A pylon of enormous size soared from the heart of the city, its top lost in the clouds, dominating all, so big that the cliff-ringed hill the city sat upon seemed as tiny as an anthill. Hard lines of cables scored the sky, heading out in all directions, as thin as cotton against the sky, but they were mighty; one had come down, and hung thick and limp over the city wall. To the east it sat low in the gorge, a sunlit streak hard against the blackness.
Everything about Pylon City was large and iron. The walls were twenty-metre giants circling the cliffs, the westernmost of which plunged straight into the chasm. Rust-streaked buttresses were set at intervals in between towers spaced round the walls' circuit. The road and railway rose up to these defences on thinlegged viaducts, the railway vanishing into a tunnel close by the main road gate. The effect was one of impregnability, but up close the travellers could see that the wall had buckled where the cable had fallen across it.
"Look at that," said Richards. "Do you think that's the same rope that ran to the top of Circus's pavilion?"
"Possibly, possibly," said Bear. "That'd explain why it is not strung from the top of the tower. Looks like it's caused plenty of damage too. Um, best not mention that when we go in, OK?"
The gates were wrought in iron and ostentatiously ornate. A thousand creatures cavorted on their span. Machicolated crenellations topped the wall above the gates, cantilevered over the road on merlons cast in the forms of leering chimps.
"That's pretty amazing," said Richards. "Puts me in mind of the Great Firewall."
Bear looked at him as if he were mad. "It's horrible!"
"I have to agree," said Tarquin, wrinkling up his nose. "Terribly lower-middle-class."
"I meant the scale of it," said Richards defensively.
"Oh," said Bear, as if he'd just realised something. "Those really are garden gnomes on that bas-relief."
"That looks suspiciously like a poorly executed rendition of Le Pissoir. Eighty feet tall, would you imagine," said Tarquin with mocking awe.
"Aw," said Bear, "look, dogs playing snooker. Cast in iron." He leant over to Richards. "A-maz-ing," he said, pronouncing each syllable with leaden sarcasm.
"There's no need for that," said Richards. "I thought it looked impressive."
"It's trite," said Tarquin. "I shudder to think of your living room, dear boy. Probably some kind of nature reserve for doilies."
"Sheesh," said Richards.
"I'll warrant you have a pottery scotty dog too."
"Needle," said Richards. Bear chuckled.
For all the walls' stature, they were silent. Not a man patrolled them. The road visible beyond the gateway was empty. The gates were guarded, but not avidly. A pair of sentry boxes stood either side of the road. Only one was occupied, by a snoozing guard, his elaborate energy pike leant against the wall.
"Ahem," said Bear.
The guard jumped up. "Gods, not another bloody talking animal." He turned away from them, busying himself with a pile of stamps. "Papers!" he demanded.
"Papers, 'sir'," said Bear, producing a sheaf of vellum from somewhere inside his gut. "I'm Sergeant Bear, these two are my prisoners."
"Two," said the guard, checking over Bear's documentation.
"Pleased to meet you," said Tarquin.
"Another! The entire bloody city's crawling with talking bloody animals," grumbled the guard.
"Aren't you on the same side?" asked Richards.
"No," said the guard.
Bear raised an eyebrow.
"I mean yes. They've all come out of the woods. Come to save us, they say. Us! There's this mad psychic badger who says he's seen the end of the world, that the Terror is coming here, here to Pylon City! I don't believe any of it."
"That cable, there," said Bear, pointing. "The Terror did that. I saw it. Happy?"
"Bah! That? A failure down the line. It's happened before, but the Prince took it as some kind of sign. Next thing I know, we're up to our bloody armpits in chipmunks. Ain't right, I tell you. I've not spent my entire life keeping the beggars out only to let all of them in. It ain't right!"
"Neither is sleeping on duty," said Bear mildly.
The guard made as if to grab his pike, but then thought better of it. "Leave me be! Isn't it enough that I've got to let you in?"
"Is that right?" said Bear. "I've been living here for years, you know. Not all of us live in the Magic bloody Wood."
"Yes! I would. Animals, think you're special, just because you can talk. If that's the bloody case why don't you have central heating? Some pissed-up bloody fox shat on me doorstep last week. And I'm a vegetarian. Do you know how much fox shit stinks? Bastard. Your papers, sir!" said the guard.
"I'm looking for Commander McTurk. Do you know where he is?"
"They're all at the square," said the guard. "The whole city. He'll be at the square."
Bear leaned forward and cupped his hand round his ear.
"Sir," added the guard truculently.
"That's better," said Bear.
"Big moot on, talk of war. You'll see."
"Then you'll be glad of the help of the talking bloody animals," said Richards.
The guard wafted a hand in front of his nose. "You there, you better take a bath! Or someone will like as not arrest you for vagrancy."
"You do need a bath, you know," said Bear to Richards. "You stink."
"Are you going to stand there all day gabbing? Clear off!" said the guard.
"Thank you, my good man," said Bear. "Carry on."
"Being sarcastic to armed men is not big or clever, Bear," said Tarquin.
"Unlike me," said the bear.
They passed through the gates. As outside, so inside; everything was made of iron. The walls, the road, the plant-pots, the carts, the gothic-lettered street signs. The metal varied in colour from the silvery-white of the tramlines to the angry red of the rooftops. A thousand hues of black and red and silver and grey. They could taste it on the air like blood.
The city was as quiet as the grave. The three walked toward the centre, their feet ringing off the pavement, until the murmur of a crowd could be heard. They crested a low rise and were suddenly at the edge of a large square directly beneath the giant pylon.
"Holy shit," said Richards, and reached up to push back his missing hat.
The square was rammed full of people and creatures of all types; every Grid-born whimsy cooked up by humanity. Fantasy knights, Arabian warriors, bobble-headed, babyfied versions of popstars and holoartistes, spacemen, Vikings, orcs and elves, squeaky steampunk robots and elephantine aliens. Droids, drones, devils and dragons, goblins and warlocks, gangsters and clams with bazookas.
Then there were the animals: strange, giant caricatures of animals, fevered imaginings of burnt-out cartoonists, fairytale versions of animals, bipedal and big. Animals that looked like they could live in a forest in the Real, others that appeared to have broken out of the children's section of a home ents library. Some plush, some not, some real as real can be, others rendered in graphical forms ranging from primitive pixel block through outright cartoon to uncanny valley-baiting photorealism.
Generations of gaming characters culled from the broken RealWorlds Reality Realms and beyond and a thousand kinds of toy from half a century of AI-gifted playthings.
All of them were talking frantically to one another.
"It's a refugee camp for geek cast-offs. You two should feel right at home here," said Richards.
"We don't," said Bear and Tarquin simultaneously, and with some conviction. "I've not seen a big gathering like this for, ooh, well, ever. Most of these tribes are bitter enemies. Come on," said Bear, raising his voice to be heard over the crowd. "Let's see what this is all about."