LV

FLAPPING EAGLE AND Media (when she opened her eyes) found themselves on a strangely transmuted Calf Mountain, a Calf Mountain in which Virgil, Liv, Liv’s house, even Liv’s donkey were reduced to wraith-like wisps, in which the outcrop remained, and the forest, both feeling different though they looked the same. Perhaps the most shocking change, harder to accept even than the ghosts of Virgil and Liv, lay above them. The clouds had vanished from the mountain’s summit. Flapping Eagle was surprised to find that the mountain was lower than he had imagined; the cumulus cocoon had made it seem much higher than it was. The summit lay only a few hundred feet above them.

—Grimushome, said Bird-Dog, pointing without turning to face them.

A sprawling house, long and low and castellated, looked down at them. It was a stone house, a miniature fortress. Somewhere in that stone home, thought Flapping Eagle, lies the Stone Rose.

The house was wildly irregular, its walls anything but straight, no corner a right angle, but it was a designed eccentricity, a deliberate folly. The zigzag patterns it wove on the mountaintop were purposeful, reflections of their creator.

Reflections: the house gave them off in all directions! for every window in its wandering walls was also a mirror. This combination of undulating stone and blind, gleaming windows made the house curiously difficult to focus upon, as if his eyes refused to accept it, as if it was an illusion that would not harden into fact.

Possibly it was a question of size. The house was large, but, in an impossible distortion of scale, it lay in the spreading shade of an inconceivably huge tree, an ash which dwarfed its venerable sibling in the Gribb garden by comparison, as if the swing-bearing tree had been a mere sapling. It was more than gigantic; it inspired awe. Flapping Eagle remembered Virgil Jones’ description of the Ash Yggdrasil, the mother-tree which holds the skies in place. And wondered what monsters were gnawing at its roots.

Another shock. Flapping Eagle had a clear memory of the upper slopes of Calf Mountain. They had been steep, more arduous even than the ascent from K to the outcrop, and densely forested. He had had severe doubts about the possibility of scaling these heights without proper equipment. It was stunning, then, to see before him a neatly-cleared passage up the mountain, a whole flight of narrow stone steps sweeping effortlessly to the very door of Grimus-home. And yet they were there. They were real. Flapping Eagle shook his head, forced into admiration.

They were climbing the stairs now, Bird-Dog leading, Media bringing up the rear, and the birds swooping and swarming all around them. More birds than Flapping Eagle had seen in his life, birds from every climate and of every imaginable feather, birds as common as crows and birds he had never seen before, with uselessly twisted beaks and strangely contorted shapes, flocking and squawling up the mountain to the peak. Often he had to shield his face against a spread of beating wings. He glanced back at Media; there was fear in her eyes, but she forced a smile.

And the whine was still all around him, loud now and pervasive, but the marvels surrounding them took far more of their attention. Eventually they were near the peak. Bird-Dog had maintained a hostile silence throughout the climb, but now she broke it, whirling to face her brother from her higher position.

—Leave us alone, she cried. Why did you have to come here?

Then, equally suddenly, she turned around once more, and there was resignation in her steps as she resumed her climb.

For a man at the end of a quest, Flapping Eagle felt extremely unheroic.

Engraved in the stone over the door of Grimushome:

THAT WHICH IS COMPLETE IS ALSO DEAD.

Birds crowded the branches of the giant ash as Flapping Eagle and Media followed the surly Bird-Dog in.

The house was a kind of rough triangular labyrinth, the face which it presented to the ascending steps being the jagged base of the triangle. The main door stood towards the left-hand corner of this base. The two other faces were even more jagged than the front; a sharp protruding sub-triangle stuck out on the left and a blunter but larger sub-triangle distorted the right side.

