uranian throne - episode twenty-three

on the eve

by
robert gibson


For the story so far, see:

volume I: the terran heir
1: Dynoom; 2: Hyala;
3: the nebulee; 4: Exception; 
5: the lever of power;
6: the infrastructure throbs; 
7: the claw extends;
8: the brain-mist writhes; 9: the last card;
10: the londoner; 11: the terran heir;
12: the city cracks; 13: the validator rips;
14: the heartland beckons; 15: zyperan

volume Ii: the golden cloak
16: confluence at ao; 17: the scared logician;
18: the rash down-payment;
19: the non-dummy run ;  20: the immigrants;
21: the cincture;  22: The golden cloak.

[ + links to:  Glossary - Index of proper names - Timeline - Maps - A Survey of Ooranye - Plan of Olhoav - guide to published stories ]

1

The ego-track of Neville Yeadon:

One step after another, and how do the strides stay firm?  Even as I ask this, dare I think, dare I imagine -

Oh get a grip, stop tottering, and face the demands of the moment.

It's a fact: this thing-to-boggle-the-mind really has happened to you.  And although you'd prefer to sit back and absorb fortune's wallop at your leisure, you have an immediate task.  It's your role to focus, right now, upon the negotiation of a peace with Yr. 

Do it well.  Live up to your new station in life.  Else you're finished as a human being.

We're going down an avenue of the City of Mists, we four: I the Sunnoad accompanied by three supportive adventurers.  I believe I did right to draw into the current of my service the guidance of Abon Gnaa and the experience of Oreneg Vadon, both of them resources to be garnered, and besides, those experts would have wished to participate whether or not I commanded their attendance; as for the youngster, Kusk - well, he happened to be on hand, and "happening to be at hand" is typical, insofar as millions of bystanders in this planet's long history have been swept into the gyre of the golden cloak.  Do those so swept complain?  I haven't heard.  At any rate these three seem quietly proud to be here with me.  I sense no critical dubiety, no reproach for my apparent rashness in walking through Yr without a proper military escort.

How different it would be if this sort of adventure were located on Earth!  Terran followers would surely regard me as madly irresponsible.  Here, fortunately, it seems my risk-taking is accepted without question.

Even so, this little lot are perhaps the better for not being able to read my mind.  If they could they might wonder - loyal though they are - "What by all the skies is Sunnoad Yadon about?"

The truth is, I don't exactly know, and if I admitted as much, "What!" they might then protest, "you know that the ruler whom you're taking us to meet cannot be trusted, yet you have no plan!"

Well, my "plan" is to "budget" in advance for the difficulties. 

For example it's no good hoping that Noad Rael Odiram, proud as Lucifer by all accounts, will turn out to be well-disposed towards Syoom.  Despite the gratitude he owes us for having freed him from the thralldom of the rebels who had seized control of his city, he must hate the idea that Yr got beaten by a Syoomean force, even though the defeated were a faction hostile to himself.  To him the entire pattern of events must represent a dire humiliation.  I'd better assume that I shall find him in a bad mood.

Besides, even at the best of times I couldn't expect him to consider himself bound by loyalty to me.  The people of Yr do not admit allegiance to the Noad of Noads; their sky-ranging, nomadic history has not encouraged them to regard themselves as Syoomean.

To place myself in Rael Odiram's power could thus be considered an act of lunacy.

Yet, during the past twenty minutes, since I voiced my intention to my followers, I've not heard a single attempt to dissuade me from trying to dicker a peace with Yr's Noad on his home ground.  Nor - admittedly - have I sensed any enthusiastic approval; all I get are matter-of-fact nods, respectful silences, quizzical looks...

The subdued voice of young Kusk mutters at my side: "So far it looks like a normal city, sponndar."

"Though the abitgers modify the picture."  What did I say then?  It's the first time I've ever pronounced "abitger". 

Reassuring, that I can dredge stuff like this from my subconscious Uranian encyclopaedic dictionary.  Reassuring, that I can thus slap a label onto a sight.  Abitgers - the bristles of grey barrels on roofs and between towers.  An abitger: a compressed-air cannon.  My comment sounds the sort of apt thing which a knowledgeable Sunnoad should say. 

Oreneg Vadon says, "Yes, the place is thick with them.  I've counted thirty on this stretch so far."

I shrug with an air of wisdom.  "Defences against predatory clouds.  Accrual over the ages."  My tone is dismissive.  Oreneg glances at me with what I guess is a flash of approval.  This Sunnoad-with-an-Earthmind seems to understand what to expect in a skyborne Uranian city:  that's what he's thinking, I trust.  Our boots continue to clink along the avenue's metal surface.  Our eye-balls swivel this way and that.  We're trying our best to keep watch on the geometric jungle that lines the way.  How crisp and clear it all seems!  Surprisingly the famous Mists, which give the city its sobriquet, don't appear to be on the prowl.  They seem to have all subsided into a patchy carpeting, here and there, of a few of the city squares and side-streets with what misleadingly looks like luminous layers of slowly bubbling mud.  We avert our eyes from those.  An attitude of mind one-hundred-per-cent-correct Uranian.  Let stuff be; let attention glide past it; they can mystify all they like so long as they leave us alone.

Kusk and Oreneg, every so often, turn to glance behind them.  Abon Gnaa and myself, less worried about ambush, keep focused on what lies ahead.  My main concern is to be sure I don't miss any signal from the palace...  Ah, that gold-and-orange arched door, there at the end of the avenue: that must be it.  The entrance.  My imagination races towards the meeting with the Noad of Yr. 

The man must be desperate.  His priority when we meet will be to do something special, to recover his lost dignity, so that he can impress his own people. 

Let's hope he'll have the sense to realize that treachery won't do it.  A grand generous gesture is what would suit his image nicely.  An agreement to an adventurous alliance of equals against the common menace of Dempelath - that would fit the bill to perfection.  It will probably be necessary, when I put the idea into his mind, to induce him to regard it as his own.

Come to think of it, "alliance" may be too much for Rael Odiram to swallow, in which case I could borrow a gag from Earth history and suggest that his city, like President Wilson's USA in World War One, be called not an "ally" but an "Associated Power".

Whatever term he prefers to use, it'll be fine with me so long as he joins in the all-important fight against the evil that threatens us all.

The bright door, the gold-and-orange arch, is much closer now.  It has not yet opened for us but already my speculations are zooming past it to get busy with the further future: how for instance I may distribute my attention between, on the one hand, the fleet of reliable Syoomean skyships which I'll have to gather for the task force to rescue Olhoav, and on the other hand the need to juggle the commitment of Yr.  For if I can secure that, the time and the concentration will be well spent, the prize being, if all goes well, a skyborne colossus that will sail with my fleet through the skies of Fyaym. 

Yes indeed, Yr is going to be a superb asset in the clash with the common enemy: won't Dempelath be aghast when he sees -

Stop daydreaming!  Get on with the job!  You haven't got the agreement yet!

I almost visibly shudder.  The reprimand, from my more focused self, is sharpened by a flash of Terran memory.  It comes to me from a sports report on TV, of a football match back in 1967.  A top-flight goal-keeper was thinking too far ahead (as he afterwards admitted) about where he would throw the ball after he'd caught it - such an obvious catch it seemed - and the result of this wandering of his mind, while the ball was still coming at him, was that he failed to catch it.  It slipped through his hands and into the goal - so that "Careless Hands" he was dubbed from then on.  The error clouded all his achievements; sadly it's what he's most remembered for, despite the fact that he was by and large a very good goalkeeper. 

And now you, Sunnoad Yadon, you'd better watch what you're doing.  For goodness' sake NOTICE the obvious things -

For instance, the quietness of Abon Gnaa. 

He hasn't said a word during the minutes we've been walking in this city of his.  It's as if he wishes to efface himself.  I didn't quite expect that.  He's no automaton, after all.  He may have been a mere mouthpiece when spokesman for Rael Odiram, but there's more in him than that.

I decide to prompt him, to obtain some reaction.

"Any comments, Abon Gnaa?"

He mutters, "Things have changed."

"More than you expected?"

"Not more than I should have expected, no." 

At the pique in his tone, my mind leaps at a guess - that his role has been abolished.  In which case, the Noad of Yr intends not to use a spokesman at all.  Will this make matters more difficult?  It ought not to.  Top-level negotiations between Rael Odiram and myself should not require any spokesman.

We halt our march a few yards from the great arch-door.  Finally it has begun to open.  Slowly its two halves swing back.  In the greyness beyond, I discern a shuffling of interior lights.  I guess I'm seeing a glint of distant polished helmets worn by people crowded back against a far wall. 

I ask, "What do we make of this?"

Abon Gnaa is wearing a sort of stuffed expression.  Kusk on the other hand looks overawed.  Oreneg Vadon seems for once subdued.  Hmm... this may be a good moment to imagine myself in their place, in fact I'd do well to empathize with any Syoomean treading the floor of legendary Yr.  Here, native insights must count as much as Terran ones; for Yr is a mystery to all.

I make no move to advance -

"Wise, wise," rasps a voice.

At this ironic approval of my hesitation I give a start (oops, undignified) and turn to see a lean, stringy old man in a grey cloak who has emerged from behind one of the pillars next to the great door.  White hair, white eyes blazing, the fellow adds sardonically:  "I too am keeping out of it, though I actually born in there."

I probe: "You don't like the look of your own people, Noad Rael?"

That was cheeky of me.  But he answers seriously.  "I want to keep the distance between them and me."

"But - your own people?"

"Today," he nods.  As if to say, that's not much to count on.

I say formally: "I, Sunnoad 80438, have come to you, Rael Odiram, Noad of Yr, to negotiate a peace.  A peace," I emphasize, "between equals."

Straight after that last word has left my lips I briskly turn to meet the eyes of Oreneg Vadon, to give him a don't worry, I know what I'm doing glance which orders him to trust me; an expression is intended to convey, Don't imagine that I shall risk any derogation of the sunnoadex.  I am not forgetting my rank; it's just that I'm not pulling it on the Noad of Yr. 

It's a lot to put into an expression, I know, but I hope Oreneg gets it.

Meanwhile it seems that my choice of vocabulary has gratified the ruler of the City of Mists.  "A Peace Between Equals," he echoes as though it were the title of a favourite poem.

I seize the moment, "Therefore we must speak aside, the two of us alone." 

Rael Odiram gestures at the square stone block from which the nearby pillar rises. 

My companions watch, grimly, as I go to join the Yrian at that plinth.  It provides space enough for two to sit and bargain. 

We settle, the Noad and I, and eye one another in half-profile.  I begin:

"Allow me to say it for you: you face... being made to disappear."  Before he can bridle at this, I raise a placatory hand.  "No discourtesy, no threat from me.  The prospect to which I allude, I know well, because it's the same for me."

I see him grind his teeth at this inexcusable utterance of the unsayable truth! 

Even on Earth it's a hard thing to say to any ruler.  No top man likes to admit, where no official mechanism of deposition exists, that he must, instead, risk disappearance. 

I reflect that not so long ago the German Kaiser and the Japanese tenno were, though revered, yet vulnerable to forcible removal by (in their case) the military: an unstated doom hung over the emperors.  It's a fate which they must have known would take effect if they failed to perform their roles successfully.  It had to be that way in cultures where no other channel existed either in theory or in imagination for the rulers' replacement.  And whereas on Earth the theory can change, and politics evolve into laxer, less demanding forms, it's not so on the seventh planet. 

On Ooranye, political evolution, insofar as it happens at all, takes vastly longer, and whole eras may pass without any mention of the details of a forcible disappearance; eras during which it remains an outrage to say out loud what had to be silently done.

Now that I have said it out loud, what is Rael Odiram going to do?  Explode? Not quite.  I watch him choke it down.  With satisfaction I see a realization dawn on his face.

I encourage it by softly spoken words:

"Noad, you must have worked out, having heard about me, that it's because I am not completely of this world, that part of me belongs to a very different world, that I can speak what otherwise is never spoken on Ooranye.  Also, that what I have said about the risk of your disappearance is likely to apply even more strongly to myself."

"To you, Sunnoad Yadon?" he asks with raised brows.

"Yes, to me," say I; "for you and I are in the same kind of situation.  Let me be blunt: you have suffered serious reverses.  You were overthrown by a faction that grounded your floating city.  It has been beaten in war by a Syoomean force to whom you owe your restoration.  Looks very, very bad for your image, doesn't it?  But now think - what about me?  Estimate how yet darker it must look for me.  A new Sunnoad, duly elected by the dying voice of Brem Tormalla 80437, but lent the golden cloak on one rather shaky condition: I'm where I am because it is believed that an Earthmind may be quirky enough to beat the abnormal threat of Dempelath.  A bit up-in-the-air, don't you think?  All sorts of things could go wrong, probably will, with such a reign.  And if they go too far wrong - something will happen to erase me."

Rael Odiram finds his voice.

"You need not be erased.  Instead, you could be admonished.  By a Corrector."

"I am aware that many Sunnoads have been righted and saved by Correctors.  But not always; and in my case a Corrector may not be enough.  I am pitted against an evil from Fyaym, resistance to whom will necessitate terrific demands.  The stresses are as yet unimagineable, on me and on any force I can raise, and if, as seems probable, I am simply not up to the task, it will mean that I shall be judged as..."

"Uncorrectable."

"You've said it, Noad Rael."

"I must confess," he muses, "I have found it intriguing, the question of precisely what happens to rulers who disappear."

"Let's hope neither of us discovers the answer." 

My comment raises an ironically understanding smile on the face of the Noad of Yr.  The desperate phase of the colloquy has come to an end.  Plainer sailing from now on. 

My glib talk slides onward towards success and almost before I realize it I find we've arranged, with no misunderstandings, the terms of peace.  It's a verbal commitment, clear and sufficient; the Noad of Yr has given his word, and I believe him, that he will bring the majestic floating presence of Yr itself to join my fleet when the journey across Fyaym to Olhoav begins.

It's a strong agreement because of what's behind it.  I know, and he knows I know, that he needs the grand gesture.  In the eyes of his people he must live down the recent blow to his prestige, and restore that splendour of destiny which alone will enable him to survive; the alternative is the silent disappearance into tacit oblivion, the gulp down that nameless throat which a ruler who fails to make the grade on this world can quietly expect to happen.

I get up from the plinth, and we bow to each other, the Noad of Yr and the Sunnoad of Syoom.

...Back with my followers, I rub a hand across my sweaty brow and say, "That's done." 

"He is now our ally?" asks Oreneg Vadon in obvious amazement.

"He will join the war effort as an Associated Power," I say with a trace of a grin.  "But yes: 'ally' really defines it.  Rael Odiram will join my fleet when it is assembled for the voyage to Olhoav."

Abon Gnaa mutters, "I must believe it, I suppose."

Kusk says, "A great outcome, sponndar Sunnoad-Y."

"So now I can bow out of the detail-mongering here..."  Just in time I warn myself to refrain from actually pronouncing the word "delegate".  Although in war a Sunnoad may lead - and hence presume to delegate tasks - in peacetime it's different: the wearer of the golden cloak must then rely not on definable authority but on pure prestige, with no staff at nen's disposal.  And it's arguable that we're not yet at war.  At any rate it doesn't yet look like an open war, though, if both sides are preparing determinedly for one, in a sense you might as well call it a war.

