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__----__________------__________--________--________--______----__


 DOWN, a novel.

   © Matthew Spong 1994

The following text file is the manuscript for a novel titled 
"Down". It was most likely downloaded from my WWWeb page at:

http://www.real.com.au/commercial/spong

DOWN is fantasy/magic realism. The story opens in the ancient city of Levinfield, home of a civilisation so old that their libraries collapse beneath the weight of their books, where the monetary system is based on poetry and . History follows a regular cycle, from industrial peak to decadent trough and back again, and the city is now in the middle of a quiet era of contented peace. Few people leave the city, as all their needs are catered for by the leftovers from the last industrial age, the automated Factories which can manufacture anything required and the antique mines where fossilised machines are dug from beneath the ruins. 

Lang, however, has been reading. In the libraries he uncovers references to a great forest to the West, and a desire stirs in him to explore, leave the safe streets and venture out into the deserted countryside. 

One legend in particular catches his interest. In the last days of the previous Industrial Age a truckdriver disappeared while passing through the forest on his way to the outlying villas of the rich Factory-owners. Since then his ghost was said to haunt the road, ceaselessly searching for a way out, a pale wraith in white tee-shirt and navy shorts, wandering through the trees crying "Map! Maaap!", searching for directions. Lang vows to track the ghost down and lay it to rest.

His friends try and prevent him leaving. Subconsciously they fear he is the first sign of the next aggressive wave of greed, desire and development. But he is determined. He readies his rusted trailbike, acquires a longbow for protection, and sets out.

Deep in the heart of the forest, in a castle that for millennia lay buried beneath the mold, Catherine toils obsessively at her life's work. She is a descendant of the Factory-owners of old, run-away from her parents crumbling villa to the West of the forest. She records on tape the words spoken by parrots that nest in the trees - words of a forgotten language of great power. Passed down through generations of birds, this language, (when the words are spoken in the right order), can harness strong magical energy. Catherine records and catalogues and files the words of power and never really knows why.

As Lang unknowingly approaches her castle he encounters strange things. By night he hears the ghostly cry, "Maap!", and sees a white shape moving through the fog, until one night when the air is clear and he sees the ghost for what it really is - an albino deer, it's coat sparkling with phosphorescent spores, that bleats the mournful cry as it grazes. He decides to hunt it down and carry the skin back to the city to dispel the myth. 

Catherine, her senses amplified by magic, senses the deer's death. She knew it well, it was almost her pet. In her anger she decides to punish Lang in the worst way possible. She will create a void, a bottomless hole, an empty universe, and cast him in. For eternity he will float through space, alive, aware but unable to escape, lost in nothingness. 

As Lang casually heads back to Levinfield, the white pelt lashed across his pack, she works to prepare the spell, cutting and splicing tape in a mad frenzy. The trap works. One moment Lang is walking through the forest, the next he finds himself suspended in the highest room in the castle, an inky black well of nothing beneath his feet, Catherine standing before him triumphant. 

And then...? Read on, to find out how they both come to be trapped in the void, how together they escape from the impossible, how they come to find themselves in inner-city Sydney, in a world they have created from their dreams, a world corrupted by their antagonism and twisted by their desperation, a world which, finally, they have to decide either to allow to continue or to destroy utterly.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At present there are three versions of this book loose in the electronic universe:

1/ DOWN.TXT

This one. Suitable for IBM PCs or any platform at all, monocrome monitors, everyone. Plain ASCII text for your word processor.

2/ Down/Color

A pair of Hypercard stacks, Stuffit archived and binhexed, which can at present be found in various Archie mirrors all over the planet under Art_and_Info/Books. Illustrated in colour, they need a Macintosh with 14" colour screen and Hypercard 2.0 to run. 

3/ DOWN.HTM

A directory of HTML files and their illustrations which can be read by any Web browser such as Netscape or Mosaic. This version should soon be posted to alt.binaries.zines. Zip compressed and UUencoded for greater cross-platform compatability.

All versions of the book can be found at my home page:

http://www.real.com.au/commercial/spong

DOWN aint shareware. 

If you enjoy reading DOWN, please send whatever you 
think it's worth to:

Matthew Spong
127A Copeland Rd.
Beecroft 2119
Sydney Australia

But you probably won't, and I can't make you.

If you have any comments, expressions of wonderment and admiration, or even disgust and dislike, send them all to me at:

    elric@real.com.au

I'm especially interested in recieving your own creative efforts and communicating with other people who get more of a kick out of uploading than downloading.

And watch out for my next book, WOODCODE, which should be 
out Real Soon Now. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 The coolest people in the world are:
Sam Shovel aka. Bruce McInnes, head honcho of the Cyberspace 
warehouse, who got me into Macs; 
Neill the Patriarch of Spong and Kemel the Incorruptible;
Richelle Norfolk, star power;
Matt Godden, Ia Cthulu ! ; 
the late Michael Mercury, test pilot, creater of horrible noise; 
Sam Young, Gerrard Ashworth, and all comic artists united by Unrealism ; 
Aeger, James Firth-Smith, David and Jill, Graham Mann, Jean 
Cameron and Katie Plummer, Dave the Xenomorph, and Mozart.
Not all characters in this publication are fictitious. 
All the best ones are real.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

CHAPTER 1
DOWN

1 : THE ACCIDENT TREE 

Once upon a time there was a traveler riding a trailbike 
through the country.

The tyres were worn and threadbare, with rims and spokes 
coated in mud; it was clear he'd come far. The engine popped and 
spluttered and left clouds of sweet smelling grey smoke. It ran on 
200 proof ethanol, and the night before he had tapped a little, just an 
ounce, from the fueltank for his own consumption, mixing it with the 
juice of blackberries growing near his campsite. The result was sweet 
and potent, with only a touch of synthetic oil marring the taste. Lying 
back staring into the fire and taking hits of blackness, he completely 
forgot about recapping the tank, and there had been heavy dew; 
even now the passing fields sparkled with moisture. It condensed 
inside the tank and watered down the fuel. Now the engine had 
trouble firing and seemed ready to quit.

The poor bike was overloaded, with an overstuffed backpack 
riding behind the seat, bulging around it's straps. The shock 
absorbers  were weighed down nearly to their limit. Each ridge and 
rut he crossed forced them down till they hit the frame with a loud 
clang and a boneshuddering shake. Worse, the road had been rising 
sharply for over an hour, winding up the side of a bare range of hills. 

Finally the little bike reached a flat section of road at the top of 
the ridge and died between a tree and a roadsign. 

Lang looked up at the tree. Old tree. Must have sprouted when 
the hill was six feet taller. Since then erosion had slowly exposed the 
base, leaving a snarled tangle of roots and boulders like a fistfull of 
rocks. It was the last living remnant of the forest that had blanketed 
these hills centuries before, and its only companions now were rank 
upon rank of bleached stumps that punctuated the fields beside the 
road.

Looking in amongst the granite boulders and the roots that 
spread out from the base of the tree, Lang could see a gleam of glass, 
like an old bottle thrown there by a careless driver. He knew what it 
was. It was the windshield of a car, half grown into the wood that 
surrounded it. 


Lang sat still on the old bike, lulled by the dull vibration of the 
engine between his legs, and contemplated that ancient shine, 
clouded by the years, that marked this tree and gave it name. He was 
transported, against his will, back down the corridor of memory that 
led to this moment. 

He remembered a photo.

It had been a month before. In the ancient stacks of the 
forgotten library, down long flights of stairs that wound into 
labyrinthine air-conditioned darkness where huge clots of dust 
trailed from the vents in the roof, and the only sound to be heard is 
the plink of failing fluorescent tubes struggling to glow and the 
distant rustle of rats nesting. Lang idly turned the pages of an old 
magazine. The glossy leaves, after centuries of waiting, cracked like 
china as he turned them. There was a picture and a short column, a 
human interest story about a  freak of nature; the car trapped in the 
trees embrace. Bonnet and roof were visible then, lipstick red, the 
roots hadn't yet had time to wrap the body entirely in wood, and the 
tree stood on the fringes of the retreating forests ranks. Lang looked 
up then and stared at infinity, and that was when the idea first came, 
the decision started to be made. To leave... go past the edge... he 
shook his head and closed the magazine and replaced it in its file slip 
and returned the file to the shelf, but the idea burrowed deep, 
deeper than the stacks of the library burrowed beneath the streets 
of the city, and it wouldn't go away, no matter how many times he 
told it too...)


He dismounted, laid the bike down, and scrambled up the little 
hill of roots. 

The windscreen was clear and unscratched, with only a coating 
of dust needing to be brushed away to see inside. The cabin of the 
car was full of pale white tendril rootlets that had entered through a 
rear window left slightly open, and they twisted and turned in the 
cramped space looking for escape, curling over the flaking vinyl 
upholstery and growing into the foam padding beneath, looping 
through the bones of the skeleton that occupied the front passenger 
seat. The only place the roots hadn't gone was the drivers seat, which 
was still occupied.

"What the fuck you staring at?" shouted the driver. He had 
perished badly, over the years, and only scraps of pink plastic clung 
to the articulated metal expression plates of his face and mouth. The 
eyes had crumbled, their silicone rubber orbs crumbled to dust like 
old superballs, leaving only uselessly whining servos in the sockets. 
The creatures real eyes, a small minicam mounted where the rear 
vision mirror would be, tracked Langs face.

"You." Lang answered truthfully. "Why did you crash?"

" 'Cause I wanted to. How many times do you tourists have to 
ask? Get me out or piss off."

"I can't get you out." Lang started to climb higher.

Hey," the autopilot called, "have they started building again, in 
the city?"

"Not yet."

"Damn." the thing muttered. "I was hoping they'd get me out, 
this time."

 The first branches sprouted from the trunk just above his 
head. He wrapped his arms around the closest one, swung himself 
astride it like mounting a horse, stood, grabbed the branch above it 
and looked out at the view. 

He could see the forest now. It was an ocean of dark green, 
stormy with upflung branches and shadowy even in the strong 
afternoon sun, reaching all the way from the horizon to a ragged 
edge that followed the base of the ridge. Rivers that started high on 
the hills around him disappeared beneath its tree tops. The road 
switchbacked down the slope until it, too, a thin brown line on the 
plain below, disappeared, but not before it had sprouted a tributary 
that avoided the forest altogether and skirted its edge, leading off to 
the left and apparently going all the way around. But that wasn't the 
road he wanted to take. He wanted to go in.

Sun was setting, casting everything in gold, the rocks poking 
through the short grass on the hills becoming gems in golden settings 
and the forest an expanse of lapis lazuli. He felt a strong urge to go 
and lie on a rock, soak up the warmth of the day from its surface and 
smell the heat and lichen, feel the pleasures that lizards feel, forget 
about his journey - but the sun was setting and there were many 
miles to go. 

So he swung down from his perch to the topmost roots and 
paused, looking down at the car and it's trapped driver. They had 
been trapped for three city cycles, something like three thousand 
years. They would keep. 

The bike wouldn't start, but that was okay, it was all downhill 
now. He kicked himself along until the slope was steep enough to 
glide down, and coasted, down, in silence, towards the distant trees.

LEVINFIELD


Bumping down that old road he passes the time dreaming of 
Levinfield, his home, miles and days behind, sprawled along the 
coast of the great unknown Continent that is the sole home of 
Humanity in this World. 

Levinfield is an old, old city. 

Enormous, rambling, streets and buildings and factories and 
carparks and towers and squares and parks spread out forever. The 
buildings rise and fall in waves, following the coast and flowing 
inland. They surround mountains and lakes. A forest in prestressed 
concrete, cast iron, brick and stone. Especially stone. The stone taken 
from mines beneath the buildings, creating tunnels and catacombs 
and cellars for every room above. An anachronistic, multi-layered 
puzzle, created by generation after generation of his ancestors, their 
history stretching back through years, centuries and millennium to 
the beginning of time.

The buried libraries told part of the tale. Lang had spent much 
of his life burrowing through the crumbling caches of forgotten 
books, peicing it together. It was a story of people who changed 
radically through their history, swinging pendulum regular from 
periods of growth to decay and back again, from hard, reliable 
science to soft, whimsical indulgence, from urgency to apathy. There 
had been years full of the sound of jackhammers and cranes, with 
new towers and office blocks sprouting overnight from the ruins to 
house men flocking like migrating birds eager to design and build 
more towers and make their fortune. Then long, unchanging eras of 
peace and decadence, languid and beautiful, the essence of slow 
Sunday afternoons and the sound of faint music drifting from a vine 
shaded verandah; ascetic silk-eyed people studying the strange 
aesthetics of the little understood magical arts, perhaps uncovering a 
fraction of the mystery before the times changed again and it was 
time for their children to build. 

Cycle after cycle, each had one thing in common; each thought 
it was right and the one before it wrong.

OUTDATED APPLIANCES


About a week before he left on his journey, Lang went for a 
walk  down the quiet streets of the suburb where he lived. They 
were lined with the burnt out shells of warehouses, and their black 
mossy walls of crumbling brick echoed each footfall. 

Up streets of terrace houses he walked; windchimes ringing in 
second storey eaves, woodpolish smells pouring through open 
doorways. The air felt warm and soft as fur. He passed a workshop; 
engineers inside what was once a garage were clustered around a jet 
engine on a testing stand, something they must have dug up from the 
ruins nearby. They argued mildly and sorted through boxes of parts. 
Light gusts of wind blew reinforced pumice cobblestones along the 
footpath, the hollow rattle like handfuls of bones.

He walked across a square of green glass blocks fringed with 
grass. A fountain in the middle, fluted glass towers spraying warm 
water, surrounded by discarded clothing. Bathers splashed and 
wrestled and made love, they laughed and shouted, chased each 
other around the edge of the pool before tumbling back in to float 
spread-eagled on the steaming surface. There were shouts as he 
passed, "Hey, jump in, it's great! Where are you going? Have a swim!" 
He smiled and shook his head and walked faster, averting his eyes, 
hoping nobody knew him, hoping no-one would call his name, which 
would make it impossible to get to his destination without having to 
stop and talk, and maybe getting pulled in. "Where are you going? 
What's the hurry?"

