So I’m being led through the babil plants by a sloth called Gaston who has a kind of mutant lisp and takes such pride in his appearance he’s got fungus growing on his back; that’s what the green streaks are. He offered to let me ride on his back hanging onto his fur but I declined.
We climb through the babil, going down and round the tower.
Who sent you then? I ask.
…Same people sent the jericule last night, Gaston says, talking over his shoulder.
What, that big bat?
…That’s right.
What happened to him anyway, do you know?
…Her, Gaston says. No.
Oh.
I follow Gaston down through the babil branches. Following Gaston isn’t difficult on account of him being a quite remarkably slow mover. If he had been coming to attack me I could probably have just gone down the branch he was on and climbed right over him before he could have started to react.
Anyway. Who was it sent you here then?
…Friends.
You don’t say.
…No, I do say; friends.
Well thanks, that’s pretty enlightening.
…Patience, young man.
We negotiate a few more branches.
Where you taking me anyway?
… to a place of safety.
Yeah, but where?
… Patience, young man, patience.
I can see I’m not going to get nothing out of this sloth so I just shut up and content myself with making silly faces at its big black green-streaked back.
It’s a long slow journey.
… There’s things going on, Mr Bascule, that’s all I can say; there’s things going on. Frankly I don’t know exactly what they are myself, or whether I’d be able to tell you about them if I did, but as I don’t I can’t anyway, you see?
Not really, I says, which is the truth.
The sloth-geezer what can only say, There’s things going on, is called Hombetante and he’s the chief sloth; he’s got implants and is actually considered a bit of a live wire by sloth standards though you could still go off and have a pee, wash your hands and brush your teeth in the time it takes him to blink. He’s fat and old and gray and his fungus looks more lively than he does.
I’m in a half-ruined bit of the same tower where the big bat called a jericule dropped me last night. Me and Gaston the sloth got here after about an hour in the babil, coming in through a tall window half overgrown with babil branches.
This seems to be Sloth Central; it’s like a whole room full of scaffolding and hanging tents and hammocks and stuff. There’s rubble on the floor and no glass or anything in the windows and the wind blows in through a window on the other side of the huge circular room and through the scaffolding and makes everything sway in the breeze and the sloths don’t seem to take very good care of the place no more than they do themselves, but at least they gave me some water to drink and have a quick wash in and then gave me some fruit and nuts to eat. I’d have preferred something hot but I don’t think the sloths are great fans of fire so heating stuff up might be a problem.
We’re in a big space in the centre of the scaffolding where the sloths apparently hold their meetings. Bet those are a bundle of laughs.
Hombetante is hanging upside down from a bit of scaffolding on a low stage at one end of the meeting space, the floor of which is covered with similar curved lengths of scaffolding like very tall railings. They’ve given me a sort of sling thing to sit in suspended from Hombetante’s scaffold pole. The only other sloth present is Gaston, who’s hanging from another bit of scaffolding alongside, munching slowly on some particularly un-yummy looking leafs.
… You are welcome to stay here, Hombetante says, until things settle down.
What you mean, settle down? I ask. How are they settled up at the moment? What exactly is supposed to be going on?
… Just things, Mr Bascule. Things which need not concern you at the moment.
What about a certain ant who goes by the name of Ergates? You know anything about her fate?
… You are just young and doubtless headstrong, Hombetante says, very much like he hasn’t heard what I just said… I was young once myself you know. Yes I know you might find that hard to believe but it is true; I well remember…
I won’t bore you with the rest. What it boils down to is there’s trouble at the crypt and somehow I’ve got mixed up in it. Might all be cleared up soon, might not. Whoever is supposed to be the good guys in all this are behind the jericule picking me up yesterday and Gaston coming to find me today. Now I’m here with the sloths I’ve been told to lie low, and not to go near the crypt.
And – of course – to have patience.
After my audience with Hombetante during which he tells me have his life story and I nearly fall asleep twice Gaston takes me to a place near the outside of the scaffolding where there’s a room with a hammock and a sling chair and an old fashioned screen working off broadcasts. There’s a sort of cubby-hole in one corner with a pipe sticking up which is supposed to be a toilet. Two floors above there’s a place where the sloths gather for food every evening. Also in the room is a bowl of fruit and a jug of water. There’s a window in one wall what looks out to the big vertical tower window we came through. Gaston shows me how the screen works and says if I get bored I can always go fruit and nut gathering with him.
I say thanks, maybe tomorrow, and he goes and I get into the hammock and pull the covers over and go straight to sleep.
I just know I’m going to go crazy here, and I know that I’m going to have to visit the crypt sooner or later, to look for Ergates and find out what’s going on, so when I wake up in the late afternoon I splash some water on my face, have a pee and once I’ve decided I generally feel awake and refreshed, I get right down to it, on the principal that there’s no time like the present.
I try to clear my mind of all things sloth-like (can’t think of anything less useful to take into the crypt than any semblance of slothfulness) and plunge right in.
I think I learnt a thing or two during all that time I spent in the crypt as a bird so I head back in that direction only this time I’m not fucking about with wee dainty sparrows or hawks or nothing; I’m going as a big bastarding bird; a simurg. They’re so big their brains can cope with a human mind without much finessing, which means I don’t have to spend most of my time remembering what I am or disguising my wake-up code as a ring. It’s a bit ambitious but sometimes that’s the only way to get anywhere.
I close my eyes.
/Check out the immediate locality first; nothing out of the ordinary in the nearby crypt-space. Have a shufty at the architecture of the tower just on general principals – this old tower is a interesting place right enough – then look a bit further out. The traffic around the Little Big Brothers’ monastery is just about back to normal but I don’t go any nearer to find out more.
Zoom into birdspace.
/And I’m a huge wild bird floating on the currents sliding within the drifting wind, hanging lazily loosed on my outstretched wings cantilevered across the singing air. My wingtip feathers are each the size of hands; they flutter like a lamb’s heart flutters when my shadow falls over it. My feet are steel-tipped grapples hung on the end of my hawser legs. My talons are unsheathed razors; only my eyes are sharper. My beak is harder than bone, keener than just-broke glass. My keel bone is a great knife cozened in my flesh and cleaving the soft air; my ribs are glistening springs, my muscles sleek bunched fists of oily power, my heart a chamber filled with slow thunder, quiet and unstressed; a towering damn trickling power, ticking over, headwaters of charged blood pent and latent.
Well, YES! This is more like it! Why did I ever bother being a hawk? Why was I so bleeding unambitious? I feel fierce, I feel powerful.
I look about, surveying. Air everywhere. Clouds. No ground.
Other birds flying in vast Vs, climbing in huge columns in the air, gathered in their own dark clouds, wheeling and calling. I think towards roosts.
/And I’m in the midst of them; spherical trees floating in the groundless blueness like brown planets of twigs in a universe of air, surrounded by a squawking atmosphere of birds to-ing and fro-ing.