Be that as it may, I'll delegate.  People will want action from me, and my little group here, plus Rael Odiram himself who has stepped closer to listen, are waiting for me to open my mouth again.

"I reckon that you three," I point, "would do well to remain in Yr a while to liaise with Noad Rael," I point again, and suddenly realize - my words have come out in a mixture of Uranian and English.  Uh... which words were in which tongue?  I can't remember a few seconds back.  But their eyes sparkle.  It seems my 'Nudge Quotient' is high.  Meaning what?  Shut up, brain.  Don't analyze how you skate over the moment, or you'll fall over.  What matters is, they're saying they'll do it.  I nod my thanks in turn.  "I leave you now," I say.  "I shall call the flagship to take me off the rim." 

Whereupon, the four of them together (I am glad to note) standing in line to bid me farewell, I set off back along the avenue with a metaphorical diploma in my pocket to comfirm that I've passed the first exam, jumped the first hurdle in my reign; maybe not cause to swagger, but still enough for a swing in my stride. 

2

In the mood of wonder into which I keep sliding, my muscular actions are left to themselves, my legs bear me like an automaton back along the avenue to Yr's rim, and, similarly without thought, I make the transceiver-call to the skyship. 

A couple of minutes' wait and now the great ovoid hovers close.  A hiss, and its pickup ayash lifts me, I rise through the opening and I step onto the floor of the hold. 

I graciously respond to the greetings of those present - the captain and several officers.  Yet immediately afterwards I can't remember what I've said.  Not for the first or last time, my consciousness gets slapped by a double-take-to-end-all-double-takes, causing my inner self to flinch and wail.  Has all this actually happened to me?  Is that golden cloak really around my shoulders?  Fortunately the mental stun stays private.  Nobody else can detect the catch in my throat, nobody notices any surface bubbles of bogglement, so you ignore it, Yadon, and listen!  The captain has taken it upon himself to ask: "Should we head back to Skyyon now, 80438?"  Answer him.

"Yes, do that."  I ought to have given the order right away.  I've let the moment drag.  The captain's head inclines.  His cloak sweeps as he turns.  His officers follow him, away to the ramp which leads to the control centre, and I tag along at a distance, brooding, pondering, cautiously pleased.  They are letting me be, they know I shouldn't be hemmed in by ceremonial.  And - no mention of a posh stateroom; good, a Sunnoad ought to be beyond such things.  Nevertheless - what about that numeric terseness of "80438"?  I suppose it's far too soon to understand the nuances of the various forms of addressing a Sunnoad.  I remember quite a lot of the procedure surrounding Brem Tormalla 80437 but it's different now that I've become the focus. 

One route to speedier understanding may come at too high a price:

Were I to let go of my Terran consciousness altogether, in a final submergence, a permanent and total surrender to my Uranian personality, then that would doubtless banish my perplexities forever -

But I shrink from the cost of that step: it's surely better than I retain the perspective of Earth, for I strongly suspect that it's why I'm here; the people of Syoom would not approve if I were to abandon the eccentric string-to-my-bow, the peculiar viewpoint which just may defend them against the even weirder enemy on Starside.

Here we come to the biggest question of all.

What sort of enemy?

We're sleepwalking towards a state of war, a war to preserve our identity, yet nobody talks about it.  Such amazing silence!  While a stench of undefined peril wafts hither, while the fighting strength of Syoom is almost squashed into inaction by a heavy blanket of silence - what can be my role?

I'm ultimately the poison-taster.  That, so I guess, is why Brem Tormalla chose me.  The idea must be, "let the Terran pollute his lips whenever it becomes necessary to mention the unmentionable".

Not a pleasant train of thought, but then one would have to be a fool to hope this job will be easy.  You'll have to use your noggin, Yadon, as best you can. 

While ambling along a corridor towards my cabin I hail an officer who crosses my path at an intersection ahead.  He stops at once, waits for me to speak, and quickly I have to ask myself why I have hailed him.  The answer fortunately comes to me, that I want to avoid arriving at the polar city at the wrong time of day.  The evening would not be good.  In order to avoid that, I shan't go straight there. 

"Please ask the Captain," I say, "to drop me off at Melikon." 

"I'll see to it, 80438," says the officer smartly, and turns round.  That was all.  No explanation necessary.  I've done right: of course a Sunnoad must not spend the night in Skyyon. 

Well, that was a good little move on my part.  I could tell that the officer approved of my request.  Ever since Tu Rim 78860, way back before the current era, tried to convert the sunnoadex into a despotic rule, wearers of the golden cloak have been banished by custom from sojourning overnight in the Sunward Polar City; and to accept the ban wholeheartedly is a way of distancing ourselves from the shameful example of Tu Rim.  It's a taboo so strong, that to flout it might well be sufficient grounds to activate the un-recorded, wordless disappearance.

Therefore while I am Sunnoad I shall never inhabit quarters in the Zairm, the palace at Skyyon.  Instead, the allotted "hut" at Melikon, ninety miles away, will content me whenever I need to lodge within a half-hour's skimming distance of the polar hub.

I bet the crew are relieved that I remembered the rule!  How embarrassing if they'd had to remind me!  (Though doubtless a useful talent in this job is that of brushing off embarrassments.)

So far, so good, then.  I'm an apprentice nudger, determined to improve, determined furthermore not to get lazy nor take for granted the love which the people of Syoom bear towards the office I hold. 

Theirs is so deep a devotion, that I need only ask in order to get the help I want, as far as practicality allows; but though I can bask in that love, I must also tend it, must take skilful care of it, making requests in the right style, and for the right things.  For love itself exerts pressure.  Love issues a challenge to live up to its expectation.  All is upon me.  The examples of precedent and the guidance of my predecessors can never be enough...

...It seems that my Terran awareness has segued again, past some further stretch of time, and that side of me gazes around as though just awoken from a doze. 

This isn't anywhere on the skyship.  I must have alighted.  The glowing numerals on a blue clockface tell me: "10,545,958 Ac".

Six days since my accession.  I've been in the "hut" for a while.

What has filled that time?  What have I been doing here?

A rummage among snippety memories gives me the answer: I haven't been doing anything much, here in my lodgement in Melikon.  I certainly am not in the middle of any action at this particular moment. 

Well, that's good.  It's a time of taking stock.  Of getting my bearings.  Learning to feel at home, wandering around the premises, outside and in. 

"Hut" is a misleading term.  True, from outside it's that sort of shape, but inside it amounts to fairly a comfortable dwelling for a solitary person's needs.  It is spotlessly maintained by silent robot cleaners.  One constant cleaner to each room, they're always inching, hand-sized, pad-shaped, at snail's pace over the floor, walls, furniture... 

Custom decrees that the Sunnoad lives here alone.  It doesn't feel lonely, however.  I know that if I ever get to  feel overwhelmed with isolation I need only use the radio and video links.  Some of them connect directly with Skyyon; others, via relay, with further cities. 

I have used some of these channels during the past few days.  I recall mildly disappointing results.  It seems that in my efforts to get an overall picture of the state of Syoom, with particular regard to signs of trouble infiltrating from Fyaym, I have met with responses that sound cagey, albeit respectful.  Was it unrealistic of me to expect more?  Perhaps one can't expect to obtain a full enough picture from this central but lonely vantage.  I suspect that's it.  On this planet, you have to go out and plunge: catch your answers on the toss amid waves of events.  Still, it was reasonable to spend a restful few days familiarising myself with Melikon, imaginatively communing with my predecessors by browsing in the hut's mellow-litten library-room. 

It's marvellous to explore the notes left by numerous previous wearers of the golden cloak.  Not that such memoirs can tell me exactly what's the right thing to do, nor do they say what will happen if I don't do it: they don't make it possible to derive formulae for what may make failing Sunnoads "disappear".  But the voices from the past do cheer me on.  

If the worst happens, if I let them all down, I'll want to disappear. 

Still, best not to dwell on that...  Anyhow, let me stay here just a few hours more, a few hours in which the "Warlord of Uranus" (haha) can plan his moves.

Wait, what's that I see through the window? 

A slabby metal crawler has slid into view.  An event has washed athwart me already, I've delayed too long to take the plunge on my own, and I have been pushed into some kind of trouble: for nobody except me ought to be at Melikon.  Unless by my express permission.  The privacy of the hut is a Sunnoad's due.  It is so regarded by all loyal Syoomeans.  Who, then, has driven this object here? Must find out, now!  Go out and investigate!  To hesitate would be beneath me.

A notion rat-tatting in my head as I move to the door is that the second big example of wrongness, during my watch over Syoom, may be at hand.  The first one was the grounding of Yr.  Here's what could be the second major shot in a barrage aimed at my reign.  A tradition-flouting trespass.  With a view to... what?  Assassination?  Has the enemy already reached this far?

Not necessarily.  Even if an assassin has arrived, it needn't be part of the new Dempelath-inspired value-distortion.  It could instead be something much more traditional.  It could be the silent, traditional erasure of a Sunnoad who doesn't measure up. 

This would mean that I have been flattering myself, deluding myself with the hopeful assumption that my Earthmind might be a contribution to Uranian history.  For, equally, one might argue the opposite.  Might say, it makes me unsuited... so much so, that my time has come to an end.

I open the hut door, I step out, ignoring the alarm bells of cowardice which keep shrilling their specious advice, Get protection first!  Hire a corps of guards before you go to meet strangers!  Yes all right it's against custom to do that, but people know that things are changing, and they'd understand, surely; in fact, won't they think you irresponsible if you risk your person like this...?

Shushhh, be quiet, silly: if this is the occasion of my quiet disappearance, it's no use countering it with Terran thinking. The political dynamics of Ooranye are not those of Earth.  Heaven forbid that they ever shall be. 

I walk straight at the intruder.  In front of the vehicle's bow window I halt, and stand tall with my golden cloak flapping about me.  If anyone wants to fire at me, let him.  I'm giving the Event its chance, with some benefit of the doubt. 

Inside, movement: a chunky man slumps back in his pilot chair, a look of stupefaction on his broad face, while on his right a woman reacts to his movement by giving him a furious shove, as if to way, do something!  Further back, against the cabin wall, a boy and girl aged about 3000 Uranian days (10 Earth years or so) stand very still.  All this doesn't look like much to be afraid of.

Dismissing the notion that a middle-aged couple and their normal-looking children could possibly be assassins, I gesture Come out and talk. 

This brings the result that the port bow-door swings open, and the man descends to the ground, almost stumbling before the Noad of Noads.  His hand pushes at his mop of hair as he struggles vainly for words.  Nervous backgrounder is written all over him. 

I say, "Welcome to Melikon."

He straightens and pulls himself together.  I had spoken my words dryly, but he knows he can trust me to mean them.  His eyes brighten at the prize which fate has thrown at him.

"Sunnoad sponndar," says the man, and bobs his head.

"You are...?"

"I am Gureem, a xebbalshar."

"A well-laden one," I observe, for his xebbalsh or plains-paddler, evidently full of cargo, lies heavy on the gralm, depressing it about six inches.

To me it resembles a beached submarine (albeit with no conning tower), forty steely-blue yards from bow to stern.  Doubeless fitted out for long voyages, it must hold ample capacity for provisions, goods and living space, since on their endless transects of Syoom xebbalsharou have no fixed abode, their mobile homes fulfilling all their needs.

I continue, "And you have come to pay me a visit?"

"Due to faulty navigational equipment on the Tseppuk - it seems I have."

He's said his excuse and recovered his poise.  His swift explanation efficiently counts as an apology for trespass.  Though the gulf between our ranks is as wide as can be, the disparity works as a sort of two-way social heat-pump, infusing cost-free power into us both.

I wave at the face of the woman at the window, gesturing that she come out and join us.  She obeys, takes up a stance by her man, and takes his hand in hers.  The couple are similar in looks, as though the xebbalshar over the aeons have evolved a definite racial type. 

"You are...?"

"Ehiv," she says, and adds: "Our home is yours, Sunnoad sponndar."

"That seems to work both ways," I remark, though I smile to take the sting out of it.  Hesitantly, they smile too.  "Since you're making free with my space," I continue, "I shall ask you to do something for me."  And seeing that the children have inched forward to stand on the threshold of the bow door, I wave them forward too.  Careful not to make a sound, they come to stand between their parents. 

From the youngsters' grave expressions I sense how keen they are to drink the dignity of the occasion, and what a mistake it would be for me to spoil the grandness of it all by "unbending" to them in the slightest.  Of course their gravity is an outward stiffness only, to hide the fizz in its pipes, but it's not for me to knock a hole in it.

Still, they're in for a surprise.  So are their parents.  My next move may be unheard-of in the history of the Actinium Era.  I turn, beckoning the family to follow me, and lead the way into the Sunnoad's Hut! 

I can hardly believe what I'm doing, and I guess they're finding it hard to credit, too, as they follow, gaze lowered until, overcome by irresistible curiosity, they raise their eyes to gawp at my workroom.  I wave the man and woman to swivel chairs; I take one for myself.  In stunned co-operation they sit and swivel to face me, while the children stare around in rapture. 

That invisible social pump is working at full tilt, to energize us mutually by the vitalising effect of its alternating current, up and down and up and down, drawing power from the vertical contrast of "highest" and "lowest" rank.

"Yes," relaxedly I muse, "you may be able to help me - but first, allow me to check something: do you know my name?"

Through his astonishment Gureem manages to squeeze out the words: "Sunnoad Brem Tormalla 80437." 

His wife jogs him with her elbow...

I smile, "Ehiv seems to know.  Listen to her." 

In a small voice the woman says, "I saw his picture once.  You, sponndar Sunnoad, are not he."

"Correct," say I.  "Brem Tormalla is dead.  I am his successor, Sunnoad Nyav Yuhlm 80438, otherwise known as Yadon." 

Gureem's mouth widens, "Yadon the slayer of Zyperan!"  Immediately after he has let out this hoarse cry, he looks aghast. 

"That's the one," I nod encouragingly.

Gureem, trembling, licks his lips and says, "Tales about you, Sunnoad sponndar, have... er... circulated."

"I bet they have," I say.  "I'm half alien: that much is true.  So my reign, if it lasts, may prove to be a race between the pros and cons of that.  By which I mean, the upside and the downside."

"Downside?" whispers Gureem.

His wife again is quicker on the uptake.  "Sponndar," says Ehiv to me, her face ashine with pleading hope, "we, your people, are in the desperate dark about what is being sent us from Fyaym.  If you, 80438, get help from your Terran mind-stretch, then I say the stretchier the better!"

"That's a way to put it," I laugh.  "Like you folk, I've travelled thousands of miles, yet I'd be willing to bet that the plentiful stupefactions we've so far accumulated are nothing to what we're doomed to endure if we don't nip our enemy in the bud.  Let me tell you..." 

My tongue loosens as I reminisce about my wanderings before I became Sunnoad. 

