"Why should I want, or not want that?"
"You might want it because you do not wish to die now. You may not want it because you have what they sometimes call a civilised consciousness. You see, each of these people has tried and failed to do what you and your lady-friend are trying - and will fail - to do; escape. Every one of them, all these millions of individuals, is a failure. Each one has given up trying to answer the riddle they were set, and while others have chosen oblivion, these have chosen to live out what time they have left as parasites, in the minds of others in forgotten times. They experience what others have experienced, they even have the illusion of altering the past, so that they seem to exercise free will, and apparently influence what their hosts do. It is to delay death, to turn to something like a drug, to turn away from reality, to refuse to face one's own defeat. I have heard it said that this is better than nothing, but..." the creature's voice trailed off. Its beady eyes stayed fixed on Quiss.
"I see," he said. "Well, I must say I don't find it all that depressing."
"Perhaps you will, though, later."
"Perhaps," Quiss said, and did his best to assume a nonchalant air. "Do I take it that these people have to be fed, and that the castle kitchens are as large and as busy as they are because they must cater for them?"
"Oh well done," the red crow said, only a little sarcastically. "Yes, they run little trains from the kitchens, full of soups and gruels, to the furthest points of the place, wherever those may be; some trains get lost for years, others never return. Luckily these failed unfortunates need little in the way of nourishment, so the easily kitchens can just about cope, though even so they couldn't do it if they didn't mess around with subjective time... For all I know this universal basement extends right round the planet, and the castle supplies all those people; or perhaps there are other castles; one does hear rumours. Well, the castle feeds all the people you see, at any rate. They're eased out of the head-hole and given a bowl to sup from; they sit there with empty eyes, as though asleep, drink or sup, then like zombies go back to their own little world again. Their wastes are taken away in the same trains." The red crow cocked its head, and its voice sounded almost puzzled: "But don't you find this all rather... sapping? This is what awaits you, man. This is where almost all of them end up, and a lot of them were a lot brighter than you. Ask the seneschal, if you like. He will confirm what I say. Very few escape. Virtually none."
"All the same, though, like you say," Quiss said, "it's better than nothing."
"To be a parasite? To end up with your head stuck inside some cheap biological time machine? I don't believe it. I thought more, even of you. I haven't lied to you, you know. The truth is quite awful enough. It's not as though these zombies really do influence the people whose brains they inhabit. The seneschal might like to pretend that they do, that free will increases with time and these people account for the sudden impulses in the primitives they haunt, but that's all nonsense. The creatures around the holes may make them think that, but experiments I have carried out myself indicate quite definitely that only the illusion of this effect exists and anyway, which is the more likely explanation?
"I tell you: these people are as good as dead. Theirs is a dreaming death."
"Still better than nothing," Quiss insisted. "Definitely."
The red crow was silent for some time, flapping lazily in front of him, hovering there, black eyes staring, expressionless. Eventually it said, "Then, warrior, you have no soul."
It flew in a semi-circle around him, heading back for the black wall which was the castle's base. 'We'd better get back," it said. "Ask the seneschal about this place, if you like. He will be angry, but he will not punish you and he cannot punish me. Ask him," the red crow said as it beat back to the curved wall of the roots of the Castle Doors, the Castle of Bequest, "anything at all. He will confirm that I almost none escape, that most end up here, or- the brave ones, the really civilised ones - kill themselves."
They arrived back at the door; it was still ajar. The red crow flapped at its side as Quiss, following it back, walked past the pillars and columns and dreaming people. At the same man, in furs, on a stool, he had looked at earlier, he stopped and turned to the red crow saying, "Let me ask you something."
"Yes, of course you can have a preview," the red crow said, and started to fly towards him. "There's an empty -"
"Oh no," Quiss said, shaking his head, looking at the bird as it stopped near him. Quiss nodded at the skinny man in the furs with his head stuck in the glass ceiling. "I was just wondering if you knew anything about him, say. What's his name? How long's he been here?"
"What?" the red crow said, sounding a little confused, even upset (Quiss concealed the thrill of triumph which shivered through him). "Him?" The red crow fluttered a little closer. "Oh, he's been here for ages," it said, its voice recovering its usual composure. "Name's... Godot? Goriot? Gerrut; something like that. The records aren't perfect, you know. An odd case... listen, are you sure you don't want to see what it's like? I can show you where -"
"No," Quiss said firmly, and walked smartly to the door leading back to the castle. "I'm not interested. Let's go back now."
And he had gone to the seneschal, who in the kitchens" clamour had confirmed most of what the red crow had said.
"So?" the seneschal had said, obviously annoyed. "You have seen your most likely fate; what of it? What am I supposed to do about it? Just think yourself lucky you didn't take the red crow up on its offer; once you're in one of those things properly you don't come out of your own free will; too beguiling. If somebody doesn't come to get you out you stay there, tapping every form of human excitement. By the time your belly rumbles you're hooked. You come out for food and it's just a grey dream compared to what you have just left.
"That's what the bird was up to. It would have shown you the free ceiling-port down there, then just have left you. And don't trust it on free will, either. The ceiling-ports allow full control of the primitives" minds. Everything can be altered. Every mind contains its own universe. We can be sure of nothing. That is all I have to say. If you want to enter officially that place which you have already seen informally, file a notice of surrender with me through the proper channels. Now go away, please." The seneschal had scowled, and gone back up the rickety wooden steps to his office, away from the continuing chaos of the kitchens.
Quiss had gone back to the games room, his old legs quite exhausted by the time he got back.
He said nothing to Ajayi.
He stood on the parapet of the balcony.
Yes, the red crow had been right. It did not know it, it could never have been sure, it had probably only dwelled on the awfulness of the dreamers" fate to bluff him into trying the experience out, so that it could leave him there, but it had been right, nevertheless, about the eventual effect of its revelation.
The thought of that low, limitless space beneath the castle had filled Quiss's thoughts - and, more importantly, his dreams - for almost a hundred days and nights since. A deep, dark depression had settled on him, weighing him down like some heavy suit of armour. He felt like some warrior, chain-mailed, stumbling into quicksand...
He could not keep his mind from dwelling on what he had seen, on the sheer extent of the place beneath them, that impression of claustrophobic infinity. So many people, so many failed hopes, lost games, surrendered dreams; and the castle, a single island of warped chance in a frozen ocean of missed opportunities.