my hand off my forehead, thinking what an idiot I've been.)
O Bascule, I'm sorry too on account of me being the host and all; this happening in my home and I should have taken more care too, but what's done is done.
Is it though, Mr Zoliparia? You really think so?
What you mean, young Bascule?
I'm a teller, Mr Zoliparia, you mustn't forget that. (I screws up my eyes at this point, to show him I mean business.) Them birds —
Bascule, no! You can't go doing that sort of thing! You crazy or something child? You'll only go and scramble your brains you try any of that sort of nonsense.
I just smile.
I don't know what you know of what a teller does but now might be as good a time as any to tell you if you don't know (them that does can happily skip the next 5 or 6 paragraphs and get back to the story).
Basically, a teller fishes into the crypt and pulls out some old boy or girl and asks them questions and answers their questions. It's kind of half archaeological research and half social work if you want to look at it coldly and are happy to ignore what people call the spiritual side of it.
'Course it's all a bit murky and weird down there in the crypt and most bags (that's Boys and Girls remember) get a bit spooked even thinking about contacting the dead let alone actually welcoming them into their heads and having a natter with them. To us tellers though it's just something we do as a matter of course and no bother … well, providing you are careful, naturally (admittedly there aren't a lot of old tellers around, though that's mostly because of what they call natural wastage).
Anyway, the point is that tellers use their natural skills to delve into the crypt, partly to find out things from the past and partly to fulfil pledges and bequests what the relevant order has taken on. My order is called the Little Big Brothers of the Rich and we originally just looked after the encrypted souls of people what were very well off indeed thank-you-very-much but our remit has broadened a bit since then and now apparently we'll talk to any old rif raf if they got something interesting to say.
Now, the thing is this; just as the deeper you go into the crypt the hazier and more corrosive down there things get, so the longer it is since you died the more kind of disassociated you get from reality, and, eventually, even if you want to stay in some kind of human form, you just can't support that sort of complexity, and one of the things that might happen after that is that you get shunted into the animal kingdom; your personality, such as it is by then, is transferred into a panther or a roc or cat or a simurg or a shark or eagle or whatever. It's actually considered something of a privilege; loads of bags think there's nothing better than being a bird or something similar.
Of course, these animals is still linked into the crypt by their own implants, and thusly their brains is potentially available to a teller, though this is a pretty irregular — not to say kind of dangerous — occurrence. Irregular because nobody ever does it. Dangerous because what you are basically trying to do as a teller in such a circumstance is to try to fit your human size mind inside a bird size one. Takes some finessing, but I've always had this theory that because my thoughts come out with a spin on them, so to speak, I'm especially good at coping with two different thought modes at once, and so more than capable of taking on the task of becoming a bird and flying into their area of the crypt.
This, you may have gathered, is exactly what I am proposing to do, and Mr Zoliparia is not too enamoured of the idea.
Bascule, please, he says, attempt to retain a sense of proportion. It's only an ant and you are only a junior teller.
For sure, Mr Zoliparia, I says. But I'm a teller what hasn't even begun to be stretched yet. I'm a great teller. I'm a total blinking hot-shot teller and I just know I can find that bird.
And do what? Mr Zoliparia shouts. The damn ant is probably dead! That bird's probably eaten it by now! Why you want to torture yourself by finding that out?
If so, I want to know, but anyway I don't think that's right; I'm banking on her having been dropped by that big bird and I'm hoping it might remember where, or —
Bascule you are upset. Why don't you just go back to the order and try to calm down and think this —
Mr Zoliparia, I says quietly, I thank you for your concern but I intend to do this no matter what you say. Cheers all the same.
Mr Zoliparia looks at me different than he has in the past. I've always liked him and I've always looked up to him ever since he was one of the people they sent me to when they realised I talked fairly normal but I thought a bit funny, and I tend to do what he says — it was him who said, Perhaps you would make a good teller, and him what suggested I keep a journal, which is what you are reading — but this time I don't much care what he thinks, or at least I do but I don't much care how bad it makes me feel going against his advice because I just know I have to do this.
O dear Bascule, he says and shakes his head. I do believe you do intend to do this and is a sorry thing for any person to do for something as insignificant as an ant.
It's not the ant, Mr Zoliparia, I says feeling dead grownup, it's me.
Mr Zoliparia shakes his head. It's you and no goddamn sense of proportion, that's what it is.
All the same, I says. It was my friend; she was relying on me to keep her safe. Just one try, Mr Zoliparia. I feel I owe her that.
Bascule, please, just think —
Mind if I just hunker down here, Mr Zoliparia?
Given you're determined, Bascule, here is probably better than elsewhere but I'm not happy about this.
Don't worry, Mr Zoliparia. Won't take a second, literally.
There anything I can do?
Yep; let me borrow that pen of yours. Ta. Now I'm going to sit up here — I squatted on a chair, my chin on my knees, and put the pen in my mouth.
'en 'i 'en 'all ou' 'a 'ouf, I start to tell him
What you saying, Bascule?
I take the pen out my mouth. I was just saying, when the pen falls out of my mouth, let it hit the carpet then shake me and shout Bascule, fast awake!
Bascule, fast asleep, Mr Zoliparia says.
Awake! I yells. Not wide asleep; fast awake!
Fast awake, Mr Zoliparia repeats. Bascule, fast awake. He shakes his head and he's shaking. O dear Bascule, o dear.
If you're that worried, Mr Zoliparia, catch the pen before it hits and then wake me. Now, just give me a minute here … I settled into place, getting comfortable; this'll only take a second but you have to feel settled and ready and at peace.
Right. I'm prepared.
This'll all happen very quickly, Mr Zoliparia; you ready? I put the pen back in my mouth.
O dear Bascule.
Here we go.
O dear.
And so it's off to the land of the dead for yours truly for the second time today, only this time it's a bit more serious.
It's like sinking into the sky on the other side of the Earth without going through the whole thing first. It's like floating into the earth and the sky at the time, becoming a line not a point, pluming the depths and ascending the heights and then branching out like a tree, like a plain tree, like a huge bush intermingling with every bit of the earth and the sky, and then it's like every one of those bits isn't just a bit of earth or a molecule of air any more, it's like all of them is suddenly a little system of their own; a book, a library, a person; a world… and you're connected with all of it, ignoring barriers, like you are a brain cell deep in the grainy grey mush of the brain all closed in but joined up to loads of other cells, awash in their communication-song and set free by that trapped machine.
Boompf-badoom; slapadowndoodie through the topmost obvious layers what corresponds to the upper levels of the brain — the rational, sensible, easily understood layers — into the first of the deep down floors, the bit under
