kroth:  the drop

6: revolt

Distant voices on the move, and a creak of metal on stone, were accompanied by a flicker of light from the direction of the mouth of the cavern. 
    The source of the light was not immediately visible to us, for by this time we were far enough in, that the cavern entrance was completely out of sight;: our tasks had drawn us into the body of the planet for several hundred yards in a gradual curve.
    “Platform riders,” breathed Jane. “Watch now.”
    Presently, into our view came four brightly phosphorescent globes, glaring on each pole at the four corners of a moving platform. One hulking Gonomong walked beside each pole, grasping it with one hand. By their combined efforts they easily pushed the contraption along. Up top, on the platform, were three chairs placed in a line, with a man seated upon each.
    The middle figure was dressed in a richly embroidered blue-and-gold tabard, contrasting with the plain shirts and shorts of the others, but I could have told by his posture alone, by his air of ease and confidence, that he had to be the Prince. He was the most human in appearance of the group.  His arms, though muscular, were no more so than an Earthly body-builder’s, and lacked the hulking exaggeration of the ordinary “commoner” Gonomong physique. Another difference was that his face sported a well-preened Kaiser Wilhelm style moustache, whereas all other Gonomong I had ever seen were clean-shaven.
    “Stop,” he called out to his attendants – in English.
    The platform creaked to a halt. 
    Prince Rapannaf stood up, strode to the edge of the platform, stepped off... and peered in the direction of Jane and me. 
    “Pfworr, it stinks around here!” he sniffed. “Hey, you two – come over here, will you? Come into the light, eh?” 
    I took Jane’s arm; I felt it shaking.
    “Come on,” I whispered to her.  “This is what you have been waiting for, isn’t it?” 
    I brought her forward with me and halted a couple of yards from the Prince. His plummy English accent might have been comically reassuring, but my blood ran decidedly cold. 
    “Fancy a ride?” asked Rapannaf. “Rest from drudgery, eh?”
    “Thank you, sir, that would be welcome,” I said.
    “Jolly good. You can replace Mostang and Gfannab for a while. Won’t do them any harm to walk, eh?” And with a finger-flicker he told his two seated attendants to get off the platform. With glum expressions they obeyed.
    Jane and I came forward; meanwhile the two front pole-pushers stepped to meet us and held out their arms to frisk us. We submitted to this – I with resentment on Jane’s behalf which I did not dare to express. They took my scraper-tool from me and threw it aside. All that was left to me, to assassinate the Prince with, were my puny bare hands, and His Highness was doubtless aware that he had nothing to fear from them. Jovially he went back to his platform chair, waving us to the seats on either side of him.
    As we took our new places he asked us our names. Jane seemed almost to swoon at the honour, which increased my pity for her. Rapannaf in my view was a popinjay at best, a royal conman at worst. In fact I became afraid of being conned by the idea that I might gain influence through proximity to power, might channel it to my purposes, might achieve something good for us slaves, so that their hopes in the Prince were fulfilled after all. I warned myself, I internally cried no, no, no to that stupid hope. Doubtless a high-born Gonomong might have affable impulses now and then – but as for real consideration...no, I’d be daft to place any reliance on that. Here was a fellow who must spend his entire life surrounded by underlings, flatterers, toadies anxious to gratify his every whim. I dreaded being taken for a sucker by some show of condescending princely charm, or indeed some real display of temporary generosity. 
    “Er, before we start off, tell me, er, Duncan,” the voice oozed at me, “have you been to see the Oracle Root?”
    “Not yet, sir.”
    He gave a signal to one of the men at the corner-poles. The platform began once more to move at walking speed. It carried us deeper into the cavern system, while the two attendants plodded behind.
    The Prince asked, “Where are you from, Duncan?”
    “Originally from a village called Guthtin, in Upland, sir. Later on, I lived in Savaluk, Topland.”
    “And you, Jane?”
    In a small voice she replied, “I was born a slave here in Udrem, sir, but my parents came from Wensib, a town –”
    “I see, I see. Well, now, Jane, and you, Duncan, I want to ask you both a favour. Ha! that surprises you, doesn’t it? The Prince asks the slaves a favour! Ho, ho.”
    I might truthfully have told him, that although I had not foreseen the particular twist which the conversation took, yet I had expected some game to be played with us. My judgement yet again was swift and sure: this was a spoiled, dilettante trifler. Yet, in an attempt to be fair, I allowed for the theoretical possibility that he might have a certain degree of benign interest in the lower orders.
    “Yours to command, sir,” I said.
    “It’s just a very simple favour,” he explained. “I want you both, if I should make mistakes in my English, not to be shy of correcting me. Can you undertake that?”
    I repressed a burble of laughter. “Right-oh, sir. You’re doing fine so far, I can truthfully say. Your English seems fluent.”
    “Terrific,” said the Prince. He looked supremely happy for a few seconds, gazing about in serene self-satisfaction. Then he goggled at me with a sudden frown and said, “Er, that is a right use of the word, ‘terrific’?”
    “In more ways than one.” Oy – careful, you fool, I said to myself. 
    “Exactly what do you mean by that, Duncan?” inquired Rapannaf, mildly.
    I looked him straight in the eye.
    “Frankly, sir,” I said, “you scare me – for a number of reasons.” And while I said this – while I looked him in the eye – I defocussed my own eyes.
    “Really?” I heard him say.
    “Consider (if your Highness would be so kind) the reality of my position,” I went on, keeping him hooked on listening to my elaborate diction and sentence structure, as I gambled that I might get away with a great deal, provided that I could maintain a tempting flow for this language-absorbed Prince. “Inasmuch as I have never met royalty before, and do not know where you are taking me, I feel, simultaneously, great caution on my own behalf, and a heavy responsibility on behalf of my fellow-slaves, to make the best impression I can...” 
    And all the while what I was really saying was: “If you want us to believe in you, be straight with us.” I am willing to be convinced by deeds. Not by a downpour of pseudo-familiarity which merely emphasizes the distance between us. 
    At the end of my speech I re-focussed and the Prince’s expression swam back into clarity to reveal delight at my language: I had gambled well.
    “Great stuff. Just what I want to practise on. I shall make you talk and talk and talk…”
    Oops, I thought: please don’t ask me what I did in the war... Had he been briefed on me? Might he catch me out if I tried to fib? And if I did not fib, if I babbled unthinkingly truthful stuff, might I sound as though I had been a spy...? 
    The trouble was, I had been a spy. 
    (A completely unsuccessful one, but, come to think of it, the authorities might not know that. What information might I have discovered and somehow relayed up-Slope? – Altogether too many mights.)
