The guy looks happier and offers the plate to Ergates, who climbs onto it and lifts a crumb bigger than she is and then returns to my shoulder.
Your eyes are bigger than your stomach, I tell her.
I'm an ant; my eyes
Smart ass.
Then the golden-eyed geezer straightens, looks unfocused for a bit and says, Ah, we have somebody requesting to join us. Elevator West North West.
I'm about to say, So? What you telling me for? when Ergates speaks;
Is it her? she says.
Yes, the guy replies. (I give him a funny look; I thought only I could hear Ergates speak.) and one of the winged emissaries, the guy continues, and another she will vouch for.
I would suggest we allow them to ascend, says Ergates.
Very well, the guy says.
We're going to have company, Ergates tells me.
There were three sets of doors; they hissed open in sequence, revealing a small cylindrical elevator with couches similar to those in the waiting room. A wave of cold air spilled from the lift's opened doors. Gadfium and Asura walked into the chilly interior. The lammergeier hopped in after them, cackling excitedly.
The doors closed, one after another.
The elevator lifted quickly; Gadfium sat down along with Asura, who wore an expression that seemed both relaxed and concentrated at the same time. She glanced once at her ring.
The lammergeier looked uncomfortable under the vertical acceleration.
It went on for some time.
TRANSLATION — TEN — 6
Well here we are, us exiles trapped in the tower. It's been a whole month so far since we took refuge up here. Everybody seems happy enough so far.
There's me, Asura, Madam Gadfium and lots of lammergeiers. We've got a whole bloody flock of them birds up here; a load of them managed to get to the lift what brought up Asura and Madam Gadfium, before the Security geezers found it. Now they can't get up and we can't get down but I know where I'd rather be. Asura says it don't matter anyway as there's other lifts they haven't found, though we shouldn't be in any hurry to use those just yet.
… What happened when Asura and Madam Gadfium got here was dead simple; Asura went straight up to the big globe of the sun and put her hand up and touched it and stayed that way for a minute or so while the rest of us looked on, then she sat down and closed her eyes.
What happens now? I asked the golden-eyed guy.
We'll know if it's worked in 16 minutes, he said.
16 minutes, I thought.
Rang a bell, somehow, but I couldn't think quite which one.
Let me make some introductions, I heard Ergates say…
The fast-towers brains got the chaos but it didn't seem to be bothered. The golden hair-and-eyes bloke doesn't seem to have changed since the chaos got into the tower's computers but then frankly he was a few feathers short of a full wing to start with so no change there.
Asura says the whole nature of the chaos may be about to change soon anyway, or at least the way we look at it may be about to change, which would amount to the same thing. First we got to stop fighting it though.
I'll believe it when I see it.
The old fast-tower's a fascinating place; there's a lot more to it than just the big room with the orrery; that's like just one little room out of hundreds. Bits are a bit dilapidated and one or two bits are off limits because they were punctured by meteorites and beyond repair and so couldn't be re-pressurised and heated when the tower woke up, but most of it's up and running again and it's just a total hoot. Amazing views, for a start.
There's loads of fascinating machines up here; great big huge ones like space guns and stuff but also lots of little robots. The robots were trying to fix some of the big machinery they've got up here. They mostly broke down when the tower got the chaos and a lot of the ones that didn't had to be deactivated, but some of them still run on their own on-board computers, which aren't very clever but let them move and do stuff.
It's a bleeding education living up here, I tell you; there's telescopes and a museum of space flight with working simulators and hundreds of hotel rooms and swimming baths and flumes and ice rinks and a huge and totally brilliant spiral ski slope and a whole bloody squadron of space planes though they're far too old to be used and would certainly blow you to smithereens if you tried to fly them, which is a pity. There's also rockets and satellites and all sorts of stuff and as Asura pointed out when she was negotiating with this guy Oncaterius and the other bags downstairs, some of the stuff we got up here could make a really nasty mess of the castle if we was to start dropping it or launching it on them. She said they became greatly less aggressive when she sent them pictures.
Anyway, the rulers have got enough on their plates at the moment as it is without worrying about us; all sorts of shake ups happening down there. The Cryptographers and Engineers have got together and are trying to get the wormhole operational, even though it looks like we won't need it for escaping. Old Adijine is still King but he's having to fight increasing calls for his abdication and all the clans have demanded and got representation on the Consistory but even so bags still aren't happy and feel they've been misled and want more info and say. Apparently the fastest growing political movement at the moment is one calling for Asura to be made Queen or President or something. Watch that space, like they say.
We've got access to the crypt now too, and I've been in touch with Mr Zoliparia, who was most relieved I was all right and is currently in a tricky position in our Go game. I also contacted the Little Big Brothers. Don't think I'll be doing any Telling for a while; we didn't lose much to the chaos but in the current State Of Emergency I'm not the sort of person the Little Bigs want to associate with, which is fair enough; plenty to do up here and I could always go freelance if I missed it, which I don't.
Asura must have mistakenly thought I was upset at getting knocked back by the Brothers because just afterwards she made me a present of her ring. I was really pleased anyway but even more so when I realised what it actually is. It's got a little red stone in it and if you look really closely you can see something moving about in there sometimes and if you try to crypt into it you can hear something way way in the distance going gidibibibigidie (etc), very tiny and small and far away and plaintive.
Ha ha ha, I says.
Nope, I'm pretty happy here and so are the others I think. Asura and Madam Gadfium talk a lot and do lots of studying and there's another Madam Gadfium what lives in the fast-tower's brains and is helping Asura talk with the chaos. Ergates makes me learn lots of stuff too, claiming my education isn't over yet and she's probably right I suppose I've still got things to learn.
As for the whole reason Asura was sent here in the first place, to deliver the message which was supposed to put everything in motion in general and Do Something about the Encroachment, well that appears to have gone smoothly, after an iffy start.
The first sign of what was going on was a bad one; the amount of light from the sun dropped by an eighth, overnight. Everybody, even the scientists, got in a bit of a blue funk about this. There were riots in the castle and elsewhere and I myself remember thinking, Oh fuck, and What have we done? and What is to become of us? That sort of thing. But then from that day on the light started to increase again, very slowly but continually.
The sun shone down, the moon did likewise, the planets continued on their allotted paths, but it was like the big old nasty Encroachment had gone into reverse, however unlikely that might sound.
It was some time before the astronomers spotted what was really happening and it was an even longer time before they convinced themselves it was true, but it was and it is and now we know exactly what the bags of the Diaspora left us with to get us out of trouble, and it's a fearsome engine indeed.
