The Times & Life of Lucifer Jones
by Steve Pemberton

If you've found this page through a web search, you ought to start reading at the prologue.

Contacting the Author

If you have any questions, comments, criticisms or even praise for me about this book, please email fiction at pembers dot net.

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With that necessary unpleasantness out of the way, let's settle down and enjoy the story...

Scene One

The first thing that Julia remembered noticing, on subsequent recollection of the events immediately following her jump from the tower, was how bloody cold it was up there. The next thing she noticed was that, to judge from the speed of the wind rushing past her, she was not moving all that fast. This might have been due to the fact that the ground, being fairly flat and featureless (and also a sickeningly long way away), gave few clues in the way of parallax and changing perspective about her motion relative to it.

She did not actually feel all that frightened. The breeze, had it not been so icy, would have been rather refreshing. In an effort to increase the speed of her descent - partly to make sure that her dream self really would be killed, and partly to bring this tedious business to an end as soon as possible - she decided to turn head downwards. She flapped her arms and waved her legs, trying to remember the lessons of the scuba-diving classes she had taken, very briefly, at secondary school. By way of reward, the ground tilted out of sight and the windspeed increased dramatically.

She still didn't feel frightened. Despite the fact that the wind was rippling her hair and clothing in rough waves that snapped painfully against her skin (how she wished she'd thought to button her blouse all the way up!), the fact that she knew that she was dreaming, that there was nothing to be afraid of, and that she would shortly wake up in the ruins of Sergeant Stazi's office, from where she could summon the rescue services, prevented her from feeling anything more than mild annoyance with her subconscious for dropping her into such a farcical mess. This was rather strange, given that in such situations your instincts and emotions tend to override completely the processes of conscious, rational thought, but probably not so strange as waking up after a bomb attack to discover yourself at the top of a tower, and then being lectured by a vast, cloud-like apparition. Then again, perhaps Julia's instincts and emotions realised that there was very little that they or she could do to counteract the influence of gravity, besides which it would all be over in a few seconds anyway, so there wasn't really much point in going to all the bother of getting the adrenaline pumping. And as for making Julia's life flash before her eyes... well, there would hardly be time for the opening credits.

The length of time it has taken to describe Julia's descent to this point, even allowing for the dilatory effects of the transcription into prose, should give some idea of just how tall the tower actually is. Unfortunately, Julia herself is facing away from it, and so is not in a position to appreciate its lean, elegant grandeur. Her present attitude does, however, give her a ringside view of somebody who is about to well and truly upset her metaphorical applecart.

This person was standing maybe fifty metres from where Julia guessed she was going to hit the ground (except that she was going to wake up before that happened, of course). He seemed to be chanting something. The words were faint and unfamiliar, but they seemed to weave and wind their way through the shifting air currents, and wrap themselves tightly around her, like a squid's tentacles. Even as the chant finished, the wind slowed to a breeze, and her hair and clothes calmed down, leaving her skin feeling red and raw after a thousand tiny lashes. Some seconds passed before she realised what had happened. The brown figure had cast a spell on her, and she was now falling no faster than a feather. "What the hell d'you think you're doing?" she yelled at this meddlesome pest.

"Fear not, Unbeliever," replied the figure, "for you are quite safe." His voice could be accurately, albeit misleadingly, described as "singsong": he actually chanted that statement, as though it was part of a ritual. [picture]

Julia called back: "I was quite safe before, you meddling little skunk! Put me down!"

"Perhaps the laws of your world are diff-er-ent. Here such a fall would surely slay you." As he chanted, Julia's perspective lazily rotated as her body performed an involuntary half-turn, so that she was now descending feet first.

"That's exactly what I intended it to do," she snapped. "Now let me go!"

"That is not permitted," he answered. "I am charged to protect the Unbeliever and give her every aid."

"Well, in that case," she said, wondering why the man was addressing her as the Unbeliever, and whether he had her confused with someone else, and whether inhabitants of this world regularly jumped from the top of the tower behind her, "the best thing you can do to help me is to take this damned spell off me!"

"Forgive me, Unbeliever," he chanted, "but I cannot see how that will aid your quest."

Oh, bloody hell, she thought, he's one of Zorian's people. After a moment she added: This is taking things too far. I'm arguing with my own imagination! Then: But I've just made this jackass up, haven't I? So I can just as easily get rid of him. She pointed her hand at him and tried to think of a suitable shooing. "Begone, foul shade!" she cried.

At that, a bolt of what would have been called lightning, had it not been the colour of fresh blood, arced from her hand to the ground. A violent red-orange explosion filled Julia's vision. A few seconds later, when she judged it safe to open her eyes again, the man's voice drifted up through the smoke: "Unbeliever, remember the words of Zorian. Though you may yet save this world, you may as easily destroy it." He sounded remarkably calm for someone who was standing no more than seven metres from the wide, shallow crater that Julia had made. There was no sign of the earth that had been occupying that volume of space a short while previously. It was only then that Julia realised that she might very well be moving through it at this moment. Remember the words of Zorian, she thought. Powers beyond your wildest, most delirious dreams. Bloody hell.

"I beseech you," the man went on, "throw no more fire at me. You have almost reached the earth now." Even as he intoned, Julia felt her feet touch something solid, and the web of words that had borne her safely to the ground frayed into air, its purpose accomplished.

"Well," she sighed, "you've won, I hope you're pleased with yourself." She took a good look at him. He was fifteen or twenty centimetres shorter than her, and looked to be in his late thirties. He had no hair, except for a few tufts around the ears and at the back, which were putting up stiff resistance. Julia guessed that he was going prematurely bald, and had decided that there was no point in trying to hide the fact. There was something discomforting about the man's face. He was hardly ugly, although a painter would have risked losing his artistic licence if he had produced a portrait of the man that could be called handsome. It was more that there was a firmness to his mouth, and a steadiness to his gaze, that said quite clearly that he knew exactly what to do in any situation that he might find himself in, and that he wouldn't have to pause to think it through first.

He was wearing a coarse brown garment, rather like a dressing gown. This had a hood, and was tied about his waist with a length of slightly frayed rope. His feet peeped out from beneath the hem of his robe. On them were a pair of open-toed sandals. There was an unkemptness about this man, which a word like "scruffy" or "impoverished" would have captured well enough, but that would have glossed over the deliberate, even fussy, aspect of his appearance which a word like "ascetic" would have conveyed perfectly. In short, the man was a monk, and he looked like one. What the man chanted next only confirmed Julia's suspicion.

"Our order holds pride to be a grievous sin. Allow me to state my identity. I am Brother Modicum, one of the Order of the Chanting Monks of Castillon."

"Terrific," she said, her voice thick with sarcasm. "I hope you realise that there's another person stuck at the top of that tower."

"Indeed I do, O Unbeliever," he replied, "but the Landless One is no concern of mine."

"Look, his name is Jack Henderson, right? And I'm Julia Hewlett," she said, uttering each word distinctly, as if trying to make sure that every one was received and understood. "Forget this Unbeliever and Brainless One garbage."

"In the Book of Going Forth you are known as the Unbeliever. The name of your birth is of no import."

"Not to you, maybe," she replied. "But I'd appreciate being called Julia." After a moment, she realised that she ought to keep this weirdo at the proper social distance, and corrected: "No - call me Miss Hewlett." While etiquette dictated that this was the proper thing to do, when framed in terms of the monk's curious logic it was not such a wise move.

"Clearly you have several names already," he intoned. "One more will make no difference."

"All right, then," she sighed. "Call me the Unbeliever if it makes you feel any better. But what are you going to do about Jack - I mean, the Gormless One?"

"The Book of Going Forth says little of the Landless One, save that he must survive a rite of passage."

"Well, what does that mean?"

"Unbeliever, I know not."

"Well, we can't just leave him there," she protested.

"Unbeliever," he chanted, calm as ever, "it is written that he must face this trial alone. If you try to aid him, he will surely fail."

"Don't tell me," she muttered, "it's in the Book of Going Forth, right?"

"Unbeliever, you speak the truth." He paused briefly, as though mentally starting a new verse. "Come, we must depart for the Sanctuary." Julia could almost hear the capital letter he gave to that word.

Consoling herself with the thought that further opportunities to kill her dream self would doubtless arise, Julia said wearily: "Let's be going, then, shall we?"

They did.

Scene Two

The muscles of his back told him that he was lying on them. Jack opened his eyes, and was greeted by darkness. Night already? he thought. There were twinkling points of light above him. Some blinked on and off in a regular rhythm, while others were constantly bright and others variable. They were not stars, he decided - or if they were, the astronomers of this world had even more explaining to do than those of his own. He wondered where he was, and why. Perhaps he had fainted with the shock of seeing Julia jump over the parapet. Oh, you bloody idiot... The memory leapt upon him like a crazy kind of vertigo, as though he had been exploring the floor with his hand, and found it suddenly plunged into chill emptiness. The panic was gone as quickly as it had come, and Jack, feeling himself to be in no physical pain, decided to try standing up.

He did, and immediately regretted the idea.

A violently bright searchlight was turned on him, and Jack felt a horrible lurch in his stomach, as though he had been stabbed. Fortunately, he was facing away from the light's source, and so his eyes were able to adjust fairly quickly. The light illuminated an ellipse perhaps three metres by two, and he could see that he was standing on a smooth, black floor, a little like ebony and a little like marble. It wasn't really very much like either, though, because it was blacker than both. It was so black that even Jack's shadow seemed grey by comparison. It was also slightly shiny. Looking down, Jack saw the reflection of his feet and shins fading away beneath him. He got the impression that what he standing on was not a floor at all, but merely a glass lid on top of a bottomless well of emptiness. If he fell into that, he would fall forever... The vertigo grabbed him again. He would have fallen to his knees and hugged the floor, had he not been afraid that he might break through it.

After perhaps two seconds of this terror, Jack's attention was mugged by a shockingly discordant braying of trumpets from somewhere on his left. The trumpets had played perhaps three bars, when they became quieter, and were overlaid by a weird, echoey voice that seemed to come from about five places at once. What it said was this: "Stranger, before you can leave this building, you must compete against the champion of the arena!" The P's of "compete" and "champion" were accompanied by a low-pitched thumping noise, which gave Jack a clue as to how the voice's omnipresence had been achieved: its owner was speaking through a PA system, and had obtained the "all around and nowhere" effect by the simple expedient of placing several loudspeakers in a wide circle around Jack. That knowledge, however, contributed nothing to Jack's understanding of his situation. What the voice said next didn't help much either.

