But I thought space was just full of nothing I said to Mr Zoliparia. What’s the point of going there?
Bascule, he said, you are so thick sometimes.
He told me the fast-tower led to the planets and the stars; once you were in space you had limitless energy and raw materials and after that brainpower took you wherever you wanted but we’d thrown all that away.
Mr Zoliparia says the fast-tower represents something of an enigma, on account that we don’t strictly speaking know what’s actually in the top of it; it’s been explored up to about the 10th or 11th levels but after that you can’t get no higher, so they say. Blocked on the inside and nothing to hold onto on the outside and too high up for a balloon or an aircraft to go. The knowledge of what’s up there’s been lost long ago in the chaos of the crypt, says Mr Z.
You hear rumours that there are people up there in the top of the tower but that’s got to be nonsense; how’d they breathe?
Mr Zoliparia isn’t the only person to have theories concerning the big tower; Ergates the ant told me there used to be three space elevators; one here, one in Africa near a place called Kilimanjaro and one in Kalimantan. According to her, they’ve all been dismantled long since of course but we’ve got the biggest stump on account of whoever designed the American continent space elevator had the wizard idea of making the terminus particularly spectacular and so designed it to look like a huge castle, viz. the vastness of the fastness (which she claimed used to be called Acsets, which was another of them acronyms, apparently).
I thought this all sounded a bit iffy and asked Mr Z if he’d ever heard of there being other fast-towers and he said nope, not as far as he knew, and sure enough when I searched the crypt for info there wasn’t any on no other elevators and when you actually look into it there doesn’t seem to be anywhere where it says straight out the fast-tower used to be one end of a space elevator, though it’s not a secret. Anyway, Kilimanjaro is a lake and Kalimantan is a big island (it’s got a Crater Lake too) and I think Ergates’ imagination was running away with her a bit there and besides if her theory was right the name of this place would begin with a K not a S or a A, stands to reason.
Poor Ergates. I still wonder what happened to that dear little ant, even though I’ve got plenty of other things to worry about now.
I turn over in the little nest I’ve made for myself in the babil branches and look down the curved trunk to the wall. Nobody else around. Looks like I gave the bastards the slip.
My shoulder still hurts. So do my wrists and my knees.
Oh what a sorry state we’re in, young Bascule, I says to myself.
I just know that sooner or later I’m going to have to go back into the crypt to find out what on earth’s going on, even though the last thing the big bat said was not to. Don’t think it’s going to be much fun.
I’m frightened.
You see, I’ve become an outcast.
I have to say I had a very pleasant lunch with Mr Zoliparia and a good game of Go which he won of course (like he always does) in this travelling restaurant. The restaurant starts in a vertical village in the babil near the top of the great hall gable and slowly descends to floor level over the next couple of hours. Good food and views. Anyway, I had a very nice time and almost totally forgot about Dartlin and the giant brain in bird space and horrible skinned heads and things what go gididibibibigididibigigi and so on.
Me and Mr Zoliparia talked about loads of stuff.
Eventually though it was time for me to go because I still had evening calls to do for the Little Big Brothers and they like you to be there in the monastery to do them and I’d already done one lot on the hoof as it were that morning in the hydrovator so I thought for the evening I ought to actually be there within the precinct.
Mr Z saw me to the west wall tube train.
You promise you won’t go back into that crypt until you have to? Until you’re back with the brothers? Mr Z said to me, and I said, Oh all right then Mr Zoliparia.
Good boy, he said.
Everything went as per normal till I got to the other end where there was a long wait at the hydrovator. I thought of a better idea and took a travelator across the allure to a funicular line up a flying buttress; I’d get to the monastery by dropping from above.
There were a couple of novice brothers in the funicular car with me; they were a bit drunk, and singing loudly. I thought one of them seemed to recognise me but I just looked away and he ignored me too.
They kept singing as the car when slowly up the curve of the buttress. I wouldn’t have minded, but they were out of tune.
Little-Big, Little-Big, Little-Big!
We’re the Mediums who don’t give a fig!
Well, here’s a fine to-do, I said to myself, sighing and staring out the window and trying to ignore the noise and their beery breaths. I looked out the window; it was dusk by this time and the lights were on in the funicular car’s cabin and the sky outside looked pretty and very colourful.
When you’re dead, when you’re dead, when you’re dead,
We’ll happily live inside your he – ad!
O, what the heck, I thought.
In a way what I was going to do would make the trip longer not shorter but at least I’d have some respite from all this cheery-drunken shit, and even if I forgot my return code again these noisy prats would wake me up soon enough. I dipped into the crypt, intending to spend maybe half a second in there.
Less than that was quite enough.
There was something going on.
The first place you go from transport is into a representation of the castle’s transport system, a transparent holo of the fastness with the tube, train and funicular lines, lift shafts, roads, hydrovator lines and clifter slots all highlighted. Then you move onto where you want to go elsewhere in the crypt. Most bags don’t even spare this setup a passing glance, but if you’re something of a connoisseur of the crypt’s states, like I am, then you just always swing past this sort of thing and click it out and do a quick comparison with actual movements to see if Transport’s on its bols or not. Upshot is, if there’s anything amiss you spot it, like I spotted the transport setup wasn’t quite right.
It looked like there was an odd kind of hole around the monastery; nothing moving out, just stuff in-going. Very strange, I thought. I didn’t go no further into the crypt. I checked the monastery’s crypt business during the afternoon. Definitely phase-change in the traffic around an hour ago. Somebody trying to make things look normal when they weren’t.
Where was brother Scalopin’s usual call to the Martian Days storyline, for example? Or sister Ecrope’s tea-time interlope with her lover in the Uitlander embassy? All replaced by making-up-numbers traffic, that’s where.
I knew I was probably being paranoid, but I worried all the same.
The funicular was due to make one more stop before the station I’d normally get off at. I told it to stop ASAP.
A minute later it did, and I got off at this little silly halt three quarters of the way up the buttress which served a couple of clan-execs’ love nests, a old babil farm and a glider club, all of them deserted. The two brothers I left on the funicular looked puzzled but waved bye-bye and kept singing as the car trundled away again.
Then there was a thump in my head. The funicular car stopped, then reversed and clunked and whirred back down towards me.
The thump in my head was some bastard trying to knock me out with a bit of feedback from the crypt; theoretically impossible and technically difficult but it can be done and the jolt I’d just got would have knocked out most people, only I’ve got the equivalent of shock absorbers because I’m a teller and therefore used to getting a rough ride from the crypt.
The funicular car was coming glowing back down the curved track, its cabin lights reflecting off the babil plants festooning the broad arched back of the buttress. The two brothers inside were at the back window, staring at me. They didn’t look so drunk now, and they were each holding things in their hands that could have been guns.