Inside, Flapping Eagle and Media found a bewildering series of interlocking rooms. First of these was the stone hall in which they found themselves upon entering, a bleak spartan room, lit only by oil-lamps until Bird-Dog flung open a mirrored window. It contained no furniture, but variegated pieces of rock, boulders and two beautifully-detailed erotic sculptures in stone stood lining its walls. Flapping Eagle found it an unfriendly room.

It was roughly square, though it grew narrower at the far end, where a door stood closed against them. Bird-Dog moved towards this door and flung it open. As they followed her, Flapping Eagle heard the creaking for the first time.

A regular, rhythmic creaking. The walls were full of it, but they were stone walls and there was no obvious source for the sound. It seemed to grow louder as he listened; he turned to Media. She, too, was listening. Creak … creak… creak … creak. They hurried into the next room.

And momentarily forgot the creaking at the sight of an army of birds.

—Birdroom, said Bird-Dog curtly and unnecessarily.

This was the room which stuck sharply out from the left side of the building. Through an open window poured the birds, a steady stream of comings and goings. Various feeds stood on small pedestals around the room and a large birdbath was the room’s central feature. Peacocks strutted on the floor.

But not all the birds were alive. Stuffed creatures stood in glass-fronted cases all around them, immobilized for ever in typical scenes from their lives: birds eating, birds courting, birds breeding and hatching, birds in flight, birds dying, birds swooping on other birds, in a dazzling series of eternal tableaux.

And on the walls, the portraits of birds, an audubon profusion of feathered heads, some real, some imaginary, serried in ranks around the central picture which took up almost all the wall to Flapping Eagle’s right. One look at the glorious particoloured creature depicted there was enough. This was the Roc of Sinbad, the Phoenix of myth: Simurg himself.

The creaking broke through Flapping Eagle’s fascination. Bird-Dog was hurrying on through yet another door at the far end of the room. They followed her rapidly through an electrifyingly beautiful dining-room, on whose walls hung ancient tapestries and on whose floor lay ancient carpets. Silver plates and candelabra glinted everywhere. This was the room which stood at the apex of the triangle. Bird-Dog did not pause.

Down the right side now, Flapping Eagle told himself, concentrating on orientation. The fourth room stood in darkness, a number of white shapes looming through the shades. As his eyes accustomed himself to the poor light, he saw that a number of podia were scattered about the room, bearing—what?—things, hidden by white, shrouding sheets. These silent ghosts—none large enough to be the Rose—were in some way worrying. And the creaking continued here as in all the previous rooms…

This time the door was not in the far wall, but in the wall on their right. Following Bird-Dog, they came into a small room, entirely empty, oil-lamps flickering on the walls, the first room they had been in without an outside wall. On the wall facing them, red against the grey stone, was this shape:

—The letter Kâf, said Bird-Dog brusquely.

Flapping Eagle did not understand the purpose of this room, unless it was an anteroom, for their journey was near an end. Bird-Dog went through a door in the wall to their left and they found themselves in a bright, airy, well-furnished room: their room. The large bed wore fresh sheets and had obviously been expecting them. There was a deep, soft divan and an ornate low table inset with ivory squares.

His sense of direction told him there was still an unexplained area on each side of this room. One was rapidly clarified—a door on his left as he stood just inside the entrance from the Kâf-room led to a bathroom and lavatory; and on the far side of this were Bird-Dog’s small, dingy quarters. She had her own door to the outside world, as befits a servant. She was retreating now, into this small shell.

Flapping Eagle called after her: —Where is Grimus?

—Wait, she said, and shut her door. He heard a bolt being shot.

Sounds: a range of unfamiliar, disturbing sounds. The whine, the loud combined conversation of birds, and the creaking.

—Are you all right? he said.

Media lay on the bed, her hands over her ears, trying to shut out this new, frightening world.

She is a resilient woman, thought Flapping Eagle, but very near breaking point.