Somewhere nearby mushrooms were spawning, probably in 
one of the empty office towers that fringed the square with tall 
cylinders of flaking concrete, faced with square after empty square 
of windows edged with the jagged remains of glass panes. 
Mushrooms loved to grow on the endless boxes of paper that filled 
the rooms of these buildings, that spilled in great cascades from the 
tops of desks and out across the soggy carpets of the abandoned 
offices. The air was filled with clouds of sweet scented blue dust that 
tickled the nose and sent mild hallucinatory shadows flickering about 
the edges of sight. Mushroom hunters leaned from the windows, 
calling to each other from floor to floor, tower to tower, coordinating 
their efforts, seeking the source of the bloom, voices crossing the sky 
above his head like birdsong. As he reached the edge of the square a 
successful band of hunters stumbled across his path. They giggled, 
eyes dilated and dark, clothes smeared blue with dust and cheeks 
pulled back in tight grins of chemical pleasure. Some among them 
walked straight and unstoned; they had scarves tied across their 
face, and they walked bare chested, carrying bundles of the little 
blue caps wrapped in their shirts, a stash to be saved for a rainy day.

He spied his destination, a restaurant on the corner ahead. 
Empty, chairs on tables, the sidewalk outside wet from hosing, 
blackboard menu newly washed down and smeared with the chalk of 
the specialty of the day. Lang entered the swinging doors and a man 
with long red hair tied back with copper wire looked up from a 
magazine spread on the marble counter.

"Giri in?" 

The man jerked his thumb at the door behind him. 

Steam poured from the kitchen doorway as he pushed through. 
Giri, red eyed and rat-tailed hair, looked up from the open hood of 
the dishwasher.

"Lang! Look at this mess!"

He peered inside. The washer was old, very old. So old the 
pipes and nozzles inside were coated thickly with white calcium 
scale, and stalactites of the stuff dripped down from the top till they 
met the rotating spray which itself was encrusted in white.

"A thousand years of slow rust and scale and they expect me to 
fuckin' repair it! I'll have to make the parts, if I can take them apart. 
It would make more sense to throw it away." she said, and reached 
for a small hammer in her overflowing toolbox.

"Old machine. 'Wonder it still works." Lang watched as she 
started to pound the works as hard as she could. Flakes of white 
cascaded down like an avalanche.

"Oh, this one's at least two millennia." She kept up a steady 
rhythm of blows as she spoke. "Look here, under the crust; brand 
name. That's how they wrote in those days. These are picturegraphs; 
this one's a horse, here's a spear, there's the sign for a telephone 
answering machine... Old machines are tough, everyone knows that. 
Stands to reason, really. The older they are, the tougher, simply 
because it's survived so long. You can drive a nail with an antique 
calculator, even if you can't read the numbers on the keys. But when 
you try to repair them...! What do you want?"

"I came to ask a favor."

"Maybe. I can't promise anything. This'll take me the next few 
days to figure out." She kept up a steady rhythm of hammering as 
she spoke, wincing at the sound as the stubborn crust of time gave 
way.

"I want my bike fixed. I'm going away, and it won't start."

"That little trailbike, eh? Last time I looked you burnt spirit, 
right? So that means you probably need new rings. Alky burns hot, it 
burns out rings. If it burnt oil I'd clean the plugs and try to get you 
to switch to alcohol; I can't stand that smell when oilburners drive 
past; like forgotten cabbage burning to charcoal on the stove, and the 
smoke..."

"Where are you going anyway? North? Lots of people going 
north now. All the old flint towers up that way are collapsing, and 
the treasure lies thick on the ground, so I heard."

"No, no, I'm not even after treasure, strange as it may seem. 
Too much junk lying around the house as it is, without trucking more 
back from the digs. Actually, I'm thinking of going inland. West. Out 
of the city." said Lang.

"Out of the city? As in, right out, past the edges of the 
buildings? Like the country? Why?"

"I thought it might make a change. I've seen a lot of the city, 
you know. You can get tired of this place."

"No one lives out there, you know." said Giri. "It's a barren 
trackless waste. You'll drive for miles without seeing a soul, and 
when you do it'll be some deranged psychopath who's gone mad 
from the isolation and looking for a good time involving your face 
and a knife. Or, at least that's how I've always pictured it." 

Giri pushed her hair back. She had finished sweeping the scales 
of calcium out of the washer, and kicked them across the floor.

"I hate to ruin your pictures, but they're wrong. I've been 
down the library-"

"As usual."

"Yeah, as usual. You should come with me some day. There's 
some remarkable things in the old books."

"Old books. Too many old books!"

"Did you know there's a forest out there?"

"Heard stories, when I was little."

"Well, I've been reading those stories, and they're true. It's 
huge, nearly as big as the City, with trees like you've never seen, 
trees with faces on them! And birds! You have to hear about the 
parrots. They glow in the dark!"

"Bullshit! How?"

"Their feathers are impregnated with spores, fluorescent fungi 
that glows in the dark, and they shine like rainbow lightning when 
they fly. As soon as I saw the photos I had to see them! Imagine 
watching them at night, shooting through the trees leaving trails of 
dusty light on the dark sky..."

"Birdwatching. Sounds fun."

"I'm not asking you to come or anything, I'll bring home photos, 
or feathers if I can get any. "

Giri sat on a counter and looked up at the transom window. 
Afternoon sun streamed through the last wisps of steam, printing 
warm squares of light across the old stone of the kitchen walls.

"Oh, I'll repair your bike, don't worry. It's just... this is a pretty 
weird thing to do, you know? If you want thrills and adventure you 
can find it in the city. If you want to see new things, they're right 
here for the seeing. You can walk down the street in some parts of 
town and see a dozen inexplicable things every block. This forest, no 
one goes there... I haven't heard of anyone leaving the city for years. 
There must be a reason for this. Maybe it is  dangerous out there. 
Maybe there are other interesting creatures out there, but 
carnivorous ones, that live in the trees of this forest and wait to fall 
on unsuspecting passers by and devour them."

"I hardly think-"

"And think about this; you remember the petrified trees we 
saw in the tunnels under Endless Nightmares?"

(Nightmares was their favorite club, a smoky dive in a 
basement near their house where bassheads went to dance to music 
played through an immensely powerful sound system that was 
discovered when the basement itself was excavated. The manager 
once showed them the cellars, his racks of ancient wines, and took 
them down secret spiral ramps and through trapdoors to a grid of 
wide dungeon tunnels that lay even lower in the ground. The bass 
thud of the music receded behind them as they descended into the 
earth, and in awed wonder they touched the opalised branches that 
protruded from the walls while their candle flames struck glints 
from crystallized fruit.)

"Those trees... they could have been part of the forest once." 
she said.

"So?"

"So maybe there isn't a forest any more. Maybe once it reached 
the coast, and it started retreating and dying back into the hills until 
now it's maybe disappeared into piles of dead wood and waste. Those 
books are old and you should never trust what you read in old books. 
Stay here, Lang. We'll go treasurehunting down south when the 
weather gets warmer, browse around on the edge, you know? 
There's always something new to see."

She started collecting the tools scattered around her feet, 
dropping them into her toolbox and slinging it around her shoulder. 
Lang shrugged his shoulders and looked away.

"Maybe someday I will, but still, I'd like to at least see if the 
forest's still there. Is there anything wrong with being the first 
person you know to leave the city? It isn't like some kind of 
blasphemy, is it, to contemplate going beyond the edge? If nothing 
else, at least it won't be boring!"

"I've never even been near the edge. Never wanted to and 
never will."

"Can you look at my bike now? I want to leave in a few days."

"Okay, okay, just wait till I'm finished." She slammed the 
washer hood shut.

SAND IN THE GEARS


She wanted to go home and drink beer and forget about 
machines, but he asked, straight out, and she had to say yes. That 
was just the way she was. 

They both lived in a communal house in the Poets Quarter, 
where people wandered from room to room day and night, learnt 
how to play guitar, took drugs, had parties, and occupied themselves 
with an endless succession of projects that were never completed. 
The city was smack in the middle of another golden age of lazy 
peace, and they were their cultures highest achievement; happy 
humans with endless free time and the knack for spending it. 

Most of them wrote verse to survive, and cashed their verses 
at the local bank. Since the great Speed Crash that marked the end of 
the Ponytail Brigade era, that last period of industrial civilization, 
Levinfield's economy had been based on poetry. Lang and Giri and 
their friends were essential, for they produced new verse to replace 
the old. 

This is how it worked: a poet would spend agonized hours bent 
over scraps of paper with a pencil. He or she would shake, sweat, grit 
teeth, shuffle feet, bite through the pencil, walk around the room 
muttering, screw up the paper, throw it at the overflowing bin, miss, 
get out another sheet, and most likely give up and go out for a walk. 
Soon they would be back at the table with the still blank sheets, 
frowning like a chessplayer and sharpening the pencil down to the 
end. Finally, a few hours of excruciating scribbles, and there would 
be verse. Good or bad, it would be handed over the marble counter of 
the bank, where tellers would run it through the computer, checking 
for forgery against the database of old bills. If it came through, if it 
was new and genuine and not copied from an old book or another 
bill, the verse would be stamped official and laminated to become 
currency, valid cash handed back to the happy poet who would then 
proceed to blow every line on booze and clothes and cigarettes. 

Peace, love and harmony roamed the land like big friendly 
gods showering gifts down on the happy upturned faces of the 
faithful. The Ponytail Brigade was just a bad chapter in the history 
books that rotted in the bowels of libraries, just a name from old 
stacks of magazines that treasure hunters found turning to dust in 
the basements of abandoned houses on the outskirts of the city. That 
era of runaway corporate megadeals and huge factory expansion and 
mean greed had faded and mellowed into another long decadent 
slide through five hundred years of relaxation and sleeping in. 

And Giri was a mechanic, repairing the old machines, the 
antiques, the remains of industrial times, tough machines that ran for 
thousands of years without complaint but sometimes came apart and 
had to be put back together to give another millennia of service. She 
couldn't write poetry. It didn't satisfy her soul as much as fixing 
what had been broken did. She made sure things worked, and when 
someone like Lang asked her for help she helped

It was her way. When people came to her with breaks, she 
fixed them, and that was her offering to the good of the world. 
"Sure!" she would say, dropping a book or guitar or whatever had 
been absorbing her interest, and immediately her attention was 
focused entirely on the problem and how to solve it. Automatic, 
without considering the time and effort it would cost her. 

It was the  way, for anyone else would do the same. It was 
their code, the moral they lived by, the source of their pride. They 
owed nothing to each other, were fierce in their independence, but 
the only way they could stand so high was to hold each other up. 


Giri and Lang returned to the house, walking silent and 
thoughtful through deserted streets, and she took his bike apart in 
the front garden. 

It did need new rings, she told him, and the fuel nozzles were 
clogged. 

"I don't have the parts here." she said.

"What?"

"The parts. It needs new parts. I don't have them and I can't 
make them. You'll have to buy them."

"Ah, sure. Sure, I'd be glad to." And he flashed her a broad 
smile that made her heart fall, as though she had asked too much. 

She scratched a quick list on a scrap of newspaper and watched 
him walk up the street. He seemed to relish the task of finding them, 
in the same way he enjoyed many trivial activities that distracted 
him from the abstract thoughts he carried around in his head like a 
box of puzzles. 

Lang was something of a misfit, as she was. A student of the 
Knack, he was. He studied magic.

(Yes, magic. Don't sneer! Sure, I was a role-player! I rolled dice 
and advanced my little lead figurines across hex maps with the best 
of them! If I want Levinfield to have magic, you can bloody well read 
what I write and shut up, or put this book down right now and go 
and wash the BMW or marble your walls or something. Sorry. That's 
just the way it is. }:-)


She cleaned her hands with a rag and looked down at the bike 
spread out on a canvas sheet, her practiced eye fitting each piece 
back into the functioning whole they could become, and she tried to 
picture Lang lying disassembled in its place, all the many 
complicated parts of his psyche spread out around his head, coated in 
machine oil and grease. Maybe she could find the piece that was 
malfunctioning, the slipped cogwheel or broken wire. 

Because there was such a piece, of that she was sure. She had a 
skill, a Knack of her own, a direct vision that pierced to the heart of 
problems and sought breakage and malfunction wherever they lay. 
With him she could almost see, but her vision was clouded. The 
problem was too general, spread out, too many parts involved. More 
like rust than a break.

It was as though there was sand in the gears, that crunched 
and splintered their teeth and caused them to slip occasionally, 
intermittent. Talking to him meant hearing the grind, listening to 
ideas that changed direction and went awry, almost working but not 
quite. Not just him, of course. Nobody's perfect. The sanest have their 
glitches, but she felt his strongest, as though vital parts were about 
to break and the repercussions would spread farthest. 

In the darkness of the darkest night, she would lie awake and 
think about time. Everyone knew that they lived in the interlude 
between the last Age of Industry and the next. Everyone knew that, 
someday, a man would come, (it was almost always a man), who had 
ambition, drive, and determination, who would want to "Set the city 
back on course", who would "Clean things up and get things working 
again", who would "Shake off this useless lethargy and start building 
a future." Not that she thought Lang was that man. But perhaps his 
son, or his grandson, would.

MAAAP!


Lang sat in the corner of his favorite pub, the Ink and Quill, a 
cold beer weeping dew on the scarred table before him, a paper bag 
of parts at his feet, watching sport on the mirror above the phones. 

There was a race reflected live from the track in Cenetaph, 
magically animated horse racing. Built of filigreed metal and hand 
carved wood, the horses flashed around the track, legs blurring into 
invisibility, riders clinging for their life. Each horse had a name 
stenciled on the side, the chop of whoever had animated them. The 
track behind was deeply slashed with trenches dug by their hard 
metal hooves, and clods flew through the air as they raced for the 
line. Crackles and sparks snapped in the gaps between them as the 
huge charges that kicked their stiff legs into life overloaded, and 
here and there smoke rose from an unlucky jockey's shorts.