    Fortunately, my royal interlocutor seemed uninterested in either war or espionage. Perhaps he was happy to assume that I had been captured in battle. More likely he didn’t care one way or the other, so long as I went on spouting English. (Jane, tongue-tied, was comparatively useless to him in this regard.) 
    Also, he wanted to hear from me about The North. He admitted: “I am not, unfortunately, a well-travelled man. In recent times the Rip-Mig has given northward tourism a bad name amongst the better sort. Those of us who eschew” (he relished the word), “who eschooo the vulgarity of foreign conquest have judged it necessary to stay at home. So tell me more of your life in Shoo Guneeng Gheeng.” 
    Shoo Guneeng Gheeng – Topland viewed as Heaven – Careful, careful, I warned myself again. I must not blunder in the thicket of religion and politics in a slave-owning society... The doubts must have showed on my face – on the Prince’s there grew an intelligent smirk.
    “Call it Topland, if you prefer.”
    “Yes, I would prefer that, sir.”
    “You look worried, Duncan.”
    Shouldn’t a mouse be worried when the air smells of cat? “I – er – felt –” Don’t be too frank. But say something. “...Felt you had handed me a hot potato.”
    “Ah!” he hooted. “Very good idiom, that!” 
    I was, all things considered, doing well. 
    The flow of dialogue about Upland continued as the platform wended its way deeper into the planet’s bowels. I saw no reason not to give Rapannaf as much information as he wanted about daily life in my home country – my Krothan home country, that is; I had not yet worked out whether it would be a brilliant or a stupid idea to tell him about my unusually sharp memories of Earth. It was an exhausting conversation for me. In fact it was like having to carry on several conversations at once. The real one was spoken out loud, while inside my head ran all my hypothetical forecasts of what would be safe to say.
    Meanwhile another pressure upon my attention was the increasing disgust and aversion I felt for this Prince. For as we progressed through the cavern we encountered groups of working slaves who stopped at the sight of us and variously blanched, sighed, whispered with hope; I could tell, I could picture their love and trust for him whom they thought of as their imminent saviour; my heart was wrung on their behalf, for the disappointment that must lie in store for them.
    Rapannaf did not speak to any of them, did not even wave in greeting, but that did not matter, for the moment. Faith wasn’t snubbed that quickly; indeed, I could easily formulate in my own mind the arguments his believers would surely be using amongst themselves, to explain his seeming indifference to them at this stage. The Prince is just reconnoitring. The Prince is biding his time. We will, we must, trust the Prince.
    It was against this sad background that I kept up my flow of English chatter to please His Highness. I was rambling on about the visit I had paid to the Lake of Nistoom on my first day in Savaluk, when I began to notice a moderate increase in the light ahead and a change in the formation of the cavern. 
    It seemed we were approaching an edge, beyond which yawned a much larger space. 
    As we got closer to it my speech faltered. Rapannaf did not comment upon my lapse into silence. The platform wheels creaked slower than before. I became aware of a low gurgling, like a wheezing rattling breath of the planet itself, that throbbed all around me every twenty seconds or so. Ahead, running from lower right to upper left of our field of view, a diagonal pipe became discernible, about as thick as a man is tall. 
    When we drew closer to the edge, with more of a view of the lower floor beyond, I saw the nether portion of that pipe lying looped on that floor. It emerged from solid rock some way to the side. The “pipe” must, I realized, be an enormous root. As such, it was acceptable to me – just about acceptable. But then I noted the queue of Gonomong that shuffled towards it. Gazing at them as they approached a kind of kink in the loop at a point just before it rose out of their reach, I sensed fear in their slope-shouldered gait, and the fear communicated itself to me. I took the decision to defocus, like when, as a little boy, I had shut my eyes during a clip of Plague of the Zombies. Then – hesitation – I’m not a little boy now – so wouldn’t it be better to look? Eyes focussed once more, I saw what was happening although I did not understand it. One of the Gonomong was staggering away from the root. The next Gonomong in the queue stepped forward, fell on his knees and plunged his head towards the root. It seemed to me as though somehow his head went in. This time I did more than defocus: I jerked my eyes away.
    Prince Rapannaf said gravely, “Here is your hot potato...”
    My glance, which had alighted on his face, whirled back to the scene below. 
    I had to look. The fact that had to be faced was that the person who had plunged his head through some membrane into the root had pulled it out again, spattered with blood. Now this fellow lurched off to the right, to a sort of bower. Promptly he lay down to have his head bathed by a slender young woman in short sleeveless blue uniform. 
    For a speechless moment I stared at that nurse. 
    I saw her clearly enough, for the bower where she worked was lit by phosphorescence. My entire self was ignited by longing. At the same time I was shot through with pain, emotion pain but still pain, as though the mere gleam of four elegant limbs, a frequent enough sight on any sunny street in England, blazed as a white-hot symbol of all my lost life, my lost future. And next moment it became personal – I recognized her. The girl’s face was oblique to my view, turned downwards, but that delicate jawline, those black ringlets and poise combined to tell me that everything could be different now. Everything had better be different now that I had found Elaine Swinton captive a second time.
    I heard the Prince grumble, “My turn, I suppose. Heck, the things I do for Udrem.” 
    Now more than ever it was vital that I know the moods of power. The suggestion of a snigger in the Prince’s words made me tear my eyes away from Elaine. I saw Rapannaf pulling a transparent plastic hood over his head. He winked at me and said, “Or rather – the things I seem to do for Udrem. This is cheating, I know, but you won’t say a word about it, will you?”
    “Er, no sir.”
    “No one will comment. It’s an unspoken rule of society. Everyone knows that I’m not into this sort of thing. Eh?” He glared at his attendants. “Agreed?”
    No response. They turned their eyes away from him. 
    Rapannaf went on, “I can’t be expected to ‘consult’ the Oracle Root for real.” Still no one spoke. How could they be so slow in perceiving what he wanted them to say?
    Yet the Prince seemed mildly disappointed rather than surprised, as though he knew full well that in this spot he had to contend with a higher authority. “Ah well, don’t worry,” he half-smiled, “I haven’t forgotten that I do have to go through the motions.” Then he turned confidentially to me. “At least it’ll get me stroked by that luscious-looking nurse... Wait here.”
    Transfixed by helpless ignorance I did nothing but sit and watch as Rapannaf descended a flight of steps into the cavern of the Root, sauntered to the head of the queue, pulled his hood tighter, crouched by the Root and plunged his head forward for the quickest possible in-out “consultation”. Then he went away to the bench at the side, where Elaine sat ready to minister to those who had “consulted”. Here he pulled his hood off and threw it away. As far as I could tell from where I watched, he was clean and un-bloodied, but nonetheless he proffered his head to Elaine for the official wash and the stroking care. 
