uranian throne - episode twenty-three

on the eve

by
robert gibson


For the story so far, see:

volume I: the terran heir
1: Dynoom; 2: Hyala;
3: the nebulee; 4: Exception; 
5: the lever of power;
6: the infrastructure throbs; 
7: the claw extends;
8: the brain-mist writhes; 9: the last card;
10: the londoner; 11: the terran heir;
12: the city cracks; 13: the validator rips;
14: the heartland beckons; 15: zyperan

volume Ii: the golden cloak
16: confluence at ao; 17: the scared logician;
18: the rash down-payment;
19: the non-dummy run ;  20: the immigrants;
21: the cincture;  22: The golden cloak.

[ + links to:  Glossary - Index of proper names - Timeline - Maps - A Survey of Ooranye - Plan of Olhoav - guide to published stories ]

1

The ego-track of Neville Yeadon:

One step after another, and I wonder: how are the strides staying firm?  Dare I think, dare I imagine -
    Oh get a grip.  Stop tottering.  Face the demands of the moment.
    It's a fact, it's real, this thing-to-boggle-the-mind truly has happened to you. 
    Naturally you'd prefer to sit back while you get used to it; you want to absorb fortune's wallop at your leisure.  But you don't have time for that.  You have an immediate task. 
    It's your role to focus, right now, upon the negotiation of a peace with Yr.      Do it well.  Live up to your new station in life.  Else you're finished.
    We're walking down an avenue of the City of Mists, we four, I the Sunnoad accompanied by three adventurers.  I believe I did right to draw into the current of my service the guidance of Abon Gnaa and the experience of Oreneg Vadon, both of them obviously fit to be thus garnered, and as for the youngster, Kusk - well, he happened to be on hand.  Such "happening" is typical.  Millions of bystanders in this planet's long history have been thus swept into the gyre of the golden cloak.  Do the up-swept ones complain?  I haven't heard.  Maybe later, in their memoirs...  but anyhow, these three seem quietly proud to be here with me; I sense no dubiety.  They aren't reproaching me for my apparent rashness in walking through Yr without a proper military escort.  How different it would be if this kind of jaunt were to happen on Earth!  Terran followers would surely regard me as madly irresponsible, whereas here my risk-taking is accepted without question.
    Even so, it's probably just as well that this little band can't read my mind.  If they could they might wonder - loyal though they are - "What by all the skies is Sunnoad Yadon about?"  And the truth is, I don't exactly know.  And if I admitted as much, then they might say, at any rate to themselves, "What! No plan?  Yet we know that the ruler of Yr cannot be trusted!"
    Well, admittedly, it's no good hoping that Noad Rael Odiram, proud as Lucifer by all accounts, will turn out to be well-disposed towards Syoom.  Despite the gratitude he owes us for having freed him from the thralldom of the rebels who seized control of his city, he must hate the idea that Yr got beaten by a Syoomean force, even though he needed this to happen since the defeated were a faction hostile to himself.  The pattern of events must represent a dire humiliation for him, and I can expect to find him in a bad mood.  Besides, even at the best of times he wouldn't consider himself bound by loyalty to me: Yr's sky-ranging, nomadic history has not encouraged its people to regard themselves as Syoomean, or to admit allegiance to the Noad of Noads. 
    In view of all this, to place myself in Rael Odiram's power could be considered an act of lunacy.
    Yet during the past twenty minutes, since I voiced my intention to my followers, I've not heard a single attempt to dissuade me.  Nor, admittedly, have I sensed any enthusiastic approval of my intention to dicker a peace with Yr's Noad on his home ground. 
    All I get are matter-of-fact nods, respectful silences, quizzical looks...
    I wish one of them would speak.
    At last, the subdued voice of young Kusk mutters at my side: "So far it looks like a normal city, sponndar."
    My voice replies.  What did I say? 
    "Though the abitgers modify the picture."
    That's what I said, but what did I mean?  It's the first time I've ever pronounced "abitger".  Reassuring, that I can dredge up stuff like this from my subconscious Uranian encyclopaedic dictionary.  Slap a label onto a sight: abitgers! - those bristles of grey barrels on roofs and between towers.  Compressed-air cannon: that's it, hurrah, I've made an apt comment.  The sort which a knowledgeable Sunnoad should make. 
    Oreneg Vadon says, "Yes, the place is thick with them."
    I shrug with an air of wisdom.  "Defences against predatory clouds.  Accrual over the ages."  
    Oreneg glances at me, as if impressed, as if thinking: This Sunnoad-with-an-Earthmind seems to understand what to expect in a skyborne Uranian city. 
    Our boots continue to clink along the avenue's metal surface while our eye-balls swivel this way and that.  We're trying our best to keep watch on the geometric jungle that lines the way, which, at the moment, seems fairly crisp and clear; the famous Mists which give the city its sobriquet do not appear to be on the prowl, but instead have subsided into a patchy carpeting, covering a few of the city squares and side-streets with what looks like luminous mud.  We avert our eyes from those areas, because, with an attitude of mind one-hundred-per-cent-correct Uranian, we're agreed: let stuff be, so long as it leaves us alone.
    My main concern is to be sure I don't miss any signal from the palace.  Ah, that gold-and-orange arched door, there at the end of the avenue: that must be it.  The entrance.  My imagination races towards the meeting with the Noad of Yr.  I figure that the man must be desperate.  His priority when we meet will be to do something special in order to recover his lost dignity.  He needs a good image so that he can impress his own people. 
    Let's hope he'll have the sense to realize that a grand generous gesture is what would suit that image most nicely.  An agreement to an alliance of equals against the common menace of Dempelath - that would fit the bill to perfection.  I'll do best to induce him to regard it as his own idea.
    If "alliance" is too much for Rael Odiram to swallow, I could borrow a gag from Earth history and suggest that his city, like President Wilson's USA in World War One, be called not an "ally" but an "Associated Power".  Whatever term he prefers to use, it'll be fine with me so long as he joins in the fight against the evil that threatens us all.  Not too much to ask, surely.
    The bright arched door is much closer now.  It has not yet opened for us but already my speculations are leap-frogging past the immediate future to imagine how superb an asset Yr is going to be in the clash with the common enemy: won't Dempelath be aghast -
    Stop daydreaming!  Get on with the job!  You haven't got the agreement yet!
    I almost visibly quake at the reprimand from my more focused self.  A flash of Terran memory comes to me from back in 1967, from a sports report on TV of a football match.  A top-flight goal-keeper was thinking too far ahead (as he afterwards admitted) about where he would throw the ball after he'd caught it - such an obvious catch it seemed - and the result of this wandering of his mind, while the ball was still coming at him, was that he failed to catch it.  It slipped through his hands and into the goal, and "Careless Hands" he was dubbed from then on.  The error clouded all his achievements so that, sadly, it's what he's most remembered for, despite the fact that he was by and large a very good goalkeeper.  - And now you, Sunnoad Yadon, you'd better watch what you're doing. 
    For goodness' sake NOTICE the obvious things -
    For instance, the quietness of Abon Gnaa. 
    He hasn't said a word during the minutes we've been walking in this city of his. 
    It's as if he wishes to efface himself.  I didn't quite expect that.  After all, he's no automaton.  He may have been a mere mouthpiece when he was spokesman for Rael Odiram, but there's more in him than that.  
    I decide to obtain some reaction:  "Any comments, Abon Gnaa?"
    He mutters, "Things have changed."
    "More than you expected?"
    "Not more than I should have expected, no." 
    From the pique in his tone, my mind leaps at a guess - that his role has been abolished; that in fact the Noad of Yr intends not to use a spokesman at all. 
    Well - this should not inconvenience me.  Top-level negotiations between Rael Odiram and myself should not require any spokesman.
    We halt our march a few yards from the great arch-door.  Small amber studs in the door-frame glow with the light that tells us we're being watched.  We wait.  Finally, slowly, the door's two halves swing back. 
    In the greyness beyond, I discern pale interior shufflings and a glint of distant polished helmets.  My eyes adjust and I discern that the helms are worn by people crowded back against a far wall. 
    I murmur, "What do we make of this?"
    My companions are not of one mind.  Abon Gnaa is wearing a sort of stuffed expression.  Kusk on the other hand looks overawed.  Oreneg Vadon seems for once subdued.  Hmm... this may be a good moment to imagine myself in their place.
    In fact I'd do well to empathize with any Syoomean who has to tread the floor of legendary Yr.  Here, native insights and Terran insights must count as equally welcome; Yr is a mystery to all.
    I make no move to advance -
    "Wise, wise to hesitate," rasps a voice.
    Oops, undignified to give a start; a Sunnoad's nerves ought to be ice-cool, I reprove myself.
    A lean, stringy old man in a grey cloak has emerged from behind one of the pillars next to the great door.  White hair, white eyes blazing, the fellow adds dryly:  "I too am keeping out of it, though I was born in there."
    I take a deep breath and say:
    "You don't like the look of your own people, Noad Rael?"
    That was a cheeky probe by me, but he answers me seriously.  "I want to keep the distance between them and me."
    "Your own people?"
    "Today, yes," he nods.
    Well, that's his problem.  I proceed formally: "I am Sunnoad Yadon 80438 and I have come to you, Rael Odiram, Noad of Yr, to negotiate a peace.  A peace," I emphasize, "between equals."
    Straight after that last word has left my lips I briskly turn to meet the eyes of Oreneg Vadon, to give him a don't worry, I know what I'm doing glance which orders him to trust me; my expression is intended to convey, Don't imagine that I shall risk any derogation of the sunnoadex; only I don't choose to pull rank on the Noad of Yr. 
    It's a lot to put into an expression; I just hope Oreneg gets it. 
    Meanwhile, my choice of vocabulary seems to have gratified the ruler of the City of Mists.  "A Peace Between Equals," he echoes...
    I continue, "Therefore we must speak aside, the two of us alone." 
    "Willingly."  Rael Odiram gestures at the square stone block from which the nearby pillar rises.  My companions watch, grimly, as I go to join the Yrian at that plinth. 
    It provides space enough for two to sit and bargain.  We settle, the Noad and I, and eye one another in half-profile.  I begin:
    "Allow me to point out the threat that hangs over you.  The threat of being made to disappear."  Before he can bridle at this, I raise a placatory hand.  "No discourtesy.  I'm in the same boat."
    "'Boat'?"
    "The doom to which I allude is the same for me."
    I see him grind his teeth at this utterance of the unsayable.  Even on Earth it's a hard truth to voice to any ruler.  No top man likes to admit, in cases where no official mechanism of deposition exists, that he must, instead, risk disappearance.  I reflect that not so long ago the German Kaiser and the Japanese tenno were, though revered, yet vulnerable to forcible removal by (in their case) the military: an unstated doom hung over the emperors, a fate which they must have known would take effect if they failed to perform their roles successfully.  It has to be that way in cultures where no other channel exists either in theory or in imagination for the rulers' replacement.  And whereas on Earth the theory can change, and politics evolve into laxer forms, it's not so on the seventh planet. 
    On Ooranye, political evolution, insofar as it happens at all, takes vastly longer.  Whole eras may pass without any mention of the details of a forcible disappearance: eras during which it remains an outrage to say out loud what had to be silently done.
    I, however, have said it out loud.  What is Rael Odiram going to do?  Explode? Not quite.  I watch him choke it down.  Then with satisfaction I see a realization dawn on his face.  I encourage it by softly spoken words:
    "Noad, you must have worked out, having heard about me, that it's because I am not completely of this world, indeed because part of me belongs to a very different world, that I can speak what otherwise is never spoken on Ooranye.  Likewise my other point, that what I have said about the risk of your disappearance is likely to apply even more strongly to myself."
    "To you, Sunnoad Yadon?" he murmurs.
    "Yes, to me; for you and I are in the same kind of situation."
    He waits for more clarity.
    "Let me be blunt," I continue: "you have suffered serious reverses.  You were overthrown by a faction that grounded your floating city.  It has been beaten in war by a Syoomean force to whom you owe your restoration.  Looks very bad for your image, does it not?  But now think - what about me?  Estimate how darker it must look for me!  A new Sunnoad, duly elected by the dying voice of Brem Tormalla 80437, but bequeathed the golden cloak on one shaky condition.  I am where I am because it is believed that an Earthmind may be quirky enough to beat the abnormal threat of Dempelath.  A bit up-in-the-air, eh?  All sorts of things could go wrong, probably will, with such a reign; and if they go too far wrong - something will happen to erase me."
    Rael Odiram finds his voice.
    "Not necessarily erased.  You could instead be admonished.  By a Corrector."
    "I admit the possibility," I say.  "I am aware that many Sunnoads have been righted and saved by Correctors.  But not always: and in my case a Corrector may not be enough.  I am pitted against an evil from Fyaym, resistance to whom will necessitate terrific demands, bringing stresses as yet unimagineable, on me and on any force I can raise.  If, as seems probable, I am simply not up to the task, it will mean that I shall be judged as - "
    "Uncorrectable," he nods.
    "You've said it, Noad Rael."
    He muses, "I have found it intriguing, the question of precisely what happens to rulers who disappear."
    "Let's hope neither of us discovers the answer." 
    That remark raises an ironic smile on the face of the Noad of Yr.  The desperate phase of our colloquy has come to an end.  He and I are of one mind, that we must make the best of where we're at.  Plainer sailing from now on, I think to myself, and my glib talk slides onward towards success.  Almost before I realize it I find we've arranged, with no misunderstandings, the terms of peace. 
    It's a verbal commitment, clear and sufficient; the Noad of Yr has given his word, and I believe him, that he will bring the majestic floating presence of Yr itself to support the enterprise when the journey across Fyaym to Olhoav begins.
    It's a strong agreement because of what's behind it.  I know, and he knows I know, that he needs the grand gesture.  In the eyes of his people he must live down the recent blow to his prestige, and restore that splendour of destiny which alone will enable him to survive; the alternative is a silent disappearance into tacit oblivion.  He must avoid the gulp down that nameless throat which a ruler who fails to make the grade on this world can quietly expect to happen.
    I get up from the plinth, and we - the Noad of Yr and the Sunnoad of Syoom - bow to each other.
    ...Back with my followers, I rub a hand across my brow and say, "That's done." 
    "He is now our ally?" asks Oreneg Vadon in obvious amazement.
    "He will join the war effort as an Associated Power," I say with a trace of a grin.  "But yes: 'ally' defines it, really.  Rael Odiram will join my fleet when it is assembled for the voyage to Olhoav."
    Abon Gnaa mutters, "I must believe it, I suppose."
    Kusk says, "A great outcome, sponndar Sunnoad-Y."
    "I reckon that you three," I point at them, "would do well to remain in Yr a while to liaise with Noad Rael."  Not phrased exactly like a command, because I am not sure whether the war is yet considered to have begun, and a Sunnoad commands only in war.  I then realize that my words have come out in a mixture of Uranian and English.  Uh... which words were in which tongue?  I can't remember a few seconds back.  Anyhow, my followers' eyes are keen; my 'Nudge Quotient' is high; so shut up, brain, and don't analyze how you skate over the moment, else you'll fall over.  What matters is, they're obeying.  "I leave you now," I say.  "I shall call the flagship to take me off the rim." 
    Whereupon, the four of them line up (I note, gladly, Rael standing in the line with the others) to bid me farewell.
    I set off back along the avenue with a metaphorical diploma in my pocket, a peace negotiated, an alliance achieved, a joint campaign promised, and if something deep inside me mumbles that it's not going to happen, or at any rate not the way I've intended, yet having jumped the first metaphorical hurdle in my reign I can stride onwards, I the Noad of Noads, buoyantly trampling on my doubts... 