The Knack was a strange thing, he reflected as he watched. 
Tricky, unreliable, but still powerful. If they could, humans would 
use it for everything. That restaurant would use it to clean dishes, 
instead of a thousand year old dishwasher unearthed in some 
antique mine. But the machine was built in an age when technology 
was at some strange dizzy height when they built for eternity, and it 
still worked, with repair, while the Knack only worked when it 
wanted to.

He himself had spent years, from early childhood, studying the 
Knack. Long hours were spent in the garage with photocopies from 
the library, (the books being too valuable to lend), trying out 
formulas and incantations. Librarians came to know him; they 
sometimes gave him tips that revealed deep research into the arcane 
subjects. With time he gained success, even to the point where, on a 
memorable occasion, he turned lead into gold, (well, actually it was 
only gold coloured lead, but it was impressive nonetheless). His 
powers grew, but the Knack was always an uncertain force in a world 
that demanded certainties.

The door to the pub swung open by itself, as if to demonstrate, 
and swung shut in the face of a young man who pushed it open again 
by hand and looked around guiltily to check how many patrons 
noticed his attempt at a classy entry. They all had, and many pairs of 
mocking eyes stared him down.

He hunched his shoulders under their cold stare and 
approached Lang's corner table. Ragged jeans fell in tangles of cotton 
dreds to bare feet, tee shirt that had split along the weave into many 
slits, hundreds of little mouths that gaped when he moved. His hair 
was a cloud of dead split ends that threatened at any second to break 
off and fall like pine needles. Something in his eyes spoke of 
madness, something that came from looking at distances from an 
early age, and not just the other side of the street. 

"Are you Lang? I'm looking for someone called Lang, a friend of 
someone else called Giri... she just gave me a call, said he'd be here, 
and you look like what she said..." 

"Yep, that's me." 

"My name's Dake. I know Giri from way back, we used to go 
fossicking together, back when she made a living from the antique 
business. I was her guide, actually. Spend a lot of time out in the 
suburbs, and I know my way around. Anyway, she said you were 
thinking about going exploring yourself. Said something about a 
forest, how you were going to ride a bike there or something. And it 
reminded her of something I told her once-"

"You used to live there?" asked Lang.

"Oh, no, no-one lives there! But we lived on the edge of the city, 
right out where the last ruins stop and the fields begin, and my 
parents used to tell me stories about it."

"Cool! Pull up a seat and tell me what you know. I've been 
reading as much as I can find, about the lay of the land out there. I 
thought no one had been there for centuries."

Dake perched nervously on the edge of his stool. 

"Yeah, I guess so. Quite a few centuries, now. Life's good here, 
there's no need to go anywhere if you don't want to, and no one 
wants to. When she called me I remembered something, something 
my father left me, I thought you should know about." 

Lang watched as the man started fishing in his ragged pockets, 
emptying the contents in a pile on the table, keys and change and 
matches and interesting pebbles. He had Dake sussed.

Lang wasn't too fond of the type. You usually met them 
crouched around campfires out in the wilderness, amongst the outer 
ruins, sharing a bottle after a hard days fossick. They would be 
covered in dirt from digging, and passing around strange coins and 
trinkets that had turned up under their spades, and telling 
whispered, choked little stories about unmentionable things  that 
lived in the out there. 

While Dake searched he went to the bar. When he returned 
with their beers Dake had found what he was searching for, a piece 
of the old technology. Small and black and square, the edges worn 
smooth and round by passing time, small buttons worn down flush 
with the scarred surface.

"What-"

"Shhh!"

Dake took a matchstick and poked at the controls. Tiny red 
eyes lit up. Power. There was a faint, steady hiss, like sand spilling 
through an hourglass. The hiss grew louder, and resolved into 
distinct sounds.  Crystal clear now, he heard the song of wind in a 
power line, and locusts droning, and footsteps on bare earth that 
didn't fade or increase but stayed the same volume. Lang reached 
out, felt the box vibrate under his fingers as the sound emerged.

They heard the footsteps approach a stream, and cross. The 
sound of fast water rushing past shins, the slosh of each step, and the 
slap of bare feet on the bank. There were trees nearby now, tall trees 
that blocked the wind and forced it to rush through their dense 
packed leaves in a steady roar. 

Gradually the wind and water faded until it could just be heard 
in the background, above the sound of horse racing and the clink of 
glasses in the bar. The footsteps were muffled now and Lang guessed 
whoever recorded these sounds was walking on dead leaves now, 
absorbing each tread. There were strange voices, gibbering and 
chanting in the distance, like devotees of an esoteric religion intoning 
secret prayers in some secluded grove before they sacrificed a victim 
to their demon gods.

"Those voices are parrots, " Dake explained. "They live in the 
tops of the trees. Strange birds. They say they glow in the dark, and 
they loop through the night like demons flying out of hell and leave 
mad spores in flaming trails through the air like comet tails."

"So this is the forest, huh?" asked Lang. Dake didn't answer.

The footsteps went on and on, monotonous, thud thud thud of 
bare heels on the deep loamy earth beneath trees. Suddenly they 
stopped, the walker startled into immobility, and there was only 
stifled breathing. All was very quiet. The parrots had stopped 
talking, the river was far behind, the wind had died down to nothing. 

Into this emptiness came a cry.

"MAP! Maaap!"

It was a terrible voice, lonely, drawn out and frighteningly 
human, far more human than the parrots, sending prickles of fear 
along Langs arms and up his back. It vibrated with an intense ache 
that froze his breath in his throat. Looking up into Dakes eyes he saw 
a strange fear. 

The cry came again, just once, before it was drowned out by 
sudden sprinting footsteps thudding into the earth and stumbling 
through piles of rustling leaves, panting breaths and oaths when the 
feet hit rocks and tripped. 

Running, desperate running, until the river returned, rushing 
calmly through its course, and the locusts shrilling in fields, and Lang 
could almost hear the sunlight of the open country beyond. Finally 
there was just loud panting, and the box went dead.

"Now," said Dake, "that was an ancestor of mine. I'm not sure 
how many generations ago. He left us this machine and some tapes. 
You're lucky this one has survived; most of the tapes have been re-
used. Music, my first words, and relatives I've never met, laughing at 
some party long before I was born. None of them contain his voice; 
legend has it he was mute, or at least he didn't want to record his 
words. There's only wind, and storms, and rivers, and animals, on the 
tapes that survive from his time."

"So that was the forest, that wind through the trees?"

"Yes."

"And that... thing, that cry, that was something in  the forest?"

"There's a special story that goes with that tape. Listen: about 
seven hundred years ago..."


Perhaps seven hundred years ago, perhaps more, at the end of 
the Ponytail Combine years, in the days when industry was just 
starting to break down, and the factories were emptying out, and 
people were just beginning to question why they spent their lives 
chasing a fortune when they were left with no time to spend it, and 
the smoke clouds were starting to clear as the chimneystacks 
stopped renewing them, a trucker drove his rig right into the forest. 

They say he was hauling a load of refrigerated cheese and 
wanted to cut time off his trip because of the risk of overheating if 
the cooler cut out. It was a luxury cargo, valuable gourmet cheeses 
for the aristocrats in their villas perched on the lip of the Bottomless 
Valley in the Fields of Cloud that lay miles away on the other side of 
the trees, beyond the wasteland and the overgrown ruins of 
forgotten farms. 

Despite the chill that leaked into the cabin from the cargo hold 
he wore the standard truckdriver uniform: singlet and navy shorts. 


"The singlet was white. That is important, you gotta remember 
it because the rest of the story doesn't make sense if you don't."


He passed an old warning sign that stood at the mouth of the 
forest road, under the branches of trees that met and entwined their 
branches into the roof of a long dark tunnel overhead, and he gave it 
a blast with the air horn:
WARNING:
THE AUTHORITIES TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY
FOR THE SAFETY OF PERSONS 
WHO ENTER THE FOREST.
DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK.


The rig thundered down the narrow road, its wake tossing the 
branches of trees on either side and blowing up twisters of dust and 
leaves. The road was a badly potholed concrete slab double laner. He 
began to worrying about the tires, thinking, "If more trucks used this 
route, the sides would be littered with shredded rubber shed from 
retreads." Afternoon light gilded the tops of the trees and fell in coins 
of gold on the grey slab ahead, and he worried about trying to 
navigate at night, thinking, "Forest roads often hit hairpin bends, too 
sharp to be taken in a semi. I'll have to slow down. But then, how 
will I make time? Maybe I should have taken the detour road 
around the forest, like I usually do." He also worried about his 
amphetamine consumption, even as he popped another little white 
pill and swallowed it dry and listened to the words "shredded rubber 
shed from retreads" play over and over in his head. 

The map lay unfolded on the seat beside him, a labyrinthine 
tangle of roads, rivers, ravines and other hazards. There were 
hundreds of intersections, unlikely to be signposted, being so deep 
inside the big, bad forest. The map looked like the palm of a big 
green hand, all cracks and lines and fingerprints of twisting roads 
and creeks and the scars of valleys and ravines. 

An intersection loomed ahead through the darkening gloom. 
Five roads meeting in a star. The truckie slowed, consulted the map 
and took what he hoped was the correct turning, marking the choice 
on the map as he drove with a blunt pencil. Then he turned up the 
radio and took another little pill, and drove on to the static ridden 
sounds of truckie music.


"Of course he never arrived. You could tell that was coming, 
couldn't you? It's just like a bad movie. Anyway, he drove in and 
vanished and they never saw him again." 

"Was this your great-something father, the trucker?"

"No. That comes later. Listen."


He disappeared without a trace. Not even a last CB, not a single 
clue. 

The transport company consulted their insurers, who sent 
search parties in, but the truck couldn't be found, and the searchers 
came back fearful and vowing never to return, scared of the dark 
and the great big trees. The insurers grumbled and refused to pay, 
insisting the driver had actually absconded with the cargo and sold it 
to a rival company. The authorities put up new warning signs. It 
made a minor story on the evening news. Forgotten quickly.

Then one day, maybe a year later, a thrillseeker who enjoyed 
racing his car down the forest roads claimed to have been passed by 
a ghostly glowing semi-transparent semi-trailer. 

"I was doin' ninety, man, and this semi just floated past like I 
was standin' still, all lit up like a bulb it was, glowin' blue, and this 
horde of demons and bat winged nightmare with teeth six feet long 
and barbed tails and poison green juice drippin' from the big barbed 
spikes on the tails eating holes in the road behind them, and cop cars 
full of zombies with rotten faces in hot pursuit with the lights and 
sirens going, and they were leaning out the side waving the truck 
down. They just ignored me. Must have been my lucky day!"

"And there was this sound", he said, "over it all, this wailing 
cry. Like a trucks horn, it was, just so lost and lonely sounding, just 
going "Map! Maaaaap!" I think that's one lost truckie. I think he lost 
his map."

It made great news. For days he was the first story every 
night. It made him a lot of money, too, especially when he sold the 
movie rights. 

So then these other people came forward with their stories. 
They lined up to reveal that, they too, while driving through the 
forest at night, had seen the damned truckdriver. 

One man said he parked to relieve himself while driving 
through the darkest part of the forest, ducked behind a tree for a 
few seconds, returned to his car, and found the door jimmied open, 
the contents of the glovebox scattered over the seat, his maps stolen 
and a bottle of aspirin missing. A scattered trail of the little white 
pills lead across the road and into the trees, and he heard a faint 
voice, a mans desperate pleading voice crying in the distance - ( 
Maaap! ... Maaap! )

And a woman claimed she had seen the lost truckie himself. 
She said she heard the call first, faint, forlorn, just hearable above 
the sound of her engine. She stopped the car and waited. A hundred 
metres up the road she spotted a flash of white through the 
undergrowth, and a man, wearing a white singlet, blue shorts and 
carrying a huge bundle of rolled up papers, stumbled onto the 
bitumen. He turned and spotted her car, clutched the papers 
jealously to his chest, and ran to the other side where he 
disappeared, screaming; "Maaaap! Map! Maaaaaap!"

Time passed, the story turned perennial; every year lucky 
eyewitnesses were well paid by the papers and TV news for their 
variations on the original. The truck was never found. 


"And even now, there's this ghost, and that's what you heard. 
It's the ghost of the truckdriver, and my ancestor saw him when he 
recorded that stone. He said it was white, and glowing, even though 
he couldn't see it very clearly, and it made that sound. That's a 
human voice. There's nothing like that in nature, nothing at all. It's 
the truckie searching for his lost maps because he thinks they'll lead 
him out of the forest."

Lang leaned back and regarded Dake over the rim of his pint. 

"I like it! I really do, it's a classic and novel story. Thanks for 
telling me. Another beer?"

"You don't believe me, do you?"

"Not as such. I believe you, but I sure don't believe that story."

"Man, you heard the recording! What do you think it was?"

"It's a bird," Lang said, "or a monkey or something. It's nothing 
supernatural. These stories are always the same. In a forest where 
glowing birds fly around, you can't believe every strange sound is a 
ghost."

"Some people are very, very stupid. The same people as won't 
listen to words of warning, even from a stranger, are the people who 
won't read a map, or a sign. They'll walk along the top of cliffs with 
their eyes closed." said Dake.

"Maybe its time for some stupid people to start re-drawing the 
maps and re-writing the signs." replied Lang.

"You study history, right? You have the smell of books around 
you."

"Yup."

"I'm just trying to warn you, stop you from getting into trouble. 
Don't be an idiot. Forget the forest."

"How can I? I want to see this ghost! I want to find out what it 
really is. I don't think it's a dead truckdriver. Bet you anything it's 
just another bird, or some animal, and the legends' someone's fancy 
story."

Dake regarded him with solemn, fathomless eyes. 

"I think maybe you spend too much time thinking. Alone. Deep 
in those old libraries. Not good. Life is for living, not thinking about. 
You probably want to write a book about this journey you're 
planning, another tome to stack on the shelves. Whatever, it's a 
mistake."

Dake pocketed his recorder and stood.