    You’re enjoying that, aren’t you – so, in return, get her out of there, I muttered. Just bring her back with you. As if you would. As if my wishes counted for anything in this Universe or any other.
    I thought hopelessly: If only I had pleaded with him before he went. 
    Now it was the turn of the next man in the queue to be nursed, so the Prince stood up to retrace his steps, and as he moved, Elaine made to follow. 
    I sprang out of my chair. Yes, my eyes were not being deceived. Elaine had moved to follow Rapannaf – and he must have heard her steps for I saw him turn to look back at her – 
    I caught my breath, expecting to hear a curt command that she stay on the job, but instead the opposite happened. Rapannaf beckoned her forward faster. He must have ordered her to come with him! My silent wish had been granted. She was being brought to join us. In my spellbound state I walked forward to the floor-edge, in wondering delight, with the thought that I might greet her as she came up the steps.
    Junk thoughts, the kind which do their best to occupy most of my waking life, crowded upon me thicker than usual. Here she comes, she looked up, why didn’t she smile, didn’t she recognize me? I made an excuse for her: the upper cavern was dimmer and so her eyes would need time to adjust. Another excuse: I had walked forward out of the range of the lights on the wheeled platform, so my face must be in darkness, so it was unreasonable to expect her to rush up to me and fling her arms around me straightaway.
    Meanwhile the Prince, bounding up the steps, called out: “Jane!”
    “Yes, sir?” quavered the slave girl, who had not left her chair on the platform.
    “I have decided to swap you over with Elaine, here. Go down there and do the best you can, will you? Go down, there’s a good girl.” 
    I had to watch her stumble miserably off the platform, as her supposed saviour dismissed her with a few extra words: “You’ll find a spare uniform. You don’t need to know much... Our heroes, after they receive their inspiration, need cold water and a rub, that’s all.”
    Jane came past where I stood. I saw horror on her face but I told myself it was a social fear, nothing more, like the fear felt by a sensitive child who is about to be sent away from home. She’d be all right down among the gurgling roots... Elaine had been all right, after all, during her spell of duty there. 
    Rapannaf and Elaine, coming up from below, passed me as they went in the other direction.
    “Come on,” said the Prince to me, “we’re finished here.”
    “One moment, sir,” I said. I hurriedly trotted a few paces, reached, took Jane’s arm and whispered to her, “I’m sorry it happened this way –”
    She interrupted gently, “You had better stay quiet, Duncan. Don’t keep him waiting.” Then she went on down the steps without turning her head, while I stood enduring a moment of shame. I could not help it, I welcomed Rapannaf’s swap, and I was full of a ridiculous urge to micromanage everything. One false move and I might find myself disqualified from the jackpot....
    On the platform, Elaine was now seated on the Prince’s left and he was leaning sideways towards her as some soothing murmur waffled through his moustache. I suppose it was fortunate for me that he was thus occupied during the moments I had delayed him. I realized I had better get a move on, and as I plonked myself down on the other side of him I chanced to experience one moment of eye contact with Elaine. 
    Her jaw sagged just a fraction. Then, calm quickly closed over her face. Well did I remember that vapid smoothness which had so often tantalized me in my long-gone schooldays on Earth. Such beauty, such shallowness. On this special occasion, surely she ought to have goggled in amazement. No, wait, I wasn’t being fair. Our situation was utterly different now. Her capacity for emotion must have awoken by this time. Only, rather than display it, she was – she must be – sensibly trying, as hard as I was, to keep cool.
    Rapannaf said, “All aboard? Righty-ho, let’s get out of this dismal hole. Don’t know about you people, but I’ve just about had enough of it.”
    The platform jerked into motion. First, the four pole-pushers wheeled us round; then they began to propel us back the way we had come. 
    The blood fairly fizzed in my veins as I realized that Elaine and I were going to be given a free ride out of the caverns. Fraud though he probably was, the Prince had cracked the situation wide open... 
    For a while I continued to sit in a daze at the turn which my fortunes had taken. All right, no doubt we were still slaves. Nothing had been said about freeing us, nor did I expect anything in that line, but, we were getting out...
    I became aware that our royal rescuer had lowered his voice almost to the level of a purr. I itched to overhear, peer round him, interrupt... to repeat my eye contact with Elaine. No – far too risky – insanely risky. I had better learn to be patient. 
    In reply to some soft question breathed through the moustache, Elaine launched into an account of her former life in Upland.
    Her bland voice recited details of her address, her school, her father’s occupation, her mother’s illness. It was all spoken in a demure, placid monotone, but, thought I, there was no danger that it would bore the Prince, oh no, definitely not, what with the girl’s good looks and the further advantage that anything to do with Upland was apt to fascinate Rapannaf. 
    He spoke again, with his knack of directing his voice to her alone so that I could hardly make out his words despite my position sitting right next to him. Left out of the conversation, I mentally flailed about, in a vain effort to make sense of all that I had seen and to identify the next parcel of trouble before it walloped me. My capacity did not match my urge to understand. The weird spectacle at the Oracle Root had quite defeated my brain. No matter how hard I tried to invent a theory to explain it, I could not even manage to formulate a stupid one – I drew a complete blank, and rather than continue my efforts to guess in the dark, I turned my attention back to Elaine’s cosy chat with the Prince. For this was the more immediate headache. 
    Not that there was anything mysterious in the fact that he preferred to talk to her rather than to me – certainly, in his place, I knew which of us I’d rather receive my English lessons from; but that was the rub: 
    Was I about to become surplus to requirements? 
    Would I soon be ditched as Jane had been?
    I then heard Elaine say in a clear voice:
    “By the way, sir, I want to thank you for finding my old friend and including him in your party.”
    A moment’s silence. A double-take? Then:
    “De-lighted to be of service, my dear.” After this most hearty declaration the Prince turned to me and said, “This young lady says she knows you.”
    “We come from the same village in Upland, sir.”
    “How amazingly coincidental. You will have nostalgic memories to share, about your former free lives, your lost native land, the many dear scenes which you are doomed never to see again. Eh?”
    “Well expressed, sir,” I said stonily. 
    “I am sure that Miss Swinton will benefit from such reminiscence,” concluded the Prince.
    Well, now at least I knew my place. As a hanger-on.

                                                   *

We got off the platform when it halted close to the main entrance of the caverns, but instead of going out that way the Prince led us to a side-door in the wall which he unlocked with a key from his purse, thence into a small curved passage, then out – genuinely, finally out, to face the glorious brightness of the forest.
