Oh no, I said. No, not me; I didn't. Nope. Not guilty. No sir-ee. Uh-uh. Wouldn't catch me doing a thing like that. Oh no.
…There you are then, Gaston said.
And so we wound on through the guts of the tower, me feeling lower than a tapeworm.
Eventually we came to a bit where the tunnel widened out and the floor turned from stone to wood; I more or less fell into this wooden bowl where a faint light shone. I didn't quite get out of the way in time so Gaston slid down on top of me.
More pelt fungus.
… there should be a trap here somewhere, Gaston said, feeling around on the floor… Ah, here it is. There was a sort of hollow clunking noise and in the half-light I could see Gaston pulling what looked like a huge plug up out of the floor.
… It's a hollowed out babil stem, Gaston explained, setting the plug to one side. I'll go first, I think.
The hollow babil trunk headed down in a series of long, stretched Ss. There were rungs on the walls; Gaston went down them pretty quickly for a sloth. Now and again we passed what might have been doors in the trunk where the occasional crack of light showed, but mostly it was totally dark. We seemed to go on down forever and I nearly fell off a couple of times. Just as well Gaston was beneath me; the thought of another close encounter with his pelt fungus quickly concentrated my mind, I can tell you.
At last Gaston said, … here we are, and we stepped on to a platform of stone and when through a door into a cramped space where Gaston wriggled and I crawled between a stone floor and this metal sealing which made a sort of blurbilurbilurbil sound. We came out in what looked like a big long curving service duct whose walls were lined with pipes; we'd just crawled under a big gurgling tank of some sort. I could here what sounded like a train rumbling somewhere nearby.
… There is a freight tube line junction through there, Gaston said, pointing at a hatch in the floor. The trains have to slow down to negotiate the points and it is possible for a human to jump on board a wagon and so secure a ride. I think I have to return to see what has befallen my friends, but if you can make your way to the second level south-west buttress you will find a town there. Go to the central square; someone will be looking for you and will look after you. I'm sorry to have to abandon you in this way, but it is all I can do.
That's all right, Gaston, I said. You done all you can and I don't deserve all the kindness you've shown me. I was so choked I could have hugged him, but I didn't. He just nodded his big funny pointed head and said,… Well, good luck young Bascule, you take care now… and you promise you will go to the south-west buttress at the town there?
Oh yes, I says, lying through my teeth.
Good. Fare well.
Then he was away, crawling back under the big gurgly tank.
I went down through the hatch in the floor into a broad dark cavern where lots of tube lines converged from single tunnels. There was nobody about but I hid behind some humming sort of cabinet things between two of the tracks and waited; a while later a train of open wagons came rattling through, clattering across the points; I let the unmanned engine and most of the wagons go past and then jumped on one near the end, hauling myself up the side and over into its empty interior.
After a few minutes during which the train entered a black-dark tunnel and picked up speed again, I reckoned it was safe to crypt.
There was no horrible corrosive fog/sleet here. Everything luckily seemed normal. The train was heading for the far end of the second level, near to the Southern Volcano Room. It would slow down at a few more places yet where I could get off. I crypted further afield.
/The lammergeiers roost was frozen. Its crypt-space representation was there but it was like a still picture instead of a movie; there were no birds nor anybody or anything there and you couldn't interact with nothing there. I sensed something nearby in the crypted space and suspected there was some kind of guard on the place, waiting to see who turned up interested in the lammergeiers. I disconnected quick.
The train rolled on. The lammergeiers lived — or used to live — in the fast-tower, on the 9th level. I reckoned there was something going on up there. The freight train would pass almost underneath the fast-tower. Good enough for me. The 9th level sounded a bit high and cold and inaccessible but I'd burn that bridge when I came to it.
I almost decapitated myself jumping off the train when it went through another set of points in a wide bit of tunnel the length of which I slightly overestimated, but apart from banging a shoulder on a wall and skinning one knee I escaped unscathed. I climbed a ladder, walked a bit of service tunnel and took a service elevator up to the main floor level. I found myself in what looked like a giant chemical works, all pipes and big pressure vessels and leaking steam and funny smells. Sure enough, a quick check on the crypt and I confirmed it was a plastics refinery.
After a lot of fancy and highly technical crypting, some walking and climbing over pipes and ducts and avoiding the dodgier-looking shadows I found an automatic freight elevator taking vats of some sort of fertilizer up the tower and hitched a ride up in that.
My ears popped after two minutes, and after about five, and ten.
Some more fancy crypting got the elevator to go a floor above where it was expected; this was as high as it could go. I got out in a sort of tall open gallery where a fierce cold wind blew and the view was of babil plants forming a fretwork of gnarled branches letting in a spare icy light.
I let the elevator take itself back down a floor.
There was a pillar about 100 metres away which supported the roof of the tall gallery. The one in the other direction was twice as far away. I set off towards the nearer one.
I was still only dressed in my usual clothes and this wind was making me shiver already, but then it had been fairly warm further down so maybe it was just the suddenness of the change. I walked along the gallery, between the silhouetted babil and the smooth ashlar of the tower's barely curved wall. The floor felt cold through my shoes and I wished I had a hat.
The crypt started to get a bit vague and unhelpful about the layout of the fast-tower at around this level. I just had to hope the pillar might have a set of stairs in it.
It didn't. It had two sets of stairs in it, intertwined in a double helix like DNA.
Didn't seem to matter which one I took. I started climbing.
I went fast at first to try and warm up but the breath just whistled out of me and my legs turned to jelly; I had to sit down and put my pounding head between my knees before I could continue, more slowly.
The steps went round and round and round; pretty steep.
I plodded on and up, trying to settle into a rhythm. This seemed to work but I was getting a hell of a headache. Lucky I was fit, not to mention determined. (Not to mention bloody stupid, it was starting to occur to me.)
The pillar got to the next storey — another open gallery — and didn't stop; it went on up. Seemed to go on for a good ways yet so I stuck with it. The stair case had no handrails and though it was a good couple of metres wide it would have been frighteningly open and exposed on the outer side if the babil plants hadn't been hanging growing all over the outside of the tower. As it was it was still pretty frighteningly exposed on the other side, but the best thing to do was not to think about it and certainly not to look.
I kept climbing.
Another level. My head was hurting like mad. I looked for the pillar but it wasn't there any more. Instead there was a whole network of twisted pillars, weaving this way and that with high altitude babil — thin weedy stuff — all over it, coating the floor of the gallery, netting the weave of the fretted stone wall.