"If it gets you, whatever it is, I'm not to blame. But I'll tell you 
what- maybe someday there'll be two ghosts."

He turned and strode to the door which obediently opened this 
time and slammed shut behind. 

Lang closed his eyes for a second, turned, looked up at the 
monitor. He saw horses fall and break apart. The riders rolled free, if 
they could, sprinting to the edge of the track leaving fractured wood 
and metal legs flexing idiotically on the chopped turf behind them, 
still powered by their magical charge. Lang watched, smiling, but he 
felt somewhat cold. He wondered if he ought to move house. Maybe 
his life was getting stale. Seeing the same faces again and again, he 
knew everything they would say moments before they said it. 

He drained his glass and watched the suds slip down the inside. 
He took out a bill, folded it into a paper dart, caught the eye of the 
man behind the bar, sailed it at him. The little plane looped and 
barrel-rolled and stalled around the bar before finally taxiing to a 
stop on the shiny counter. Lang caused it to unfold and smooth out 
while he gathered his bag and left, stepping out into afternoon 
crowds. 

SHOPPING


He tried to be casual, he tried to act cool. Assembling the kit he 
needed for the journey as unobtrusive as he could. He tried not to 
attract attention. He tried not to tell too many people, and those he 
did he warned not to let the story pass their lips. 

But there was something about the idea of actually leaving the 
city and going into the forest that disturbed and shocked everyone in 
the house until they could barely contain themselves, and they came 
in a steady flow to ask him was it true? Did he really mean to go... 
"out there"? And when he said, well, yes, he did intend to ride his 
little bike to the forest, and he did intend to explore all the way to 
it's heart, and he intended to do it alone, they recoiled. They turned 
away and left with odd glances. If he said he wanted to cut off his 
own head and cook it and eat it on toast, it might cause the same 
reaction. 

And the rumor spread. It was too good a story to leave untold. 
What a jerk! he told himself. What a fool! Did I really say "Just keep 
this under yer hat, okay? I don't want a lot of questions from 
everyone. Just a little trip. I'll be back within the month." and expect 
them to shut up?

Not that anybody wanted to tag along. There was no reason to 
leave the city, just as Giri said; after all, it was vast enough, unknown 
enough, and the adventurous could always find new territory to 
explore beneath the streets, or in the deserted areas, where spiders 
spun huge shining webs between buildings that hummed like 
thousand stringed harps in the slightest breeze, and plastic dolls 
from eon-dead civilizations walked the streets, their power supplies 
only just beginning to fade, feet worn down by thousands of years of 
patient step step step through silent corridors and rooms.


Much of the gear he needed could only be found at the factory 
outlet. 

Lang waited patiently in the queue of customers, shuffling 
forward slowly through a huge dark shed. Great trailing cords of silk 
hung down from the colonies of spiders that nested in the high 
corners of the ceiling. The floor was littered with their discarded 
wings, silver slips of cellophane that stirred in the slightest breeze 
wafting through the great sliding doors that were the only source of 
light. Echoes rebounded from the corrugated metal walls. 

He stared down at the bald head of the man before him. He 
kicked the floor and sucked his teeth as one by one the people before 
him had their turn. It was incredible, the range of things they 
wanted. An old woman stepped forward, wrapped in ragged layers of 
cotton shawls, like some shuffling lichen covered statue of Mother 
Time, and croaked something to the operator who sat at the high 
control panel and typed on a keyboard of alien symbols whose 
meanings were lost, language changing over time until only 
specialists could operate the machine.  

Whatever you asked for, if the directions for its creation were 
in the devices memory, would roll down the polished metal chute to 
your feet, newly minted, created whole from the storm of matter and 
energy that raged deep in the bowels of the machine. On the other 
side of its bulk the intake hopper gaped, waiting for garbage, 
rubbish, stones and dust to be tipped in to feed the matter reactions 
and supply the raw material.

Once it had been just one among rank after rank of similar 
machines. A thousand years before, plus or minus a century or two, 
it had stood in a well-guarded building surrounded by fences of 
barbed wire and patrolling guards, churning out goods for sale in a 
chain of supermarket stores. Times had changed. Now, it's services 
were free to whomever need them, and no-one abused the privilege. 

Unrealistic, you say? Not in keeping with basic human greed? 
Greed still existed, but it was an atrophied force. In the era of 
decadence there was only greed for peace and tranquillity. No-one 
wanted more of what could be had for free. No one could be 
bothered.



The old woman finished her request, and the operator, a young 
student type with glasses and a small beard, bent over his keyboard, 
peering intently at the small screen. He tapped the keys. The 
machine groaned, shook slightly, and a series of boxes slid down the 
chute, brown cardboard stamped with the symbol of the broken 
wineglass. He tapped again and a small hand trolley rattled down 
and hit the last box in the line with an audible crunch. Lang winced.

With a great show of patience the operator lifted the boxes 
onto the hand cart and the old woman dragged them away.

Lang stepped forward. 

"Two man tent, weatherproof." 

The operator punched at his keyboard, hands familiar with the 
alien letters. The factory, all faceted armor plates and discrete 
weapons, (a legacy from the times when it had to be capable of 
defending itself against thieves), coughed. The tent rattled down the 
produce chute and rolled to his feet.

"Fire starter."

"Is that chemical briquettes or a lighter?" The operator asked.

"Um, some sort of lighter that's very dependable."

"Going exploring, right?"

"Yup."

The operator punched keys.

"I've just been out west, where the swaying towers are. 
Beautiful!" A metal rod came rolling down the chute. "But there's no 
roofs left on the ruins there. This is what I used. The end glows red 
hot. No flame, but it works even in full rain."

"What else would you recommend?"

"Well, you seem to have the footwear right." He glanced down 
from the console at Langs antique boots.

"Heirlooms. Used to be part of a vacuum suit. They've been all 
over the sky."

"Well, they've lasted, that's for sure. Here, this is what you 
need. Sleeping bag, folding shovel and a decent hat." The items 
tumbled down the chute as he spoke, followed by a shapeless bag.

"That's an ergonomic pack, won't give you backache. Hope you 
find something worthwhile. You should try the shore regions to the 
east, interesting things wash up on the beach there all the time. Most 
other places you have to be lucky or dig deep; pretty well picked 
over by now."

Lang turned the complicated backpack over until he found the 
opening and started filling it. The next customer stepped forward.

"I need a big steel wok with a lid."

"Does it have to be steel, I can do hardened glass? It's much 
tougher and won't need to be scoured every day." The customer 
pondered and Lang left the shed and strolled out into the light.


Outside, sun spilled into the square and filled it with a hazy 
glow. Spores and floating cobwebs glinted till the air seemed filled 
with sparks. They drifted around the Ice Fountain, that slowly 
exuded a glacier of green ice that flowed down in sharp shards of 
glinting coldness like a crystal umbrella.

Shoppers crossed the square with bags of stuff, talking, heading 
for waiting taxis or cafes, keeping to paths worn deep in the stone. 
Lang crossed their paths and headed for the fountain where Giri 
waited.

"See the ruts?" asked Lang. "Where they're walking?"

"What?" replied Giri, tired, shading her eyes against the sun. 
She wore layers of old dresses against the cold, faded leaf prints, 
frayed edges as intricate as lace against her pale legs.

"The grooves in the stone where the people walk. Cut through 
one of those, you get an upside down bell curve. The probability that 
a pedestrians foot will hit the centre of the rut is high, and that it'll 
hit the outside, low."

"So what?"

"Well, now that the rut's there, people walk in the centre, 
because the sides are sloping up and you'd twist your ankle. So they 
wear deeper quicker, 'cause their feet only hit the centre now."

"Someone should ask the factory for a machine to fill them up 
with concrete."

"Oh no! That'd ruin the whole square! They're part of the 
scenery now. Besides, how would we find our way without a rut to 
walk in?"

"Someday you won't even be able to see the top of their heads. 
Maybe just hats cruising along level with the stone."

"Someone will do something. Next century. Come on, I want to 
get home." 


They headed for the taxi rank. (Most people who owned a 
vehicle in Levinfield spent some of the time driving it as a taxi. They 
needed no markings, no licence and no registration. All they needed 
was some kind of sign, to let customers know they were for hire.) 

Giri chose a beautiful streamlined machine from the back of the 
cue, one with smooth silver plating and a mean slit windscreen and 
wheels mounted on complex articulated shocks that looked like the 
coiled legs of a crouching panther. A racing machine. It would get 
them home with time to spare.

"I'm nearly out of alcohol. Where do you want to go?" said the 
driver.

"Poets quarter, thanks. Number 23 Parquet street."

"Hop in."

He started the machine as they struggled the bulky pack in 
through a side door. The taxi rose slightly on its shocks and slid out 
into the sparse traffic.

"Poets, aye? I used to do that when I was young. Best times of 
me life. Until I ran out, that is. Happens to all but the best. You dry 
up and then it's no more easy meal ticket. Makes you think, doesn't 
it? I mean, it's as though all that poetry is inside you, and then you 
pour it all out onto the page and cash it and spend it, and then it's all 
gone. Empty. The reservoir all dried up and no matter how hard you 
try there's no more. Luckily I managed to get this cab, even if it goes 
through spirit like the worst piss-artist in the park goes through 
bluecap wine!" he said, patting the dashboard. The engine almost 
purred under his fond caress.

"Really?" said Lang.

"Oh yeah, it fair burns gallons every day. Have to keep track of 
where I am all the time, try to stay close to a well when the needle 
hits the red."

He honked at an approaching taxi, a small silver teardrop that 
zipped past them in a rattle of lose stones.

"You see that one? It runs on air. Truly! No idea where he 
found it, but the damn thing sucks a little air and runs all day! 
Repairs itself too, so I hear."

"How old were you, when you ran out of poetry?"

"Not as old as you may think, and that's all I have to say on 
that subject. Oh, it's not so bad. I expect I'll be writing again some 
day, when the urge comes again."

"You know," he said, as they unloaded outside the house and 
paid the fare, "the thing I most regret is giving it all away. I mean it. 
All those beautiful words, where are they now? I wrote them, and 
they ran away like mice or children and escaped into the world and 
left nothing behind. I never kept copies. Perhaps the best work I'll 
ever do in my life was as a poet, and perhaps I threw it away on a 
pint of beer."

"But you said you'd write more."

"Maybe. If I can. You'll see, when you dry up."

"Oh, it won't happen to us." said Giri. "There must be an infinite 
different poems in the world. How can you exhaust that?"

"You'll see, you'll see." And he drove away in a whir of sweet 
exhaust. 



They spent the night together. She told herself it was a mistake 
even as they shared a bottle and sank together into a sloppy, stupid 
haze of intoxication, rolling around the floor of her room amongst 
layers of discarded clothes and magazines laughing at the music on 
the radio.

"I'm gonna stow away in your pack!"

"Heavy enough already! You could help me carry it, though."

She found a cynical mood stealing over her. She started teasing 
him.

"Look after yourself out there in the wild woods. Everyone here 
loves you, you know that. We'd be lost without you!"

"What!"

"Oh, I mean it! We'd all leave the house and split up. This whole 
happy fucking family would fall apart without you to hold us 
together."

He frowned and regarded her with serious eyes.

"Really?"

She rolled over and crouched like a tiger, arms drawn up ready 
to spring, eyes wide.

"Yeah, really. Don't you think so?"

"No, I don't." He stared at the ceiling. "I like this place; friendly, 
pretty close, there's always someone around to talk to, but I'm just 
another resident. You like me, but we all like each other, that's why 
we live together."

"Don't you think I'd miss you, if something happened?"

"Of course. Don't worry" He wrapped long arms around her and 
gently tickled the smooth skin just above her hips. "I will come 
back."

"You'll come back?"

"Of course! You think I want to leave this life? We have it easy 
here. Maybe even too easy."

"Show me some magic."

He considered the options available. 

Lang wasn't that good, as far as magic was concerned. He could 
have animated a wooden horse. He couldn't fly. Some could; it wasn't 
unusual to see a tiny figure crossing the sky silhouette against the 
clouds. It was a dangerous pastime, though, for the simple reason of 
the fallibility of the spell. All spells fail, sooner or later. Nothing was 
permanent. That was the sole reason the old machines were still 
used.

He closed his eyes and reached out towards her, lying half 
undressed besides him. He sent his mind into the spaces between 
them, grabbed the air itself and balled it into solid forms. This was 
an advanced trick. It took concentration, for the slightest wavering of 
attention would cause his creation to dissolve and he would have to 
start again.

Giri gasped and giggled as the cool air washed over her, around 
her. An anaconda of cool air across her ribs. Hands beneath her back, 
lifting. She rose slowly, a foot above the floor, and turned lazily. Tiny 
capricious winds teased at her hair.

"That's fucking delicious! It's like swimming naked in the sea. 
Lower, lower... yeah!"

Abruptly he lost it. The shapes in his head dissolved into 
confusion, and she dropped sluggishly through his grasp to sink back 
to the carpet. Lang wiped sweat from his brow.

"Wonderful. My master magician! I wish I could do that."

"I wish I could repair my own bike. I'll have to walk home if it 
conks out. You should come with me."

"I've already told you I don't want to. But don't worry, I'll do a 
good job. I want you to come back as soon as you've satisfied this 
wacky desire to look at some trees."

"I promise."

SURPRISE


Six trees grew in the back garden of the house. They were 
beautiful, graceful, with long clean limbs that reached out to touch 
each other and touch the eaves and tap on the second story windows 
with their twigs. Shelf fungus adorned their boles, bright orange and 
burnt red in parallel stripes like brands on the pale bark

They supported a colony of spiders. Every evening the spiders 
would fly out from their crowns and search for fluffy molds. Downy 
bundles returned, flashing cellophane wings. Lint from spider nests 
dotted the surface of the pool, clogging the filter. 

Julia spent hours scooping the pool with a net, throwing the 
soggy fluff into the weeds where it would dry out and grow again, 
and the spiders would carry it back to the tree tops and once more it 
would grace the pool with islands of colour.

