enjoyed striding across the blustery high moors, with the racing skies, the blown coarse grasses, the stunted brambles and clammy mosses, that any mood induced by the dead towers was easily overlooked.
One day, clambering through hills a fair distance inland of the town, I noticed deep and parallel clayey furrows left by caterpillar tracks, and I realized that I must be close to one of the places where Alvie and her decommissioning team had been working.
I wandered up the slope, following the tracks, interested to see what might be there.
I came eventually to a shallow declivity, a way down from the local summit of a rising moor, exactly the sort of site where the towers were usually placed. I could see no sign of any tower ahead of me as I walked, but this was soon explained. I came to an area where the ground was torn and furrowed by the repeated movements of the heavy machine.
Dark bricks lay all around, some of them broken by the violent act of demolition, but many more of them intact. I walked around the site, looking at the ground, the view, the glimpse of the sea that could be distantly made out. I sensed no concentration or intensity of the psychic emanation. I assumed that Alvie and Ref and the others must have succeeded in removing whatever entity or force there might have been. It just looked and felt like a place where an old building once existed.
In the centre of the rubble I saw a series of deep channels, trenches, arranged in an octagonal shape.
When I was back in the peace of the apartment that night I said nothing to Alvie about this. She was in a quiet mood, and later, when Ref came to visit, I overheard the two women talking quietly about the need to take a short break from the work.
Alvie said at one point, in a hushed voice, ‘I think it’s getting to me at last.’ Ref replied softly, obviously not realizing that even in the next room I could hear her whispered words, ‘Two of the guys have requested a trip to the mainland.’ And Alvie said, ‘Then I would come too.’ Ref: ‘What about Torm?’ Alvie said, ‘I think he likes it here.’
That night she and I made exuberant love.
But the next day, as soon as Alvie had been picked up by the team transporter, I put on my walking clothes and set out for the site of the demolished tower.
The fallen bricks had not been on the ground long enough for them to become embedded in the thin soil and therefore difficult to move. They were heavy, of course, and hard on my hands, but if I moved one brick at a time and rested for a few moments afterwards, it was a practicable task.
When I took a break in the middle of the day I had succeeded in returning many of the bricks to the octagonal trench, the original base of the wall. As I had hefted each one in, it felt so right and natural that every brick seemed to slip willingly into its place. By the end of that day, one row of bricks, neatly octagonal, was just visible above the surface of the ground, giving the semblance of a deliberate construction.
I returned to the tower day after day, intent only on working with the bricks that were mostly undamaged. I had no means of mortaring them, so I had to find a way of resting each new brick so securely that it would hold firm — in practice, the bricks seemed eager to nestle once more with the others.
Soon the octagonal tower stood slightly higher than myself, and I had used nearly all the intact bricks I had found lying on the ground.
I stood back from the new building, looked at it critically, walked around it, admired the view of the valley and the distant sea it commanded.
Then I clambered over the wall, and for the first time I stood within.
I was surrounded by the tower’s walls. I could see nothing outside. There was only the endless wind, the rushing sound of blown grasses. I sat down, stood up again, stretched out my arms to see if I could straddle the interior with both my hands.
Then I sat down again, until it began to be dark.
Of course I returned the next day, and every day after, climbing over the wall, taking up my position inside the octagonal compartment, listening to the unceasing moorland winds. I liked to sit, but I also liked to raise myself up to see over the wall, to regard the area of the island my tower was covering. It frustrated me that I could not both sit down and see outside, but after a while a solution became obvious to me.
Amongst the rubble of bricks left behind by the tractor were several heavy wooden beams, clearly once used as joists or supports. If I were to make an aperture in one of the walls, used a beam to support the bricks above, then a crude window would be possible. I could afterwards crouch silently within, looking out at the view.
For that I would require glass, not only to shield myself from the constant winds, but to give me a way of concentrating the sensations that poured through me whenever I went inside. I was thrilled by the idea, and also by the other thoughts I was having. My sensations were constantly expanding. Whenever I was inside the tower I felt I could see everything, hear everything, within me and without, past, present and future.
That night I went to the Authority’s works depot in the town, and there I found several sheets of the special shielding glass. I chose a piece of suitable size, concealed it overnight close to our apartment.
It had been many days since Alvie had left for Jethra with Ref and the others. It would be many more days before she came back. Now I barely thought of her.
The next day I carried the glass up to the moors, dreaming about how I might fix it in place, planning how to use it, imagining the concentration of my thoughts and senses emanating from the tower, intensified, condensed, enhanced, transduced and transformed by the polymerized material, a psychic triumph, a focus of all fears and hopes.
There in my tower behind the glass I would wait patiently for Alvie’s return. I had much to tell her about, much to show her, from the past, in the present and into the future.
Sentier
HIGH / BROTHER
SENTIER is a semi-arid island in the sub-tropical region of the southern Midway Sea. It is dominated by the cone of an immense extinct volcano, whose name in island patois renders not only as HIGH (the island’s local name), but also as BROTHER. The island is short of natural resources, and there is a constant scarcity of drinking water. Large storage cisterns can be seen all over the landscape, especially in the drier uplands. In summer the island is beset by a hot wind from the equatorial north, the ROSOLINO. This was once the strumpet wind of the south-eastern spice trade, ruthlessly used by mariners but never trusted, but in the age of modern shipping the Rosolino brings aridity and dust to the islands it sweeps disdainfully across.
Because of its remoteness and the liberal attitudes of the inhabitants, Sentier is favoured by the backpack generation. There are many cheap hotels and food places along the strip and around the port in Sentier City. In this transient population, the young men and women who are deserters from the war find a congenial and safe environment. Sentier has permissive attitudes towards the use of alcohol and recreational drugs, and has allowed all havenic laws to fall into disuse.
Sentier City is a city only in name: the harbour is quiet and utilitarian, with a small area set aside as a marina for visitors. Fishing goes on, but in a desultory fashion. There is little trade with other islands, although because of its rich volcanic soil Sentier wines are popular and bring in much currency.
Most conventional visitors and tourists head inland, to the small town of Cuvler. Here there are unusual ruins: Sentier was purged during the first Federation invasion, and all the then-inhabitants were either taken as hostages or liquidated. This was of course before the making of the Covenant. The troops were soon removed under treaty and the island was eventually repopulated, but much of the old flavour of the town has long gone. There was once a thriving artists’ colony in Cuvler, and the small area of the town, close to the desiccated banks of Sentier’s sole river, where the houses and studios were once occupied, is now a protected zone. It is open to visitors. There is an excellent museum and gallery which displays the best surviving examples of the work from the early days, as well as more recent work, including a large but mediocre Bathurst:
Oddly, for such a remote and in many ways primitive island, Sentier has a worldwide reputation in the sciences and in medicine, and all this is to be found in Cuvler.
It was in Cuvler that the astronomer PENDIK MUDURNU was born, and it was he who set in motion the
