objections had ceased. It was not being locked up that worried her — no, for she was tough, she was with freinds, she could hack it. No trouble!
Chegory, far more concerned with mere survival than with his rights, found Ingalawa’s attitudes alien, to say the least. He was not nearly so sanguine. If truth be told, he was near frantic with worry. He was under arrest on a drugs charge. What worse could happen?
‘Shabble!’ said Pokrov. ‘Turn down your light! You’re pulling in every bug in creation!’
But Shabble made no reply. Instead, the imitator of suns sang sweet madrigals, quite lost in a musical fugue. So the humans ignored the lord of chaos, tried (less successfully) to ignore the swarms of insects lured by the light of the singing one, and endeavoured to compose themselves for sleep.
Olivia produced an ivory comb and began to stroke it through her long, silky black hair. Chegory watched her out of the corner of his eye. Shortly he had to carefully compose his limbs so no evidence of his uprising passion would be visible. He was not at all embarrassed at this; it was such a common occurrence that he indulged in the necessary manoeuvres without thinking.
‘Shall we tell our dreams?’ said Ingalawa.
The telling of dreams is an Ashdan custom followed in Ashmolea South and Ashmolea North alike. One does not tell the dreams one has endured already; instead, one tells the dreams one wishes to have.
‘You first,’ said Olivia.
‘I wish to dream myself… living in the usual,’ said Ingalawa. ‘No alarums in the streets, no prison walls, no soldiers. Instead, the Dromdanjerie as always. My own room, my own bed, the peace within my own mosquito net.’
Ingalawa was a skilled dreamer with years of training and experience behind her. Since that was her chosen dream that was surely what would grace her sleep that night.
‘I wish,’ said Olivia, still soothing the comb through the free-flowing fantasy of her hair, ‘I wish… I wish the same.’
But the way in which she said it hinting of things unspoken, of visions altogether different, of dreams intended yet unvoiced.
‘You now,’ she said, glancing at Chegory.
Then glancing away. Too quickly, too casually. His dream? He saw Pokrov watching him, saw the smile on Pokrov’s lips. Knew Pokrov knew. But he denied all, and said stolidly:
‘I wish to be a rock. That’s all. That’s what I’ll be tonight. A rock, nothing else.’
‘Oh, Chegory!’ said Ingalawa. ‘What will happen to you if you can’t dream more than that?’
‘It’s only dreams,’ said Chegory.
‘But dreams shape life,’ answered Ingalawa.
Reason was with her. The shaping of aspirations is never a matter to be taken lightly. In part, the Ashdan discipline of dream-telling is such a shaping. It is also a sharing, and, indeed, a profoundly effective method of socialisation. By declaring that he would be a rock, Chegory was rejecting the aspirations which Ingalawa wished to foist upon him; he was shutting himself off from the elite intellectual society which she wanted him to enter; he was declaring his life hopeless even though he was her pet project. He was being, in a word, offensive.
‘They do shape life, you know,’ persisted Ingalawa. ‘Chegory, Chegory, what will become of you if you don’t try?’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Chegory, in scarcely more than a mumble. He was too tired for this. Debate, rhetoric, ideology — Ingalawa had an endless appetite for such. But Chegory was exhausted, and longed for sleep. To avoid further argument he said: ‘I have to excuse myself for a moment.’
Then he stumped off to find the toilet, which he located at the rear of the temple. It was nothing fancy. Just a shaft bored straight down into the ground until it debouched into one of the tunnels Downstairs. In this case, the tunnel in question was lit with unearthly green light, some of which filtered up the bog-hole. By that light Chegory saw a heavyweight metal grille halfway down, a focus for filth which prevented anyone escaping down this makeshift sewer, and also stopped any occult horror creeping up into the temple from Downstairs.
By the toilet was the customary bowl of water, but smell alone told Chegory it was foul with the filth of dozens of people. He was disgusted, and found himself immediately constipated. Nevertheless, he took a piss, then mooched back to his companions, hoping to find them seriously attempting to sleep. But instead he found them arguing with soldiers. By the time Chegory realised his danger, he had been spotted.
‘Zounds!’ cried one. ‘It’s him!’
He turned to run, but they were too quick for him.
Scorched uniforms, singed hair, angry sunburn and patches of blisters told him who they were. These were the soldiers Shabble had burnt. They were exceedingly sore, very angry and definitely in a mood for murder.
‘Ebby!’ said one, punching him.
‘Stop that!’ shouted Ingalawa, grabbing the bully.
‘You stay out of this,’ said the soldier, shaking her off.
Then the soldiers began to shove Chegory around, pushing him so he went reeling from one to the other.
‘What next?’ yelled one.
‘Skin him alive,’ growled one dragon-bitten veteran.
‘Eat him alive,’ shouted another.
‘No, no. Stake him out in Lak Street for the rats to eat.’
‘Oh, too easy, too easy. The lagoon, boys. Tomorrow. Blood in the water. Sharks.’
All the while Chegory stumbled helplessly from one shove to the next, knowing he would be pulped if he fought back. Swiftly, a consensus formed. The soldiers would prove their own virility and the inferiority of members of lesser races by castrating the Ebrell Islander.
‘You can’t!’ screamed Olivia.
‘Ebby lover!’ said a soldier, administering a slap along with the insult.
There followed loud noises from Qasaba, Ingalawa and Pokrov with reference to lawyers and lawsuits. All the while Shabble bobbed about in the air, making music that got steadily louder and louder. This the soldiers ignored until the torturer of harmonies began to imitate a skava-mareen.
[i Skavamareen: despite hints made below by the Originator to the effect that this is a species of mechanical device, it is actually a type of demon rumoured to scourge the lands west of the Great Ocean. In those benighted lands, a fearful populace propitiates these demons with human sacrifices to obtain their silence, for to endure the wail of a skavamareen is agony undiluted. Ritha, Annotator Minor.]
[Ritha’s note on the skavamareen is in error. The great lexicographer Zero Twink has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the word ‘skavamareen’ denotes a rabid wildcat. Sot Dawbler, School of Commentary.]
To the skavamareen the demented Shabble then added ghoul-drums, a two-tone gong, a set of babble-tongs, the sound of a dragon with a bad case of flatulence, the cry of a cockerel and the bray of an ass.
The guards took exception to Shabble’s musical taste, particularly when the genius loci of Injiltaprajura added a second skavamareen to this makeshift orchestra. By now you will be asking the obvious question. What, you ask, is a skavamareen? Ask away! The device will not be described here, lest some reckless spirit be tempted to build one from description. Ignorance is bliss!
Let it merely be recorded that the soldiers were truly justified in attacking Shabble with shovels. This they did, battering at the imitator of suns in a truly terrible fashion. But it is almost (not entirely — the therapists of the Golden Gulag knew how!) impossible to hurt or kill Shabble, just as it is impossible to damage a rainbow.
Such was the fury of these men at arms that they quite abandoned Chegory Guy as they onslaughted Shabble. Chegory promptly collapsed. Sick, dizzy and disorientated. Olivia and Ingalawa comforted him as best they could while Ivan Pokrov made notes by Shabblelight for the trial (of certain members of Justina’s brutal and licentious soldiery) which would surely result from this night of outrage.
The noise grew even louder as Shabble competed in volume with swearing soldiers, the incessant screaming of sundry babies and the groans, moans and assorted abuse of disinterested parties who merely wished to sleep.
These proceedings were interrupted by the advent of a senior officer whose stentorian voice nearly shattered eardrums as he roared:
‘What the hell is going on here?’
