'You don't always have to play the hero.'
'You're my hero,' she said darting a quick, unconvincing smile at him.
They wended their way through the village, past rusting signs. He helped Honour over heaps of rubble, took her past fields thick with plants that had once only been able to survive in greenhouses.
They reached the car. He'd parked it in the old tourists' car park, now just another collection of misplaced botanical specimens. They got in. They looked at each other, and burst out laughing at the water running in rivulets from their soaked clothes.
'Shall we go home, madchen? ' he said.
'Oh, yes, Otto, please. I'm tired.'
'It's more than that.' He reached out to her, both with his hand and with his mentaug.
'Please, Otto.' She grimaced. 'Don't poke about in my head. I'm not in the mood.'
Rain thundered off the car's clear roof.
'It's worse this time?'
She did not reply.
' Verdammt, Honour! You have to talk with me about this!' He slammed his hands on to the steering wheel. She remained silent. He wrestled with his feelings, appalled by his outburst and the fear that underlay it. 'I'm sorry. I'm…' His voice took a pleading edge. 'Let's see Ekbaum. He'll help, I am sure.'
'No, Otto, no,' she said firmly. 'Not Ekbaum.'
Otto thought about arguing, but he had been with her long enough to know that would get them nowhere. He engaged the air car's turbofans and eased it up into the rain.
He flew on for forty minutes, waited for Honour to fall into an exhausted sleep, and put in a call. Not Ekbaum then, but there were others.
'Can you get me Ms Dinez, please? Yes, neuro-engineering. Thanks.'
He arranged an appointment, and hung up as the first cyclone of the wet season smashed into Britain.
Otto started awake. There was a pattering on the window, and for a second he thought he was still back in the car, hearing the rain, but the noise came from a shower of grit cast out by a largelegged machine trundling through a field of tree-stumps, arms plucking felled trees from the floor and stripping them of their branches, logs onto its back, waste ground up for fuelstock and compost going into another vehicle stumping alongside it. Its rear end extruding netted saplings, arms like a spider's spinnerets scooping holes and ramming them into the ground, a new forest for the old. Spider cannon formed a loose square with the forestry walkers at the centre, and tracked sentry guns rolled around them, guards against Beggar Barons' timber poaching and equipment theft.
The train sped past the forestry rigs, their blinking lights lost in the trees.
Otto shook his head. He was raw with emotion. The mentaug was a curse. Every time he slept he relived his life in perfect clarity. Intended to maximise the learning processes associated with sleep, instead the mentaug made Honour live, and every time he woke it was like losing her all over again.
It had been nine years.
It felt like it had happened yesterday.
He could turn it off. He should.
He swallowed hard.
He looked out of the window, forcing himself to concentrate on something else. The sky was grey with predawn light. All slept, Chloe watching over them.
Otto squeezed through the narrow gap between the seats, trying not to bump them.
'Where are you going?' said Chloe, in her sly five-year-old's voice.
'Quiet down,' Otto whispered. 'I'm going for a walk, stretch my legs.'
It was a half-truth. He intended to go for a walk, only there'd be a bottle of whisky at the end of it.
CHAPTER 10
'Ding Ding!' yelled Bear. 'All change for solid ground!' He hurled himself from the wood onto the moor, unmindful of the nothingness.
Richards was more cautious. 'How can we be sure it's not another fragment?' he said.
Bear closed his beady eyes and breathed deep. 'Sniff that air! That's the air of good solid ground, that. Them islands smell funny. Besides,' said Bear, stretching his long arms, 'even if it was I'd take my chances. If I have to eat another bloody squirrel in my life I'll not be a happy bear.'
Richards took his time sizing up the gap before leaping. He climbed over exposed rocks up to the moorland where Bear stood. Richards now wore a lionskin cloak, crafted by Bear from the pelt of Tarquin.
'Do I have to wear this? It makes me feel like a kid playing at Hercules,' said Richards, fingering the tawny skin.
'I beg to differ,' grumbled the lionskin. 'Hercules, is it now? I don't think so. I've seen bigger pecs on a pigeon.'
'I didn't choose this body,' said Richards.
'I've told you before, pal!' said Bear. 'Shut it or I'll sew your mouth up.' He shook his head. 'You'd think being skinned would shut it up, wouldn't you? You really would.'
'Mee-owww,' said Tarquin.
'Where's me needle?' said Bear, reaching for his flap. 'Quiet? Good. Come on, Mr Richards. Who'd not want a lionskin cloak? And it has promised to behave.'
'I told you,' protested the lionskin, 'I was enchanted. Enslaved! I'm not now. I'll be good.'
'Yeah,' said Bear doubtfully. He cupped his paws and shouted back to the island. 'You sure you're not coming with us, Lucas?' called Bear to the tramp.
'Although it pains me to do so, I'm afraid I must say no. This is not my stop,' said Lucas.
Richards scratched his beard, another highly annoying thing about being human. It had been a week since they'd left Circus's tower burning in the void. Little more than a small garden's worth was left.
'Are you really sure?' said Richards.
'Yes, but I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your help. I am too old to catch squirrels, and a little too cocksure to avoid being turned into a pig.' He smiled. 'And I have my nice new coat to keep the rain from my bones.'
'Keeps the weather out nicely does dwarfskin,' said Bear.
'You have been most kind,' said Lucas, tipping Circus's soiled turban in salute. 'And for your many kindnesses I have a gift for you.' He began patting his numerous pockets. 'The time has come for repayment. You are indeed right, young Richards, you should always be kind to your fellow man. For who knows what… oh, where is it? Aha! For who knows what wonders it may bring in return? It's all karma, you know. Anyway, here you are. Gifts from me unto you.' He leant across from the wobbly island to present Richards with a small piece of glossy paper, grubbied by long carriage and folded many times.
'Thanks,' said Richards. 'I'm sure I'll treasure it.'
'I'll be buggered if it's any use. If you'd have caught me in the old days I'd have magicked up a set of epic items for you, some 'phat lewt', as I believe they say. But then, despite my cheerful manner and insightful wisdom, I am a tramp, and therefore a bit mad.' He shrugged. 'And for you, Bear — ' he fished out a wrinkly dwarfskin pouch tied at the top with a cord '- a piece of Optimizja. This island is all that remains of it now, and that will soon be gone. Take this rock, a small part of the land. The pouch should keep it from evaporating.'
'Gee, thanks,' said Bear. 'Nice. A stone in a dwarf's nutsack.' He secreted it somewhere in his innards.
Lucas leant back into the wood and looked into its tiny patch of sky. 'Night draws in. I must be away. Bear, if you would be so kind?'
'Be a pleasure, mate.' Bear ripped a large limb from one of the few remaining trees. 'Last chance…'
'Oh, don't worry about me!' said Lucas. 'I'll be fine. There may be no squirrels left here, but there are other nourishing things for a man to eat.' He eyed a chaffinch speculatively. It wisely flew off onto the moor.