"Gladiators, step forward!" The spotlight on Jack faded, and a softer, more ambient light filled the space around him for perhaps twenty-five metres in each direction. A little way in front of him was a line of four grey cube-shaped blocks, about a metre along each side, with a metre between one block and the next. He was aware of a weight in his right hand. He looked down, and saw that he was holding a large pistol, bristling with tubes and discs. He guessed it was some sort of energy weapon. A length of thick, flexible tubing emerged from the pistol's butt and wound its way up his arm and over his shoulder to a box strapped to his back. In front of him, beyond the blocks, were appearing, one at a time, several rows of what are perhaps best described as flat holograms. They were rectangles with cut-off corners and a pair of spindly legs. They looked like walking heads, and this was reinforced by their having two triangular holes and a horizontal slit where their eyes and mouth would have been. The shape looked teasingly familiar to Jack. Something his father had told him, when he'd been in one of his yarn-spinning moods...

"Oh my God..." Jack whispered, "you mean I've got to play a game of Space Invaders? "

At that, one of the holograms appeared to speak - although all that happened was that the slit representing its mouth opened and shut, like a glove puppet's. It said, in a perfect imitation of a first generation speech synthesiser: "This is no game, Earthling. If you lose, you will die."

Jack considered this. The gun in his hand certainly looked real enough. He thought of firing it, just to see, but then realised that such pre-emptive use might be against the rules of the arena. It was only reasonable to suppose that the Space Invaders would have similarly lethal armament. "Ah," he said.

A few seconds passed.

"Well?" asked another of the Space Invaders. "What are you waiting for?" Then they chorused: "O Mister Jones, we who are about to die salute you." With that, they opened fire, and Jack yelped as a laser bolt sizzled past his ear. Another crashed into one of the blocks, vaporising a chunk the size of his head.

Wondering who Mister Jones might be, and considering that, at the moment, it was probably the least of his worries, Jack ducked behind another block, looked up, and asked plaintively: "But what am I supposed to do?"

"You know the rules of the game," boomed the PA system in response. " Play!"

Yeah, Jack thought grimly. Don't get hit, and if it moves, shoot it. The block behind which he was sheltering was shaking under the repeated impacts of the Invaders' fire. Cautiously, he poked his head out and squeezed the gun's trigger. The weapon lit up like a neon sign and made a noise like a bomb exploding in a cathedral. There was a sound like laughter from the aliens. Evidently he'd missed. As if to emphasise the point, another bolt went past his head, almost singeing his beard.

Jack's block was by now in serious danger of falling apart. As he wondered whether it would be worth making a dash for the next one, there was a crash a few centimetres to his right, and his shoulder was showered with fine purple-grey dust. That settled it. He pointed his weapon in the general direction of the aliens and fired as he ran for the next block. They laughed again - hardly surprising, considering that he hadn't so much as looked at them to aim. He was about to fire again when a flash of pain hit him in the middle of his left thigh. At least, that was what he said when telling the story later, but it was hard to be sure, because within a fraction of a second, the feeling of having been thrown into a pit full of poison-quilled porcupines was being reported by every nerve in his body. Every nerve, that is, except for the ones in his eyes, ears, nose and mouth. His eyes were being exposed to glaring white light, which was made far more horrific by the knowledge that it was a highly successful neo-minimalist painting. His ears were being tortured by a rhythmic crashing and screaming, overlaid with aggressive white noise. Had Jack been able to think at all, he might have recognised it as Sado-Masochism All Night Long, a best-selling dance record of a few years ago, which had spawned a host of imitators and a whole new style of disco dancing. The assault on his nostrils was spearheaded by rotting cow dung and followed up with leaks from a toxic waste incinerator. His tongue and throat had a special treat - several mouthfuls of Whacko, an ingenious new sour-milk-flavoured soft drink, complete with secret ingredients - salt, extra saccharin, a large helping of citric acid, and excess carbon dioxide for that unique sandpapery tingling in your nose. Above all this, Jack could just hear the Space Invaders uttering the words: "Bite the dust, Earthling!" He tried to scream, but after the sound had passed through the vile pus-coloured liquid in his mouth, it sounded more like gargling.

After three seconds of this ghastly physical and aesthetic torture (the amount prescribed by the game's regulations), there was darkness, silence, odourlessness, and whatever you want to call absence of taste. Jack's muscles reported that the porcupines' quills were gone, and the poison somehow neutralised, and that Jack's body was falling towards the floor. He hit it and felt briefly uncomfortable, and then that feeling too was gone.

Had this game of Space Invaders been for real (whatever that means), a hit like the one Jack has just taken would certainly have killed him. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, the sensory overload to which he has just been subjected has merely stunned him, and he is now just recovering, wondering why he can't remember having fallen over behind a comparatively undamaged block.

Jack awoke to find himself lying beside a block. Compared to the one whose shelter he had just vacated, this one was undamaged. He tried to let go of the gun, so he could raise himself into a sitting position, but it seemed to be welded to his hand, so he brought his other arm round and used that instead. He guessed that he had tripped and knocked himself out. He noticed, however, that his legs were sticking out beyond the edge of the block. Why, he wondered, were they still there, rather than having been vaporised by alien laser bolts? Why, come to that, were laser bolts not flying around him at this very moment? As far as he could tell, the Invaders had stopped firing altogether.

One of the aliens said: "You have just lost a life, Earthling. You have two lives remaining... but they won't last much longer." As though they had been waiting for this cue, the aliens began firing again.

Jack yelped and quickly drew his legs behind the block. He moved into a squatting position, ready to make a run for the next block, although something told him that this wouldn't be a good idea. He noticed that they could only fire in one direction, perpendicular to the line formed by the blocks, so he was only in danger from those aliens directly in front of him. They were marching sideways across the playing area, moving a little closer every time they reached the side. He had no doubt that they would win by default if they reached the blocks. Shoot the ones at the end first, then, he thought. Slow the buggers down. He wondered whether it might be possible to hit any of the aliens by firing over the top of the block. Balancing himself with his left hand, he rested the gun on the top edge of the block, crossed his fingers and pulled the trigger.

The gun did its neon bomb trick again, and a moment later there was a high-pitched explosion, like a glass hand grenade, accompanied by a synthesised scream which suddenly cut off, as if the relevant circuitry had fused. [picture] At that, Jack felt guilt tug at him, like an old wound that had not quite healed properly. The question is not: "Can they speak?", he thought, recalling the words of one of his favourite philosophers, nor: "Can they reason?", but: "Can they suffer?" He wondered whether it would be worth trying to call a truce. Even if they just shot him straightaway, they would only do that anyhow, sooner or later. After all, it was impossible to win at Space Invaders. If you destroyed one wave of aliens, another would appear, and then another and another, until your luck ran out and you lost all your lives. If he fought back, he would only be delaying the inevitable.

He stood up and waved his free arm at the aliens. He was about to call for peace, when the PA speakers crackled, and the controller's voice thundered: "Stranger, you are not permitted to throw down your weapon. This is a contest to the death. There can be no surrender. You have a fair chance. Now fight!"

Have it your way, then, Jack thought, taking advantage of the lull in the Invaders' fire which the PA's pronouncement had caused to shoot a few more of them.

By the time Jack had shot six of the twenty-five or so aliens, he had unfortunately become a little too used to their not firing back, and so he was rather surprised, on stepping out from behind the block to take a shot at the last alien on the end of a row, to see the alien fire first, and strike him full in the chest.

Jack's punishment for this folly was much the same as before, except that the porcupines had sharpened their quills and swapped the poison for prussic acid, the neo-minimalist painting was now illuminated by a high-intensity strobe light, Sado-Masochism All Night Long had been replaced by a specially-extended megamix of the band's most popular recordings, the cow dung was assisted by a crack squad of rampant foot odour and dirty laundry, specially matured in an unwashed beer vat, and Whacko was now Diet Whacko, complete with generous amounts of extra saccharin, extra salt and extra carbon dioxide to make up for having only half as much sugar. And the regulations said that this time, it should last six seconds.

Jack tried screaming again. This time, he choked on the Diet Whacko.

When he woke up again, his throat felt as though some thoughtful craftsman had lovingly sandpapered down all the rough bits, and then given it two lavish coats of gloss varnish, the second of which was still drying. His skin felt numb, as if he'd taken a steaming hot bath, and then vigorously rubbed himself dry with sheets of newspaper. The tape loop screams of the Sado-Megamix were still shrieking in his ears, and after-images of the strobe lighting flashed in various colours behind his eyes. His nose had gone on strike, and refused to report anything.

"You have just lost a life, Earthling," intoned one of the Invaders. "You have one life remaining, and after that... oblivion." There came a quiet sniggering from the speakers. The PA controller was evidently enjoying himself.

"You can shut up, you petty Nero," Jack muttered, as the laser bolts began to thump into the block in front of him. He poked his head round the corner and fired, grateful for the gun's lack of recoil. He was rewarded with another tinkly explosion and edited scream. I'm getting better at this, he thought. Trouble was, he might not get the chance to perfect the skill...

He managed to destroy another six, trying not to take any suicidal risks. By this time the block in front of him was looking dangerously worn. Then he heard a low-pitched humming sound somewhere over to the left. Beyond the Invaders, slowly drifting across the playing area, was another flat hologram. This one was shaped like a cubist flying saucer, and it was spinning on its vertical axis, making it a more difficult target than the other aliens. This fact made Jack suspect that destroying the saucer would count significantly in his favour. He pointed the gun at it, trying not to let the rain of laser fire spoil his aim, and fired. The shot missed, defeated by the saucer's rotation. The aliens laughed again. He looked down at the block in front of him. It offered about as much protection as a moth-eaten net curtain. He aimed again at the saucer, hardly daring to wait for it to rotate into a vulnerable position. Another section of the block gave way. He squeezed the trigger and hoped.

There was a boom and a flash of light, so loud and so dazzling that for a moment he thought he had been hit again. Fragments of icy brilliance streaked past him and lost themselves in the darkness beyond. After a second or so, the noise and the light faded, and Jack was left looked at a playing area completely devoid of hostile hologrammatic lifeforms. A moment later, the blocks too disappeared.

"Congratulations, stranger," boomed the PA controller. "You have proved yourself worthy. You may leave by the doorway in front of you." Before Jack could even begin to think about saying: "What doorway?", a spotlight was thrown onto a patch of space about thirty metres in front of him. It revealed a bit of what Jack assumed was a wall, which was made of the same abyss-covering substance as the floor. In the wall, as promised, was a doorway. It was outlined by what looked like a neon tube, and opened onto featureless greyness. Jack walked towards it, half-expecting it to disappear at any moment. His right arm felt curiously light. He looked down, and saw that the gun had gone. So had the backpack. Just as well, really: it had been making him feel unbalanced - in more ways than one.

He was now standing before the doorway. He could still see nothing beyond it. He wondered whether it was worth stepping through. But he didn't really have any choice. There was nowhere else to go, and if he stayed here, the PA controller might expect him to defend his title.

Jack took a deep breath, and plunged into the unknown.

Scene Three

Jack was never quite able to work out how, immediately after stepping through the doorway, he found himself in a corridor that stretched as far as he could see in both directions without a door or any similar aperture in sight. Admittedly, he could not actually see very far, because the corridor was almost completely dark, but his appearance in the middle of it was nonetheless something of a puzzle.