I then encourage them to talk about their travels too.  This opens the buds of friendliness further, and in the softened mood our tales overlap in an intervolved recitative...  and in these story-swaps we really are well-matched friends; strain has disappeared, or, well, almost disappeared, apart from Gareem's little tics of astonishment, which happen when he not only realizes but really realizes where he is. 

His wife talks less as time goes on, huddling knowingly in her chair.  I can tell she's clutching, in quiet joy, a sense of triumph.  Most likely she is busy thanking Fate for the fortunate outcome of their navigational error.

All of a sudden I understand why, during the past few days, I have been so uncommunicative towards those with whom I might have been expected to make contact; why, for example, I have not yet made a serious attempt to contact my fellow-Cinctees, or go patrolling with my fleet.  The short answer is, I have been waiting for something like this. 

A get-together with backgrounders. 

Finally getting down to business, I say: "Talking of adventure: today our adventures intersect.  You got here by accident, but, now that you're here, you can help me bring the situation in Syoom into better focus.  You can be my..." (I rummage for the phrase I want.  It's one that means pipeline of significant reports...) "stalking stranth."

They draw breath, startled.

"Why us?" asks Ehiv.

"People like you are most likely to know."

"Know?" whispers Gareem.

"About the corruptions wafting into Syoom."

It's a hard sentence to speak, but I needed to dare to say it, and, yes, Gareem is nodding, for he knows, no matter how little he likes to hear it said.

I continue:  "You've heard the name Dempelath?"

"An ill-omened word," nods Gareem. 

I prompt:  "From...?"

"From somewhere in Starside."

"As, by now, is widely known.  Without a doubt," say I, "he is concocting a nasty brew, a sickness-brew.  The first main symptom was the grounding of Yr.  Have you heard something about that?"

"We have," they admit in small voices.

"Well, that one is solved, but more infections are surely on the way.  I need to be informed about them, preferably before they sprout into crises."

"And we - "

"You xebbalsharou as a class are the best on-the-ground observers and listeners in Syoom."

I let them absorb that for a moment and then I add the verbal propellant:

"Start today; start now!"

"80438, can you..."

"No, it's no use trying to be specific; when you give me news of off-putting stuff, you give me my next target."

Ehiv and Gareem turn to each other.  "That'll be - " "It sounds like - "  "Narar!" they both say at once.

They know of one already!  "What about Narar?"  I've not been to that city.  I check my knowledge.  I know something of its ancient history, but nothing recent.

Gareem says, "It's where we heard that the Noad's son has been appointed Daon."

I almost don't get it.  Then my heart misses a beat.  Succession of the Noad's son.  A hereditary noadex. 

I whistle and say, "Like something out of the Vanadium Era!"

"That's how it seems," nods Gareem.

I shake my head in doleful amazement, recognizing the style of the event, the Dempelathian flouting of taboo.  If the Nararans really have defied the profound Uranian antipathy to hereditary government - !

"You've made a good start," I say to my visitors.  "I know where to head for next."

3

They bow their heads in farewell, and Gareem says: "May fate's paths lead you to victory, 80438." 

"Without too many wrong turnings, let's hope," I dryly agree.  To cap it with something more appreciative, I add: "Conversation, such as we've enjoyed, counts as one rich path."  Wondering if I was wise to say that - since all sorts of things may go wrong if these people get the notion that I now want to consume yet more time talking - I do a quick lore-rummage to turn up the right farewell-phrase.  Ah, here it is, based on the fact that a xebbalsh mid-section has a big horizontally hinged door which swings down to form an access ramp for the cargo hold: 

"May you find a good place to put the flap down," I say, and they smile with pleasure because I've hit the right note, meaning, May you find a good place in which to stop and trade.  They're back in their vehicle now and it's moving off, the sub-gralm paddles of the xebbalsh churning away. 

Well, negativity sure has taken a fall in this unblemished little encounter with members of the public.  How heartily I can jeer at my former doubts!  Assassination, my eye!  My gleaming body-suit of exalted rank allowed me to mirror these people's hopes right back in their faces.  Hence we've parted with mutual uplift.  I'm not a target but an accepted service... 

All right, fate may not always be as kind as this, but still I reckon I can count on some degree of leeway between me and disaster, when I go forth with the prestige of the sunnoadex as my shield; maybe not an invincible shield, but enough, I trust, to ensure that the threat of Disappearance won't loom at every turn -

Gazing at the vehicle's wake, I detect the isostacy of the plain, the grainy surface slowly rebounding to even up once more as the xebbalsh recedes.  Within an hour or so the gralm will as level as before, with no lingering trace to reveal that a heavy plains-paddler came this way.  The thought brings a certain melancholy. 

Oh come off it, Yadon: why feel lonely?  You're the Noad of Noads!  You can have companionship whenever you want it.  Anyone in Syoom will be honoured to give you their time and attention... 

But it was the sight of those family ties, that have made me wistful.  Those children remind me of my own.  Tsritton and Idova Sganna are adults now, they're all the family I possess, and they're a long distance away. 

Pointless to complain that the don't rush over to see me.  I know very well why I cannot expect that.  Pointless to object, "If they'd dropped everything and skimmed in this direction they could have been here by now" - pointless because of the look of things, the powerful Uranian taboo against hereditary succession to power. 

Which is why the news from Narar must be such a shock to all of society.  Anything that looks as though it might lead to that particular political sin is viewed severely.  No wonder that rulers on this planet tend to distance themselves from their families...

I gaze back at the hut and that, too, wafts me some inevitable sorrow.  Everybody knows the sound historical reason why Melikon is a lonely place.  The hut's very existence is a reminder of how Sunnoad Tu Rim 78860 went wrong.  If it had not been for him, no such structure would have been built here.  None would have been needed.  My thoughts circle round, as they often do, to the old story.

Without the powerful and age-old historical memory of Tu Rim's rise and fall, I could have slept in the Zairm; could have stayed in the Palace of Skyyon as many nights as I wished, as of right. 

That palace would have been my ex officio home, if history had gone differently.  Now it's at my disposal only as an office in daylight hours.  No overnight stays by a Sunnoad any more, anywhere in the polar city. 

But enough moping: I have a shiny plan, and I must follow its shine. 

...Yet still my mood still swings to and fro, as though my inner eye were swivelling to follow the ball at a psychic tennis match.  The first swing tells me to appreciate my plan.  It's based on the couple's mention of the doings at Narar, and it promises fair success.  The second swing brings the worry, that perhaps I was so rapt in all this brilliant thinking ahead, that I failed in courtesy towards my visitors; that I didn't thank them properly at the end.  But no.  Scrub that.  If they noticed my absorption, they must have understood it.  Surely, it was a compliment to them, insofar as it meant I had listened to what they told me and recognized its importance.  Indeed, it's what enabled them to clear off so smartly.  They could leave with a treasure locked safe in their memories, of the knowledge of a successful brush with 80438. 

I return to the hut, scribble a paragraph in the log, and then radio a message to my office in Skyyon.  My request is for a skyship to be allotted for my use in ten days' time; reasonable enough, I reckon, since ten days should allow the fleet to re-arrange patrols without much trouble.

"Sunnoad Yadon, you can have a ship sooner than that," says the duty officer, sounding on edge.  "You can have... let me see... the Lorodest today."

"That would be efficient," I reply (tactfully does it!); "you, sponndar patrol-co-ordinator, are...?"

"Tham Mext is my name, sponndar 80438."

"Noted, sponndar, and thank you, but I'll stick to my schedule.  So, unless my route swerves, expect me in ten days."

"Taquotal, Sunnoad Yadon."

That's more like it.  Better than his initial response.  He'd definitely sounded not quite right at first: clumsy in style, his renl rather wonky.  I'm being awfully perfectionist all of a sudden!  Such bouts of hyper-critical sensitivity seem to come on me now and then, as if, with regard to the degree of renl which ought to govern public conduct, I were getting more Uranian than the Uranians.  This isn't my wish.  So what if the chap was awkward?  Shouldn't it simply be ascribed to the fellow's nervousness at addressing the Sunnoad? 

Nevertheless my view persists that he would not, in more normal times, have presumed to suggest a tightening of my schedule.  Oh well, perhaps he was naturally curious as to why I wanted a ship not now but in ten days' time.  Perhaps my plan - and not his reaction to it - is itself the peculiarity.  Indeed, it's a valid question: what am I going to do with these ten intervening days?

Rather than face that thought, I mount my skimmer, and I'm off... 

More Uranian than the Uranians, quite so!  With zeal I recline on the wave.  Despite the "spilth" from Dempelath that has begun to trickle into Syoom, you can still trust to the wave, the good old current which holds back its conclusions until the hour when the answer appears.  Till then, a hunch suffices, inducing me to steer my vehicle's bow, not towards distant Narar, but in the opposite direction, for some special days.  My decision rewards me with a flow of vigour in my veins, with the racing plain below my keel and the cool wind that whistles past my glassite cowl, bracing me with that trust in the wave which makes utter sense on a world like this.  To be free of worry concerning an apparent detour, even though I have no logical guarantee of how it will work, is Uranian common sense; here postponed conclusions aren't a cheat, nor are they any kind of dodge.  A cheat or a dodge it would be on Earth, like in those detective stories which allow the viewpoint characters to conceal what they perfectly well know, this being an artificial literary device to preserve the reader's surprise until all the suspects are lined up and the punch is delivered - but here it's honestly true that I myself really don't yet know.  Any reader of my life will have to accept that the wave works this way.

…I come to myself after a skid of time.  The number on the pnal, or distance-indicator, shows that I have advanced over two thousand miles.

Though it's not towards Narar, yet in a practical sense I am “on the way” to that city, since my route deviates for a purpose that is intended to serve my mission.  But how well am I reading Destiny's script?  That's to say, has my action garbled it?  No, again comes the reassuring answer, I have stayed realistic in terms of how things actually work around here; hope pats me on the back and says, "Carry on as you are, old fellow, it's a waste of time to think about backing down." 

I note some expanding grey blocks up ahead.  It's a ground-town, an obscure surface-settlement, one of those islolated huddles of humanity on the plains of Ooranye. 

Were it not for the invisible wave, my advice to myself would be to detour with care, to half-circle this place slowly, not rush straight through, lest some trigger-happy watchman fail to note my golden cloak.  As things are, nevertheless, I go belting down their high-street without hesitation. 

Waving back at those who see me - it seems, despite their astonishment, that (thank goodness) these townsfolk have the presence of mind to recognize the Sunnoad in a flash and to catch the moment with arms raised in greeting - I speed through.  In less than a minute I'm out the other side.  Not once do I look back.  I did what I did because I didn't want to stop or swerve or decelerate at all. 

Having sown who-knows-what legend, I've streaked through.  I haven't even learned the name of the place.  However the incident is not quite over: here's an outlying vheic-farm.  Somebody's painting one of the storage barns.  What a nostalgically Earthly sight: a fellow putting a coat of paint on a wall.  However, the glowing orange fields behind around us are extremely un-Earthly.

Now the farm recedes, the settlement's outermost habitation diminishing at my back.  My skimmer bullets once more into the world-plain, the infinite stretches of loneliness.  I shan't have any more occasional encounters with scattered folk, before I reach my goal.

...At last, what is that I now glimpse, the distant fuzzy spire?  More miles flow past, it gets closer and sharper, and all of a sudden I know it to be the solitary crown of Kafumabapsu, rarest of trees, tall as a mountain: a signpost for me that my journey nears its end.

Kafumabapsu stands on a dark line which stretches at its base: the forest of Namrol.  Slow down, Yadon.  Think.  Why aren't you afraid?  "Life has teeth", says a Uranian proverb which could act as a corrective to your lazy thoughts of riding on waves.

Yes, it's as well to remember that life can bite.  Right through the cushion of one's fate-wave, even while one lolls on it, it can snap its teeth... but that piece of folk-wisdom hasn't made me stop.  All it has done is to prompt me to decrease my speed to a hundred miles per hour.  Flunnd to those teeth, let them blunt themselves on me.  Is that excessive bravado?  Um... Must focus seriously.  Let some Terran caution get a look-in.  The old Terran parenting dilemma: children are one's responsibility, but they aren't one's belongings.  How far, then, ought one to mould one's progeny in in the image of one's own ideas of right and wrong?

On this world of Ooranye the problem mostly doesn't exist - except for rulers.  But hey, I am a ruler.  So hadn't I better watch out? 

The answer lies in the fact that there's no heredity in souls: even back on Earth I didn't need to be told that.  On both worlds, then, I can plump firmly for letting-souls-go.  Let them be what they want!  It's what I firmly believe.  I don't have any excuse for failure here; I can and must do this right.  Part of that means not giving in to unnecessary fears.  I have my faults, but never shall I be a Tu Rim.  Never shall I wish even in the slightest degree to turn the sunnoadex into a Yeadon dynasty.  The very thought is preposterous; I wouldn't have wanted that sort of arrangement even if I had been a King on Earth.  What a mug's game - wishing to dilute oneself via multiplication of identical successors!  Oddly inconsistent with regal pride!  The vast ego of Louis XIV worked against itself, by naming his son another Louis, his grandson and great-grandson likewise Louis, so that if the line had gone on forever they'd all have indistinguishably blended in, drowning remembrance of his individuality in an unending stream of Louis Louis Louis...  What price ego then?

I can sincerely reject the whole notion; and with that, my native Uranian wellness takes the helm.

4

My awareness has skidded.  Again.  I'm evidently addicted to skids, addict-ed-to-skids, to a sleepy slippage through time for my Earthly awareness when it's not needed, so that unemployed Terran insights sit back to let my Uranian self into the driving seat. 

Only when the next moment arrives at which my Planet Three perspective may come in handy, does the Earthly ego-track return; which must mean that such a moment has come once more.  Evidently, on the approach to the immigrant settlement, my Uranian guts got churning in panicky need for that extra Terran edge and, on cue, when I saw my children, click! my Earth-self returned to the cockpit of consciousness.

Outwardly I'm not discomposed.  Even while we hug in greeting, Tsritton and Idova Sganna and I, we simply brim with quiet joy while the crowds watch.  Now we step back to arm's length to survey each other, while at a few yards' distance the village clearing is packed by the people of (what's that humorous-sounding name I learned from the sentry just now?) Nu Galodabbab. 

Yes, the population of Nu Galodabbab are witnesses of this moment of family history, while my eyes and those of my children sparkle together, but meanwhile my split attention darts all over the place, as it has to. 

This settlement's name, for instance, nags at me.  "To scurry to safety" - nu dabbarr; "trekking" - galodarr; add the perfect participle ending -ab and shake well to get Nu Galodabbab - "the haven to which one has scurried".  Ah, yes, if only...

Tsritton teases, "Crushed by the cares of office, Father?"

"Shush," says Idova Sganna.  "Don't mention the grey hair."

It's their way of complimenting me on how well I look.  I don a crooked smile.  "Despite how busy I am, neither of you seem surprised to see me."

"Oh, we wonder, all right," says Idova, "but we don't expect to know just yet."

"At any rate, not before you see fit to tell us," says her brother.  He glances around at the host of spectators and adds:  "Of course, they are all trying to guess already." 

Idova remarks, "The one thing we do know, is that it's nothing to do with us."

