Hold on! it shouted agen.
Am bludy tryin 2! I yelld.
U safe?
Juss about, I sed, huggin a big strand ov babil like it wos a long-loss mum or sumthin, not abil 2 look behind but stil heerin thi big bat flap & beet @ my bak.
Am sorri I cuden help u moar, thi bat sez. U mus saiv uself now. Thare lookin 4 u. Bware thi kript. Keep outa things! Erch! Erch! I mus go. Farewell, hoomin.
Yeh, & 2 u, I shoutid, turnin roun 2 luke @ it. & fanks!
Then thi big bat dropt, & I saw it disapeer in thi mist, fallin away strate down, traylin smoak & then juss b4 I loss site ov it curvin away followin thi circumferince ov thi towr, beetin hard but lookin week & still follin.
Disappeered.
I crolld in2 thi darkniss ov thi babil, nursin ma aiks.
O deer Bascule, I sed 2 myself. O deer o deer o deer.
I spent thi nite in thi foleyidje, constintly dreemin ov flyin thru thi air wif Ergates in ma hand but then droppin hir & hir tumblin away & me not bein abil 2 catch hir & mi wings cumin off & me follin 2 & screemin thru thi air, then wakin clutchin thi branchiz, shiverin & cuverd in swet.
So heer I am, lookin up @ thi fass-tower & Ive spent sum time so far this mornin tryin 2 pluk up thi curidje 2 go strate bak in2 thi kript 2 find out whots goan on & look 4 poor litil Ergates & this time tak no nonsins… & Ive also spent sum time vowin nevir 2 evin fink ov thi bleedin kript agen & desidin not 2 deside about it 4 now & so insted am juss sitin heer wonderin whot am 2 do in jeneril & not abil 2 cum 2 a disishin on that scoar nevir.
I turn ovir in ma litl nest agen & luke down thru thi branchis & this time I freez & stair, coz I can c this big animil cumin climin up thru thi babil; iss bleedin hooj, thi size ov a bare & iss got thik blak fur with streeks ov green on it & iss got big shiny blak claws & iss lukin @ me wif 2 litl beedy Is & a funy pointid hed & iss cumin up thi branch am on, strate 2words me.
O shit, I heer myself say, lukin roun 2 c if thers a way 2 escape.
Ther isnt. O shit.
Thi animil opins its mouf. Its teef r thi size ov ma fingirs
… Shtay whare u r! it hissis.
* * *
FIVE
* * *
1
‘In those days the world was not a garden and the people were not idle as they are now. Then on the face of the world there was real wilderness, empty of humanity, and the wilderness that humanity created, the wilderness that it packed with itself and which it called City. People toiled and people idled and the toilers worked for themselves and yet not for themselves and the idle did no work or little work and what they did, did only for themselves; money was all-powerful then and people said they made it work for them but money cannot work, only people and machines can work.’
Asura listened, fascinated but confused. The speaker was a thin middle-aged woman dressed in a plain ivory-coloured smock. Her feet were hobbled with a half-metre-long iron rod attached to wood-lined cuffs whose internal surfaces had been polished smooth and bright by friction with her skin. Her hands were similarly secured. She stood in the centre of the open gondola, chanting more than talking, her gaze raised to the belly-bulging underside of the airship above and her voice raised to cope with the noise of the craft’s engines and the slipstream swirling over the gondola’s semi-transparent bulwarks. Asura looked around, wondering at the effect this strange, declaiming woman must be having on her fellow travellers. She was surprised to find that she seemed to be the only person paying the woman any attention.
Asura had been standing at the airship’s deck rail watching the plain roll past beneath and had seen the first line of blue hills appear through the haze. She had been waiting for her first glimpse of the great castle, but the woman’s steady voice and odd words had intrigued her.
She left the rail to find a seat close to the woman. As she moved between the tables and chairs, she looked towards the bow of the gondola, where the upper deck’s round transparent nose bulged out, part of a huge sunstruck circle veined with the dark lines of struts, and suddenly she was reminded of something she’d seen in her dreams last night.
She sat down, feeling dizzy.
In a great dark space there was a huge circle, subdivided into smaller circles by thin dark lines like rings of ripples in a disturbed pool, and further subdivided by similarly fine lines radiating from the very centre of the circle. The circle was an enormous window; stars shone beyond it.
She could hear a clock ticking.
Something moved at one edge of the great circle. Looking closely she could see it was a figure; somebody walking along the horizontal ray-line from the edge to the centre of the circular window. She looked more closely still, and saw that the person was herself.
She walked along until she stood in the very centre of the vast aperture, looking out through a central pane of some substance she knew was more hard and clear and strong than glass. Far below, there was a landscape of luminous grey; a circular depression of shallow, undulating hills surrounded by cliffs and mountains, lit from one side and full of deep, black shadows. The clock still ticked. She stood for a while, admiring the stars, and thinking that the circle of the great window mirrored the shape of the circular plain it overlooked.
Then the clock-sound speeded up, ticking faster and faster until it was a ripping, buzzing noise in her ears; the shadows swung across the landscape and the bright orb of the sun tore across the sky, then abruptly the sun vanished and the noise of the clock changed, took on a kind of rhythm until the noise speeded up again and became the buzz it had been before. She could barely see the landscape below. The stars blazed.
Then the stars started to disappear. They went out slowly at first, in a single region of the sky off to her right and near the dark horizon, then more quickly, until the stain of darkness was eating up a quarter of the sky, rising like a vast curtain thrown up from the ghostly grey mountains. Now a third of the sky was utterly dark, the stars going out one by one or in groups; shining, then dimming, then flickering and disappearing altogether as the darkness consumed half the sky, then two thirds.
She stared, open-mouthed, choosing brighter stars in the path of the blackness and watching them as they vanished.
Finally almost the whole sky was black; just a few stars shone steadily above the distant mountains to her right, while to her left the darkness had touched the horizon, where the sun had shone earlier.
Abruptly the clock was back to normal, and the sun blazed again – from a different angle now, but still just within the region of the darkness – sending a cold, steady light across the crater floor to the grey cliffs and crags of the rim-wall.
Earth. Cradle. Very old. There are many ages. Age within age. Age of nothingness comes first, then age/instant of infinitesimal/infinite explosion, then age of shining, then age of heaviness, of different air/fluids, then the tiny but long ages of stone/fluid and fire, then the age of life, smaller still, and living with and in all the other ages, then the age/moment of thought-life: here we are, and all goes very quickly and at the same time all other types/sizes of ages go on but then there is next age/moment of the new life that the old life makes, and that is much faster again, and that is where we are now too. And yet.
The old ape-man looked sad. He had grey hair and grey sagging skin on a skinny frame and he was dressed in a strange costume of yellow and red diamonds topped by a pointed hat with a bell on the end. His soft shoes were pointed too, and also had bells at their tips. The only noise he could produce was a chattering laugh; he was the size of a child but his eyes looked wise and sad. He sat on the steps that led up to a big chair; the large room was empty except for her and the ape-man and one wall of the room was window, double-skinned and curved and ribbed with a fine tracery of dark lines, though much smaller than the circular window she had seen earlier. This window too looked out onto a landscape of shining grey.