Strata

by Terry Pratchett

  ‘How can – was that a joke?’ said Kin. ‘Good grief!’

  Dawn saw them flying over semi-desert and scrub, in a sky free of clouds. Once they passed over a camel train, almost invisible were it not for its skeletal, juddering shadow on the sand.

  They had drifted slightly off their course during the night, and as far as Marco could estimate were speeding down the Tigris-Euphrates valley.

  ‘That puts us in south-east Turkey,’ said Marco, and added wistfully, ‘That means Baghdad. I should like to have seen Baghdad.’

  ‘Why?’ said Kin.

  ‘Oh, when I was a kid my foster-folks bought me a book of fantasy stories about, well, genies and magic lamps and such. It made a big impression on me.’

  ‘Don’t suggest landing,’ said Kin. ‘Don’t even think about it.’

  But they passed over a city of low white houses surrounding palaces and strangely domed buildings. A tent town lay outside the walls. The river the city straddled was noticeably a different colour downstream, and low enough between its banks to speak of drought. Now the sun was well up the ground shimmered.

  A mile later Silver’s belt failed. There was no question of a crash – instead all forward power ceased as the batteries’ waning ergs buoyed her gently to the ground.

  The others followed her down into a grove of knotted, sweet-smelling trees. When Kin took off her helmet the heat hit her like the breath of Hell. Too hot, she decided. No wonder the fields looked scorched. From here the river was a blood-coloured snake winding weakly between slabs of cracked mud.

  ‘Well,’ she said vaguely. She meant This Is It.

  ‘I am at a loss,’ said Marco, moving hurriedly into the heady shade under the trees.

  ‘You mean you don’t have a plan?’

  ‘Your meaning?’

  ‘Oh, forget it.’ Kin took a sip of water from the suit’s reservoir. Have to be careful about that, too.

  Silver sat with her back against a trunk, staring vaguely at the city. Behind her the sun was a copper rivet in a sky like hot iron.

  Then she commented, ‘An aircraft has just risen.’

  He was old in looks at least, his face wrinkled like an old apple. His grey beard was intricately styled. His eyes seemed to show neither whites nor expression. Certainly he did not seem surprised.

  Disc builder? While Kin watched him and Silver talking, facing each other crosslegged under the trees, she thought hard and fast. His clothing didn’t look anything but barbarously splendid, but she was no arbiter of disc fashion. His craft was technologically advanced, and he knew how to use it – at the moment it was folded up inside a pouch on the belt of his travelling companion, a large broad man wearing nothing but a loincloth and a dour expression. He held a long curved sword, and his eyes never left Marco.

  Kin slid across to the kung.

  ‘I wonder where he keeps his antipersonnel blaster?’ she asked. ‘Marco, you know you and Silver had this idea about how I could survive on the disc by using sex?’

  ‘You have that advantage, yes.’

  ‘Well, forget it.’

  ‘Your meaning?’

  ‘Just forget it. Our fat friend with the sword is—’ She stopped, furious to feel herself reddening. ‘Marco, can’t you recall anything else from that storybook?’

  Marco’s face was blank for a while. Then he winced. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘You mean, like, unique.’

  ‘Not too unique for this time and place,’ said Kin, and turned towards Silver. The shand looked up at her.

  ‘This could be Arabic,’ she said. ‘I’ve never heard it spoken. I’ve tried a bit of Latin, which I think he understands but he’s not letting on. The only thing I’ve established so far is that he wants our suits.’

  Kin and Marco exchanged glances. A look of almost Ehftnic guile spread across the kung’s face.

  ‘Tell him they’re very precious,’ he said. ‘Tell him we wouldn’t exchange them even for his aircraft. Tell him we need to get to the coast quickly.’

  ‘He’ll never fall for that,’ said Kin. ‘Anyway, there’s hardly any juice left in the belts.’

  ‘That’s his worry,’ said Marco. ‘I have a plan. But first of all I’d like to see how he operates that flying rug. Tell him it is too hot to negotiate out here – it’s true, anyway.’

  There followed a long exchange of cracked phrases and words repeated at varying levels of exasperation. Finally the man nodded and stood up, motioning towards the servant with a hand.

  The big man stepped forward and reached into his pouch, handing his master the – call it the—

  Hell, thought Kin, it is a flying carpet. Only we don’t like to say it because it sounds crazy.