He wondered whether he was still in the tower. It seemed unlikely, as the arena in which he had just fought for his life had seemed too large to fit into the building. Perhaps the doorway had been some sort of teleport device. Perhaps. It didn't really matter. What mattered was saving Felintor. Julia didn't really enter into it anymore. He tried to control the feeling of falling that lurched upwards to embrace him as he thought that. After a few seconds of vertigo, he picked himself up off the floor, noticing that it was made of rough, square flagstones, perhaps fifty centimetres along each side, with uneven gaps separating them like carelessly-spilled ink. He began to walk along the corridor.

After a few paces, he noticed that the corridor was remarkably cold.

After a few more paces, several things happened at once that made Jack freeze in his tracks.

There was a fizzling and crackling all around, like a vast, ancient, unshielded electrical circuit being pressed into service. Overhead, several pieces of equipment creaked into action, producing hummings and whirrings at various pitches. There was a flickering brightness, like distant lightning, and then the surroundings were filled with a yellowish institutional light. A wave of warm air rolled over Jack like a woolly blanket. The air reminded him that he had recently been sweating heavily, and it was also full of dust, which made him sneeze twice.

"Who turned the lights on?" he asked, looking up.

At that, another electrical circuit buzzed into life, and a slow, sulky voice that seemed to be right next to Jack said: "Well, make up your mind - do you want the lights on or not?"

Jack spun round, and saw no-one. "Who said that?" he demanded, rather panicked.

"Oh, don't start that again," said the voice, seeming this time to come from behind him. "Do you want the lights on?"

"Where are you, anyway?" Jack asked, still trying to locate the voice's real source.

"Look, stranger," said the voice, in a tone that suggested he had delivered this speech a good many times more that he would have liked to, "if it really makes you feel any better, my name is Mildew. I'm the caretaker of this wretched run-down tower. I am currently sixteen floors above you, cooped up in a room the size of a henhouse, most of which is occupied by the controls for the lighting, the heating and the ventilation. Does that answer your question?"

"I guess so," Jack replied. Wondering whether it was worth pushing his luck on the matter, he asked: "How can you see me, though? And how can I hear you?"

"Look," Mildew said, his sigh briefly drowning out the hum of the fans and strip lighting, "there's no magic or witchcraft involved. I know this is probably beyond you, but it's all done with closed-circuit television and a rather clever PA system."

"Actually," said Jack, somewhat offended, "I do understand that."

"So you won't go bringing those Chanting Monks over here, demanding that they exorcise the place?"

"Err... no!" he replied, rather surprised. Who on earth - Felintor, rather - are the Chanting Monks? he wondered.

"Good," said Mildew, although his tone suggested that it was a matter of supreme indifference to him. "Now, do you want the lights on - or off?"

"Oh, err... on, I guess," said Jack.

"Right. I'm glad that's settled."

"Err... thank you," Jack said.

"Don't mention it," the caretaker replied grumpily. "No-one else ever does." There was a loud click as he turned off his microphone.

"Oh well," Jack muttered as he resumed walking, "suit yourself."

Scene Four

For what felt like about half an hour, Jack wandered along corridors and down staircases. As he walked, lights would switch on in front of him, and off behind him, leaving him roughly in the middle of a strip of light perhaps thirty metres in length. The corridors all looked much the same, and Jack would have worried that he was going round in circles, were it not for the fact that he made a point of only ever taking staircases that went down. He tried not to think about the possibility that some of the corridors might slope subtly upwards, leading him back to the floor that he had just left. He noticed that some of the junctions had markings on one or more of the greyish-white stone walls. These signs were of no assistance, however, as the script was completely unfamiliar to Jack. It looked a little like Greek, a little like Arabic, and a little like Cyrillic, but not really enough like any of them for Jack to be able to guess with any confidence at what the marking might mean. Occasionally the markings were accompanied by what looked like an arrow, and Jack, reasoning that guidance towards something, even if he didn't know what it was, was better than no guidance at all, decided to follow them.

Eventually, having descended another staircase, Jack found himself in a roughly square chamber. Corridors led off the room to the left and right, and opposite the staircase was a solid-looking wooden door. Jack looked down the two corridors. He could see nothing unusual. He walked over to the door and put his ear to it. He heard nothing. Jack stepped back and considered his options. It was worth a try.

He went back to the door and knocked.

There was no answer.

He knocked again.

Again, no answer.

"Hello!" he called. "Anybody in?"

At that, Mildew's voice came sulking down the staircase. "Knock all you like, stranger," he said. "No-one's going to answer."

"Oh," said Jack, turning round. "Why not?"

"That's what we caretaker generally call the 'front door'," replied Mildew, in his "I've told you this twenty times already, but I'll excuse your poor memory and general lack of intelligence just once more" tone of voice. [17] "It leads out of the building," he added, as though it had just occurred to him that Jack might not know what a "front door" was. [18]

"Is it unlocked?" Jack asked, determined not to be labelled as completely lacking in conscious thought. (He knew that the cause was probably a lost one.)

"If the hinges haven't rusted shut through lack of use, yes." Mildew switched off his microphone again.

Jack took hold of a large iron ring at one side of the door, which he guessed was the handle, and turned it. There was a sound of metal moving, metal that hadn't been oiled properly in quite some while. He gave the door an experimental push. There was a creak, was one of the planks shifted slightly, but the door as a whole didn't move. He stepped back and looked at it. There were no hinges visible on this side, which he took as a sign that the door opened outwards. It was a good idea to make sure, he thought. He didn't want Mildew humiliating him again with a remark like: "You'll find it much easier if you pull the handle, you know." He put his shoulder to the door, turned the handle again, and pushed.

The hinges were a little stiff, and the bottom of the door scraped a little on the flagstones, but without too much trouble he was able to open the door wide enough for him to step through.

Outside there was a faint breeze, which was refreshing after the warm stuffiness of the tower. He was standing at the top of a cliff, with sparse, tall grass growing in the slightly sandy soil. He could hear, punctuated by the harsh calls of gulls, the sea crashing distantly on the rocks below.

From the tower came a far-off, echoey grumble. "Here, shut the door, will you?"

"Oh, sorry," Jack muttered. He complied with Mildew's request, and the door made a noise like two colliding mountains.

He began walking away from the tower, taking care to keep well away from the cliff edge. As he walked, he looked about for signs of Julia - or rather, what had happened to her. He was getting better at controlling the vertigo: this time, he just stumbled. Then again, perhaps she had woken herself up after all. Considering the strange experiences that Jack had been having, Julia's hypothesis seemed quite plausible. Maybe he was dreaming. Or perhaps Julia was dreaming him. No. He knocked that idea firmly on the head. I think, therefore I am. If anybody was dreaming round here - and Jack knew that, when all was said and done, he couldn't really prove it either way - that somebody was him.

Maybe Julia had been rescued, he thought - been blown into the sea, perhaps, or fallen on a passing pterodactyl...

"Hi there. Looking for somebody?"

Jack turned round, half-expecting to be greeted by empty air. He was instead rather surprised and just a little disappointed to see a human female standing about a metre in front of him. After hologrammatic Space Invaders, and disembodied caretakers, and Gods manifesting as megalomaniac cotton-wool sculptures, a talking cactus or a super-intelligent cloud of bromine would have been more Felintor's style, he thought. But no, there was a woman there instead. She was fairly tall, perhaps ten centimetres below Jack's height, and well-built, though not over-muscular. She was quite good-looking, and sufficiently aware of the fact to know that she didn't need much make-up to get the point across. Her hair, on the other hand, had obviously been bleached and dyed, because it was a rich brown at the roots, and pale blonde at the ends, although it had been done very cleverly, so that the colour changed gradually, rather than making her hair look like a paint manufacturer's colour chart. She wore a beige-coloured jacket, with a pale pink blouse beneath it. Her skirt was a slightly darker shade than her jacket, and finished a little way below her knees. Jack was convinced he could see himself reflected in the toecaps of her black knee-length boots. He felt a bead of sweat trickling down his nose. This woman wasn't just quite good-looking. She was very good-looking. Almost too good to be true, in fact. He didn't like to think about what Freud might have had to say about her presence in a dream. Damn it, he thought, why does this character have to be a boring, unoriginal, stereotypical sex object? Why can't she be a cactus or a bromine cloud or something? The thought that if she was the result of his subconscious pandering to his libido, she'd probably have been wearing something a little more revealing, and that furthermore, her first line of dialogue would not have been: "Hi there. Looking for somebody?" but instead something along the lines of: "Hi there, big boy. You look like you're after a good time," did not occur to Jack. [19]

He closed his eyes, and was about to try to force his subconscious to turn this woman into a talking cactus, when two things happened. The first thing was that the woman said: "Excuse me, are you looking for somebody?" The second thing was that Jack realised that he didn't even know how to talk to his subconscious, never mind how to bully it into doing something which might well be beyond its abilities. He decided that he might as well play along for the time being.

"Erm, yes, actually," he said, in reply to the woman's question. "I'm looking for a friend of mine. She's about the same height as me, short brown hair, medium build... err..." He tailed off as her eyes met his. God, she's beautiful, he thought, as he looked down at his feet.

"Where did you last see her?" the woman asked, oblivious to Jack's discomfort.

"Well," he replied clumsily, looking up again, over her head at the tower behind her, "the last I saw of her, she'd just jumped off that tower over there." He hadn't realised until now how tall the tower actually was. It was no more than fifty metres wide at the base, and so narrow at the top that the dizzying perspective made it hard to be sure where the top actually was.

"Oh, I know who you mean," she said. "She's quite safe now - I know where she is. I can take you there, if you like."

Jack's glands went into overdrive at this offer. "Oh, that'd be great," he said, and then, in the hope of making it sound a little less like: "Please come to bed with me," he emended: "I mean, if it's no trouble, of course."

"None at all," she replied, flashing a smile at him. "Come on - it's not far."

She walked past him, leading the way inland, and Jack caught a hint of her perfume - an elegant aroma that danced and sidled its way through his olfactory glands, evoking a score of memories, most of them sweat-inducing, as it did so. He followed her, trying not to trip over his own feet. After a few paces, he felt that he had regained control of them, and decided to ask the woman a question.

"Errm, excuse me," he said, "who are you, by the way?"

"Oh, I forgot to say, didn't I?" she replied, laughing a little. "My name's Zamandha." [Picture of Zamandha. The scene in this picture is from the radio series: it doesn't occur in the book, because I thought of a better way of doing that bit.]

At least that was how it would have been written. The Z was actually pronounced more like TS, as in German, and the DH was a voiced TH, as in this, rather than an unvoiced one, as in thin. These subtleties were lost on Jack, however. "Samantha?" he asked, a little uncertainly.

"No, Zamandha," said Zamandha.

