Then the clock-sound speeded up, ticking faster and faster until it was a ripping, buzzing noise in her ears; the shadows swung across the landscape and the bright orb of the sun tore across the sky, then abruptly the sun vanished and the noise of the clock changed, took on a kind of rhythm until the noise speeded up again and became the buzz it had been before. She could barely see the landscape below. The stars blazed.
Then the stars started to disappear. They went out slowly at first, in a single region of the sky off to her right and near the dark horizon, then more quickly, until the stain of darkness was eating up a quarter of the sky, rising like a vast curtain thrown up from the ghostly grey mountains. Now a third of the sky was utterly dark, the stars going out one by one or in groups; shining, then dimming, then flickering and disappearing altogether as the darkness consumed half the sky, then two thirds.
She stared, open-mouthed, choosing brighter stars in the path of the blackness and watching them as they vanished.
Finally almost the whole sky was black; just a few stars shone steadily above the distant mountains to her right, while to her left the darkness had touched the horizon, where the sun had shone earlier.
Abruptly the clock was back to normal, and the sun blazed again — from a different angle now, but still just within the region of the darkness — sending a cold, steady light across the crater floor to the grey cliffs and crags of the rim-wall.
Earth. Cradle. Very old. There are many ages. Age within age. Age of nothingness comes first, then age/instant of infinitesimal/infinite explosion, then age of shining, then age of heaviness, of different air/fluids, then the tiny but long ages of stone/fluid and fire, then the age of life, smaller still, and living with and in all the other ages, then the age/moment of thought-life: here we are, and all goes very quickly and at the same time all other types/sizes of ages go on but then there is next age/moment of the new life that the old life makes, and that is much faster again, and that is where we are now too. And yet.
The old ape-man looked sad. He had grey hair and grey sagging skin on a skinny frame and he was dressed in a strange costume of yellow and red diamonds topped by a pointed hat with a bell on the end. His soft shoes were pointed too, and also had bells at their tips. The only noise he could produce was a chattering laugh; he was the size of a child but his eyes looked wise and sad. He sat on the steps that led up to a big chair; the large room was empty except for her and the ape-man and one wall of the room was window, double-skinned and curved and ribbed with a fine tracery of dark lines, though much smaller than the circular window she had seen earlier. This window too looked out onto a landscape of shining grey.
The beautiful globe hanging in the black sky above the shining grey hills was Earth, the ape-man had told her. He talked by sign, using his arms and fingers. She found that she could understand him but not reply, though just by nodding, frowning or raising her eyebrows it was possible to express herself well enough, it seemed.
Eyebrows? she signalled.
And yet, the ape-man sighed, expression still downcast. Ages are in conflict, he told her. Each move, own pace, not often come together, fight. But now: happens. Age of air/fluids and age of life fight. Two ages of life, too. For all who feel sadness sometimes, there comes sadness now. For all those who die sometimes, there comes death now, perhaps.
She frowned. She was standing, still dressed in her night-blue gown, in front of the wide window. Every now and again, during pauses in the ape-man's signing, she glanced at the Earth and the steady stars hanging visible beyond its brightness. Her gown was the colour of the barren, ghostly landscape outside.
She shrugged.
People/humans made much; big things on Earth. Biggest thing, smallest thing too. Everywhere. Then inside this thing, fight. Then peace but not peace; peace for a while, short now. Now the age of air/fluids comes, threat to all. All must act. Most danger if biggest/smallest thing not act. Biggest/smallest thing fight with self, cannot talk to all of self; bad. Other ways of talking; good. Most special good if self talk to self.
The ape-man looked almost happy for a moment, and she smiled to show she understood.
You.
She pointed at herself. Me?
You.
She shook her head, then shrugged, spreading her arms.
Yes, you. I tell you now. You forget in future, but you also know still, too. Is good. Perhaps all safe.
She smiled uncertainly.
'Ah, there you are,' Pieter Velteseri said, appearing from the steps leading to the gondola's lower decks. He parted the tails of his coat and sat beside Asura, planting his silver-topped cane between his feet. He looked at her.
She blinked rapidly for a few seconds and then shook her head, as though just waking up.
Pieter glanced at the woman standing speaking in the middle of the gondola's floor. He smiled. 'Ah; our Resiler has found her voice, has she? I didn't think she would stay silent for long.' He placed his hands on top of the cane and rested his chin on top of his hands…
'She is… Resisla?' Asura said, glancing at Pieter and frowning as she tried to pick up the thread of the woman's speech again.
'She is a Resiler; one who resiles, or recoils,' he said in a low voice. 'In a sense we all are, or our ancestors were, I suppose, but she is of a sect who believes we need to resile further.'
'No one else listens,' Asura whispered. She looked around the others on the gondola's open deck. They were all talking among themselves, or watching the view, or sitting or lying with their eyes closed, either snoozing or experientially elsewhere.
'They will have heard all this before,' Pieter said quietly. 'Not word for word, but…'
'We are guilty,' said the Resiler. 'We have treasured our comfort and our vanity by giving shelter to the beasts of chaos which infest the crypt so that humanity's part of it now is barely one part in a hundredth, and that wasted, that turned over to the worship of self and vanity and dreams of sovereignty over what we claim to have renounced…'
'Is all she says true?' Asura whispered.
'Ah,' Pieter said, smiling. 'Now, that is a question. Let's say it is all based on truth, but the facts are open to different interpretations from the one she supplies.'
'… The King is no King and all know this; well and good, but neither is what appears to be our good work good, but only a disguise for the face of our foolish ignorance and ill-fitness.'
'The King?' Asura said, looking puzzled.
'Our ruler,' Pieter supplied. 'I've always thought Dalai Llama would have been a better description, though the King has more power and less… holiness. In any event, the royal term is preferred. It's complicated.'
'Why is she in irons?' Asura asked.
'It's a symbol,' Pieter said, a teasing, mischievous look on his face. Asura nodded, her expression serious, and Pieter smiled again.
'She seems very sincere,' Asura told Pieter.
'A word with oddly positive connotations,' Pieter said, nodding. 'In my experience those who are most sincere are also the most morally suspect, as well as being incapable of producing or appreciating wit.'