2

In the mood of wonder into which I keep sliding, my legs bear me like the limbs of an automaton back along the avenue to Yr's rim.  Similarly without thought I make the transceiver-call to the skyship.  A couple of minutes' wait and the great ovoid hovers close.  A hiss, and its pickup ayash lifts me.  I rise through the opening; I step onto the floor of the hold.
    Immediately after having graciously responded to the greetings of those present (the captain and several officers), I can't remember what I've said.  Again my consciousness gets slapped by the double-take to end all double-takes.  Again my inner self wails, "Has all this actually happened to me?  Is the golden cloak really around my shoulders?"  Fortunately it stays private, this mental stun; the bogglement fizzes away in a mode invisible to others.  Well, let me ignore them too, except right now for the captain, who is asking me something:
    "Should we head back to Skyyon now, 80438?" 
    (Answer him, idiot.)
    "Yes, do that," I say.  I ought to have given that order right away, rather than let the moment drag, but better late than never.  The captain's head inclines; his cloak sweeps as he turns.  His officers follow him, away to the ramp which leads to the control centre.
    Cautiously pleased, I tag along at a distance.  They seem to understand - I think they do - that I shouldn't be hemmed in by ceremonial.  Hence no mention of a posh stateroom; but what about being addressed as "80438"?  Such numeric terseness.  I suppose it's too soon to understand the nuances of the various forms of communication with a wearer of The Cloak.  I remember quite a lot of the procedure surrounding Brem Tormalla 80437 but it sure seems different now that I myself am on the receiving end. 
    One route to speedier understanding occurs to me, though it may come at too high a price.  Were I to let go of my Terran consciousness altogether, in a final submergence, a permanent, total surrender to my Uranian personality, would that not banish my perplexities forever?  In other words if I were to become wholly native.
    I shrink from the cost of that step: I had surely better retain the perspective of Earth, which, I strongly suspect, is why I'm here, wearing this colour.  The people of Syoom would not approve if I were to abandon the eccentric and peculiar viewpoint which they hope may defend them against the even weirder enemy on Starside.   
    Here we come to the biggest question of all.   
    What sort of enemy is it that we face? 
    Dempelath, yes - but what does he mean to do, and how, and with what? 
    We're sleepwalking towards a state of war, a war to preserve our identity, yet nobody talks about it.  For hundreds of days now a stench of undefined peril has been wafting across Syoom, while our fighting strength of Syoom is almost squashed into inaction by an amazingly heavy blanket of silence.  What can be my role in all this?   
    A mad, horrid idea poses as the answer:
    The role of a poison-taster.  That may be it.  That could be why Brem Tormalla chose me.  The idea: "let the Terran pollute his lips if necessary, whenever someone has to mention the unmentionable.  Let him soil himself and leave us clean."
    Now look what I've done: overcast the day with yuck-thoughts.
    Oh well, one would have to be a fool to hope this job will be easy.  
    While ambling towards my cabin I reach a corridor-intersection where an officer crosses my path.  I hail him and he stops at once.  Hastily asking myself what I meant to say, I fortunately locate my motive, which is that I want to make sure I don't reach the polar city at the wrong time of day.  In order to eschew an evening arrival - which I know from history would be bad - I resolve not to go straight there. 
    "Please ask the Captain," I say, "to drop me off at Melikon." 
    "I'll see to it, 80438," says the officer smartly, and turns round.  That was all.  No explanation necessary.  I've done right: of course a Sunnoad must not spend the night in Skyyon.  Good little move on my part.  I could tell that the officer approved.  Ever since Tu Rim 78860, way back before the current era, tried to convert the sunnoadex into a despotic rule, wearers of the golden cloak have been banished by custom from sojourning overnight in the Sunward Polar City.  To accept the ban wholeheartedly is a way of distancing ourselves from the shameful example of Tu Rim.  In fact it's a taboo so strong, that to flout it might well be sufficient grounds to activate the un-recorded, wordless disappearance, and at the thought of this I shiver a little at what may have been a near-miss with disaster.  Therefore, let me resolve that while I am Sunnoad I shall never inhabit quarters in the Zairm, the palace at Skyyon, not even for an afternoon. 
    Instead, the allotted "hut" at Melikon, ninety miles away, will content me whenever I need to lodge within a half-hour's skimming distance of the polar hub.
    I bet the crew are relieved that I remembered the rule.  How embarrassing for all concerned if they'd had to remind me!  (Though doubtless a useful talent in this job, and in the bystanders involved, is that of brushing off embarrassments.)   
    So far, so good, then.  I'm an apprentice nudger, determined to improve.  May the Skies grant that I do not get lazy nor take for granted the love which the people of Syoom bear towards the office I hold.  After all, theirs is so deep a devotion, that I need only ask in order to get the help I want, as far as practicality allows; but though I can bask in that love, I must also tend it, take skilful care of it, make requests in the right style, and for the right things.  For love itself exerts pressure, the challenge to live up to its expectation.  All is upon me.  Upon me, with never enough aid from precedent and the guidance of my predecessors...   
    ...It seems that my Terran awareness has segued again, past some further stretch of time.  I gaze around as though just awoken from a doze. 
    I'm not on the skyship.  I must have alighted.  The glowing numerals on a blue clockface tell me: "10,545,958 Ac".  Six days since my accession.  I've been in the "hut" for a while.   
    What has filled that time? 
    What have I been doing here?   
    A rummage among snippety memories gives me the answer: nothing much.  Here in my lodgement in Melikon, I am certainly am not in the middle of any action at this particular moment.  Good: that means I've been granted a while in which to get my bearings and learn to feel at home, as I wander around the premises, outside and in. 
    Hut" is a misleading term.  True, from outside it's that sort of shape.  Inside, though, it amounts to fairly a comfortable dwelling, at any rate for a solitary person's needs. 
    It is spotlessly maintained by silent robot cleaners.  One constant cleaner to each room, they're always inching, hand-sized, pad-shaped, at snail's pace over the floor, walls, furniture...     
    Custom decrees that the Sunnoad lives here alone.  It doesn't feel lonely, however.  I know that if I ever get to  feel overwhelmed with isolation I need only use the radio and video links.  Some of them connect directly with Skyyon; others, via relay, with further cities.     
    I have availed myself of some of these channels during the past few days - with, I recall, mildly disappointing results.  It seems that my efforts to get an overall picture of the state of Syoom, with particular regard to signs of trouble infiltrating from Fyaym, have met with cagey responses, albeit respectful ones.  Was it unrealistic of me to expect more?  Perhaps one can't realistically hope to obtain a full enough picture from this central but lonely vantage.  I suspect indeed that on this planet you have to go out and plunge, to catch your answers on the toss amid the waves of events.  Still, it has been reasonable to spend a restful few days here. 
    It's marvellous to be able, imaginatively, to commune with my predecessors by browsing in the hut's mellow-litten library-room; marvellous to explore the notes left by numerous previous wearers of the golden cloak.  Not that such memoirs can tell me exactly what's the right thing to do, nor do they specify what will happen if I fail to do it: no records can possibly exist from which to derive formulae for what makes failing Sunnoads "disappear".  But the companionship of voices from the past does cheer me, and inspire me.   
    If the worst happens, if I let them all down, I'll want to disappear.     
    Still, best not to dwell on that...  Anyhow, let me stay here just a few hours more, a few hours in which the "Warlord of Uranus" (haha) can plan his moves.
    Wait, what's that I see through the window?    
    A great slab of an object, that wasn't here before.  It's a metal crawler which has slid into view; an event that has washed athwart me to show me that I've delayed too long to take the plunge on my own initiative, and therefore have been pushed.  Since nobody except me ought to be at Melikon - except by my express permission - the sight means some kind of trouble.  Who could have driven this object here?  The privacy of the hut is a Sunnoad's due.  It is so regarded by all loyal Syoomeans.  Must go out and investigate, right now.  To hesitate would be beneath me.  And another notion rat-tatting in my head as I move to the door is that the second big example of wrongness, that has occurred during my watch over Syoom, may be at hand.  The first one was the grounding of Yr; now this crawler-thing may represent the second major shot in a barrage aimed at my reign.  In fact such a tradition-flouting trespass could have been committed with a view to assassination, if the enemy really has already reached this far.  But other explanations are possible.  And anyway, even if an assassin has arrived, it needn't be part of the new Dempelath-inspired value-distortion; it could instead be something much more traditional: the silent, traditional erasure of a Sunnoad who doesn't measure up.  In which case I have been flattering myself, deluding myself with the hopeful assumption that my Earthmind might be a contribution to Uranian history.  For, equally, one might argue the opposite, might say that a Terran nature makes me unsuited... so greatly unsuited, that my time has come to an end.
    I open the hut door.  I step out, ignoring the alarm bells of cowardice.  Let them shrill at me with their specious advice, Get protection first!  Hire a corps of guards before you go to meet strangers!  Yes all right it's against custom to do that, but people know that things are changing, and they'd understand, surely; in fact, won't they think you irresponsible if you risk your person like this...?  Shushhh, be quiet, silly: if this is the occasion of my quiet disappearance, don't try to counter it with Terran thinking; the dynamics of Ooranye are not those of Earth, and Heaven forbid that they ever shall be.    
    I walk straight at the intruder.  In front of the vehicle's bow window I halt.  If anyone wants to fire at me, while I stand tall with my golden cloak flapping about me, let him.  I'm giving the Event its chance, and the benefit of the doubt.
    Movement visible inside the Crawler: a chunky man slumps back in his pilot chair, a look of stupefaction on his broad face.  On his right a woman reacts to his movement by giving him a furious shove.  Further back, against the cabin wall, a boy and girl aged about 3000 Uranian days (10 Earth years or so) stand very still. 
    Dismissing the notion that a middle-aged couple and their normal-looking children could possibly be assassins, I gesture Come out and talk.     
    This brings the result that the port bow-door swings open, and the man descends to the ground, almost stumbling before the Noad of Noads.  His hand pushes at his mop of hair.  Nervous backgrounder is written all over him.     
    "Welcome to Melikon," say I.     
    He straightens and pulls himself together.  He must know that although I had spoken my words dryly, he can trust me to mean "Welcome" when I say it.  Yes indeed, his eyes brighten at the prize which fate has thrown at him, while he bobs his head and says, "Sunnoad sponndar."    
    "And you are...?"   
    "Gureem, a xebbalshar."   
    "A well-laden one," I observe, for his xebbalsh or plains-paddler lies heavy on the gralm, its full cargo depressing it about six inches.  To me it resembles a beached submarine (albeit with no conning tower), forty steely-blue yards from bow to stern, and doubtless fitted out for long voyages, with ample capacity for provisions, goods and living space.  On their endless transects of Syoom, xebbalsharou have no fixed abode; their mobile homes fulfil all their needs.
    I continue, even-toned, "And you have come to pay me a visit?"
    "Due to faulty navigational equipment on the Tseppuk - it seems I have," he replies with a balance of excuse and of recovered poise.  His swift explanation is meant to count as an apology for trespass.  And it seems to work: although the gulf between our ranks is as wide as can be, the disparity doesn't grate, on the contrary it successfully functions as a sort of two-way social pump infusing cost-free power into both our roles.  No question, this goes to show that when foregrounders' renl is shared by backgrounders, life is good!  I wave at the face of the woman at the window, gesturing that she come out and join us. 
    She obeys, takes up a stance by her man, and takes his hand in hers.  The couple are similar in looks, as though the xebbalshar over the aeons have evolved a definite racial type.     
    "You are...?"   
    "Ehiv," she says.  She adds: "Our home is yours, Sunnoad sponndar."   
    "That seems to work both ways," I remark, though I smile to take the sting out of it. 
    Hesitantly, they smile too, but fail to find a smooth reply, so I need to help them out. 
    "Since you're making free with my space," I continue, "I shall ask you to do something for me."  And seeing that the children have inched forward to stand on the threshold of the bow door, I wave them forward too. 
    Careful not to make a sound, they come to stand between their parents.  From these youngsters' grave expressions I sense how keen they are to drink the dignity of the occasion.  What a mistake it would be for me to spoil the grandness of it all by "unbending" to them in the slightest!  Of course their gravity is an outward stiffness only, like a sturdy pipe for the fizz of excitement, but it's not for me to knock a hole in it.
    Anyhow, they're in for a surprise.  So are their parents.  My next move may be unheard-of in the history of the Actinium Era. 
    I turn, heading back to the Sunnoad's hut, and beckon the family to follow me!  I can hardly believe what I'm doing.
    I guess they're finding it hard to credit, too, as they follow me with lowered gaze into where nobody but me is supposed to go.  Then, overcome by irresistible curiosity, they raise their eyes to gawp at my workroom.      
    I wave the dazed couple to swivel chairs; I take one for myself.  In stunned co-operation they sit and swivel to face me.  The children meanwhile, standing, stare around in rapture.  That pump, that invisible social pump, is working at full tilt.  We're energezied, all five of us, by the vitalising effect of its alternating current.  Up and down and up and down, it draws power from the vertical contrast of "highest" and "lowest" rank...  "Yes," out loud I muse, "you may be able to help me."
    "How?" whispers Gureem, almost to himself.
    I say:  "But first, allow me to check something: do you know my name?"      Gureem manages to squeeze out the words: "Sunnoad Brem Tormalla 80437."
    His wife's elbow digs at him...   
    I smile, "Ehiv seems to know.  Listen to her."     
    "I saw his picture once," the woman says, in a small but resolute voice.  "You, sponndar Sunnoad, are not he."   
    "Correct.  Brem Tormalla is dead.  I am his successor, Sunnoad Nyav Yuhlm 80438, otherwise known as Yadon."      
    Gureem almost gargles, "Yadon the slayer of Zyperan!" 
    "That's the one," I nod.
    Trembling and licking his lips, Gureem says, "Tales have... er... circulated..."   
    "I bet they have," I say.  "For instance, I'm half alien: that much is true.  My reign, if it lasts, may prove to be a race between the pros and cons of that."
    "'Prozancons'?" 
    "By which I mean, the upside and the downside."
    Gureen still looks uncomprehending but again his wife is quicker on the uptake. 
    "Sponndar," says Ehiv to me, her face ashine with pleading hope, "we, your people, are in the desperate dark about what is being sent us from Fyaym.  If you, 80438, can obtain help from your Terran side, your mind-stretched power, then I say the stretchier the better!"
    "Encouragingly put!" I laugh.  "Like you folk, I've travelled thousands of miles, yet all the stupefactions we've accumulated so far will turn out to be nothing compared to what we're doomed to endure if we don't nip our enemy in the bud."  I've got them spellbound; my tongue loosens further; I reminisce about my wanderings in the many days before I became Sunnoad.  And then, opening the buds of friendship further, I encourage them to talk about their travels too.  In the softening mood our tales overlap in an intervolved recitative...  and in these story-swaps we really are well-matched; strain has disappeared, apart from Gareem's little tics of astonishment which happen when he not only realizes but really realizes where he is.  As for his wife, she contributes less talk as time goes on, huddling in her chair; clutching, knowingly - I can tell - a quiet triumph; joyfully thanking Fate for the navigational error which brought them here.
    All of a sudden I understand why, during the past few days, I have been so uncommunicative; why, for example, I have not yet made a serious attempt to contact my fellow-Cinctees, or go patrolling with my fleet.  Truth is, I have been waiting for something like this.  A private get-together with backgrounders. 
    "Talking of adventure," I finally say, "today our adventures intersect.  You got here by accident, but now that you're here you can help me bring the situation in Syoom into better focus.  You can be my..." (I rummage for the phrase I want, the one that means pipeline of significant reports) "stalking stranth."   
    They draw startled breath.  "Why us?" asks Ehiv.   
    "Because people like you are most likely to know."   
    "Know?" whispers Gareem.   
    "About what's wafting into Syoom."   
    It's a hard sentence to speak, but I needed to dare to say it, and, yes, Gareem is nodding, for he knows, we all know, of the corruptions, the incoming stuff which we don't want to hear about or describe.   
    I continue:  "You've heard the name Dempelath."   
    "An ill-omened word," nods Gareem.     
    I prompt:  "From...?"   
    "Somewhere in Starside."   
    "As, by now, is widely known."  I must say it: "He it is, who is concocting - you surely sense what I mean - the sickness-brew.  The first main symptom was the grounding of Yr."   
    "We've certainly heard of that," they admit in small voices.   
    "Well, that one is solved, but more infections are surely on the way, and I need to be informed about them, preferably before they sprout into crises."  
    "And we - "   
    "Among the many measures I must take and the classes of people I must use, you xebbalsharou are the best on-the-ground observers and listeners in Syoom."  I let them absorb that verbal propellant and then I conclude:  "Start today; start now!"   
    "80438, can you..."   
    "No, sponndarou, I've said it all.  It's no use trying to be more specific.  Give me news of off-putting stuff, give me a target."   
    To my awed delight it seems Ehiv and Gareem have something to impart right now.  They turn to each other and -  "That'll be - " "It sounds like - "  "Narar!" they both say at once.    
    They know of one already!  "What about Narar?"  I've not been to that city.  I check my knowledge.  Nothing recent.    
    Gareem says, "It's where we heard that the Noad's son has been appointed Daon."   
    I almost don't get it.  Momentarily thinking purely as a Terran, I say to myself, "So what?"  Then my heart misses a beat.  Succession of the Noad's son.  A hereditary noadex.  I whistle and say, "Like something out of the Vanadium Era!"   
    "That's how it appears," nods Gareem.   
    In doleful amazement I shake my head, recognizing the style of the event, the Dempelathian flouting of taboo.  By all the skies!  If the Nararans really have defied the profound Uranian antipathy to hereditary government -    
    "You've made a good start," I say to my visitors.  "You've given me my next target."