"That's the one certainty," agrees Tsritton, " - that we're out of it."

They're implying: look how good we are.  Look how far we are from trading on our relation with the Sunnoad.

"Your view," I smile, "needs revision."  A quiver of strange hope and alarm flicks over their expressions.  I continue, "The taboo you're allusively skirting around... is, precisely, why I am here!"

Idova whispers, "What do you mean, Father?"

"Nothing dishonourable, I assure you.  The taboo is decent and orthodox.  Hereditary influence on power - an idea one hardly dares to speak.  An item in my armoury of shockers... which I intend quite soon to draw and fire."

...Once more comes the time-skid!

I jerk into awareness of an interval of days.  The vanishment of those days has cleared away all sight of the Nu Galodabbab.  All that's around me now is the wide plain and, ahead, the city of Narar.  I've travelled, I the Earthly me, unconscious again.  What, you back again, Earthy? exclaims my Uranian self.  Yes, that Terran ego has settled on me, light as a shawl, once more, so as to color my thoughts and view my Uranian plans from a critical stance.  The reason I'm needed: to exercise some supervision, because what what the Sunnoad of Syoom is about to do seems irresponsible according to Terran criteria.

A sort of argument, like a chord of clashing notes, flares within me.  Too fast for conversation, its after-echo on reflection sorts itself thus:

"What rashness is this that you're about to commit?  Is the governor of a world about to indulge in knight-errantry?"  "Don't carp like that, Terran - this is is the way crises are faced on this world."  "Maybe, but think before you go blundering into Narar: what's the likeliest place on Syoom to cause me to disappear?  Answer, it's that, there!  That approaching city now!  That sight which towers ahead of my little skimmer procession.  And it's not as though I have a strong escort of guards.  Only my two children.  Not a single one of the other fellow-exiles from the Namrol settlement cared to come along."  "I told them not to come.  I chose thus to travel light."  "The more fool you!  Talk of putting all one's eggs in one basket!  Does the Sunnoad have the right to gamble in this way?  Facing the spilth in Narar with a mere trio?"

Cogent questions, indeed, and no snappy answer arises from the bedrock of my native wisdom. 

In my memory's rearview mirror I check out the past couple of days.  In terms of mood, this latest "skid" has been a good one, as benign and efficient as they come.  It has to feel good.  If it were not so the undertow of anxiety would tug me back.  As things are, my onward impulse wins. 

Truth to tell, I'm looking forward to a triumph.

Here's the moment of no return: our skimmer-prows tip up as the ayash takes hold.  We start to climb the invisible entrance drive, the air-current onto Narar.  If all goes well, as soon as I get a breather I'll unify my impressions.  That's to say, I'll sew it all together, integrate the memory of the past few days with my Terran Neville Yeadon consciousness...  just as I can continue to do in skid after skid until I get to be one continuous person; why not?

Meanwhile our rise on the ayash has lifted us to where we can see over the rim of Narar.  We gaze down upon the city floor.

Spectators are swarming onto the landing area.  Scores, hundreds of faces gawp at us as we begin our descent, despite the fact that I never made any public announcement of my arrival.

Our skimmers come to rest.  We dismount, and rest our elbows on our vehicles' floating hulls. 

"Quite a crowd," says Tsritton.

Idova Sganna adds, "Yet we didn't tell them..."

"We must have been spotted on the approach," I reply. 

Watch out, I tell myself.  Steer your course through this part of your life as though driving along a road full of potholes.  Can't avoid consideration of the holes in history.  Unmentionable perforations in the social fabric through which many an unsuccessful Sunnoad has dropped out of all... er... mention. 

You really don't want to be one of those "cancelled" Sunnoads.  Only their names and numbers stay mutely on the reign-lists, unadorned by any further information.  It's an issue I'm not even going to mention to my nearest and dearest.  In fact, especially not to them. 

Nevertheless the hush-hush syndrome makes it hard not to wonder: what might be the first warning-signs? 

I can think of one clue that such an end might be in store for me.  An obvious one: overconfidence.  Like, for example, my current stupid behaviour, my coming here with almost no support.

"Here she comes," drawls Idova Sganna.

I know who 'She' is. 

Directing my gaze at where the crowds are parting to make way for the new ruler of this city, I notice that she... swaggers.  That's my disquieting first impression of Nwix Ezong, Noad of Narar: she's a waddling amplitude.  Only moderately hefty in Earth terms, admittedly; but what on the Third Planet would be a hardly noticeable fleshiness is a gross plumpness here.  Uranian women are almost all svelte - whereas this one isn't!  I choose to de-translate the sight: I prefer to see her in the laxer Earthly way.  In that mode, in which the higher Uranian physical standards don't apply, I can find her quite attractive.

Unimportant, these observations - but what's definitely important is the unmistakable family resemblance between her and her close escort.  The gimlet-eyed young man who is accompanying her - keeping a bit further back and to her left - is the sight that should worry me.

Her other attendants are keeping out of earshot but this sharp-looking youth is the exception: he's evidently meant to listen in at top level; and because he is wearing a blue cloak I can only conclude that he holds the rank of Daon.  All of which means: he is both the Noad's heir and her son.  That's the enormity.  The recrudescence of something long regarded as anathema on this world. 

Hereditary power.

Moreover it's no accident that it is happening now.  The timing makes it a blatant instance of that "Spilth", the social decay increasingly reported in varieties scattered over Syoom.  A multi-form moral plague, wafted hither from Fyaym.  Quietly, we know it must be the work of Dempelath, hybrid human/Ghepion, tyrant of Olhoav. 

My duty, both as Sunnoad and as an Olhoavan exile, is to combat the menace, and I ought to do it with the added qualification of an Earthmind experienced in the weirdnesses of Planet Three.  I had better make a start here in Narar.  Surely most people will support me.  Allow a dynasty to govern?  It's just not done.  In decent Uranian terms, it cannot be allowed to happen. 

Just a moment, though: isn't it rather ironical that I should be taking this line?  I'm not merely an Earthmind, I am, more particularly, a royalist aficionado of British history, and, as such, am I not actually LESS qualified than anybody else on this planet to argue against the dynastic principle?

Well now, never mind that stuff: the contradiction is more apparent than real.  Although in favour of kingliness while on Earth, I was never very keen on its hereditary transmission.  I found it noticeable that the greatest sovereigns tended to be those who did not succeed to their thrones by strict primogeniture.  Think of Alfred the Great, Robert the Bruce...

All very well, but do these thoughts help me HERE? 

They come!  A sense of isolation overcomes me.  The Noad of Narar has stopped within a distance of four yards and now she hails me.  I'm in a bad, false situation.  No good just rebuking those responsible.  Telling people off is not how a Sunnoad works.  "Works"!  And just how is a Sunnoad supposed to work, for the matter of that?  No staff, no secretariat...  Cut that thought.  No point in complaining even to myself.  Must listen, must think.  The woman is welcoming me to Narar.  She seems, as she speaks, to overflow with glee.  It feels as though she's expressing a gratification over and above what is due to a visit from the Noad of Noads.  I can guess why.  From the way her glance flicks back and forth between me and my own son and daughter, it's plain she finds confirmation for her stance as dynastic Noad of Narar that I, too, am that way inclined, since, behold, I have brought my family with me!  This is a trap, without a doubt, and I've fallen in.

...My progeny are having a good time.  While we're being shown around the city by our good hosts, Noad Nwix and her son, Daon Ptem, they chat with Nwix most of all; Ptem not so much. 

Ptem seems preoccupied.  He's going to draw me aside; I can sense his decision...  here it comes.  The young Daon touches my arm and points; my gaze follows his finger to a blue-grey, spindle-shaped colossus, rising from a square a block away.

"The Tarck," he says.  "You recognise the building, Sunnoad Yadon?"

"By repute." 

"Even on Starside, you'd heard of it?"

"Even so," I confirm. 

He looks pleased but also surprised.  I decided to make the point that Starsiders aren't ignoramuses.  "You must realize, Daon Ptem, that the people of Olhoav, though they're so remote from here, are nevertheless keen to retain what they can of the history of Syoom."

"But it's the first time your naked eyes have met the structure?"  He's concentrating intensely on my face as he speaks.

"Yes, it is only now that I can cross the dungeons of Tyoar Ixx off my list of must-see horrors," I dryly agree.

Ptem firms up his sagging jaw.  "Sorry," he recovers with a chuckle, "I was staring rudely, Sunnoad Yadon, because I was trying to, er, see whether you would feel urged to step towards it."

"Oh.  You'd like me to be a tourist for the dungeons?"

"Well, we've had a craze for them... a surprising craze... and you might help us to figure out why."

"Some sightseers," I suggest, "must simply like to prove they're not scared." 

"Only - why?" wonders Ptem.  "The place is quaint now, nothing more.  One would think that the dreaded Tarck must long since have lost its capacity for inspiring genuine fear.  After all, it's a couple of dozen lifetimes since the old tyrant fell."  Ptem's eyes have developed a mischievous sparkle.  "Though come to think of it, Sunnoad Yadon, what are a couple of dozen lifetimes, after all?"

"Ah yes, quite so; we must not minimize the costume-evil image of Narar's notorious tyrant - a mini Tu Rim, by all accounts."

"You make him seem picturesque," remarks Ptem, and shakes his head.  "Worse, far worse; Tyoar Ixx was a throwback to the most blood-soaked days of the Vanadium Era."

"Well then, you have it," I say.  "Our chat has produced the answer."

"But," says Ptem, still musing, "why this standard of scariness?  Whole dynasties of evil flourished in the Vanadium Era, whereas our local villain Tyoar Ixx founded no lasting school of oppression."

"He's remembered as an outlier," I nod.

"And as such - as a lone example - he's remembered for the mystery of how he got away with it."

"Don't sound so wistful," I say, but my easy laugh earns me a sharp look; was my flippancy inurbane?  I'd better appply a gloss of tact.  "It's a fair question for historians: what some people get away with, and how.  In this case, how a Noad managed to maintain a tyranny of such awfulness in our modern Era 89." 

Silence from Ptem.  His look has become intense.  How odd that I suddenly sense that vast issues hang on our little chat. 

"I dare say," I plough on, "if one made it one's life's work to study the man's methods... but no, let it be. Ignorance is bliss."

"True, very true," says Ptem, suavely understanding my English.  "Sensible Terran dictum, that.  Ignorance is bliss.  To which I add: not ignorance only, but also her cousin, superficial knowledge... is also bliss."

"You're too clever for me," I sigh, and perhaps I mean it; I had better not assume that this youngster is unfit to be Daon of Narar, even though I came here to combat the notion of hereditary rule. 

In fact, rather than seek to argue with him on his chosen ground I had better mark out some ground of my own.  Get him in his weak spot.  I can well imagine that he'll relish showing off his fluency in English (that exotic fad which has spread like wildfire in Uranian society) and so I shall continue in that language - tempting him with an opportunity to match wits with the world's only native speaker of Terran lingo.

Nodding towards the spot, about ten yards away, where tall, pinnate vanes start to flank the path to the Tarck, I begin: "Not hard to believe that those signposts give voice to the commands inscribed upon them.  Almost can I hear their cracked voices!  Funny how lovingly they're maintained."

Ptem chuckles, "It is odd, the way we Nararans are proud of our old evil."

"Reminds me, in some respects, of what you get in touristy places on Earth.  A patina of romantic horror."

"Tell me more, I beg."

"I've visited the dungeons of some old castles in England," I say, "along with other sightseers in touring groups.  We allowed ourselves to be locked in, just for a few minutes, in the dark, just to experience the pretend-terror, the de-fanged thrill of that dark despair which the real captives must have felt."

"Looks like it's the same pretense on both worlds," nods Ptem.  "Only, here the induction is a bit stronger."

"You mean the..." - I dredge up the name of the alley between the pinnate vanes - "the Groor." 

Ptem gives a more vigorous nod, "The Groor's teghestu," and he waves at the parallel lines of inscribed vanes.  Teghestu.  Encouragers.  "Now if you will just step a bit closer..."

Cartoon-like, his features undergo a vulpine stretch; a parcel of meaning that thumps onto my mat of awareness; I try to unwrap it, and I find I can't.  That's what you get when you're living a story like this.  Oh let me out, nightmare; I don't need this.  But the odour is telling me, it will not let me go until I produce an answer to what I came here to solve.  Well then, let that be done, and when it's done let it be smoothed away in the cushiony ride on my fate-wave, for I am the Sunnoad of Syoom, fantastically the most favoured of beings on a world where no fiction ever needs to be written because real life, here, obeys the best fictional laws - those laws which allow teasy fate to hold back its conclusions like an Agatha Christie detective reserving the shocks for his summing-up.  All that is required of me, meanwhile, is that I stay ready to receive the shock when it comes.  Then, and only then, shall I, by some happy grasp of the moment, make my move through a last-minute inspiration which will be far better than the mangled mess I'd make if my conscious mind were given time to chew it all over.  For really I don't feel all that bright; were it not for the cushiony wave, I might DESERVE to  plop into oblivion through one of the holes in history, or else (far worse) live on, spotlit in the glare of ignominious failure.

I glance around.  Seems my children are chatting with Noad Nwix some way off.  Might as well leave them to it.  For a minute or so anyway.  "Looks like there's no rush," I remark to Ptem.  "So, yes, I might as well go like a tourist..." 

Doing what he wants, I wander towards the Groor.

After a few steps I can say: this counts as having gone far enough - counts as having visited.  Here, where the vanes line the path on either side, honour is satisfied.  Naught prevents me from turning back, for now I find that the bewildering nightmare mood is gone.

Actually it was worth coming this far.  Interesting to look at those vanes.  Shaped like fins, or right-angled triangular sails, they look down on me from their seven-foot height, impressing me with their surfaces - I see when I peer up close that they are covered with curlicues, decorative arabesques; art without any message; nothing formidable here.  Back in the reign of Tyoar Ixx this approach-slot was regarded as more scary than the interior of the dungeon itself (hence the the proverb, "The Groor is worse than the Tarck") but now I feel no menace; yet why, then, the pressure, the buzzing input?  It must be the thought-mirroring stuff (I've heard some blah about how it was done), usually employed in thuzolyr-elections to the sunnoadex, which was scraped off and re-used on these teghestu vanes.  What for, though?  Oh well, you can count yourself unusually lucky, on this reticent planet, if you hear any attempt at a real explanation of anything - and this is not one of those rare days.

It's understandable, after all, that these people don't want themselves whipped up into a frenzy of knowledge.  They'd soon drown in the giant planet's immensity if that were to happen.  Why then am I sniffing around here at all?  Because of who I am.  Hency this whimsical snatch at a core sample of facts.  Like some paleoecologist taking a sampler drill to the Greenland ice cap.  All part of how I lurch to and fro between Uranian and Terran habits of mind. 

The thought then comes to me, that I may have over-lurched this time. 

I suppose, yes, it ought to be faced, that down this particular alley I may have taken one step too far.  As the Noad of Noads, I'm a unique target.  And even if assassination is not the idea, why put temptation in somebody's way?  Somebody with an interest - like Ptem, the poor kloop. 

Hey, that's a nasty word.  Worse insult even than "flunnd".

