kroth:  the rise

1: life down under

“Go aaarn, mate,” said one of the voices behind me, “it’s dead simple, just push the hendle.” And although I made no move, it went on, “Yis, that’s right, just push it.”
    “Yesss,” goaded another, quieter voice, without the vowel change, and with a steely softness. “Notisss,” it addressed the others, “how he moved of his own accord; he’s made a good start; now let us see whether he spoilzzz it.” I could picture that speaker, the misshapen one, his lip curled in mild amusement at the ridiculous spectacle I presented – for I, doubtless, was misshapen by his standards. The others meanwhile, who were built more like me, might also be judging my efforts pathetic.  I faced the simple task of opening a door and yet it was such a hard thing to do, it cost me all my courage to put forth my right hand.
    I did get so far, but the moment my fingertips touched the door, my resolve weakened to nothing. It was as if the charge of my will were dissipated at contact with the wooden slats.
    “Go arn, go aaarn….” repeated the first voice.
    All very well for that old veteran dangler. He had lived here all his life.  I however, at age eighteen, had yet to take my first step over the southern hemisphere sky.
    I was acutely aware that the moment I stepped outside I would do more than know of it, I would see it: that yawning gulf of infinite blue where a sky ought not to be; I’d see it beneath my boots.
    At the thought of this, a whole parade of excuses waved for attention in my head. I was ill. I was not yet “up to it”. I was untrained for conditions here. I was in fact completely lacking in experience of life under this overhanging country. To try to face it too soon was to risk a lethal setback. In short, I did not feel inclined to “go arn” –
    And yet, even less was I inclined to disappoint the voice.
    So, to get some decision one way or the other, I turned my head to glance back at the encouragers. My hope was, that either the sight of them might spur me on, or my poor bewildered face might move them to relent.
    Les Bucklaw, the elderly red-haired fellow with lantern jaw and seamed face, confirmed his “go arn” with a nod. Friendly but impatient, he was not the sort to understand if I backslid. No relenting there. Nor from the other two members of the reception committee. They propelled me with their stares. Dr Stoom’s regal posture gave out the message that one need only be firm with the universe.  Just treat the universe with authority and it would not dare try any nonsense! As for Farambolank, the legless “spider man”, he of the quiet hiss who hung from a ceiling rail with all four hands - I received the impression that he was not terribly interested in what might happen to me.  Partially concealing his broad smile, his head drooped, waiting for my move, as were the others.
    All the danglers, I thought, are all waiting to see what I’m made of.
    Well, since I’m here, I shall have to be a dangler too.
    To demonstrate that I was safety-conscious, I made sure that my left hand continued to grasp one of the plentiful ceiling straps that clustered close to the door, while with my right hand I jabbed down at the door-handle and gave it a shove.

                                                     *

To be fair, I ought to explain at this point that my apprehensions and my meticulous caution were not stupid. Though the reader who has followed my adventures down the flank of the world might think it crazy that I shrank from a glimpse of the sky below me, it is necessary to bear in mind the uniquely shattering experience which I had just recently undergone.  I had been, that very morning, dropped into the blue void, from the place of execution at the vertical equator of Kroth. I had expected with absolute certainty to die of cold after days of a fall into infinity as I plummeted further and further from Kroth’s Sun. In the event, it had not turned out that way.  My fall (and that of my companions) had lasted approximately fifteen minutes before we were rescued against all expectation by a colossal net which the inhabitants of the Southern Hemisphere somehow maintained; but those fifteen minutes had surely been the ultimate, the furthest extent to which terror can be stretched by vertigo.  So you may say: compared with that, what did I have to be afraid of now? I was safe among my rescuers. I had been received into a humanized habitat full of railings and straps to hold onto.  Here, all settlements and enclosures must be firmly anchored under the overhanging surface of the planet. To live Down Under might seem fantastic, but these people had managed it for centuries. So what was I so worried about?
    What nagged my spirit now?
    Answer:
    It is one thing to be tossed plumb into infinity without a hope. In such a circumstance you are nothing, because in your fall through the wideness and depth of nothing you yourself are diluted to that same nothing; or, even if something does remain of your personality, it has curled up, hedgehog-like, to huddle into a fatalistic acceptance which is neither sanity nor insanity according to the usual definitions. But to border infinity is quite something else. If you live not the fact but the risk of it, you experience an altogether different pull or stretch, as you juxtapose that inhuman immensity with familiar daily life. Instead of falling free, you stand quivering on an edge. You’re still in the game but on the verge of a final loss, and so you clutch that edge, and panic hovers close. 

                                                    *

At the same moment that I shoved at the door, I did my old trick of deliberately de-focussing my eyes.
    The door swung wide open. I saw a fuzziness.  I didn’t mind it; it held no dangerous hint (as yet) of bottomless blue. I re-focused, thinking, “so far, so easy”. As my gaze roved I understood that I was looking at a station platform. It was quite narrow and short.  In fact, just the size of a small-town country station in England. To right and left the ends of it were blocked by large obstructions, which fortunately helped to reassure me that I was not yet “out in the open”. A long sign at eye-level glowed with strip-lighting:

                                    KLETTERWEGGLE

That name was a homely and welcome reminder of names like “Wagga-Wagga” which I had seen on maps of Australia back in the Dream of Earth. Also helpful was the fact that the gap between carriage and platform was only an inch or so wide, and I had the sense not to look down at it as I stepped across.
    Now standing on the platform, I smothered the impulse to look back at the train from which I had just emerged, for although I knew it must be a vertical train, a plummeting north-south train, I preferred, just for the moment, to take my culture shocks in manageable doses. Better to go slow and sip comfort from the idea, “station platform”. The familiarity of the phrase could counterweigh its real context, so I hoped, so I tried – but I was still confused, on the one hand knowing that I was tremendously lucky to be alive, on the other hand apt to emit cry-baby emotions of complaint at being let down by the difference between this place and an honest-to-goodness Earthly train station. As if memories of Earth mattered now. Earth, as I very well knew, did not exist, for we had all wakened from Earth, though (the random thought came) there are such things as recurring dreams…. but meanwhile I must quieten the inner baby, for in my situation mental discipline might prove to be a matter of life and death. So – for instance – stamp hard on what you’re about to think about what’s a few yards to your left –
    But how? Impossible to ignore the fact that the “wall” which closed off the platform in that direction was the body of the planet.
    It was a brownish rock-wall, softened by a few tufts of grass and ferny growths. I could not mistake it. I looked away. For it meant that Kletterweggle Station must jut out from the world like a jetty, into emptiness. Yes, true, but better picture it in different terms or look at something else –
    Up above my head I saw the planks of a wooden ceiling; to my right a fat grey shaft. A staircase spiralled like a solenoid round the shaft. Shaft and staircase ran up and down, to disappear into ceiling and floor, obviously continuing to the other levels of the station, one level for each carriage; how else could a vertical railway system be organized? It was the reason I understood the shaft to be an elevator – it had to be one. And beyond it was the outer wall. Beyond that – yes, I could accept it – a partly-obscured patch of sky blue. Reasonable to expect a window in the outer wall.
    Behind me, Dr Stoom must be assessing my reactions. I glanced leftwards again, at the rough wall that was the surface of the world. That same world which, thousands of miles up from where I was, curved back to the north-polar horizontal home which I could not hope to see again.
    Well, no use lamenting that loss. Topland was just a remote golden memory. Here was I in (or rather, under) Hudgung, the southern hemisphere, my home henceforth, no matter how incredibly fantastic it might seem. Acceptance – that was the name of the game. Do something intelligent, Duncan.
    I turned to the right, and took some steps towards the elevator, for there was nowhere else to go. Perhaps this was the stroke of common sense the watchers had been waiting for. I heard their footsteps and felt the boards under my boots creak and quiver slightly – which was unfortunate for me in my precarious state of mind. The physical reminder that this whole building must dangle was too much for me just then. Dr Stoom and Les must have witnessed my convulsion at the moment of insight, for they rushed forward to grab me.
    “Sorry, sorry,” I whispered as they held me up. I was feebly anxious to apologize. “A blip...”
    Dr Stoom said curtly, in her unaccented voice, “Relax. You have done well.”
    “Ah – oh?” I was still groggy, virtually electrocuted by that flash of terror.
    “I mean it,” she insisted; “you are doing fine,” and I could tell it was no polite fib. Apparently, because I had opened the carriage door and had taken a few strides in the right direction, I had passed some crucial psychological test.
    “Relax,” she repeated. “We can look after you now.”
    “Yeah,” chipped in Les, “you’ve done your bit, mate. Not bed, not bed at all by the stendards of your everidge immigrant. You’re up to par, I’d say. Take it easy.”
    As they walked me to the lift, I resolved to cease my use of the words dangle and dangler. Nip that habit in the bud – show some tact towards myself. In my old identity as an Earthman I might have considered the idea of a literal Down Under existence quaint, and I might legitimately have coined the fun term dangler to denote a person who must live in such a place, but that didn’t make it a wise word to use. Far better to use a more dignified term, such as…. antipodean. Think of the Antipodes, the upside-down lands, the legend out of medieval books. The legend has turned out true and real, but still, keep the thought of it rooted in those old books, so that from such roots the reality can stem, full of academic sap, picturesque and calm. Layers of fear must be appeased. Especially the lower, volcanic ones. The cosmos isn’t funny. And the Dream of Earth is long gone.