3

They bow their heads in farewell, and Gareem says: "May fate's paths lead you to victory, 80438." 
    "Without too many wrong turnings, let's hope," I dryly agree, and to cap this with something more appreciative I add: "Conversation, such as we've enjoyed, counts as one of the richer paths." 
    Now, was I wise to say that?  All sorts of things may go wrong if these people get the notion that I now want to consume yet more time talking.  I do a quick rummage in my mind for the right farewell phrase.  Ah, here it is, based on the fact that a xebbalsh mid-section, which contains the cargo hold, has a big horizontally hinged door: 
    "May you find a good place to put the flap down," I say.
    I've hit the right note - they smile with pleasure because my words mean May you find a good place in which to stop and trade. 
    They're back in their vehicle now and it's moving off.  I watch the sub-gralm paddles of the xebbalsh churning away.  Well, negativity sure has taken a fall in this unblemished little encounter; heartily I can jeer at my former doubts.  Assassination, my eye!  My gleaming body-suit of exalted rank allowed me to mirror these people's hopes right back in their faces.  Therefore we parted with mutual uplift.  Far from being a target, I'm an accepted service... 
    Sure, fate may not always be as kind as this.  I nevertheless can count on some degree of leeway, I reckon, between me and disaster.  Enough to allow me to go forth with the prestige of the sunnoadex as my shield. 
    Maybe it's not an invincible shield, but it will be enough, I trust, to ensure that the threat of Disappearance does not loom at every turn.
    Gazing at the vehicle's wake, I watch the slow rebound of the grainy surface to even up the surface once more as the xebbalsh recedes.  Within an hour or so the gralm will as level as ever; the isostasy of the plain ensures that no trace will linger to reveal that any heavy freighter paddled this way.  The thought brings some melancholy.  I'm bound to remain mostly alone here.  Oh come off it, Yadon, that's silly.  You're the Noad of Noads!  You can have companionship whenever you want it!  Anyone in Syoom will be honoured to give you their time and attention...
    Ah, but it was the sight of those family ties, that have made me wistful.  Those children remind me of my own.  Tsritton and Idova Sganna are adults now.  They're all the family I possess and they're a long, long distance away.  Pointless to complain that they don't rush over to see me.  I know very well why I cannot expect that.  Pointless to object, "If they'd dropped everything and skimmed in this direction they could have been here by now" - pointless because of the suggestion of influence, and how bad that would look, given the powerful Uranian taboo against hereditary succession to power. 
    Which is precisely why the news from Narar must be such a shock to everyone. 
    Anything that looks as though it might lead to that political sin is viewed severely by all society.  No wonder that rulers on this planet tend to distance themselves from their families...
    I gaze back at the hut and that, too, wafts me some inevitable sorrow.  Everybody knows the sound historical reason why Melikon is a lonely place.  The hut's very existence is a reminder of how Sunnoad Tu Rim 78860 went wrong.  If it had not been for him, no such structure would have been built here.  None would have been needed.  My thoughts circle round, as they often do, to the old story.  Without the powerful and age-old historical memory of Tu Rim's rise and fall, I could have slept in the Zairm; could have stayed in the Palace of Skyyon as of right, for as many nights as I wished.  That palace would have been my ex officio home if history had gone differently.  Now it's at my disposal only as an office in daylight hours.  No overnight stays by a Sunnoad ever again, anywhere in the polar city. 
    But enough moping: I have a shiny plan.  Be glad you've thought of a way forward.  Follow its shine! 
    ...Yet still my mood still swings to and fro, as though my inner eye were swivelling to follow the ball at a psychic tennis match.  The first swing tells me to appreciate my plan.  Based on the couple's mention of the doings at Narar, my decision promises fair success.  The second swing brings the worry, that perhaps I was so rapt in all this brilliant thinking ahead that I failed in courtesy towards my visitors: I didn't thank them properly at the end.  But no!  Scrub that!  If they noticed my absorption, they must have understood it.  Surely, it was a compliment to them, for it showed I had listened to them.  It made obvious my appreciation of the importance of what they told me.  Indeed, that's what enabled them to clear off so smartly: they were able to leave with a treasure locked safe in their memories, namely, knowledge of a successful brush with 80438.  
    I return to the hut, and scribble a paragraph in the log.  My next step is to radio a message to my office in Skyyon, with a request for a skyship to be allotted for my use in ten days' time.  This is reasonable enough, I reckon, since ten days should allow the fleet to re-arrange patrols without much trouble.
    It turns out that the request was too modest:  "Sunnoad Yadon, you can have a ship sooner than that," says the duty officer, sounding on edge.  "You can have... let me see... the Lorodest today."
    "That would be efficient," I reply; "you, sponndar patrol-co-ordinator, are...?"
    "Tham Mext is my name, sponndar 80438."
    "Noted, sponndar, and thank you - but I'll stick to my schedule.  So unless my route swerves, expect me in ten days."
    "Taquotal, Sunnoad Yadon."
    That's more like it.  He'd definitely sounded not quite right at first: clumsy in style, his renl rather wonky.  I'm being awfully perfectionist all of a sudden.  Such bouts of hyper-critical sensitivity seem to come on me now and then, as if, with regard to the degree of renl which ought to govern public conduct, I were getting to be more Uranian than the Uranians.  This isn't my wish.  I just want to be clear as to what's going on.  Consider: the chap sounded awkward; but so what?  Shouldn't that simply be ascribed to the fellow's nervousness at addressing the Sunnoad?  Nevertheless my view persists that he would not, in more normal times, have presumed to suggest a tightening of my schedule. 
    Oh well, perhaps he was naturally curious as to why I wanted a ship not now but in ten days' time.  Perhaps the nature of my plan - and not his reaction to it - is itself the peculiarity. 
    Indeed, it's a valid question: what am I going to do with these ten intervening days?
    Rather than face that thought, I mount my skimmer, and I'm off... 
    Spontaneously adventurous!  More Uranian than the Uranians, quite so!  With zeal I recline on the wave.  You can still trust to the wave, I hope, despite the "spilth" from Dempelath that has begun to trickle into Syoom; you can still rely upon the good old current which holds back its conclusions until the hour when the answer appears. 
    Until that hour, a hunch suffices, inducing me to steer my vehicle's bow, not towards distant Narar, but in the opposite direction, for a few special days. 
    My decision rewards me with a flow of vigour in my veins, with the racing plain below my keel and the cool wind that whistles past my glassite cowl, bracing me with that trust in the wave which makes utter sense on a world like this: to be free of worry concerning an apparent detour, even though I have no logical guarantee of how it will work, is Uranian common sense.  Here, postponed conclusions aren't a cheat, nor are they any kind of dodge.  A cheat or a dodge it would be on Earth, to be sure - like in those detective stories which allow the viewpoint characters to conceal what they perfectly well know.  That sort of artificial literary device, to preserve the reader's surprise until all the suspects are lined up and the punch is delivered, is a conscious cheat - but here it's no cheat, it's honestly true that I myself really don't yet know the wave's climacteric crest, and yet that's where it's headed, and any reader of my life will have to accept that it works that punchy way. 
    …I come to myself after a skid of time.  The number on the pnal, the distance-indicator, shows that I have advanced over two thousand miles.    
    Though the miles aren't towards Narar, yet in a practical sense I am “on the way” to that city, because my route deviates for a purpose which serves my mission.  At any rate I assume so.  But how well am I reading Destiny's script?  Has my action garbled it?  No, comes the reassuring answer: I have stayed realistic in terms of how things actually work around here; Carry on as you are, old fellow, hope pats me on the back, it's a waste of time to think about backing down.   
    Up ahead, some grey blocks expand into view: it's a ground-town, an obscure surface-settlement, one of those islolated huddles of humanity on the plains of Ooranye.  Were it not for the invisible wave, my advice to myself would be to detour with care.  I would half-circle this place slowly, not rush straight through, lest some trigger-happy watchman fail to note my golden cloak.  As things are, I dispense with any such advice.  I go belting down their high-street without hesitation.  Waving back at those who see me - it seems, despite their astonishment, that (thank goodness) these townsfolk have the presence of mind to recognize the Sunnoad in a flash and to catch the moment with arms raised in greeting - I speed through. 
    In less than a minute I'm out the other side of the ground-town.  Not once do I look back.  I did what I did because I didn't want to stop or swerve or decelerate at all.  I've streaked through, not even learning the name of the place, and in so doing I've sown who-knows-what legend. 
    The incident is not quite over: here's an outlying vheic-farm.  Somebody's painting one of the storage barns.  Well now, a fellow putting a coat of paint on a wall - what a nostalgically Earthly sight!  However, the glowing orange fields behind around us are extremely un-Earthly.   
    The farm recedes, the settlement's outermost habitation diminishing at my back.  Alone once more, bulleting into the world-plain, the infinite stretches of loneliness, I realize I shan't have any more occasional encounters with scattered folk before I reach my goal.   
    ...At last, I glimpse what looks like a distant fuzzy spire.  More miles flow past, it gets closer and sharper, and all of a sudden I am certain that it is the solitary crown of Kafumabapsu, rarest of trees.  Tall as a mountain, it looms as a signpost to tell me that my journey nears its end.  Kafumabapsu stands upon the dark line, which stretches at its base, namely the forest of Namrol.
    Slow down, Yadon, and think: why aren't you suitably afraid?  Life has teeth, says a Uranian proverb which could act as a corrective to your lazy thoughts of riding on waves.  Yes, it's as well to remember that life can bite.  Snapping right through the cushion of one's fate-wave, even while you loll on it, the teeth can bite you.
    That piece of folk-wisdom hasn't made me stop, it has merely prompted me to decrease my speed to a hundred miles per hour.  Flunnd to fate's teeth, let them blunt themselves on me!  Is that excessive bravado?  Must focus seriously.  Allow some Terran caution to take hold. 
   The old Terran parenting dilemma comes to mind: children are one's responsibility but they aren't one's belongings; how far, then, ought one to mould one's progeny in the image of one's own ideas of right and wrong?    
    On this world of Ooranye the problem doesn't exist - except for rulers.  But hey, I am a ruler. 
    So hadn't I better watch out?  The answer, I suppose, lies in the fact that there's no heredity in souls.  Even back on Earth I didn't need to be told that.  On both worlds, then, I can plump firmly for letting-souls-go.  Let them be what they want
    It's what I firmly believe, so I don't have any excuse for failure to put it into practice here.  And part of that practical approach means not worrying too much.  Not giving in to unnecessary fears.  I have my faults, but never shall I be a Tu Rim: never shall I wish to turn the sunnoadex into a Yeadon dynasty.  The very thought is preposterous.  Not even if I had been a King on Earth, would I have relished that sort of arrangement.  What a mug's game - wishing to dilute oneself via a multiplication of identical successors!  Oddly inconsistent with regal pride!  The vast ego of Louis XIV worked against itself by naming his son another Louis and his grandson and great-grandson likewise Louis, so that if the line had gone on forever they'd all have indistinguishably blended in, drowning remembrance of his individuality in an unending stream of Louis Louis Louis...  What price ego then?  Sincerely do I reject the entire notion; and with that, my native Uranian wellness takes the helm.

4

My awareness has skidded.  Again.  I'm evidently addicted to skids, add-ict-ed-to-skids, the sleepy slippage through time, my Earthly awareness sitting back, unemployed Terran insights drowsing while my Uranian self occupies the driving seat. 
    Only when the next moment arrives at which my Planet Three perspective may come in handy, does the Earthly ego-track return.  Such a moment has again arrived, evidently, on the approach to the immigrant settlement.  My guts got churning - my Uranian guts - in panicky need for that extra Terran edge.  On cue, when I saw my children, my Earth-self clicked back into the cockpit of consciousness.
    Outwardly, even while we hug in greeting, I'm not discomposed.  Tsritton and Idova Sganna and I, we simply brim with quiet joy while the crowds watch.  Now we step back to arm's length to survey each other, while at a few yards' distance the village clearing is packed by the people, the inhabitants of - what's that humorous-sounding name I learned from the sentry just now? - Nu Galodabbab. 
    Yes, while my eyes and those of my children sparkle together, the population of Nu Galodabbab are witnesses of this moment of family history.  My split attention darts all over the place.  It has to.  It's the reign of nagging awareness which won't let go.  This settlement's name, for instance: it sort of means "To scurry to safety" - nu dabbarr; "trekking" - galodarr; add the perfect participle ending -ab and shake well to get Nu Galodabbab - "the haven to which one has scurried" -
    Tsritton suddenly teases, "Crushed by the cares of office, Father?"
    "Shush," says Idova Sganna.  "Don't mention the grey hair."
    I don a crooked smile.  "Despite all that, neither of you seem surprised to see me."
    "Oh, we are, we are!" says Idova, "but we don't expect to know just yet..."
    "Not before you see fit to tell us, anyhow," says her brother.  He glances around at the host of spectators.  "They, of course, are all trying to guess already." 
    Idova remarks, "The one thing we do know, is that it's nothing to do with us."
    "That's the one certainty," agrees Tsritton, " - that we're out of it."
    They're implying: look how moral we are.  Look how far we are from trading on our relation with the Sunnoad.
    "Your view needs revision," I smile.  A quiver of strange hope and alarm flicks over their expressions.  "The taboo," I continue, "that you're allusively skirting around... is precisely why I am here!"
    "What do you mean, Father?" whispers Idova.
    "It's orthodox, I assure you.  Normally an idea one hardly dares to speak, but my way of upholding decency is to name it out loud: the taboo against hereditary influence and power, which I intend to add to my armoury of shockers, quite soon to draw and fire."
    ...Once more comes the time-skid!
    I jerk into awareness of an interval of days. 
    The vanishment of those days has wiped the scene in the Nu Galodabbab.  All that's around me now is the wide plain and, ahead, the city of Narar.  Oh, how I have travelled, my Earthly self once more unconscious! 
    What, you back again, Earthy? exclaims my Uranian self. 
    Yes, that Terran ego has re-settled, draped light as a shawl, over my thoughts and feelings and plans, to colour them and view them from its peculiar critical stance. 
    The reason I'm needed - I, Neville Yeadon, Terran - is to exercise supervision over what I as the Sunnoad of Syoom am about to do, for my plan seems irresponsible according to Earthly criteria.  "What rashness is this that you're about to commit?" flares the argument within me.  "Is civilization's leader about to indulge in knight-errantry?"  "Don't carp like that, Terran," clashes my Uranian side.  "It's precisely the way crises are faced on this world."  "Maybe, but think before you go blundering into Narar: what's the likeliest place on Syoom to cause me to disappear?  Answer, it's that city approaching now!  That sight which towers ahead of my little skimmer procession!  And instead of a strong escort of guards, I have only my two children.  Not a single other one of my fellow Olhoavan exiles from the Namrol settlement cared to come along."  "That's because I told them not to come.  I chose to travel light."  "The more fool you.  Talk of putting all one's eggs in one basket!  To face the spilth in Narar with a mere trio!  Does the Sunnoad have the right to gamble in this way?"
    Cogent questions, indeed.  No snappy answer arises, from the bedrock of my native Uranian wisdom, to rebut the Terran scorn.    
    Better look back and check my motives!
    In my memory's rearview mirror I check out the past couple of days.  In terms of mood, this latest "skid" has been a good one; its emotional effect as benign and efficient as they come.  If it were not so, the undertow of anxiety would tug me back, and I would retreat, even at this late point.  As things are, my onward impulse wins. 
    Truth to tell, I'm looking forward to a triumph.  Here's the moment of no return: our skimmer-prows tip up as the ayash takes hold.  We start to climb the invisible entrance drive, the air-current onto Narar. 
    As soon as I get a breather I'll unify my impressions, sew it all together, integrate the memory of the past few days with my Terran consciousness...  as is my habit nowadays in skid after skid... until one day I'll get to be one continuous person.
    Meanwhile our rise has lifted us to where we can see over the rim of Narar.  We gaze down upon the city floor.  We note spectators are swarming onto the landing area.  Scores, no, hundreds of faces gawp at us as we begin our descent.  All this, despite the fact that I never made any public announcement of my arrival.   
    Our skimmers come to rest.  We dismount, and rest our elbows on our vehicles' floating hulls.     
    "Quite a crowd," says Tsritton.   
    Idova Sganna adds, "Yet we didn't tell them..."   
    "We must have been spotted on the approach," I remark.
    Watch out, I tell myself, as you steer your course along the pot-holed road of life.  Unspoken perforations in the social fabric, through which many an unsuccessful Sunnoad has dropped out of all mention, may await you here.  It's hard to know much about those "cancelled" Sunnoads; only their names and numbers stay mutely on the reign-lists, unadorned by any further information.  It's an issue I'm not even going to mention to my nearest and dearest; in fact, especially not to them.  It's my affair and all I can do is wonder: what might be the first warning-signs?     
    I can think of one clue that such an end might be in store for me.  Overconfidence.  Like, for example, my current arrival here with almost no support.
    "Here she comes," drawls Idova Sganna.   
    I know who 'She' is. 
    A swagger: that's my disquieting first impression when I direct my gaze at where the crowds are parting to make way for the new ruler of this city.  Nwix Ezong, Noad of Narar, is a waddling amplitude.  Only moderately hefty in Earth terms; but what on the Third Planet would be a hardly noticeable fleshiness is a gross plumpness here.  Uranian women are almost all svelte; this one, however, isn't.  I choose to de-translate the sight, to view her in the laxer Earthly way, where the higher Uranian physical standards don't apply; then I can find her quite attractive.
    Alongside these unimportant observations, I also note what may be crucial: the family resemblance between her and her close escort.  It's unmistakable.  And to be specific, the gimlet-eyed young man who is accompanying the Noad (keeping a bit further back and to her left) is the sight that ought to worry me.   
    Her other attendants are keeping out of earshot but this sharp-looking youth is the exception: evidently he's allowed, and meant, to listen in at top level.  And because he is wearing a blue cloak I can only conclude that he holds the rank of Daon. 
    All of which means: he is both the Noad's heir and her son.  That's the enormity. 
    It's the recrudescence of what has long been regarded as anathema on this world.      
    Hereditary power.   
    No accident that it is happening now: the timing makes it a blatant variant of that multi-form moral plague we're starting to call the "Spilth", the social decay increasingly reported across Syoom, wafted hither from Fyaym and the work (we quietly know) of our distant, ultimate enemy Dempelath, hybrid Ghepion/human, tyrant of Olhoav.   
    Well, one thing at a time.  Here my duty, both as Sunnoad and as an Olhoavan exile, is to combat the immediate menace.  I ought, moreover, to do it with the added qualification of an Earthmind experienced in the weirdnesses of Planet Three.  If I thus make a start in Narar, most of its population folk must surely support me.  Allow a dynasty to govern?  By all the skies, it's just not done!  In decent Uranian terms, it cannot be allowed to happen.
    Just a moment, though: isn't it rather ironical that I should be taking this line, seeing as I'm not merely an Earthmind but more particularly a royalist aficionado of British history?  As such, am I not actually LESS qualified than anybody else on this planet to argue against the dynastic principle? 
    Well now, the contradiction is more apparent than real.  Although in favour of kingliness while on Earth, I was never very keen on its hereditary transmission, even on that planet.  Noticeably, the greatest sovereigns tended to be those who did not succeed to their thrones by strict primogeniture: think of Alfred the Great, Robert the Bruce...   
    All very well, but do these thoughts help me HERE?     
    Four yards' distant, the Noad of Narar halts.  She hails me.  I need to respond at once.  Set the tone.  But which tone?  I'm in a bad, false situation.  No good just issuing a rebuke.  Telling people off is not how a Sunnoad achieves things. 
    For the matter of that, just how is a Sunnoad supposed to work?  No staff, no secretariat...  Cut that thought.  Must listen, must think.  The woman who's welcoming me to her city seems, as she speaks, to overflow with glee.  Expressing a gratification, it would seem, that's far over and above what is due to a visit from the Noad of Noads.  I can guess the reason.  From the way her glance flicks back and forth between me and my own son and daughter, she plainly finds confirmation for her own stance as dynast, in the idea that I too am that way inclined, since, behold, I have brought my family with me!  This is a trap, and I've fallen in.