Tall, willowy, blonde, Julia lived in the attic and rarely 
emerged. The most prolific of the poets in the house, her strange, 
cryptic verse would often turn up in someones change, remarkably 
old sometimes. Some suspected she had found old youth treatments 
among the ruins. Most of the time she ghosted alone through her two 
rooms, cutting through beams of sunlight slanting through skylights, 
thinking and writing, robed in habitual black.

It was she who suggested the party that would see Lang off on 
his journey. A brilliant move; it turned something that bothered and 
disturbed all who heard about it into an occasion they could 
understand. A party. That was good enough reason to do anything. 

Some bought wine and hid the bottles in their rooms, behind 
bookcases and curtains. Julia cooked, boiling great pots of pasta and 
steaming sauce. People tiptoed around Lang with one-sided smiles. 
The most important aspect of the ceremony was that it should 
appear to be spontaneous, and he wouldn't know about it till 
everyone had arrived.

(Of course he did know; as if it wasn't obvious enough, almost a 
dozen people had taken it upon themselves to tell him, each asking 
him to pretend ignorance and try to act surprised. And even this was 
redundant, because the party would start so gradually, people 
casually appearing and gathering in the lounge room without any 
explanation, just as though they all felt like coming over at the same 
time, and so it would never really start, and without starting it could 
never really be, and therefore it would never really happen, a sort of 
non event, which was really cool.)

Julia skimmed the pool, deep in meditative thought. It was 
septic, she couldn't see the bottom, and couldn't stand the thought of 
anyone swimming in the stuff. Darting spiders, trailing long 
streamers of silk towing fuzzy cargo, surrounded her in dizzy lines of 
colour. 


Inside the house Lang watched the mirror in the loungeroom 
with his feet stretched out, ignoring the fuss.

The mirror was broken, but it still worked. They found it down 
a back alley behind the private residence of a rich artist, left out 
with the garbage. It reflected crystal clear, colour vivid as a dream, 
only the glass was broken in fine cracks that spidered the surface, 
turned out of alignment just a degree from one piece to the next, 
transforming the picture into a stained glass puzzle. Beautifully 
framed, in wood silvered by age, it was huge, three feet across, but 
the flaw made it worthless. Hard to tune, the balance subtly out of 
line. 

Now it reflected Channel 13 and the ads were on. Lang reached 
out and nudged it with a touch of the Knack, to bring it into focus.

Images of the main broadcast mirrors flashed and span, the 
stations logo, reflecting in turn the mirror that caught their image, 
catching a glimpse of the mirrorman crouched behind with his dark 
glasses on, cap emblazoned with the logo.

Lang wanted to be a mirrorman once, when he was young, and 
his parents gave him his grandfathers old mirror, a yellowed and 
scratched but still sound hand reflector. A years worth of reflections 
lay stacked on the bookshelf in his old room, forgotten, left behind 
when he moved out. Only his parents still ran the jumpy images 
through their old oak framed mirror, laughing and crying together at 
their long dead youth, alone in their too-big house.

The ad ended, replaced by yet another documentary.

"Tonight we present the second in our series, Dome Builders for 
the Master. Marble slabs recently unearthed by fossickers in a 
basement have been dated to the 17th. Slave Epoch, famous for 
leaving us the ruins known as the Blue Wave, the crumpled remains 
of a fiberglass dome lying to the south of the present inhabited areas. 
The slabs were analyzed and video images discovered encoded into 
their fabric; they record fascinating details of the lives of these little 
known people, reflected for your viewing pleasure tonight."


The pictures were so clear it was a pity they were so boring as 
well. Dome Builders had a pathological fear of the sun, and their 
brightly coloured bubbles lay deflated in many abandoned sectors. 
Like huge tents they were, and as though in retribution for their 
irrational fear, the sun slowly corroded the material, turning it to 
confetti that swirled through the deserted streets and squares, lit by 
coloured sunlight filtering through the panels that remained.

In the mirror Lang watched them rise again, as they had been, 
always shot from inside, buildings and people coloured green and 
blue and yellow by filtered sun. Domebuilders marching in step, 
single file, through grids of roads, nodding in time to the beat of a 
drum broadcast from speakers on every corner. 

The slabs were government files of the period, said the voice-
over. Each encoded with thousands of hours of video, and hundreds 
had been used for table tops and monuments in later centuries, 
priceless footage now damaged and maybe lost.

The marching lines split and reformed. There was a factory, 
endless ranks of pastel-tinted human robots assembling clockwork 
by hand. Housing was in dormitories, large square rooms for every 
family, two parents and two children. In vast refectories they ate 
their meals, processed wastes, pastel coloured, two biscuits on every 
plate. 

Always smiling. Always teeth, everywhere the images took him 
Lang saw teeth, pulled back rictus grins smiling in mockery at the 
sun that raged beyond their artificial sky, smiling faces identical one 
to the next.

"Don't they look happy."

Julia stood in the door, nibbling a stick of celery, and she 
nodded at the screen.

"Don't they look like a bunch of happy campers? With their 
civilization zipped up tight, stable, enough for everyone, no problems. 
Makes you wonder how it ended."

"Boredom?" guessed Lang. 

"Bet you're right. There's nothing people won't do to alleviate 
boredom. Speaking of which..." she gestured at the screen.

"Okay. The news'll be on in a while."

Now the dome people stood in ranks in a public square, 
chanting their vows of obedience to the Masters. Lang bore it for a 
few minutes, then frowned at the screen, focused; a new reflection 
came into view, the news. 

"The third day of the Levinfield Councils convention ended in 
agreement on the proposed changes to zoning laws."

Aldermen and women smiled and shook hands. Their 
spokeswoman addressed the reporters.

"The shores of the Quicksilver Depressions are already settled 
by squatters, and tests have proved the region is safe, so now the 
official ban has been lifted."

Voice over shots of the region, gentle slopes of angular brick 
ruins that disappeared beneath the surface of a lake, calm water 
reflecting the cluster of concrete towers at the centre, sunk by flood 
and subsidence. 

"The worry over contamination of the water, that caused the 
area to be banned, has ceased, following tests that show low levels of 
industrial waste. Some scientists still hold fears, however, regarding 
possible submerged chemical supplies that may rupture in the 
future, but council has promised regular tests of water quality."

A small sailboat tacked around a half submerged warning sign, 
fishing lines trailing blithely from rods mounted in the stern.

LIGHT CONVERSATION


"A toast!"

"To success!"

"To survival, at least!"

Lang moved uneasily through the near empty room, surprised 
at the sparse attendance. A few distant friends tried to party up, but 
they were fighting against the silence of empty rooms, and losing. It 
looked like the night was a failure. At best he could drink and talk 
without having to perform too much. 

"Will that little bike carry you that far?"

Olvin Clarke, who used to live in the house, studied archaeology 
at the Cyggyn Institute of History. Archaeology was an industry, as 
he was often heard to say. He was stamped deep with the academic 
look; thick glasses, cut from quartz windowpanes, unbreakable but 
always smeared, and a flamboyant wool cloak dyed autumn brown 
that trailed on the carpet and gathered static. His thick hair was 
short and greasy with neglect.

"I hope so. It's carried me so far. Fuel is the problem out there, 
so I thought, why go to the trouble of finding a car and hoping to find 
more alcohol before I run out..."

"Good thinking, good thinking." He sniffed and grinned. "I didn't 
think of that. Of course, the Institute could have supplied you with 
something special, if you'd asked. We have a few cars with old 
motors, no one really knows what keeps them going, but they do. If 
you wanted to take assistants, some researchers, along for the ride, 
and promised not to go too far in..."

"No, this is really just a holiday. Why everyone worries has me 
puzzled."

"Worried?" Asked Julia, dramatically swirling her long black 
dress around her ankles. "Worried? Have you ever left the city?"

"Yeah, a couple of times." Lang lied. He had traveled, but never 
beyond the ruins. 

"Well, I never have, never wanted to. And no-one's worried, 
don't let this fool you. This is just a party, and you're as good a 
reason as any. Things are quiet, now."

"Yes, they have been. For quite a few years." said Olvin.

They drifted away talking about fossicking trips and their 
finds.
 Lang remembered his past journeys. He had been near 
the outskirts, and they were far enough. There, in the most ancient 
regions, masonry crumbled into dust and jungles of ornamental vines 
and trees fought for the sun. He had stood on a high mound, 
crumbled concrete from a vanished office tower, staring out over 
fields of short grass. Lawn. It grew flat and even, densely green, 
dotted with clumps of lilies and stands of trees. For some reason he 
didn't want to step out into the space, with no walls to contain him 
and no streets to follow. Better to fossick through the ruins, lifting 
slabs of stone looking for artifacts, useful machines abandoned for 
millennia in empty rooms and overlooked by generations of treasure 
hunters. 

"We've been here so long we've changed the shape of space."

Lang turned, following the voice to a pair of figures seated in 
the corner of the room, huddled over a steaming bowl.

"It's like a ghost. Have you ever seen a ghost?"

"Only when I drink enough."

"Well, it was just rhetoric. Anyway, ghosts always follow the 
habits of their creators. If you have habits and repeat them every 
day, then you're likely to leave a ghost, and that ghost will repeat 
those habitual actions. And all the ghosts together are imprinted on 
the fabric of space, the invisible background of matter that 
permeates everything, and they form the framework of our minds."

"Wow!"

"Yeah. And then it says the group mind is connected through 
ghostspace, and the only true communication is the subtle mind-to-
mind currents carried by dead spirits."

"There must be a lot of 'em."

"There are. Just think, how many thousands of years, how 
many generations..."


Lang went out into the garden for a smoke. Lovers did their 
thing in dark corners; he smiled, looking up at the satellites. An 
endless procession passed overhead. They fell from bright sunlight, 
turned dim red and then gone, quenched by the shadow of the world. 

Then a dark shape moved into view, eclipsing the distant lights, 
a great round shadow that moved on the face of the firmament. He 
watched in delight as it descended towards him. Coming straight 
down, till it seemed he might be flattened on the lawn, but he stood 
his ground, trusting in the skills of whoever piloted the thing. Just 
before it reached the level of the houses roof it swerved aside and 
moved towards the pool, settling into the water quietly and coming 
to rest, the only sound tiny ripples smacking its sides and coos of 
wonder and admiration from the couples around the lawn. Dim green 
light showed through the narrow slits of viewports like many green 
eyes staring out. 

Soft ticking of cooling coils. A quiet voice came from the 
vehicle.

"Where is everyone?"

"Most of the guests are inside. Hi Emma."

"Lang! Too dark out there... try this."

Muffled groans and complaints from the shadows as actinic 
light spilled out, illuminating everything in stark black and white.

"Turn it down, Emma, you'll blind someone!"

"Come on board!"

He walked to the pools edge, then stepped back as part of the 
black hull opened down into a ramp. Emma stood there, stick thin in 
baggy coveralls, patched and stained with colour coded panels. 

"Come in!"

He stepped forward and hugged her, gently. Her bones were 
delicate twigs. 

Emma had lived briefly in the house, years before. She had 
been a poet with the best of them until she inherited her mothers 
house, a habitat in a high orbit, spacejunk from the distant past, and 
this, an old shuttle. Very few people lived in the sky now; they were 
unwilling to trust the old machines that supplied their air and 
repelled meteorites. It was failure of the automatic defenses that 
killed her mother. But she  had felt obliged to visit the station, at 
least once, and there, she had looked out on the view and fell in love. 
Now she rarely touched ground, and calcium loss from the lack of 
gravity took its toll. 

"Arg, that's enough! You smell like ground, I miss it sometimes! 
Not often, though. How many people out there?" she asked.

"Not very many."

"Good. I hate crowds. When I heard the news I was just going 
to call, but it's been years since I visited and I thought, well, I could 
just flyby and see you. It takes me ages to collect enough energy to 
come down. I put up extra panels, I've probably got the largest 
privately owned solar farm in orbit!"

"You smell like orbit. Ozone and incense."

"Stale clothes, you mean, and malfunctioning air system."

"Well, yeah, but I like that too. You always smelled a bit, 
anyway."

"Well, thanks! I came all the way down from orbit for this..."

"Come into the house. I've got some wine hidden."

"Well, okay. Has anything changed since I've been away?"

"Not a thing. Some guy I never see got your old room. He's kept 
the mural you did, keeps saying he doesn't like it but it's still there."

They crossed the lawn to the back door of the house.

"I painted that last thing before I left." she said.

Inside there were cries of recognition as Emma was recognized 
by long time residents, and she was soon surrounded by old friends 
eager for stories of her new life.

"Okay, okay!" she laughed, sinking into a beanbag, joints 
creaking loudly under unaccustomed stress of gravity. She cocked a 
sardonic glance at Lang, as if to say "Can it be helped?" 

"Later." she shouted as he turned away.

"Cool."


"Hi Lang."

A latecomer, staring around at the meager gathering, the 
audience clustered around Emma, the demolished plates of food on 
the dining table. Rawly cultivated long hair, to convey a total lack of 
concern with his image. (The epithet "Long haired louse" was still in 
use amongst some sectors of society, though the insect itself was 
reliably extinct and had been for some time.) He wore the same 
clothes he always wore, checked shirt and torn factory-produced 
trousers, (the trousers torn by a machine, of course; much too strong 
for natural wear.) 

"Little sparse, isn't it? Perhaps there's another party 
somewhere else and we didn't know and everyone decided..."

"Could be. Have you heard what it's all about though?"

"You mean your little journey? Well, that's your decision, and I 
can't stop you, but I would."

"Everyone says that! I can't stand it! I met someone from the 
country, a bit paranoid about ghosts." He glanced at the couple in the 
corner, now sharing lungsful of steam mouth to mouth. "Spun me a 
tale about a dangerous one I'm gonna meet there."

"Dake, right? Weird guy, that one, and typical country. Listen, 
you don't have to actually leave the city, everyone's freaked enough 
by your threats alone. Wait awhile and let it slide. People are 
thinking things. Saying you're mad."