*

When we reached the elevator, sufficient strength and balance had returned to me, to allow me to step unsupported into the cage. It did have one troublesome aspect: a window on the far side, coinciding with the fact that the shaft itself, likewise, had windows on that same side. So, more of that unsettling colour, sky blue, a lot closer this time; however, I could look at it without shaking – I must be getting better at this –
    The cage went up some floors and then we stepped out onto another platform, with access to a different part of the train. I looked at the train properly this time, and saw that it included a vertical cylinder alongside the carriage, doubtless a corridor wide enough for passengers to move between all the carriages above and below.  I filed this observation under possible escape route.
    “In here,” said Les, diverting my attention one way as he opened a door in the station building, but then came a different diversion:
    “I leave you now,” announced the much softer voice, the less-heard voice. “The best of luck to you.”
    Wondering at it, not yet used to the way its final syllables chomped and clacked, and slow to understand that the words had been spoken to me, I delayed to turn my head, and when I did look, Farambolank had swung away. I would still have called out a reply, but for a strong impression that the creature could not wait to be off.
    Les nodded at me: “Yis, Ferembolenk hes finished his chore.  Off home, duty done.  He nivver hengs round longer than he hes to.”
    Powerfully, again, I had that sense of being observed and assessed. Les and Dr Stoom had been instantly willing to stop at this threshold and answer my questions. Their eagerness to watch while I bumped from one puzzlement to another showed that I was being tested every step of the way.  Or rather, I was being watched while I tested myself, like a child pulling itself up by the bars of its playpen.
    I asked, “Why did he come, then?” – still curious about the motives of the spider-man.
    “You sid it yoursilf. Duty. Thet alone is what makes those denglers attind the wilcoming committee.”
    DANGLERS!
    No way out of it: the word was current, the word I had coined! I breathed deep. Face it, Duncan, it’s the natural word to use.  You’re not going to be able to avoid it, so you may as well be thankful that you’re so tuned in to this dangling culture, that you came up with the term independently… Go for it, then.  Be a wholehearted dangler. That way you’ll survive.
    I spent one final glance on Farambolank, the omong, the ultimate in adaptation. He had reached the platform end, adjacent to the planet’s surface, and, while swaying from a ceiling rail which he clutched with three hands, used the fourth hand to pull open an exit door.
    Not a bit phobic about spiders, I don’t mind seeing a big one walk upside-down on the ceiling, and therefore neither should I object to a race of men who hang from rails.  Besides, he was disappearing from my sight – so, cross him off your list of worries, I told myself.  And now: step over the next threshold.

*

A waiting room? Inadequate description.  Much more.  A place to lift the heart. I beamed as my gaze swept over my companions, fellow-adventurers, fellow-survivors. Every single one of them was present.  Scarcely believable that we should be together again!  Seated in easy-chairs around low tables!  We sure were an invincible bunch.  Fortune had refused to abandon us, no matter the odds against us; snatched not only from the jaws of death but right down death’s gullet, we had been brought, alive, to this dangling haven – a peculiar place, but apparently liveable.
    All of us were dressed in the same government-issue pyjamas, as though this were some prison hospital convention, but no minor oddness could dampen my joy at the sight. I could have hugged them all, were it not for my enfeebled state; I could have babbled, except that this was not a private meeting: close by each of them sat an attendant. The attendants, or nurses or minders, both men and women, were dressed in distinctive beige, so that the view I had was of mingled stripes and beige.
    “Last but not least,” cried my uncle Vic Chandler amid widespread cheers at my entrance. He lifted his arm in ebullient welcome. “Siddown, Duncan. You look terrible.”
    “Thanks a lot,” I grinned wanly. In truth, most of them did look to be in better shape than I was. Cora was an exception, pale and badly bruised, barely able to greet me. Another battered case was Dasnidd, the youth who had lost his nerve just before The Drop. He lay slumped in his chair, head lolled so I saw only his ginger mop, but I could guess how he must look from his twitchy shoulders and hands. And then an elegant motion attracted my eye to where Elaine Swinton lifted her head, briefly, to grant me a perfunctory smile. Her right hand rested on the arm of a man who sat in the chair next to hers, and she quickly returned her gaze entirely to him. Full of quiet solicitude, she watched over him – while he, about as responsive as a zombie with catalepsy, sat hunched with downcast stare, so hollow-cheeked that if it had not been for his moustache I might not have recognized him as Prince Rapannaf.
    The rest of us were alert and cheerful, if somewhat drained. Physically and mentally, we had come through. The trauma of the immediate past had been swallowed up by our fantastic deliverance. It was, after all, enough to make a person drunk with a sense of his own invulnerability – to have survived being tipped into the universal void. As my guides steered me to a chair, I could not help but hoist a great sail of hope in my mind.

*

They put me at a table next to Vic’s and Wherreth’s. Les Bucklaw sat down with me, presumably as my minder. On my other side were Cora and Orlan; Wulla and the semi-conscious Dasnidd one table further off. Elaine and Rapannaf were a couple of tables away; I could not see them well from where I sat, and I did not particularly wish to. Not that I was jealous of the sick prince, but Elaine had an annoying habit of not being the person I wanted her to be. Right now I didn’t want any emotional complications, not when we immigrants might at any moment have to absorb some vital facts about our new lives.
    Dr Stoom walked to a podium, stood beside a lectern and beckoned. Responding to her summons a man rose from among us and came up to the lectern. He was large, deep-chested, but with incongruously hippy hair that swished about in curly ringlets – a hippy gorilla, or Conan the Barbarian turned beatnik. “This,” said Dr Stoom, “is my husband, Oraggalee Stoom.” She added in a neutral, distant tone, as if disclaiming responsibility, “You have been brought here for an opportunity to listen to him.”
    She then departed the podium and sat down. Oraggalee Stoom leaned on the lectern and grinned around at us.
    Then he began to speak in that flat, nasal, vowel-changing voice which I had heard from Les. “Thenk you, Vel. Thet was will put. You might as will listen to what I hev to say, but there’s no compulsion. Only, please beer in mind thet it is a one-off. What you shell hear from me, you shell not hear again, once you hev gone out under the world. For some things are not right to say under normal circumstences.”
    He paused. “I ken see some of you are looking worried.” Again his grin panned around the hall, and I thought to myself, he has done this many times before; he is quite sure that he knows our type well.
    “Worry if you like,” he went on, “but don’t overdo it. That’s ectually the whole point, the virry point you’ve been brought to hear me say: don’t overdo anything. And now you are thinking – I ken see it in your faces – ‘he dregged us out of our bids just to hear thet?’ Yip. Ill though some of you are, knocked and bettered about though all of you are, it was considered issintial to interrupt your ricuperation in order thet you imbibe the following pearl of wisdom – moderation in all thoughts and feelings! Believe me, it’s inveluable advice, if you want to start off on the right grip as citizens of the commonwilth of Birannithep. And by ‘moderation’ I don’t mean you hev to be boring and mediocre. I mean you hev to stay in control. Control is everything down here. Why? Because – extreme emotion ken kill.
    “Normelly, it is not considered right to talk about this problem. And there is a good reason for thet. Talking about it can cause it. Yis, by talking about how and why emotion ken kill, you ken arouse just thet same didly emotion. So what is to be done?
    “Fortunately, talk or no talk, the way it works will soon become obvious.
    “Nivertheliss, for you it might not be soon enough. New immigrants can’t be ixpicted to grasp the unwritten rule of Down Under straight away. It takes a bit of gitting used to. So, as a concission, on this one occasion, we allow a peculiar person such as mysilf to spill it out. Here goes. SUICIDE IS FATALLY EASY DOWN UNDER. SO DON’T GET HIT UP ABOUT INYTHING. DON’T GIT DIPRISSED ABOUT INYTHING. ALL IT TAKES IS ONE MOMENT OF LITTING GO, AND YOU’RE GONE.
    “Hev you got thet? Is it clear enough? Lit’s hope you grasp the idea thet from now on if you lose your timper or give way to diprission, you may be awarding yoursilf the dith pinalty.”
     He paused to assess the effect of his words.
    He may have been satisfied by our solemn looks, but I, for one, could sense that none of us fully believed him. We were tired, we were comfortable in our chairs, and we were full of gratitude towards these wonderful people who had saved our lives. Besides, the vowel-alterations in the man’s accent blurred his message under a veneer of quaintness – at least it did for me.
    “My words may seem harsh,” he continued, overestimating the extent to which he had worried us, “but you’ll look beck and thenk me for them, if you survive. Which no doubt you will. The vast majority of our citizens are hilthily cheerful.
    “Just rimimber that those who aren’t cheerful are weeded out pretty smartly – by thimselves. Suicide, in this country, is as easy as sewage disposal, and, I’m sure you’ll egree, thet presints no problem et all. It just takes a moment. One pessionate impulse of dispair, and you lit go, and thet’s thet.
    “So – lit me say it one last time – stay cool, for your lives. Don’t git obsissed about six, politics or riligion, because if you do, you’ll condimn yoursilves to your own Drop.”