5

...My progeny are having a good time being shown around the city by our good hosts Noad Nwix and her son Daon Ptem.      
    Ptem, though, has become preoccupied.  He's going to draw me aside; I can sense it...  here it comes: the young Daon touches my arm and points; my gaze follows his finger.  I look towards where he wants me to look: at a blue-grey, spindle-shaped colossus, that rises from a square a block away. 
    "That's the Tarck," he says.  "You recognise the building, Sunnoad Yadon?"   
    "By repute."     
    "You mean, even on Starside, you'd heard of it?"   
    "Even so," I confirm, and he looks pleased.  But he also looks surprised, and I decide to make the point that Starsiders aren't ignoramuses.  "Daon Ptem, you need to realize that the people of Olhoav, though so remote for so long, have nevertheless always been keen to retain what they can of the history of Syoom."   
    "Of course, yes.  But it's the first time your naked eyes have met the structure?"  He's concentrating intensely on my face as he speaks.
    "Yes, it's only now," I agree, "that I can cross the dungeons of Tyoar Ixx off my list of must-see horrors."   
    Ptem gapes, at the dryness of my tone perhaps, or perhaps at his own sense of slippage, the conversation having escaped his control; then he firms up his sagging jaw and recovers with a chuckle, "I was staring rudely, Sunnoad Yadon - sorry about that - just trying to, er, see whether you would feel urged to step towards the dungeons."   
    "Oh?  You'd like me to be a tourist for them?"
    "Well, recently we've had a surprising craze for doing just that... and I thought you might help us to figure out why."   
    "Some sightseers must simply like to prove they're not scared.  That's my guess."
    "Yes, but the place is quaint now, nothing more."  Ptem seems honestly puzzled.  "One would think that the dreaded Tarck must long since have lost its capacity for inspiring genuine fear.  After all, it's a couple of dozen lifetimes since the old tyrant fell... though come to think of it, Sunnoad Yadon," and the lad's eyes grow a mischievous sparkle, "what are a couple of dozen lifetimes, after all?"
    "Enough to turn oppression into a picturesque memory, a mere costume-evil.  The saga of Narar's notorious tyrant!  A throwback to the blood-soaked days of the Vanadium Era!  Come and look, folks!"
    "And yet," muses Ptem, "whole dynasties of evil flourished in the Vanadium Era, which is rather a different case from that of our local villain Tyoar Ixx, who founded no lasting school of oppression.  So why this level of scariness right here?"   
    "He's remembered as an outlier," I suggest.   
    "Hmm... and as such he's remembered for the mystery of how he got away with it."  Ptem seems suddenly delighted.   
    "Don't sound so envious," I say, earning a sharp look; was my flippancy inurbane?  Or an unwise clue to what I suspect about Ptem?  I apply a gloss of tact:  "True, it's a fair question for historians: what some people get away with, and how."      
    Silence from Ptem.  His look has become intense. 
    I amplify the theme of getting away with it:   
    "In this case, one might consider, how a Noad managed to maintain a tyranny of such awfulness in our modern Era 89.  I dare say," I plough on, "if one made it one's life's work to study the man's methods..."  (Whoa there, I tell myself.)  "No, let it be.  Ignorance is bliss."
    "True, very true," says Ptem, suavely understanding my English.  "Sensible Terran dictum, that.  To which I add: not ignorance only, but superficial knowledge is also bliss."   
    "You're too clever for me," I say.
    Indeed, even though I came here to combat the notion of hereditary rule, I'd better not underestimate how well this youth might perform in the role of Noad of Narar.  In fact, rather than seek to argue with him on his chosen ground I ought rather to mark out some ground of my own, ideally to get him in his weak spot. 
    For a start, since I can well imagine that he'll relish showing off his fluency in English (that exotic fad which has spread like wildfire in Uranian society), so I shall continue in that language, in the hope that he won't be able to resist the opportunity to match wits with the world's only native speaker of Terran lingo...   
    Nodding towards the spot, about ten yards away, where tall, pinnate vanes start to flank the path to the Tarck, I begin, partly in English: "Not hard for the mind's ear to hear cracked voices from those signposts, as they utter the commands inscribed upon them.  Almost can I hear them now!  Funny how lovingly they're maintained."   
    Ptem chuckles, "Yes, it is odd, the way we Nararans are proud of our old evil."    
    "Reminds me of what you get in touristy places on Earth.  A patina of romantic horror."    
    "Tell me more, I beg, of how it is on Earth."   
    "I've visited the dungeons of some old castles in England," I say, "along with other sightseers in touring groups.  We allowed ourselves to be locked in, just for a few minutes, in the dark, just to experience the pretend-terror, the de-fanged thrill of that despair which the real captives must have felt."   
    "Looks like it's the same pretense on both worlds," nods Ptem.  "Only, here the induction is a bit stronger."   
    "You mean the..." - I dredge up a name, the name of the alley between the pinnate vanes: "the Groor."     
    Ptem nods again more vigorously, "The Groor's teghestu," and he waves at the parallel lines of inscribed vanes.  "The teghestu: the Encouragers.  Now if you will just step a bit closer..."   
    On the mat of my awareness thumps a parcel of meaning, at the same time as Ptem's features, cartoon-like, undergo a vulpine stretch.  I fumble without success at the wrapping of the parcel, to get at the significance of what's inside.  Desperate scrabbling is what you get into when you're living a story like this.  Oh let me out, I don't need this!  But the sniff of nightmare is telling me it won't let me go until I produce an answer to what I came to Narar to solve. 
    I must, I shall, solve it, for I am the Sunnoad of Syoom, and all should become smoothed in the cushiony ride on my fate-wave, supported by the best of laws: I - fantastically the most favoured of beings on a world where no fiction ever needs to be written because real life, here, obeys the best fictional laws - I, 80438, grasp how those laws allow teasy fate to hold back its conclusions, so just because I can't see the end, I needn't worry, any more than an Agatha Christie detective need worry as the plot he's in reserves the shocks for his summing-up; all that is required of me is that I stay ready to receive the denouement when it comes.  Then, and only then, shall I, by a happy grasp of the moment, make my move.  Perhaps the detective knows the ending far in advance; but I am also in some ways like the reader, for whom the solution must emerge from a last-minute inspiration which will be far superior to the mangled mess I'd make if my conscious mind were given time to chew it all over.  For really I don't feel all that bright.  Were it not for the cushiony wave, I might DESERVE to plop into oblivion through one of the holes in history.  Or, far worse, I might linger helplessly spotlit in the glare of failure.  Thank goodness for the wave.
    The whirl of thoughts subsides.  I glance around and see that my children are chatting with Noad Nwix some way off.  Might as well leave them to it, for a minute or so anyway.  "Looks like there's no rush," I remark to Ptem.  "So, yes, I might as well go like a tourist..." 
    For he still wants me to wander towards the Groor, and I might as well.   
    After a few steps I can say: this counts as having gone far enough - counts as having visited.  Here, honour is satisfied, at the point where the vanes begin to line the path on either side. 
    Naught prevents me from turning back.  The pressure of a stern and bewildering mood is quite muted now.
    Actually it was worth coming this far. 
    Yes, interesting to look at those vanes.  Shaped like fins, or right-angled triangular sails, they look down on me from their seven-foot height.  They rather impress me with their surfaces - I see when I peer up close that they are covered with curlicues, decorative arabesques, art without message; nothing formidable here. 
    Back in the reign of Tyoar Ixx this approach-slot was regarded as more scary than the interior of the dungeon itself (hence the the proverb, "The Groor is worse than the Tarck") but now I feel no menace.
    Why, then, all that pressure, that buzzing input I felt just now - and which in fact has not quite gone? 
    It must be the special stuff (I've heard some blah about how it was done) usually employed in thuzolyr-elections to the sunnoadex.  A thought-mirroring substance which was scraped off thuzolyrs and re-used on these here teghestu vanes. 
    What for, though?  Ah, what's the point of trying to find out.  You can count yourself unusually lucky, on this reticent planet, if you hear any attempt at a real explanation of anything.  It's understandable, after all, that these people don't want themselves whipped up into a frenzy of knowledge.  The human identity would soon drown in the giant planet's infinitude if any serious move were made to understand it.
    In which case - why am I sniffing around here at all? 
    Because of who I am.  A fellow who samples things.  Hence this whimsical snatch at a core of facts, like some paleoecologist taking a drill to the Greenland ice cap. 
    It's just the way I lurch to and fro between Uranian and Terran habits of mind. 
    What, though, if I have over-lurched this time?  It's a thought.  Down this particular alley I may have taken one step too far. 
    After all, as the Noad of Noads I am a unique target.  And even if assassination is not the idea, why put temptation in somebody's way, somebody with an interest - like Ptem, the poor kloop?
    A nasty word, kloop.  Worse insult even than "flunnd", which is bad enough.  Literally "flunnd" denotes a backgrounder who arrogates the status of a foregrounder; however, it is far more often used as a mere cuss-word, though its offensiveness stems from its literal meaning insofar as one isn't supposed to mention out loud the categories of "foregrounder" and "backgrounder" at all.  Be that as it may, "flunnd" can't get as bad as "kloop".  For a "kloop" - so says my squirming thought - means someone who abuses the wave. 
    Precisely what clever young Ptem is doing - I see it now - he's urging me right now to wander further among the teghestu vanes in the alley of the Groor because he knows (I get it all now) - he knows, or senses, the real danger here -   
    Danger?  Getting mixed up, aren't I?  Sure, the vanes pointed the way to something terrible in the bad old days of Tyoar Ixx, tyrant of Narar; but that regime is long dead and gone.  The dungeons are empty and un-staffed...   
    Yes but the trouble, since then, is that over the millions of stagnant days during which the teghestu have had nothing to do, their poison has grown stronger.  They have no staff nowadays because they no longer need to be tended!  In fact, something tells me that the shapes on which my eyes are now fixed do not even need to draw me towards any place.  No prison building is needed any more, for the vanes are able to construct a prison out of my own fears.   
    In particular my fear of failure.   
    What if, stabs the thought: what if, in Narar, my authority is defied?     
    Despite the infinite prestige donned with the golden cloak, the wearer has neither retinue, nor secretariat, nor any armed force except when open war is being waged.  And at this moment, open war is yet to come.  At the moment, therefore, I am obliged to give Syoom the leadership it needs without any regulatory sanction to back me up.  I, part-stranger on this world, must make do like a teacher whose sway over the classroom depends on force of personality alone, for prestige is all I have - a purely psychological discipline which, if rejected or defied, becomes a pitiful joke. 
    Thus the fear of disgrace rears like a wave.     
    Oh, but it won't swamp me - because I have the answer (a sudden answer, hold onto it, don't let it slip); I haven't verbalized it yet but already I wield it, swish it to shake off the mood that has ensnared me in this alley. 
    The mind-traps dissolve.     
    Perhaps they were for Ptem too, poor kloop.  In which case the answer should extricate him as well. 
    Or perhaps his urges are too guiltily strong, in which case, he cannot be saved.  We shall see. 
    Anyhow, here comes the answer's nucleus, a smudgy vision blurred in white light, that causes me to swivel on my boot-heel, while I feel the entire situation turning with me.  With a snap in my stride I remark over my shoulder:
    "All that stuff was interesting, Ptem, but now you must listen to me."  
    "I'm listening, Sunnoad Yadon, believe me I'm keen always to learn - " gasps the lad as he tries to keep up.   
    "The moment is at hand for me to tell both you and the Noad.  You had better both concur."   
    We reach Nwix Ezong, Noad of Narar, who turns her face to me with a quizzical look on her ample features.  My son and daughter likewise turn, with affectionate attention.  I pause, reflecting on the price that I shall have to pay.   
    "Noad Nwix and Daon Ptem," I begin, and then for a another second I pause because I don't know of any word for nepotism in any of the Uranian tongues.  "A thing may look bad," I continue, "and not matter all that much, so long as it isn't, in actual fact, bad.  Still, it's also important to stop it looking bad.  With this principle in mind I have come to a decision concerning my successor.  Somebody who is definitely no close blood relation to Nyav Yuhlm of Olhoav."
    Staring, they are hanging on every syllable, their silence absolute.
    "As the news gets around," I continue, "of what I have just said, even though I've spoken no name, people will know whom I have not chosen.  People will know, from the assurance I give, that I have not selected my son, Tsritton, or my daughter, Idova Sganna, who, therefore, will be able to remain involved in my projects without scandal.    
    "Which also should help you, too, eh, Noad Nwix and Daon Ptem!  Accidents will happen, we all know: accidental resemblances of good to bad.  But in your case as in mine, the matter can be cleared up."   
    In the ensuing silence I watch the Nararans' faces with the utmost care - and so do Idova and Tsritton, who, commendably, are quick to grasp what I'm about.  It's up to the Noad and Daon now.  I'm gambling that they can adjust, that they can see I'm giving them an out.  
    Nwix finds her voice.  "Accidents, as you say, will happen," she says slowly. 
    Just for a moment this makes me wonder whether she and Ptem are deciding to arrange an accident of the type I did not mean.  My heart misses a beat - but no - their expressions brighten and the mood thaws.  Clearly, these folk want to do the decent thing.  They want to resist being part of the Spilth.  They welcome the chance I'm offering them.  They opt to save face on my terms.   
    Reasons and explanations, set the seal:   
    "Our particular accident," Nwix continues, "could hardly have been avoided.  Let me tell you how it happened.  Not so long ago, when I was a private citizen, it happened  that Ptem, when already Daon, was unfortunately lost, presumed killed, on a Wayfaring mission in the forest of Yy-yodihid, and shortly afterwards I his mother for an entirely separate reason was elected Noad.  Then, before the opportunity arose for me to appoint another Daon, he came back alive."   
    "I understand," I nod with sympathy, "and thus Narar found itself with a closely-related Noad and Daon without anyone having been to blame."        
    "Exactly, 80438!  The outcome was unplanned!  Against all expectation!  I ask you, what could I have done but accept the arrangement as a...."   
    "A one-off," I say in English, and she smiles in gratitude for the snuffing of the problem.  "No harm done," I continue, "if it is viewed that way.  No harm at all in a mere contingent concatenation of appointments."
    The scene relaxes on that carpet of words.
    Nobody mentions - yet - the awesome thing I have done.  The declaration that I have made up my mind on a successor to the sunnoadex.  Breaking a rule.  
    No, not a rule, only a custom.
    All right, quibbler, a custom.  That's what they have here, so strong that you might as well call it a rule.  Stupid in Earth terms, the reliance on fate to produce a successor... but this isn't Earth, and how do I dare to step in and usurp the native way?  Megalomania!
    Ah, but it's a kind of humble megalalomania...
    Uh?  What for heaven's sake can be the sense of "humble megalomania"? 
    Actually the road to it does exist: one which any egotist (if he saw along to the end) would instantly reject.
    It leads to the soul's drowning, the engulfment of the personality, the effective extinction of what was the self, lost in a vaster identity, a better-but-different overarching Fate...
    It's not for me.  I'm too proud for that.