    Yes, “brightness”. Udrem, with its dim gloom of branches and leaves, was bright to me then.  My sight lapped up every filtered trace of the marvellous light of day. I had done it, I had got lucky, I had got out.  Just for that moment I revelled in the simple fact. Score one positive point – “out” was not “in” – and for some seconds I really felt free.  Thus my simple mind blossomed in the light; my ego gratified as though I had masterminded an escape. 
    We stood on a small ledge, balcony-sized though without a railing, and faced into the vast green dimension with the planet’s surface at our backs.  I meanwhile gloried in my surge of irrational self-respect.
    “Pfworr,” exhaled Prince Rapannaf, venting cavern fumes from his lungs.  “Don’t know how you stood it so long. Balaff,” he called out.
    The pole-pushers who had driven the moving platform now sprang to another type of conveyance which, here on his private ledge, awaited his pleasure. 
    Within a couple of minutes he and Elaine and I had taken our places in an arrangement like a three-seat swing. It dangled from six ropes held by men who were balanced on a branch above us. I craned my neck as they sprang forth...  Tarzan would have met his match in these Gonomong.  It was pointless to worry as we were borne through the branch-veined air. With ease we swept through ellipsoid clearings, we skirted denser regions where the ropes might have fouled, we steered past illuminated dwellings and signs, and I never had any doubt that we would arrive safely at our destination. My anxiety focused on what might happen afterwards. 
    The trouble was, the old numb despair had given way to the stinging circulation of hope. Because life seemed open-ended once more, my complete lack of knowledge became almost unendurable. I yearned to ask questions but dared not open my mouth.
    Above and ahead of us, through the maze of branches, we began to discern a blocky shape. The length of a terrace of houses, it was smeared with a fuzzy glow which, as we approached, resolved itself into dozens of lighted windows, and as we drew closer we saw that the structure was built of lopped trunks and trained branches, combined in a regular pattern of contrasts: dead logs athwart living wood. 
    To either side of the entrance, at which our course was aimed, twists of withe flared like eagles’ wings.
    The structure’s floor was not level... and this looked funny to me: imagine going to all that trouble to build a big structure like this and then failing to place it straight.  I smiled to myself: of course the Gonomong had no hope of keeping it level, since it must be impossible to control the slow growth and movement of the trunks and branches which held it in position. The whole thing had tilted up leftwards and down to the front, so that it appeared perceptibly askew, like a mess of boards that had been inexpertly chucked up a tree. 
    Or, one could consider it more respectfully. And as the entrance curtains were drawn aside at our approach, and I realized what I was being drawn into, I did become more respectful – for when faced with the organic splendour of a royal Palace of Udrem it becomes easier to be impressed…  We swung into the orange glow of the foyer; we alighted on a floor that was terraced like a row of paddy fields. I looked around me at a dazzling display of gilded logs and bejewelled branches which poked through panelling at a myriad points.
    The strange rich roughness of the place assaulted my senses and saturated my nerves.  I disliked the look of the courtiers, or palace guards or whoever they were: darkly be-suited hulks who stood silently in the dimmer reaches of the room. I fixed my gaze upon Elaine instead. She also, in a different sense, was too much for me: in the foyer’s brighter light, I suffered the kick of her loveliness which most inconveniently woke my memory of the other girl I had known with the same first name as hers. By that stab of coincidence, memory like a hooligan mugged me just then; memory’s boot kicked my thoughts from this here Elaine Swinton to that there Elaine Dering far out of my reach.  This Elaine (my thoughts ran), with her exasperating beauty which needed to be shaken into life, might get drawn to me by circumstances, and I might win her (assuming that I could outrival a prince), but then what about that Elaine, the one I really loved, and who still visited me in dreams? 
    I couldn’t afford all this right now. 
    I refocused my attention upon Prince Rapannaf, just then bending his brow at a skinny human attendant who had hobbled forward.
    The attendant was knobbly and old – older than Dreaker Choik – and I guessed he was good for nothing much save the repetition of messages. 
    “...So it seems your presence is required, Highness,” he quavered in English. 
    Rapannaf scowled. “So it seems.  Damn.”  He closed his eyes, and swerved head and neck as if easing a cramp. “Olof,” he addressed the slave, “see that these two are looked after.”
    “I understand, Highness.”
    “They must be given what special guests require. Unit 352, Olof. The full treatment.” 
    “Yes, Highness.”
    I might have guessed that the Prince’s house-slaves were chosen for their fluency in English. But then what about his supposed need to practise his command of the language with either Elaine or myself? I ought to have figured it out before: loads of captives must be available who came from English-speaking parts of Kroth, so Elaine and I couldn’t be particularly important in that respect. Of course, Rapannaf might be an obsessive hobbyist who constantly looked for new speakers to experiment on (Unit 352?), in which case I might retain my value perhaps for a few days, after which I would revert to obscure slave status in whatever corner of Udrem he saw fit to plonk me, and as for Elaine, she would be kept (if at all) as a mistress. How could I have ever hoped differently? I had allowed myself to become as much a sucker as my fellow-captives in the Caverns who thought of Rapannaf as a liberator. Unless – unless some other reason existed for him to collect us.
    “Norung, zanodaym,” said a deeper voice, out of the shadows in the further reaches of the foyer. Three of the men there stepped forward. They were hulks draped in rich brown uniform – a kind of pleated jerkin and baggy trousers with holsters on thigh and calf. The middle one, who had spoken, gazed with serene confidence at the Prince, as if in certain expectation of the right answer.
    It felt to me as if the temperature in the foyer instantly sank several degrees.
    The words put the Prince into a cold fury. He gave some biting rejoinder in the same tongue.
    Then he spoke wearily to his house-slave. “Forget what I said, Olof. I must bring them with me.”
    Lastly, he turned to Elaine and me, and with a slight curl of the lip he said, “I am under arrest, it seems, and you are evidence. Sorry about this. You’ll have to follow me closely now.” 
    I had the strong impression that although his “Sorry about this” was addressed to us it was really aimed at the uniformed guards, as an expression of contempt for them and for what they were making him do. 
    I did not speak, nor did Elaine, as we re-emerged from the palace and took our places again in the conveyance which had brought us here. We rode as before, only now we were flanked by the guards who rode with us, hanging on the ropes, as we were borne obliquely upward. 
    Rapannaf had sunk into silence, moodily gazing into the lamplit forest dimension that swayed dimly all around us. No doubt each of us had different reasons for keeping our mouths shut. His was obviously the silence of injured pride, or outraged dignity; mine was the opposite, the shameful silence of fear. My reaction was that of a slave mentality that lets itself be walked over out of fear of irritating the Masters. 
    Or, was it that I needed more information before I might act? 
