He stared at the broad expanse of tableland, and in an eyeblink the plateau filled with a grid of tracks, roads and paths so densely packed and interlaced they created their own solid surface, overwhelming the plain. The network of trails and lines radiated away to the horizon, filling the view with blurred, flickering movement; vast broad highways buzzed and glittered with complex articulations travelling too quickly for any individual element to be discerned, but creating a conglomerative impression of streamed solidity. Elsewhere, on narrower routes, long trains of material flashed past, just glimpsed, while an unseen myriad of paths specked and sparkled with solitary packets of traffic.
In another blink, it was all gone again.
He turned to his other self.
‘Well, here we are,’ said the construct. ‘The parting of the ways. You remember all you need to remember?’
‘How would I know if I didn’t?’
‘Hmm-hmm. What do you remember?’
‘I am going into the wilderness,’ he said, looking back at the plain.
‘For sanctuary?’
‘For sanctuary. And to seek and be sought. To provide a container, a medium for whatever I find out there.’
‘You will change.’
‘I have already changed.’
‘You will change forever, and may die.’
‘I think you will find we have always lived with that knowledge; not all our betterments have really changed such matters.’
‘I hope I’ve given you all you may need.’
‘So do I.’ He looked the other man in the eye. ‘And you, now?’
Alan turned and glanced back to where a distant mural tower was visible through the swaying trees. ‘I’ll be back in there,’ he said. ‘Doing what I’ve always done; watching. And waiting on your return; preparing.’
‘Well, until then.’ He offered his hand.
‘Until then.’
They shook hands, both smiling self-consciously at the physicality of the ritual, still germane even in this translation from base-reality.
The construct nodded out at the plain, where the ghost-image of furious movement still seemed to linger.
‘Sorry it will be so slow.’
‘Slow is safe, in this.’
‘Good luck.’
‘And you.’
Then they each turned, and one headed back uphill on the path between the trees, making for the vast cliff of wall towering beyond, while the other set off down the slope towards the plain.
He walked out across the semi-desert. The paths here were so densely packed there was indeed effectively one single surface. He watched dust drift behind him on a soft breeze and wondered what aspect of the crypt’s nature it signified. He stopped and looked behind him, back to where the foothills rose, sprinkled with trees. The fastness hung half-hazed in the sky beyond.
His footprints lay in the dust, leading back to the ridge.
He looked around and saw other footprints scattered here and there in lines that criss-crossed the plain. Above, the sky stayed blue, with no hint of cloud. He walked on, and when he first saw a stretch of ground where flat rocks lay like pages of stone upon the prairie, walked towards them and then upon them, changing his direction a little to follow the outcrop. When the rocks submerged beneath the dusty ground again he struck off in a different direction again.
At the next group of rocks, he sat down and held one of his shoes out to one side so that he could look at the sole. The sole was composed of simple ridges running from side to side. He thought about it changing, and the pattern changed to chevrons. He did the same with the other shoe, and felt pleased that on this scale such changes could still be effected. He hefted his rucksack, wondering what might be in it but knowing better than to look. All that mattered – he could half recall being told – was that there were useful objects within it.
He got up and continued walking.
A few times he heard the sand and rocks around him making a high-pitched keening noise, and knew he was near one of the great data highways. He would stop and stare and the highway would be there; a vast shining pipe on the surface of the plain, roaring like a waterfall, charged with pulsing, flashing movement and itself moving ponderously, writhing like an immense snake stretching from horizon to horizon, sweeping from side to side in great loops and waves and alternately raising its semi-fluid bulk up from the ground and troughing it back down.
The first time he encountered one of these gigantic, shimmering pipes, he sat and watched it. The accumulation of its sinuous movements gradually took it away, then started it moving towards him again. He inspected the surface of the plain, and saw where the ground had been scuffed clean by the paths the highway had taken. It reminded him of a river delta, where channels form, flood, silt and shift, and islands seem to move, shuffled across the flood by the ever-weaving braid of waters.
He chose his spot and – more because he wanted to check that it was possible than because he particularly wanted to proceed in that direction – ducked beneath the arched under-surface of the highway as it bowed over the sand and ran, doubled up, for the far side, the highway’s great bulk a roaring shadow above him.
It was done without mishap and he looked back at the tubular rush of the highway with satisfaction.
He continued walking.
A breeze got up after a while and he was grateful for it though he was not hot; the breeze was simply something different. He felt no hunger or thirst and no fatigue; realising this he started to run, and after a while did feel tired, and his breathing became laboured. He settled back to a stroll and when he’d got his breath back he increased his speed to the pace he’d been maintaining earlier.
Darkness waxed slowly.
When the light had quite gone from the sky he was able to see a ghostly grey image of the ground in front of him, and walked on. He stared up at the black sky and it filled with the network of lines and lights again. He watched the grid shift and the constellations change, just for something to do, knowing that somewhere inside himself he knew what this silently fabulous display signified, and unworried that its import was not quite immediately available to him, but lodged in some memorative backwater he knew he could explore if he really needed to.
He stared at the plain and saw the great roads and tracks and highways again, though they looked a little more dispersed than they had been before.
Most of the time he just walked, head down, hardly thinking about anything.
After a while he felt light-headed and thought he heard voices and saw shapes that weren’t there in any reality. He started to trip over rocks or roots that were not there either, each time feeling like he was back in his earlier, biological life, and was in bed, about to fall asleep, but had suffered some involuntary spasm which had wrenched him back to wakefulness. This happened again, and again and again.
He decided he needed to sleep after all. He found a hollow under a rocky outcrop, put his rucksack beneath his head and fell asleep.
* * *
4
Translation
U no whot am goan 2 do if u doan tel me whot I wan 2 no, doan u? I sez 2 thi ole crow caged in ma talinz.
Am restin in ma big nest on thi fingir ov stoan lookin out ovir thi desirt, sittin here qwite happily pullin out thi old grey-black crows fevvirs 1 by 1 wif ma free foot, hummin 2 maself & tryin 2 get sum sens out ov thi ole bird.
I doan no nuffin! thi grey-black cro shouts. Yool pay 4 this, u peece ov filf! Set me bak whare u fownd me imeedyitly & mibi we say no moar about this – eerk!
(I scrunch his beek a bit wif 2 ov my talinz.)
Zhou schwine! he blubbers.
I dcide itz time 2 fix thi old fellir wif a serius stare, so I lower my grate-beekd head doun 2 his levil & luke in thru thi talin-bars @ his litl black beedi Is. He trys 2 luke away but I hold his hed roun lukin 2wards me wif a talin & put my hed closer 2 him (tho not 2 cloas – Im not stupid). Crows cant acthurely move ther Is very much & now he cooden move his hed neethir. They’v got a thing cold a nicitatin membrane whot they can flik over ther I & this old chap’s nicitatin like mad tryin 2 blok me out & if I wozen such a fine firm fleshd-out eggzampil ov a sirnurg he mite blok me out (or evin takin me ovir if he woz tryin), but I am so he cooden & I woz in thare.