"No, I said I would and I'm going, that's the end of any 
argument. Listen, I'm sick to death of all this bullshit. I hid a bottle 
of red in the kitchen, under the sink. Lets get it."

"Rawly takes everything back, Lang, you're perfectly sane!" He 
laughed and headed for the kitchen, but Lang let his face drop in 
sour lines. It seemed that if he decided to go ahead he could kiss a 
few friends goodbye. 

The bottle was still there and they cracked it on the kitchen 
table, drawing up chairs and lighting candles that clustered in the 
centre surrounded by puddles of melted wax. Red was their favorite 
wine, pressed from tiny cherry-capped mushrooms that grew on 
certain kinds of old wallpaper and books in libraries. It sparkled, 
energetic, belying it's restful origins, and was notorious for loosening 
the tongue.

"Bad mirror, that's what I've been doing with my time. I saw 
some show, made just last year, incredible! Very strange. Made by 
some rising young artist who wanted to capture daily life and make a 
sort of documentary about boring lives. Strange, really. I mean, most 
of the time they emulate the old stuff dug up from cycles ago, with 
people worshipping gods and creating new lifeforms and factories 
churning out mechanical mice, running around in clear plastic 
ponchos or painted blue or enameled armor, totally bizarre customs 
and behavior you just can't make sense of no matter how hard you 
try. That's what we start with, images of dead people, so the new 
stuff is just the same,  imaginary history. Not nearly as incredible as 
the real thing, because who can create something totally new out of 
whole cloth without being affected by the past?"

"Anyway, I was watching these people who could have lived 
next door, doing boring things, and I had the weirdest thought. 
Suppose that this show gets buried, and discovered in a few 
thousand years, and they play it and say "Weird!", because it is to 
them, and suppose they also discover something fictitious, total 
fantasy, concocted from a drunk directors nightmares told to a half 
literate hack, totally unbelievable fantasy? 

"I dunno."

"They'll think "Weird!" and put it on the shelf with the others 
and they'll believe that it's real, it actually happened, that it's a 
documentary instead of documentary-styled fantasy, because that's 
what we have, so many bloody documentaries!"

"Yeah!" said Lang. "But just think; maybe some of the stuff we 
think is real about the past is also fiction. All those historical 
sequences could have come out of some stoned writers head, who 
looked at the palm of his hand and saw roads in the lines and 
imagined he was emperor of the kingdom. Look."

Lang swung a small mirror that sat on the counter around until 
it caught something. They watched jumpy, damaged images from the 
archives. No subtitles, just bizarre shots of armored children chasing 
lizards through alleyways lined with shelves of plastic balls, rotating 
symbols made from coloured glass that hung in the air above 
thousands of smiling dancers in electrically charged clothes, women 
anointing pairs of folded cloth rectangles with blue dye.

"I bet that was just thought up by some sick ideas-man with 
nostrils full of ivory spores! He's probably laughing in his grave right 
now, thinking about some earnest researcher trying to decipher what 
madness caused people to act like this!"

"Rawly, tell me something. Why is everyone so freaked out? 
I'm going for a long drive in the country, not bombing the city from 
orbit! It's as though they can't quite believe I'd do something so crass 
, so unconventional. As though it's the height of bad manners to pass 
the city limits."

"Don't you think it is?"

"How can it be? Look at Emma out there. She left to go live 
millions of miles away. How much further past the city limits can you 
get, and that's okay-"

"It's still the city, Lang. Up there, it's just outlying suburbs. 
There are four continents in the World. Why do we only live on one?"

"I don't know. Why?"

"Because we just bloody well don't! They're wild country and 
they're going to stay that way. Look, just supposing you went down 
to the nearest factory late at night and claimed it as your own. 
Sprayed you initials on it, called it "Lang and Co." and tried to sell the 
produce. What would happen?"

"I don't think I'd do anything like that. Who wants to have to 
guard a factory all their life just for money? Imagine all the work, 
trying to get people to buy what it made when they can get it free 
elsewhere, just to make more money to spend on what?"

"Six hundred years ago people owned those factories. They 
didn't begrudge the bother of ownership. They would sneer at our 
laziness, just as we sneer at their stupidity. "

"But that's different. You don't want the responsability, and 
neither do I. We'd just rather live our own lives than try to get other 
people to sell us theirs. There's no percentage in it."

"Yet. No percentage now, but there will be. Look, Lang, I'll put 
it as gently as I can, and you just have to try and follow. We like you, 
you know? You're a little bit weird, a little intense about things, and 
you spend so much time in those library holes in the ground that you 
forget how to speak sometimes, but basically you're okay."

"It's just that... why would anyone leave all this? We're Kings of 
an Age, resting between generations of struggle and effort in the war 
against time! This is the truce, when humans allow time into their 
hearts and minds and accept the futility of life, not with desperation 
but quiet humor. Soon, a few generations, and the cycle will start 
again. Our offspring would grow up with a gleam in their eyes, they'll 
look upon the deserted factories and moldy areas with distaste at the 
waste. Once again, the rebuilding, the profit, the upswing of the 
eternal Curve. But that's not for a long time yet, and now's the time 
for extreme decadence! Drugs and pleasure and infinite freedom, and 
leisure, absolute eternity to do nothing whatsoever, that's the order 
of the day! You could do anything you wanted, but why... this?"

"If we are free to do anything we want that includes going Out 
There."

"Nobody's free, Lang, yer kidding yourself. Get with the 
program. If you do this thing people will hate you."

"I don't care."

DECADENCE


Face it, the party was a flop. 

Face it, nearly every party is a flop.

Unless you're talented, unless you know  people, unless you 
have a cast of actors to invite who can force it to work, you can't 
garuntee a good party.

People only go to parties in the hope that they score the one-
in-ten, the one that goes off.


One in the morning and everyone gone. Only Rawly and Emma 
in Langs room; Rawly picking books from the shelf and stacking them 
on the floor, Emma lying supine on the bed, and Lang spinning 
tiredly in his swivel chair.

"Hey man, what're you doing?" he asked Rawly.

"These books are all mine. I'm just gonna put them on their 
own shelf so you know which are mine and which are yours."

"Okay, then can I come over and check out my collection on 
your shelves?"

"Sure... Hey Lang, if you get killed can I have your books?"

"Fuck off! Vulture! You've got a hope."

"No, really, have you thought about that? There's... things, out 
there."

"There's things here! There's slimy hairy things probably 
crawling through the sewers not a hundred feet below the floor right 
now eating each other and planning to take over the city and 
eliminate humanity for being obscene!"

"Yeah, I heard-"

"No, not another story!"

"Listen Lang, you can come up the well with me." Emma 
drawled sleepily. "See the sights, have some adventures, keep your 
friends." 

"Do you think I'm crazy, too?"

"No. But you'd be crazy not to try spacing it before you go 
camping. It's fun!"

"It's more dangerous."

"Bullshit!"

"Emma, how old is your oldest friend up there?"

"Well... about forty... and he has a few scars. Pressure loss 
fucked up his face... Look, danger is the price you pay for living in an 
interesting world."

"You're welcome to your interesting world, I've got mine and 
the forest calls. No-ones been there, been all the way in, for 
centuries. Not since the last industrial age."

"It should remain untouched until the next." said Rawly.

"Decadence." said Emma. "That's what this is, the Age of 
Decadence. That's what Industrial ages call the periods in-between."

"Up and down and up and down until we get sick and throw up, 
these ages are a poor way to run a species." Lang joked, oblivious to 
their disgusted stares. "What's to say things wouldn't be better if 
they both happened at the same time? We could have half the city 
and our industrious friends could have the other."

"Dickhead! They'd never leave us alone! They'd want us to 
work in their plants and buy their goods, and they'd fight over us, 
trying to sell more than their competition, until everything got 
caught up in their stupid game and there was no more room in our 
lives for us to play our stupid games! I'd rather do pointless things 
for my own reasons than for someone else's. I'd rather eat because 
I'm hungry, not because someone wants to make money selling me 
food. I'd rather not have to buy the life I already own."


Emma left, kissing Lang sisterly on the cheek before going into 
her ship and lifting like a dream from the surface of the pool, her 
course curving towards the coast. When she was high, and far enough 
out that her exhaust would hit only water, she lit the engines.

"I love that sight." breathed Lang. "Maybe I will go up the well, 
when I get back. Nothing really ties me down here. There's no reason 
why I shouldn't." His eyes followed the vanishing speck, far but 
bright, as it jockeyed into orbit, guided by the faint bleep of her 
home's beacon. It vanished into the general swarm of moving stars 
that slowly crossed the sky. 

"Maybe you will." said Rawly. "It would probably be an 
anticlimax after that forest."

"Aw man, I'm getting tired of this!"

"Yes sir! By the way, sir, I get dibs on the couch in the 
livingroom."

"Yeah, no-one else's claimed it yet. No one wanted to stay."

"Good party."

"Ha, ha."


The next morning Lang woke surprised at how clear he felt. Not 
that he had consumed much wine, but he felt cheated that the send 
off party had not left more of a mark on him. As though it had 
somehow failed.

He checked Emmas room. She had gone, taking her tools with 
her. Somewhere across the city she would be kneeling again in the 
guts of some dusty mechanism, tracing components and deciphering 
plans. He wished her luck. 

The sun shone dimly through a high haze that seemed to 
descend on the city from time to time, as though the ghost of ancient 
palls of smoke returned to their old haunts. Lang and Rawly trudged 
through the quiet streets.

"Have you thought about arming yourself, Lang?"

"I'm surprised at you! Would you?"

"Of course. It's always best to prepare for emergencies. You're 
pretty handy with a bow and arrow, but I know that old bow of 
yours is blessed for safety, and I'd rather have something more 
effective at my side."

"Don't worry. Giri and I took care of that. We went and bought 
a new bow, and it isn't blessed, as far as I know."

"I used to go into the far North suburbs, Lang. You hear of 
them? Pretty bad place to be caught at night. Gangs of young 
starvelings running around there. They're territorial. Harmless, if you 
leave them alone, but they claim the area as their own and resent 
anyone fossicking on their turf."

"But they're lazy, dig, and there's still plenty of loot there. 
Much of it they leave alone, because they fear the old science. I used 
to go out there in my own youth with a flare pistol. Not much of a 
weapon, you may think, but it was old science, too. Shot bright blue 
electric charges, and even if you missed, it would blind your enemies 
long enough to escape."

"No thanks. I don't like old weapons. Bad karma."

"Don't blame you."

"So. Did you ever, uh, actually... did you ever use this flare gun? 
On a person."

Rawly stopped and turned to face Lang.

"Yes. I don't want this to get around, okay, but I did."

"Of course. But what happened?"

"It was simple. It was night, and I'd stumbled across some kind 
of celebration. They had an old sound system going, very loud, and 
they were playing and singing and dancing, and stumbling around 
drunk out of their minds on some lethal brew that seemed to totally 
fuck their heads. I said they were harmless if you avoided them, but 
they sounded like demons that night. I was terrified."

"But I knew I had to get past their encampment, because I 
didn't want to backtrack too far. It was hard going, in that region. 
The roads were blocked with rubble. I decided to skirt them close 
and trust my luck."

"I was discovered. One lad, must have been eighteen. Long hair 
in plaits, all down his back as far as the waist, and ragged clothing 
washed completely grey by rain and time. He came stumbling blindly 
through the ruins for no apparent reason, except maybe he was 
looking for a quiet place to take a leak."

"The instant he spotted me he stopped for a look. I stood stock 
still, hoping he'd decide I was a hallucination from the homebrew. 
But no, he came on, and I backed up."

"My back hit a brick wall and he walked right in front of me 
and stood there. He smelt like he'd never washed. He had a blank 
expression, impassive, and he stood there, thinking. Then he reached 
out for my throat."

"I dodged, and drew the gun. I had fashioned a holster for it 
from an old glove and a belt, so it was hidden beneath my jacket. I 
reached in and managed to draw just as he grabbed me."

"I waved it in front of his face, as a warning. He ignored it. Just 
looked at it and looked away. For all I know he didn't understand 
what it was. Just started to crush the life from me."

"My head started to ring, but I didn't want to kill. I wanted to 
frighten him off. So I took that gun and jammed the barrel right up 
under his chin. Still, he squeezed. I was passing out."

"What then?"

"I fired."

They stood in silence in the centre of the deserted street.

"It was silent. His eyes lit up and his hair caught fire, but there 
was just this fizzing sound like you hear when it rains and a buried 
battery starts to hiss and short in the ruins. Just that, and he froze, 
didn't let go, just froze."

"I reached out and pushed. The hands slid from my throat and 
he fell to the ground. The party raged on, no-one had heard or 
missed their college, so I turned and ran. Scrambled as fast as I could 
through the old bricks and fallen stone and the rusted struts that had 
once been thick steel girders, just scrambled away from there like a 
cockroach being chased by a spider. I stopped, though, for a last look 
back, and saw something."

"What?"

"He disappeared, Lang. That boy... he just melted away. I 
thought then that it must have been a dream, and thought that until 
I woke the next day, but then I could still see the bruises on my 
neck, and the charge indicator on the gun showed that a shot had 
been fired. So it happened, and I saw him disappear."

"There are strange things. In this world. Strange things, Lang."


They reached the library. Lang lead the way. Through the 
swinging steel doors, their locks rusted into uselessness long ago, 
across the marble foyer, kept brightly polished by a steel beetle that 
buzzed after them wiping away the traces of their muddy footprints. 

An old man lay asleep at the desk, head laid on crossed arms. 
His silver hair shiny with light reflected from the monitor before 
him, a box with a curved glass screen. Lang patted it as they passed.

"Not many TV's around now. Too delicate. Only ever see them 
at the bank or here. Relics from before the days of mirrors."

Past the old security scanner, long ago broken and never fixed, 
and they were in the stacks.

"Books are like the sediment that collects at the bottom of a 
river." said Lang. "They're like the leaves from a tree, that pile up 
year after year and compress themselves under their own weight 
until they bury themselves under later generations, to be dug up 
millennia later as fossils."

"Basically, there's too many books. Right?" quipped Rawly.