6

...Another skid of time - and up pops my Terran consciousness again.  Quickly my brain informs this "me" as to where I am.  Norkoten Hall at Skyyon: that's where this table is, at which I'm sitting with seventeen other people.  What's the date?  Read the history-clock on the wall - see it says 10,546,009 Ac - do a quick silent calculation -
    I've been Sunnoad for fifty-seven days now. 
    What has been going on? 
    Please, native awareness!  I implore you, fill me in! 
    Obligingly that other "me" gives out what I immediately need to know, in a wordless impression which reassures me, that what has been "going on" is a breathing-space. 
    The emotional message confirms the general viability of my reign so far: I am made to feel comfortably sure that no boulders of trouble are rolling to crush me just yet. 
    What of the folk gathered here with me?  Some of them I recognize.  All must be notables of Syoom.  Otherwise they wouldn’t be here. 
    They've formed three or four chatting groups; rarely do they glance at me.  What's expected of me, by and large, is supervision.  They must take it for granted that I am here primarily to listen, and (memory fills me in some more) this is because it has become a habit of mine to listen in Norkoten Hall.  So far, then, this doesn't seem to be an unusual moment; nothing obviously special about it.
    Yet, something must have recalled my Earthmind to its post of alertness. 
    Both logic and gut instinct tell me that the whatever-it-is must require my Terran perspective; some unusual crux, alien to normal life on Ooranye, has summoned the outsider-me who is once more in demand: Earth-nous required for Terran-style troubleshooting.
    I expect I'll learn the nature of the trouble soon enough, probably sooner than I'd like.  Still, wouldn't a more specific early-warning system be preferable?  How handy it would be if I were to set up a tight headquarters here in Norkoten Hall... a permanent set-up, properly staffed, with me at the apex of a chain of command, instead of the wavy adventurous ramblings of Ooranye?
    It’s easy thus to slide into a mode of thinking in which a Terran practical approach is brought to bear on my Uranian regime...  However, swishing the idea about, I don’t really care for the taste of it. 
    The truth is, my heart - even my Earth-self's heart - isn't in it.  I don't really desire that kind of power-play here.  After all, I am a Uranian Noad of Noads; in practical terms, a super-nudger.  That's my understanding of how the sunnoadex ought to work: as an inspirational fount of nudging. 
    Put that way, it does seem a rather feeble leadership structure; has my Earthmind wakened in order to stiffen it somewhat? 
    No.  That thought is immediately rejected.  My sense of what is fitting will not allow it.  In any case I don't accept the criticism.
    The institution of the sunnoadex would be flimsy and feeble were it not for the vast fund of good-will on which a Sunnoad can draw.  So stupendous is that heritage, it's actually far stronger than any ruling rod of iron. 
    At any rate, that's the case so long as the Sunnoad surfs the fate-waves in the right style. 
    Here, my Earthy thoughts butt in with what seems to be an irrelevant irritation:
    It's the sight of all these uniformly photogenic men and women!  My old "me" is getting a trifle bored with how they occupy this hall in nonchalant fashion like a blandly handsome bunch of movie stars, shirt-ad models and beauty queens.  Like rich celebrities gathered for a fund-raiser!   
    Hey, don't let that mood take hold; it simply isn't fair.  My attitude-pendulum swiftly swings to a finer Uranian view.  The picture sharpens.  The good looks remain as obvious as ever, but they no longer seem uniform.  Tiny differences in people's appearances are accentuated to magnify the individuality of each face and build.  Boredom is smothered; the scene leaps into more powerful life.  For example that marginally-thickset gentleman with the grey brows which meet above his nose: he would be instantly recognizable even without the grey cloak that proclaims his status.  He is Nonnang Seej, the Noad of Skyyon, this sunward-polar city’s immediate ruler.  I must be extra tactful with him.  I next focus my attention on the occupant of the chair just next to his –
    Remiss of me, that only now have I come properly awake to the fact that I’m in the same room with a member of the Cincture! 
    The sight of her is a summons to my conscience. 
    I should have done more, in the days since my accession, to guide and nudge her and her co-Cinctees.  Out of the nine of them, this one here is the extrovert Pjourthan woman, Lemedet Tanek, who nowadays calls herself Yozazel.  In my prissy Uranian disapproval of name-changes I have continued to call her Lemedet (come to think of it, isn't the de-stabilising of nomenclature an aspect of the Spilth, of the plague we're trying to resist?)  Now, what about the others?  No, none of them are here.  Oh, but yes, I do see one: Tarl Ezart of Skyyon, the courier who joined the Cincture at the last moment.  Well, that makes three of the nine – including myself – who happen this morning to be here in Norkoten Hall. 
    It's time I availed myself more of their services. 
    With that in mind, after the meeting is over I must not let Tarl or Lemedet get away.  In fact, why wait till then?  Heavens above, don't I wear the golden cloak, and can't I therefore collar them whenever I like? 
    I start to rise from my chair, but some words spoken by the Noad of Skyyon make me hesitate.
    "...contribution of skyships..."
    (Good, he's talking about the allocation of naval contributions - only, his tone alerts me to an impending 'but' - )
    "...but war is not yet official," he confirms the antithetical follow-up.  That word official bombs onto me rather wetly...  He goes on:  "How much easier the assemblage of a fleet would be, if only war were solemnly declared before the fighting starts - like  - "
    "Like on Earth, you mean," I break in to the discussion.  "Whoa there, Noad Nonnang, are you trying to impress me with this Terran-style talk?"
    Laughter spins round the table.  Nonnang Seej looks sheepish.  "If it's inauthentic, Sunnoad Yadon, I stand corrected."
    It's a successful bantering reply, but I also sense how laden are the historical precedents connected with the words Correction and Corrector - laden with doom for Sunnoads.
    Still, the immediate point is a score for me, because it helps to position me as guardian and judge of authentic Uranian procedure.  After all, they all know that it is I, and only I, who can really decide to what degree any English phrase or pattern of thought can appropriately be used on Ooranye.  Who else can straddle the worlds, after all?  
    Now to ladle out some indulgence:
    "It's authentic to some degree," I concede, "to recognize, insofar as a popular fan base for Terran styles has established itself on this planet, that we cannot afford to ignore it.  But we need to remember that it could be playing the enemy's game."
    "Except when you take charge of it, Sunnoad Yadon."
    I look at Nonnang sharply.  Is he being sarcastic, by any chance?  I allow his words to hang in the air.  By this time I'm strolling round the table.  They're all watching my thoughtful stroll.  It comes to me that the significance of Nonnang's tone entirely depends, retrospectively, upon the nature of my reply. 
    "I don't suppose we have much chance of mounting a surprise attack on Dempelath anyway," I remark.  "So, yes, perhaps we have nothing to lose if, before our fleet sets out, we decide to send him some sort of official defiance.  Call it Terran style, if you like!  But, although a declaration of war might help our sense of purpose, it might backfire if we then encounter an unexpected reason for delay.  So it won't be any good until we are ready to go.  Till then, we need to keep our options open."
    "Such as?" asked a skyship commander, Tyol Leth.
    I employ a Terran idiom in my reply: 
    "If it turns out that we have our hands full here in Syoom, it's no use pretending that we don't." 
    Don't they get what I'm driving at?  That dragging silence, as I eye them all!  Do they want to be spoonfed?  Apparently so.  I spell it out for them:
    "Unwise to leave additional enemies at our back, you see." 
    Lemedet - bless her - dares to specify:  "Like the Noo Wallang."
    The words Noo Wallang are pronounced at a cost in distaste, a cost which needs to be paid although the price is never welcome.  I support her remark with a smile of grim approval.  I quietly say, "Lemedet has reminded us of one of the most dismal social pests of our day. Think about it.  Can we afford to launch a fleet into Fyaym before we've mobilized decent society against such a foe right here in Syoom?"
    Glum murmurs follow my words:  "...Alert the people..."  "...No, mustn't cause panic..."  "...Sunnoad Yadon's right: the Noo Wallang are too serious to ignore..."  "Serious?  Who are those jokers who call themselves the Mockers of Fate...?"
    The meeting is beginning to break up.  I circle round to Lemedet and, at the very moment I give her a sign, she with excellent lremd divines my intention and steps aside to make it easier for us to exchange a bit of private speech.
    "80438," she says in a low tone, "this has been an odd meeting.  It's as though you wish to slow them down.  And yet you must be as keen as any, and more anxious than most, to launch the expedition to rescue Olhoav.  It is, after all, your home city."
    What a wonderful woman, yet healthy minds in healthy bodies are to be expected on this world, are they not?  Her impact on me right now is disproportionate; a warning voice sounds inside me.  My feelings must recede.  Back, back into that distant sharpness which is the reversed telescope of rank.  On the eve of war, emotional austerity is a must.
    I find words: "As you say, Lemedet, I'm keen to get the mission started.  But it's no good whipping up extra, artificial determination.  The impetus for the drall must grow from the commitment we already have." 
    "You mean," she smiles, "we must stay cool?"
    "At any rate not jump in panicky zeal to 'get it all over with'... just imagine how a mission into Fyaym conducted on that basis is likely to end!"
    She casts her eyes down, inevitably reminded of the disastrous finale of the Phosphorus Era.  Any thoughts about sending a fleet into Fyaym always ends with that.
    "True, sponndar Sunnoad," she says in a small voice.
    "Therefore, firstly," continues my authoritative flow, "we must secure our rear, stamp out the enemy infiltration in our own country...  You mentioned the Noo Wallang.  Any ideas?"
    She shakes her head.  "Dealing with them is like hitting empty air."
    "We haven't pinpointed their organization - true.  But if we can't tackle the problem at the root, we can hit the branches!  And with that in mind, Lemedet, here's something you might help me with: I have agents among the xebbalshar and I hear that their next tryst is being held in Oam.  That's your home district - you're a Pjourthan - "
    "I am that."
    " - So find out for me as soon as you can, the exact location of that event.  My agents may have found some enemy branches for me to lop off."
    "Will do, 80438!" 
    Now she looks keen to leave my presence as they all usually are when they get to the stage of saying to themselves, Let me get away with a plus score...  I inwardly sigh.
    At any rate, I've nudged her successfully.  A feeling of exhaustion comes over me.  With it comes, and a longing to revert entirely to my Uranian consciousness.  Please let me relax into that entirely native mode, I wordlessly plead.  I need my Terran mind sometimes, but not all the time.  Sink and rest, O Earthly me.  Ah, yes, here goes - 

8

I rap my knuckles on the solid rim before me as I settle myself in the chair.  The notables whom I have invited, and who have been waiting around the polished circumference for my move, seat themselves likewise, so that at this solemn moment we form a ring of breeze-blown cloaks, under the open sky. 
    Around us extends the brown and liver-coloured plain.  Close by, there stands a grove, the meaning of whose name, Thion, is now stretched to include a settlement which I have called into being. 
    Facilities as yet are rudimentary: a few sheds for supplies; a map-room; and nothing much else - apart from the gleaming new Table, whose function now begins. 
    Its pristine surface is, as yet, clear of paperwork; the breeze would of course immediately have blown any papers away.  What am I thinking?  This is not a bureaucratic culture.  Never shall there be paperwork!  This world is not Earth.  
    Ah, but although we're a long way from Earth, the legend that put into my head the inspiration for this Round Table did come from Earth... 
    Yet here is no close equivalent of palatial Camelot.  The legend is not fully transportable.  It's now exposed to the elements of a giant planet on which those old Knights would have been out of their league. 
    I shan't put it quite that way to my followers, however.  Seeing the expectancy in their looks, I had best pepper my oration with Terran catch-phrases which, no matter how stale they seem to me, will sound fresh and inspiring to them.
    "Notables of Syoom," I declaim, "the muster of the drall fleet proceeds apace."  Their eyes glow with enthusiasm; my tone, my words are what they want to hear; must give more.  I continue:  "Each one of the twenty-five great cities of Syoom has undertaken to provide a skyship.  I have furthermore made agreements for the larger towns and settlements to club together to provide fifteen extra craft.  A total of forty skyships should give us the edge over Dempelath."
    "Forty!" some glad murmurs respond.
    "Not all of this mighty fleet will be ready at the same time," I concede; "much will depend on the various local patrol requirements, so we must be patient while we gather our full strength.  After all, it would be the height of folly to denude our homeland of defence while we conduct an expedition to Starside."
    Again, the reaction is good.  I feel the right "vibes".  They appreciate responsible leadership.  Give them more.
    "The enemy," I continue, "will not stay idle while we prepare.  We should allow for the possibility of actual raids, that's to say, enemy action more deliberate than the mere Spilth we have endured so far.  Or perhaps the Spilth itself, intensified due to its own dynamic, will persist as the major threat.  Either way, we must be prepared to fight a holding action in order to counteract the degradation of Syoom until we reach and destroy the source of the evil..."
    I pause, and Niom Rax of Jaax dares to say, "Sunnoad 80438, you speculate about 'raids'.  Can you envisage their nature; the kinds of battles they may draw us into?"
    It would be easy for me to be too much in awe of the tall, typically fine-looking, cleanly-capable persona of the Jaaxan.  
    "We may make some guesses," I say, pressing my thoughts into confident shape after a dangerous instant of sag.  "But first let me emphasize that until we are ready to go over to the attack we must be reactive rather than proactive.  By that I mean that during our period of preparation we must take what comes, and if that means being caught on the back foot or taking some hits, well, look on it as a lesson in resilience: a course of education offered by our enemy for free!"    
    (Some chuckles, some of them uneasy, around the table.  I get the feeling they want more of a specific answer.)    
    "...That said," I continue, "let's try, while we're here, to answer Niom Rax's question more specifically.  Let's have a shot at prophecy."
    I'm committed, now, to making good guesses about the enemy's plans.
    Take it steady, breathe deep and utter my thoughts, breath by breath.
    "To start with, we can extrapolate from the data that have trickled our way so far. 
    "We have acquired many clues about how the mind of Dempelath works.  From my time in Olhoav, and from what has happened in Syoom in more recent times, we can be sure that his main strategy is, and will continue to be, to nurture resentments against the fate-wave.
    "He likes to cultivate thwarted hopes; to exploit backgrounder dissatisfaction as a lever. 
    "Djatanat and Wylit, you can vouch for this.”
    The union leaders return glance for glance, while some good-natured laughter ripples through the meeting.  One of my urgent concerns, if this were on Earth, would be: careful now, massage the egos of that pair!  But here, where it's so much easier for views to change in the light of rational debate, they've been persuaded and now are really are onside, wholeheartedly; so glad am I to have invited them here!  I don’t need to worry about them at all. 
    The risk, more likely, centres on me.  In the euphoria of heading a civilization of grown-ups, I risk sliding into stunned inebriation...
    I must, however, plough on.   
    “My guess is," I continue, "that if the ‘backgrounder unions’ are deliberate attempts at subversion and not mere Spilth, they represent a premature move on the part of Dempelath.  After all, look what has happened during the past few days to the membership of Djatanat’s SUBMIC and Wylit’s UMUC: collapsed, like burst bubbles.  The rank and file could not weather the loss of their leaders. 
    "Nevertheless they, or equivalents, will reappear and get stronger, and, when they do, we must be prepared, amongst oursevles, to use some dirty words.  Backgrounder.  Foregrounder.  Flunnd.  I make no apology, sponndarou, for saying them out loud.  It is not a question of being foul-mouthed, but of a need to face a practical truth. 
    "Notables of the Round Table, do I have your agreement in this?”
    I'd welcome a bit of noise at this point...  but the silence is, I hope, that of sombre consideration.
    Ah, just becoming audible, a murmur of support, and then an spate of answers: “You have it, 80438” – “Yes, Sunnoad Yadon”...
    I reward this with encouragement, "What we've beaten once we can beat again.  Let's therefore save some of our strength for stuff that isn't repetition.  We must be on the look-out in varied directions, keeping our ears and eyes open for multifarious creepies, on whom we must stamp hard while our fleet prepares.  Remember, it would be hardly be worth our while to defeat Dempelath on Starside only to return to a Syoom that has suffered plok in the meantime!   
    They appear to approve.  I think I can trust them to maintain vigilance against all the lesser creepies of the Spilth until it’s time to launch our forty skyships against the ultimate foe.   
    I conclude: “At this moment, history appoints you to stay on top of the job.  Raise your hands, any of you questers, if you know of any targets.  You have something to say, Hevad Quafroa of Jador.  Speak up."   
    Hesitantly she stands - the woman whom I've named; not dowdy in any visual sense, yet shadowed by a fear of which I recognize the signs: the fear of being thought ridiculous.
    “I hardly dare repeat the rumour," and she bites her lip; "it is so absurd.”      “Absurdity is to be expected in this business,” I say, and gesture for her to go on.   
    “Very well," Hevad sighs and continues:  “The stories, which emanate from my home city, tell of large numbers of people who suddenly are throwing their clothes away…”  She looks round.  “Go on, laugh!”   
    “Bit cool on this planet, to start a nudist colony,” I allow myself to say in English, and, whether or not they understand my alien mutterings, quite a few of the audience appear on the verge of laughter.     
    Hevad winces, “It makes even less sense than that, 80438.  If what I hear is true, many people in Jador have adopted the notion that clothing ought to change in style according to the date on the calendar.  A perfectly good outfit one day might be sklung the next day.  That is, not the right match for the date."    
    Someone else asks, “What do they say the date has to do with it, Hevad?”   
    “Skies above – I don’t know.  But anyhow, witnesses aver that loads of people are throwing away stuff that's perfectly good, that's to say, not threadbare or damaged in any way... and nobody has heard of any reason for it."   
    I remark: "I'll bet that no reason has been given."   
    "That seems to be how it is," Hevad says, wearily.  "It’s supposed to be self-evident that one does not wish to be sklung.  Sunnoad Yadon, you did ask… I know it’s incredible.”   
    "All too credible," someone says, "in a world gone mad."
    "That's an exaggeration," says another.  "The world hasn't gone mad."
    "Parts of it have."
    I remain with impassive mien while they discuss the insane news from Jador.  Most of them can’t believe it as it stands; they think it’s a smokescreen of some kind.  At length I put up my hand.   
    “My own background,” I say, “tells me, those tidings sound all too true.”   
    That’s my contribution right now: to nudge them towards the serious consideration of laughable news… and it works because they can see that I’m not joking.  The phenomenon has occurred for real, in Jador and perhaps elsewhere on this planet, though the phrase that describes it seems not to have yet come into use. 
    I'll use it now.  "Call it fashion-consciousness," I say.  "Now, come on, who else is prepared to be as brave as Hevad Quafroa, and top her report for idiocy?  The more embarrassing the rumour, the more urgent your duty to stand up and tell it like it is.”   
    But there's no rush.
    I need to nudge some more.  I need to tell them terrible things which this world has not yet realized and cannot yet understand, and (Fate willing) never will greatly understand. 
    “I know it’s distasteful,” I say, "to examine the Spilth.  Indeed, this is where I myself must blush the hottest, for what Dempelath has done is to open - somehow - a conduit from the Third Planet to the Seventh, thus shaming me through my Terran origins; a guilt I mean to expiate by using my Terran insights to counter the Terran mind-set's trespass here.  But to do that I must keep informed of what’s going on.  So grit your teeth and tell me more; say what you'd rather not say!”   
    Lemedet stands up.  (The women in this lot are the bravest, says I to myself.)  “I’ve heard,” she begins, “from my home region of Oam, that the Noad of Pjourth has been asked to appoint a Fairness Allocator, to ensure that Wayfarers undertake their journeys with regard to…” she coughs… “safety-regulations.”   
    At this, the floodgates of confession groan open.  Minutes roar by in a deluge of crazy anecdotes.  I'm given the information I asked for in a quantity which more than satisfies the need.  Superficially various and colourful, in a deeper sense it’s all the same sort of stuff.  It all amounts to misapplications of ideas, inappropriate standards, logic so lame that it lacks all point.   
    I give suggestions in each case.  Then, one by one, I send off my "Knights", including lady-knights, armed with the Sunnoad’s authority, to deal with all the crazy stuff that they’ve told me about. 
    I get less apprehensive about my decisions.  Checking over what I've been saying, it seems I cannot find any flaw in what I've done.     
    Lemedet, for instance, whom I sent to the Noad of Pjourth to sort out the "safety regulations" business, I advised thus: “Tell your Noad to tell his critics that to hobble his Wayfarers with ‘fair’ rules and standards while they do their dangerous work is the most unfair imposition of all.”  Obvious enough.  But the message is enhanced when I, the semi-Terran, say it.   
    It has been a long day, but finally the questers are all gone on their missions.   
    Except one.
    Oh brother, here we go again: life on Uranus in heavy-hint mode.  I can't complain that I'm being singled out; one way or another it's like this for everybody.  Consider how the crowd received my heavy hint just now.  I know a bit more than they, about what's coming down the spiritual pipeline, but even I don't really know - I just feel the impending, the dangling... Sometimes – maybe not often but sometimes – I kind of wish I was back on Earth. 
    Well, not really.  I'd actually be appalled if I were to find myself back on Earth.
    Still, it can get hard, these double-takes, these dramatic deferments of realization.  This latest one, hitting me just after the other Round Table members are all gone, causes me to recognize how their heads performed little half-turns during the past few minutes, as they looked to note that Oreneg Vadon was determined to remain behind because (they all know) he has some bone to pick with me.   
    Is it any use, regretting my slowness, my failure to absorb immediately what I could plainly see?  No, such regret would be pointless.  Better to face it: I'm not above par for my course.   
    Anyhow, here comes a test of my Terran insights. 
    The impending confrontation will furnish proof, one way or the other, as to whether my Earthly experience can help retrieve my own errors.  Specifically, the mistake I made in Narar. 
    For surely a Terran ego ought to have some idea how to cope with Oreneg’s similarly bloated self-image...   
    However, a fog rises in my brain as he walks towards me.  No longer do I feel certain whether my mistake was quite so bad.  What did I do, after all, but merely let out a hint that I had tagged him as my successor?  Why shouldn't he be grateful?
    On planet Earth this would be good news for an ambitious man.  Even on Ooranye it’s good news for someone chosen as Daon of a city.     
    Yes but bear in mind that the sunnoadex has always been different, special, unique; that the same rules don’t apply for the choice of heir to a Sunnoad, as those for the choice of heir to a Noad.   
    Well then, what can I do about it? 
    He he is, halted to glower a couple of yards from me, when suddenly a sunburst explodes in my head, a brilliant, perfect, stunning idea, the beauty of it being that I won't need even to try to understand - simply go ahead.    I've got a moment in which to suggest my idea.  Just a moment, before he opens his mouth to launch his complaint.   
    “I know what you’re going to say, Oreneg Vadon, Notable of Grard.  Allow me to forestall your utterance with the good news, that the problem which you were about to mention is one which need not be dragged out any longer.”
    My words, or merely that they got in first, have disconcerted that haughty aquiline look of his.     
    “How so, 80438?”  Terse, but polite.   
    “Because - you’re going to like this, Oreneg - I can put an end to it now.  I, Yadon, can simply let go of it all."   
    “I don’t know that I like the sound of this, 80438.”   
    “You ought to.  I mean it: really, I can just go.”
    He doesn't believe me.
    "The change-over," I continue, "should be painless, smoothly feasible, and to the benefit of us both.  You'd prefer to be in my place, would you not? - and as for me, if my reign ends today, history will regard it as quite creditable.  Most importantly I’ve set the drall in motion.  And perhaps, in accomplishing that aim, I have also achieved some other good things, so - why should I not quit while I’m ahead?  That kind of quitting requires the kind of judgement which, I've noticed, is deemed a particular virtue on this world.  And since I doubt that I have the ballast for the longer haul...”   
    He's listening, he’s not interrupting; plainly I have him hooked.  In fact, while the words pour from my mouth they hook me too, with a pleasant mental picture of me in a skyship accompanying the new Sunnoad 80439, to whom I'll still be available as an advisor, happier than I am now.  No longer squirming transfixed by the supreme spotlight, I'll be a sort of retired elder statesman to whom Oreneg may refer if he wishes, in case any Terran insights are needed during the expedition; a position of some self-respect, out of range of my own ridicule.   
    “To summarize,” I conclude, “it would solve our problem if we were to go gather some witnesses right now so that I can, without more ado, abdicate in your favour.”   
    “WHAT?" 
    Such a yelp!  He sounds as if he simply hasn't registered any of what I've just clearly been saying. 
    Sounding almost strangled, he adds:  "Resign the sunnoadex?  For the Skies’ sake, why?”   
    For all that looks and sounds stunned and appalled, surely my suggested plan must be what he wants.  To prompt a right response from him, to help him over the shock, my next words must put a stopper on his dismay.   
    “The reason, Oreneg, should be evident to both of us.  I made a big mistake in Narar when I let slip that I had decided upon a successor.  It seemed a good idea at the time, but I now see that I’ve made it too easy for people to guess that I had you in mind.  Naturally you fear your image will get stale as people get accustomed to the notion of you as the Sunnoad-in-waiting.  I remain as convinced as I ever was that you ought to be 80439, but I ought to have understood that the leak of my intention gravely flouts the tradition whereby a Sunnoad names his successor at the last moment, and that I have thus sadly deprived your future of all the proper dazzle of an unexpected succession.  Successive wearers of the golden cloak have, throughout history, been launched into their reigns by such dramatic surprises; this is counted as a boon, which (given my mistake) I can only retrieve one way: I must make it happen a lot sooner than people expect.”   
    I listen to my own words with rapt astonishment at hearing such wisdom issue forth from the lips of a self whom I had previously assumed incapable of such a performance.  Ah but, Yadon old man, don’t do yourself down – you don’t get to the top if you’re dense. 
    Ah but (flashes the retort) you do, indeed, get to the top precisely that way.  Density is what must propel you in a world governed by idiot-driven plots.  The threads from which sagas are woven must stay stupidly on target...
    Right now, for instance, you're doing well, Yadon; pay close attention to Oreneg’s face and you should see him becoming mollified, reassured…   
    Oh no, what’s this sullen look?  What have I done now?  What was that he just said?   
    “You just don’t get it, Earthman."
    I heard the words but the tone can't be right.   
    “Don’t tell me,” I say, “that you have no wish to become the next Sunnoad, the one after me."   
    "Not by this route!" 
    "What - "
    "Not by your voice in the matter!" he insists.  "Neither now nor when you are dying, do I wish to reach the rank by any action of yours.  The way I have always dreamed is to WIN it."   
    I mutter, "Oh."     
    "Win," he continues savagely, "win the golden cloak by my renl ability; win it via thuzolyr!”   
    "Oh," my voice repeats in a dull dismay.  "Yes.  I understand."   
    Oreneg Vadon exemplifies those few whose renl ability is not so much to do with their standing as citizens, rather it's a kind of super-sport.  It’s a rare extreme, yet a thoroughly Uranian one, and my native knowledge has enabled me, belatedly, to comprehend it, whereas Terran insights got me nowhere in this case.   
    A fuzzy feeling in my head warns that my Earthly consciousness, no longer needed, is about to drowse once more...