*

A silence lengthened to about ten seconds, after which it dawned on all of us that he had finished. I heard several breaths exhaled in relief. Perhaps we had been starting to take him a bit more seriously, and now I felt the relief too, on the lines of, “So that’s all he meant. Obvious. Completely obvious. This is a country where you don’t let go. We can certainly grasp that. Grasp….”
    The grasping adaptation had already begun to take root in me, I realized: yes, I recalled that there had been a railing along which my hand had slid during most of my walk towards this room, and nobody had had to tell me. Good old sensible human nature had put me into clutching mode in an environment where it was wise to cling.
    Except inside this room. I noted an absence of hanging straps and railings here. But that was all right. A category of special rooms must exist.
    “Any quistions?” said Oraggalee Stoom all of a sudden.
    I put my hand up. “This room… it’s unusual, isn’t it? Nothing to hold onto….”
    “Jumping ahid, aren’t you? I love it!” A smile of pure happiness overspread his face. “Yis, this is what we call a ‘spookless din’, marked by thick walls and a double rid stripe round the intrance. Noticed that double rid stripe, did you?”
    I thought back. “Yes, I noticed it.”
    He went on, “And most important, no windows here: in this ketegory of place we can really relex. You’ll find that in most good houses the bidroom is a dia-lummu (that’s the real Abo word for it), and so are most good lounges and many conference cintres. On the other hend we don’t wanna overdo the relexation, so you’ll also find other ketegories; in fact I could go on and on about architicture and interior design. We have the tolod style window that faces the body of the plenet, the mandamoots that face the blue in the other diriction, and then, and then,” Oraggalee raised his brows, “for those who really wanna don the afflong, there’s the bannaff-nomoon where the really hardened types like my woife can look down through the floor. But,” he concluded with a gesture of dismissal, “you don’t wanna hear me on my tichnical hobby-horses. I’ve made your hids spin enough for now. I won’t keep you much longer.”
    He paused; his smile faded.
    “To get back to my main point, I ixpict you’ve all got the missage about keeping the lid on your pessions, but you may will be thinking: ‘easier sid than done’. Eh?”
    We murmured agreement. I thought back to my last spurt of terror. Certainly if that had happened out in the open, the consequences would have been final. Emotion can kill – but what to do about it?
    “All right thin,” said Oraggalee. “We admit the problem. Let’s nerrow it down, git a grip on it. It is time for me to mintion the one big quistion which is bound to occur to all you immigrants, sooner or later.”
    We all pricked up our ears, eager to hear this key question formulated, but Oraggalee seemed determined to pile on the suspense:
    “Outside of this room, it’s a silent quistion; you won’t hear it discussed. So, you may ask, how do I know of it? Answer: because although I can’t claim to be a conscious immigrant mysilf – I was too young to remimber – I am the son of immigrants, and what’s more my parents heppened to be unusually frenk people. My mother and father, like you, were slaves in Udrem, and condimned to The Drop. They smuggled me with thim – I suppose they thought I would be bitter off dying with thim then living with the Gonomong. And like you, they and I, after being caught and saved by the Redakka, edepted to life in the Lucky Country. But it was my spicial luck that when The Quistion occurred to me, and I asked my mum and ded, they didn’t till me off. Instead they answered me straight. In fect they anwered me in one syllable. And thet gave me a hid start. I’ve never looked beck since…”
    We were squirming in our seats by this time.
    On he went: “Of course, as a child I framed the Quistion in childish terms. But they knew what I mint. Now for your binifit I shall frame it in adult terms. The quistion is: ‘Is compromise possible?’”
    He straightened himself. He had actually said it, after building up to it for so long. Is compromise possible? Or… is it not? He looked down on our spellbound faces. The special genius of the man’s ramblings lay in the way he managed to jolly us all along and make us forget the void below, even while the peril of that void was the very subject of his discourse. He did it by the way he kept us guessing while enlightening us piecemeal, so that our puzzlements were overborne by a temptation to follow his lead. The master knew precisely how fast to go with his pupils. Abruptly he pointed a finger at Uncle Vic.
    “Mr Chandler – is compromise possible?”
    Vic coolly replied, “I’d say no, it isn’t.”
    “Correct. Would inybody like to elaborate on thet? What are we talking about here?”
    “If you like,” Vic offered, “I’ll finish what I was saying.”
    Oraggalee Stoom waved a hand. “Please go ahid. Explain what the quistion means.”
    “It means – ‘Some’ is not good enough.”
    “Hey, that’s good. You’ve got it. ‘Some’ is not good enough. You’ll go far.” Deepening his tone, Oraggalee addressed us all: “It’s all or nothing, in this invironment. ‘Some’ safety is not good enough. You can’t allow any of the tirror to take hold. It lurks in countless embushes – inny of which ken wipe you out. These are the fects of life Down Under. But, as I sid before, we don’t normally talk about this kind of thing in public. Not even my parents – and they were pretty outspoken – would have dared to bleb to all and sundry, the way I am doing in this room. The closest they came was in a dry, learned article in a psychology journal – an article with the somewhat unexciting title, Digital and analogue courage: a strategic evolution of survival moods. Not too zappy, eh? And as for what it means – yis, Mr Chandler?”
    Vic shrugged, “‘Analogue courage’, I guess, must be customised, partial, adjustable to needs and circumstances.”
    “Right. And digital courage….?”
    “Digital courage, on the other hand – is all or nothing. Limitless or non-existent.”
    Oraggalee remarked, “Well, thet’s thet, folks. You heard what the men hes just sid. You either git it or you don’t. One brimful perfect ricord of staying cool – or zero chance of survival.” He winked. “But you’ll git used to this sort of life. It’s not thet bed rilly.”   

                                                      *

He asked us if we had any “quistions”, but none of us felt up to asking any. We sat sombrely as we tried to absorb his warnings. Battered in mind and body, I for one could have done without the vague threat implied in the recommendation of perfect courage.
    Then our mood perked up because he finished off with some comforting news. Birannithep being a nation that welcomed immigrants, arrangements were being made, he said, to place each one of us with a host family for as long a period as we needed for our adjustment to Biri society. Thus we would all be helped to settle in. Eventually we would find jobs and make our own way; in the meantime we’d be guests for as long as we liked.
    It was a generous little speech, and we were even more pleased by the way he finished it off:
    “Anyhow, it’s time for me to shuddup and for us to leave you folks alone for a while. Vel and I have some edministrytion to git on with, to fix up the nixt stage in your journey.” Whereupon not only he and his wife, but also every single one of the attendants or minders left the room.
    We – the survivors of the Drop – those of us who were conscious – looked around at each other’s faces as if to say: Comments, anyone?
    Some seconds passed before any of us spoke. Apparently, my wish not to be the first to stick my neck out was shared by the rest.
    Much of the time that we had spent listening to Oraggalee, we had been enveloped in a charmed glow of good-will, unable to take his warnings seriously. By this time, however, a sense of the truth of them had percolated into our minds.
    I wanted to say: “All right, this could be tricky. Nevertheless, the main thing is that we are obviously among good people.”
    But if I said that, Vic might well typically spoil it by saying something like, “Oh, yes, good according to their own lights, no doubt….”
    And so I kept quiet.
    “Thoughtful of them,” murmured Vic at last, “to allow us this bit of privacy. I…”
    “Hold it, Chandler,” entreated Orlan, a stocky man of about fifty with thinning hair and the weakened look of a heart patient. “Are we really private? It seems too easy.”
    Vic turned to me. “What do you think, Dunc?”
    “What do I think?” I sighed noisily. “Having survived the Battle of Neydio, the Tokropolians, the Gonomong and the Drop, why should I worry about these friendly antipodeans?”
    “So you – ”
    “I say, trust them.” Another deep breath. I felt as a card or chess player must no doubt feel when he sees the chance of winning something big with cautious play. In our case, the prize that loomed was a home. Survival and a home; winning a future. “I dare say a lot could still go wrong, but, in my view, success and happiness are in sight.”
    Orlan nodded. “I want to agree with you. Besides, what choice have we?”
    Then we heard Cora’s enfeebled voice.
    “Like beads on a string,” she gasped out, “one crisis after another, all along our descent from Topland…. but the string must stop here. At long last, our relief from it is here.”
    Elaine Swinton cut in more sharply. “Relief is ours if we have the sense to accept it. Orlan sounds as though he suspects the room is bugged and our attitude is being tested. Then let’s be positive and pass the test!”
    I was astonished at this snappy contribution from the vapid Elaine of all people. Evidently her self-appointed role as nursemaid to a sick prince had put some fire into her veins. Matters must go right, the universe must play ball, and reality would have to co-operate….
    Even as I sneered at her in my mind, I agreed with her conclusion. I stuck by my own advice: “trust them”. That, indeed, was our broad consensus.
    My only reservation was one I kept to myself. Oraggalee Stoom, for all his talk of frankness, his pose of being outspoken, had in one vital respect skirted round the question he had raised, insofar as he had evaded any mention of the actual statistics of the suicide rate, that would have illustrated his general warnings against emotion by telling us, for example, how many such deaths occurred among the newest immigrants, compared with the older ones, and with the native born. Of course, he might simply have wanted not to frighten us… but weren’t we entitled to know?
    Still, bist not to git obsissed about it.