"Flunnd" is bad enough.  Literally it denotes a backgrounder who arrogates the status of a foregrounder; however, it is far more often used as a mere cuss-word. 

That gets me thinking about cuss-words on this planet.  Admittedly the offensiveness of "flunnd" does arise from its literal meaning - because, of course, one isn't supposed to mention out loud the categories of "foregrounder" and "backgrounder" at all - it can't get as bad as "kloop". 

For a "kloop" - so says my squirming thought - means someone who abuses the wave. 

That is what clever young Ptem is doing!  He's urging me right now to wander further among the teghestu vanes in the alley of the Groor - because he knows - I get it all now - he knows, or senses, the real danger here -

Danger?  Getting mixed up with the past, aren't I?  Sure, the vanes pointed the way to something terrible in the bad old days of Tyoar Ixx, tyrant of Narar, but that regime is long dead and gone, the dungeons are empty and un-staffed...

Yes but, the trouble is, since then, over the millions of stagnant days during which the teghestu have had nothing to do, their poison has grown stronger.  They no longer need to be tended by staff.  In fact, something tells me that the shapes on which my eyes are now fixed do not even need to tempt me towards any physical prison building. 

Instead, they are able to construct a prison out of my own fears.

In particular my fear of failure.

Stab, stab, comes the thought: What after all can I hope to achieve in Narar if my authority is defied? 

Though infinite prestige is due to the wearer of the golden cloak, the Sunnoad who wears it has neither retinue, nor secretariat, nor any armed force except when open war is being waged.  At this moment, open war is yet to come.  Prestige is all I have, and that, if defied, is a mere nakedness.  I, part-stranger on this world, am like the teacher who must keep order in class by sheer personality, with no real sanction to back me up.  In this unfortunate situation the fear of disgrace rears up like a wave that threatens to swamp me. 

Oh, but it doesn't - because I have the answer. 

It came so fast, I haven't verbalized it yet, but already I wield it, swish! - to shake off the mood that encloses me in this alley.  The mind-traps all dissolve like a bad dream. 

Perhaps the traps were for Ptem too, poor kloop.  In which case the answer I'm seizing should extricate him as well.  Or perhaps his urge towards hereditary power is too guiltily strong.  If so, he cannot be saved; we shall see.  Anyhow, here the answer comes; in my mind's eye I sight it as a smudgy figure, a humanoid nucleus amid a swathing white light.

Armed with this vision - which I do not yet understand - I swivel on my boot-heel, a movement during which the situation likewise turns around.  With a snap in my stride I remark over my shoulder:

"All this is very interesting, Ptem, but now you must listen to me."

"I'm listening, Sunnoad Yadon," says the lad, striding to keep up.  "I'm keen, always, to learn - "

"In fact the right moment is at hand for me to tell both you and the Noad."

"We cannot oppose a moment."

"I'm glad you concur."

We reach Nwix Ezong, Noad of Narar, who turns her face to me with a quizzical look on her ample features.  My son and daughter likewise turn, with affectionate attention.  I pause, reflecting on the price that I shall have to pay - for the words I am about to speak; for deliverance they will bring; for my triumph in Narar. 

"Noad Nwix and Daon Ptem," I say, and then for a another second I pause because I don't know of any word for nepotism in any of the Uranian tongues.  "A thing may look bad," I continue, "and not matter all that much, so long as it isn't, in actual fact,  bad.  Still, it's important to stop it looking bad, too; and so I have made a decision concerning whom I shall voice as my successor.  Somebody who is definitely no close blood relation to Nyav Yuhlm of Olhoav."

They all stare, hanging on every syllable.  I continue with the advantage of the suspense I have caused:

"As the news gets around of what I have just said, even though I've spoken no name, people will know whom I have not chosen.  That's vital.  People will know, from the assurance I give, that I have not selected my son, Tsritton, or my daughter, Idova Sganna.  They, therefore, will be able to remain involved in my projects without scandal.

"And this ought also to help you, eh, Noad Nwix and Daon Ptem!  Accidents will happen, we all know - accidental resemblances of good to bad - but in your case as in mine, the matter can be cleared up."

My speech snaps shut and in the ensuing silence I watch the Nararans' faces with the utmost care - and so do Idova and Tsritton, commendably quick to grasp what I'm doing.  It's up to the Noad and Daon now.  I'm gambling that they can adjust, that they can see I'm giving them an out.  (But if not, what will they do?  Never mind!  They simply must see.  They can't not see...)

"Accidents, as you say, will happen," says Nwix slowly, and she heaves a sigh which, just for a moment, makes me wonder whether she and Ptem are deciding to arrange an accident of the type I did not mean.  Oh...my heart misses a beat as I reflect that it was I, just now, who said accidents will happen: but no - like a sudden sunny spell on Earth their expressions brighten and the mood thaws.  Clearly, these folk want to do the decent thing.  They want to resist being part of the Spilth.  They welcome the chance I'm offering them, to save face on my terms.

Reasons, explanations, set the seal:

"...And this particular accident," Nwix continues, "could hardly have been avoided.  The way it happened was that Ptem, when alread Daon, was unfortunately lost, presumed killed, on a Wayfaring mission in the forest of Yyyodihid, at the same time as I his mother (for an entirely separate reason) was elected Noad.  Then, you see, before the opportunity arose for me to appoint another Daon, he came back alive."

I put encouragement into my tone, "And thus Narar found itself with a closely-related Noad and Daon without anyone being to blame." 

She takes the cue.

"Exactly, 80438!  The outcome was unplanned!  Against all expectation!  I ask you, what could I have done but accept the arrangement as a...."

"A one-off," I nod, and she smiles in gratitude for the snuffing of the problem.  "No harm done," I continue, "if it is viewed that way.  No harm at all in a mere contingent concatenation of appointments."  Mingled with that soothing carpet of words, my mind's ear catches the sigh of a relaxing wave.

5

...Another skid of time - and up pops my Terran consciousness again.  Quickly, my brain informs this "me" as to where I am.  Norkoten Hall at Skyyon is where the table is, at which I'm sitting with seventeen other people.  What's the date?  Glance at the figure on the history-clock on the wall - see it says 10,546,009 Ac - do a quick silent calculation -

I've been Sunnoad for fifty-seven days now.  What has been going on?  Please, native awareness, fill me in.  Obediently that other "me" gives out what I immediately need to know, a wordless impression of a breathing-space, meant to confirm the general viability of my reign so far: no boulders of trouble are rolling to crush me just yet. 

To to get more of my bearings, I gaze round at the folk gathered here with me.  Some of them I recognize.  Not all – but I do know that they’re all notables of Syoom.  Otherwise they wouldn’t be here.  They've formed three or four chatting groups.  Rarely do they glance at me.  It looks as though they expect me to supervise rather than to contribute.  They must take it for granted that I am here primarily to listen.  That’s because (memory fills me in some more) it has become a habit of mine to listen in Norkoten Hall. 

So far, then, this doesn't seem to be an unusual moment.  Nothing obviously special about it in any way.  Nevertheless, something must have recalled my Earthmind to its post of alertness; something which requires my Terran perspective; some alien crux which causes this me to be again in demand.  My survival instinct nowadays switches in this way only when Earth-nous must be called upon for a bit of Terran style troubleshooting.

But what, exactly?  I expect I'll know soon enough.  No point in looking for trouble. 

Speculation nevertheless tempts me into mental doodles.  Wouldn't a better, more specific early-warning system be handy!  How convenient if I were to set up a tight headquarters here in Norkoten Hall.  Imagine a permanent set-up, properly staffed, with me at the apex of a chain of command, instead of the wavy adventurous ramblings of Ooranye. 

It’s easy thus to slide into a mode of wishful thinking in which that Earth-style practical approach is brought to bear on my Uranian regime; except -

Swishing the idea about, I don’t really care for the taste of it.  Really, not even my Earth-self wants that kind of power-play here. 

After all, what I am here is a Uranian Sunnoad, a Noad of Noads which, in practical terms, is a super-nudger.  That's how I understand the sunnoadex ought to work: as an inspirational fount of nudging. 

Put that way, it sounds like a feeble leadership structure.  Does it need stiffening, and is that why my Earthmind has awakened? 

Ah, but that thought is immediately rejected.  My sense of what is fitting will not allow it. 

The institution of the sunnoadex would be flimsy and feeble were it not for the vast fund of good-will on which a Sunnoad can draw.  So stupendous is that heritage, it's actually far stronger than any ruling rod of iron, so long as the Sunnoad surfs the fate-waves in the right style. 

That's a good Uranian thought, but my Earth self butts in with an irritation.  It's one that seems quite irrelevant, but it butts in anyway:

My old "me" is getting a trifle bored by the sight of these uniformly photogenic men and women, who occupy this hall in nonchalant fashion like a blandly handsome bunch of movie stars, shirt-ad models and beauty queens gathered for a celebrity fund-raiser. 

Hey, that's not fair.  Don't let that mood take hold.

My attitude-pendulum swiftly swings to a finer Uranian view.  The good looks remain as obvious as ever, but no longer seem uniform.  Tiny differences in people's appearances are accentuated to magnify the individuality of each face and build.  Boredom is smothered and the scene leaps into life.  For example that marginally-thickset gentleman with the grey brows which meet above his nose: he would be instantly recognizable even without the grey cloak that proclaims his status.  He is Nonanng Seej, the Noad of Skyyon, this sunward-polar city’s immediate ruler.  I must be extra tactful with him.  I next focus my attention on the occupant of the chair just next to his –

Remiss of me, that only now have I come properly awake to the fact that I’m in the same room with a member of the Cincture!  The sight of her is a summons to my conscience.  I should have done more, in the days since my accession, to guide and nudge the nine Cinctees.  This one here is the extrovert Pjourthan woman, Lemedet Tanek.  Nowadays she calls herself Yozazel.  In my prissy Uranian disapproval of name-changes I have continued to call her Lemedet.  Come to think of it, isn't the de-stabilising of nomenclature an aspect of the Spilth?  If so, it has splashed right to the top.  I reserve judgement.  My priority is catch-up...  Now, what about the others?  No, none of them are here.  Oh, yes, I do see one: Tarl Ezart of Skyyon, the courier who joined the Cincture at the last moment.  

Well, that makes three of the nine – including myself – who happen this morning to be here in Norkoten Hall.  It's time I availed myself more of their services.  After the meeting is over I must not let Tarl or Lemedet get away.  In fact, why wait till then?  Heavens above, don't I wear the golden cloak, can't I collar them whenever I like –

I start to rise from my chair.  However, some words spoken by the Noad of Skyyon make me hesitate.

"...contribution of skyships," he's saying -

(Well, that's good, isn't it, he's talking about the allocation of naval contributions; only, his tone alerts me to a 'but' impending - )

"...but war is not yet official," he continues, confirming my sense of an antithetical follow-up.  I specifically don't like the way that word official bombs wetly onto me...  He goes on:  "How much easier the assemblage of a fleet would be, if only war were officially declared - "

"Whoa there, Noad Nonnang," I interrupt.  "Are you trying to impress me with this Terran-style talk?"

Laughter spins round the table and Nonnang Seej looks a trifle sheepish.  "If it's inauthentic, Sunnoad Yadon, I stand corrected."

It's a successful bantering reply, but I also sense a counter-mine being dug, since "to stand corrected" is something I myself may have to do.  The words Correction, Corrector, evoke an ancient and profound tradition, of which the historical precedents are laden with doom for Sunnoads.

Still, the immediate point is a score for me.  By pointing out his usage of fashionable Terran vocabulary ("declaring war") I've positioned myself as the guardian and judge of authentic Uranian procedure.  After all, they all know that it is I, and only I, who can really decide to what degree any English phrase or pattern of thought can appropriately be used on Ooranye.  Who other than I, after all, has straddled the worlds? 

Ha!  Declarations of war, indeed!

On the other hand (it always shows up, the other hand)...

"It's authentic to some degree," I concede.  "Which is to say, insofar as a fan base for Terran styles has established itself on this planet, we can't afford to ignore it.  But we need to remember that it's superficial at best.  And at worst, it could be playing the enemy's game."

"Except when you take charge of it, Sunnoad Yadon."

I look at Nonnang sharply.  He's not being sarcastic. 

I allow his words to hang in the air.  By this time I'm strolling round the table.  They're all watching my thoughtful stroll, as they await my response.

I eventually remakr, "I don't suppose we have much chance of mounting a surprise attack on Dempelath anyway.  So, yes, perhaps we have nothing to lose if, before our fleet sets out, we decide to send him some sort of official defiance.  However, that's no good until we are ready to go.  And in our timing, we need to keep our options open.  For, although a declaration might help our sense of purpose, it might backfire if we then encounter an unexpected reason for delay."

"Such as?" asked a skyship commander, Tyol Leth.

I employ a Terran idiom in my reply:  "If it turns out that we have our hands full here in Syoom, it's no use pretending that we don't." 

A shame, that dragging silence, as I eye them all.  Do they want to be spoonfed?  Apparently so.  I spell it out for them:

"Unwise to leave additional enemies at our back, you see." 

Lemedet - bless her - dares to specify:  "Like the Noo Wallang."

Those words are never welcome, but I support them with a smile of grim approval.  The words "Noo Wallang" - signifying one of the most dismal social pests of the day - are pronounced at a cost, a cost in distaste, but a cost which needs to be paid. 

I quietly say, "Lemedet has reminded us of one particular enemy here in Syoom.  Think about it.  Can we afford to launch a fleet into Fyaym before we've mobilized decent society against The Mockers of Fate?"

Glum murmurs follow my words.  "...Alert the people..."  "...But not panic..."  "...The Noo Wallang?  Who are those jokers...?"

The meeting is beginning to break up.  I circle round to Lemedet and, even as I give her a sign, she (with excellent lremd) divines my intention and steps aside, making it easier for us to exchange a bit of private speech.

"80438," she says in a low tone, "this has been an odd meeting.  It's as though... you wish to slow them down."

"You're not wrong."

"Ah."  She uses this permit to continue:  "And yet you must be as keen as any, and more anxious than most, to launch the expedition to rescue Olhoav.  It is, after all, your home city."

What a wonderful woman, says a long-ago side to my life; and yet, healthy minds in healthy bodies are to be expected on this world, are they not?  Still, her impact on me right now is special and ridiculous enough, that a warning voice sounds inside me.  My feelings must recede into that distant sharpness (the reversed telescope of rank) which tells me not to forget my responsibilities on the eve of war. 

I find words to speak.  "As you say, Lemedet, I'm keen to get the mission started.  But it's no good whipping up artificial determination... the impetus for the drall must grow from the commitment we already have.  Otherwise – well, just imagine us the way we all might jump in panicky zeal to 'get it all over with'.  And you can guess how a mission into Fyaym conducted on that basis is likely to end!  We must all stay cool."

She casts her eyes down, inevitably reminded of the disastrous end of the Phosphorus Era.

"True, sponndar Sunnoad," she says in a small voice.

"Therefore, firstly," continues my authoritative flow, "we must secure our rear, stamp out the enemy infiltration in our own country...  You mentioned the Noo Wallang.  Any ideas?"

