Less than that was quite enough.
There was something going on.
The first place you go from transport is into a representation of the castle's transport system, a transparent holo of the fastness with the tube, train and funicular lines, lift shafts, roads, hydrovator lines and clifter slots all highlighted. Then you move onto where you want to go elsewhere in the crypt. Most bags don't even spare this setup a passing glance, but if you're something of a connoisseur of the crypt's states, like I am, then you just always swing past this sort of thing and click it out and do a quick comparison with actual movements to see if Transport's on its bols or not. Upshot is, if there's anything amiss you spot it, like I spotted the transport setup wasn't quite right.
It looked like there was an odd kind of hole around the monastery; nothing moving out, just stuff in-going. Very strange, I thought. I didn't go no further into the crypt. I checked the monastery's crypt business during the afternoon. Definitely phase-change in the traffic around an hour ago. Somebody trying to make things look normal when they weren't.
Where was brother Scalopin's usual call to the Martian Days storyline, for example? Or sister Ecrope's tea-time interlope with her lover in the Uitlander embassy? All replaced by making-up-numbers traffic, that's where.
I knew I was probably being paranoid, but I worried all the same.
The funicular was due to make one more stop before the station I'd normally get off at. I told it to stop ASAP.
A minute later it did, and I got off at this little silly halt three quarters of the way up the buttress which served a couple of clan-execs' love nests, a old babil farm and a glider club, all of them deserted. The two brothers I left on the funicular looked puzzled but waved bye-bye and kept singing as the car trundled away again.
Then there was a thump in my head. The funicular car stopped, then reversed and clunked and whirred back down towards me.
The thump in my head was some bastard trying to knock me out with a bit of feedback from the crypt; theoretically impossible and technically difficult but it can be done and the jolt I'd just got would have knocked out most people, only I've got the equivalent of shock absorbers because I'm a teller and therefore used to getting a rough ride from the crypt.
The funicular car was coming glowing back down the curved track, its cabin lights reflecting off the babil plants festooning the broad arched back of the buttress. The two brothers inside were at the back window, staring at me. They didn't look so drunk now, and they were each holding things in their hands that could have been guns.
Oh shit, I thought.
I ran down a spiral stairway at the side of the buttress. I heard the car stop above me. The stairway went on and on and on and on spiralling all the time and I thought when it levels out I'm not going be able to stop going round; they'll find me whirling round in a tight little circle unable to go straight. I hit the bottom and sheer terror proved a very efficient course-straightener. I raced across a gantry slung underneath the stonework and went down another stairway set against a metal-frame building on the far side of the buttress. Footsteps clanged behind me.
I came out on a broad balcony and dodged through a doorway and down some more steps into a sort of hanger where old gliders sat tilted like great ghostly stiff-winged birds and a bunch of little bats started chattering and flying round my head. Footsteps above, then behind. Oh shit oh shit oh shit. The bats were kicking up a hell of a racket.
I spotted a ladder against one wall leading down through the floor and I ran for it. Somebody shouted behind me; the footsteps slapped loud. Something went, Bang! and a glider next to me exploded with flame and lost a wing; the blast of air was warm and almost knocked me off my feet.
I threw myself at the ladder, held the sides and dropped, sliding down without using my feet at all, hitting the floor and twisting my ankle.
I was in some kind of circular platform slung under the glider building. Nothing but air underneath and nowhere to go. I looked back at the ladder. The footsteps were right above me.
I heard a noise like quick, distant surf, and a huge black shape lifted from under the platform on wings longer than I'm tall. It wavered in the air alongside then grasped at the thin metal rail round the platform on the far side from the ladder, its talons gripping the rail while its wings beat quickly and almost silently back and forward.
I could hear somebody coming down the ladder, breathing hard.
Here! shouted the black shape at the other side of the platform. I'd thought it was a bird but it was more like a giant bat. Its wings clapped in and out in and out.
Quickly! it said.
I think if the brothers coming down the ladder hadn't shot at me in the hanger I wouldn't have gone, but they had so I did.
I ran for the big bat. It held its feet out. I grabbed its ankles and it wrapped its talons round my wrists making me shout with the bone-crunching pain while it pulled me off the platform, cracking my knees off the rail.
We twisted and dropped like the thing couldn't carry me and I screamed, then it spread its wings with a snap and I nearly lost my grip as we curved out and away. Light sparkled above me and I heard the bat cry out but I was too busy looking down at the dark fields in the allure, 5 or 600 metres below and thinking well, if I die, there's still another seven lives to go. Except I didn't think that was right somehow, I reckoned whatever trouble I was in went beyond this life and I wasn't guaranteed another seven lives or even one.
I held on tight, but the light crackled again and the bat thing juddered in the air and cried out again and I smelled smoke. We lurched and side-slipped towards the wall of the great hall, then fell like the proverbial, and in a scream of air and a scream from me dipped below the allure and the parapet and went on down till we were level with the lower bretasche, where the bat wheeled round so hard I lost my grip on its scaly legs and only its steel-like clasp on my wrists stopped me from falling to the roof of the second level tower underneath.
Felt like my arms were about to pop out of my sockets. I'd have screamed but the breath was gone from me.
The air shrieked round my ears as we plummeted between the great tower and the second level wall, down into a layer of cloud where I couldn't see a damn thing and it was freezing cold, then we turned in what I thought was the direction of the tower and out of the mist loomed this bleeding great rock wall. I closed my eyes.
We twisted once, twice and I went — phew — to myself but when I opened my eyes we was still heading straight for naked stonework. O fuck, I thought, but by then I'd decided I'd rather die with my eyes open. At the last moment we lifted, I saw hanging bunches of foliage strung from the machicolation above and a instant later we crashed into the babil; my shoulder was wrenched and I was thrown off the bat and into the babil, grabbing at leaves and twigs and branches and slipping and falling down through it.
The bat beat furiously, shouting, Hold on! Hold on! while I tried to get a hold on the damn stuff.
Hold on! it shouted again.
I'm bloody trying too! I yelled.
You safe?
Just about, I said, hugging a big strand of babil like it was a long-lost mum or something, not able to look behind but still hearing the big bat flap and beat at my back.
I'm sorry I couldn't help you more, the bat says. You must save yourself now. They're looking for you. Beware the crypt. Keep out of things! Erch! Erch! I must go. Farewell, human.
Yeah, and to you, I shouted, turning round to look at it. And thanks!
Then the big bat dropped, and I saw it disappear in the mist, falling away straight down, trailing smoke and then just before I lost sight of it curving away following the circumference of the tower, beating hard but looking weak and still falling.