"Ah, Zamandha," said Jack, more confidently this time. After they had walked another five paces or so, he realised that he had forgotten something. "My name is Jack Henderson," he told her.

"I see," she said calmly. "May I call you Jack?"

"You may as well," he replied. "I've never been comfortable with 'Mister Henderson.' Always think people are talking to my father."

"Right, Jack," said Zamandha. "Let's go an find your friend, shall we?"

As they walked away from the tower, Jack consoled himself with the thought that, as her hair was hiding her ears, she might be an elf. Or maybe a shapechanger. She's certainly not one of my fantasies, he thought. I'd have given her an easier name.

Scene Five

The monastery of the Chanting Monks of Castillon was a large, rather rambling building, with several extensions and outhouses, covering perhaps ten hectares. It seemed rather inelegant for a place of worship, but Julia guessed that the order's vows of poverty extended to their dwellings as well. The monks did seem to possess rather a lot of real estate, but she supposed that, as the monastery was in the middle of nowhere, there was no competition for land. In the cities in which Julia had lived most of her life, land was scarce and expensive, so big buildings were tall and narrow. Here, there was plenty of room, so when the monastery needed to expand (the number of different architectural styles told her that it had been built in several stages, perhaps over three or four centuries), the monks had taken the much cheaper (and safer) option of moving outwards.

The archway in which the main door was set was decorated with carvings of various people and animals, which would have been quite impressive, had the wind and the rain not worn them into featureless indistinction. Around the edge of the arch was what Julia took to be an inscription, but that too had been weathered into illegibility. She supposed that even had the characters been clear, she would have been unable to read the script.

Brother Modicum stepped up to the door and knocked smartly on it. After a few seconds, it was opened by another monk who looked almost exactly like him. "Brother Modicum," this second chanted, "I bid you greetings. Hurry, or you will be late for the afternoon mass."

"Brother Tellurium," replied Modicum, "I bid you greetings also. I bring a visitor to our monastery." He indicated Julia.

"Hi," she said glumly, raising a hand in a token wave.

"Brother Tellurium," continued Modicum, "this woman calls herself Julia, and also Miss Hewlett. She is the one whom the Book of Going Forth names the Unbeliever."

Brother Tellurium gasped, and then recovered his composure. A second later, he looked as though nothing unusual had happened. "Then, Brother Modicum," he chanted, "we must convey her to our Father."

"Just a minute," Julia interrupted, as Modicum was about to pass through the doorway, "who's 'our Father'?" Modicum and Tellurium looked enough alike to be brothers, but monks were supposed to be celibate... weren't they?

Modicum turned to her and replied: "Our Father is named Chalice."

That didn't help. "No," she said, "I mean, is he actually your father, or what?"

The monks looked a little puzzled. Modicum answered: "Unbeliever, you misunderstand me. Father Chalice is named Father not because he is our sire, but because he is our master."

This still wasn't what she wanted to know. "Well, what is he, then?" she asked.

Some moments passed before Tellurium seemed to grasp what she meant. "Beloved Unbeliever," he intoned, "Father Chalice is but a man, like Brother Modicum and myself. He is, however, possessed of greater sanctity and enlightenment than we who are named his sons. That is why he is a priest, and not a humble brother."

"I see," she said, a little disappointed. She had been hoping that "our Father" would be a bloodthirsty demon or something, to whom the monks were planning to sacrifice her in an orgy of violence. Just before you get to the most horrible bit...

Brothers Modicum and Tellurium went into the monastery, with Julia following glumly behind them. They walked along stone-walled, lamplit corridors of varying widths and heights. Now and again they passed wooden doors. Some of them were open, and Julia caught glimpses of kitchens, refectories, dormitories, workshops, libraries and storerooms. Curiously, she saw no other monks on this journey. She wondered if her companions were taking her by some secret or disused route to Father Chalice, to make sure that he knew about her before anyone else. But why then did the rooms which they passed seem to be in regular use?

They went through another door, similar in construction to the one by which they had entered the building. This opened onto a small, walled courtyard, with a dried-up fountain in the middle. Whether this was because the fountain's water supply had run dry (it seemed to be summer at the moment), or simply because the fountain had fallen into disrepair, Julia couldn't tell. They passed the fountain and stopped in front of another door. Sounds of chanting were coming from beyond it. That explained why they had seen no-one on the way here. This was the chapel, and the monks were all at mass.

Modicum gingerly opened the door. The chanting became louder as he did so, and then died away as he, Tellurium and Julia entered the chapel.

"Modicum," reproached the man standing in the pulpit, "once again you are late for this sacrament. What explanation will you offer us this time?" This, Julia guessed, was Father Chalice. He looked much the same as Modicum and Tellurium - in fact, looking around the pews, Julia saw that all the monks looked pretty much alike - except that he was perhaps twenty years older than them, and probably didn't present much of a problem to whoever did the tonsuring. His robe, which was in better condition than Modicum's, had a red hem, and he had what Julia took to be a religious symbol, or perhaps a badge of rank, on a cord around his neck. Other than that, he looked exactly like everyone else.

"O my Father," began Modicum, clearly nervous, "I flatter myself to think that you may forgive my past errantry when you hear the tidings which I bring." Anywhere else, that statement would doubtless have attracted several knowing sniggers. The Castillon Monks, however, were somewhat better-mannered than most, and so they chanted nothing. Most of them weren't even looking at Modicum, which made what he was about to utter all the more startling.

"That, Modicum," replied Chalice, "depends on what these tidings are."

"Father, Brethren," chanted Modicum, "in the last hour, as was foretold in the twenty-eighth chapter of the Book of Going Forth, the Unbeliever fell from the Mildewed Tower." As one, the congregation gasped, and turned to look at Modicum, Tellurium, and Julia.

"Silence, Breth-e-ren," commanded Chalice. "Pray continue, Modicum."

"Blessed was I," he went on, "that in that prophesied moment I stood at the foot of that fated building. I saw the Unbeliever fall, and cast a spell of feather-lightness upon her, which she ordered me to rescind, that she might spill out her life on the stones below. Following the commands of the twenty-eighth chapter, this I did not do. In strict accordance with the prophesies and commands of the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of our sacred book, I led her directly into our Order's sanctity, where she stands now by my side."

Chalice trembled visibly, and gripped the lectern for support. "And did she throw fire at you," he asked Modicum, his voice shaking, "even as is foretold by the Prophet Deciduous in the eighth appendix of our sacred book?"

"O my Father," replied Modicum, "it was just so."

Chalice declaimed: "Brethren, the Unbeliever is come amongst us. Great shall be the rejoicing of the Monks of Castillon." Getting somewhat carried away, he added: "Perhaps we shall celebrate a little at this moment." He raised his left arm, and commanded: "Together now - "

As one, the monks solemnly chanted: "Hip hip hooray."

There was a pause, and then Chalice continued, a little more calmly: "Elder Brother Penicillium - "

"Yes, Father?" replied a monk near the front of the congregation.

"Give Brother Modicum an extra helping of gruel tonight."

"As you command, Father," answered Penicillium.

"O Father," chanted Modicum, "your benevolence knows no bounds."

"There will be time for further rejoicing when the other monasteries of our Order have heard this joyous news," Chalice went on. "In the meantime, however, as is set out in Chapter Five of the Book of Going Forth, to welcome the Unbeliever, we shall perform the Mass of the Crocodile."

There was a great rustling, as the monks turned over pages in their prayer books, and then they began chanting again. Quietly, shakily, Julia muttered two words: "Oh, God."

Scene Six

"So this is where Julia is?" Jack asked, as they walked along a dirt track which led them past various small single-storey buildings. Their shapes and positioning suggested to him the toys of a young giant, hastily dropped when its parents had called it to dinner.

"Yes," Zamandha replied, turning her head towards him. He fervently hoped that she didn't notice the fresh beads of sweat that the feather-like tickling of her perfume brought to his forehead. She seemed not to.

"She's probably in the main building over there," Zamandha said. Thank God she said it in an ordinary, matter-of-fact voice! That gave his embattled super-ego the chance it needed to beat his libido into temporary acquiescence, and allowed his senses to focus on something other than Zamandha.

The main building resembled a large lump of clay, perhaps one which the young giant had been trying to make into a castle. The child did not show much promise as either a potter or a sculptor. Then again, perhaps it had simply got bored, or been summoned to dinner, halfway through. The building had several extensions, which the child had perhaps intended to be towers, or parts of the keep, but which had either never been attached to the sculpture, or else had fallen off after its abandonment.

As they approached one of the main structure's doors, Jack could see that the child had attempted to add some detail to the work. Unfortunately, it appeared that the finest implement which it had been able to find for this had been a small twig, roughly the size of an adult human's leg. Being left out in the rain hadn't done much for the definition of whatever it was that the carvings were supposed to represent, either. Jack just hoped that whoever lived here had moved out by the time the giants finished their tea.

They reached the door, and stopped. Zamandha knocked confidently. Jack determinedly studied the door. It was made of solid-looking wood, but almost black in colour - probably the work of many years of coastal weather. He wondered who lived here. Maybe this was where he would find his talking cactus, or enlightened bromine cloud.

He heard Zamandha irritably mutter something, and she knocked again - a little louder this time. After a few seconds, the door edged open, and from within came the words: "Patience, friend. What business have you with the Chanting Monks of Castillon?"

Jack was rather taken aback by this. Firstly by the mention of Chanting Monks, and secondly by the fact that this man, if he was one of them, lived up to the order's name. He actually chanted that greeting. Admittedly, there was no rhyme, no discernible metre, and hardly anything of a tune, but it was still quite a passable Gregorian-style chant. "Err, hello," Jack stammered, "I'm looking for a friend of mine..."

Zamandha interrupted, by contrast oozing confidence. (Or was it just sex appeal? Jack wondered.) "Hi," she said. "We're a couple of weary travellers heading for Vannharial. We were hoping to find an inn for the night, but we were robbed a few miles down the road." Jack wondered whether she had been planning this story, or whether she was inventing it on the spot. He just hoped she wouldn't ask him to corroborate it. She widened her eyes soulfully, and her shoulders drooped. "Is there any room for us here?" she asked the monk.

Jack thought he saw something resembling a smile cross the man's face. "Travellers," he chanted, "our doors are ever open to such as yourselves. Pray allow me to welcome you to this sacred house."

Zamandha resumed a more normal posture, and clasped her hands together. "Oh, thank you so much," she said, as she swept past the monk. As she did so, the man's eyes widened abruptly, as if long-forgotten memories had suddenly bubbled to the surface of his consciousness. He swallowed hard, and turned his face from her, muttering aggressively. Remembering his manners, he bowed to Jack, motioning him to enter the building. Unsure as to whether it was a wise move, he stepped over the threshold and hurried after Zamandha.

She heard him following, and paused for him. When he caught up with her, he hissed: "Zamandha, you lied to that guy then!"