She shakes her head.  "Dealing with them, 80438, is like hitting empty air."

"We haven't pinpointed their organization - true.  But we can tackle the problem at the branches instead of at the root.  And with that in mind, Lemedet, here's something you might help me with: I have agents among the xebbalshar and I hear that their next tryst is being held in Oam.  That's your home district - you're a Pjourthan - "

"I am that."

" - So find out for me as soon as you can, the exact location of the event.  My agents may have found some enemy branches for me to lop off."

"Will do, 80438!"  Now she looks keen to leave my presence as they all usually are when they get to the stage of saying to themselves, Let me get away with a plus score...  I inwardly sigh and think: oh well, at least it shows she's keen to be useful.  

For my part I can conclude that I've nudged her successfully.  A feeling of exhaustion comes over me, and a longing to revert entirely to my Uranian consciousness.  Please let me relax into that entirely native mode, I wordlessly plead.  I admit I need my Terran mind sometimes, but not all the time.  Sink and rest, O Earthly me.  And yes, here goes - 

7

I rap my knuckles on the solid rim before me as I settle myself in the chair.  The notables whom I have invited, and who have been waiting around the polished circumference for my move, seat themselves likewise. 

We sit, breeze-blown, under the open sky.  Around us extends the brown and liver-coloured plain, with, close by, the grove whose name, Thion, is now stretched to include a settlement which I have called into being. 

Facilities as yet are rudimentary: a few sheds for supplies; a map-room; and nothing much else - apart from the Table, whose use now begins. 

Dramatically new, its polished workmanship avows our solemn moment.  Right now the gleaming surface is clear of paperwork; the breeze would immediately have blown any papers away, of course.  What am I thinking?  This is not a bureaucratic culture.  This world is not Earth. 

Ah, but the legend that inspired this Round Table did come from Earth, so yes, to that degree it's a transportable legend... but here, on the other hand, is no equivalent of palatial Camelot.  Here we are exposed to the elements of a giant planet on which those old Knights would have been out of their league.

I shan't put it quite that way to my followers, however.  Seeing the expectancy in their looks, I had best pepper my oration with Terran catch-phrases which, no matter how stale they seem to me, will sound fresh and inspiring to them.

"Notables of Syoom," I declaim as my eyes rove, "the muster of the drall fleet proceeds apace.  Each one of the twenty-five great cities of Syoom has undertaken to provide a skyship.  I have furthermore made agreements for the larger towns and settlements to club together to provide fifteen more.  A total of forty skyships should give us the edge over Dempelath.  Not all of this mighty fleet will be ready at the same time; much will depend on the various local patrol requirements; so we must be patient while our full strength gathers.  After all, it would be the height of folly to denude our homeland of defence while we conduct an expedition to Starside. 

"The enemy will not be idle while we prepare.  We should allow for the possibility of actual raids, that's to say, enemy action more deliberate than the mere Spilth we have endured so far.  Or perhaps the Spilth itself will be so intensified due to its own dynamic that it will count as the major threat.  Either way, we must be prepared to fight a holding action, to counteract the degradation of Syoom..."

I pause, and one of the group (Niom Rax of Jaax) dares to say, "Sunnoad 80438, you speculate about 'raids'.  Can you envisage their nature; the kinds of battles they may draw us into?"

"We may make some guesses.  But first let me emphasize that until we are ready to go over to the attack we must be reactive rather than proactive.  During this period we must take what comes, and if that means being caught on the back foot or taking some hits, well, look on it as a lesson in resilience.  A course of education offered by our enemy for free!"

(Some hesitant nods, some uneasy chuckles around the table.)

"That said," I continue, "while we're here let's try to answer Niom Rax's question more specifically.  Let's have a shot at prophecy.

"We'll do well to start off by extrapolating the data that have trickled our way so far.  We have acquired many clues about how the mind of Dempelath works.  From my time in Olhoav, and from what has happened in Syoom in more recent times, we can be sure that his main strategy will be to nurture resentments against the fate-wave; to cultivate thwarted hopes; to exploit backgrounder dissatisfaction as a lever.  Therefore we ought to expect more of that kind of thing as time goes on.  It has begun, in a small way, already.  Djatanat and Wylit, you can vouch for this.”

My remark gives rise to some dry amusement.  The union leaders return glance for glance, not a bit put out by the good-natured laughter that ripples through the meeting.  If this were a political gathering on Earth, one of my urgent concerns would be to massage the egos of that pair.  Here, now that they are onside, they really are onside, wholeheartedly, and I don’t need to worry about them at all.  The risk, more likely, centres on me, insofar as I’d better take care not to slide into some stunned inebriation in the euphoria of heading a civilization of grown-ups.

“My guess is," I continue, "that if the ‘backgrounder unions’ are deliberate attempts at subversion and not mere Spilth, they represent a premature move on the part of Dempelath.  Look at what has happened during the past few days to the membership of Djatanat’s SUBMIC and Wylit’s UMUC.  They’ve mostly collapsed, like burst bubbles.  They did not have enough self-belief to weather the loss of their leaders.  Nevertheless they, or equivalents, will reappear and get stronger.  And when they do, we must be ready to debate our options realistically, which means being prepared, amongst oursevles, to use some dirty words.  Backgrounder.  Foregrounder.  Flunnd.  I make no apology, sponndarou, for saying them out loud.  It is not a question of being foul-mouthed, but of a need to face a practical truth.  Tell me, notables of the Round Table, do I have your agreement in this?”

A moment of sombre consideration, and then: “You do, 80438” – “Yes, Sunnoad Yadon” – the voices murmur in support.

Next, more lightly:  "But let’s not be too eager to meet trouble before we’re forced to.  If it's true, what I said, that the wirrip-bubble is apt to burst when its inflation is premature, then for the time being we must quest in other directions.  Varied directions!  Keep your ears and eyes open for lesser creepies to stamp on, while our fleet prepares.  And you'd better make a good job of stamping.  To go and defeat Dempelath on Starside only to return to a Syoom that has suffered plok in the meantime, would be rather a shame.”

They appear to approve, that if it's what it takes to stay on top of the job until it’s time to launch our forty skyships against Dempelath, then they’re willing to maintain vigilance against the “lesser creepies”.

I conclude: “At this moment, history appoints you.  Raise your hands, any of you questers, if you know of any targets.  Ah, speak up, Hevad Quafroa of Jador.”

Hesitantly the woman stands.  Tall and serious, she sighs and bites her lip.

“I hardly dare repeat the rumour; it is so absurd.”

“Absurdity is to be expected in this business,” I say.  “Go on!  Tell us!”

“Very well,” says Hevad, wincing.  “The stories emanate from my home city.  Large numbers of people all at once are throwing their clothes away…”  She looks round.  “Go on, laugh!”

Quite a few of us do look to be on the verge of laughter.  “Bit cool on this planet, to start a nudist colony,” I allow myself to say in English; whether or not they understand the sentence, they’re used to my alien mutterings.

Hevad, apparently, does understand me.  She says, “It makes even less sense than that, 80438.  If what I hear is true, many people in Jador have adopted the notion that clothing ought to change in style according to the date on the calendar.  A perfectly good outfit one day might be sklung the next day.  ‘Sklung’ meaning not the right match for the date."

Someone else asks, “What do they say the date has to do with it, Hevad?”

“Skies above – I don’t know."

"I'll bet that no reason is given," I say.

"Quite - that seems to be how it is.  It’s supposed to be self-evident that one does not wish to be sklung.  I’m sorry, Sunnoad Yadon, but you did ask… I know it’s incredible.”

For a few minutes I remain with impassive mien while they discuss the insane news from Jador.  They can’t believe it as it stands; they think it’s a smokescreen of some kind.  At length I put up my hand.

“My own background,” I say, “tells me, those tidings sound all too true.”

That’s my contribution: to nudge them, where necessary, towards the serious consideration of laughable news… and it works because they can see that I’m not joking.  The phenomenon has occurred for real, in Jador and perhaps elsewhere, though the actual phrase “fashion conscious” seems not to have yet come into use. 

“Come on,” I say; “who else is prepared to be as brave as Hevad Quafroa?  The more embarrassingly idiotic the rumour, the more urgent your duty to stand up and report it.”

But they’re slow.  I need to nudge some more.

“I know it’s distasteful,” I say.  “Indeed, here is where I myself would be subject to the greatest deluge of shame - for having brought such stuff from my world to this - except that by now we all know that most of it can’t be my doing: it is Dempelath our enemy who has somehow opened the principal conduit from the Third Planet to the Seventh.  My role is to use my Terran insights to counter the Terran mind-set; but to offer that kind of leadership I must be informed of what’s going on.  So tell me more!”

Lemedet stands up.  Looks like in this lot the women are the bravest, says I to myself.  “I’ve heard,” she begins, “from my home region of Oam, that the Noad of Pjourth has been asked to appoint a Fairness Allocator, to ensure that Wayfarers undertake their journeys with regard to…” she coughs… “safety-regulations.”

At this, the floodgates of confession groan open.  Minutes roar by in a deluge of crazy anecdotes, giving me the information I asked for in a quantity which more than satisfies the need.  Superficially various and colourful, in a deeper sense it’s all the same sort of stuff: misapplication of ideas, inappropriate standards, logic so lame that it lacks all point.

I give suggestions in each case.  One by one I then send off my "Knights", armed with the Sunnoad’s authority, to deal with all the crazy stuff that they’ve told me about.  I get less apprehensive about my decisions as I find no awkward issues whenever I check over what I’ve said.  Lemedet, for instance, I advised thus: “Tell your Noad to tell his critics that to hobble his Wayfarers with ‘fair’ rules and standards while they do their dangerous work is the most unfair imposition of all.”  Obvious enough, but the message is enhanced if I, the semi-Terran, say it.

It has been a long day, but finally the questers are all gone on their missions.

Except one.

Oh brother, here we go again: life on Uranus in heavy-hint mode.  Sometimes – maybe not often but sometimes – I kind of wish I was back on Earth.  Well, not really.  But it can get a bit hard, these double-takes, these dramatic deferments of realization.  Only now, after the other Round Table members are all gone, do I recognize how they performed little half-turns during the past few minutes, looking back to note that Oreneg Vadon has determinedly remained behind.  They all know about the bone he has to pick with me.

Is it any use, regretting my lack of full alertness, my failure to absorb immediately what I could plainly see?  No, it's useless to expect to be above par for my course.

Anyhow, here comes a test of my Terran insights.  The impending confrontation will furnish proof, one way or the other, as to whether my Earthly experience can help deal with the mistake I made in Narar.  For surely a Terran ought to have some idea how to cope with Oreneg’s ego.

However, a fog rises in my brain as he walks towards he and I’m no longer sure why my mistake was so bad.  What did I do but merely let out a hint that I had tagged him as my successor?  On planet Earth this would be good news for an ambitious man.  Even on Ooranye it’s good news for someone chosen as Daon of a city. 

Yes but for some reason the sunnoadex has always been different, special, unique; the same rules don’t apply for the choice of heir to a Sunnoad, as those for the choice of heir to a Noad.

Well then, what can I do about it?  Suddenly a sunburst explodes in my head: a brilliant, perfect, stunning idea, the beauty of it being that I wouldn’t need even to try to understand anything at all…

Here he is.  Halted to glower a couple of yards from me.  I've got a moment in which to suggest my idea, before he opens his mouth to complain.

“I know what you’re going to say, Oreneg Vadon, Notable of Grard.”  My words disconcert that haughty aquiline look of his.  I can continue with a slight edge: “Allow me to forestall your utterance with the good news, that the problem which you were about to mention is one which need not be dragged out any longer.”

“How so, 80438?” he asks tersely

“Because - you’re going to like this, Oreneg - I can put an end to it now.  I, Yadon, can simply let go of it all; really, I can just go.”

“I don’t know that I like the sound of this, 80438.”

“You ought to.  The change-over should be painless, smoothly feasible, and to the benefit of us both.  After all, if my reign ends today, history will regard it as quite creditable.  Most importantly I’ve set the drall in motion, and perhaps in accomplishing that aim I have also done some other good things.  Why should I not quit while I’m ahead?  That kind of quitting takes judgement of a kind which, I've noticed, is recognized as a particular virtue on this world.  And since I doubt that I have the ballast for the longer haul...”

He's listening, he’s letting me speak without trying to interrupt; plainly I have him hooked, and while the words pour from my mouth they’re seconded by a pleasant mental picture of me in a skyship accompanying the new Sunnoad 80439, to whom I'll still be available as an advisor, happier than I am now, no longer transfixed by the supreme spotlight, a sort of retired elder statesman to whom Oreneg may refer if he wishes, in case any Terran insights are needed during the expedition. 

“To summarize,” I conclude, “it would solve our problem if we were to go gather some witnesses right now so that I can, without more ado, abdicate in your favour.”

“WHAT?"  Such a yelp!  He sounds as if he simply hasn't registered what I've just clearly been saying.  "Resign the sunnoadex?  For the Skies’ sake, why?”

He looks and sounds stunned and appalled and yet, surely, my suggested plan must be what he wants.  Somehow, to prompt a right response from him, to help him over the shock, my next words must put an immediate stopper on his dismay.

“It’s not at all hard to say why.  The reason, Oreneg, should be evident to both of us.  I made a big mistake in Narar when I let slip that I had decided upon a successor.  It seemed a good idea at the time, but I now see that I’ve made it too easy for people to guess that I had you in mind, so that you naturally fear your image will get stale as people get accustomed to the notion of you as the Sunnoad-in-waiting.  I remain as convinced as I ever was that you ought to be 80439, but I ought to have understood that the leak of my intention gravely flouts the lurchy tradition whereby a Sunnoad names his successor at the last moment, and that I have thus sadly deprived your future of all the proper dazzle of an unexpected succession.  Successive wearers of the golden cloak have, throughout history, been launched into their reigns by such dramatic surprises, and this is counted as a boon, which (given my mistake) I can only retrieve by making it happen a lot sooner than people expect.”

I listen to my own words with that rapt astonishment one feels upon hearing wisdom issue forth from the lips of a person previously assumed to be far too dense for such a performance.  Ah but, Yadon old man, don’t do yourself down – you don’t get to the top if you’re dense.  Ah but (flashes the retort) you do, indeed, get to the top precisely that way, for density is what propels you in a world governed by idiot-driven plots, the threads from which sagas are woven...

Pay close attention to Oreneg’s face, and you should see him becoming mollified, reassured…

Oh no, what’s this sullen look?  What have I done now?

“You just don’t get it, Earthman.”

“Don’t tell me,” I say, “that you have no wish to become Sunnoad after me."

“Not by this route!  Not by your voice in the matter!  Neither now nor when you are dying.  The one thing I have always dreamed of is to WIN it."

"Oh," I mutter.

"WIN," he continues savagely, "the golden cloak by my renl ability; win it via thuzolyr!”

"Oh," my voice repeats dully.  "Yes.  At long last I understand."

Oreneg Vadon exemplifies the phenomenon of one whose renl ability is not merely part of his standing as a citizen but is also a kind of super-sport, the centre of his interest in life.  It’s an extreme, but a thoroughly Uranian one.  My native knowledge has enabled me to comprehend it, belatedly.  Terran insights got me nowhere in this case.

