There is still an I. An I within me that is not him.
We are at war about the Rose.
—Look, said Grimus. (I was in him as he is in me. The Subsumer works both ways.)
He held up a small mirror, held it against his chest, angled up towards my face.
My hair had become white. It was his face now, his face entirely, his head on my shoulders.
I was Flapping Eagle.
A second secret door, leading into the room where Media slept. This small room, at the very centre of the house, adjoining most of its rooms. Grimus (who was partly Flapping Eagle) led Media by the hand to where I stood, by the coffin which held the Rose.
—Stay here, he said. Look after each other. They will come soon. But even Bird-Dog does not know about this room.
There was fear in his face. I recognized it; it was my fear. It was the me which he had imbibed that was scared of dying.
—You will not harm the Rose now, he said. We are the same.
And he left.
—He’s changed you, she whispered.
Media was looking at me, wide-eyed.
I held her hand. At least she was the same. One constant thing in a transfigured universe.
The Rose. The him in me had a will of its own, and it was forcing me to bow to its wishes. The I in me was weakened, enfeebled by the shock of subsumation. I stood looking at the Rose for a long, long time. The bump on its stem seemed to acquire a great fascination for me, a magnetic attraction. Perhaps it was the him in me which did that.
Suddenly, I grasped the Rose. By the bump. It fitted well into my hand. Then I screamed, and Media screamed. I screamed in pain. She screamed because I disappeared from the room altogether.
I had Travelled.
The pain is caused by one’s first experience of the Outer Dimensions. Suddenly the universe dissolves, and for a fraction of time you are simply a small bundle of energy adrift in a sea of unimaginably vast forces. It is a devastating, agonizing piece of knowledge. Then it—the universe— assembled once again.
When the Gorfs created the Objects which linked the infinity of Conceived and Inconceivable Dimensions, they always included one element which beamed directly to the planet Thera. The bump served that function on the Stone Rose.
I was there, on Thera, beneath the star Nus, at the edge of the Yawy Klim galaxy in the Gorf Nirveesu. In a small airbubble, sitting on a wide flat rock. Being observed.
Outside, yellow sun against black sky, and a number of stone monoliths surrounding me.
—They look like frogs, I thought. Huge stone frogs. (I-me thought it, not I-Grimus. I-Grimus was reserving its powers to fight me over the Rose.)
—Is it Grimus? The thought, unspoken, unformed into words, came into my mind. It was followed by a second, a deeper, wiser thought-form.
—Yes … no … ah, I see. I had the sense of being stripped naked. My mind had been scanned.
—Where are you? I shouted, and the I-Grimus within me told me that these monoliths, lumpy, huge and surrounded in a slight haze, were the most intelligent life-form in any Galaxy, and that the second thought-form had been that of the great thinker Dota himself.
—The non-Grimus element appears to be marginally in command, came a third thought-form.
—Good. Dota again. Listen, he thought at me, slightly too loud, like a man dealing with a stupid foreigner. We are the Gorfs. There then followed a very rapid series of thought-forms which told me the history of tibe race and the Objects.
—We have two great concerns, thought Dota. The first is for the Gorf Koax, who has settled irrelevantly in your Endimions. Should you meet him, kindly let him know that his gross Bad Order has led to his being banned from Thera. He is not welcome here. He stands or falls with your Endimions.
—Ah, I thought.
—Which leads us to our second concern, thought Dota. We are extremely perturbed about Grimus’ misuse of the Rose. It was never intended to be a tool for intra-endimions travel. Nor a magic box for the production of food. It is a flagrant distortion of Conceptual Technology to use the Rose to Conceptualize a packet of (he searched for the right form) coffee.
Most particularly we are worried about the sub-endimions he has set up on the mountain-top. Sub-endimions are Conceptually unsound. A place is either part of an Endimions or it is not. To Conceptualize a place which is both a part of an Endimions and yet secret from it could stretch the Object to disintegration-point. We would like this ridiculous Concept to be dissolved forthwith. That is all. You may return.