    Forget that excuse. The bald truth was: fear and strong emotion ruled me. I was awash with it at a time when I ought to have been thinking fast and hard. I had ceased all resistance to the surge of oppressive events. My feelings were of the type that got me nowhere: passion and pity for Elaine; fears for us both; antipathy to Rapannaf, now complicated by the sudden prospect of finding myself on the same side as he, because it seemed we were fellow-prisoners...
    If you can’t beat all these wodges of emotion, join ’em. Wring some sense out of them if you can. Make use of them. 
    All very well, but were I to find myself definitely on the same side as the Prince, I could not imagine myself trusting him as one ought to trust a comrade. And it does help – if you’re going to have to do something – to be able to imagine it.
    My mouth opened; my lips and tongue formed a sound.
    Elaine looked at me, and I looked at her, both in surprise. I had spoken the silly phrase “easy-peasy”. From what deep well of nonsense had my utterance arisen? 
    But actually, I understood... 
    It’s such a simple, seductive idea: that if you’re on the way to your doom, the very fact that you are on the way there means that you are not yet there, which means you’re absolutely, so far, free of it; for never mind what’s going to happen, it’s not happening yet!
    Of course the respite will probably only last a few minutes. I’m not on a lavishly equipped expedition so the journey won’t be a long one. Yet the great thing is to crunch and enjoy the meltable-in-the-mouth moment, mmmm… the delicious fact of not being there yet, the moments of prolonged life, of being as yet unharmed – and so forth, all kinds of bulging pockets of exaggerated nonsense, perhaps mutated relics of The Slant (because once the mind has been taught to play the game of “adjust” with regard to the Slope, it will play it with regard to other things too). Or, to look on the bright and merciful side, I could classify the nonsense as a fortunate whimsy, a nice frolicky windfall of peace. Windfall minutes: accept them, and live them, for why should I not enjoy the not-being-there-yet? Let me revel in my motion among the branches and leaves which extend in all directions, as if I were free.
    Only then I sniffed and smelled smoke, evidence of burning, and this put an abrupt end to my ridiculous holiday of the spirit. It was time to watch for a turn in the graph. Ahead of us, more and more stumps of branches could now be seen to jut and quiver in front of hazier grey. The small mottling of that greyness suggested perspective, the further side of some gap. We were about to encounter an unusual volume of space, a cavity in the forest of Udrem. 
    At the same time I became aware that our little group was not alone. I looked over my shoulder at a further company of Gonomong in dark uniform, who now crouched and leaped and swung expertly behind us.  We had been joined by a group much larger than ours, that shepherded us towards the gouge of emptiness, the broken-edged wound in the jungle.
    Prince Rapannaf began to mutter furiously. He fired out words in a mixture of Gonomong and English. “Falastomoon… the ruin of us all... snang allafomm… Damn it – the Moyt will plank us for this…”
    Without understanding, Elaine and I shrank from his vehemence.  She couldn't be expected to understand, and as for me, I as usual preferred to be slow on the uptake.
    We were brought forward until we had to stop, at the very edge of the Hole.
    A deep voice, to which I did not dare to raise my eyes, commanded us to dismount. Rapannaf, Elaine and I equally hastened to obey. We stumbled off our dangling conveyance onto a narrow platform. It was hardly more than a stub of a branch that jutted close to the emptiness, and it was occupied by no one else. For some moments I did not see who had issued the command.  I got the main point, which was that we were supposed to look ahead; and so we looked.
    The void that gaped before us was perhaps fifty yards wide horizontally but in its vertical dimension it went on up and down without visible end: it was a tubular passage ripped through the forest by some huge impactor that had crashed down from above and had been deflected at a minor angle away from the equatorial face of Kroth, annihilating all in its path. I immediately felt an enormous sense of guilt, as though I personally had caused the disaster. And perhaps I had.
    With gentle regret, Prince Rapannaf, in a tone which breathed finality, said to Elaine and me:
    “It was the Moyt, himself, who spoke just now. Keep your eyes down unless he addresses you personally, in which case you may raise them.”
    The title Moyt resonated in my mind like Czar, Shah, Kaiser and Sultan all rolled into one.
    Half a dozen of the hefty guardsmen who had been following us now crowded onto the platform with us and grasped hold of our arms.  One guardsman held each arm. They turned us part-way.  Now we were forced to stand facing in a direction towards the other side of a bay in the edge of the Hole.  On that other side, another promontory-platform, some yards to the right of ours, was crowded with tall resplendent figures.  My eyes glimpsed them, and then tried to avoid them as, from that other platform, again came the commanding voice.  It tore into us, lashing us like a surge from a furious sea. 
    I understood one word: Rapannaf. I glanced sidelong at the Prince to see how well he was bearing up under the reprimand. I could not avoid guesses as to its meaning: You have associated with slaves; you have tempted them with hopes.
    After a while, despite Rapannaf’s warning that I should not lift my eyes to the Moyt, the temptation to steal a glimpse became impossible to resist.  Just for a second I risked it. I do not suppose that I gained a realistic impression; my visual perception of the ruler was so harshly distorted by the impact of his voice and personality that the image of a Gonomong hulk was superimposed upon the outline I had actually seen – an outline which, I suppose, was human enough in form, although powerfully built and taller than average. But to me he came across as a monster.  That was the greater truth, for my cringe was sounder than my logic.  It was the drenching royal anger, aimed at the Prince but spattering over all who stood with him, that hurled claws at me in its spate; outstretched words, shrieking in my guilty imagination: you, Duncan Wemyss, caused the big rock to fall. I was from the North, after all. I must have had a hand in the dislodgement of Glorious Glondeem. 
    Well, could this Hole actually have been recently caused by that very same rock?  
    Inconceivable – the timing was way out.  The dislodgement had happened months ago.  This crash, if it was a consequence, was “old hat” by now.  Unless… could it have been delayed – lodged somewhere part way down, then dislodged again... or rather (this was vastly more probable) had it caused some instability that led to the dislodgement of another rock so that at one remove, or several removes, that had caused this? Whichever the explanation, it all came round again to my guilt… for I was a Krothan now. I felt as a Krothan, believed as a Krothan, that the great sin of all sins was to cause an avalanche.
    My thoughts were interrupted. I was jostled. I tightened my grip on the hand-branch. A man had been pushed onto the platform beside me. 
    Rapannaf said, “Hah. Dreaker Mnak. The linguist.” 
    My heart sank further as I deduced that I was about to be questioned. And the authorities didn’t trust Rapannaf to translate for them.  That, likewise, was a bad sign.
    Dreaker Mnak, elderly and portly, wobbled as he bowed low to the ruler and said, “Traireer, Moyt Ganafoon,” which I rendered naturally as, “Long Live Moyt Ganafoon.”