"So?" she snapped back, her face looking like a model for a post-neo-modernist painting entitled The Scowl. "It got us into the building, didn't it?"

Jack had only planned his diatribe as far as "You lied to that guy then," and was rather surprised by the fact that Zamandha had replied, and so he was reduced to making inarticulate noises of protest.

Her expression softened, and she continued, more sympathetically: "Look, Jack, you've got to know how to handle these people. They're not interested in anything that happens out of chanting range of their monastery. Forget this missing friend business - they just don't want to know. They wouldn't let you in if three generations of your family, plus cousins, had got lost and turned up here - if you said that was what you were here for. Make out you're a hungry, creditless traveller - it works every time."

"Oh well, " Jack shrugged, "have it your way."

They continued walking through the large, pillared entrance hall. Even inside, Jack couldn't help noticing the building's resemblance to a giant's clay model. Such was the order in the monks' lives, it seemed, that they had worn ruts into the flagstones, giving a whole new meaning to "the straight and narrow".

Some of the pillars had lamps attached to them at chest height. Jack caught himself glancing at Zamandha to see if there was any of the "romantic meal by candlelight" effect to be observed. True, the way that the patches of light and shadow jostled over her face did look quite sensual, but this was rather offset by the smoke from the lamps, which smelled like burning dung and made Jack's eyes water.

A large door at the far end of the hall, some twenty metres distant, was opened, and three lines of monks walked silently through. They had no trouble in staying in line; Jack guessed that the Chanting Monks walked with their heads bowed not out of respect to their deity, but so that they knew where to put their feet. Sounds of scuffling came from the doorway, at the back of the lines. One or two of the monks chanted something in reproach, and then a figure broke away from the group. Its orange blouse and white trousers stood out from the monks' habits like a profanation. The figure ran towards Jack and Zamandha, probably more in hope of finding an exit in that direction than obtaining aid from them. When she (the figure was a woman; that much was certain) was about ten metres from Jack and Zamandha, she skidded to a halt and exclaimed: "Jack!"

Jack stopped walking and stared, puzzled, at the figure. The poor lighting rather hindered his efforts to work out who she was. Then again, perhaps it was Zamandha's distracting influence that had prevented the full significance of what she had said about Julia being safe from registering. "Julia!" he gasped.

In as dignified a manner as possible, they walked towards one another. Amongst all the tears brought on by the acrid smoke of the lamps, there were one or two of immense relief.

"God, am I glad to see you," said Julia, breaking a brief silence.

"And me you," replied Jack, not caring for the moment about his grammar.

"These people are mad," she went on. "Mad in one-metre neon letters. They think I'm some kind of Messiah. They've just made me sit through two whole hours of chanting in that bloody chapel." She pointed with a thumb over her shoulder to the doorway through which she had just passed.

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that," said Zamandha, approaching. "Everybody has to attend mass here."

"Who's this, anyway?" asked Julia, looking rather suspiciously at the other woman. Jack guessed that she had a right to wear that kind of expression, given that she had just been through what seemed to have been a very stressful experience. He hadn't actually realised until now how plain Julia looked, in comparison with Zamandha. Not ugly, of course, but just... ordinary. In this light, her blouse clashed with her hair, which she hadn't bothered to comb.

Suddenly remembering that she had asked him something and was still awaiting his reply, he said (hoping that he was answering the right question): "Oh, I met her at the foot of that tall tower. Her name's... err... Zamantha."

"Samantha?" Julia asked, making an even worse job of it than he had.

"No, Zamandha," replied Zamandha. She was obviously used to it.

"Ah, Zamandha," said Julia, more confident now.

"Well," said Zamandha sweetly, "shall we be going, then?"

"Oh. Err... why?" asked Jack, a little surprised.

"Well, we've got what we came here for," explained Zamandha. "You've found your friend, so there's no point in hanging around. I don't imagine your friend wants to stay much longer."

"Too right," replied Julia.

"Well, what are we waiting for?" asked Zamandha, shrugging.

"Greetings, travellers," intoned a voice behind them. They turned round to see a monk, rather older than most of his brethren. He wore a heavy pendant, made in thick relief from some silvery metal. Those parts which were raised above the surface had been recently polished, but the recesses were black with soot from the lamps. The monk continued: "I am Father Chalice, the priest of this humble monastery."

"Oh, uh... hello," said Jack. "I'm Jack Henderson. This is Zamandha, and... I guess you already know Julia Hewlett."

Father Chalice looked at him like a Latin master who had just heard a first-former split an infinitive. "Jackhenderson," he chanted, "do not profane the Unbeliever with the name of her birth."

"The Unbeliever?" asked Jack.

"Yeah, that's what they call me," sighed Julia. "Apparently this personage features rather prominently in the Book of Going Forth, which I suppose is their equivalent of the Holy Bible. " She shot Father Chalice a dirty look, and muttered: "I just hope they don't expect me to start performing miracles."

There was an awkward pause.

"Well, thank you for your hospitality, Father Chalice," said Zamandha after a moment. "It's nice to have met you, but we really must be going."

"Yeah, farewell and all that," said Jack, edging nervously towards the door through which they had entered.

"We'll see you around," offered Julia, walking boldly along one of the ruts. If her nerve held, she might just be able to bluff her way out. It was probably a mistake to add: "Happy chanting." But she did. And regretted it for quite some time afterwards.

"Hold!" boomed Chalice. The reverberations went on so long that it seemed the whole building was an echo chamber, and that everyone in it must have heard Chalice's command. But even without that there would have been no disobeying that voice. Together, the three of them stopped, and turned round, the way iron filings do when you sprinkle them on a sheet of cardboard and waggle a magnet underneath it. "Jackhenderson and Samantha may go, but the Unbeliever must stay here."

"Why?" demanded Julia, her confidence returning.

"In our sacred book it is written that the Unbeliever that the Unbeliever must be protected from evil influence," replied Father Chalice. Jack snorted. He thought that he saw Zamandha allow herself a brief, tiny smile, but it was probably just the sensuous, stinking light playing over her face again.

"It is also written," continued Chalice, "that the task of protection is laid on the shoulders of the Order of Castillon. Thus the Unbeliever must remain here."

"Oh, terrific," groaned the new Messiah.

"Well, look..." Jack began. He wanted to say something like: "We realise that we've got to save the world, but you can't expect us to leap up and slay tyrannical overlords just like that, I mean, last thing we know, we were being blown to pieces, and it's not every day that you're asked to go around carrying the fate of the world on your shoulders, and to be quite frank we're both rather traumatised at the moment," but somehow the words didn't want to fit themselves together, and so he said nothing more.

"Let me handle this, Jack," offered Zamandha. For once he was glad to. She turned to Father Chalice and said: "I'm not sure that we ought to leave just yet, actually. We are rather tired - aren't we, Jack?" The last three words were delivered in a tone normally accompanied by a dig in the ribs.

"What? Oh - yeah, yeah," he said, not wanting another ticking-off for reminding her that she was lying.

She assumed the same expression and posture that she had used with the monk at the door. "Do you think we could stay here for the night?" she asked.

"Samantha, you and Jackhenderson are welcome to stay as long as you wish."

"Oh, thank you so much."

"One of the brethren will show you the dormitory and refectory, and then it will be time for the early evening mass."

"Oh, thank you, Father." Her shoulders dropped another centimetre even as she spoke.

"Mention it not, child," replied Chalice.

Did he leer just then, Jack wondered, or was it just the light?

Father Chalice turned and left them, as if they had never existed. They watched him walk along one of the ruts, his sandals removing two or three molecules from the stone with every step. Once he had become just a shape in the gloom, Julia said, her voice trembling:

"Did he say something about a mass?"

"Yes," replied Jack. "Why?"

More collected now, Julia answered: "Do you think we could go outside for a few minutes? I don't want the brethren to hear their beloved Unbeliever screaming her lungs out."

Scene Seven

The three of them attended the early evening mass. Mercifully, this lasted only one hour. They ate supper in refectory with the monks. The brethren's awe of Julia was quite plain, but their reverence for their sacred guest and her companions did not extend to their culinary practices. Or perhaps it did; perhaps ordinarily the monks dined nightly on steak and new potatoes, and chocolate and banana ice-cream, but had been reminded by the arrival of the Unbeliever that they were supposed to be living in blissful austerity. A holiday brochure advertising the monastery would have described the meal which Jack, Julia and Zamandha ate as "simple," and quite possibly "unpretentious" too, but there was no hiding the fact that the monks had developed a powerful aversion to meat, and very probably to ovens and mills as well.

Julia looked at the bowl in front of her. To call its contents "gruel" would, in her world - the real world, dammit - have resulted in prosecution under the Trade Descriptions Act. She tried to tell herself that it was full of fibre, which was essential for her digestion. The trouble was, the bowl's contents seemed to be nothing but fibre. And water, of course. Fibre and water, she thought. In one end and out the other. And from what she could tell, the plumbing here was as old as the monastery itself. At that time, the possibility that the Unbeliever might eventually turn out to be a woman had been not so much not considered as not allowed to exist.

Julia left her meal half-eaten.

She heard one of the brethren comment on this. One of the Elder Brethren replied: "Indeed. By causing herself to feel physical hunger, she is demonstrating to us that man lives not gruel alone, but by sanctity of the spirit and contemplation of asceticism. This should be an example to us all."

The monks left their meals half-eaten. One or two of the brethren smiled slightly, though whether because of their heightened contemplation of aestheticism or whatever it was, or simply because for once they didn't have to eat quite so much of the foul stuff, Julia had no idea. She was certain, however, that whoever was in charge of food preparation here (she refused to glorify him with the title of "cook") would gather up what the monks hadn't eaten and serve it again at breakfast the following morning.

After supper, their minder, a young, impressionable brother by the name of Duodenum, led them to the dormitory. This contained several rows of (to quote the hypothetical holiday brochure) "naturalistic personal sleeping accommodation" or, more honestly, mattress-sized blocks of wood, each covered by a single thin blanket. At the far end of the room were three more naturalistic beds, set apart slightly from the main group.

"This is where you shall make your beds," intoned Duodenum, indicating the three wooden blocks. "I bid you restful sleep. We shall rise two hours before the sun."

"When's sunrise, then?" asked Jack uncomfortably. It would be true to say that the sun usually woke him up, but negligent not to add that he made a point of sleeping in rooms with windows that faced west.

"About five AM, at this time of year," replied Zamandha.

"I thought as much," said Julia wearily. "Even my dreams are determined to recover my sleep debt from me. Oh well. I'll see you both in the morning. Or later on tonight. Assuming I don't wake up first, that is." She paused briefly, and added: "That sounds rather silly, doesn't it? I may start chanting while I'm asleep. Don't let it worry you." Jack wondered why the monks hadn't thought to have a stenographer around to write down everything that Julia said. All things considered, he told himself, statements like that, even if they did fall from the lips of the Unbeliever herself, were better left where they landed. Even Alan Turing would have been hard-pressed to extract divine wisdom from such words.