*

"Time we left, 80438," said Oreneg Vadon.  "The day is advancing and it would be as well not to delay."
    Yadon blinked.  "Where now?"
    "It is still necessary to gather witnesses, albeit not for an abdication."
    Yadon blearily nodded, his native consciousness on the rise towards full sufficiency. 
    "Cheer up, Sunnoad," said the Grardesh Cinctee.  “Come on!  It will benefit both of us.  Off to Skyyon we go.”
    “The sensible choice,” the Sunnoad agreed, not resenting the other's cheeky tone; rather, preferring it to the fellow's usual grimth.  Any lightness was welcome to counteract the clang of that portentous phrase, gather witnesses.
    Minutes later they had mounted their skimmers and were speeding towards the polar city.  Less than an hour later they were in the palace. 
    On a podium in front of a hastily summoned crowd of notables and others who had drifted in from the streets, and who had heard rumours of an impending event, Oreneg said in a low tone to Yadon:
    “Take heart.  Prod the wave and naturally the wave prods back.  Inevitable interaction." 
    “That's true,” sighed the Sunnoad.  "How else can things be?"  He filled his lungs and addressed the multitude: “I stand here, as Sunnoad of Syoom, explicitly to confess."
    Mercifully, knowledge of what to say, and how to say it, accompanied the sniff of this historic moment.  He was able to continue:
    "It seems it is widely known, but now I make it certainly known, that I had blabbed a decision which I ought not to have made public, with regard to the succession to the sunnoadex.  Nor should I even have allowed its content to be silently guessed.  I did wrong - but I was shown the right, and therefore, I stand corrected!    
    After this speech, Yadon’s mouth shut like a trap, and awed silence ensued, broken in about a minute by the boot-steps of an aide who, by arrangement, carried in his hands a red cloak. 
    The red cloak of a Corrector, passed to Yadon who handed it up to Oreneg, who donned it – 
    The cheers which then erupted were neither for Yadon nor for Oreneg; it was a surge of emotion aimed at both achievers in combination, joint authors of a double coup that had worked to perfection.  Oreneg had objected and Corrected; Yadon had conceded with grace, leaving them all to wonder:
    “Has he merely repented of his loose talk, or has he actually changed his mind?  Has he, or has he not, altered his opinion about Oreneg Vadon’s suitability for the succession?” 
    The rightful uncertainty was back, unshackled and free, its healthy vigor released to circulate in the veins of saga throughout Syoom.
    Yadon muttered to Oreneg on the podium:
    "Remember that old woman, the Elder of Beown, at the time of the Cincture?  I think we’re going to prove her wrong."
    "I think we shall," the Corrector agreed.  "I remember her lack of confidence in our mission.  Today has shown we are all more than we think we are."
    "Not just the menials of Fate, then," murmured the Sunnoad.