He was retracing his steps to the main entrance. The unexplained area towards the front face of the house, south of their room, must be Grimus’ own quarters, he had decided; but he had seen no doors leading into that area. He went outside and circled the house; but other than the front door and Bird-Dog’s back door, there were no entrances; and the windows of Grimus’ room were closed and reflecting. Puzzled, he returned to the stone hall.

To find a door where none had been, a swinging slab of stone that now stood open. From the room within came the creaking, the all-pervasive creaking. Flapping Eagle walked slowly towards the sound. The dirty yellow light of oil-lamps glowed through the secret door.

—The acoustics here are somewhat haunting, yes?

Quick, clipped consonants and short, flat vowels. The voice of Grimus.

—I trust you are both comfortable?

The rocking-chair stood with its face to the closed window and its back to Flapping Eagle. He could see the head: a shock of white hair, some of it flowing over the back of the chair.

Creak … creak … creak as the rocking-chair swayed back and forth; and another, slighter sound, a soft clicking which Flapping Eagle could not understand. He reached the rocking-chair and stood beside the man he had come so far to see.

Grimus was knitting.

Like, and yet unlike. Yes, their faces were alike, the aquiline nose, the deepset eyes, the firm square jaw; but Grimus was nearer Bird-Dog’s olive colouring than the white of Flapping Eagle’s sepulchritude. And their eyes spoke differently, Grimus’ distant, cool, twinkling while Flapping Eagle’s were glaring and hot. Like, and yet unlike.

As though reading his thoughts, Grimus said:

—My pale young shadow. That is you.

Flapping Eagle forced the necessary words past his lips; he was finding it difficult to take up an antagonistic stance in this relaxed, amused presence.

—You know why I am here, he said. Where is the Stone Rose?

—I know why Virgil wanted you to come, said Grimus. That is sad, you know. For Virgil to side with the Nicholas Deggles of this world. But no matter, no matter. I hope you will make up your own mind, Flapping Eagle. You are nobody’s tool. The eyes smiled.

—Well, then, said Flapping Eagle. Tell me why you sent Bird-Dog for me. And tell me what you have done to make her … what she has become.

The white eyebrows rose a fraction.

—So fast, said Grimus. Such haste. No, my friend, I will not tell you. Not, at any price, before dinner.

Dinner was vegetarian, like Grimus; but so expertly had Bird-Dog prepared it that Flapping Eagle, a great carnivore, scarcely noticed the absence of meat.

—Man’s origins, Grimus was saying, are those of the hunter. Thus the hunt, search or quest is man’s oldest, most time-honoured pursuit. You must feel a great sense of accomplishment to have arrived.

Flapping Eagle looked at his sister: crushed, servile, cowering menially in a corner, ignored by her master.

—Perhaps it’s better to travel hopefully, he said.

Bird-Dog, who had been waiting on Grimus for an eternity now, an eternity of being ignored. She had stood it, Flapping Eagle surmised, because at least she could feel unique, the sole acolyte of the man she worshipped. At least she was significant. No wonder, then, that she grudged his arrival; she would not want to share Grimus with anyone.

Grimus, for his part, treated her throughout the meal as subhuman, a being beneath contempt; and Flapping Eagle found himself shaping a dislike of the strange secret man.

He was talking to Media. —I must compliment you on your strength, he said. But I fear for you. Flapping Eagle, do you not fear for her? This is not an entirely safe place. The side-effect, I mean.

—She’s resisted it perfectly well so far, said Flapping Eagle.

—But one can weaken, said Grimus. My dear, would you be prepared to undergo a little hypnosis? It would make you safe.

Media looked at Flapping Eagle through ill, panicky eyes. He was thinking: Grimus is right: the Effect is strongest here. She could succumb at any moment. So, despite his reluctance to allow Grimus near her, he said: —Perhaps you’re right.

—After dinner, then, said Grimus. You will of course be present yourself.

—You like my home? asked Grimus, eagerly.

—Very nice, said Media.