*

Oraggalee Stoom and the minders bustled back into the lounge. “You’ll be gled to hear you can all git going,” he announced. “Places all sorted. Unfortunately you’ve all got a long train journey ahid of you. That’s unavoidable. There aren’t minny fecilities up here in the Deep North. Few of us Biris like to live right close under the iquator. So this is where we part from the didicated souls who form the permenint staff up here at Klitterwiggle.”
    Les Bucklaw took this cue to say, “As chief steward of the reciption station on bihalf of all of us here I wish you all the bist of luck.”
    We expressed our appreciation in a spate of murmurs.
    Oraggalee added, “One more commint I’ll make bifore we go. While you’re sittling in to your new lives you will of course neturally tind to congrigate with your compenions quite a lot. Birds of a fither flock togither and all that. But ivintually each of you’ll hev to find your own way in our culture, and I’ll like to advise you to make thet sooner rather then later, if you ken. I’m only trying to hilp you by saying that it might be dangerous to linger in an “us immigrants” mintality. You don’t wanna perpituate that. You don’t wanna dilay your normelization more then you hev to. Thet’s not a thrit. We won’t prissure you – but Life might.”
    Fair enough, thought I, as we were escorted back to the station platform and thence to the elevator where we awaited our turns to go up or down to our individual carriages. My thoughts, during those minutes of separation, were still optimistic. My weariness helped. The hope which it let me hoist was just a modest sail, not too much of a commitment. If a small sail gets shredded in a typhoon, well, it need not bring down the mast with it. I would settle for an even chance. I was certainly better off than when condemned to The Drop…. infinitely better.

*

By the time I returned to the carriage, I was glad to get back into bed; the get-together at the station had depleted what was left of my energy, and I began to feel sick. It did not occur to me to tell this to the nurse who tucked me up; I had become too dopey to distinguish between what I knew and what she knew. Shortly afterwards, when she had left me and the train had resumed its downward journey, I sank into a fever which lasted a few days. My memories of that time are mostly blurred. I was fed and looked after, by a steward and by another nurse who (I suppose) got on the train at one of the stops down the line; my one distinct recollection is of some syrupy medicine which tasted extremely good. This, and the meals, and the announcements of station names, all made me simple-mindedly happy, despite some bodily discomfort. The illness did me a favour, switching off the merry-go-round of suspicions and counter-reassurances which would otherwise have drained me even further.
    Then came an hour when I found myself wanting more light. Real daylight instead of the glow of the ceiling bulb. Simultaneously I discovered in myself the energy to do something about this new craving. I got up and lurched to a wall-panel. Earlier, perhaps I would have hesitated, but now I just slid it aside.
    On my right, a speeding diagonal blaze of colour met my eyes. I looked upon the crazy vista with wonder and admiration.
    Thousands of miles, we must have slid! My days at express speed had brought me down to a latitude where the world no longer looked like a wall, it bulged over my head and overhung me like a vast attic ceiling, a sloping ceiling with no floor below but the infinite blue. I might, I realized, be as much as forty-five degrees south of the equator. My fears were deep confined, and their weak shouts were drowned in the soft efficient thrumming of the train. I pulled up a chair and sat for hours, spellbound, to watch the fleeing landscape of Birannithep.
    Fields and rocks I noted first, then my gaze roved to passing spinneys of upside-down trees that dipped their branches into the sunny sky, and then I squinted up at white blobs in the overhead fields, blobs which had to be a clawed variety of sheep, clinging to the vegetation from which they dangled. Next, peering at what hung in the middle distance I coaxed my mind to identify structures, dumpy grey farmhouses rooted or welded into their planetary ceiling, or – in other instances – dangling from cables cemented into the surface above them. And beyond the middle distance I could glimpse the downward bulges of hills or ridges, often moulded into thorn-shaped stalactites or folds of rocky drapery, gothic in their frozen sharpness. Upwards rolled the slanting scene; the thrum of the train continued low and soft, for we slid under gravity alone. My mood flowed into a state of quiet acceptance, the surreal beauty outside swamping irrational fears with equally irrational trust.
    It makes sense, I thought, for them to treat us kindly. It’s the sensible policy for immigrants. After all, look what happened when I first arrived in Topland. Such an excellent reception I had, that I responded with patriotic devotion, ending up willing to fight for the country against its enemies, and so their decent treatment of me paid off from their point of view. Settle into that thought, Duncan. A good civilization, something one can believe in, with mutual loyalty and regard – the chances are good that this is really on offer. Get into it, be bright, be on the ball when they fetch you to participate.
    As if on cue, just then this topsy-turvy landscape presented me with a vision of heart-warming normality – the sight of another train.
    My eyes caught it just as it sped from over our train. Our monorail (which I could never see from where I was) must have darted under the other via a bridge. Bridges and tunnels must swap roles here, I realized. Though it dived under instead of jumped over, it could still be called a bridge, a normal, basic idea, expressive of the good old habit engineers have of taming their environment; I felt like cheering. In fact perhaps I did cheer, while the other train streaked off down into the south-west. I was like a little boy, jiggling with enthusiasm.
    “Feeling bitter?” asked the uniformed steward who at that moment came in with the tea-tray.
    “Oh,” I replied. “Ah. Better, yes, thanks. I just spotted another train.”
    “Ah yis, probably the 9.30 from Nakritidi,” the steward remarked, a smile on his homely, fleshy face. “My son could till you for sure – he’s a fenetic. Equally into model railways and spotting real ones.” He turned to go. “He’d probably say you were lucky to see thet one.”
    “Why?”
    “Oh, it gits to be a bit of a disert out here. Not much ection, I mean. Services just once a day on the long downward roll.”
    Almost without thinking, I asked: “Hey – what about the upward roll?”
    The steward stopped at the door. He looked back at me and it was as if a rubbery mask pulled itself over his expression.
    This did not immediately stop my blabbing mouth. I continued, “I never thought about it till now but of course the northward run, the upward run, has to be made against the pull of gravity, so you must need power, enormous power to climb thousands of miles; I wonder how it’s done….”
    The steward, speaking slowly and with care, said:
    “Have a guiss.”
    “Well, hmm, there’s wind power,” I burbled, “but no, that’s ridiculous, you couldn’t sail a train up a gradient like this…. unless maybe you disassembled it and sailed it up in small sections…. Coal? Oil? Nuclear? I don’t know. I give it up,” I finished, expecting an immediate response, in the form of the answer to the riddle. But the steward’s mouth worked on nothing, no sound coming out at all, for some long moments.
    “The sed truth,” he finally said, “is thet the power is borrowed.” And he then made his exit, firmly closing the compartment door behind him, leaving me with the idea that to pursue the matter would be an indiscretion.
    Borrowed energy? Borrowed from where, from whom? Far too early to paint a general picture of things, but this particular unanswered question formed an annoying little stain on the canvas. I wanted clarity, but at the same time I found the steward’s reluctance contagious. I yearned to fit in, Down Under, and I well knew that in any society there are things you don’t talk about. Oraggalee Stoom had already touched upon that. But what had trains got to do with it? Borrowed energy. When you borrow, you owe. I began to brood on it, and this depressed my mood a little, tainted my enjoyment of the landscape and even induced me to review my decision to trust the Biris. I had relapsed into irrational suspicion.
    The only cure for that state of mind was to humour it for a while. Give it enough rope….
    The carriages of this train, I knew, were linked by an external corridor. My carriage had two doors, one (rectangular) for stations, which I had used at Kletterweggle, one (oval) for the corridor.
    Unwell though I still was, I resolved to use that oval door. Sometimes you have to give in to restlessness.
    I turned the handle and the door swung aside easily; I peered through, into a long empty space of white metal that ran the length of the train. In cross-section it was vaguely square with rounded corners. Simply an access corridor, bare and desolate. But not dim: it gleamed in sunshine from a row of windows, one every five yards or so. Floor, walls and ceiling were ribbed all the way along; the ribs at this tilted latitude were steps, which would allow me to clamber, using my hands and feet, either up or down the current forty-five-degree slope.
    Borrokolom, borrokolom, murmured the train as I began to monkey my way leftwards up the diagonal. Every few seconds I halted to look up and down, to see if anyone else happened also to be in the corridor. Each time I saw that I had it all to myself. You paranoid fool, what were you expecting? Armed guards?
    The quietness gave me time to work out: “I know why I am doing this. I am proving that there is no plot to discourage communication between me and my companions.” Nothing to stop me visiting them –
    That would be a worthwhile piece of reassurance. Armed guards or not, I had had so many unnerving adventures with cultures hitting me with their unexpected stuff, that it only took one little mystery (here, the steward’s reticence about the power-source for northward trains) to set me off wondering which precipice of shock I was about to skid over next. I couldn’t see the path of common sense amid suspicion’s dark smoke.  I therefore must act to fan that smoke away.
    Sure enough, the “action cure”, the climb up the corridor, began to produce some positive thoughts. Reason surely might deduce, from my accumulated escapes, that I was a survivor type. Unless it was just luck – but if so, then I was a lucky type!
     On the other hand, “Let him that standeth, take heed lest he fall.”
      Krunk, you can’t win.
    I halted my climb when I reached the first oval door on my left. Presumably, it provided access to the carriage above mine. I rapped on it with my knuckles.
    No response – so I knocked again, louder, and then, after a wait of half a minute, I tried the door. It opened, and I looked inside.
    All my large thoughts, my wider worries, shrank in perspective. They were silly, I realized, as I put aside the big picture and focused upon the occupant of the bed, who lay with eyes half-closed and mouth partly open, her black hair spilled around the pillow: Cora Blazakkis, with the bedclothes twisted about her as she squirmed in her battle to throw off her weakness.
    I went to her and put my hand on her forehead and felt the fever. I should not worry, I told myself. I was looked after; so must she be. The authorities here cared about us. They knew what they were doing. But – did I?
    Oraggalee’s warning had returned to centre stage in my mind.
    Extreme emotion was a killer! Moderation must be your aim! Trim your sails. Do not concern yourself with what may lurk behind the cloak of political or economic mystery; you, Duncan, have got your work cut out in your human relationships – just in making sure that you don’t get overwhelmed by them; that’s challenge enough.
    Look at her. Consider your surge of pity and admiration and love. When she recovers, what then? She will resume being Cora, your best-ever girl friend in the non-romantic sense – yet why non-romantic? It was because we had quarrelled once, and then she had found Rida, and now Rida was dead and she grieved for him.
    Ah, but there was more to it than that.
    I thought: she and I were too alike, perhaps. We connected on some deep, comradely level. We were so chummy that I had no chance whatever of being a mystery to her; she would always see through me.
    Romance, on the other hand, depended upon not being seen through – it depended on mystery and fond illusion – on knowing just enough to be entranced; but why then does romance have such authority? What gives it its power of emotional command, why indeed does it exist at all, what’s the point of it? And, above all, why was I standing here like a drooling idiot all a-drip with these useless questions?
    I would be better occupied in thoughts of gratitude for the way our lives had turned out. Our hosts, our rescuers, were doing their best for us, making a big effort to look after us – allotting us a whole carriage each; high time I clambered back to mine.
    I had begun to tremble, but it was only the return of a bit of fever. I had over-exerted myself, I realized, as I tottered out of Cora’s presence.
    By the time I staggered back to my own bed, I was once more sick in body yet far healthier in mind.

