Anyway, I had a very nice time and almost totally forgot about Dartlin and the giant brain in bird space and horrible skinned heads and things what go gididibibibigididibigigi and so on.
Me and Mr Zoliparia talked about loads of stuff.
Eventually though it was time for me to go because I still had evening calls to do for the Little Big Brothers and they like you to be there in the monastery to do them and I'd already done one lot on the hoof as it were that morning in the hydrovator so I thought for the evening I ought to actually be there within the precinct.
Mr Z saw me to the west wall tube train.
You promise you won't go back into that crypt until you have to? Until you're back with the brothers? Mr Z said to me, and I said, Oh all right then Mr Zoliparia.
Good boy, he said.
Everything went as per normal till I got to the other end where there was a long wait at the hydrovator. I thought of a better idea and took a travelator across the allure to a funicular line up a flying buttress; I'd get to the monastery by dropping from above.
There were a couple of novice brothers in the funicular car with me; they were a bit drunk, and singing loudly. I thought one of them seemed to recognise me but I just looked away and he ignored me too.
They kept singing as the car when slowly up the curve of the buttress. I wouldn't have minded, but they were out of tune.
Little-Big, Little-Big, Little-Big!
We're the Mediums who don't give a fig!
Well, here's a fine to-do, I said to myself, sighing and staring out the window and trying to ignore the noise and their beery breaths. I looked out the window; it was dusk by this time and the lights were on in the funicular car's cabin and the sky outside looked pretty and very colourful.
When you're dead, when you're dead, when you're dead,
We'll happily live inside your he — ad!
O, what the heck, I thought.
In a way what I was going to do would make the trip longer not shorter but at least I'd have some respite from all this cheery-drunken shit, and even if I forgot my return code again these noisy prats would wake me up soon enough. I dipped into the crypt, intending to spend maybe half a second in there.
Less than that was quite enough.
There was something going on.
The first place you go from transport is into a representation of the castle's transport system, a transparent holo of the fastness with the tube, train and funicular lines, lift shafts, roads, hydrovator lines and clifter slots all highlighted. Then you move onto where you want to go elsewhere in the crypt. Most bags don't even spare this setup a passing glance, but if you're something of a connoisseur of the crypt's states, like I am, then you just always swing past this sort of thing and click it out and do a quick comparison with actual movements to see if Transport's on its bols or not. Upshot is, if there's anything amiss you spot it, like I spotted the transport setup wasn't quite right.
It looked like there was an odd kind of hole around the monastery; nothing moving out, just stuff in-going. Very strange, I thought. I didn't go no further into the crypt. I checked the monastery's crypt business during the afternoon. Definitely phase-change in the traffic around an hour ago. Somebody trying to make things look normal when they weren't.
Where was brother Scalopin's usual call to the
I knew I was probably being paranoid, but I worried all the same.
The funicular was due to make one more stop before the station I'd normally get off at. I told it to stop ASAP.
A minute later it did, and I got off at this little silly halt three quarters of the way up the buttress which served a couple of clan-execs' love nests, a old babil farm and a glider club, all of them deserted. The two brothers I left on the funicular looked puzzled but waved bye-bye and kept singing as the car trundled away again.
Then there was a thump in my head. The funicular car stopped, then reversed and clunked and whirred back down towards me.
The thump in my head was some bastard trying to knock me out with a bit of feedback from the crypt; theoretically impossible and technically difficult but it can be done and the jolt I'd just got would have knocked out most people, only I've got the equivalent of shock absorbers because I'm a teller and therefore used to getting a rough ride from the crypt.
The funicular car was coming glowing back down the curved track, its cabin lights reflecting off the babil plants festooning the broad arched back of the buttress. The two brothers inside were at the back window, staring at me. They didn't look so drunk now, and they were each holding things in their hands that could have been guns.
Oh shit, I thought.
I ran down a spiral stairway at the side of the buttress. I heard the car stop above me. The stairway went on and on and on and on spiralling all the time and I thought when it levels out I'm not going be able to stop going round; they'll find me whirling round in a tight little circle unable to go straight. I hit the bottom and sheer terror proved a very efficient course-straightener. I raced across a gantry slung underneath the stonework and went down another stairway set against a metal-frame building on the far side of the buttress. Footsteps clanged behind me.
I came out on a broad balcony and dodged through a doorway and down some more steps into a sort of hanger where old gliders sat tilted like great ghostly stiff-winged birds and a bunch of little bats started chattering and flying round my head. Footsteps above, then behind. Oh shit oh shit oh shit. The bats were kicking up a hell of a racket.
I spotted a ladder against one wall leading down through the floor and I ran for it. Somebody shouted behind me; the footsteps slapped loud. Something went, Bang! and a glider next to me exploded with flame and lost a wing; the blast of air was warm and almost knocked me off my feet.
I threw myself at the ladder, held the sides and dropped, sliding down without using my feet at all, hitting the floor and twisting my ankle.
I was in some kind of circular platform slung under the glider building. Nothing but air underneath and nowhere to go. I looked back at the ladder. The footsteps were right above me.
I heard a noise like quick, distant surf, and a huge black shape lifted from under the platform on wings longer than I'm tall. It wavered in the air alongside then grasped at the thin metal rail round the platform on the far side from the ladder, its talons gripping the rail while its wings beat quickly and almost silently back and forward.
I could hear somebody coming down the ladder, breathing hard.
Here! shouted the black shape at the other side of the platform. I'd thought it was a bird but it was more like a giant bat. Its wings clapped in and out in and out.
Quickly! it said.
I think if the brothers coming down the ladder hadn't shot at me in the hanger I wouldn't have gone, but they had so I did.
I ran for the big bat. It held its feet out. I grabbed its ankles and it wrapped its talons round my wrists making me shout with the bone-crunching pain while it pulled me off the platform, cracking my knees off the rail.
We twisted and dropped like the thing couldn't carry me and I screamed, then it spread its wings with a snap and I nearly lost my grip as we curved out and away. Light sparkled above me and I heard the bat cry out but I was too busy looking down at the dark fields in the allure, 5 or 600 metres below and thinking well, if I die, there's still another seven lives to go. Except I didn't think that was right somehow, I reckoned whatever trouble I was in went beyond this life and I wasn't guaranteed another seven lives or even one.
I held on tight, but the light crackled again and the bat thing juddered in the air and cried out again and I smelled smoke. We lurched and side-slipped towards the wall of the great hall, then fell like the proverbial, and in a