Brother Duodenum bowed to them, and walked over to his block.

Jack found himself thinking: So that's it, then. We're supposed to make our beds. Do we get some tools, or are we just supposed to sit here and contemplate the vaguely bed-like nature of those lumps of wood, and imagine them turning into four-posters? He was not terribly happy with the way that events were progressing. He had been hoping to be invited to a hastily-convened counsel to be briefed on what was threatening to destroy Felintor, or Felintor-as-we-know-it, and what he and Julia would have to do to avert the danger - not be stuck here, saying meaningless prayers and eating raw porridge (which he had done out of courtesy, and was now acutely regretting) with a bunch of self-effacing, self-flagellating monks!

The three of them lay down, with Julia nearest the wall (furthest away from the monks). Jack took the block next to her, and Zamandha took the one at the end. They removed their footwear, and anything that was likely to dig into them, but they kept most of their clothing on - partly because they had no pyjamas, but no mostly because they could see a couple of the monks, who were still in their underhabits, shivering.

"Good night, Julia," said Jack. She grunted something in reply, which he took as meaning that she didn't want to lie awake in discussion. He rolled over and said to Zamandha: "We really have to get her out of this place."

"Don't worry, Jack," she replied. "I'll think of something. Good night."

There was something slightly odd about the way she said that, but Jack put it down to the effects of the porridge. "Good night," he said.

Jack actually slept fairly soundly that night. This was perhaps not surprising, however, considering that he had spent the last third or so of his life in digs and university halls of residence.

"Jack! Jack, wake up!" The voice was only just above a whisper, but it was right next to his ear.

"Wha...?" he groaned.

"Sssshhh!"

He rolled over, and landed with a painful thump on the floor. He raised his head, and saw somebody crouched down beside him. "Jack," Zamandha whispered, "we're getting out of here."

There came a yawn from Jack's right, and Julia started to make noises that could have been called singing, but only in the sense that an orange can be called a grapefruit. The song had been popular a few years ago, one of the reasons being that she hadn't been on lead vocals: "You stupid - bugger - opinions are not facts - if you'd only realise that you'd pay a lot less tax - "

"Julia! Wake up!" Jack hissed.

"I'm a gay transvestite who's having an affair! I don't know it, but they do ooo..."

"Julia!" he whispered desperately. " Wake up! " He had to throw himself backwards to avoid being headbutted as she sat up.

She looked at him as if she'd never seen him before, and asked: "Was I asleep? Could've fooled me."

"Julia," said Zamandha, stepping over Jack's block, "we have to get out of here right now."

"Fine by me," she yawned. "Don't think Father Chalice'll be too pleased, though." She yawned again, and then bawled: "Please, show a bit more tact - !"

"Julia, please - calm down," implored Zamandha, flapping her hands. "Your singing is" - she winced - "very nice, but could you please save it for later?"

Julia gave her a dirty look, and said: "Wassamatter, don't you like it? I'll sing something else. Together, together, if only for a day!" Jack looked around, worried. As far as he could tell, the monks were all still on block. Either they expected their Messiah to behave like this, or they were all very sound sleepers.

The three of them stood up and tiptoed towards the door, past row after row of monks, every one of whom no doubt thought himself immensely privileged to a have a wooden block to sleep on, when he could easily have been forced to sleep on the floor. Jack was amazed that the three of them, particularly Julia, hadn't already woken the entire monastery.

As they were leaving the dormitory, a monk stepped out of the shadows, probably on the way back from evening classes (do-it-yourself beating and self-esteem-lowering). "Hold, brethren," he chanted, evidently not recognising them. "Why are you out of your pallets at this late hour?"

After a moment's thought, Jack replied, imitating as best he could the Castillon chant: "Answer me this, Brother. What are you doing out of bed?"

The monk was silent.

"That's foxed him," Jack whispered. "Right, let's go."

They shuffled down the corridor, away from the monk, as quickly as they dared.

When they had gone about six paces, Jack began to get the feeling that he'd done something wrong. Was it that he was an even worse singer than the average Castillon monk? Had his tone been a little too peremptory? Had the monk perhaps been an elder brother? On later reflection, Jack decided that what had actually given him away was his use of the word "bed."

"Stop them!" declaimed the monk. "The Unbeliever is being abducted!"

They ran. All around them, the monastery began to jar into life. From behind them came a great drum roll of running feet. Somewhere in the distance, bells were ringing frantically. The walls shivered with the echoes of shouted chants and chanted shouts. They ran, not really knowing which way they went, but driven by the hope of finding an exit. When they finally did reach the entrance hall (due as much to good luck and the monks' poor organisation as to native wit or good navigation), they discovered that the main door had been barred.

Jack looked around. The monks had obviously worked out where their guests would be heading, because several dozen of them were walking hurriedly along the ruts in each of the corridors which led to the hall.

Realising that there was only one escape left to them, Zamandha said to Julia: "You try and hold them off while Jack and I get this door open."

"Why me?" she wailed. "That's not in my job specification!"

"Er - because!" snapped Jack.

"Oh, that's all right, then," she said, as Jack and Zamandha each took one end of the bar and tried to lift it out of its brackets. Civil servants are well known for having lots of rules, and following them to the letter, but the most important rule is that the management can change any of the other rules whenever they feel like it. She turned to look at some of the monks, who were now entering the hall. "Now," she said to them, "I know you aren't going to like this, but my friends and I really have to be going now." For some bizarre reason, Julia's befuddled visual system had decided to interpret the monk-like images being projected onto her retinae as a flock of grubby carrots. "And don't try to stop us," she went on, "because if you do you'll probably regret it. I'll tell you what'll happen if you try to stop us, shall I?" she asked of the oncoming large brown chess pieces. In response, they just moved in some curious gambit, so she continued: "Well, you remember what I said to Brother Modcon? 'Begone, foul shade,' I said, and this big ball of fire went whooshing down at him. I missed Modcon, but I know what I did wrong, and if you make me throw a ball of fire at you, I won't miss this time. Now are you going to be good little rooks and bishops and let us go," she said to Stonehenge, which had unaccountably turned into wood and decided to rearrange itself into straight lines, "or do I have to get nasty?" She paused. They were meant to answer that one. They did have a choice, after all.

"Well?"

There was a heavy thud behind her. She ignored it. She was determined to get an answer out of these creatures, which had suddenly decided to look like balding men wearing brown dresses.

"We've got the door open, Julia," wheezed Jack. "Let's go!"

"Wait a minute," she said, vexed, "they haven't said whether they're going to let us go, or whether I have to get nasty instead. 'Begone, foul shades,'" she giggled, "and Whooooosh! Boooom!"

Someone grabbed her shoulder and jerked her through the doorway. "Look, it doesn't matter," Zamandha snarled. "Come on!"

Deciding that she would probably get more answers out of Jack and Zamandha than the Chanting Monks, Julia chose to follow them.

For the next five minutes or so, during which time Jack was terrified that at any moment, they were going to go hurtling over a cliff, and was only able to stave off his vertigo by the need to keep moving so as not to lose sight of Zamandha, they ran through fields and small woods, and rather too many puddles and nettle patches. Just as Jack was ready to try collapsing in a heap, to see if that would make things any easier, he heard Zamandha shout: "There's our transport up ahead!"

Jack guessed that that probably justified slowing his pace to a walk, even though he couldn't actually see anything. He told her so.

"There!" she exclaimed, pointing to another small wood. "James!" she called. "It's me, Zamandha. I've brought the two foreigners with me."

"What kept you?" uttered a gruff voice up ahead.

"The female's worn out," replied Zamandha, approaching. "The monks made her sit through two consecutive masses. I think it's rather gone to her head."

(Julia was, by now, singing again. This one went something like: "This song is very silly but it's not quite right - there's a monk in the chapel and he's been there all night.")

"All right, all right, spare me the bloody chapter and verse," said the person whom Zamandha addressed as James. He was a large, squat man, built like a chest of drawers. If you stretched him on a rack, you'd have somebody the same height and build as Jack. The furniture motif was continued in his clothing, a uniform of the the kind worn by chauffeurs and doormen at those clubs that you can't join unless you've been recommended by someone who's already a member. It was wine-red in colour, and appeared to have been made out of a carpet. There was a pleasing symmetry to his face. His chin looked like the front end of a bulldozer, and his nose looked as though it had lost a fight with the back end of a bulldozer.

He walked into the wood. "Lights on, you lazy buggers, we've got passengers," he shouted to the ground. As if by magic (if not actually by magic), a miniature galaxy of points of greenish light swept up off the ground and gathered into a roughly circular formation, perhaps four metres across. As the three guests (or passengers, as they had now become) drew nearer, they could see that the lights were actually fireflies, and that what they were illuminating was a rug. It lay on one of the drier patches of ground, and was richly embroidered with curly, abstract patterns in red, blue and gold. James, in perfect seriousness, sat down cross-legged on one corner of this rug, facing outwards. He shot a dirty look at Jack, as if to say: "Make my day - call me a hippie." "All right, everyone aboard," he growled. "Zamandha, you sit on my right. You two sit behind me."

They did this. As they were settling into comfortable positions, having fastened the straps which James insisted that they use, Jack tentatively asked: "Erm... excuse me... could someone tell me why we're sitting on this rug?"

James said nothing. From the way the man's shoulders tightened, though, Jack could tell that it hadn't been a sensible question.

Julia briefly interrupted her silly, inaccurate song about monks to say: "Didn't they teach you anything at that university, Jack? Any Unbeliever could tell you that this is a flying carpet."

"Everybody got their seatbelts fastened?" asked James irritably. "Right, hold on tight. Here we go."

There was a jolt as the carpet rose above the trees. It steadied briefly, and then surged forward at frightening speed into the night.

Scene Eight

The journey on the flying carpet lasted several hours. Jack and Julia slept through most of it. James told them that they could unfasten their seatbelts. Zamandha did this, probably because she knew it was perfectly safe, and so did Julia, probably because she hoped it wasn't, but Jack left his belt firmly buckled. No-one fell off, though, even when James banked quite steeply. Even when he was awake, Jack was too tired to wonder why this was so, or why, given the speed at which the scenery raced past beneath them when the moon occasionally illuminated a scrap of it, the air wasn't rushing past them at life-threatening speed, but was instead wafting over them as if propelled by an air-conditioner that was on work to rule.

He wondered where James and Zamandha were taking Julia and himself. Perhaps James was an emissary of the autocratic but rightful rulers of this land. Perhaps these same rulers were preparing to welcome Felintor's saviours in a manner suited to such exalted personages. Then again, perhaps James was just going to fly around in circles until they fell asleep, and then dump them in the sea.

"Seatbelts fastened, everybody - we're coming in for landing."