*

My bed – I became aware when I next awoke – was being carried by hand.
    It was the half-heard click which woke me, that signalled the frame’s detachment from the wall. I was being borne on what was now a stretcher, towards the open door, the outside – for the train had stopped.
    Quite a chunk of time must have gone by, because standing at the door was Cora, now upright, cheerful; she nudged Vic at her side and I heard her say, “Look, his eyes are open. Hi, Dunc!” she waved.
    I lifted an arm and hoarsely echoed, “Hi”.
    Vic peered at me. “Take it easy.”
    I returned his stare, and whispered, “Yeah. No problem.” He’d soon get to see that I had learned my lesson.  No more over-anxious straining. Meanwhile, rolling my head, I looked at the station sign:

                                   MRAKKASTOOM JUNCTION

-and I quietly checked and verified that I had learned my lesson, and it was true, I felt only keen wonder and even affection for this large station with a large bright exit towards which I was being taken, past alleys of walkways and open doors, a procession of perspectives, with people going in and out and around. Here came the exit now. I braced myself. We crossed into the sunlight. We were still on a walkway, but now we were dangling directly from the slanting surface of the planet overhead – slanted, here, approximately as much as a beret; we must be so much further down from Kletterweggle, as to be closer to the south pole than to the equator. Huge ideas into me.  But they could not knock me over, could only refresh me with their spume; the fantastic Down Under context was a merely potential nightmare.  Terror could not win against the everyday-mannered veneer, the worldly under-spread of un-panicked crowds who bustled on their business on the walkways: they were what bred my attitudes now. If they could live here, so could I. Whatever they could accept, I could accept.
    What next – a taxi-rank?  No, it looked as though I was being carried towards a cable-car stop. Vic and Cora strode beside me as casually as if they owned the place. I looked forward to being like that myself. I already was getting used to thinking of the hung walkways as streets. That’s what they were, no matter that the cables from which they were suspended had to be rooted in the ground above my head, so that, I guessed, when we reached the cable car –
    My former senses, my old assumptions of geographical right and wrong, at that moment staged a counter-revolution. I suddenly felt that the world above me must be about to fall on me and crush me with its zillions of tons of rock. But this attempted coup failed to grip me for more than a nasty split second. Ironically it was scuppered not by bravery but by the opposite fear, that of falling into space away from the looming world. That older terror took equal advantage of my moment of disequilibrium. The two incompatible frights cancelled each other out. In a trice I was back on course for Down Under normality. I was just a bit sweatier than I had been before the dicey “blip”.
    I raised my head from the stretcher pillow in defiance, as if to dare another such occurrence. I’m ready for you, you subconscious bastard.
    Not a squeak in reply.
    I got a better look at Mrakkastoom. Its roads and buildings, or more correctly its walkways and dangling structures of painted wood, and its dagger-like downpointing poplars, lower-slung cables and occasional omong swinging along them in their characteristic style, the whole pageant in sunny colours, seemed only expectedly strange – indeed, the word I chose was suburban. That’s how I labelled the scene, by its own standards. Once you can see a place as suburban you can’t possibly be spooked by it.
    I began to nit-pick stuff the way I used to do on Earth; for example, “Aha, the station seems to have only one platform, but if they want to call it Mrakkastoom Junction, well, that’s fine by me.”
    No sooner had I formulated this quibble than I heard a metallic screech and saw a burst of white – a parachute-brake had opened behind a train which decelerated dramatically (maybe it was a goods train – or the passengers had strong stomachs) and pulled into what seemed like an entirely separate building from the one that housed my arrival platform. The station must be spread out more than it would have been on Earth. Hence, plenty of platforms – but a fair distance from one another. Architects here under Hudgung must not like to dangle too much weight from one spot. I could immediately picture the reason for that. Like a careful driver avoiding a patch of oil or ice, I steered round the dismal thought of what would happen if the architects got it wrong. They’d probably have a word for that kind of disaster. A tear-off, a down-rip, or something similar. I didn’t want to know.
    “Here we are, and here are your hosts,” Vic interrupted my thoughts. I now recognized that I was being “seen off at the station”. An ordinary event. Another dose of normality. That was how to view it. Float the phrase, free from its Down Under context, to connect it instead to Earth. Though the place where we now stood was not remotely like anything that I had known on Earth, it could be related functionally. It was a branch of a local line. Here, a cable-car line.
    “Meet Milt and Cerise Sibboan,” Vic continued.
    A sleekly good-looking couple strolled forward. I sat up, feeling dizzy but determined to greet them, and felt instantly reassured by the relaxed, easy-mannered look that went with their shirts, shorts and trainers. Just the sight of their well-tanned limbs and faces made me feel as though life itself could be one long holiday.
    “Another guist!” smiled Milt; “it’s been a while since the last one. Glad to hev you with us.”
    Vic and Cora waved a temporary good-bye and left me with the Sibboans.
    “Wi’ll take over from here,” said Milt to the stretcher-bearers. He said to me, “Come on, up you go,” whereupon he and Cerise hefted me into the cable-car.
    It was a six-seater, vaguely ovoid structure, like a helicopter without rotors. I was left to loll in the front passenger seat while Milt sprawled in the mid-section; Cerise meanwhile sat beside me and simply pulled on a handle on the dashboard. That started into motion the endless looped cable that carried the car. “We don’t use this much, as a metter of fect,” she remarked to me as I felt us begin our gentle, controlled slide. “Our house is within walking distance; look.” And she pointed through the front window, ahead and slightly downwards. We had sagged some yards from the surface of the planet on our oblique course; my field of view was widening as my eyes followed the direction of her finger, towards her home. I experienced one of my rich moments, not because her house was extra special (though it was enticing enough, a spacious bungalow surrounded by lawn and trees), but because it, and the equally handsome estates around it, and the gently hilly landscape more widely stretched around those, swung on a mighty hinge of acceptance so that for one boggling moment I saw the entire scene as right way up.
    No illusion – I still saw what was true; nothing literally had changed, except for my momentary, extreme adaptation, that let me see Down Under as normal!
    The vision slipped away, dwindled into a fading memory as I tried to keep hold of it. I treasured the aftertaste. A peculiarly pleasurable shock, that one single instant of real integration meant – if I was good – I would surely get more.
    To make conversation, I responded to Cerise’s remark.
    “I can well believe that you don’t use cars much. You both seem extremely fit, the way you carried me. I hope, though, that you won’t have to do that much longer.”
    “No worries,” chuckled Milt. “You’re in the Lucky Country now. The air of Birannithep won’t lit you lenguish for long.”
    Indeed not. I could well imagine this to be a land of physical exercise; of hikers, rangers, climbers…. Embarrassed at my weakened state, I was impatient to get all my strength back. However, my kindly hosts had put me at my ease, and I felt no pressure from them.
    As we neared the house I saw something that appalled me. Two small figures, children aged ten or eleven, dangling from the front lawn, their heads pointing down into the sky as they somehow walked upside-down on the grass – incredible to suppose you could do that, magnetic boots wouldn’t do it unless you had magnetic grass, I must be hallucinating – I gulped, sickened.
