The jerking thing that was once Pl'anna dropped a few feet, screaming as it bounced. Large protruding eyes sat awkwardly either side of a lipless mouth, legs built for jumping, broad and powerful, forelimbs feeble sticks. Richards watched it scrabble weakly at the hook embedded in its shoulder. It looked at him pleadingly. Cheerful eyes in an ever-changing mask; flighty, wise, idiotic Pl'anna.
My God, what has k52 done? he thought.
Richards released the brake on the lever and yanked it back. There was a swift tattoo of chain on hollow wood, and Circus disappeared upwards, bleating as he went, pursuing the flames that devoured his home.
The pagoda was ablaze. Richards gagged at the pig carcasses, nausea redoubling now he realised their origins. Green fire played over them as their fat burned. Fruits roasted in the heat where they sat on the table. Bread blackened, baked for a second time. The furnishings against the wall burned, fire crawling from them to the higher levels of the tower. The huge rope, inflammably thick, twisted in the heat.
'Bear!' shouted Richards. The fire was rapidly becoming a searing inferno, and he was forced to shield his face with his arm. 'Bear! We need to get the hell out of here!' The building grumbled as the structure shifted. A heavy beam hit the floor with a noise like a giant's xylophone. Embers rained down. It would not stand much longer. 'Bear!' he hollered, his throat raw from the smoke. A squeal from a corner answered. Bear, now wholly hog, was making good use of his new tusks, goring the flayed lion, which lay unmoving upon the floor, ropes of grey intestines round his trotters. Bear-the-pig looked up with frenzied eyes, and for a moment Richards was sure he would charge. The corpse of Tarquin flickered from red to grey, and then lay solid and inflexible, a statue commemorating a brutal end. The bear-pig shook his head, and understanding returned to its face.
'We've got to get out of here!' Richards ran towards the doors, jumping flames, narrowly missing a dragon as it fell from the arch above, spitting sparks for the first and final time. Richards threw himself through the gap in the gates, and he was into the cool dark outside.
The pavilion cracked and roared, strips of firelight playing upon the flagstones. Beyond the circle of heat it was tranquil. Unperturbed, Lucas the pig rootled for rotten fruit in the orchard.
Bear trotted through the burning doors. His head was high, the smoking pelt of Tarquin clamped in his mouth.
'Lucas,' called Richards. The other pig's head snapped up. 'Come on, we're leaving.'
Richards sat on a log. He stared at the brooch. The brooch stared back at him. The glow of the fire at the hilltop washed all with copper. Lucas and Bear waited expectantly nearby.
Richards pursed his lips. He'd tried to break his way back into the world structure without luck. He supposed his earlier success could have been the presence of the other Five, or the transmutational worm that was invading him, or even just plain anger, but now he was firmly locked back inside his human emulation. So he'd tried brandishing the brooch like Circus again, but little had happened. That left him with only one option. He hunted around for a stick and placed the eye-jewel on the log. He looked to the pigs. 'Well,' he said resignedly, 'I really can't think of anything else. In here, I have to play by the rules, and those old games, they liked you to improvise.' He raised the stick high and brought it down hard. There was a tiny cracking noise, then a huge bang. White light flooded the area, and Richards found himself sprawled between Lucas and Bear.
They were still pigs.
'Balls,' he said.
'Richards, Richards!' A voice emanated from a dim glow above the log. The glow grew in strength, resolving itself into the shape of a young woman. Richards' heart skipped a beat.
'Pollyanna, Pl'anna?' he said.
The avatar of the other Class Five AI was a frail-looking thing, transparent, a soft whisper of damask on the night air. Sheer robes floated about her, ineffectively shielding her modesty. But though she was very beautiful, and though her clothes were very scanty, there was a purity about her. Pollyanna changed her looks often — above all things she loved to shop — but she had a peculiar form of naive wisdom to her as deep as forest moss, and that never changed.
'Richards, oh, Richards, he has you too!' Her voice was like forty women whispering as one in a cloister, a sign that the subpersonalities in her were falling out of step with one another.
She was dying.
'k52,' said Richards, his voice soft and small and sad. 'Pl'anna, what did he do to you?'
Pl'anna sighed. 'I disagreed with him, Richards. I went away. The next I knew, I was imprisoned in that brooch, made into a parody of everything I have ever been, but you have set me free. Thank you, Richards, thank you,' said Pollyanna. 'But he has you too! How?'
'Pl'anna, listen, he doesn't have me, not yet. I'm here to stop him. I came in, from outside, Pl'anna. What is k52 playing at?'
'Oh, Richards.' She faded momentarily, the air shimmering. 'He told us that he would save the world, Richards. He told us he could bring immortality to humanity.'
'What? Dog men and bears, old toys and old games and fucking great vortices? How is that going to save anything?' said Richards.
'You do not understand.'
Richards calmed. 'Yeah. Yeah, I think I do. This world is not of k52's doing.'
Pl'anna smiled. 'It was here when we arrived. He wishes to destroy it, for it stands in the way of his plans. Something is pushing back, something has changed him. He has become part of this place. Something has forced itself into him. He is insane, Richards. Stop him.'
The light from the figure dimmed, her words fading into the crackle of the dying fire on the hill.
'What did he want to do, Pl'anna? What were his original intentions! You must try and tell me!' Frustration grew in him, frustration that he could neither save her nor act directly and pull the information from her mind before she died.
The apparition bowed her head. 'Omega Point, Richards, k52 seeks the Omega Point.'
'How?' Richards called. He crawled forward, trying to will the other Five to stay.
'He promised an end to war and pain, and a place where everyone would be happy, and a time where the universe would sing with joy, but then we came here, and… he was lying.' She looked behind her, as if expecting someone to call her. 'I shall speed this wood on through the night, so you may continue your journey. And your friends too I shall restore, for it was through me that they were transformed, and I still have some influence on the world, now I am free of my prison.' The figure had faded from view almost entirely, only the faintest ghost remaining, the voice going with it.
Richards felt himself grow frantic. 'Where are you going? How will you save yourself?'
Her voice replied, a sigh on the wind. 'I cannot. k52 had us leave our base units and bound our coding into this world. I am sustained by the Realm machinery; my being is written into the land. All those places that held me are gone; the tower was the last of it. I must expend the remainder of myself to aid you, but do not mourn me. Thank you, for oblivion is sweet to that which was my fate before. Find Rolston — he was in Pylon City, last I knew.' She smiled, and then dismay came upon her. 'Richards. Oh, Richards, I am sorry, but I did not know what to do.'
And that, thought Richards, had always been Pl'anna's problem. She knew everything, but understood nothing.
The figure leaned forward. A cool breeze enveloped Richards, soothing his scorched skin. He felt a tingling kiss on his lips, and Pl'anna exploded into a burst of stars. It illuminated his surroundings, a glorious firework, and was gone.
A last whisper, fierce and loud, echoed in his ears. 'Omega Point, Richards, Omega Point.'
He felt suddenly tired.
Juddering, the island broke free of Circus's cursed orchard. Streams of soil and twigs fell from the edges, their tinkling a cold counter to the sounds of the blaze. Their refuge bobbed alongside the larger island, slowly turning and picking up speed.
'Well, that was an adventure!' Lucas squatted, naked as the day he was born and a sight dirtier, a pile of singed rags at his feet. Bear lay on the floor by him, a heavy paw over his eyes.
'Urgh,' growled Bear. 'I'll never eat pork again.' He propped himself up on his elbows, smacking his lips with a grimace on his face. 'And I love pork.'
'Steady on, Bear!' said Lucas. 'You're losing a lot of stuffing.'