  It was about two metres by three, and patterned with an intricate geometrical design in blue, green and red. Spread out on the ground it hugged the bumps and hollows limply.

  The man said a word. Some dust was blown up as the carpet straightened, stiffened, and hovered a few inches above the sand; Kin thought she could hear a faint hum.

  It didn’t rock even when Silver stepped aboard. The man with the sword sat behind them. The old man said another word. The ground fell away noiselessly.

  ‘One could coat a surface with flexible lifting units,’ said Marco after a while, with a brave little quiver in his voice, ‘but what about power? How could you get batteries this thin?’

  Similar thoughts had been passing through Kin’s mind, since she was staring intently at the carpet between her knees so that her eyes didn’t stray over the edge. She was aware that Marco was sliding gingerly towards her.

  ‘You nervous too?’ she said.

  ‘I am conscious of mere millimetres of unknown and unproven flying machine underneath me,’ he said.

  ‘You weren’t nervous in the lift belts.’

  ‘But they were under an unconditional hundred-year guarantee. If one belt failed, how long would the manufacturer stay in business?’

  ‘I do not think one could fall off this if one tried,’ said Silver. She hit the air beside her with a paw and it made a noise, as though someone had punched a jelly.

  ‘Safety field,’ she said. ‘Try it.’

  Kin waved a hand gingerly over the carpet’s edge. It was like moving through treacle and, as she pushed, like leaning on rock. Ali Baba turned round, grinned at her and spoke a sentence.

  When the carpet was finally flying level again there was silence. Finally Marco said flatly: ‘Tell the lunatic if he attempts that again I will kill him.’

  Kin released her numb fingers from their grip on the patterned pile.

  ‘Be diplomatic,’ she added. ‘Be tactful. Say that if he does it again I will maim him.’

  Two loops and a triple roll!

  On the disc-generated gravity, shaped fields and direct vocal control came wrapped up in one neat carpet-shaped vehicle.

  She wondered how Marco intended to steal it.

  They skimmed low over the flat roofs of the city. Kin saw people in the narrow crowded streets look up, then turn back and go about their business. Magic carpets, apparently, were familiar objects.

  They homed in on a minor palace, a squat white affair with a central dome and two ornate towers. There was a garden behind decorative trellises – now, that was odd …

  ‘It must have its own source of water,’ she said aloud.

  ‘Why?’ said Marco.

  ‘Everything else round here is parched. That’s the one green spot we’ve seen today.’

  ‘That would not be surprising, if he is a disc builder,’ said Marco. ‘A fact which I doubt.’

  ‘And I also,’ rumbled Silver, ‘yet he handles the carpet well enough and our flying belts evinced only cautious greed, not awe. I am thinking now in terms of some hermetic order, maybe, handing down disc builder machines and relics with no proper understanding of their internal workings – like a savage may competently drive a groundcar while believing it to be powered by little horses under the engine cowling.’


  Ali Baba brought them down perfectly, the carpet drifting slowly across a balcony and through an arch into a high-ceilinged room. It hovered a few inches above the intricately-tiled floor, then settled.

  He leapt up and clapped his hands. By the time the others had untwisted their limbs and, in Marco’s case, eased the steel grip his hands had been maintaining, a posse of servants had entered the room. They carried towels, and wide bowls.

  ‘That’d better be water,’ growled Marco, ‘ ’cos I’m gonna drink it.’

  He pushed his head noisily into the bowl in front of him, causing mild consternation among the servants. Silver picked up hers and, after a preliminary sniff, opened her mouth like a funnel and tipped it down. Kin drank her fill in a reasonably ladylike manner, and used the rest to wash the dust off her face.

  She took the opportunity to look around.

  There was hardly any furniture. The room was just an ornate box, walls decorated with geometrical and horticultural patterns and several large screens at one end. By the grounded carpet was a low table, its top apparently one thick slab of crystal.

  Ali had disappeared, along with the servants. Silver peered around the room.

  ‘The water was ice cold,’ she stated. ‘There were crystals in it. Show me iced water, and I’ll show you civilization.’

  ‘Anywhere else it would mean a refrigerator,’ Kin admitted, ‘but here, I’d bet they’ve got hot-and-cold running demons in all rooms.’

  Marco walked over to the carpet and inspected it carefully. Then he stepped on it and said the word.

  ‘I imagine it’s slaved to his voice pattern,’ said Silver, without looking round. Marco cursed quietly.