A fuzzy feeling in my head suggests that my Earthly consciousness, after such a demonstration that it is no longer needed, is about to drowse once more...

*

"Time we left, 80438," said Oreneg Vadon.  "The day is advancing and it would be as well not to delay."

Yadon blinked and said, "What?  Where now?"

"It is still necessary to gather witnesses, albeit not for an abdication."

Yadon blearily nodded, his native consciousness on the rise towards sufficiency.  "I think I know what you mean.  Yes – of course, I am bound to know what you mean."

“You look a bit glum,” said the Grardesh Cinctee, in a tone that struck a new, better-natured note than his usual grimth.  “Come on!  It will benefit both of us.  Off we go, to Skyyon.”

“The sensible choice,” the Sunnoad agreed. 

Minutes later they had mounted their skimmers and were speeding towards the polar city.  Less than an hour later they were in the palace.  On a podium in front of a hastily summoned crowd of notables and others who had drifted in from the city streets, and who had heard rumours of an impending event, Oreneg said in a low tone to Yadon:

“Take heart.  It’s interaction.  Prod the wave and the wave prods back." 

“That,” sighed the Sunnoad, “sounds about right.  How else can things be?"  He took a deep breath and addressed the multitude.

“I stand here, as Sunnoad of Syoom, explicitly to confess.  It seems it is widely known, but now I make it certainly known, that I had come to a decision with regard to the succession to the sunnoadex; a decision which I ought not to have made public, nor allowed its content to be guessed.  Therefore – I stand corrected!    

After that, Yadon’s mouth shut like a trap.  Awed silence ensued.  It was broken by the boot-steps of an aide who, by arrangement, carried in his hands a red cloak.  He handed it up to Oreneg, who donned it – the red cloak of a Corrector.

The cheers that then erupted were neither for Yadon nor for Oreneg, but for the combination of both, in an enveloping surge of emotion to celebrate the moment of history that had worked to perfection; in which all who were present understood the power of Yadon’s coup as well as Oreneg’s. 

Oreneg had objected and Corrected; Yadon for his part had left them to guess anew; this time, the thought that went the rounds being:

“Has he merely repented of his loose talk, or has he actually changed his mind about Oreneg Vadon’s suitability for the succession?” 

Thus, his confession had unshackled the rightful uncertainty, releasing its healthy vigour to circulate in the veins of saga throughout Syoom.

Amid the gale of enthusiasm Yadon muttered to Oreneg on the podium:

“I remember that old woman, the Elder of Beown, at the time of the Cincture.”

“Ah yes?” smiled the Corrector.

“Yes.  She seemed to think that nothing much would be achieved by our collective efforts.  I think we’re going to prove her wrong.”

"I think we shall," the Corrector agreed.  "This is the kind of day that shows we are all more than we think we are.”

“Not just the menials of Fate, then,” nodded the Sunnoad.

8

History then offered up a surprise treat, a sort of golden age on borrowed time, which came to be known as the “Golden Deferral”.  It is defined as the stretch between Day 10,546,013 of Era Y – the momentous day which saw both the founding of the Round Table at Thion and the acclamation of the Corrector – and, 3,717 days later, the shock of the Forokkadand on Day 10,549,730 which, as we shall see, brought the Deferral to an abrupt close.

It was a strange, poignant time.  Its “on the eve” aura stretched so long, its credibility grew limp yet did not die.  During the protracted hiatus of those 3,717 days (Terran readers note that the period is equivalent to 4,646.25 of your days, which is getting on for 13 Earth years) the sense of urgency ebbed but gradually, imperceptibly, with never any public suggestion that the drall against Dempelath should be abandoned, for the threat which the Olhoavan tyrant posed was not forgotten; the forty Syoomean skyships destined for the voyage to Starside were duly built, armed, and maintained at the ready... but…  delays, always, delays arose.

This was not because of doubts about the eventual aim.  It was rather a consequence of dispersion of effort.  The little spots of trouble, the local pinpricks of hostile influence at one location after another throughout Syoom’s four-hundred-million-square-mile expanse, required the attention of Yadon the Sunnoad and of the enlarged Cincture of the Round Table, time after time.  They became expert at dealing with this rash of nuisances, each nuisance requiring attention but none grotesque enough to require the summons of the Terran side of Yadon’s mind into full control: for his native Uranian consciousness, by now, had developed a good enough working knowledge of Terran cultural foibles, to be able to advise how to stamp them out entirely with Uranian competence.  After all, Ooranye was in itself so mysterious that it had always forced its people to adapt to strangeness and deal with weirdness in order to survive; Terran input was merely one more crazy influence among many.

Thus the days rolled by, with a peculiar sense of present nostalgia, as though already viewed in retrospect.  Yadon’s repute grew ever more majestic as his hair greyed and his face grew more lined and his skills accumulated in the role of Noad of Noads, though he never altogether ceased to hanker for the life of a freely reckless adventurer: that irresponsible life which, for a period after his arrival in Syoom, he had actually lived.

Yet in part that reckless aura still clung to him, insofar as, despite his condensing elder-statesman image, 80438 retained some waft of unpredictability.  Part of this stemmed from the paradox that the greatness of a Sunnoad is enhanced by the rectifying action of a Corrector: the humiliation of having to stand up and say in public, “I stand Corrected”, soon brings compensation whereby, with a mutual reflection of storied fame and honour, both Sunnoad and Corrector brighten one another.  And part also stemmed from a hopeful suspicion, “This man may dare to take big risks” – a capability which (so folk sensed) might prove vital some day.

The people, in short, while glad to have Yadon as their Sunnoad, nevertheless felt no need to hurry themselves or him towards the looming destiny which in their heart of hearts they knew he was on their world to face.  They know it would not be delayed as long as a generation, yet while it was delayed, they enjoyed the Deferral of that ordeal.  When the time came, he should lead them to victory, and that hope sufficed for them and for Yadon too, especially as his personal life was softened, after thousands of days as a widower, by an unlooked-for return to domestic bliss.

*

The ego-track of Neville Yeadon (resumed):

…what – what – what – it’s all been piling up while I drowsed – and the soak of certainty, deep-clear, shows me I cannot expect to evade what “it” is –

Like suddenly realizing that water coming through the ceiling means you’ve left the bath-tap on too long –

And what marked the moment of overflow?  What exact event has jogged my solely Terran mind awake?

I’ll know soon enough, but though I cringe in anticipation of the knowledge, which I bet will be something I’d rather not learn, what's far worse is the thought of how much time is sure to have passed… my hand looks older, and Lemedet my wife, still beautiful beside me as we ride the breezy slideways of Toolv, looks somewhat older too.  Guilt!  Such guilt at the delay of my mission!

My first reaction is to turn my head from her, lest she see a sick look on my face.  But then I turn back because it’s no use hoping to avoid explanation.

My eyes drink in the sight of her.

“You’ve seen me before, you know,” she says, impishly.

“Likewise you, chremn,” I say, “must recognize from what’s often happened before, what’s happened to me again just now.”

Eyes sparkling, she slips her arm through mine.  Tenderly she says, “I know.  You don’t need to pull such a long face.”

Ha - Terran idiom - a skilful attempt to put me at my ease – and I suppose I’m thankful, for it’s better than to hear her say, what took you so long to wake up, Earthman? 

Maybe, following her kind example, I ought to go easier on myself…  at least postpone my contrition and my excuses, assuming Lemedet ever wishes to hear them.  Other, far more practical urgencies than my guilt, push to the forefront.  The radioed warning still rings in my ears.  Must share the gist of it. 

“Lemedet,” say I, “listen.  Yr has reverted to rogue.  Rael Odiram has repudiated our alliance.”

“Skies!” she blanches.  “In public?”

I nod.  “The message was from Oreneg, who adds that the news is being relayed all over Syoom.”

“The grutt!  Rael, that is.  The flunndy grutt!”

“Oh well,” I shrug, “at least he was decent enough to send an open defiance.”

“Hmm… and as to why he’s chosen to administer this shock at this moment in particular – while you’re on your way to inspect some factories in Toolv…?”

“That is a question indeed.  Hard to believe it’s coincidence.  But if I’m going to take him by surprise, as he has taken me – I may not have time to work it all out before I act.  We’ll get off the slideway here.  See, just beyond that pedestrian, a short-cut to the factory…”

“You mean you’re going straight there?  No courtesy call on Byndin?“

“She had better understand after the event, like everybody else, more often than not, has to do,” I drily observe, for, truth to tell, I’m in no mood for a confab with the superlative Byndin Ghelanver, Noad of Toolv.  It's the Noad of Yr who concerns me now.  “I suspect that time presses, that Rael Odiram is interested in the same thing as I, and that Yr may already have floated into Toolvan air-space… oh look,” I add, pointing at a white spot in the sky around declination sixty and perceptibly moving, “if I mistake not, here it is already.”  All sense of on-the-Eve has vanished; rather, the mood I sense is one of accelerated nightfall.

Moreover the act of stepping off the main slide-way onto the slip-road that leads to the research facility sets off a metaphorical slide-switch in my head which weakens the bonds of reason.  Part of me protests at the prospect of what I feel impelled to do, but another part knows better and scornfully replies with the voice of the wave: Do you really think you can get out of this one?  You helpless thing, you don’t have a chance!

I fear the “you” refers to my wife as well as to me, for she sticks close with that determined body language which I can easily translate as “we fellow-Cinctees are equally fit for the danger spot”.  Still, perhaps I should make at lease one attempt to dissuade –

“Kleeftie Yadon,” she says, forestalling me with that endearment which I’ve never quite understood (it must be some sort of Pjourthan slang) – “it’s time, isn’t it?”  She doesn’t even say what it’s time for; and the fact that she doesn’t need to is the direst proof of all.  “One cannot go on and on being ‘one the eve’,” she echoes my mind as if able to read it.  “It’s not a state which can last indefinitely!”

“It ends here,” I tersely agree.  “Have you been to this spot before, Lemedet?”

We have halted at the entrance to the Ubbulungul, the Toolvan omhetter (science-park, I suppose we'd say in English).  The general shape of the Ubbulungul is that of a flat-floored bowl, a shallow artificial crater housing its seventeen research-bays, each different from the others but all bristling with shiny metal cranes and laboratories, and busy with their separate personnel.  My eyes scan the bays till I make out Number Fifteen – the gantry of the Forokkadand.

She answers: “Can’t say I’ve been here, but I’ve heard about it.  Rather typically Toolvan – by repute, anyhow.”

She means: speculative, impractical, up-in-the-air.  Weapons research as an unserious hobby.

“Ah, but they take the long view.  Hobbies do pay off, on rare days.” 

“Like today?” she asks in a tone which expresses some degree of polite uncertainty. 

“Yes, like today.”

“Oh, so you’ve been keeping up to date about what goes on here.  You’re full of surprises, Sunnoad Yadon.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” I ambiguously reply.  "Come on, let's proceed to Bay Fifteen."

I begin to walk along the path that leads amongst the bays, and people as usual stop in amazement at the sight of the golden cloak.  With easy gestures I indicate that they need not interrupt their work.  Lemedet says to me softly – using my Uranian birth-name - “It doesn’t look as though we are expected, Nyav.”

I shake my head.  “We aren’t.”

“But then how can we ourselves expect – ”

“Nothing,” – comes the cut-off word from my mouth which shall, I hope, quiet her - “need be ‘expected’.”

It doesn’t quite do the trick.  “What do you mean?” she insists, plainly disturbed; she twigs that we are striding towards a turning point and of course she has a heap of sensible questions to ask, the poor darling, with regard to all the unmentioned practical issues.  I know, yes, they must be faced, but not too squarely because I simply cannot afford delay; nothing is any good if it produces delay. 

Admittedly it’s childish, that voice in me which sullenly insists, “I wanna shortcut, I gotta have a shortcut” –

Childish but justified at this place and time.  After all, it’s too much to expect necessity to be always likeable.  Mustn’t miss this bus, I mutter.  Pitiful, banal metaphor!  The grander truth is the dictatorship of the wave, which cuts me loose from causation, about to replace it with an unfettered exuberance, soaring with the power to fulfil.

Only later will the bailiffs come knocking (dismal metaphor again).  The logic-creditors will then present their accounting.  Let them!  It will be too late! 

…Now we are borne up the gantry on an elevator that takes us away from the officials on the ground who have just tried, respectfully and in vain, to get from me an idea of what I am about to do…

Lemedet is singing beside me, or maybe humming.  She gets it now.  She’s accompanying the song of existence itself.  When it sings, this is playtime and the winner is “should”!  Thus: if the Forokkadand should work, that means it will. 

We reach the top, we step off the elevator, and take our places on the summit cone.  No chance of entering this rocket: it has no interior; it must be ridden outside.  It’s a metal steed.  And besides that, it’s also a cutter of Gordian knots, and although I have always considered that story to show Alexander in a bad light (he slashed it because he was too stupid to untie it) I can see the point here of slashing the tangle of my life.

So up we ride, clutching rails which keep us from falling or being blown off by the rush of air.  Such feeble holds can’t be enough; the flimsy, juddering tubular framework around us could not keep us, could not save us from being tossed away in this crazy shoot.  Sharply it occurs to me that an extra protection must be swathing us in its equilibrium of forces, the assurance of which, rationally, I ought to have demanded beforehand, but then, I would not expect to know, would I?  Sufficient unto the instant is the excuse thereof, and, apart from that meagre allowance of one sharp-focused present flicker of a hint, the “before” and “after” stretch of the chain of causation remains a mere blur.  So it goes, on Ooranye, especially when one’s fate-wave must undergo an accelerant to meet a deadline: in this case the collision with the fate-wave, or plot, of Yr. 

Despite the wind’s roar and the juddering of the Forokkadand’s hull, I am able to make out the growing form of the aerial city.

No point in dismay; it’s what I expected; it’s why I’m here; but then a sparkling form detaches itself from the flying City of Mists and as a consequence I, mesmerised by a sense of utter doom, realize that I’m witnessing the launch and deployment of the legendary aerial combat weapon, the Voorspoot, the Lance of Yr.

My despair is momentary.  It’s followed by rejection.  Ridiculous commands issue from somewhere inside me.  It’s like, back on Earth, when I was in a taxi slowed by traffic, I leaned forward and muttered come on, come on, hurry up, as though in so doing I could cause reality to rearrange itself obediently in accordance with my will.  But here I do feel an immediate answering quiver in the hull I’m riding, as I mentally mutter at it to dodge, go round, flank the thing. Eh, what’s this, can I make reality tremble?  I try again, deliberately, and quickly find that I can, to some degree, affect the rocket by thought alone.  This, in fact, is why I’m here.

Next, urgently, I must ask: can I, do I control the weaponry of the Forokkadand?

It must be biddable in the same way.  It’s got to be.  Within practical limits, steering and fighting, I must be able to give the orders, to think the commands.