"Yes. The world is old and bent under their weight. I sometimes 
think that you could prove that the rock the city's built on is made of 
old books. This library goes down for miles. It's best not to go down 
too far; the floors are unsafe down there. Every now and then you 
hear the distant rumble of subsidence, as some deep, forgotten floor 
gives way and sinks a few feet further. Here."

Lang lead the way down dark stairs littered with strips of 
paper carried there by rats. They could hear scurrying feet 
retreating from their own footsteps. Five floors down, and they left 
the stairs, entering the stacks.

Here the dust hung in streamers, waving tiredly like weed in 
deep water in the sluggish flow of air from the ceiling ducts. Here the 
flouro tubes flickered and pinged quietly as they tried to glow. The 
ends of shelves stretched away in the distance to either side, each 
tagged with a yellowing card. The narrow alleys between the shelves 
was littered with layers of books. Some dislodged by the ever-
present rats, some left there by lazy searchers, and some shaken off 
their shelves by subsidence. 

Lang lead the way, down the narrow alleys between 
dangerously leaning shelves, sometimes touching each other above 
their heads to form tunnels of paper. They tunneled their way 
through the vast storehouse of useless knowledge to his base camp, a 
clearing hollowed out in the midst of the wilderness.

He had furnished it with a table, chair, and portable light 
connected to one of the old, everlasting batteries. The stacks were a 
little neater here, ordered amongst the greater entropy. 

"Here we are."

"It's... incredible! It's terrible."

"Terrible?"

"So much time. I can smell it. These pages... do you ever realize 
that someone wrote every word? Someone dead? Someone forgotten, 
lost in time, except for the dead memory stored here for no reason at 
all, except that maybe, just maybe, someone in the future just might  
want to know whatever it was they wrote about?"

"But there's always hope, isn't there? I mean, it was someone's 
words that fired me up with the desire to explore. Someone dead and 
forgotten, sure, even I don't know the name of the guy who wrote 
the piece. Here."

He fished a magazine from under a pile. Crumbling, the cover 
faded, the glossy paper shedding flakes of clay. He turned pages.

"Here. It was a woman. Sarah Lake."

Rawly could barely read the archaic script. He puzzled out a 
few sentences; something about a holiday destination, interesting 
sights, villas on the valley. There were photos, their colours 
preserved by the darkness and dry air. He could almost see the 
branches wave and smell the trees, the clear air vibrant and new. 

"I don't know. It still seems so useless. What about after you? 
We're talking eternity here. What use are all these books against the 
sheer weight of the years? The effort, to print them, store them here, 
as though they really represented a barrier against time."

"No. It's hope. The hope that maybe someone will need them. It 
represents hope."

"It represents futility."

They faced each other, almost angry, across the table.


Two days later Lang left the city.

Giri was the only one to see him leave.

That morning, as he loaded his pack and strapped it to the 
carrier, she wandered from the house looking tired and sleepy. Early 
morning was a novelty the denizens of the house rarely enjoyed, 
unless they saw it from the wrong side of night. 

"So, this is it." she said.

"Yep." Lang checked the straps one last time. He lashed his new 
bow to the side, checked the arrows. 

"Look after yourself, out there." she said.

"I will."

Giri had fixed his bike. She had shown him where to buy a new 
bow. She felt bad.

"You've been wondering why everybodies acting crazy, trying 
to get you to change your mind, stay home, haven't you?"

"Yes." He wouldn't look at her.

"Wouldn't you like to know why?"

"Okay. Why?"

"It goes like this: the only way we can maintain the illusion 
that our lives mean anything is by filling them with toys. We go here 
and there, and do things, have little adventures, take drugs, 
experience, all because there's no great task waiting for us to 
perform. There's nothing left to do that hasn't been done already a 
thousand times better than we ever could."

"You're a fool, a dangerous fool, because you might remind us 
of this. Do you understand? We don't want to know about the futility 
of trying, it detracts from the taste of the wine. If you remind us of 
this it'll take years to forget again."

"Go out there and die, and you'll be a nail in everyones heart. 
Don't you understand, the forest's outside! What are you, a Ponytail, 
sizing up the trees for a lumber mill?"

"Only if you return will we be able to forgive you."

Lang considered her words.

"Giri," he said at last, "I love you, but I have to admit, that 
didn't make any sense at all."

"Then don't worry, just return."

"I will."

"Promise."

"Yeah, okay. I promise to return. But before I return, I must go. 
See ya later." and he kicked the little bikes engine into life.

"Keep some wine ready! Expect me in a month." And he was 
gone.


THE FOREST


Morning came, and Lang stood on the threshold of the forest. 
Stories and rumors warred in his mind. Which ones to believe? 

Smells of wetness and decay. It was dark in there. The 
outermost trees were all saplings, thin and smooth-barked, leaning 
away from their taller ancestors to catch more sunlight. Further in, 
dark epiphytes clung to the black trunks, and spider webs spanned 
the gaps. Wide spaced columns rose from gnarled tangles of root, 
festooned with parasites.
 

He turned and left the road, wheeling the bike over the turf 
until he reached a stand of ferns thick enough to hide it from sight. 
In the centre of the growth he laid the bike down and set about 
adapting the pack for walking. Much had to be left behind for his 
return, and he wanted to make sure no animal could damage the 
provisions. 

Finally he shouldered the pack, still too heavy, checked one last 
time the cap on the fuel tank, and walked into the forest.


At first the longbow caught on the saplings and other young 
growth, until he entered the darker older regions and the trunks 
were widely spaced. The road was clearly visible to his right, 
sunlight reaching the ground there and shining through the trunks. 
He headed towards it.

Inside the margin of the forest, however, the road was vastly 
different to outside. Great ridges of up-thrust asphalt and concrete 
ran across its surface, split at the crest to expose the bark of old 
roots. The surface was strangely marked with paint, many different 
conflicting lines and markings of various ages ran across the surface. 
It was the result of various local governments indecision about what 
to do with this road. No one traveled it, but ancient law stated it had 
to be maintained, as it was a major thoroughfare and might be 
needed in an emergency. So they pared down the repair budget, let 
the surface fall into decay, worried about wasting money repairing a 
useless road, tried to prove that it was still passable in emergencies, 
and finally salved their conscience by making sure it was well 
marked with dividers and lanes, sending in mortally scared road 
crews who raced the clock to mark as much road as they could 
before nightfall. The road signs, he noticed, were in good repair. As 
he passed each one he observed the pile of old signs, uprooted and 
tossed hastily asides by road workers desperate to leave. 

The day passed. The road grew worse. Above it the treetops 
met, the trunks now crowded the concrete barriers at the curb, some 
even emerged from old potholes in the surface. He walked on crazy 
pavings of split concrete, then featureless expanses of glossy black 
metal, undamaged by the elements. Then blue glass that made him 
nervous; like walking on upside Down sky, at least in the clean 
patches. Then more concrete.

On an impulse he left the road, stepping over the crumbling 
concrete crash barrier and stumbling down the earth bank, jumping 
the ditch and pushing through the undergrowth. It was cooler there. 
Less insects troubled the air, and they moved slower. 

Here were the fungus. Unknown varieties on every side. 
Somber colours and outrŽ shapes. The traveler lost himself in 
sampling their variety. He started filling his pockets. There were 
familiar varieties as well, but in the forest they grew large and full, 
record breaking weights compared to the city product. Something 
about the air, he wondered? 

For food he harvested the edible kinds, small caps that tasted 
like fried kidneys and others with the tang of garlic. He wouldn't 
have to hunt if he kept finding them. Volumes of mushroom lore 
bubbled up from the deep recesses of his mind. He even recognized a 
rare explosive variety, the Blast Cap, which would put tough silica 
shrapnel through any animal unfortunate enough to touch its red and 
blue stem. More Blast Caps would grow from the dead, punctured 
flesh. No walking around at night.


This worried him so much that night caught him unawares. 

Vision slowly adapted as the light failed, and when the sun 
finally reached the horizon he realized he was stumbling through 
near-darkness, that it would be pitch black in minutes. Immediately 
he began casting around amongst the trees for firewood. There was 
wood, alright, fallen branches littered the ground, but the ubiquitous 
rot ate it fast and left only papery remnants that crumbled at the 
slightest touch. 

In desperation he stumbled through the shadows squinting at 
the ground for any signs of whole wood, new dropped branches, 
twigs, anything to burn for light, but the ground was bare and 
smooth. Several times he mistook his shadow for a fallen branch. He 
stood and stared stupidly down at it, faint shadow, moving, swinging 
around his feet. he thought, "Shadow?"

The parrot swooped down upon him, blazing. Its wings left 
afterimage trails across his sight, rainbows that pulsed in the dark 
when he looked away. Other parrots crowded the trees, perching 
silently on the lowest branches and chewing at the bark. They 
smoldered like coals when they sat still, just visible in the gloom as 
ghostly hunchback shapes exhaling a misty glow in a halo that rose 
to a candle flame point above their heads. Now another detached 
itself from the black branch it clung to and swooped down, igniting 
as it moved. Brighter and brighter, its speed feeding air to the 
feather mold, spores trailing behind the outstretched wings in twin 
contrails of angel dust. It was attacking him. The beak opened into a 
cruel hook ready to gouge his eyes out the instant it touched him. He 
groped blindly for the bow lashed to the pack.

DRAWING THE BOW


Here's how Lang got a weapon.

Ground Zero was a region of totally deserted ruins roughly one 
hundred miles in diameter. Nobody lived there. Occasional wanderers 
drifted through the ruins looking for loot missed by their ancestors. 
The pickings were free, for the area was destined to be destroyed. 

At the centre of Ground Zero, the true "ground zero" lay. A man 
lived there. 

He inhabited an ancient ruin, round edged walls of obsidian, 
fused from local earth and stone, sprawling over acres of ground. 
Millennia of rain pounding their bare tops had pitted the black glass 
slabs and worn them down into blunt shapes that seemed melted. 
Between the walls were orchards and gardens. Groves of apples filled 
some of the huge squares that once had been rooms. Oranges and 
lemons grew mixed together, tall trees, ancient and strong. Thorns 
flashed from the lemon branches. Pumpkin and melons wound 
between the trunks. One square of the ruin had been excavated of 
earth, and water filled the space in a flashing blue lake. Black 
obsidian floor showed at the bottom.

Small robots, service and repair mechanisms like silver 
trilobites, moved through the garden, little pincers pulling weeds, 
climbing trees to pick grubs from the leaves, irrigating roots. Water 
was piped from the lake to the base of every tree. When the wind 
wasn't too loud in the branches one could hear the click and rustle of 
their metal legs. 


Lang rode through rubble choked streets, slowing to pass piles 
of brick and stone from fallen walls, steering around open manholes 
and subsidences in the road. Giri sitting behind him, pointing the way 
and shouting directions over the roar of the little engine. Blue and 
white sky above.

"You can see it now. Those black walls." she yelled.

Almost nothing remained of the factories that had once made 
the area a centre of industry. Here at the centre of Ground Zero they 
had long been abandoned, and the stones from their walls lay 
scattered. Tile roofs were now piles of red dust, and rust-stained 
weathered concrete hummocks showed were plant machinery once 
stood. 

The bike reached smooth slopes of grass running down from 
the obsidian walls to the rubble, and Lang decided to park and leave 
it there. It would be a crime to ride up that smooth turf and leave 
wheel ruts in the sod. 

Giri led the way, up the slope towards a break in the wall. They 
took off their helmets and let the breeze dry the sweat from their 
hair. 

"Look at that!"

Lang pointed at a robot, creeping across the turf dragging a bag 
of woven flax behind. Rear claws scattered seed from the bag, and 
the front claws neatly snipped the longer grass blades. It was aware 
of their presence; a spare claw waved at them to attract their 
attention. 

"They're the gardeners I was talking about." said Giri.

"So small?"

"Lots of them."

The machine dropped its bag and scuttled towards them. 
Reaching their feet it hesitated, chose Giri, and climbed onto her boot, 
then claw over claw up the folds of her jeans, up her baggy black 
jumper, to perch on her shoulder and extend a claw into her field of 
vision, pointing to the wall. 

Lang followed Giri as she was guided through the gardens, past 
more machines fixing sprinklers or towing carts filled with earth, 
past clumps of herbs in sunny corners, filling the air with sharp 
smells, past rows of terra-cotta pots full of water, lilies blooming on 
the surface. The little scuttlers were tireless, constantly darting 
through their field of vision, flashes of silver, stopping to plant or 
weed and moving on. It was as though they felt their own lack of life 
so much they wished to fill every niche with greenery. Blocks had 
been carried in from the ruins outside and stacked for moss and 
creepers to overrun. They saw a robot spraying a fine mist of water 
on lichen that bloomed on the obsidian walls. 

On Giri's shoulder the guide gestured. They passed through an 
empty doorway into a smaller square. Turf and scattered trees filled 
the space, the lake sent glints of light through gaps in the wall 
opposite where they came in. A hammock swung slowly beneath one 
of the trees. 

An old man lay in the hammock, a book spread on his chest 
and others scattered on the grass beneath. As they approached, the 
silver droid that crouched above his head reached forward to tug his 
hair. 

"Oh, shit. Visitors."

With surprising grace he rolled out of the hammock and stood 
before them. Tall and stooped, very thin, with concave chest and long 
white hair that fell past his shoulders and down his chest, he wore 
grey jeans and a white tee shirt stained with dirt. 

"Welcome to Ground Zero."


He lead them through a grove of citrus. His name was Absole, 
he told them, 

"I've studied archery for years," Lang said, "I use a compound 
target bow, but it's no use for hunting or self defense."

"You had the thing blessed, right?"

"Yes. I did it myself. I was worried about safety; it's a mean 
bow. But now, of course, I can't kill anything with it."

"If you want to kill someone with a bow you shouldn't have 
told me, I won't make one if it's going to be used for murder. I'll 
bless it as well, leave you helpless."

"Not someone! I'm going out of the city, to the forest. Going 
inside. I need to be able to hunt, maybe even protect myself."

