This, you may have gathered, is exactly what I am proposing to do, and Mr Zoliparia is not too enamoured of the idea.
Bascule, please, he says, attempt to retain a sense of proportion. It’s only an ant and you are only a junior teller.
For sure, Mr Zoliparia, I says. But I’m a teller what hasn’t even begun to be stretched yet. I’m a great teller. I’m a total blinking hot-shot teller and I just know I can find that bird.
And do what? Mr Zoliparia shouts. The damn ant is probably dead! That bird’s probably eaten it by now! Why you want to torture yourself by finding that out?
If so, I want to know, but anyway I don’t think that’s right; I’m banking on her having been dropped by that big bird and I’m hoping it might remember where, or –
Bascule you are upset. Why don’t you just go back to the order and try to calm down and think this –
Mr Zoliparia, I says quietly, I thank you for your concern but I intend to do this no matter what you say. Cheers all the same.
Mr Zoliparia looks at me different than he has in the past. I’ve always liked him and I’ve always looked up to him ever since he was one of the people they sent me to when they realised I talked fairly normal but I thought a bit funny, and I tend to do what he says – it was him who said, Perhaps you would make a good teller, and him what suggested I keep a journal, which is what you are reading – but this time I don’t much care what he thinks, or at least I do but I don’t much care how bad it makes me feel going against his advice because I just know I have to do this.
O dear Bascule, he says and shakes his head. I do believe you do intend to do this and is a sorry thing for any person to do for something as insignificant as an ant.
It’s not the ant, Mr Zoliparia, I says feeling dead grownup, it’s me.
Mr Zoliparia shakes his head. It’s you and no goddamn sense of proportion, that’s what it is.
All the same, I says. It was my friend; she was relying on me to keep her safe. Just one try, Mr Zoliparia. I feel I owe her that.
Bascule, please, just think –
Mind if I just hunker down here, Mr Zoliparia?
Given you’re determined, Bascule, here is probably better than elsewhere but I’m not happy about this.
Don’t worry, Mr Zoliparia. Won’t take a second, literally.
There anything I can do?
Yep; let me borrow that pen of yours. Ta. Now I’m going to sit up here – I squatted on a chair, my chin on my knees, and put the pen in my mouth.
‘en ‘i ‘en ‘all ou’ ‘a ‘ouf, I start to tell him
What you saying, Bascule?
I take the pen out my mouth. I was just saying, when the pen falls out of my mouth, let it hit the carpet then shake me and shout Bascule, fast awake!
Bascule, fast asleep, Mr Zoliparia says.
Awake! I yells. Not wide asleep; fast awake!
Fast awake, Mr Zoliparia repeats. Bascule, fast awake. He shakes his head and he’s shaking. O dear Bascule, o dear.
If you’re that worried, Mr Zoliparia, catch the pen before it hits and then wake me. Now, just give me a minute here … I settled into place, getting comfortable; this’ll only take a second but you have to feel settled and ready and at peace.
Right. I’m prepared.
This’ll all happen very quickly, Mr Zoliparia; you ready? I put the pen back in my mouth.
O dear Bascule.
Here we go.
O dear.
And so it’s off to the land of the dead for yours truly for the second time today, only this time it’s a bit more serious.
It’s like sinking into the sky on the other side of the Earth without going through the whole thing first. It’s like floating into the earth and the sky at the time, becoming a line not a point, pluming the depths and ascending the heights and then branching out like a tree, like a plain tree, like a huge bush intermingling with every bit of the earth and the sky, and then it’s like every one of those bits isn’t just a bit of earth or a molecule of air any more, it’s like all of them is suddenly a little system of their own; a book, a library, a person; a world… and you’re connected with all of it, ignoring barriers, like you are a brain cell deep in the grainy grey mush of the brain all closed in but joined up to loads of other cells, awash in their communication-song and set free by that trapped machine.
Boompf-badoom; slapadowndoodie through the topmost obvious layers what corresponds to the upper levels of the brain – the rational, sensible, easily understood layers – into the first of the deep down floors, the bit under the cerebral, under the crust, under the photosphere, under the obvious.
It’s here you have to be a little bit careful; it’s like being in a not-so-salubrious neighbourhood of a big dark city at night – only more complicated than that; much more so.
In here, the trick is thinking right. That’s all you have to do. You have to think right. You have to be daring and cautious, you have be very sensible and totally mad. Most of all you have to be clever, you have to be ingenious. You have to be able to use whatever is around you, and that’s what it really comes down to; the crypt is what they call self-referential, which means that – up to a point – it means what you want it to mean, and displays itself to you as you’re best able to understand it, so it’s up to you really what use you make of it after that; it’s all about ingenuity and that’s why it’s a young person’s medium, frankly.
Anyway, I knew what I wanted so I thought bird.
And suddenly I was up in some dark building above the wee twinkly lights of the city, up there with big metallic sculptures of fearsome looking birds and there was lots of screeches and squawks about the place but you couldn’t see no birds just hear the noise they made and it was sort of crusty-soft under foot and smelt acidic (or alkaline; one of the two).
I sniffed about, walking quietly, then hopped up onto one of the big metallic birds and squatted there, wings by my sides, staring out over the light-specked black grid of the city and not blinking, just looking for movement, and lowering my head now and again and poking in under my wings with the twig what I held in my beak, just like I was preening or something.
Noticed my wake-up code in the form of a ring round my left leg. Handy to know it was there, just in case things go wrong and/or Mr Zoliparia fluffs his line.
… Stayed there a while, patient as you like, just watching.
What you want then? said a voice from above and behind.
Nothing much, I said, not looking. I was aware of the twig in my beak but it didn’t seem to make speaking any harder.
You must want something, you wouldn’t be here otherwise.
You got me there, I said. I’m here looking for somebody.
Oh?
Lost a friend of mine. Roost-mate. Like to trace her.
We all got friends we like to find.
This one very recent; half hour ago. Taken from the septentrional gargoyle Rosbrith.
Sep what?
Means – (this is complicated, referring to the upper data level while I’m down here in the first circle of the basement, but I do it) – means northern, I said (blimey). Rosbrith. North-west on the great hall.
Taken by what?
Lammergeier, I said. (Didn’t know that neither til now.)
Really. What you giving in return?
I’m here, aren’t I? I’m a teller. You got my ear now. I’ll not forget you if you help. Look in me if you want; see what I say is true.
Not blind.
Didn’t think you were.
This bird; you catch any distinguishing marks on it?
It was a lammergeier, that’s all I know, but there can’t be all that many of them around the north-west corner of the great hall half an hour ago.
Lammergeiers are a bit funny these days, but I’ll ask around.
Thanks.
(flutter of wings, then:)
Well, you might be in luck –
– then there was a mega-squawk and a scream and I had to turn around and look and there was a huge great bird beating in the air behind and above me, holding another torn bird in one of its talons; the big bird was red-black on black and fierce as death and I could feel the wind of its flapping snapping wings on my face. It hung in the air, wings spread, beating like something fiercely crucified, shaking the dead bird in its talons so that its blood spattered in my eyes.