I could feel the I-Grimus part of me throbbing angrily at Dota’s reproof. Then I realized there were some questions that could be answered here better than anywhere else.
—Dota, I thought.
—Yes? The thought was curt, the form of a great mind disturbed.
—Are the blinks in our Dimension a result of the mutilation of the Rose?
—We don’t know, came the reply. Yours is the only Object to have been defaced, and the only Endimions which blinks. There may be a cause and effect relationship. There may not. It may be something which should concern you. It may not. We don’t know everything, you understand.
—One more question, I asked. The air in my bubble felt stale. I would have to go soon.
—Well?
—Is it possible to Conceptualize a Dimension … Endimions … which does not contain any Object?
A long pause, in which I felt complex arguments flashing between the assembled Gorfs.
—We cannot be sure, said Dota. For us, the answer would be No, since the very existence of the Endimions relative to us is a function of the Object. But for a dweller in the Endimions … a mental shrug-form followed.
—Goodbye, said Dota’s lieutenant.
I searched in the I-Grimus and found the technique for returning to the Rose. A moment later I stood in the secret room again.
Media looked very relieved!
Flann O’Toole, wearing his Napoleon hat, right hand concealed in his buttoned greatcoat, face whisky-red, climbing the steps. At his side, One-Track Peckenpaw, raccoon hat jammed on, bearskin coat enveloping his bulk, coiled rope hanging over one shoulder, rifle in hand. And behind them, P. S. Moonshy, a glaring-eyed, unshaven clerk. An unlikely trinity of nemesis nearing its goal.
Grimus stood in the shade of the great ash, beside his home, the particoloured head-dress fluttering in the slight breeze, his birds lining his shoulders, clustered around him on the ground, watching over him from the vast spreading branches. His hands twitched; otherwise he was completely still.
And eventually, the four of them stood facing each other, knowing what had to be done.
Grimus said:
—I have learnt all I wish to learn.
I have been all I wish to be.
I am complete.
I have planned this. It is time.
But in his high, shrill voice was the uncertainty of the subsumed Eagle within him, the second self protesting. It had not chosen this death.
Flann O’Toole said: —Where is your machine, Mr Grimus? You kept it a secret from your servant woman, we know that, surely. You’ll not keep it from us.
Grimus said nothing.
—One-Track, said O’Toole, try and persuade the gentleman to converse with us.
A few moments later, when Grimus’ nose was broken, his eyes closing, his skin bruised, and his lips still sealed, O’Toole said: —Don’t kill him, man. Not yet. Peckenpaw released Grimus. Who swayed on his feet as the blood streamed from him, but remained erect. Birds screamed in the tree.
—Search the house, said Flann O’Toole.
One-Track Peckenpaw and P. S. Moonshy went into Grimushome then, but found nothing. They did, however, wreck whatever they could; and when they came out, Grimus’ shrouded collection lay around its pedestals in fragments, the shards of a lifetime’s Travel. The Crystals, broken. The Ion Eye, trodden on and crushed.
Suddenly, as they emerged into the misty dawn light, the whine stoppe
d. Abruptly, without any warning. It was simply no longer there.
Flann O’Toole was watching Grimus; so he saw the face sag, saw the look of horror in the blackened eyes, saw the exhaustion seep through the pain. He saw it, and smiled.
—You found it, then, he said to Peckenpaw.
—We found a whole lot of things, said Peckenpaw. So we broke them all. I dunno what they were.
—O, you found it, said O’Toole. Mr Grimus here has just this minute told me.
Grimus remained silent.
—One more thing, said Peckenpaw. I want Flapping Eagle. Where is he?
Grimus said nothing.
Flann O’Toole put his hands around the battered man’s neck and pressed with his thumbs. —Come now, Mr Grimus, he said. You’ll tell us that, now?
Grimus said: —I expelled him from the island. He is no longer here.
—That is the truth, isn’t it, now? asked O’Toole.
—Reckon so, said Peckenpaw. Nobody in the house. Nobody out here. Flapping Eagle’s a lucky man.
P. S. Moonshy spoke for the first time. —What are we waiting for? he said.
O’Toole favoured him with an amused smile.
