I'm behind the walls of the sloths' scaffold structure, swinging from pole to pole like a monkey, heading downwards. A huge explosion of flame bursts out overhead, showering me with flaming debris; I have to hang by one hand from a pole and pat out flames on my shirt. The debris falls on down, lighting the way. There are quite a lot of flames now, and gunfire.
Part of my mind is thinking, Blimey, can all this really be for me? and another part is thinking, No, Bascule, don't be silly! But the first bit is going, Then how come there's all this violence and stuff happening around yours truly? This ain't a violent society; bags is pretty peaceful as a rule. How come all this is happening all of a sudden? Oh fuck; those poor sloths was just trying to be friendly and how do I repay them? I wonder how things have shaken out for Gaston and old Hombetante. Then I figure maybe it's best if I try not to think about that sort of thing; it's done now.
Amazing the survival mechanisms you build up in times like this.
Ahead of me I can see the curved inner surface of the wall of the tower, it's undressed stone and all black and glistening with moisture in the light of flames. A few last poles to go, regularly spaced.
Right hand left hand right hand left hand; I'm in a fever or something because I think; just the time to crypt for a second, and as I reach for the next pole I think, right, crypt until you touch this pole, and I'm there, deliberately not thinking about where I am at the moment but swinging out into the immediate locality
/only to find it isn't there any more.
It's like there's just a grey fog all around me; a metallic, growling, hissing, static-ish sort of fog. I can roughly remember where things were from earlier but I don't want to have to trust to memory that much. Then the fog seems to collect around me and it's like it's not fog at all it's made up not of water but of metal filings, metal dust, sleeting into my skin like acid, burrowing into my pores and it hurts and my eyes go wide and the metal dust is sandpapering my eyes and making me scream and as I open my mouth it's filling it and nose with metal grit and I'm breathing it in and it's fire, like breathing flame, filling me, roasting me from inside.
I flail out at it, trying to push it away and my hand touches something solid and I remember that means something and with a struggle I wake up.
My hand clutches the cold bar of the scaffold pole and I feel the breath whistle out of me and I sneeze and my eyes water and my skin itches everywhere and I just manage to grab the last pole and then thump into the black stone wall and stop there, still shaking and not feeling too good.
The floor is a couple of metres lower down, covered in rubbish. Looking up, the wall disappears into darkness. On either side, it curves away, black and barely visible. The sloths' scaffolding structure fits raggedly against the wall, poles stuck resting on bits where the rough stone juts out and the grey sackcloth stuff flapping in the breeze. The channel I escaped down rises like a narrow black canyon above me. Flames burn in the distance.
I try to remember the layout of the place from the start of my crypting earlier. Bleeding hell.
I shake my hed, then start leaping across from pole to pole along the side of the rough stone wall. Should be this way…
And so I go swinging off through the dark space behind the walls of the place where the sloths hang out, or at least did until these guys — with the guns and parachutes and stuff — came calling.
I'm a rat behind the bleeding walls, I think, scurrying above the rubbish looking for a hole to disappear down.
Oh dear Bascule I think to myself, not for the first time and I've a horrible feeling not for the last time neither. Oh dear oh dear oh dear.
TRANSLATION — SEVEN — 4
I'm in the lammergeiers' roost, my breath sounding loud in my ears and mixed in with these hissy clicky noises because I'm wearing this mask on my face and a breathing bottle on me back both of which I got off the dead spyer.
This is a spooky old place and no mistake. There's nobody around and it's very cold indeed and the light is very white and intense and washed out looking. Being in the lammergeiers' roost is like being inside a giant holey cheese; sort of interconnected bubbles and stretched, punctured membranes of stone and metal everywhere and high up on the walls in places where the bubbles make cup and bowls jutting out there's these nests lined with babil plant and feathers only there's no birds in them nor eggs nor nothing. The floor of the roost is like a whole lot of little craters each of them holding loads of broken, splintered bones. My feet go crunch crunch as I walk, looking up and around and trying to see if there's anybody else here either human or creature but the place seems to be deserted.
There are huge circles in the outer walls like portholes where the winds come in whistling through and sounding high and ready and weird; I climb up to one of the bigger holes and look out. It's hazy white cloud out there like a layer of fog what extends to the horizon; you can just about see the lower levels of the castle showing underneath, like something trapped inside a transparent glacier. There's a couple of towers sticking up from the cloud but they look very small and far away. No sign of no birds out there neither, but then that's the thing; this is too far up for birds to fly, so how come the lammergeiers were ever here?
I slide down a curve of bubble and crunch into some bones, then head towards the centre of the tower, into the shades where there's a faint breeze coming from.
The nests thin out and disappear as I go deeper, still crunching over the occasional bone while it gets darker and darker and I can hardly see where I'm putting my feet. I've got this torch what the dead spyer had on him so I turn it on and just as well; there's a dirty great hole right in front of me. I edge closer and hold onto the wall and stick my head out over the huge circular hole. Must be 50 metres or more across. Black deep. Goes straight up into the darkness, too. There's a gentle draft of air coming up the shaft. It's warm, at least in comparison with the freezing air up here. No sign of any other entrances around the shaft, just this one.
I'm still not anywhere near the centre of the tower; that's way, way further deep, probably a couple of kilometres away. I'm in the fast-tower, still on the lam and searching for little Ergates.
I lean back from the hole.
Then there's a crunching noise somewhere in the darkness behind me. I whirl round.
I found Gaston the sloth peeking out over a stone ledge on the inside wall of the sloths' tower, near the sloped tunnel what led to the old lift shafts. According to the glimpse I'd had of the locality when I'd crypted earlier these shafts were abandoned and unused but I'd thought with any luck they'd be the type of shaft what has stairs going round the inside of the shaft for emergencies, and maybe they wouldn't be guarded by the bods what were attacking the sloths.
Well, that was the theory. In fact the scoop of the tunnel on the level below where Gaston was hiding was full of Security geezers with guns. Oh great, I thought.
I'd climbed along between the dank black wall of the tower and the framework of scaffolding what was the sloths' home neighbourhood, heading for here, where the floor dropped away in steps and the access tunnel was. Looked like old Gaston had had the same idea.
I didn't think I'd made a noise but he turned round slowly and saw me and pushed himself back from the edge of the ledge and climbed up the scaffolding towards me, pointing behind me.
We retreated a bit, behind some of the canvas-hung scaffolding.
… young Bascule, he said, you are safe; good.
Yeah and you, I said. But it looks like the Security boys have this place strung up good and tight. You know any other ways out of here?
…As it happens, Gaston says, I do actually. If you'll just follow me…
Gaston set off back from the scaffolding heading upwards at what was probably an extreme sprint for a sloth. I ambled after him.
We climbed up about seven floors of the sloth scaffolding; there was quite a lot of smoke up here and I could see flames in the distance, deeper inside the structure.
… Here, Gaston said, stopping at a pretty ordinary looking bit of wall. He gripped the top of a dripping black