"Did you say something?" yawned Jack. Even as he spoke, the carpet pitched forward alarmingly. Suddenly jerked awake, Jack saw that dawn was beginning to break. To his left was an expanse of dull blue, which he guessed was the sea. There was a cry of "Bloody hells!" from James, as Julia's still-slumbering form crashed into the pilot's back. Fortunately, they were already close to the ground, but Julia's involuntary assault made the carpet speed up. A moment later, there was a bone-jarring thump and the noise of fabric tearing. Then for a moment there was stillness and silence, apart from the air-conditioner breeze and the distant sounds of breakers and seabirds.

"You bloody idiot!" James erupted. He unfastened his seatbelt and stood up. He kicked at the ground, and turned to face Zamandha, who was untangling her seatbelt and skirt. "Who the bloody hells d'you think you are," James continued, "putting this bloody dirty great boulder smack in the middle of the bloody runway?" He thrust his hand accusingly in the direction of a rock, perhaps the size of a small elephant, which squatted obstinately about five metres in front of the carpet. Jack guessed that whatever kept the wind at bay would offer rather less protection against something equivalent to a direct hit from a siege engine. "And whose bloody smart idea was it to spread gravel all over the bloody place, eh?" demanded James, kicking again at the ground. "You've torn off half the tassels from the front of this bloody carpet - and the bloody underside is a bloody dead loss."

"James," said Zamandha, rising shakily to her feet. "I'm really sorry about this. You will be compensated for the damage."

"Ah, pull the other one," he replied sourly, "it's got bloody sequins on it."

"Well," she said snootily, "if you don't want to be paid, I'm sure my bosses will have no objection."

"Oh, you'll pay me all right - I'll make bloody sure of that," he muttered. "But you won't pay me for the bloody earnings I'll lose while this bloody carpet is being repaired, will you? There's at least three bloody weeks' work there for Vaira in Heriahn, and that's just to put the bloody threads in shape - that bloody carpet'll need at least twenty points-worth of flight and levitation and binding before it'll actually fly again. I've a bloody good mind to sue your bloody bosses for wilful bloody negligence - this so-called bloody runway of yours has probably been like this since this bloody island rose out of the bloody sea!"

James' tirade was interrupted by the hasty, breathless arrival of four men and women. They were dressed in blue clothing, which had the look of a summer uniform about it. Two of them were wearing overcoats, however. The insignia on their uniforms depicted a carpet amongst some clouds. Two of these people were carrying a stretcher. Another was holding a clipboard, on which he was furiously writing copious notes. The fourth, a short, mousy-haired woman by the name of Karennda, said urgently to James: "Are you all right? We saw you coming down - it looked like a very bumpy landing." She paused, took a deep gulp of air, looked briefly at James' pride and joy, continued: "You've been very lucky with that carpet - I thought it'd surely be a write-off."

"You gormless bugger," James snarled at her, "are you the runway manager?"

Rather surprised that this man seemed to be blaming her for the accident, Karennda replied uncertainly: "Err - yes - yes, I am."

James looked at Karennda as though considering strangling her. Instead, he settled for: "You ought to be sacked, after letting your bloody runway get into such a bloody state."

"I'm sorry?"

"Use your bloody eyes, woman!" James yelled. "I nearly hit that bloody boulder there when I was landing, and then this bloody gravel - " he kicked at it again " - tore off half the bloody tassels from the front of the bloody carpet, and tore bloody great strips out of the bloody underneath of it - I'll make you bloody sorry all right"

"Well... surely your insurance will cover you against damage from a forced landing?"

"There was nothing forced about it," he growled. "Not until I hit the bloody ground, anyway," he added.

"Well then why did you land here?" she asked.

"Because this is your bloody runway, isn't it?"

"Groll preserve us, no!" gasped Karennda, grateful for some insight into the mystery, and yet not really believing what she had just heard. "This is the edge of the airfield."

"You cheeky bugger!" exclaimed James.

"No, really," she told him, beginning at last to realise what might have gone wrong. "That boulder is a boundary marker. The runway that you were supposed to land on is two hundred metres over there." She waved an arm in the direction of a small hut further inland.

James staggered backwards, regained his balance, and looked disbelievingly at Karennda. Too surprised even to punctuate his sentences properly, he breathed: " What?"

One last loose end, thought Karennda. "Who told you to land here, then?" she asked.

As if mounted on a revolving platform, James swung round to confront the guilty party. He narrowed his eyes, and snarled: "Zamandha..."

"Err... look, James," she began, backing away, feeling acutely embarrassed, and slightly worried, in case James should ruffle her hair, or smudge her make-up, "our guests must be very tired after that long journey..."

"Hear, hear," yawned Jack. (Julia was still asleep.)

"...we've wasted enough time already," Zamandha continued, "and - I think we really ought to be heading towards the village now - " she gave him a sweet, hopeful smile " - don't you?"

Scene Nine

Eventually, after Karennda and her companions had managed to hold down James long enough for Zamandha to sedate him with morphine from the stretcher bearers' first-aid kit, Jack and Julia were taken to "the village" - a small, loosely-grouped collection of buildings located perhaps one and a half kilometres from the airfield. They checked in at the village's hotel, an expansive, three-storeyed building by the name of the Ocean Vista. Zamandha had Jack and Julia taken to their rooms, where they slept soundly until late afternoon. When they awoke, their butler, a tall, slim, elderly man named Edding, took them to a vast, chandelier-lit dining room. [picture of Edding]

As they walked to their table, Jack began wondering why Julia and he had been brought here. This village did not seem like the sort of place where Felintor's rulers might hold their desperate final counsels in the Last Days of the Light, or whatever. In fact, this dining room looked more like that in the Student Union building of Jack's first university, whose only claim to fame (apart from keeping several heart surgeons in gainful employment) was providing a venue for the Union's fortnightly General Meetings. Jack had been to a General Meeting once, Or rather, he had been to what might have been a General Meeting, had it been attended by anyone besides himself, the Union's secretary, two Korean students who wanted to see what this "democracy" business was all about, and a small Chihuahua belonging to one of the cleaners.

Jack fervently hoped that the hotel was just a stopover point on their journey. He didn't like to think that one day, such a boring, ordinary, out of the way place might have a plaque in its lobby to the effect that: "In this hotel, on (whichever day of whichever month of whichever year it happened to be), the rulers of the nations of Felintor agreed to take steps to strike the first decisive blow against... against..." Against what? Zorian hadn't been very specific about what it was that he and Julia were supposed to defeat. Maybe it had been a recorded message. Maybe Felintor routinely faced this kind of threat, and the two of them were merely the latest in a long line of saviours dragged in from other worlds. Maybe the Felintorians had contracted out their salvation business. Maybe this was the explanation for the Bermuda Triangle. Maybe. Maybe.

He sat down at a circular table of polished wood, between Julia and Zamandha. They were roughly in the middle of the dining room. From somewhere in the distance came the sound of a band, which seemed to consist solely of a bass player who hadn't yet learned to read any note shorter than a minim, and a drummer who had only a snare and a hi-hat.

Edding positioned himself behind the unoccupied chair. He leaned forward ever so slightly, and asked: "Would you care to order drinks before hors-d'½uvre?"

"But of course," replied Zamandha.

The butler smiled momentarily, as though recalling the facial movements from a teach-yourself book. From some secret place in his clothing, he produced a large, leather-bound book, some five centimetres thick, and placed it on the table, saying: "Here is the wine list..." This was followed a moment later by a piece of plastic-coated card, some fifteen centimetres by twenty. "...and the list of non-alcoholic beverages."

Zamandha picked up the wine list and, having consulted the index, turned to one of the sections and began thumbing through it. After a few seconds, she said thoughtfully: "I'll have a glass of the Asd'fgojekl brownish-pink - "

"Oh, please, Ma'am," interrupted Edding, a pained expression on his face, "rosé d'un teint brunétre."

Zamandha looked at him, gulped, and said: "Yeah, that colour, from the, ah, Fargelur Delta."

"Hmm," said Edding after a moment, "we have the 'thirty-three, the 'thirty-seven, and the... 'forty."

"I'll take the 'thirty-seven," replied Zamandha.

"First or second harvest, Ma'am?"

"First, I guess, please."

"And which vineyard, Ma'am?"

Zamandha um'ed and ah'ed a little. The whole site was only three hundred metres north to south, and detecting the differences in soil quality and the amount of sunshine each vineyard received was a bit like looking at a mosquito from forty paces and trying to work out which eye it was winking with. Still, culture was culture. "The north-east one," she requested.

"A splendid choice, if I may say so, Ma'am," said Edding. Turning to Julia, he asked: "And for Ma'am?"

Julia was pointedly studying the white linen tablecloth. It was undecorated, except for a curvilinear pattern picked out in small, precise stitches around its edge. "A glass of sherry, please," she answered, without bothering to consult the book to see whether they served the stuff.

The butler raised an eyebrow, again recalling the teach-yourself instructions, and said quizzically: "Sherry? Ma'am must be more precise. We have two whole storerooms given over to sherry, which between them cannot contain fewer than six thousand bottles, representing the fruits of some two hundred plantations over a period of at least fifty years."

"Yeah?" she said, in a tone that suggested that her next sentence was going to be something along the lines of: "You wanna make something of it?" What she actually said was: "Well, I'm not going through this south-side-of-the-north-by-north-west plantation rigmarole, if that's what you're thinking. As far as I'm concerned, sherry is sherry is sherry. Go into the first of those storerooms, find the shelf nearest the door, find the first bottle on that shelf nearest to chest height, and bring me a glass of what's in that bottle."

Edding frowned in concentration. "The Altamarian 'twenty-seven, plantation number... four, I believe." He sighed. "We've had that for years, Ma'am. It hasn't proven very popular, I'm afraid, and I fear that it is beginning to turn sour."

"Well, then, bring me something else - " She caught herself just in time to stop Edding from wringing the brand and the year from her, and emended: "The bottle next to that one."

"As you wish, Ma'am," he said. The expression of contempt which Edding displayed in response to her request was one which he probably hadn't had to earn from a book. He might have had to take lessons to mitigate its severity, though. "And for Sir?" he enquired, turning now to Jack.

"Uh, black decaffeinated coffee, please - no sugar," he replied, slightly nervously.

Trying hard to disguise a sigh, Edding replied: "Sir, our kitchens stock forty-eight blends of decaffeinated coffee."

"Only forty-eight?" asked Jack.

"Sir, nine months ago there were in total fifty-three blends of decaffeinated coffee available from the world's markets. Since then, the manufacturers of four of those blends have gone into liquidation."

At this point, Julia butted in with: "You mean someone poured boiling water over them?"

Ignoring her, Edding continued: "That, Sir, is why this establishment has a mere forty-eight blends to choose from."

"Well, put it this way," said Jack carefully. "do you serve Starkafe?"

"Sir must ignore my ignorance," Edding began.