  Ali Baba appeared from behind the screens, followed by two men with swords. He was carrying a small black box on a red cushion.

  He looked sideways at Silver and spoke a few words in halting Latin.

  ‘He is going to, uh, summon that-which-speaks-all-tongues,’ she said. ‘I think.’

  While they watched he laid the box on the floor and opened the lid. The thing he took out puzzled Kin. It looked like a small flat teapot made out of adulterated gold.

  He polished it with his sleeve.

  ‘Will You Give Me No Peace, Sorcerer?’

  It had appeared a few feet away, hazy in a cloud of purple smoke. It was immediately obvious to Kin why Marco’s appearance hadn’t bothered the man – if he was used to things that looked like this, he was used to anything.

  It was man-height, or would have been if it stood erect. But it was bent almost double, two thick gold scaled arms and oversized hands serving as a second pair of legs. Clusters of tendrils grew out of its neck. Its face was long, vaguely horse-like, topped by a pair of pointy ears and tailed by two moustachios that trailed on to the floor. It wore a small cone-shaped hat.

  ‘Know All That I Am Azrifel,’ it began in a sing-song voice, ‘Djinnee Of The Desert, Terror Of Thousands, Scourge Of Millions And, I Must Be Frank About It, Slave Of The Lamp. So What Do You Want This Time, Master?’

  There was a long speech from the sorcerer. The djinnee turned around until it faced the trio.

  ‘My Master Abu Ibn Infra Presents His Compliments And Welcomes You To His Humble Abode And A Lot Of Stuff Like That. If You Want To Eat, Just Tell The Table. Your Wish Is Its Command. There’s A Lot Of That Sort Of Thing Goes On Around Here,’ he added.

  Kin hunkered down beside the table and looked at it more closely. It was one block of crystal, but now that she paid close attention there seemed to be something else in there too, something like a moving wisp of faint smoke.

  She thought of cucumber and green paprillion salad, and the cinnamon ice cream she used to buy from Grnh’s Olde Drugge Store in Wonder-strands, the one with the recipe that Grnh had refused to sell to the dumbwaiter programmers. There was always a black Treale cherry on the top. The memory of that taste welled up until she drooled.

  It grew out of the table. There was an impression of swirling movement in the crystal and then it was there, smoking with frost.

  There was a black Treale cherry on the top. And – Kin picked up the carton and stared.

  It was in a familiar blue, black and white and showed an anthropomorphic penguin in a chef’s hat. Around the side was: The Olde Drugge Store, corner of Skrale and High, Upperside, Wonderstrands 667548. Tregin Grnh and Siblings, reg. WE FREEZE TO PLEASE.

  Marco stared at the carton, then looked down at the teasing shadows in the tabletop.

  ‘I don’t know how you managed that,’ he said carefully, ‘but what I have in mind is the Blue Plate special they serve in Henry Horse’s Kung Food Bar in New—’

  He stopped, because it was already there. There was one bowl, heavy pottery containing something under an orange-yellow crust that rumbled with internal eruptions.

  ‘It must be telepathy,’ he said uncertainly. ‘It’s just a telepathic dumbwaiter. Come on, Silver. I’m hungry.’

  ‘You’re hungry,’ said Silver. She drummed heavy fingers on the table edge, then doubtfully:

  ‘I have in mind a dish of ceremonial truduc.’

  The shadow swirled, disappeared. Silver’s fingers drummed on.

  ‘Smoked guaracuc with grintzes?’ she suggested.

  A vague shape appeared above the crystal, then faded.

  ‘Dadugs in Brine? Chaque sweetbreads? Xiqua? Dried qumqums?’

  Kin sighed, and pushed the ice cream away untasted.

  ‘There Is A Problem?’ said Azrifel.

  ‘The table can’t handle Shand proteins,’ said Silver, sitting down heavily and drawing her knees up to her chin.

  ‘What Is A Protein?’

  Abu Ibn Infra seated himself comfortably by the far side of the table and put out his hand to grasp a crystal glass of pinkish liquid as it materialized beside him. Azrifel stirred, and nodded as the man spoke.

  ‘My Master Wishes To Talk About Your Flying Clothes And Similar Matters.’ More consultation. ‘My Master Presents His Compliments To His Fellow Collectors And Offers, In Exchange For All Three Items, A Mirror-To-See-All-Things-Be-They-Never-So-Far And Two Bottomless Purses.’