—Mr Moonshy is in a hurry, he explained apologetically to Grimus. And now that we have completed our task, there is little point in delaying matters, Mr Grimus. I’d be grateful if you’d stand just here.
He moved Grimus to a position directly under the thickest branch of the tree.
Grimus said: —I have no reason to live. It is planned.
O’Toole smiled. —O, good, he said. Most co-operative of you, Mr Grimus.
Beads of cold sweat mingled with the congealing blood on Grimus’ face.
—Why, Mr Grimus, said Flann O’Toole. I do believe you’re frightened.
—Not I, said Grimus. Him.
—Is there a fire lit anywhere in the house? asked Flann O’Toole.
—I saw one, said Peckenpaw. In the entrance hall.
—Good, said Flann O’Toole.
As the three assassins moved away, down the stone steps, the great ash blazed behind them, and the body of a man, ridiculously small against the trunk to which it had been tied, grew charred and blackened in the flames. Suddenly it fell, as the fire licked through the rope which held it, and lay on the ground as the blaze grew stronger. Branches crashed in showers of sparks and smoke around and over him, forming an incandescent tomb. And around the column of smoke, a great dark cloud of circling, shrieking birds, swooping and shrieking, pronounced his epitaph.
There was no Gate now. Calf Island was one place again. The steps led down to Liv’s house, which was solid, visible. With the end of the whine had come the end of the Sub-dimension. There were no ghosts now.
Bird-Dog sat slumped against the foot of the steps, and stiffened as the three men reached her. They passed her without speaking.
The blackveiled woman came out of her small black house. Bird-Dog watched her speak to the trio, followed O’Toole’s pointing arm to the rising pillar of smoke. Liv nodded, quickly, and went indoors. The assassins continued down the Mountain to K.
A moment later, Liv Sylwan Jones emerged once more. She held a knife in her right hand, a knife which had carved innumerable ugly things from the wood of the encroaching trees. She sat down on the ground.
With the knife in her right hand, and with intense concentration, she slit the vein in her left wrist. Then she transferred the knife to that hand and set about slashing the right wrist, equally methodically.
Bird-Dog came over to her and stood in front of her, saying nothing, silently looking on. Liv Sylwan Jones returned her gaze.
—It’s done now, she said, jerking her head at the column of smoke.
Like Grimus, Liv had chosen her moment of death. Death on the Mountain of Kâf must be chosen. A selected violence against the body.
With exaggerated care, she drew a red line with the knife, a thin, leaking red mouth, grinning bloodily from ear to ear, beneath her chin.
Bird-Dog watched it drip.
A small mound of disturbed earth, freshly-turned, stood in the forest behind the blackwashed house. A wooden carving lay upon it, a distorted, open-mouthed death’s head.
A woman in a black robe, her face hidden behind a black veil, walked away from it, away into the black house, averting her eyes from the rising smoke and sat, perfectly still, upon the one chair, amid the filth and mould, and began to chant an old, half-forgotten, half-remembered Axona hymn to death.
—My God, said Nicholas Deggle.
Virgil Jones turned towards him, slowly.
—The Stem, said Deggle. It’s gone. Quite gone.
He began to search desperately around the small, rickety shack. Virgil hauled himself out of his rocking-chair and went outside.
—Well done, he said, looking up the Mountain. Well done.
Deggle came out to join him. —It’s nowhere to be found, he said.
—The Rose has been broken, said Virgil Jones.
—What do you mean?
—I mean that Flapping Eagle has succeeded. Brilliantly.
Nicholas Deggle charged into the forest.
A while later, he returned, full of bewildered surprise.
—There’s no whine, he said. Nothing. We can go up to K.
—I’m going to the beach, said Virgil Jones.
Mr Virgil Jones, a man devoid of friends and with a tongue rather too large for his mouth, was fond of descending this cliff-path on Tiusday mornings, to indulge his liking for Calf Island’s one small beach. Below him, under the shifting greysilver sands, lay the body of Mrs Dolores O’Toole.