    Next came another blast of sentences from the royal mouth. Again I had to endure a deluge of language which I did not understand and which must closely concern my fate. My passivity was more than frustrating, it was close to maddening.  In my panic I forgot, or ignored, the Prince’s advice not to look up. I raised my eyes in a desperate reflex and for the second time dared to gaze at Moyt Ganafoon, ruler of Udrem.  The great man glowered from the platform on the neighbouring promontory perhaps ten yards away around the arc of the Hole’s edge.  Standing next to him – I now noted - was a man I had seen before, months ago in Slantland. I could not mistake the SS-officer-style handsomeness of Prince Nostemb. That sight completed my roster of Udrem’s royal family; I had heard that the ruler had two sons and now I had them both in my field of view, the younger, Rapannaf, and the elder, Nostemb.
    Dreaker Mnak nudged me. “The Moyt is asking,” he said, “if you were in Jummudge at the time of the murkburr.”
    My mind chattered to itself:
    “Don’t admit it. Suppress all mention of it.  Jummudge and the murkburr. Nostemb and the captives in that hall. Precisely true though it all is – I remember it all exactly, but no, don’t admit it, don’t let them get you with their trick question, they can’t possibly know, can’t – unless I let them – trick me into admitting that it was I who carried out released those logs, I who carried that rescue of the captives at Jummudge. For there’s a good reason why they can’t possibly know. It is, that I never really came into the presence of Nostemb. That time I thought I had broken in and challenged him, it was only my private illusion, hypothetically constructed by the murkburr. And afterward, when they were all rushing out, none of them saw me.”
    I was immensely pleased with myself for working this out.
    I also figured just what to say.
    (When will I ever learn?)
    “I dreamed once,” I answered, “that I saw the Prince in a storm, but it cannot have been true.”
    Nostemb replied, in dryly perfect English, “I also saw you, on the same occasion, and that cannot have been true, either.”
    I must have looked a sight then, as the flesh on my face sagged and my little spark of self-congratulation was snuffed out.
    Of course I should have guessed, anyone with any sense ought to have guessed that the murkburr illusion worked both ways.  Nostemb had seen me, in exactly the same unreal but effective way that I had seen him. And the reason he had done nothing about it on that occasion was, simply, that he had had more important things to attend to.
    Apparently, that was also the case now. For, instead of following up his devastating put-down, Nostemb spoke mildly to the Moyt in his own language. Whereupon the Moyt nodded and then uttered a final sentence, facing across the ten-yard gap to his disgraced second son.
    “Suffay leemann snamboffong.”
    Beside me, the Dreaker gave a sort of hiccup, a choke of amazed distress. In his shock he turned his white face to me and dribbled out:
    “The Moyt has condemned Prince Rapannaf to The Drop.” 
    Rapannaf himself spoke then – a simple, clear English sentence which I could not understand or absorb at the time.
    “Sholkov was right.”

                                                   *

And that was that. They pulled him back into his princely conveyance and he was borne away as befitted his rank. Elaine and I were left on the platform. We had no knowledge of what our fate would be. Now that we had played our part in the discrediting of Rapannaf, our brief importance was apparently at an end.
    It was my testimony that had tipped the scales. A woeful conclusion – but it could not be avoided. It was obvious that Elaine and I had been brought here solely for use as evidence against the Prince, and I, especially, had been set up to provide the clincher for the guilt-by-association.
    Association, that is, with avalanche-mongering shonks.
    I turned, nevertheless, to ask Dreaker Mnak if he was quite sure; but Mnak was gone. Disappeared from the platform. And then I realized that his presence had not been necessary in the first place; Nostemb spoke fluent English – though doubtless the ordinary business of cross-examination was beneath the elder Prince, and only the delivery of the final put-down had been in keeping with his status. 
    With one accord, Elaine and I put our arms around each other, and wordlessly stood, as we waited for someone to take notice of us and take us to whatever punishment we had coming to us.
    Rapannaf’s final words had still not penetrated my brain properly. I suppose I ought immediately to have begun a chain of deduction, on the lines of, “He said, Sholkov was right. So he must have talked with Rida Sholkov about something. And if he’s seen Rida then he probably has also seen my other former companions, Vic and Cora, and if so, he probably knows where they are. He may even have collected them together, and in that case he probably had come to the Cavern deliberately to collect me, too. Despite the haphazard way he seemed to go about it…” 
    I didn’t have the heart for all this reasoning. It was of no relevance anyway. Whatever opportunity the Prince might have held out to us was now gone beyond recall. I had learned too late that I ought to have trusted him...
    Elaine’s arms tightened around me. She murmured, “What’s going to happen, Duncan?”
    “Each minute that passes,” I replied, trying to reassure her, “is a good sign, I reckon. What can we hope for, except to be forgotten by them? And when one of them remembers, perhaps we’ll just be taken back where we were. We’re not important enough for The Drop.”
    I was talking nonsense, and I knew it. The Gonomong condemned slaves to The Drop for the slightest infraction of their code of behaviour. We had merited it many times over. Their reason for keeping us alive – if that was what they intended to do – was likely to be sinister from our point of view.
    As a matter of fact, I could have given Elaine’s question, “What’s going to happen?”, an absolutely precise answer.
    It was a truth which was too frightening for me to voice. 
    I waffled on, “I’ve been known to complain, sometimes, that life gets too complicated. But now we don’t have that problem, Elaine. Now it’s all simple, just a matter of waiting and living through what’s coming...”
    Correct as far as it went, but I did not reveal to her the whole of it. It was not “life” but I, Duncan Wemyss, who was about to become the Simplifier.
    That was my greatest fear of all: that because I was at the end of my tolerance for being a slave, I was going to do something stupid, in comparison with which all my previous follies would seem like marvels of wisdom.
    After what seemed an age, and was probably five minutes, another group of taciturn guards advanced upon us with out-held canvas sheets, roped at the corners. At their approach Elaine wailed at me, “Where are they going to take us?” – as though I could be expected to provide an answer. While the men grasped us, tipped us over and shoved us into the travel slings, I snapped back at her, “It doesn’t matter.” I caught one last glimpse of her looking at me in puzzled wonder at my tone, before our bearers sprang aloft and we were once again hauled through the forest.
    Neither friends nor enemies could have known that the blinkers had gone down in my mind. I showed no outward sign apart from my surliness of manner. And supposing I had tried to issue a warning that my will had grown a layer of ice, that I was determined upon a last throw no matter what the cost? Who would have understood? Even someone as wise as Uncle Vic might merely have said, “Nah, you’re no more crackers than any other Slant-soaked mentality that has been subjected to too many changes of environment and culture in his journey down the world.”