    Milt said conversationally, “There you see the twins, Ella and Dan, dengling again, the monkeys.”
    Cerise said, “Krunk, Milt, you’re going to hev to talk to thim about thet.”
    “Guiss so.” He sighed heavily. To me he added, “They’re looking forward to meeting you, Duncan. News has got around that you hev spicial mimories of Earth.”
    Now the car slid towards the end of its sagging loop, approaching the road where a number of bungalows dangled, and the upside-down craziness of what I could see was so strongly belied by the normality of what I breathed and sensed – a kindly welcome awaiting me in a normal home – that I felt cross-eyed and weakened in the head by these contradictions between the visual and the moral. And yet this confusion had been overtaken by a new inner firmness and gladness. I had something to offer these people. The children wanted to hear about Earth, did they? I could provide something in that line!
    The car came to rest in the street not far from the Sibboans’ front lawn. The cable ended right beside a dangling walkway.
    “Are we properly edjacent?” inquired Milt.
    “Yeah, yeah. No need to mind the ghep,” Cerise assured him, and got up from her seat.
    “Right, lit’s see what those nippers hev got up to,” said Milt, following her. He held open the gate in the walkway for me, and helped me out of the car with one strong hand.
    I could have remarked, as I co-operated, that, actually, there was just a little sky-blue slit between car and walkway, but I stepped over it with hardly a quiver and with no need to comment. Milt and Cerise then took hold of my arms and supported me between them.
    Was I really prepared to walk, or be walked, along this dangling path? Yes, because it was fenced and railed to waist height, so there was always something for people to hold onto, and that was enough, never mind that infinity yawned below.
    Yet after we started to tramp along, with every step the boards under our boots quivered and the entire path swayed almost as bad as a rope-walk and I sensed a tsunami of panic oncoming –
    And then another white-out came, an erasure, in one masterful flash, of everything that was strange and peculiar about the scene, so that the idea of normality ruled me and impressed upon me that this walkway, which reached from the cable-stop to the Sibboan’s front door, could be classified with the familiar phrase, “the driveway to a house”. Or – since (to be honest) naught heavier than a bike could go on it – “the path to a front door”. Spiritually speaking, just that. When the white-out flash was over, and my realistic vision returned, it was tamed.
    The next problem occurred when we were half-way to the house.
    Milt said to me, “Here they come. The Tirrible Twins.”
    This fear was different. No chance anxiety for myself. How could I have been nervous about the path? If only they were on a path!
    Milt remarked, “The boy’s Dan, the girl’s Ella.”
    My heart was bobbing in my mouth as I stared at the twins.
    Might this be it, the deadly emotion, the turmoil that can kill? What could be stronger than anxiety for the safety of young children?
    Blithely they strode alongside us, upside-down, out under the grass. At each stride, with a sucking rip, the boot on the back foot tore free of the green surface.
    “Vilcro grass,” explained Milt, to my gape of astonishment. “And ixtremely ixpensive vilcro boots, I might edd.”
    “B-but – ”
    “You’re wondering, is it safe?”
    “Ugh, you could say that, yeah.”
    Milt put a hand on my shoulder. “Listen, kid, the grass hes ivolved for millions of years into something that simply rifuses to lit go of certain metirials. The boot-grass clinch is foolproof.”
    “I want to believe you, but suppose the boot comes off….”
   “It will do thet only if you diliberately take it off, and thet would be diliberate suicide. Which anyone ken do, anytime, far liss ixpinsively then abusing a vilcro boot. Not saying I like it, but I ken live with it.”
    I thought of the parents’ anguish if their children should be lost. They really must be sure.
    I relaxed and once more I sensed that I had gained something. My emotional reflexes were that bit better trained. They certainly were undergoing one heck of a training course today…
    We stepped from the walkway’s end onto the dangling front porch; thence into the dangling house, where I was left to stand while holding onto an ornamental, polished wooden rail that ran the length of the hall. My hosts had turned to face their inrushing offspring. I sensed that there was going to be some telling-off so I distanced myself, slowly making my way down the hall till I leaned against a coat-cupboard at the other end.
    I heard a piping protest from the boy, “Aw, Ded, it’s safe, you know thet.”
    Meanwhile, in a rest from reality, I yielded to the temptation to see and feel the house as a house, with all the traditional implied weight of firm earth beneath it; I allowed this blatant untruth to roam, on parole, amongst my more honest thoughts and feelings. I just needed a break.
    “Nivertheliss” (I heard Milt say), “I don’t like the prectice of vilcro-grasswalking. I don’t like the distriss it causes your mother.”
    I wanted to say, hear, hear! Three cheers for Ded! Much aware of the inner parent in all of us, I imagined what would happen if one were to witness the accidental loss of a child; the poisonous mutter of guilt continuing for the rest of one’s life, if only I hadn’t stood by, if only I had done this or that…. in the end one would not be able to stand it….
    “….Your mother and I are old-feshioned enough, true, but thet’s not the point.”
    “So what is the point, Ded?” asked Ella.
    “The point is we have a guist! Thet’s why I asked you guys not to use the boots today!”
    “Sure, Ded.” “Sorry, Ded.”
    “Because,” Milt went on, “it takes time to edjust to cultural change, and – ”
    “Ded, will you skip the licture just this once please, so we ken talk to Duncan?” – this from Dan.
    “All right, all right, but he needs to hear it too, so listen, willya? The gist of it is,” and he turned in my direction, raising his voice –
    Cerise interrupted with scant show of respect, “Right, I’ll leave you to rule here with your rod of iron while I go git us all a sneck.” And she left the room.
    “The gist of it is,” Milt continued, “that this is a fairly effluent neighbourhood, because most of the folk around here work in benks in the ciddy or will-paid government agincies like I do. Being comfortably off we are under a certain amount of prissure to keep up with the Joneses, aren’t we, guys?”
    It dawned on me that he was steering the argument more cleverly than I had given him credit for. He was putting the Velcro boots into a boring context – the kind of conformity which children affect to despise.
    The move stumped them – I could see.
    He brought them to me, and made introductions. “Ella and Dan, this is Duncan Wemyss from Topland – ”
    “Topland! Wow!” said Dan.
    “And thet’s not all. Duncan is an oneiro. Know what thet is?”
    Ella said, “Sure we do. An Earthdreamer! Thet is – ”
   Dan scoffed at his sister, “Naw, it’s more then thet. We’re all Earthdreamers to some ixtint. What Illa’s trying to say, Duncan, is thet… er… you rimimber Earth properly. Like, it was real. Thet’s so, innit?”
    “I remember Earth,” I nodded gravely, “because it was real. A higher state of reality. It’s not real any more; the world has gone back to its ground state, Kroth. Kroth is always real; Earth is only sometimes real. If you compare reality to an atom – Earth was the excited state of the atom, so to speak.”
    They gazed at me with awe.
    Milt said, with a grin, “Run along now, guys, give Duncan a chance to sittle a bit, then I’m sure he’ll be heppy for you to intirrogate him some more.”
    With hopeful smiles the youngsters departed in silence.
    Milt said to me, “They liked your spiel, Duncan! Looks like you’re gonna be something of a hit round here! Ah will, they’re good kids” (I winced; it seemed that even a change of universe wasn’t enough to get me away from that word kids), “and I suppose I shouldn’t till thim off for using the boots. It’s inivitable they’re going to try the things. The prectice of Vilcro grasswalking is spridding like wildfire among the younger gineration, so I’m told. Ah, will,” he repeated, “what ken you do?”