9

History then offered up a surprise treat, a species of golden age, a period which came to be known as the 'Golden Deferral'.  The name, expressive of borrowed time, denotes the poignant and protracted dalliance of civilization between Day 10,546,013 of the Actinium Era – the foundation of the Round Table at Thion and the acclamation of the Corrector – and the shock, on 10,549,730 Ac, of the Forokkadand: the event which, as we shall see, brought the Deferral to an abrupt close.
    Between these dates, the "on the eve" aura was thus thinned out to a length of 3,717 days, during which hiatus, equivalent to 4,646.25 of your Terran days, or getting on for thirteen Earth years, the credibility of the plan to rescue Olhoav grew limp though it did not die.  It was bound to fade, lingering as it did for so long an "eve" - bound to shrink into a marginal public consciousness.  Although nobody actually went on record to suggest that the drall against Dempelath ought to be abandoned, inevitably the sense of urgency dwindled, and private doubts spread.
    Nevertheless the threat which the Olhoavan tyrant posed was not forgotten at the skyship docks.  The forty Syoomean craft destined for the voyage to Starside were duly built, armed, and maintained at the ready.  More widely, the attention of Yadon the Sunnoad and of the enlarged Cincture of the Round Table was serially drawn to pinpricks of hostile not-quite-urgent influence throughout Syoom’s expanse, requiring, time after time, the people to remain accustomed both to the memory and to the delay of the great plan, so that the Deferral became a way of life.
    The leaders of Syoom - the Sunnoad, the Noads and the Cincture - became expert at dealing with the rash of nuisances, the gravest of which were quashed by the Sunnoad in person, who, from his own Terran experience, alone intuitively understood what the enemy was doing.  Dempelath, so Yadon more and more firmly realized, must have some dimensional access to Terran inspiration, doubtless via the Snaddy Galomm, that force-diagram which maps the tissue of fates, and which is a total secret to all but a very few minds upon Ooranye.  This after all was what Dynoom had alleged to be the case in that message which Yadon himself had brought all the way from Olhoav.  A message so indigestible and profound, that the memory cannot hold it for long.  Occasionally, though, it can be faced: that the Snaddy Galomm exists; that, neither good nor bad in itself, it provides a frightful channel by which evils may cross the void between the worlds. 
    Somehow, by such means, Demepelath was hurling cultural stink-bombs of Terran yuck at Syoom.
    For instance, thought Yadon, this latest one, whiffed at Invun today, on Day 10,549,603 Ac. 
    Business as usual for me, he thought; something I have to deal with because nobody else wants to.
    Just an outbreak of some stupid Terran mindset - he had no doubt of his ability to cope with it, but any of the other Cinctees could have seen to the matter instead... not as easily, to be sure, but the practice would have done them good.
    Yadon was preparing to get to work, when, during this otherwise undistinguished hour, in the control room of the skyship Seraben Liffet as it hovered above the city of Invun, the long slow rise of an odd idea finally broke surface in his mind.
    It happened to him while he was seated in the Captain's chair, vacated for him by the skyship's regular commander, Tuoch Irriv, after some competition of courtesy.  From this vantage his eyes had been roving around the cavernous onboard scene.  It hummed with alertness, the banks and screens manned by officers whose flexible vigilance of mind was utterly at variance with the tranced routines of those who maintained the economies of cities.  That was the quite ordinary comparison which suddenly caused him to reflect: 
    Skyship officers must think consciously, all the time; must be ready to react to a crisis.  No dreamy reliance on scheduled procedures, no work-trance for them; any more than there could be for a Noad.  And a fortiori that observation must apply to the Noad of Noads himself.  Except -
    Could it be that, at the very top, awareness somehow comes round full circle?
    Could it possibly be that I, the Noad of Noads, am actually in a special trance of my own?
    I? Tranced?  Yadon's immediate impulse was to squash the new-hatched idea.  How silly can you get? 
    Yet it became an insistent, floating observation that shone a different light than usual over the dialogues between himself and the ship's officers.  Granted that each snippet of chat was unique, yet the flow of suggestion and response, the ongoing antiphony between the Sunnoad and his people, began to take on an over-trending rhythm.  The result was something which could be seen as analogous to the daily unconscious patterns in which the administration of cities had settled, over long ages.  It could just possibly be.
    Still, an analogy was just an analogy.  He need not worry that he was really bound, really automated into any kind of unconscious routine...
    Hang on, though, perhaps he was held, comparably, by something rarer: a fate-trance, maybe. 
    Yes, a wavy surfing of destiny, which has its vital use: for just as the humble work-trance spares workers from boredom, the fate-trance may cushion Sunnoad Yadon from the agony of a crashing defeat...
    He was approached, just then, by a certain special officer. 
    Objectively he admired the bouncy tread, the brimming attractiveness of this smoothly competent fellow-Cinctee who by now meant more to him than any of the others.
    "Sunnoad-Y," said Lemedet in the formal style with which she still addressed him in front of others, "the Captain says this looks like the time to land."
    "Looks like you have no doubts about it," he replied blandly, in an attempt to elicit some revealing comment from this wife of his who often liked to keep him guessing... 
    "Absolutely none, 80438," she agreed.  "No room for doubt, from the looks of the gathering in the Omosson.  It appears as full as can be."  Her words were backed by their usual unseen, purely tonal grin, her way of letting him know that any tendency in him to doubt the flight-path of his greatness just made her want to laugh... 
    Ah well - he would never understand her.  "Then let's go down."
    She turned smartly and relayed his words to the Captain.
    The ship began slowly to descend towards the octagonal centre of Invun.
    Concentrate, the Sunnoad told himself.  The latest foe was a bunch that needed weeding out.  But still his mind wandered to Lemedet, to the fate which had brightened his life, rather than to to the political problems he faced.  Remarkable, the stroke of fortune by which, after thousands of days as a widower, he had been accorded an unlooked-for return to domestic bliss with Lemedet Tanek of Pjourth. 
    This second wife of his was so vastly unlike his first, he could hardly process his awareness of the combination!  Lemedet admittedly did have some vital qualities in common with Dittri.  The loving, loyal Dittri, who had died so many thousands of days ago back in Starside, and the equally trustworthy Lemedet, were both, he was quite sure, lovingly committed to him.  And yet, what a difference there was between Dittri's romantic softness and Lemedet's bustling smartness, so efficient and resourceful and never - even in her interludes of passion - "sweet": on the contrary the Pjourthan's briskness extended even to her emotions, and her ardour came and went without any gentle transitions of mood.  Yadon shook his baffled head. 
    It all went to show how varied one's life's benefits could be.
    Anyhow - an end to broody puzzlement, for the ship's ovoid hull was descending through the hemisphere of city-glow, floating down towards the floor-space in Omosson Octagon, Invun - or as much as had been allotted to it by the crowds.
    Yadon, as usual, had to assume that his mere presence should overawe opposition.  He had to feel, in these moments, that he was the plunging pile-driver of 'Should', the mighty mallet of that prestige which ought to force matters on this world; he must, against a mob, successfully aver the majesty of the golden cloak. 
    Sure, these were troubled times, but in any times it ought to remain true on Ooranye that when a fate-wave smashed against a rock of hostile fact, it was the rock that broke. 
    Or so the crew believed.  Nobody expressed doubts about going down.  Nobody even asked him for guidance.  They trusted they'd get away with not bothering to understand the details. 
    No crew member, no officer undertook any prudent discussion of what the miscreant trouble-makers at Invun were up to.
    Yadon did not forget to eye the kinematic chart on the map table during the final seconds of descent.  It was a proud feature of the Seraben Liffet's control room: by this advanced age of the world's history not many banessyens remained in existence.  Nowadays the secret of their manufacture had long been lost, nor could anyone define how their brand of "existential cartography" actually worked, but some people retained the necessary skills to make good use of them when possible, and to know when to do so was not possible.  Yadon was inclined to keep watch on the thing.  Yet he saw no reason to worry about the meanings of its writhing features, which had acquired various nicknames in use among the baffled crew. 
    Thus, its "lobed crawler" and "blob of mist", whose contorted actions might otherwise have depressed or even sickened him, became manageable sights, writhing only in two dimensions.  In no past age had any savant been known to design a three-D banessyen, and the consensus of experts was that it would never happen.
    Yadon just then realized that captain and crew were noting where his attention was focused.  Heaven help them, maybe they counted on him deriving some wisdom from the banessyen.  No time for disclaimers, which might be risky anyway; instead he smiled, and cheerfully remarked: "Makes one wonder what's going on down there."
    In response, Captain Tuoch Irriv, in a modish display of Terran gesture, made a circular motion of finger on forehead, as he remarked, "Who knows what makes spilthees tick?"
    Yadon suppressed a touch of irritation.  The epithet spilthee was gaining currency as a contemptuous term for all who allowed their brains to be turned by Dempelath's propaganda, but also, alas, as a way of dismissing the problem.  Oh well, dismissals galore, like the unrepeating decimals of a surd, a no-pattern, all-purpose shield against a hail of foes: that's the way we must tread, thought Yadon.  And if I can keep juggling along that way, my weaknesses will never come to light.
    With a slight bump the ship touched down on the floor that awaited them.
    A sensor pickup communicated a low roar from outside.  A monitor the size of a cinema screen mounted on the Octagon's edge revealed how the city pulsed.  The crowds, both those directly visible and those on screen, seethed and strove, placards held high.  The juddering slogans were not easy to read.  However, one Nouuan word was often glancingly visible: AVULK.
    Apologize.
    "It's time I went out to them," said Yadon, rising from the command chair. 
    His officers were uneasy about letting him go, but what could they do? And anyhow why else was he here, if not to confront the proxies of the enemy?  In the end it always came down to this: he must face the music (thus whispered his inner provider of Earth-idiom) - face the music which fate had most lately composed.  So while the exit ramp was being extruded from the hull, he strode to it with regular step.  
    When the crowd saw him appear, in person and unguarded, at the opening, it was to the surprise of many.  The general murmur became confused by a multitude of hesitations. 
    Yadon's gaze searched the sea of faces till he saw a spokeswoman pushing her way to the foot of the ramp.  Reports had told him about Xilim Starg, and here she was.  Xilim the insister upon 'Avulk'.  Well, thought the Sunnoad, nothing for it but to walk down the ramp. 
    Xilim awaited him, arms folded to show her supporters that she wasn't overawed by the golden cloak.  Not young, but head-of-department chic, she wasn't cloaked at all - she wore blouse and violet trousers to match the glint in her eyes. 
    Yadon almost smiled at the idea, that the point of this Spilth might be to overawe him by the sight of a Terran-style teacher.  Good try, he thought, but likely to fail.  Dempelath's borrowings via the Snaddy Galomm were bad translations at several removes from Earth.  It had to be that way; such inauthenticity ran parallel with the lack of genuine referents in the modern vogue on Ooranye for the English language.
    He came to a stop at the foot of the ramp.  He was now only a couple of yards from the woman.  She had stepped back and unfolded her arms.  "Welcome to Invun," she said dryly.  "We're glad that you've come."
    As she spoke, half a dozen supporters, in a crescent around her, each held out a strubbut - a thing that looked like a square trumpet. 
    A strubbut to spread her words, a gadget to make sure she was heard via relay upon relay all the way to the boundaries of Syoom! 
    Nobody was making a similar effort to ensure an equal distribution of the Sunnoad's reply, but never mind; he did not need that kind of aid; he was the Noad of Noads; nothing could stop him from going where he liked or doing what he liked to ensure his side of the quarrel would be taken seriously.  For instance he could declare these folk to be enemies of Syoom (which arguably was what they were) and order the skyship to open fire -  
    Only - if he did that, he would soon happen to disappear. 
    Rightly so.  He was no Tu Rim, nor did he wish to be. 
    In fact, if a man's power were measured against the challenge he had to face, then a case could be made out for classing Sunnoad Yadon 80438 as the weakest person on the planet.  Weak he indeed was, if the challenge he faced was that of living up to the infinite expections that accrued to his rank.  Oh stop, stop, he told his see-sawing thoughts!  Co-operate with the lapidary fate-wave which was already helping him to drown out most of this scene so that, despite the crowd, he and his opponent seemed alone in centre stage, while the rest of the cast had devolved into peripheral shadows.  Now he had one person only to worry about.  The spotlight of the moment shone on Xilim the wirrip, Xilim the blah, Xilim the silly woman who claimed that the Sunnoad had come here to "apologize".
    Facing her, the man who was more than himself, the Sunnoad of Syoom, could "recline erect" upon the electrified power-line of history. 
    "Talk me through it," he suggested gently.
    Xilim Stang compressed her lips.  "You know as well as anyone, that the Vanadium Era was the one in which slavery - yes, I said SLAVERY - was allowed."
    "Well, yes.  We all know that."
    "Then why should I bother to make an eloquent speech?  The truth is obvious and, as you admit, known to all.  In that evil of evils, the complicity of the sunnoadex cannot be denied."
    "For a while, a long time ago.  And slavery was only in the final fifth of the Vanadium Era, and the complicity was shared by all."
    "The Vanadium Era was our longest era!" she cried.  "A fifth of that, still meant two hundred and fifty lifetimes!"
    Yadon, suddenly struck by her sincerity, was silent as he thought about it.
    She went on, "Two hundred and fifty lifetimes during which wearers of the Golden Cloak, like you, allowed the abomination to continue.  Be in no doubt: an apology is overdue, 80438."
    He could empathize with any obsession, and could easily have humoured hers, but then one concession might lead to another... so better not... better be clear, he told himself; it's the kindest way in the long run.  Only, how?  Just what was the best way to deal with all this?
    A voice inside him whispered, Let me up.  You're out of your depth ere.  This is one of those times you need my part of your mind.
    No, thanks, he replied.  I can deal with her demand.  I'm grateful for what I have learned from you on past occasions, but on this one I must demonstrate that I can cope - 
    He spoke in a suddenly loud voice, knowing that the strubbut would relay his words:
    "Sponndar Xilim Stang, you need to remember, that since the battle against slavery was won fifty-six eras ago, we are all by now descended both from slaves and from slave-owners."
    Yes, he'd done it, he'd stumped her.  He could see, from her confused and crestfallen look, that he had won. 
    He had won by cheating back at her.
    Differently from the way in which she and her movement had cheated, what counted in his picture of things was not genetic descent but soul-identity. 
    She had been making a point about ideas and institutions inheriting guilt; he had obscured that by a genetic irrelevance - yet it would take her a while to spot the fallacy: time which, in turn, would lessen the impact of her fallacy that the moral account of one incarnation was inherited by the next; that guilt was somehow bankable across Time.
    Xilim looked around uncertainly at her followers. 
    The edges of the crowd were drawing back.  Yadon needed to see no more.  He bowed, and turned back to the ramp.  Ignoring the confused sounds behind him he walked back into the skyship. 
    He strode with the confidence of a full-minded native of the giant world; his Uranian side alone had been sufficient to put matters to rights.  Though he had frequently exploited his Terran knowledge, no incident had so far been grotesque enough to trigger the summons of his Terran personality into overall control. 
    Quite evidently his native Uranian consciousness, by now, had developed a good enough working knowledge of Earth's cultural foibles, so as to be able to stamp out Terran vices by means of Uranian competence alone, and thus the weight of native technique had swung to his aid: after all, Ooranye's own mysteries had always forced its people to deal with variegated weirdnesses in order to survive. 
    Viewed in this perspective, the plagues of Dempelath's hostile "spillth" merely amounted to one more crazy influence among a host of wild forces, with no particular requirement for Terran guidance towards solutions.
    ...Thus more days rolled by, and the Golden Deferral became tinted with a peculiar “present nostalgia” as though its lived moments were already viewed in retrospect.  Yadon’s repute grew ever more majestic as his hair greyed, his face grew more lined, and his accumulated skills diffused awe in his people. 
    An impression of him as a reckless trickster also gained ground.  Perhaps that aura clung to him because, in his heart, he never altogether ceased to hanker for the life of a free adventurer: that irresponsible life which, for a period after his arrival in Syoom, he had actually lived.  Thus, a waft of unpredictability accompanied 80438's growing elder-statesman image.
    This trend was encouraged by the paradox, that the greatness of a Sunnoad is enhanced if he has suffered the rectifying action of a Corrector. 
    Oreneg had done him a big favour.  The humiliation of having to stand up and say in public, “I stand Corrected”, had brought Yadon the dazzle of mutual brightening shared by Sunnoad and Corrector whose deeds reflected their stories upon one another.  This encouraged people to hope, “Sunnoad Yadon may dare to take the giant risks which will have to be taken some day."
    Some day; but perhaps not very soon.  The people, while glad to have Yadon as their Sunnoad, nevertheless felt no need to hurry themselves or him towards the looming destiny which in their heart of hearts they knew he had appeared on their world to face.  They simply enjoyed the Deferral.  When the time came, when the ordeal could no longer be avoided, then he should lead them to victory.
    Yadon himself, meanwhile, also avoided too-deep reflection.  His own extraordinary rank and position every so often brought him close to a "surely there has been some mistake" incredulity, but he learned to skirt the pitfall of self-doubt, to avoid the paralysis it threatened to his will and the harm to his courage.  Occasionally he had to power-winch himself out of the trap by means of the undeniable truth that he was committed and that retreat was out, but the need for this reminder grew less, as lapses of confidence became rarer, as the evidence piled up that he was actually making quite a good job of being Sunnoad.

10

The ego-track of Neville Yeadon (resumed):