    That’s as may be. The fact remains, I now silently knew that I was primed to explode into recklessness. Any new pressure might turn out to be the trigger, and there was nothing I could do to prevent it.

                                                   *

We were taken back to the palace – Rapannaf’s palace no longer; it swarmed with government guards. We were hauled into the foyer, tipped out of our slings and marched through a hall, along a corridor and into a large square room.
    The room had a bare, undecorated look, but it was far from empty. Eight tallish structures stood to one side, ranged along the wall which was to our left as we entered. The structures, about the size and shape of artists’ easels, were covered with plastic sheets, and I got a whiff of the dust on those sheets. On the actual wall beside them ran a shelf on which I sensed movement, writhing movement, and I purposely turned my eyes away from it. Beyond all this, there was a long bench against the further wall.
    The guards took their hands off us and Elaine collapsed against me, crying softly. I put my arms around her and patted her, absently. In my reckoning she did well to confine herself to soft tears. As for my own composure, it sprang from the fact that I was, by this time, well away in some frigidly objective mode of being, determinedly nuts, perhaps the only way I could prove to be a match for what awaited us.
    Our four guards took up position on either side of the door and one of them gabbled something to someone in the corridor, whereupon I heard hurriedly departing footsteps.
    “Come on, let’s sit down,” I said to Elaine, and led her to the bench. On the way there I risked one glance at the writhing motion on that wall-shelf. Whatever lay upon that shelf was hidden by a canvas covering, but it celebrated its nature nonetheless, as though a dancing row of magnified cartoon amoebas pranced and squirmed under the canvas. After that one glimpse I looked away, and made sure that Elaine faced in the other direction as we sat. 
    No sooner had we occupied the bench than a heavy footstep clumped in the doorway. A mountainous body entered the room – a woman, tall and fat though not gross or wheezy. The guards stood to attention. I thought: this is probably another member of the Udrem royal family. In fact I could detect a facial resemblance between her and Rapannaf, Nostemb and Ganafoon. 
    The woman did not require us to stand. She was content to lean against the wall and gaze down on us from across the room, surveying us with a look of personal bitterness and hatred which had been absent in the other royals, formidable though they were. Her face twisted into a smile which would have terrified me had I not passed beyond such feeling. I clasped Elaine to me and murmured, “Don’t look at her.”
    “Oh, I might as well,” the girl replied with an equanimity that suggested to me that she, too, was on the road to her own personal quiet solution. She disengaged from my arms and we sat side by side, facing our fate. “I just wish I knew what she was waiting for.”
    Elaine’s question was answered within the minute. We heard more footsteps and then more guards appeared, conducting two out of my three long-lost companions, Vic and Cora, and four other people whom I did not know, into the room. 
    They entered slope-shouldered, worn down by oppression, but when Vic and Cora saw me they hurried over and, full of speechless emotion, clasped my arms; I could only smile quietly and they sensed something in me that made them draw back and scrutinise my face.
    “Hard, isn’t it, to meet here,” I whispered, “but let’s –”
    The voice of the huge woman then made us all turn around.
    She said, in English, “Prince Rapannaf is for the Drop. And you – you are for Unit 351.”
    My eyes were fixed on my uncle and my friend, and I saw the horror blanch their faces and likewise the faces of the other four prisoners, all of whom, obviously, knew more than I did; I, however, was indifferent to whatever their ghastly knowledge might be, because I had increased the dosage of that fever of the will which caused the others to look at me askance.
    Meanwhile the guards began to move, under the orders of the royal giantess. They heaved the plastic sheets off the easel-frames. Vic, Cora, Elaine and I, and the four other prisoners were each then taken to one of the frames, and lifted and strapped onto them, so that we were spread-eagled at an angle of about sixty degrees. 
    We endured silently. I wondered at the courage of my companions: they weren’t nuts, they had nothing to sustain them. Perhaps they were simply frozen in shock.  I closed my eyes so as not to look at them.
    More footsteps pattered at the door and I heard a short babble of Gonomong language in a tone that sounded urgent; I opened my eyes again in time to see the giantess leave the room. A respite! For the moment, apart from the four guards, we Uplanders had the place to ourselves.
    At first we all hesitated to speak.  We concentrated on averting our gaze from those writhing forms on the shelf close by. Unanimously we refrained from comment on the weird stuff – our need was for whatever comfort might be snatched from any source.  Perhaps none could be had; perhaps weirdness reigned supreme.  On the other hand it might be good to pool our knowledge.
    “Any news of Rida?” I eventually whispered Vic, who was stretched out next to me.
    “Don’t ask,” he replied grimly. “Not now.”
    “Very well. What’s Unit 351?” I whispered again. 
    “You’re a cool one, Dunc,” he said, shaking his head, the only part of him that could freely move. “We don’t see you for days and then... but you asked me a question. I don’t know – is the answer. But maybe it’s possible to guess. Were you in that pillow-universe thing? At the start of your time in Udrem?”
    “I was.” 
    “Well, there you are. They must get their results from somewhere.”
    I saw what he meant. Experimentation. Using prisoners as guinea pigs. Akin to those establishments run by the Axis powers in World War Two. We were in for it. When that woman came back...
    “Who’s the big lady?” I enquired.
    Cora spoke. “The king’s sister.”
    “Her name,” Vic amplified, “is Mabglwa. Her nearest thing to a human emotion seems to be loyalty and affection for her favourite nephew, who had been treating us quite decently. But if he’s now for The Drop... oh, well. Perhaps, out of regard for his memory, she’ll not go too far with us... although concerning the slave question, she and Rapannaf didn’t see eye to eye…”
    His speech continued to fumble around in search for ways to look on the bright side of things. He told me – with frequent glances at the open door, for we didn’t know how long this respite would last – the story of their captivity; how Rapannaf had taken over this palace and made it into a humane research centre, named Unit 352, that functioned as a kind of Schindler’s Ark for the preservation of the lives of certain chosen slaves. Vic repeated his hope that Mabglwa would keep Unit 352 running, or at least that Unit 351 would be modified on the lines of Unit 352... 
    I could have said, Don’t pin your hopes high; don’t count on Mabglwa perpetuating Rapannaf’s kindness to slaves. I would not be surprised if his aunt crucifies us on these easel things.  After all, I, a slave, was partly responsible for Rapannaf’s fall. It’ll be back to the full-blown Unit 351 treatment any minute now, I’ll bet.
    Uncle’s flow of words had run down, and I wanted to fill the silence, but Cora saved me the trouble.