Of course I will, thought Jack. I know you can't help it, you git.

"I have never heard of the blend, although if Sir so desires, I will do my utmost to ensure an adequate supply of it for Sir's stay."

Bugger, thought Jack. That means we'll be stuck here for a week, at least, while it arrives. "That's very kind of you," he began to say, "but - "

"All part of the service, Sir," said Edding, managing the "I work, therefore I am" smile slightly better this time. "However, what would Sir like to drink in the meantime?"

"Well, uh, take the names of those forty-eight blends of coffee, put them in alphabetical order, and... make me a cup of whichever comes first." He shrugged slightly, as if to say: "Is that all there is to it?"

"And how would Sir like his coffee made?"

"Like I said, black, no sugar, and... don't let the water boil."

"And what sort of water would Sir like?" asked the butler, determined not to let him off so easily as all that.

"Look, I don't care!" exclaimed Jack, suddenly losing his patience. "As long as it doesn't give me green hair, or typhoid, or Alzheimer's disease! There'll be a tap in the kitchen labelled 'drinking water' - use that."

"As you wish, Sir," said Edding, gravely. "I'll fetch the drinks now. I'll have someone bring the hors-d'½uvre menu." He walked off in the direction of the kitchens.

Once Edding was out of earshot, Jack said to the others: "I hope he's not going to be like this all evening, or we'll spend more time ordering the food than we will eating it."

Julia nodded glumly. Zamandha said nothing.

A few moments later, Julia suddenly said: "Hang on - the butler said that they have forty-eight blends of decaffeinated coffee. There were fifty-three on the market nine months ago, and four of them have gone bust since. That leaves one still trading which they don't stock. How come?"

"Well," Zamandha said in a conspiratorial tone, "the kitchen staff say it's not up to their standards."

"Their standards must be pretty low, then," remarked Jack.

Zamandha sighed and gave him an "of-course-that's-not-the-real-reason" look. "What I heard," she continued, "was that about twenty years ago, one of the owners of this place lost his shirt gambling with one of the owners of that forty-ninth coffee blend. Men!" she sniggered. "And since then, he's refused to have anything to do with that man's commercial ventures." She caught sight of another butler. "Ah, here's the hors-d'½uvre menu."

Scene Ten

"Urkl! Where's that progress report?"

The former Demigod of Minor Inexplicable Happenings felt a shock of guilt, and leapt to his feet. At least, he tried to leap to his feet; his new boots were three sizes too big, and had a habit of working their way off his legs and tripping him up whenever he tried to move. He picked himself up, and straightened his new cap, which kept flopping into his eyes. He looked unhappily at General Olympyus. Never mind that her visual manifestation was that of a crotchety, grey-haired middle-aged woman, whose new "image" clashed head-on with aeons of military tradition. Never mind that she probably thought that a pincer movement was something from an avant-garde symphony. Never mind that her uniform was a garish mish-mash of styles taken from every army and rank that had existed over the last thirty centuries. What mattered, in Urkl's eyes, was that the uniform fitted. Oh, it had a certain kitsch appeal, most of which was due to the incredible panache with which Olympyus wore it. [20]

"Well?" Olympyus demanded, leaning over him, and practically adding another furrow to his brow with the peak of her cap.

"Which particular progress report was this, boss, err, chief, milady - " Urkl stammered.

"General," she reminded him. "The progress report on our mad dictator - you know, the Terran whom we dropped from the sky onto Tyrania's summer solstice festival."

"Oh, that progress report," replied Urkl. "Well, he's doing quite well, so far, anyway. He's only been there a week of human time, but he's already regrouped Tyrania's regular army. He's handling the culture shock better than we thought he would. He seems to have caught the mood of the people very well - his popularity rating is a hundred and six percent at the moment."

Olympyus regarded him carefully for a moment. Deities are immune to other deities' ability to blast things out of existence, but Urkl drew little comfort from this fact, particularly at times like these. "Urkl," said the General, in that sweet, rational tone which she often adopted as a prelude to screaming multi-coloured first-degree murder at him, "a popularity rating of one hundred percent would mean that absolutely everybody was completely in love with him. Are you really trying to tell me that in just one week, he's done even better than that?"

"Sorry, boss, er, General, er, milady," gulped Urkl, "I guess we... must have asked some people twice."

"Urkl," she said, still sweet and reasonable for the moment, "I promoted you to Unpaid Acting Lance-Corporal for the duration of this campaign specifically so that you would be better able to tell me what is going on in Felintor. I see now that I may have to reconsider that decision. In other words," and here her tone began to suggest felonies of various hues, "if you don't find out, by the time the Sun hits the Western Ocean this evening, exactly what is going on down there in Tyrania and Androdyne, you are going to be changing places with Flotcher, Imp in charge of Gas in the Digestive Tract!"

Urkl gulped. Maybe being an Unpaid Acting Lance-Corporal wasn't so bad after all.

"Am I making myself clear?" demanded Olympyus.

"Yyyes, bbbosss, milady, Chief, General, sir," blathered Urkl. He tried to salute, slapped himself in the eye instead, and disappeared so fast that you could almost see the vacuum that he left.

Scene Eleven

Captain M'wensi of Tyrania's Fifth Adult Infantry Regiment ("The Screaming Heebie-Jeebies"), stepped out of his tent, pitched a few hundred metres back from Greater Tyrania's new western border, and surveyed his men's work. By Red, it was good to be back in the field, or rather, the wasteland, again. He'd been going mad back in barracks. It was worse than being a prisoner of war. At least the Androdynes and Queen Fad's Farded Warriors would torture you now and again, to keep your wits sharp. And there was always the prospect of escape, across a steaming jungle or a crocodile-infested river, hiding from enemy search parties in convenient dungheaps or brothels, bluffing your way past suspicious border guards, who, at the last minute would tear off your woollen wig to reveal your blond Tyranical locks, and march you back to gaol to await the forces of liberation. In barracks, however, there was nothing to escape to. Except civilian life, of course, but that would have been even worse. Not being allowed to fight just because there wasn't a war was excruciating enough. Not being allowed to fight even when there was a war would have been intolerable.

A soldier's standard of living during peacetime certainly left a lot to be desired. His captain's wage of eight silver mapcats per day (plus two mapcats bonus on ceremonial days) was barely enough to support himself, never mind his wife and three mistresses. In time of war, it was easy enough to supplement this with "danger money" (also known as "productivity bonuses"), kindly and graciously paid by one's defeated enemies. Officially, looting was a court-martial offence, but provided no-one saw you doing it, and your kitbag didn't bulge too obviously, you weren't looting; you were "reclaiming what is Tyrania's by right."

He'd tried to augment his income by writing tales of his life as a soldier for newspapers and magazines, as there was quite a market for this sort of thing. He hadn't managed to get any of them published yet. They always came back covered in comments scrawled in what looked like blue crayon. Things like: "I can't read this," or "These sentences have no subject." More puzzling were the ones that said: "Where's the human interest?" and "Where's the pain, the suffering, the regret, the lament, the damning of war as the folly that it is?" Surely the magazines had people who were paid to fix things like that. What people wanted was action, and M'wensi had seen plenty of that. Even confining his stories to the battles where he'd been on the winning side, he'd still have been able to fill three whole issues of Greetings from Sullin, Tyrania's most popular monthly magazine. He knew that his spelling was rather idiosyncratic, and that his command of literary style was rather weaker than the new King and High Priest's command of his native sadism, but that was why M'wensi was a soldier, and not a professional liar. (He'd always thought that term to be much more accurate than "novelist.") In any case, the bottom was about to drop out of the market for soldiers' memoirs. King Kahtoun had (so he thought) achieved his objective of pacifying the Tyranists, and so this particular propaganda instrument was no longer needed.

Eight days ago, on the eve of the summer solstice, Captain M'wensi had given himself one week, maximum, before he took to roaming the streets at night with a machete to stop his combat skills from going rusty. Seven days ago, Tyrania's Gods had finally taken action against the heretics Kahtoun and Stentor, destroying them both with a black bolt from the heavens. The bolt turned out to be a man, dressed like a grasshopper-baiter's assistant. At his side, he carried a hammer which could strike down at a distance any who dared disobey him. For the first time in many centuries, the old law which stated that whoever killed an earthly or spiritual ruler of Tyrania could lawfully succeed him had been invoked. For the first time in Tyrania's existence, the same man had in the same moment killed both the King and the High Priest, and everybody know that this signalled a turning point in the nation's history. This man, who had taken the name of King-Priest-General Stazi, was the man who would make Tyrania great again, and he was going to start by avenging that orchard raid which poncy King Kahtoun had told them to do nothing about.

And so Captain M'wensi, of the Fifth Adult Infantry Regiment, stood in front of his tent and surveyed what had, until yesterday evening, been a village in the middle of Androdyne's East Walking province. Some of the houses and sheds were still smouldering. Here and there lay dead Androdynes, one or two with arrows in their backs. "Let them be a warning," he said to himself, "that this shall be the fate of any who dare stand against us."

"You called, Sir?" asked his batman nervously, scrambling out of an adjacent tent.

"No," replied M'wensi, a little embarrassed. "Just reflecting."

"Right, Sir," said the soldier, looking around for a mirror. He couldn't see one, and guessed that his captain was probably still adjusting to being in the front line again. He ducked back inside the tent.

M'wensi looked out over the battlefield once more, and leered in a manner that could have come straight from the Civil Service Internal Security Department Interrogation Techniques Manual. Tyrania was going to be big, he decided. This revenge attack was just the start. There was going to be a lot more of this kind of thing, and he was going to be in the front line all the way. The traitors Kahtoun and Stentor had been sitting on the lid of the cooking pot for too long, but now the genie was out of the bottle, and it wasn't about to meekly go back in again. He was vaguely aware that there was something not quite right with that sentence, but he was a soldier, after all, not a professional liar. Tyrania is going to be big, he told himself, and anyone who tries to stop us is just going to be ground into the mud.

Now, read on: Chapter Two is at http://www.pembers.net/fiction/lj_ch2.html

Footnotes for Chapter One

[17] Actually, he always spoke like that. [Back to main text.]

[18] You can tell, can't you? [Back to main text.]

[19] Although who knows - perhaps his subconscious thought his libido might like a challenge. [Back to main text.]

[20] An analogy: imagine, if you will, a human woman with a peroxide blonde bouffant hairstyle, wearing a Tyrolian hat, Mexican earrings, a Peruvian shawl, a pink Paisley-patterned nylon blouse, a gold lamé jacket, enough rings, bangles, and bracelets to remove the cheeks of any man whom she slapped across the face, a latex miniskirt covered in car bumper stickers, thick stockings with black and yellow stripes, and red thigh-length high-heeled PVC boots, and you will have some idea of how General Olympyus would have appeared to any military man who wasn't particularly bothered about the possibility of being blasted out of existence on the spot. [Back to main text.]