*

A couple of days had passed, and I had settled in well. Hour by hour I felt that I was on the mend. Bouts of uncritical delight drew me further into “white-outs” whereby crazy Down Under scenes were turned into tame, right-way-up visions. I gradually allowed more and more of this to happen until I had almost convinced myself that I was relaxing on some posh holiday estate back on Earth. I knew I was daydreaming, dodging the facts, but I preferred to believe that the benefits of this process outweighed the risks. The trick, as always, must be not to go too far. The reward for getting it right would be to enjoy life. I wanted not only to become a proper citizen of Birannithep – a Biri – but also to like it. No reason why I shouldn’t get away with believing, for example, in this picnic on the lawn…. The back garden, I decided, looked quite a lot more comfortable than the front… Ah, a great day for a picnic…
    No! Wrong! Rattle! Rattle! The sound of chains snatched my mind back from its latest trip in comfort-land.
    Right close by, someone was removing a teapot from the end of its chain by the kitchen wall.  That little fact set straight my awareness of the entire scene.  A picnic under the lawn, let’s be truthful about it, that’s what I was about to take part in. I saw the girl (one of Ella’s friends) click the pot onto her own belt chain, so that even if she were to let go of it, it would not drop into the sky. I then watched her as she headed for the dangling stove further out in the garden and as she did so she walked upside down, and then I heard Cora remark – she and Vic were both here on visits from their host families – “Chains are moral around here.”
    “Hey, there’s your thought for the day,” Vic grinned. “Workers of the World Unite, and keep a good grip on your chains.” He never missed an opportunity to tease Cora on her Leftist leanings. I settled back on my swing-seat as I half-listened to their back-chat. I had to re-assess my surroundings every so often during minutes like these.  It happened whenever I “came to”, came clean, as it were, about where I precisely was.
    The swing seat was wide enough for two, but no one sat on it with me at the moment. I was on its right-hand side; Vic and Cora were on the identical one next to mine. The swing seats were quite heavy; they swayed, if at all, like ponderous pendulums, dangled at the edge of the conservatory where we waited and watched while the picnic was being prepared. The dangled floor beneath us came to its end an inch or two in front of us, where glass doors had been slid aside. Beyond it was no floor.  Just the open garden, grass above, sky below.
    I heard footsteps behind me and I turned to see Dan trot out of the kitchen, carrying a hamper. He crossed the conservatory floor and plonked himself onto the third swing seat, which had been empty, at my left. He waved at me and then began to swing. On the third or fourth forward swing, he pressed a release lever which enabled the seat to pivot on its long axis, then he threw himself back with perfect timing, his boots came up above his head and adhered to the grass, he let go of the seat – and lo, he dangled upside down from the lawn. With a cocky grin at the kitchen window he picked up the hamper again and turned away. Off he then went – with the suck-rip gait of Velcro boots under Velcro grass – carrying the hamper chained, of course, to his arm.
    Vic turned to me: “Did you note that bravura performance?”
    I nodded, “Yeah. If the jammy little squirt thinks I’m going to learn to do that, he can think again. The day I walk upside-down, well… it’s just not going to happen, that’s all.”
    “I dare say you’ll find other ways to wow ’em.  You can always talk about Earth.”
    As we spoke, a dozen or so other guests arrived, from round the side of the house, to be hailed by Milt and Cerise who were working with the twins to set up hammocky chairs and tables. Some of the guests immediately joined in the work, going to a shed and fetching stuff which they brought to the middle of the lawn and then unfolded. The garden furniture all seemed to rely upon the Velcro principle, whereby pads or strips stuck to the grass above, with sufficient firmness to bear the required weight. I found I could cope with the sight up to a point, and then something in me would say, that’s enough, and the white-out process took over, the simplification, the familiarization. The entire scene turned over and the grass was down and the sky was up, and we were all in a world where the force of gravity tugged us upwards into the sky. A mere matter of using different words, but somehow it felt more natural. Now, in the swing seat, it felt as though I must be sitting upside-down, and the natural move to make would be to do what Dan had done and clinch my boots with the grass and walk on the lawn…. I began to swing…. I timed my move on a forward swing….
    I heard hands clapping behind me and Cora’s voice saying, “Woo-hoo, go for it, Dunc!”
    I was doing what I was sure I would never do, namely, walking ‘on’ the grass in Hudgung, or rather (keep it confidential, mind) walking under the grass, under Hudgung.
    Ella approached me, meeting me half way across the lawn. She was tailed closely by half a dozen youngsters, ranging in age from eleven to sixteen or so. She said to them, “This is Duncan Wemyss the Earthmind who’s staying with us – ”
    “Glad to meet you all,” I said in my new haze of confidence which hid outrageous reality, “but please note I’m not the only Earthmind around here.” I jerked my thumb back at where Vic and Cora still sat on the swing chairs. “And my uncle Vic knows ten times as much as I do.”
    Ella trilled with laughter. “That’s what he told me you’d probably say!”
    “Oh?” While chewing that one over, I noticed some older teenagers advancing towards my group. Some of them were my age, some perhaps slightly older. All of them, I noted, were more formally dressed than I would have expected of youngsters at a picnic. (That was also true of Ella and Dan. They might be self-willed, but never ragamuffins.) All the guests wore name-badges, which surprised me. Ella self-importantly explained that the name-badges were out of consideration for me – they meant I would not have to strain my memory during introductions. Within the next minute I had acquired an audience of almost all the members of the younger generation who were present, and I was enveloped in the emotional cloud of their acceptance.
    They drew me to a cluster of dangling single-seat swing-chairs, within reach of the now laden dangling tables.
    Now for the safety protocol, which one never skimps. You can’t sit on one of these chairs until it has been de-spiked, and the spikes only retract after the click of the chain. Expensive, the electronics – but necessary. To rely on memory might be sufficient nine hundred and ninety nine times out of a thousand, but that’s not good enough when you consider what would happen the thousandth time. You would be sitting, unchained, on the swing chair, your Velcro boots uselessly dangling into the sky, no contact with the sticky grass above your head. And then something might cause you to slip, or let go…. No, it’s best to pay for the electronics, so that you are bound to do it right. They showed me. We did it right. We chained ourselves and sat (a rapid flick of viewpoint – sky was now once more down and grass up) and we swung and ate and drank and chatted, and everything was pleasant and acceptable because everything swam in the protective field of force created by common opinion, the powerful consensus that the scene was normal.
    Jack Petergate and his girl-friend Gedelly Sanand sat closest to me. I gathered that Jack was the son of Arthur and Vanessa Petergate, who were Vic’s hosts. Jack’s parents were intellectual types – both professors at Mrakkastoom College – and well-off, like all the guests at this picnic. Jack and Gedelly swung beside me in leisurely fashion, he in light suit and cravat, she in a sumptuous bridesmaid’s dress. They made me almost feel that I was in a costume drama, except that here was no drama, unless you could count the honour accorded me by the ease of their welcome, the strength of their quiet assumption that I was a person to be adopted into their group, a person to be proud of. It was an honour which I could not refuse.
    Jack, uniquely, wore a hat, a Stetson that might have come from Texas. Gedelly saw me staring at it. “Exquisite, would you not say?” she remarked to me.
    “Er – picturesque, anyway,” I replied, thinking: good for you, Gedelly; hurrah for a teenager who knows other adjectives besides “cool”.
    And then, to my dismay – for I was just then seized with anxiety lest such pricey headgear fall into the blue beneath us – she blithely lifted her arm and knocked the thing off his head –
    A blur of movement and next thing I knew, Jack had caught the hat in his right hand, while continuing to sip from a tall glass held in his left. He smirked affectionately at Gedelly. “Nice try.”
    She turned to me in exasperation: “Say, Dunc, how would you discribe this guy?”