    “Rapannaf,” she spat. “He killed Rida.”
    Not even this latest complication could swerve me; I filed it under ‘to be dealt with some other time’… but Cora wouldn’t let it go.
    “Can’t you people hear me?” she insisted. “He killed Rida.” 
    “Now wait, Cora, we don’t know that,” said Vic. He turned his head my way. “We heard them arguing, we heard a shot, and we never saw Rida again. Rapannaf would not answer our questions.”
    “But why?” whined one of the other prisoners, a woman whom I could just about see if I stretched my neck at maximum to my left.
    “Stupid question, Wulla,” Cora sneered back. “Princes don’t need reasons. Just impulses.”
    I asked, “What were they arguing about just before the shot was heard?”
    “Pah,” sneered Cora again, stung by my dispassionate tone which must have given her the impression that I did not grieve for Rida. In truth I did regret the loss of a decent man. Never a close friend, he had been a companion whom I had liked and greatly respected; however, this was not a time for mourning. This was a time (likely to be short) during which we must scrabble for any kind of weapon, and since physical weapons were denied to us we must gamble for our lives with our wits.
    Vic said, “I know this much: that Rida was unable to accept the ‘pillow universe’. The memory of the experience bothered him incessantly. He insisted it ‘didn’t fit’; he went on and on about how the Gonomong weren’t psychologically or technically advanced enough to create such an illusion. He used to follow the Prince from room to room, arguing about it, insisting that the Gonomong weren’t bright enough to have done it; and that’s what they were talking about the last time they went out the door.”
    Cora said, disgustedly, “Can’t you picture it? Benevolent Prince R. finding himself contradicted and his race’s intelligence impugned – of course there’s only one thing for a self-respecting Unspior to do,” – her voice rasped with contempt and anguish: “shoot the uppity slave.”
    I pictured it. Rida Sholkov, the sanest of us all, finally cracking, grabbing at Rapannaf’s gun, then a frenzied struggle that ended with the gun going off. More of an accident, then.  I wondered if I ought to voice this supposition; wondered whether it might calm Cora; whether she would even listen...
    Heavy footsteps again brought our attention to the doorway.
    Mabglwa returned, and this time she was followed by Rapannaf’s old house slave or major-domo, Olof. 
    The oldster panted as he hobbled after her, “My lady –”
    “Quiet, you,” grated the giantess. “I did not permit you –” 
    “But m’lady, the Prince’s instructions –”
    With a swish of her right arm she swept him back into the corridor.
    For the second time she surveyed us, with a smile crueller and more sarcastic than before, yet when she spoke her tone was admixed with frustration. “You people will have to wait to get what’s coming to you,” she growled, “but rest assured, when it does come, it will be all the worse.”
    In my peculiar state, with fear blocked off, I asked:
    “What’s happened? Has the Prince escaped?”
    Mabglwa’s jaw worked; I could virtually hear her teeth grind. Indeed, if the choking rage on her face was anything to go by, the trouble we had landed in so far was minor compared to what faced us now. 
    “Yes,” she finally hissed, “my nephew has ‘escaped’. The fool has started a rebellion against his father.”
    “Good for him,” I said.
    She looked at me in utter disbelief and her face went blotchy.
    When she emerged from her inarticulate fury she smoothed her expression, and in a grim but steady voice she spoke:
    “Rapannaf had one chance, one tiny chance to appeal the verdict. Now he has forfeited that chance completely. Now, nothing can save him from The Drop. But now there will be the added shame – now history will record him not only as a traitor but as a rebel, a miserable, failed rebel, and I tell you this, slaves, so that you may ponder your position. Rapannaf’s messenger has asked me to keep good care of you. I shall, therefore, keep good care of you – as long as the Prince remains at large. But as soon as news comes of his recapture –”
    “That need not happen,” I cut in, “if you help us.”
    “Help you!” she slavered, and lumbered forward.
    “Help us to help the Prince,” I yelled back. “Join the rebellion!”
    She leaned over me.
    “You’re mad,” she hissed, jowls wobbling, a most unpleasant sight and yet actually I preferred to look at her than at my companions whose fates I was risking along with my own.
    I began, “Let me tell you –”
    “Let you tell me, you little thing?” Doubtless in accordance with the thought that inspired the hideous smile which now overspread her face, she reached with her left hand towards the shelf of the dancing shapes. She ripped the covering from those shapes. I jerked my eyes from what was revealed: truly outrageous cartoon amoebas, lobes linked, dancing in a row, jellied nightmare, exuberantly squirming.
    “No, don’t you look away,” she said with a throaty hum; “see what I’ve got here for you.”
    Leaning over me once more, she forced my head round with her right hand. In her left hand now undulated one of the jelly things. I could sense that she was going to splatter it in my face. Immediately the most vital thing in the universe – in the entire multiverse of universes of reality – was that that thing must not splatter in my face.
    The right words must come, now, to save my soul.
    “Rapannaf’s last words in my hearing,” I said to Mabglwa, “were: Sholkov was right.”
    “What?” she responded. It was her first display of uncertainty. She stood, holding the jelly thing but no longer waving it close to me.
    “Get your head round that, my lady. Rida Sholkov was right – about the Oracle Caverns!”
    This was my shot in the dark, my ultimate gamble. I watched Mabglwa’s left hand replace the jelly thing on the shelf and then make a fist, and I watched her fist clench and unclench. 
    She turned to Vic.  “Do you endorse this?  Do you even know what he means?”
    Vic, it was obvious, was faced with a hard choice.  Ashen-faced, he must be desperate to back my play, but as yet he had no idea what it was.  His breath came in tense puffs or gasps as he croaked, “I can’t explain - but with respect, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll give ear to that intuitional superman.”
    Mabglwa’s fingers began to twitch towards the release of the straps that held me. Time slowed to an ooze. A touch of a lever and the metal hasps all lifted at one go, and I slipped down onto the floor.  I could sense amazement all round, thick in the air.  Amazement and, with one exception, total incomprehension.  None of the others yet understood – except our hate-filled enemy; she did.  She could be persuaded, could be reached through her brain. 
    She watched me in silence while I released the others.
    One by one they gathered into a docile, uncomprehending group, stunned by the turn of events.  I likewise remained awed by what I appeared to have done; stupefied by the result achieved by what seemed the most tenuous of deductions… I tried to review them, and could hardly list them, and maybe I was wrong, and maybe, even if I was right, things remained hopeless.
    Well, so what if some mad hunch had merely staved off the evil hour?  That postponement would whet our appetites further, would tempt us into madder ideas of ultimate escape.  And… maybe I wasn’t mad – for Mabglwa had grasped the gist.

>>  7: The Plank