  Kin was aware of the other two looking at her. She said, ‘Leaving aside for a moment his somewhat derisory offer,’ – she had a feeling that a lack of the haggling spirit might be regarded as signs of general weakness – ‘we come from a far off land and do not quite understand the reference to Collectors. Collectors of what?’

  Abu Ibn Infra frowned as he listened to the translation. He spat out a reply. Kin wouldn’t have thought it possible for anyone to spit several lengthy sentences, but he managed, he managed.

  ‘My Master Is Puzzled. You Possess Gifts Of God But You Do Not Know Of The Collectors. He Says: How Can This Be?’

  ‘Listen, demon,’ said Kin. ‘you know. You’re a projection, like Sphandor. Aren’t you?’

  ‘I Find Myself Forbidden To Answer That Question At This Moment In Time,’ said Azrifel smugly. ‘You Are In The Shit, That’s All I Know. If You Think You’re Coming Out Of This Alive, My Reaction Is Ho Ho Ho.’

  ‘I will kill it,’ said Marco, half rising. The guards behind Ibn Infra stirred.

  ‘Sit down,’ hissed Kin. ‘You, demon, answer the question. What is a collector?’

  ‘My Master Says It Is No Secret. He Himself Was Once A Humble Fisherman Until, Upon Gutting A Fish, One Day, He Discovered Inside It A Gift Of God, To Whit, The Lamp To Which I Am Shamefully Enslaved. I Am Azrifel Of The Ninth Dominion Of The Damned. I Can Find Anything – Even The Power To Talk To You. That Is My Power.

  ‘For Five Years I Have Laboured Mightily For This Jumped-Up Pig Of A Nouveau Riche Former Fisherman, Spiriting To This Somewhat Pretentious Palace Such Gifts Of God As Are Unclaimed By Other Collectors Or In The Possession Of Collectors Unfortunate Enough To Have Demons Weaker Than I. I Have Combed The Depths Of The Sea And The Bowels Of Volcanoes, I Have—’

  ‘Hold it,’ said Kin. ‘The flying carpet, the table, these damn money purses
– they’re Gifts of God?’

  ‘Aye. The Carpet I Liberated From A Merchant In Basra, The Table I Found Encrusted With Barnacles On The Sea Floor—’

  ‘But your master doesn’t know how they operate? I mean, they’re just magical items to him?’

  ‘Aren’t They, Then?’ said the demon, grinningly.

  ‘Just as I thought,’ snapped Marco. ‘He’s just an ignorant man who doesn’t know any more about the nature of the disc than does anyone else in these parts. I’ll take out these guards, then we’ll grab him and ride the carpet out of here.’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Kin sharply.

  ‘What for? He knows nothing except how to operate the toys this creature finds for him.’

  Kin shook her head. ‘Just once, let’s try diplomacy,’ she said. ‘Demon, tell your master we are not Collectors. We will give him these flying belts for his collection if he transports us on his magic carpet to the circular island that lies off the coast to the south-east of here.’

  She knew she had said something wrong as soon as the words were out of her mouth. When Azrifel’s translation died away Abu’s face went white.

  Marco sighed, and stood up. ‘Okay, so much for diplomacy,’ he said. He sprang. So did Azrifel. There was a grey and yellow blur in mid-air and a small thunderclap. Then the demon was back, unruffled. Marco had vanished.

  ‘What have you done with him?’ said Kin.

  ‘He Has Been Deposited In A Place Of Safety, Unharmed Except Maybe For A Few Friction Burns.’

  ‘I see. And his ransom is our flying belts, right?’

  Abu spoke. The demon said: ‘No, My Master Says He Knows Now That You Come From Another World. There Was Another Such Traveller, Some Time Since, Who—’

  ‘Jago Jalo?’ said Kin. Abu glared at her.

  ‘Crazy fool,’ hissed Silver.

  ‘That Was His Name,’ agreed the demon. ‘A Madman. He Abused Our Hospitality. He Stole From Our Collection. He Sought The Forbidden Island Too.’

  ‘What happened to him?’ said Kin. The demon shrugged.

  ‘He Escaped From Here With A Carpet, A Bottomless Purse And A Cloak With Unusual Powers. Even I Have Been Unable to Locate Him. My Master Feels, However, That All Is Not Lost.’