Mr Jones stood, facing away from the sea, looking towards the massive forested rock of Calf Mountain, which occupied most of the island except for the small clearing, directly above the beach, where Mr Jones and Dolores had lived. The body of Mrs O’Toole lay between him and the forested slopes.
—Crestfallen, murmured Mr Jones to himself, with his back to the sea. Crestfallen, the sea today.
Well, well, thought the Gorf Koax. A fascinating new status quo. Flapping Eagle and the girl Media replacing Grimus and Bird-Dog. Bird-Dog replacing Liv. Elfrida Gribb replacing Media. Virgil Jones returned to the foot of the island. And the other, earlier re-orderings: Alexei Cherkassov replacing his father. Mr Moonshy replacing Mr Page.
But most interesting of all is the fate of the Rose. Without it, Flapping Eagle is powerless. He is an exile at the top of the mountain. The peak implies no kind of superiority now.
—What are you going to do? Media had said.
Outside, the assassins faced the feathered Grimus.
Inside, in the secret room, I (I-Eagle) was engaged in a furious battle with the I-Grimus within.
—You must preserve the Rose, said I-Grimus. You need it for the constant re-conceptualization of the island. As I explained. You must preserve the Rose. Relativity holds good even between dimensions. They exist only in conjunction with one another, as functions of one another. Destroy the Rose, and you destroy our link with the Dimensión-continua. We cannot survive that.
—Grimus misused the Rose, remembered I-Eagle. The blinks are proof that it is both damaged and being stretched to breaking-point. We cannot continue to use it as Grimus did.
—The Gorfs made the Rose to link the Dimensions, cried I-Grimus inside me. Break it and you break us. Dota could not conceive of a Dimension without an Object.
—But he said that he could conceive of a Dimension-dweller devising such a Concept, said I-Eagle.
Then the I-Grimus ceased to reason with I-Eagle and flooded me with thought-forms. The Rose enables you to travel, said the forms, and showed I-Eagle a thousand beautiful worlds, a thousand universes to explore. The Rose enables you to learn, said the thought-forms, and revealed a hundred new sciences and a hundred new art-forms, the cream of the infinite galaxies. You have one life, Said the thought-forms. With the Rose you can enter into, and become, a thousand thousand other people, live an infinity of liv
es, and acquire the wisdom and power to shape your own. And they showed I-Eagle some of the people Grimus had watched and understood, showed the vicarious joys and agonies of countless lives. And one day, said the thought-forms, when you have done all you wished to do, been all you wished to be, you can pass this supreme gift on to another, choose the moment and manner of your going and give the Phoenix a new life, a new beginning.
But I-Eagle had seen too much on Calf Island and outside it, seen too much of the way I-Grimus had ruined lives for the sake of an idea. To I-Grimus ideas, discoveries, learning; these were all-important. I-Eagle saw the centuries of wretched wandering that preceded my arrival, saw the people of K reduced to a blind philosophy of pure survival, clutching obsessively at the shreds of their individuality, knowing within themselves that they were powerless to alter the circumstances in which they lived. The combined force of unlimited power, unlimited learning, and a rarefied, abstract attitude to life which exalted these two into the greatest goals of humanity, was a force I-Eagle could not bring himself to like. I-Eagle saw its effect on Virgil Jones, on Dolores O’Toole, on Liv Jones, on Bird-Dog, his sister even though they had long been estranged. No, I-Eagle thought, the Rose is not the supreme gift.
Then all discussion, whether rational or thought-formal, ceased, and the I-Grimus within released upon I-Eagle the full force of his formidable will. Media saw me (us) stagger and lurch as the war raged within, and she grasped my hand.
Perhaps that was what turned the tide towards I-Eagle. I was not alone. Media was there. Media, one of the many whose lives he had distorted. Media, one of the many to whom I-Eagle felt responsible. The guilt of recent events was still there. I was fighting for the island. He was fighting for himself. And he lost.
Outside, Peckenpaw and Moonshy ransacked the house.
I, I-Eagle, spoke to Media. The I-Grimus had receded within me, a throbbing pain in the back of my head.
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