There was also something very odd about it, which Random couldn’t immediately make out.
It certainly shared with pikka birds the impression it gave that it was watching something that you couldn’t see.
Suddenly it vanished.
Then, just as suddenly everything went black. Random drop- ped into a tense crouch, feeling for the specially sharpened rock in her pocket again. Then the blackness receded and rolled itself up into a ball and then the blackness was the bird again. It hung in the air in front of her, beating its wings slowly and staring at her.
`Excuse me,’ it said suddenly, `I just have to calibrate myself. Can you hear me when I say this?’
`When you say what?’ demanded Random.
`Good,’ said the bird. `And can you hear me when I say this?’ It spoke this time at a much higher pitch.
`Yes, of course I can!’ said Random.
`And can you hear me when I say this?’ it said, this time in a sepulchrally deep voice.
`Yes!’
There was then a pause.
`No obviously not,’ said the bird after a few seconds. `Good, well your hearing range is obviously between 20 and 16 KHz. So. Is this comfortable for you?’ it said in a pleasant light tenor. `No uncomfortable harmonics screeching away in the upper register? Obviously not. Good. I can use those as data channels. Now. How many of me can you see?’
Suddenly the air was full of nothing but interlocking birds. Random was well used to spending time in virtual realities, but this was something far weirder than anything she had previously encountered. It was as if the whole geometry of space was redefined in seamless bird shapes.
Random gasped and flung her arms round her face, her arms moving through bird-shaped space.
`Hmmm, obviously way too many,’ said the bird. `How about now?’
It concertina-ed into a tunnel of birds, as if it was a bird caught between parallel mirrors, reflecting infinitely into the distance.
`What are you?’ shouted Random.
`We’ll come to that in a minute,’ said the bird. `Just how many, please?’
`Well, you’re sort of…’ Random gestured helplessly off into the distance.
`I see, still infinite in extent, but at least we’re homing in on the right dimensional matrix. Good. No, the answer is an orange and two lemons.’
`Lemons?’
`If I have three lemons and three oranges and I lose two oranges and a lemon what do I have left?’
`Huh?’
`OK, so you think that time flows that way, do you? Interesting. Am I still infinite?’ it asked, ballooning this way and that in space. `Am I infinite now? How yellow am I?’
Moment by moment the bird was going through mind-mangling transformations of shape and extent.
`I can’t…’ said Random bewildered.
`You don’t have to answer, I can tell from watching you now. So. Am I your mother? Am I a rock? Do I seem huge, squishy and sinuously intertwined? No? How about now? Am I going backwards?’
For once the bird was perfectly still and steady.
`No,’ Said Random.
`Well I was in fact, I was moving backwards in time. Hmmm. Well I think we’ve sorted all that out now. If you’d like to know, I can tell you that in your universe you move freely in three dimensions that you call space. You move in a straight line in a fourth, which you call time, and stay rooted to one place in a fifth, which is the first fundamental of probability. After that it gets a hit complicated, and there’s all sorts of stuff going on in dimensions 13 to 22 that you really wouldn’t want to know about. All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it’s pretty damn complicated in the first place. I can easily not say words like “damn” if it offends you.’
`Say what you damn well like.’
`I will.’
`What the hell are you?’ demanded Random.
`I am The Guide. In your universe I am your Guide. In fact I inhabit what is technically known as the Whole Sort of General Mish Mash which means… well, let me show you.’