it sank back onto its haunches. 'Nixon good president.'
'Are you going to pick it up then?' said Bear.
'Yes! Yes! For fuck's sake, I'm thinking. Leave me alone.'
'It's just sitting there staring at us. Pick it up.'
'You pick it up,' said Richards.
'It quite obviously gave it to you,' said Bear nudging him. The dog growled.
'Good boy!' said Richards. 'Good Mr President!' Not taking his eyes off Nixon's face, he crouched down and picked up the collar.
'Eh? A message.'
'Where?'
'Here,' said Richards, pulling it out, 'on the inside.'
'Well, what does it say?'
'Will you just give me a chance?' Richards said testily. Nixon looked at them without interest.
'I'm sorry, but that thing gives me the horrors.'
'You said that already.'
'I always repeat myself when I've got the horrors,' said Bear. 'It doesn't happen often, I swear.' He shifted his weight. 'What does it say?'
'Don't you get at me because you're embarrassed.' Richards broke the seal and unrolled the missive.
'Dear Richards,' the letter said. 'Follow the dog. Yours, Rolston.'
'Hmmm. Be careful. I don't like the sound of this Rolston fellow,' said Bear. Nixon's ears pricked up at the name of his master, and the wind blew a little chiller. 'I mean, anyone who has that for a pet can't be entirely on the straight and narrow.'
'To be honest, pal, I never really thought Rolston was on the straight and narrow,' said Richards. 'He's got a bizarre sense of humour, and gets involved in some seriously weird shit, this construct notwithstanding, but talking to him will help me clear this up more quickly.'
'Hmmm,' said Bear.
'Do you actually know where you are going?'
Bear's shoulders sagged. 'Um, no. No I don't.'
'Well then. Lay on, MacNixon,' Richards said to the dog.
'OK, pinko commies. Heel,' said the dog.
They followed the dog. It trotted tirelessly, humming 'The Star Spangled Banner'. Night grew darker. Although Richards and Bear found walking on the springy heather tiring, they did not stop.
The mist cleared, and the sun came up. By noon they came across a lonely sign of habitation. A crossroads cut into the brown and purple of the heather, two sets of parallel quartz and mica ruts, a stripe of grass between them. Where the roads crossed, they formed a glittery X of sand in the landscape.
'That way,' said the dog, pointing with its nose down the road leading to the southeast. 'Goodbye,' said Nixon, and left. As he walked away from the road, back the way they had come, he faded away as he would were he retreating into the mist, though the day was clear as a bell.
'Nixon good boy,' said the dead president as he blended into the world. 'Nixon good president.' The world closed behind him. 'I would have made a good pope,' came a faint voice, then he was gone.
'Yeah,' said Richards, 'Maybe a Borgia.'
'Grrr,' shuddered Bear.
'Here we go,' said Richards with satisfaction, pointing to a weathered sign. 'Pylon City.'
'Nobody likes a smartarse, sunshine,' said the bear and let out a shuddery sigh. He reset his helmet. 'Just remember, you're still in my custody.'
The land dropped until they left the moors behind. Tussocky grass scattered with stunted trees replaced the heather. They crossed a bald stripe of rock, a fault line like a scar where Richards surmised one fragment of a world had been artlessly welded to another, and over it the landscape changed utterly and immediately into a plateau pockmarked by industry.
'This look like a join to you?' said Richards as they crossed it. 'Looks like one to me.'
The bear did not reply. He was doing his best to look vigilant and dangerous.
Tracks ran among spoil heaps, some well used, some not, leading to machines in various states of disrepair. A narrow-gauge railway came in from the left to run parallel to the road, while the road itself became wider. By the time Richards and Bear were close enough to make out the city in the distance, it was a broad highway of iron plates.
'Aha!' said Bear. 'Pylon City.'
'Told you,' said Richards.
'Shut it, fucko,' said Bear.
The road ran to the edge of a steep valley and turned to follow its lip. From below, the shouts of a playful river echoed. The eastern side, lower by some two hundred feet, was cloaked in impenetrable forest, another abrupt change in landscape. The valley divided two worlds, one brown and dead, the other green and lush. The chasm was deep; evening took hold there a full hour before the sun touched the moors. When Richards and Bear reached the dusk-kissed walls of Pylon City the valley was dim with night, and the slag-heaps about the city cast shadows as black as those of pyramids.
A pylon of enormous size soared from the heart of the city, its top lost in the clouds, dominating all, so big that the cliff-ringed hill the city sat upon seemed as tiny as an anthill. Hard lines of cables scored the sky, heading out in all directions, as thin as cotton against the sky, but they were mighty; one had come down, and hung thick and limp over the city wall. To the east it sat low in the gorge, a sunlit streak hard against the blackness.
Everything about Pylon City was large and iron. The walls were twenty-metre giants circling the cliffs, the westernmost of which plunged straight into the chasm. Rust-streaked buttresses were set at intervals in between towers spaced round the walls' circuit. The road and railway rose up to these defences on thinlegged viaducts, the railway vanishing into a tunnel close by the main road gate. The effect was one of impregnability, but up close the travellers could see that the wall had buckled where the cable had fallen across it.
'Look at that,' said Richards. 'Do you think that's the same rope that ran to the top of Circus's pavilion?'
'Possibly, possibly,' said Bear. 'That'd explain why it is not strung from the top of the tower. Looks like it's caused plenty of damage too. Um, best not mention that when we go in, OK?'
The gates were wrought in iron and ostentatiously ornate. A thousand creatures cavorted on their span. Machicolated crenellations topped the wall above the gates, cantilevered over the road on merlons cast in the forms of leering chimps.
'That's pretty amazing,' said Richards. 'Puts me in mind of the Great Firewall.'
Bear looked at him as if he were mad. 'It's horrible!'
'I have to agree,' said Tarquin, wrinkling up his nose. 'Terribly lower-middle-class.'
'I meant the scale of it,' said Richards defensively.
'Oh,' said Bear, as if he'd just realised something. 'Those really are garden gnomes on that bas-relief.'
'That looks suspiciously like a poorly executed rendition of Le Pissoir. Eighty feet tall, would you imagine,' said Tarquin with mocking awe.
'Aw,' said Bear, 'look, dogs playing snooker. Cast in iron.' He leant over to Richards. 'A-maz-ing,' he said, pronouncing each syllable with leaden sarcasm.
'There's no need for that,' said Richards. 'I thought it looked impressive.'
'It's trite,' said Tarquin. 'I shudder to think of your living room, dear boy. Probably some kind of nature reserve for doilies.'
'Sheesh,' said Richards.
'I'll warrant you have a pottery scotty dog too.'
'Needle,' said Richards. Bear chuckled.
For all the walls' stature, they were silent. Not a man patrolled them. The road visible beyond the gateway was empty. The gates were guarded, but not avidly. A pair of sentry boxes stood either side of the road. Only one was occupied, by a snoozing guard, his elaborate energy pike leant against the wall.
'Ahem,' said Bear.
The guard jumped up. 'Gods, not another bloody talking animal.' He turned away from them, busying himself