…what – what – what – it’s all been piling up while I drowsed –
    - and now it's like suddenly when you realize that water's coming through the ceiling which means you must have left the bath-tap on –
    And just what jogged my Terran mind awake to the overflow of events?  
    I bet it'll be something I’d rather not learn, but, like it or not, I'll know soon enough. 
    The worst part of it is going to be the stretch of time that is sure to have passed.  Look at my hand: unmistakably older.  And though Lemedet my wife looks still beautiful beside me as we ride the breezy slideways of Toolv, she looks noticeably older too.
    Guilt stabs me: guilt at the delay of my mission!
    My first reaction is to turn my head from Lemedet lest she see a sick look on my face.  But then, my eyes turn back to her.  Might as well do what I want to do, savour the sight of her, drink her in.
    "You’ve seen me before, you know," she says, impishly.
    "Likewise, chremn," I say, "you've often recognized what's just happened to me.  You've witnessed it again and again, haven't you?"
    Eyes sparkling, she slips her arm through mine.  Tenderly she says, "I know, but you don’t need to pull such a rueful face  Such a long face."
    Ha - Terran idiom - skilful easement – and I suppose I’m thankful.  Better than if I'd heard her say, what took you so long to wake up, Earthman? 
    Her kindness gives me more permission to be kind to myself... at least to postpone my contrition and my excuses. 
    No time for them anyway.  Practical urgencies push to the forefront.  The radioed warning which must have woken me still rings in my ears. 
    "Lemedet, listen.  I've had a message from Corrector Oreneg Vadon.  He tells me that Yr has reverted to rogue."
    "You mean - " she begins.
    "Rael Odiram has repudiated our alliance."
    "Skies!" she blanches.  "He's done this in public?  That flunndy grut - "
    "Yes.  Oreneg confirms that the news is being relayed all over Syoom."
    Lemedet lets out some more ripe language.  "That blustopan!  That snoogalap - !"
    "Oh well," I shrug, "at least he was decent enough to send an open defiance."
    "Hmm…" is her response to that.
    A few moments later she adds, "And as to why he’s chosen to shock us at this moment in particular..."
    "That is a question indeed."  I want to say more but I'm in the middle of frantically trying to remember what I'm in the process of doing.
    Helpfully my wife adds some more: "Just when you're on your way to inspect some factories in Toolv… is there a clue in that?"  She ponders.  "Oh well.  If it was going to happen, it had to happen sometime..."
    Now I've clicked into the situation and I am able to say in a more confident tone, "Hard to believe it’s coincidence, but if I’m going to take him by surprise, as he has taken me, I may not have time to work it all out before I act.  So it will be a matter for improvisation, instinct, whatever you want to call it.  We’ll get off the slideway here."  She's paying attention, bless her, and does not ask me what my plan is, which would be an embarrassing question to have to face just now.  "See," I add, "just beyond that monument, a short-cut to the factory…”
    "You’re going straight there?  No courtesy call on Byndin?"
    Byndin Ghelanver, the superlative Noad of Toolv, is a lady with whom I am in no mood for a confab right now.  It's the Noad of Yr who concerns me, and I must work fast.  Byndin will have to wait.  "She'll understand afterwards," I tell Lemedet.  "Like everybody else, more often than not in this life, she must sometimes miss her turn." 
    "Time really presses that much?" wondered Lemedet.
    I say: "Yr may already have floated into Toolvan air-space… in fact," I point at a white spot in the sky around declination sixty and perceptibly moving, "if I mistake not, here it is already."  No mere on-the-eve mood now; the wave of events is dropping a shower of hints of accelerated nightfall.
    The consolation is that I have become aware of the course I must pursue.  The act of stepping off the main slide-way onto the slip-road that leads to the research facility sets off a metaphorical slide-switch in my head which weakens the bonds of reason, so that, although part of me protests at the prospect of what I feel impelled to do, another part knows better and scornfully replies: Do you really think you can step out of this wave? 
    I fear the “you” refers to my wife as well as to me, for she sticks close with that body language which I can easily translate as “we Cinctees are fit for the danger spot”.  Nevertheless perhaps I should make at lease one attempt to dissuade –
    She guesses, and forestalls me.
    "Kleeftie Yadon," she says, using an endearment that I’ve never quite understood (must be some Pjourthan slang), "it’s time, isn’t it?  I mean one cannot go on and on,” she echoes my mind, "being 'on the eve'."
    She's got the rights of it, I agree with a sigh. 
    We have halted at the entrance to the Ubbulungul, the omhetter (science-park, I suppose we'd say in English) which the city of Toolv boasts as a feature.  "Have you been to this spot before, Lemedet?"
    My terse change of subject succeeds in narrowing her attention to the crisis at hand. 
    The general shape of the Ubbulungul is that of a flat-floored bowl, a shallow artificial crater which houses seventeen research-bays, each bay bristling with shiny cranes and busy laboratories.  My eyes make out Number Fifteen, which is the gantry of the Forokkadand.
    Lemeset answers: “Can’t say I’ve been here, but I’ve heard about it.  Typically Toolvan, some say: speculative, impractical, up-in-the-air.  Weapons research carried out as an unserious hobby."
    "Hobbies may pay off, on rare days."
    "Like today?"
    "Yes."
    "So you’ve been keeping 'tabs' on what goes on here.  You’re full of surprises, Sunnoad Yadon."
    "You don’t know the half of it," I say, to treat her to some more Terran idiom.  "Come on, let's head for Bay Fifteen."  I begin to walk along the path that leads amongst the bays, and people as usual stop in amazement at the sight of the golden cloak, whereupon with easy gestures I indicate that they need not interrupt their work. 
    Lemedet says to me softly, using my Uranian birth-name, "It doesn’t look as though we are expected, Nyav."
    I shake my head.  
    She persists, "But then how can we ourselves expect – "
    "Nothing need be ‘expected’."
    It doesn’t quite do the trick of quieting her.  "What do you mean?" she insists, aware that we are striding towards a turning point; she has a heap of sensible questions to ask, the poor darling. 
    "Nothing is any good," I assert, "if it produces delay.  Mustn’t miss this bus." 
    That's one metaphor she fails to get and I don't take time to explain because there are so many more where that one came from.  The dictatorship of the wave cuts me loose from causation, and replaces it with an unfettered exuberance, soaring with the power to fulfil; only later will the bailiffs of logic come knocking.  The creditors will then present their accounting.  Let them.  It will be too late.
    …Now we are borne up the gantry on an elevator, that takes us away from the officials on the ground.  They tried, respectfully and in vain, to get from me an idea of what I am about to do…
    I sense a sudden happiness in Lemedet, at my side, who is humming some sort of happy tune, which I guess is her way of accompanying the song of existence itself: the song that announces playtime for players of the game called Should, meaning, here, that if the rocket called the Forokkadand should work, it will - 
    We reach the top.  We step off the elevator, and take our places on the summit nose-cone.  No chance of entering; this rocket has no interior; it's a metal steed that must be ridden outside like a witch's broomstick. 
    I happen to think just now of the legend of the Gordian knot, for although I have always considered that story to show Alexander in a bad light (he was too stupid to untie it so he just slashed it) I can see the point, here, of hacking through the tangle of my life.  No more hesitations!  So we dare to press the take-off levers, and up we ride. 
    We clutch rails which keep us from falling or being blown off by the rush of air.  Such holds can’t be enough, however.  The flimsy, juddering tubular framework around us ought not to save us from being tossed away in this crazy shoot, and yet we do stay on: some extra protection must swathe us.  I ought to have required such assurance beforehand, but I didn't because I could not have expected to know.  That's how it must be on Ooranye, where if you seek assurance you never get anywhere: sufficient unto the instant is the excuse thereof. 
    Now, apart from a meagre flicker of a hint, the cause-and-effect chain remains a mere blur.  Again, that's the way it goes on Ooranye, especially when you're on an accelerant to meet fate's deadline: in this case, collision with the wave-plot of Yr. 
    Despite the wind’s roar and the juddering of the Forokkadand’s hull I am able to make out the growing form of the aerial city. 
    It looks unconquerable, but dismay is pointless; what's in front of me is what I expected; it’s why I’m here; I must simply go on being mesmerised by a sense of doom while I watch a sparkling form detach itself from the flying City of Mists...  I know what I’m witnessing:
    The launch and deployment of the legendary aerial combat weapon, the Voorspoot, the Lance of Yr.
    Amazing words, ridiculous commands, issue from somewhere inside me.  It’s like when, back on Earth, I was in a taxi slowed by traffic, and I leaned forward and muttered come on, come on, hurry up, as though in so doing I could cause reality to rearrange itself obediently in accordance with my will - here the difference however is that I actually do feel an immediate responsive quiver in the hull I’m riding, as if it's some use my muttering at it to dodge, go round, flank the thing.  Can I really affect the rocket I'm riding by will alone?
    Can I thus control the weaponry of the Forokkadand?
    It must be biddable in the same way as the steering.  It’s got to be.  Within practical limits, steering and fighting, I must be able to think the commands.  First, I must maneouvre.  My fighting instinct takes over my attempts to flank the Voorspoot while it tries in turn to flank the Forokkadand.  My field of view is smeared across with several close views of my enemy.  That dirigible lance, whose tip reminds me of a sparkling firework, has a hull about fifty yards long, and unbelievably agile, just as is my own rocket-steed, with swoops and swerves at and around each other, each desperate to get a forward shot in an instant when the target is broadside.  For one moment in the closest pass, which rakes me with heat, I actually spot the Voorspoot’s rider, a grey-cloaked man astride a kind of stub on the hull a few yards behind its flashing, hissing head.  The sight of him informs me of what I might have guessed, that I face none other than the Noad of Yr himself, who alone is entrusted with Yr’s ultimate weapon. 
    Neither of us gets a good shot on this pass.  So we must try for another, more effective - but wait, what of Lemedet’s hold on her part of the framework during the turn I must make?  Will she be pitched away?  What can I do to keep her safe in this fight?  Nothing!  That's the terrible truth.
    I experience the force of the swerve on the muscles of my arms but I have learned to trust invisible, elastic force-sheet that confines us to our places.  Perhaps it's not entirely reliable: I sense in it a kind of ripping strain which suggests it’s not infinitely shock-proof.  Nevertheless it has worked so far.  Be that as it may, will the rocket have enough fuel for another pass?  I can hear a rattle in the motor.  
    A smart shudder in the hull tells me that a successor-propellant has clicked into use: the Forokkadand now draws power from the atmosphere in more ways than one.  With an insight beyond dream I now know that besides the material suction of fuel from gas, the wave-compression of the crisis itself is pouring through the tubes, pouring densely in an alternation of literal and metaphorical spoutings, blurring into one invincible medium of plot-furtherance unstoppable.  
    Does this wave want us all dead?  For we face a collision.  I suppose, this could be one possible answer to the demands of history.  Oh, stop, stop trying to think at all; throw away what’s left of my rationality like so much ballast.
    No, don't give up the mind, not yet; the situation's literal/metaphorical force hasn’t quite yet burned out the linings of the thrust-tubes, and consequently the Forokkadand still counts as a vehicle rather than a mere projectile.  I may be allowed some narrow leeway in which to steer the approach to the Voorspoot.   
    Here it comes hurtling, bearing the Noad of Yr.  I foresee the smash, moments away.  Neither he nor I can avoid it.  I was wrong, we're no longer in control: the execution of our aims has been taken over by our respective steeds, so that it’s now a question of one self-propelled fire-lance against another, determined, it seems, to collide.  I flinch but, when it happens, it doesn't feel like metal striking metal; rather, in the three or four yards of air that still separate Voorspoot from Forokkadand it is the forces of destiny that bump together. 
    That's a grinding which no doubt Rael Odiram can hear the same as I; and from his rock-hard glare I realize that, whatever may ensue, our former agreement stays dead.
    He opens his mouth and I listen to what comes out of it in English: 
    “You’ve ridden your firework gleefully, Sunnoad Yadon!”
    I shout back: “I’m nowise gleeful, I'm appalled by your treachery to Syoom.”
    The situation demands that we speak, and that is why it does not at all surprise me that our yells can carry across the gap and over the roar of the violet flames which now are pouring down my rocket’s flanks.  Meanwhile, as the Forokkadand's engine strives to hold position I note the hazy tracks of approaching scavenger clouds, in the role of Uranian vultures, drawn by the signs of combat.
    Pattern-wise, the whole event must darned well turn out as it ought to be, and in this dreamy conviction I focus my will to draw the meaning my story demands: the Forokkadand has to finish its climb onto Yr. 
    I’m moving forward and up - it's happening!  Likewise the Voorspoot, force-locked with the Forokkadand, retreats with my advance.  Rael Odiram doesn’t look at all disconcerted at the need to keep the same relative position; to judge from his implacable expression he believes that he is capturing me, not the other way round.  Well, he may know his own mind; I tell myself that I equally know mine.
    In any case it honestly doesn’t feel like a capture; it feels like what it is, a free, independent clatter onto the floor of Yr. 
    So my dirigible rocket has come to rest, about ten yards from where the Voorspoot has clanged into its cradle with its rider, Noad Rael Odiram. 
    I - a captive in his opinion, a conqueror in mine - step down onto the metal floor space. 
    My confidence, in my wave's surge towards success, is justified with every ticking moment that leaves me free to gawp like a happy tourist at the aerial cityscape.  Not sure why or how I got here – but then reasons can wait while I inhale these special instants; let the whys and wherefores dangle.
    Then the floor seems to shift under my boots. 
    I get what’s happened.  Rael just touched a remote control.  I saw him do it as he got down from the Voorspoot and took some steps towards me. 
    The result of his action is that the section of city-surface on which he and I stand is rising, is moulding into a slope-sided platform.  From the streets around, meanwhile, many Yrians are emerging.
    I dare say they're all eager for news, and Rael knows it, so what is he going to do?  Talk to them all, or confer with me, the Sunnoad, on a level above that of the plebs?
    To start with, he should greet me; and he does:
    “Skimmjard, sponndar Sunnoad,” says the Noad of Yr in calm triumph, and draws his laser.
    My hands remain at my sides because I have made the lightning decision, not to reach for my own sponnd.  But though my body stays still, my understanding is in terrible motion, like in those dreams which you can be sure are headed for no good. 
    In precisely that dream-style, my physical sight of the Noad's face, that's to say my purely ocular registration of it, is over-ridden by a starkly different vision, that of a murky silhouette.
    Simultaneously an extraordinary forward lurch tips gravity’s pull through a right angle.  Swing goes the world!  I’m suddenly looking down into that silhouette that is Noad Rael.  It has somehow become a pit of evil.  It has widened so that I am about to pitch into it.  What's more, some extra-horrid dream-thought informs me that (by some dire metaphoric hunch) a black-hole mass lurks in that thown-down direction.  I'm the hurtling probe that has been directed at it, for a flyby from which I shall never return.  A moral black hole will engulf me... 
    I am able to straighten up, no longer "tipped forward", as the metaphoric vision cedes to more literal knowledge, a panoramic historical knowledge of Yr's depredations in many former ages.  My educated memory subjects me to imagined movie-scenes of Yr floating through epics of battle and pillage, in each of which the pirate city floats over the summit towers of its victims and pours its fighters to loot downwards, throwing the defenders off their platforms to tumble to their deaths amid the crackle of sponnd-bolts and the yells of combat, and the stink of woe, blood, pain, death, loss, multiplied over time.  This is what Yr is really like, this is what Rael Odiram really stands for; how could I ever have believed that this man could be an ally?  Wake up, Sunnnoad 80438; face your duty.  Why were you so slow?
    I realize, at long last, the appalling truth about life on this planet.  I realize it far later than I should have, precisely because this is a world of belated recognitions. 
    It has to be this way.  Conclusions are held back here, kept in reserve until they can pack their full wallop, by dazzling unexpectedly.  Plot-lines work in this fashion on Earth in a whodunit, and over here on Ooranye in real life.  Flunnd, but it sure leaves me feeling stupid!  
    With a weary sigh I make an effort, a dream-style effort to control my vision, so that its metaphoric dominance fades.  The silhouette fills in.  It turns back into Rael’s face as it literally is.  Once more I have normal sight of the man's features. 
    Nevertheless the skull-like intensity of that face puts me off from hoping that I could ever argue with the man.  I now know - really know - that his moral world is one in which it’s all right to raid, loot and kill provided you do it from the sky. 
    To him, the airborne cultural heritage provides an excuse.  It's his nature, his let-off, I now understand.  History voluminously hoses this knowledge into me.  Yet, despite such unwanted understanding, my own wave bears me on with its inmost insistence that I must WIN. 
    My baffled old Terran nature protests: for goodness’ sake, how?
    No answer.  Oh well.  What can one do but shrug at the pretentions of destiny? 
    My guess is, Rael won’t shoot.  Right now he’s enjoying his complacent stare too much.  Besides, if he shoots me dead he’s just swapping a Sunnoad who’s captive with one who won’t be – for Syoom would soon elect a new one; elect one by thuzolyr.  (Doubtless, Oreneg Vadon would win that kind of election, as he almost did after the death of Arad Thastu 80436.)  Therefore – it’s not death at the hands of the enemy which I face.  Merely captivity and the ignominious end of my reign.  But that does, in effect, mean the end of my life: for, of course, I can’t allow myself to be a hostage for Syoom.
    Rael Odiram smiles, “Working it out, are you, Sunnoad Yadon?  This here,” and he gives his laser a little flourish, “is just to dissuade you from any rash personal move.  I have no interest in attacking the Noad of Noads!”  The smile becomes a chuckle.  “Nor even in imprisoning the Noad of Noads!”
    What's this I hear now?  What’s he getting at?  If he intends letting me go, I must take extra care to stay ahead of the game, ahead, in other words, of his thoughts.  For no matter what tricks he may have up his sleeve, and despite the despair that assailed me a few moments ago, I must win; must indeed have won (says my mind with a optimistic lurch), for destiny’s thrum does not lie!
    Rael pats the flank of the Voorspoot.  He addresses it familiarly, “Sazid, you have fulfilled my expectations.”  Directly to me he says, “If even the yards and workshops of Toolv cannot produce a weapon to beat Sazid here - the only Voorspoot in this era of the world - then so far as I am concerned you, 80438, can go where you like."
    "Do I hear aright?"
    "Yes," he says, "I always mean what I say.  You can even carry out your long-neglected duty and lead your fleet to Starside.”
    “Leaving control of the skies of Syoom to you, I suppose, so that you may prey upon my people.” 
    Rael matches the keenness of my glance.
    “Ah, you are sounding me out, Yadon!  I shall prey, yes – upon the soft options.”
    I bristle at first, but then, on reflection, it's my turn to nod.  In truth, not much remains to be said.  Each of us believes in his own victory.  Our beliefs are unshakable because, amid the colliding waves that smash together and mingle our fates today, both are true.
    I shall lead my expedition to Olhoav; that's one truth.  And while I and my fleet are gone in Starside the people of Syoom will have to endure the skyborne depredations of Rael Odiram’s pirate city; that's another truth.  But for those whom he attacks, he will prove, by and large, to be a necessary scourge – for as he has just averred, he will go for the soft options.  The corrupted, weakened options; the cities and settlements weakened by the Spilth, the areas gone morally mouldy through Dempelath’s influence, the incipient arenas of civil strife between backgrounders and foregrounders... all be forced to wake from their insanity.  Bloodlettings shall awaken them; pains and griefs from attacks by Yr’s wolves-from-the-sky. 
    Horrid though that scourge will be, it will counteract the worse thing.
    I couldn’t have planned it better!  From his stratospheric perspective, who better than the Noad of Yr to determine the best targets, so as to disincentivise my people from going rotten during my absence?
    No wonder he’s letting me go.  His own motives, and the motive of fate, wondrously agree.  Similarly it’s clear that I shall harden my heart and lead my fleet away on its mission, leaving control of the skies of Syoom to the mercies of Yr. 
    The pirate city will, at worst, cost many of the lives of my people; Dempelath, if he were to win, would cost them their natures and souls.

[revised to here 17.7.2026]

11

I re-mount the Forokkadand, resuming position as steersman in the framework at the bow.  Lemedet for her part has not moved from her support structure which gives her a hold part way round the hull; I can just see her motionless form, ready for take-off.

Just for an instant I pause, as I reflect on how things have quietened since the roar of events which accompanied our arrival.  Belatedly absorbing the magnificene of the cityscape of Yr, I blink in calm astonishment at where I am, at the place I am about to leave. 

What a place - what an eternally unique, never-to-be-classified place.  Yet its heaped geometric buildings, helical towers, globular palaces and branching skimways are broadly similar and in no way inferior to those of the Great Twenty-Five metropoli whose stems rest upon the ground, though here a uniquely creepy dimension is added by the baggy Mists, four or five of which are visible at any one time as they prowl through the streets.  Tamed clouds, it is assumed, but I am content never to have met one at close quarters...

“Let’s go, Lemedet,” I mutter, though not loudly enough to have reasonable expectation of an answer from her. 

I ignite the rocket motor and the Forokkadand comes to life.  Raising my right arm in a farewell gesture to mark the end of my life’s second visit to Yr, and of my first ever visit to airborne Yr, with my left hand I press the stud to accelerate.  I head for the rim and over.  Only now do I dare believe we have really got out, as I come into sight of the aerial city’s underside, with its rugose Strakes which constitute the second most marked physical difference (apart from the Mists themselves) between Yr and ground-based cities.  Questions naturally crowd in upon my mind: how were the Strakes ever built; how was all of Yr ever built and launched; what keeps it up in the sky?  I may never learn the answers, may never return to see more of this awesome floating power. 

Then comes a hit from my Terran conscience.  All this admiration of magnificence: what a sell-out!  Think how frequent such moral whitewash is in the history of Earth.  So much indulgence of the imagination to the cruel splendour and courtly glitter of tyrants...

...I swerve in my downward flight so as to point towards Toolv and to retrace the miles - perhaps a score - over which the drift of Yr has carried me.

Toolv now coruscates with alertness.  Its towers and platforms are flashing, bristling with ready artillery.  My transceiver gives an urgent beep; I click it on and acknowledge, "Yadon here.  Returning undamaged."  

Amid the babble on the airwaves one voice cuts its imperious way to the fore: that of the Noad of Toolv, Byndin Ghelanver, sweetly sonorous like the note of a honeyed horn.  "But 80438, what must we do?"

"Do not, at this moment, attack Yr."

"And in subsequent moments?"

"We have a mission - a drall - to fulfil."

"And meanwhile - in what category do we place the Yrians?"

Seems she won't be deflected from the key question.  Well, in an equivalent situation on Earth my reply would be standard:  The pirate city, having abandoned our special agreement, is once more an outlaw, a rogue state.

Here though, on a world of custom rather than written law, the English term "outlaw" requires careful translation, as do many other Terran words and catch-phrases, all of which nevertheless can come in useful on Ooranye, especially as they sound freshly minted here; and so in my reply I put the crucial words into English to give them a lilt of mystery:  "It’s business as usual with Yr."

I hope the lilt gives Byndin pause.  I hope she decides to follow my lead without further question.  My hopes are dashed.  She says:

“Not sure I understand, 80438, with regard to what you aim to do next.”

Looks like bluntness will have to be next. 

“What’s left is simple: a rejection of all further reasons for delay in the departure of the drall.  I shall require Noads of cities, like yourself, to understand - to cut corners.”

“Even if the reasons for delay are good?  Urgent crises, pleas…  I need to know what to say about it.”

“Pursue shock tactics,” I reply.  “Say that I have decided to be ruthless.”

Her lips purse at that, and, sensing clear reproof, I retaliate with some more Terran metaphor, switching to English for the punch line - “If you find ruthless neglect of lesser matters too hard, switch your mood to a different channel.” 

As for me, I go further and switch mine off –

…and come to in the control room of my flagship with its captain and officers standing around me and the captains of the other skyships in the fleet of the drall each visible on a panel of screens that curves around the command post.

I obviously didn’t wish to allow any Terran hesitation during the ruthless hours just passed, while I over-rode all pleas and engagements in order to be able to stand here and now.

Wisps of indrawn breath come to my ears as I reach a finger to the toggle switch that will cause the flagship’s engines to hum into life.  All witnesses are savouring the occasion, and I too relish a gulp from what breezes in through the ports and vents of the ship, open so that the tang of the upper air has penetrated to this bulk-centre of the Zaderal.  Skies of Fyaym, reaches of Starside, here we come.

Over the intercom I speak the words, “It is time” – and flip the toggle.