She didn't reply. She was staring off to one side.
The ice beneath them trembled. Then — thirty metres or so away — the surface bulged and split; great wall-sized plates of ice tipped over and slammed back, breaking and splitting and spreading out across the water-filmed surface as from the middle of the spreading, creaking breach, in a blast of steam and smoke, a huge animal covered in thick, knotted hair appeared, the size of a house, the sweeping yellow brackets of its tusks as tall as a man, its trunk longer still, thicker than a man's leg and hoisted to the cold skies, blasting an ear-splitting bellow on a cloud of mist. On its back an ape-like thing screeched and punched the air while a giant black bird screamed and spread its broad wings. An elderly woman — clinging onto the beast behind the gibbering ape-man — glanced nervously under the bird's wings as the mammoth roared again and trod with surprising delicacy over the ice towards them.
She took a handful of the material at the neck of Oncaterius' one-piece suit and hauled him to his feet; he was unsteady and almost fell; blood poured from his face and he held both hands to his mouth and nose, trying to staunch the flow. He blinked at the sight of the approaching mammoth.
'Good grief,' he said, sniffing. 'Well, I hope they're your friends, because I haven't got a thing in.' He snorted back some blood, coughing. 'And the hairy one looks hungry.'
'Shut up, Quolier.'
'This is terribly amusing, but I'd make the most of it if I were you.' He snorted again, throwing his head back. She still held him by the neck of his suit. Tuck,' he said, 'did we really have to make pain so realistic here?' He coughed again.
The mammoth stopped five metres away. The beast's trunk swung, pendulous and heavy. The ape-thing chuckled, the great bird flapped once. The elderly lady looked down at them. She glanced at Oncaterius and looked rather shocked.
'Madam Chief Scientist Gadfium, I presume,' the girl said.
'Yes, hello,' she said. 'Are you the asura?'
She nodded. 'Apparently.'
'Well then,' Gadfium said, 'apparently we're here to rescue you.' She looked at Oncaterius again. 'Isn't that Consistorian Oncaterius?'
'Delighted, ma'am,' Quolier said, bowing. Blood splattered on the ice. He threw his head back once more and sniffed mightily. 'Actually, I'd been hoping we'd meet again. This is not quite how I'd imagined it, but —'
The girl shook him, quieting him. 'Shall we go?' she asked.
2
Gadfium — swung so violently through all three axes of motion that she feared both biting her tongue and losing her breakfast — clung desperately with both hands to the tangled fur on the back of the bellowing, charging mammoth. The ape-man in front of her whooped and screamed and waved both arms wildly in the air, only the grip of his legs on the animal's thick neck and a generous measure of luck preventing him from being thrown off. The lammergeier flapped overhead, cackling.
The troop of galloping beasts thundered through the streets of the dark city-port of Oubliette, scattering startled people to left and right.
They had exited the tunnels by a series of ramps leading to a huge dark hall full of neatly stacked railway wagons, then crashed through a partition wall of flimsy plastic boarding into an empty warehouse. Sweating and trumpeting, the mammoths had swept down the aisles in a half-dozen hairy streams, their humanoid riders whooping and clamouring.
The warehouse doors had given way; they let out onto a dock-side where black water stretched away under the dark sky of the vast cavern which housed Oubliette and the end of the tunnel which led to the distant sea. The mammoths had wheeled and headed along the dock between warehouses and ships for the city itself, their riders hollering and making faces at a few astonished container-crane operators and sailors.
A broad boulevard led up from the docks to the centre of the quiet city; there were some vehicles on the road but they had all stopped. The Security building was plain and undistinguished and formed one corner of a square. The other mammoths came to a stop outside; the one Gadfium was on thumped on up broad steps, turned at the top, kicked in the tall closed double doors with its rear legs and then turned and shouldered its way through. Gadfium had to duck. The lammergeier clung to the animal's rump behind her.
There were no obvious guards, just one man at a desk who sat staring straight ahead and did not react when they charged into the reception area, but sat immobile and unblinking.
– What's wrong with him?
– Our new friend, her own voice said. He's jamming the Security people's implants. We should be safe here for a while.
The ape-man hopped off the mammoth and bounced easily on the floor. He scampered for a door, which hissed open in front of him. He disappeared; the door seemed continually to be trying to close, but could not, and so oscillated fractionally back and forth with a series of clicks and hisses.
The lammergeier flew over to the receptionist's desk and settled there, folding its wings and stamping from foot to foot, making an S of its long, naked neck and staring quizzically up at the face of the unmoving man.
The ape-man reappeared at the hesitating door. He beckoned her. The mammoth settled, kneeling.
Gadfium sighed and clambered down off the mammoth. At least its knotted fur provided ample foot— and hand-holds.
– Get the receptionist's keys, her other self said.
She did. The ape-man took her hand and led her by corridors and stairs to a door with a complicated mechanical combination lock. The ape-man screamed and leapt up and down, hitting the lock with one fist.
– 6120394003462992, the voice in her said.
– One at a time, please.
-6…
The room beyond held a woman and a very large man, both of them sitting at a table holding cups and staring straight ahead.
The ape-man pulled her onwards.
The room led to another combination-locked door and then a corridor where her crypt self led her to a distant door; this door had an electronic lock — already winking green for Open — a combination lock and two key-locks.
The girl was inside, sitting on a small bed. She nodded when she saw Gadfium, and took the ape-man's hand when he ran to her, chuckling happily.
She came up to Gadfium.
'I am somewhere else as well,' she said. 'Come and see.' And she reached out and gently touched Gadfium's neck.
– Woa, here we go-
/And Gadfium was back on the great mammoth but this time in a crypt reality, where the great animal rose like a furry fist through a white glowing ceiling of ice. The little ape-man was seated in front of her again and the lammergeier flapped above.
They burst out onto the frozen surface, where a man with a bloody face lay on the ice, straddled by a slim girl in a fur coat who was holding the blade of an ice-scull to his neck and who had just turned to stare at them.
3
The mist was the world was the data corpus was the Crypto-sphere was the history of the world was the future of the world was the guardian of un-done things was the summation of intelligent purpose was chaos was pure thought was the untouched was the utterly corrupted was the end and the beginning was the exiled and the resiled, was the creature and the machine was the life and the inanimate was the evil and the good was the hate and the love was the compassion and the indifference was everything and nothing and nothing and nothing.
He dived within, becoming part of it, surrendering completely to it to accept it into him and dissolve himself within it.
He was a flake within the fall, an insect sucked up into the whirlwind, a bacterium caught within a water droplet forced whirling within the hurricane's howl. He was a particle of dust from the plain thrown up by the hoof of one horse within the charging line, a grain of sand upon the storm-besieged beach, a fleck of ash from the eruption's endless detonations, a mote of soot from the continent afire, a molecule within the encroaching dust, an atom from the star's heart thrown out in its last, majestic, exhaustive blast.