First, though, I must maneouvre, and this I accomplish during these astounding seconds in which my fighting instinct takes over my attempts to flank the Voorspoot as it, in turn, tries to flank the Forokkadand.  I get close views of the enemy dirigible lance – its tip reminds me of a sparkling firework and I judge its hull to be about fifty yards long - as it and my rocket-steed undergo a swoop and a swerve, at and around each other, each desperate to get a forward shot at a broadside target.  And for a moment in the close pass, which briefly rakes me with heat, I actually spot the Voorspoot’s rider, astride a kind of stub on the hull a few yards behind its flashing, hissing head; the rider is a grey-cloaked man, a sight which suggests that none but the Noad of Yr can be trusted with Yr’s ultimate weapon.  Neither of us get a good shot in on this pass so I assume we’re going to try for another – but I suddenly fear the force of the turn I must make.  What of Lemedet’s hold on her part of the framework: will she be pitched away?

I experience the force of the turn on my tensed arm-muscles.  I clutch my rail and I learn what is giving us the chance to survive: an invisible, elastic force-sheet that confines us to our places; perhaps not entirely reliable for I sense in it a kind of ripping strain which suggests it’s not entirely shock-proof; nevertheless it has worked so far.

Be that as it may, I also realize that the rocket has insufficient fuel for another pass.  I can hear a rattle in the motor which tells me that what powered its ascent is virtually gone.

Next, a smart shudder goes through me and I know that a successor-propellant has clicked into use: the Forokkadand now draws power from the atmosphere, in more ways than one, for, besides the material suction of fuel from gas, the wave-compression of the crisis itself is pouring densely through the tubes, and the alternation of literal and metaphorical spoutings blur into one invincible medium of plot-furtherance: nothing, I feel sure, can stop us now! 

“Us”?  Yes, all of us involved.  For we face a collision.  I don’t quite know whether the wave wants us all dead; I suppose that would be one possible answer to the demands of history; or better still, maybe, I could stop trying to think at all and just throw away what’s left of my rationality like so much ballast.

No, there’s more to the situation than that; its potent blur of literal/metaphorical force hasn’t quite yet burned out the linings of the thrust-tubes and hence the Forokkadand is still a vehicle rather than a mere projectile, so that I am allowed some narrow leeway in the approach to the Voorspoot. 

Here it comes hurtling, bearing the Noad of Yr.

I foresee the smash, moments away.  Neither he nor I can avoid it: the aim has been taken over by our respective steeds, so that it’s one self-propelled fire-lance against another, determined, it seems, to collide.  I shrink inwardly but, when it happens, metal does not strike metal; rather, in three or four yards of air that still separate Voorspoot from Forokkadand it is the invisible forces of destiny that have met and no doubt Rael Odiram, the same as I, is able to hear their grinding creak.  Rael glares, his face rock-hard, trimphant, merciless.  The face of an enemy.  Whatever happens now, our former agreement is dead.

He opens his mouth and what comes out of it shows he’s been studying English.  

“You’ve ridden your firework gleefully, Sunnoad Yadon!”

Is my face gleeful?  Could be.  I shout back: “Don’t be misled by that.  I’m appalled by your treachery to Syoom.”

The situation demands our words and so it does not surprise me that our yells can carry across the gap, how we can communicate at all over the roar of violet flames now pouring down my rocket’s flanks with the effort the engine is making to hold position, and the very sky is bespattered with lurid mists as though wounded by the swathe our trajectories have cut through it – in reality the hazy tracks of scavenger clouds inevitably drawn by the signs of combat.

Trusting that the event must darned well turn out to be what it ought to be, pattern-wise, as my story demands, I focus my will like one sometimes does in a dream, to get things moving and to give things the meaning one wants, which in this case is for the Forokkadand to finish its climb onto Yr – and yes, it is happening, I’m moving forward and up!  Likewise the Voorspoot, force-locked with the Forokkadand, retreats to match my advance; each steed keeping its relative position.  Rael Odiram doesn’t look at all disconcerted; doubtless he sees the situation differently from how I see it, in view of how implacably certain he looks, that he is capturing me; well, he’ll find out; if he knows his own mind, I, equally implacable, know mine, and shan’t settle for less than victory.

Honestly, it doesn’t feel like a capture.  All it is – this unfolding arrival, this aerial cityscape of Yr so firmly around me – is just evidence, is it not, of my wave’s surge towards success.

The dirigible rocket I have ridden has come to rest, about ten yards from where the Voorspoot has clanged back into its cradle, likewise with its rider, Noad Rael Odiram.

A captive in his opinion, a conqueror in mine, I step down onto a metal floor space. 

I don’t reckon I’ve done badly, so far, to get here.  Not sure why or how – but then I don’t expect to know.  I inhale the excellence of these special moments in my story.  Reasons can wait; they dangle subordinate to a mighty aim.

Don’t let yourself be disconcerted, I say to myself as I feel the floor shift under my boots.  I get what’s happened.  Rael just touched a remote control – I saw him do it as he got down from the Voorspoot and took some steps towards me.  The result: this section of city-surface is rising, moulding into a slope-sided platform.  Meanwhile many Yrians emerge from the streets around, obviously eager for news, and Rael doubtless wants to confer with the Sunnoad on a level above that of the plebs.

“Skimmjard, sponndar Sunnoad,” says Rael Odiram in calm triumph, and draws his laser.

My hands remain at my sides.  I must have made the lightning decision, not to reach for my own sponnd.  But though my body is still, my understanding is in motion.

Oh yes, in terrible motion, like in those dreams which you sense surely are headed for no good.  Eyesight is over-ridden by meaning.  Thus, my purely ocular registration of the Noad's face becomes subordinate to some other kind of vision, that of a featureless, dark silhouette.

Simultaneously a forward lurch seems to tip gravity’s pull through a right angle and I’m suddenly looking down into that silhouette which has become a pit of evil, widened so that I am standing on its brink and about to pitch into it.  A brief, but dire, astronautical metaphor tells me that in that down-direction lurks a huge black-hole mass.  I'm invited to probe it via a parabolic flyby from which I shall never return. A moral black hole, the metaphor explains.  It then cedes to a more literal presentation: movie-scenes of Yr’s depredations in former ages: Yr floating through epics of battle and pillage in which the aerial pirate city edges up to the summit towers of its victims and pours its fighters to loot downwards and throw the defenders off their platforms to tumble helplessly to their deaths amid the crackle of sponnd-bolts and the yells of combat.  Woe, blood, pain, death, loss, all multiplied over time: this is what Yr is really like, this is what Rael Odiram really stands for.  How could I ever have believed that this man could be an ally?

At long last I realize the appalling truth about life on this planet, and, naturally, I realize it far later than I should have, because that’s the point: this is the world of belated recognitions.

It has to be this way.  Conclusions are held back here, until they can dazzle unexpectedly, so as to pack their full wallop.  Plot-lines are apt to work that way in a whodunit on Earth, and in a what’s-really-going-on on Ooranye.

Flunnd, but it sure leaves me feeling stupid!

With a weary sigh I make a partially successful dream-style effort to control my vision so that its qualitative dominance fades, the silhouette fills in to be replaced once more by a sight of Rael’s face as it literally is, but nevertheless its imperturbable, skull-like intensity puts me off from hoping that I could ever argue with this man.  What’s the use?  I now recognize that his moral world is one in which it’s all right to raid, loot and kill provided you do it from the sky.  The sky-perspective is his let-off, I now understand.  The immense span of history teaches this, the weight of knowledge which has come to me at ridiculously long last.  And yet despite everything my own wave bears me on with its inmost insistence that I must WIN.  My baffled old Terran nature protests: for goodness’ sake, how?

What can one do but shrug at the pretentions of destiny? 

My guess is, Rael won’t shoot.  Right now he’s enjoying his complacent stare too much.  Besides, if he shoots me dead he’s just swapping a Sunnoad who’s captive with one who won’t be – for Syoom would soon elect a new one.  By thuzolyr.  And my bet is, Oreneg Vadon will win that kind of election, as he almost did after the death of Arad Thastu 80436.  Therefore – it’s not death I face, but captivity and the ignominious end of my reign.  For, of course, I can’t allow myself to be a hostage for Syoom.

Rael smiles and nods, “Working it out, are you, Sunnoad Yadon?  This,” and he gives his laser a little flourish, “is just to dissuade you from any rash personal move.  I have no interest in attacking the Noad of Noads!”  The smile becomes a chuckle.  “Nor even in imprisoning the Noad of Noads!”

I wonder, What’s he getting at now?  If he intends letting me go, I must take extra care to stay ahead of his thoughts.  For no matter what tricks he may have up his sleeve, and despite the despair that assailed me a few moments ago, I must win; must indeed have won, for destiny’s thrum does not lie.

Rael pats the flank of the Voorspoot and addresses it familiarly, “Sazid, you have fulfilled my expectations.”  Directly to me he says, “If even the yards and workshops of Toolv cannot produce a weapon to beat Sazid here, the only Voorspoot in our era of the world, then so far as I am concerned you, 80438, can go where you like.  You can even carry out your long-neglected duty and lead your fleet to Starside.”

“Leaving control of the skies of Syoom to you, I suppose, so that you may prey upon my people.” 

Having spoken these bitter words, I listen extra keenly, because for all my conviction that I have won, the question remains, how far does he understand?

Rael matches the keenness of my glance.

“Ah, you are sounding me out, Yadon!  I shall prey, yes – upon the soft options.  You get me?”

My turn to nod.  In truth, not much remains to be said.  Each of us believes in his own victory, and the beliefs are unshakable because, amid the intensity of the colliding waves that smash together and mingle our fates today, both are true.

I shall lead my expedition to Olhoav and while I and my fleet are gone in Starside the people of Syoom will have to endure the skyborne depredations of Rael Odiram’s pirate city.  But for those whom he attacks, he will prove, by and large, to be a necessary scourge – for as he has just averred, he will go for the soft options.

The corrupted, weakened options - the cities and settlements weakened by the Spilth – the areas gone morally mouldy through Dempelath’s influence – the incipient arenas of civil strife between backgrounders and foregrounders - they will all be forced to wake from their insanity when they suffer bloodlettings, pain and grief from attacks by Yr’s wolves-from-the-sky.  Horrid though the scourge will be, it will counteract the worse thing.

I couldn’t have planned it better.  From his stratospheric perspective, who better than the Noad of Yr to listen and determine the best targets, in order to provide the disincentive for my people to go rotten during my absence from the scene?

No wonder he’s letting me go – from his own motives, and from the motive of fate.  And similarly it’s no wonder that I shall harden my heart and lead my fleet away on its mission, leaving control of the skies of Syoom to the mercies of Yr.  The pirate city will, at worst, cost many of the lives of my people; Dempelath, if he were to win, would cost them their natures.

9

I re-mount the Forokkadand, resuming position as steersman in the framework at the bow.  Lemedet for her part has not moved from her support structure which gives her a hold part way round the hull; I can just see her motionless form, ready for take-off.

Just for an instant I pause, as I reflect on how things have quietened since the roar of events which accompanied our arrival, and I blink in calm astonishment as I belatedly absorb the magnificence of the cityscape of Yr. 

The heaped geometric buildings, helical towers, globular palaces and branching skimways are broadly similar and in no way inferior to those of the Great Twenty-Five metropoli whose stems rest upon the ground, though here a uniquely creepy dimension is added by the baggy Mists, four or five of which are visible at any one time as they prowl through the streets.  Tamed clouds, it is assumed, but I am content never to have met one at close quarters...

“Let’s go, Lemedet,” I mutter, though not loudly enough to have reasonable expectation of an answer.  I ignite the rocket motor and the Forokkadand comes to life.  Raising my right arm in a farewell gesture to mark the end of my life’s second visit to Yr, and of my first ever visit to airborne Yr, with my left hand I press the stud to accelerate, head for the rim and over. 

Only now do I dare believe we have really got out, as I come into sight of the aerial city’s underside, with its rugose Strakes which constitute the second most marked physical difference (apart from the Mists themselves) between Yr and ground-based cities.  Questions crowd in upon my mind.  How were the Strakes ever built; how was all of Yr ever built and launched?  What keeps it up in the sky?  I may never learn the answers, may never return to see more of this awesome, wonderful floating power.  Then comes a hit from my Terran conscience.  All this admiration of magnificence: what a sell-out!  Think how frequent such moral whitewash is in the history of Earth, allowing so much indulgence of the imagination to the cruel splendour and courtly glitter of tyrants...

Ah well, I expect my punishment has already begun.

...I swerve in my downward flight so as to point towards Toolv and to retrace the miles - perhaps a score - over which the drift of Yr has carried me.

Toolv now coruscates with alertness.  Its towers and platforms are flashing, bristling with ready artillery.  My transceiver gives an urgent beep; I click it on and acknowledge, "Yadon here.  Returning undamaged."  

Amid the babble on the airwaves one voice cuts its imperious way to the fore: that of the Noad of Toolv, Byndin Ghelanver, sweetly sonorous like the note of a honeyed horn.  "80438, what must we do about Yr?"

"Do not, at this moment, attack."

"And in subsequent moments?"

"We have a mission - a drall - to fulfil."

"And meanwhile - in what category do we place the Yrians?"

Seems she won't be deflected from the key question.

In an equivalent situation on Earth my reply would be standard:  The pirate city, having abandoned our special agreement, is once more an outlaw, a rogue state.

Here though, on a world of custom rather than written law, the English term "outlaw" requires careful translation, and so do many other Terran words and catch-phrases, all of which nevertheless can come in useful on Ooranye, especially as they sound freshly minted here; and so in my reply I put the crucial words into English to give them a lilt of mystery:  "It’s business as usual with Yr."

I hope the lilt gives Byndin pause.  I hope she decides to follow my lead without further question.  My hopes are dashed.  She says:

“Not sure I understand, 80438, with regard to what you aim to do next.”

Looks like bluntness will have to be next. 

“What’s left is simple: a corner-cutting rejection of all further reasons for delay in the departure of the drall.  I shall require Noads of cities, like yourself, to understand.”

“Even if the reasons for delay are good?  Urgent crises, pleas…  I need to know what to say about it,” she murmurs.

“Pursue shock tactics,” I reply.  “Say that my policy will have to be one of ruthless neglect.”

Her lips purse at that, and, sensing clear reproof, I retaliate with some more Terran metaphor, switching to English for the punch line - “If you find it too hard, switch your mood to a different channel.” 

As for me, I go further and switch mine off –

…and come to in the control room of my flagship with its captain and officers standing around me and the captains of the other skyships in the fleet of the drall each visible on a panel of screens that curves around the command post.

Seems my Earthmind has received an invite to the occasion.  I didn’t need – obviously didn’t wish to allow – any Terran hesitation during the ruthless hours just passed, while I over-rode all pleas and engagements in order to be able to stand here and now.

Wisps of indrawn breath come to my ears as I reach a finger to the toggle switch that will cause the flagship’s engines to hum into life.  All witnesses are savouring the occasion, and I too relish a gulp of what seems as good as outside air, for the ports and vents of the ship are open so that the tang of the breeze has penetrated to this centre of the Zaderal’s ovoid bulk.  Skies of Fyaym, reaches of Starside, here we come.

Over the intercom I speak the words, “It is time” – and flip the toggle.