XXIV

LAND ROSE UP from the sea to meet them, but it was unlike any soil or earth either of them had ever seen. It was not so much solid as not-liquid, a viscous, glutinous stuff. At one second it seemed insubstantial as air, at another it acquired the consistency of treacle, at another it lay smooth as glass. It seemed to smoke, or steam, a little.

Virgil Jones knew where they were. It was the nearest they would get to escape, and also the most dangerous of the Inner Dimensions. They stood at the very fringes of Flapping Eagle’s awareness, close to the point at which his senses merged with the void. This was unmade ground, the raw materials of the mind. If they bent it right, it would lead them wherever they wished to go; if they failed to master it, they could drift on its wisps out of Flapping Eagle’s existence. To put it another way, they would die.

The raft had lodged—or stuck—in the land. Gingerly, they placed feet upon the colourless, formless substance. Flapping Eagle looked nervous.

—We’re in very deep, said Virgil and explained.

—Now then, he said, we’ll need to concentrate as hard as we can. Try and imagine the topography of this Dimension, since it seems to be topographic. It’s a series of concentric circles.

—A series of concentric circles, repeated Flapping Eagle.

—We’re on the outermost circle. We need to get to the centre.

—We need to get to the centre, repeated Flapping Eagle.

—Once we’re in the centre, we’ll need to climb. The waking state lies directly above the centre. Do you understand?

—Yes, said Flapping Eagle.

—If we concentrate hard enough we can use this stuff to make a passage. We’ll be able to move through it to the centre without being affected by the Dimensions.

Virgil Jones had taken on a new dimension himself. He was crisp, authoritative. Flapping Eagle settled down to shape the stuff of his mind.

The passage, or tunnel, took shape around them. It was dark grey, suffused with dirty yellow light. In mounting excitement, Flapping Eagle realized that he was shaping it into a passable facsimile of the red tunnel down which Bird-Dog had fled at the beginning of the fever. His strength began to flood back; the malleable not-land stretched into a longer and longer tunnel. Virgil Jones, watching, felt an enormous relief. And finally at the very far end of the tunnel they saw a tiny beckoning pinprick of light.

—Time to go, said Virgil Jones.

Flapping Eagle didn’t speak. All his efforts were plunged into holding the tunnel, preserving its existence until it set. So Virgil Jones, ever co-operative, concentrated on creating a means of transport. A moment later (he derived a sizeable pleasure from the speed) they were the proud possessors of two bicycles.

—I’m sorry, he apologized, the mysteries of the internal combustion engine have always been beyond me.

The tunnel had set. They mounted their anachronistic steeds and headed into its depths, towards the siren light.

For all his recent achievements, for all his new-found confidence, Virgil seemed to Flapping Eagle to be a worried man.

—Virgil, he asked, you wouldn’t hold anything back from me, would you?

—My dear fellow, admonished Virgil Jones. My dear fellow.

—Well, then. You wouldn’t know what’s at the other end of this tunnel, would you?

—My dear fellow, repeated Virgil Jones; and then, after a pause, he added quietly: That depends entirely on you.

—Explain?

—In all probability, said Virgil, there will be nothing at all.

—And that’s what worries you?

Virgil Jones coughed. —You seem to be an unusual fellow, he said. Perhaps you won’t need … He stopped.

—What? asked Flapping Eagle.

—The monsters, said Virgil Jones.

When he had explained, Flapping Eagle knew what had to happen.

The cure for Dimension-fever is a complex thing. It involves more than mere survival, more than just the ability to find one’s way through the labyrinth. If that is all a sufferer has to offer, the fever can recur and recur. Once exposed to it, the sufferer’s resistance is lowered; he can expect further and perhaps worse attacks to set in without warning. Even the cure is sometimes not total; it does, however, insulate the sufferer from the worst the Effect can produce. That is, if it doesn’t kill him.

Lurking in the Inner Dimensions of every victim of the fever is his own particular set of monsters. His own devils burning in his own inner fires. His own worms gnawing at his strength. These are the obstacles he must leap, if he can. Often, sadly, they are stronger than he is; and then he dies. Or lives on, a working body encasing a ruined mind.

Flapping Eagle thought: all he had ever done was survive. To have been so much and done so little. Searching, always searching for the path through the maze that led to Bird-Dog, and Sispy, and his way out. It had left him half a man, unfound even by himself. It was this lack in himself that was now reaching a time of crisis. And, added to it, the cross it seemed he was always to bear, was his responsibility for the life of Virgil, his rescuer, guide and friend. Why, he thought in anguish, why is it that I place the lives, the happinesses of all I touch in danger? I never wished it.

As if reading his thoughts, Virgil said:

—Don’t worry about me. Glad to have been of service. Might even be able to render some assistance.

He knew this to be untrue. It was Flapping Eagle’s fight that must wait at the growing circle of light. No-one could help without hampering his own chances of success,

Flapping Eagle set his jaw.

Bird-Dog: his search: all of it. A gigantic blind alley. A voyage through the waste land that had destroyed his appetite for his greatest treasure: life. He resolved that if he emerged from this tunnel, he would abandon his search. He would go to K and make his home. The discovery and befriending of other human beings was enough, more than enough, even for a man with eternity at his fingertips. If Calf Mountain was not perfect (and it was no Utopia), then what matter? Perfection was a curse, a stultifying finality. He would seek out and grow rich in the glorious fallibility of human beings, dirty, wartish, magnificent creatures that they were.

Virgil half-guessed the thoughts going through his friend’s mind, and his eyes clouded. They had good reason to. He was thinking about his own fate, which was entirely out of his control. Now that Flapping Eagle had set his mind on the contest, it would be waiting as sure as eggs were eggs. Everything hung on the battle. Virgil ordered his mind into something approaching resignation.

The Gorf woke, roused by some mental alarm-system, and immediately began to take an acute interest in events. This was better, he thought. This was something like it. If he had had hands, he would have rubbed them.

On their rickety bicycles, dressed in their forlorn garments, Flapping Eagle and Virgil Jones, Don Quixote and Sancho, rode to their tryst.