"The forest! Ah, someones interested in the forest, after all 
these years! We're too complacent." He stopped and turned. "That 
forest is younger than the city. Older than this place, though. I know 
the legends about it. The thing is, it grew too fast. Forests take 
millions of years to grow. There's something powering it. Believe me, 
I know. I grew this place, and it takes power to maintain."

He gestured to a small herd of robots dragging a potted tree 
across pavement some distance away. The pot stood on a low cart, 
and the scuttlers formed ranks before it, clutching ropes and hauling 
in unison.

"Think of this place as a forest in its own right. Those crabs are 
the power behind its growth. What grows a million years of forest in 
ten thousand, eh?"

"I'm just curious. There's always the chance I'll find 
something." He looked down at his feet. 

"I haven't seen curiosity, genuine curiosity, in years. I thought 
it had died out. I'll make your bow. Here."

The old man reached out for a branch of an orange tree. The 
tree had been pollarded, and grew long thin whippy branches from 
the chopped top of the trunk. He drew a hasp knife from the back 
pocket of the jeans and cut the branch through cleanly at the base. A 
scuttler, sensing that the tree had been damaged, scuttled up the 
trank to the stub of the branch and started to spray it with 
something, stopping the sap from bleeding out. 

"This is the thing. Orange wood, long grained and smooth."


He spent hours working the branch into a bow. Giri and Lang 
grew tired of watching and drifted out of his workshop, going down 
to the lake to watch the silver trout-like fish dart over the smooth 
black bottom. Pipes led up from the water and into the groves of 
trees. Giri had remained completely silent the entire afternoon. She 
idly wandered the bank and helped a scuttler pick snails from the 
shrubs there, tossing them into the water for trout to snap up. 

"If the old bastard let a few caterpillars grow there would be 
butterflies." she said.

"I thought you'd been struck dumb."

"No, just thinking. Where do you think the generator is?"

"You said you'd been here before. I thought you would know."

"He didn't show us then. We hoped he would show us, but he 
didn't, and we didn't ask. We didn't want to act like jerks and piss 
him off by asking."

"I'll ask."

"Yeah, you've got curiosity."

"He's just an old man. We shouldn't assume he really knows 
about the things he says. White hair does not a sage make."

"I'm bored."


The glowing bird was nearly upon him. He grasped an arrow 
and drew it from the quiver, a smooth movement down over his 
shoulder to the waiting bow. Drew and let fly.


"Orange strakes have the best grain." said the old man. "It 
makes the draw as smooth as your fiberglass. People know me for 
that. I cure the wood in a microwave oven. It works, believe me, 
better than letting the wood lie around for months in a pile. Here."

He handed Lang his new weapon. It was smooth, still warm, six 
foot long but light and easy to aim. Lang counted out the price, six 
verses, one for each foot. The old man unfolded one and read before 
stuffing them into his jeans.

"We want to see the generator." Lang blurted out. Giri took his 
arm.

"Sure."

They followed him as he threaded a path through the ruins, 
ducking under low doorways and pacing down long avenues of trees, 
and came to a square, the largest yet, bare of any plants at all. They 
stepped out onto clean black glass.

Obsidian rubble lay piled along the base of the walls. In the 
centre of the smooth black floor rose a silver machine. Cylindrical, a 
giant beer keg, tarnished but undamaged by time or weather, it 
radiated a sense of monstrous power barely contained. The air was 
filled with the high whine of it's spin, directionless, as though the air 
itself was stressed and ready to break. A bright star glowed at one 
end, and as they followed the bent figure closer they felt radiated 
heat on their faces. 

Absole showed them a forked stick that lay near the base. It's 
tips were charred black. He took out a cigarette and pinched it in the 
Y, and reached out to hold it near the unbearably brilliant rod of 
light protruding from the end of the generator. In seconds it's tip 
smoked and the paper was brown. 

"The spin. Heats the metal by friction with the air. Very hot. 
Try listening to the hull."

They heard bees, cats purring, and the pain of metal. 

"And this is the counter."

He tapped a tiny slot low on the side of the cylinder, and they 
crouched to see inside. Numbers moved. A row of digits glowed and 
ticked steadily, backwards towards zero.

"Forty two thousand one hundred and six years, twenty nine 
days, six hours and..." he raised his watch and waited for the second 
hand to reach twelve, "thirty one minutes."

"Booom!" intoned Lang, and the old man smiled like a skull. 


Everyone knew, and left the region to ruin. The blast would kill 
everything and utterly destroy all buildings still standing for 
hundreds of miles. Levinfield would be no more. There was no 
reason to move, Ground Zero was as safe as any other place. Nothing 
was going to survive. The time was long to come, but people don't 
like to think about their ancestors madnesses, or the ruin of all their 
work, even when it happens long after their death. 


"Most of the power is going to waste." said the old man. "The 
scuttlers don't draw much, and I use even less. It's just wasting it all, 
invisible rays of power are disappearing into space even as we 
speak. Except for the residue. That'll be a sight to see."

"Unless we disarm it."

Absole looked at him in surprise.

"We've tried, many times. I've read the history. The Lottery 
Combine, during the last peak, tried for a long time, but they couldn't 
even damage the casing, couldn't move it or even scratch it. It gets 
harder with age."

"Maybe next time they will, or the time after that."

"Somehow I don't think that's likely. You know, whoever built 
it, I think it was their joke. A cruel joke on lazy children. We assume 
our eager offspring will find a way to solve the problems of the past, 
but this problem gets harder with age. No, I think it will remain until 
the last, and that will really clear the rubble. Maybe a new beginning 
will break us out of our Cycle."


He lead them back to the bike, stopping by his hammock for 
something.

"This is something you'll need." he said, holding it out to Lang. 
It was a map, creased and worn, an old surveyors map of the forest. 
"Have you got one like this?"

"Kind of. I tried to find one in the Utilities offices but it was 
insane. They have maps of power, gas, sewage, water lines, telephone 
networks, but it was a nightmare. I saw madmen burrowing through 
layers of paper charts of revisions and re-revisions, trying to match 
one to another. They said continental drift had to be factored into the 
old ones, and the proper motion of stars to correct surveying figures. 
Erosion, precession of the equinoxes, and the movement of the sun. 
All the changes of time. Researchers running everywhere struggling 
with obsolete measures, computer languages, tape cassettes and 
discs, obscure tongues and terminology that had changed and 
changed again; wandering through rooms of silent computers with 
unearthed memory cartridges in their hands, trying them in this slot 
and that, hoping to find one that fits so they can switch it on and 
hope it works and can access charts of five-thousand-year-old steam 
lines. I could barely stand to watch."

"Even the recent ones you'll find in the city are dubious, I 
wouldn't trust them. This one is accurate. It's a copy of the last real 
survey of the forest, taken just at the end of the last business 
culture, when they considered pushing a rail line through. No-one 
would work on the project though, but the map survived. Bring it 
back, when you return."

They walked away, watched by the old man, a scuttler perched 
on either shoulder.


The arrow flew straight and true, through the birds heart.

RADIANT BIRD


Lang raised his quarry by the arrow that pierced it. Wings 
trailed loose from the sides, releasing glowing dust in a rain of 
colours. There was nothing dangerous about it at all. 

"Shit!'

The bow had been properly tested, though. The bow was clean. 
It had no curses or blessings, as he had feared. The hunting head 
twisted easily off the arrow's tip and he slid the still-bright body 
from the shaft, leaving it lying where it dropped like a fragment of 
rainbow. No one eats parrot. 

On he stumbled, absently wiping blood from the arrow and 
searching for a piece of flat ground. No fire tonight. Tomorrow he 
would remember to search for wood while he walked. 


Later, he pitched his tent in one of the few glades, where a tree 
had fallen decades before and the canopy let enough light through 
for grass to grow. It was full night. All around was muttering, 
chanting, glowing confusion. Great toadstools rose slowly through leaf 
litter, caps a dim blue phosphorescent haze. Flying centipedes drifted 
past and brushed his shoulders. 

Above the trees the night was alive. Spiders swung across 
abyssal gaps in the branches to string their traps. Some blew fine 
mesh balloons and drifted towards the sky. Their hairy bodies swung 
beneath, arms outstretched for tiny bats and night flying 
hummingbirds that fed on the sweet nectar slime-molds trailed 
behind as they crawled along branches. A full moon silvered the hills 
and valleys of this country of leaves. 

Lang lay inside his tent reading by flashlight, a prehistory of 
spaceflight, wishing he could see the crowded sky.


"Recent discoveries in the Lagrange points suggest that even 
earlier cultures had settlements there. Structures believed to belong 
to a culture that predates what is generally known as the First Stone 
Age have been found, although some authorities suggest that dating 
techniques are confused by long exposure to cosmic rays. The general 
rate of change in processed metals in space may be increased vastly 
by brief bursts of high energy radiation from supernovae, and there 
is even belief that some of the artifacts made close orbits through the 
atmosphere and were heated by friction before being captured by 
the stability of the Lagrange orbits. 

Nonetheless, these structures are obviously human, but belong 
to no known era of space travel. They suggest temples, rather like 
the Meltingpot temples, which were looted of their gold by Sixteenth 
Machine Age astronauts. Consisting of the remains of what was once 
outer shells, and some internal corridors and compartments, they are 
mostly bare of machinery. The basic structure is ceramic, and the 
usual alloys are only used for fittings. What are presumed to be 
sleeping quarters, racks of piping fringed with rags of cotton that 
may have formed stretcher beds, have been found. The airlocks cycle 
into rooms filled with murals, depicting the structure itself, whole, 
surrounded by ornately decorated craft. For the most part the craft 
are orbit-to-orbit, devoid of wing structures and too flimsy to 
tolerate atmosphere, though there are a few which may have been 
robust enough to survive re-entry. Amongst the attendant vehicles 
surrounding the habitat in these murals are fantastic creatures, 
apparently living in the vacuum and surrounded by tiny suited 
figures conveying food to their mouths. Like many mythological 
creatures these display the usual chimera combination of body parts; 
their tails similar to zbats, rows of spider wings, bodies of whales and 
giant squid, and human facial features, though their mouths sprout 
strange claw like mandibles, and they are equipped with engines 
emerging from their otherwise organic bodies, probably fusion drives 
as suggested by the tell-tale exhausts."

It was a good book. It put him to sleep.


His dreams reached back to youth, inspired by the book; winter 
days avoiding school, lying paralyzed with boredom in abandoned 
concrete pipes, exploring webby offices of forgotten beaurocracies, 
inches of dust on desks swirls as he passes, documents decayed by 
time. Streams of rainwater leaked from the ceiling, running down 
dangling phone cables. Time, time, everywhere he turned was time. 

He is twelve, digging a hole in the cellar to hide pornographic 
magazines. Footsteps move back and forth on the boards above, his 
parents in the kitchen. Wires and pipes crumble before the spade. 

A crunch, and the earth drops away into bottomless black.

Eagerly he chews away at the edges, stopping to shine a torch 
down at the growing pile of debris on the floor below. As soon as the 
hole is big enough he drops a rope through and clambers down. 

It's a tunnel or a large pipe, running off into the blackness on 
either side. Stainless steel walls coated in white dust. One side is 
bare, the other crowded with a tangle of pipes, conduits, wires, and 
bulkheads covered in meters. 

He is amazed. Not so much that the place exists but that he 
doesn't recognize it. Like most children he spent much of his time 
underground, exploring the secret world. He knows all the tunnels in 
the area, and this has escaped him till now. 

Hours of walking down the slightly curving tunnel brings him 
back to the start. It's a circle, a ring. He climbs the rope and lays 
boards over the hole. 

Later, his parents discover his secret and call in authorities. 
Universities send academics. They recognize the design; a particle 
accelerator. Twelve thousand years old. Perfectly preserved. If 
someone wanted too they could start the machine working again, but 
no one does, so it's left to be forgotten again, by all but Lang. 


Three AM, the forest was silent, even the birds had stopped 
talking and settled down to sleep. Mist filtered through the trees 
from the sky above. Grey and spectral, glowing with diffuse light. 

In his tent Lag turned in his sleep again and again. The ground 
was hard under the canvas sheet. Rocks dug into his back. 

Lang turned over and groaned loudly. He was answered from 
outside the tent.

"MAAAAP!"

It took one long second for him to come fully awake, one 
adrenaline charged heartbeat, and he sat shivering in the centre of 
the tent desperately turning his head this way and that, seeking the 
source of danger.

"Maaap. Maaap! Map?"

There was no protection in the tent. He grabbed for the bow, 
which lay unstrung besides him, forgetting the arrows still in his 
pack, and swiveled until he could unzip the flaps and peer through. 
Now the mist was at ground level and surrounded him in grey.

"Maap!"

Every cry stopped his heart and set it going again twice as fast 
as before. Now he was fully hyped, almost angry, except a cold sweat 
of fear shone on his arms and his balls were climbing into his 
stomach. Desperately he tried to see through the fog.

There! White, a flash of pale white between the trees.

Summoning every particle of stupid desperate courage, he 
burst from the tent and made directly for where he had seen the 
apparition. He caught another glimpse, clearer this time, a patch of 
white in the fog that moved before him, running away faster than he 
could chase. Panting, trembling with shock, he stopped and watched 
it disappear into the mist. 

Lang turned and slowly retraced his steps to the tent. Lay 
down inside, shivering with shock. All his denials came back with 
ironic force, and he ran through Dake's warning, his recording and his 
stories. 

"There's a fucking ghost out there!"

ONWARDS


A day: twenty miles, more or less. No way of measuring 
distance. Nothing changed; the trees remained the same, same 
distance apart, same species. Only the lichen and fungal growths 
showed variety in their colours and forms.

He crossed old roads sunk in weeds and blown leaves. Late in 
the afternoon there was a cloverleaf intersection, where four broad 
highways met. Of course he couldn't help himself, and had to walk 
the twisting ramps to the top.

Here he could look into the crowns of the trees, see the way 
they were shaped. Here the face of a huge bear stared straight at 
him, there was a crow, and there a woman's hea