    “Oh, well, a cool dude, I suppose.” Damn, I said it, I said the c-word. The word which on Earth had infested conversation, had choked it like a weed. I prayed it might not catch on here. To cover up, I said: “Try my Uncle Vic. He’s never at a loss for the right word.”
    “‘Cool…’,” murmured Jack.
    “But,” I hastily continued, “how could you take that risk, Gedelly?”
    “What risk?”
    “Knocking his hat off!” I was flustered not so much for the sake of the hat – though I didn’t like waste of expensive property – as for the wider reason, that to play games against the infinite Drop might entail a defeat more serious than the loss of a Stetson. It might lead to a puncture in the bubble of confidence, a breaking of the spell of assurance, that kept us all from the last scream.
    “Show him, Jeck,” said Gedelly.
    With a lopsided grin he dangled the hat from an extremely thin, almost invisible thread which I had unsurprisingly overlooked. “Even if I hedn’t caught it, I wouldn’t hev lost it. Cool, eh?”
    “Aw, get some thummu, Jeck,” said Wensib Oan, a thinner, slightly younger lad.
    “What’s thummu?” I inquired, hoping to enlist the word as an ally against cool. And sure enough, by the time we had all discussed it (“get some thummu” turned out to mean “come off it”, as far as I could understand), cool was mercifully buried in oblivion. It helped that a small doll-like girl of Far Eastern appearance, Sulles Tjat, rebuked Gedelly for acting wibrupt, whatever that was (I was reluctant to guess), whereupon her friend Kada Gevlig – an ample, tall, Nordic-looking blonde – gave me the explanation I had hoped not to hear:
    “Wibrupt – will now, a Biri gets to ricognize a certain look. When thet look comes upon a person, and is noticed by others, the others rush to thet person and hold him/her until the look hes passed away, no quistions asked… I ixpict you know what I mean.”
    “No of course he doesn’t know what you mean; he’s only just got here,” said Gedelly, and turned to me. “You hevn’t seen it happen yit, hev you?”
    I began to sweat and hoped I wasn’t blushing.  “Really, you don’t have to –”
    “It’s a sign,” Gedelly remorselessly continued, “that the person’s mind hes broken out of the ristraints of the safety-wibbing of normal teboo and is realizing the re-ellity of the gulf thet gapes bilow.”
    “Ah,” I said, praying that she would shut up.
    “Of course,” she went on, “Sulles didn’t mean it literally when she called me wibrupt – it was just a joke, about the way I knocked Jeck’s het off. But sometimes such a break in the hebit-wib really does heppen…”
    “The break, itsilf,” added Jack, “is commonly called a squartcho. Not a tichnical term; it’s colloquial.”
    “Sounds appropriately horrible,” I said, and while the others nodded and agreed, I took stock and realized what had happened.
    They weren’t teasing me, they were just being important, like a group of intelligent sixth-formers back in England might have bandied Freudian terms about. Here, in Birannithep, if you wanted to sound fearlessly adult and sophisticated, then rather than spout psycho-sexual stuff, you became blunt and frank about the pull of gravity.
    I sensed that they were a little uncertain, perhaps a little regretful that they had gone so far in my presence.
    I thought I might reassure them while at the same time I might also gently nudge them towards decent reticence.
    “And after the break,” I suggested, “when the habit-web is repaired, you go back to seeing that the comfy webby ideas are part of our nature, and so they’re just as real as the void below.”
    “Thet,” said Wensib, “is a crecking good point.”
    “Yis, you sure hit the nail on the hid,” agreed Sulles. The others smiled their approval. Honours were even, between comfortable habit and horrifying squartcho.
    Honesty impelled me to add:
    “Some aspects of this conversation, I didn’t very much like, but,” I held up a hand, “I’m grateful to you all for putting me in the picture. I expect there’s a wealth of ways in which squartcho can open beneath us. An ugly word for an ugly thing, which one must sometimes face. But now, I vote we talk about something else. Let me bring over my companions Cora and Vic – time I introduced you – ”
    “It’s all right, don’t bother, we’ve mit thim,” said Gedelly, dismissively, and neither did any of the others seem much interested. They were much keener on talking to me, than on paying attention to Cora and Vic.
    Those two, I began to realize, had plotted neatly and effectively to set me up. They had spread stories about me so that, in the eyes of Biri youth, I was the adventurer out of the current batch of immigrants. I was held to be the most exciting story-teller and knowledge-giver among my companions; I, therefore, was the one to quiz. Not they; they could sit back and let me do it all. I had little choice. The way they’d worked it, I could hardly disappoint this little crowd without dissipating a lot of good-will. Vic’s idea, no doubt, and I thought it rather callous of him. I had had this sort of thing done to me before. Didn’t he realize that to make me out to be a hero involved the danger that people might require me to be a hero again? And then the krunk would be in the glunk, with a vengeance.
    Still, things seemed to be going fine at the moment. I was honoured to be befriended by these youngsters; they were attractive, witty, intelligent, good-natured; a universe away from yobdom. When they stopped talking about webruptness and squartcho, I could breathe with complete ease in their presence.
    Then a moment came when, literally, I heard myself breathe. One of those random silences had settled on the group –
    Gedelly Sanand looked around and said, “Hey, folks, what’s up with everyone?”
    “Coincidence,” said Jack. “Bound to heppen now and thin. Even you must stop for brith sometime.”
    “Or we could blame Duncan,” suggested Kada Gevlig in a sultry voice. “Say he swipt us off our feet; stunned us into silence.”
    “I haven’t said much,” I countered.
    “Not yit, maybe,” she inconsistently agreed, “but lit’s git you talking…. it’s time you told us about Australia.”
    “Yis!” approved several of the others. Wensib added, “Just what I was going to say! You rimimber Earth for real, don’t you? You ken bring our vague dream into focus. It’s been fading, in our minds, for months now, but you won’t have lost it at all – because it’s more then a dream to you. Isn’t thet right?”
    “It is,” I confirmed. Aha, the set-up was beginning to make sense now. Vic had had good reason to put me in this position, after all. His side of the family wasn’t at all connected with Australia, whereas mine was; I knew something about the place, for my interest was keen, although I had never been there. I, not he, was the one to satisfy these people’s curiosity about Earth’s equivalent of Birannithep.
    So, I talked.
    “Australia was special in various spectacular ways,” I told them. “Where to begin…. let me think…. well, for one thing, it was the only nation which was also a continent…”
    Making that point right at the start reminded them of the key difference between any place on Earth and its Krothan echo. Continents imply seas. Seas must be horizontal, else the water runs away. Kroth, therefore, can have no seas; the most it can have is a single lake, Nistoom, at the level North Pole. Earth and Kroth are one world at two separate levels of reality, inhabiting different universes, at different stages of natural law. Kroth’s universe is more basic, with unidirectional gravity and therefore a constant “up” and “down”; Earth has locally oriented gravity all over it, derived not from direction but from mass.
    “So if you bear in mind this enormous difference, it isn’t surprising that the parallels between Australia and Birannithep are few. For example, kangaroos, and things of that sort, are out of the question here. Hudgung, unlike Earth’s Southern Hemisphere, is a real Down Under with its Velcro grass and its fauna that have evolved to clutch and cling and stick to the overhead ground. And yet,” I went on, “if the geography is entirely different, I won’t say the same of the spirit of the place.
    “Birannithep seems to me to have one thing in common with Australia: namely, the golden magic, the glamour of a nation with a great future.”
    What made me say that? What made me mean it?
    I saw faces around me full of a glad calm. My audience was pleased, and not in the least cynical, as they accepted my compliments to their country.
    This made me feel yet closer to them, more respectful of them and more strongly aware of a vast potential in Birannithep/Australia. I felt fully justified in what I had said. My disregard of the differences between the worlds might seem laughable, and yet, with mysterious certainty, the greatness of which I spoke was all the more apparent to me because the two manifestations of it were so unlike; as though the dissimilarities between Earth and Kroth must form not a contrast but the necessary ends of a baseline, the wider the better, from which the joint Antipodean soul could get a fix on its glorious future.

*

TO BE CONTINUED