—I have built it to enshrine my favourite things, said Grimus. My favourite ideas. The ash outside. The portraits of birds. It is a great pleasure to a lonely man.

—It’s very large, said Media.

—When I lived in K, said Grimus, I was prepared to live as modestly as the rest. But since they have forced me to withdraw, I indulge myself shamelessly.

—Acute of you to recall the Ash Yggdrasil, said Grimus over coffee. Let me tell you of a related matter. The Twilight of the Gods, as it is known. This is an entirely erroneous term, you know. The word ragnarok, twilight, only occurs once in the entire Poetic Edda, and is almost certainly a misprint for the word ragnarak, which is the one used throughout the songs. The difference is crucial. Ragnarak, you see, means fall. Total destruction. A much more final thing than twilight. You see how one letter can warp a mythology?

—How do you get coffee here? asked Media.

Grimus frowned at the irrelevance. —I think, therefore it is, he said.

Flapping Eagle imagined he looked pleased at her confusion.

On their way out of the dining-room, Grimus bumped into Bird-Dog. She dropped the dish she was carrying. He dusted himself down at the place where their bodies had touched, looking disgusted; and said: —Bird-Dog, you are a clumsy fool.

—Yes, Grimus, she said.

Flapping Eagle stifled a surge of anger, remembering Virgil’s advice: Bide your time.

The hypnosis of Media was completely successful; the post-hypnotic suggestion completely shut out the whine from her head. Flapping Eagle cheered up slightly, then thought: I wonder how much hypnosis he’s used on Bird-Dog?

Media was asleep. Bird-Dog was concealed in her quarters. Grimus and Flapping Eagle sat in the Bird Room, amid the paintings and the stuffed and sleeping creatures.

—Peaceful beings, said Grimus. Yet they can be trained to fight, like cocks. Simple beings, yet they say the mynah bird can tell fortunes. Amoral beings, yet some are highly moral. The albatross, for instance, is monogamous after performing its mating dance. For the rest of its natural life. Few of us could claim as much.

—Grimus … began Flapping Eagle.

—They feed, they breed and they die, said Grimus. All we can do is feed. Which of us do you find the superior?

—I think it’s time, said Flapping Eagle.

—Now you yourself, Flapping Eagle, are a strange creature. Once you were nidifugous, fleeing the nest which bore you. But not by choice, so you have once more become nidipetal. Seeking a new nest, eh? Admirable. Most admirable.

Flapping Eagle burst out:

—Grimus, what is this all about?

Grimus looked mildly astonished.

—All about, Mr Eagle? But of course it is all about death. Death, Mr Eagle—that is what life is about.

Flapping Eagle felt suddenly very cold.

—Whose death? he asked, fearfully.

—My dear Flapping Eagle, smiled Grimus. Mine, naturally. Whose did you think? That is who you are: the angel of my death.

—Put these on, said Grimus.

—Why?

—Because it must all be properly done, said Grimus, his hands fluttering in bird-like movements.

So, in the Bird-Room, Flapping Eagle assumed the full ceremonial feathered head-dress and face-paint of an Axona Sham-Man, slung a bow across a shoulder and a quiver of arrows at his back, and held a ju-ju stick in his right hand. Grimus, in the meanwhile, put on a different head-dress, whose colouring exactly matched the plumage of the great bird in the largest portrait in the room.

—And now, said Grimus. Shall we dance?

Flapping Eagle sat in Grimus’ rocking-chair, listening, There was not much else he could do; he had seen no sign of the Stone Rose. And besides, he was curious. His head-dress hung proudly over the back of the swaying-chair and the ju-ju stick lay in his lap. Grimus circled him, walking in an odd, stilted manner, bending forward from the waist and sticking out his neck at every step, his hands at shoulder-height, his fingers moving, moving ceaselessly. There was an angular rhythm about his movements that dizzied the eye.

—This is the Dance of Wisdom and Death, said Grimus. Death, still, watching and listening, biding its time, good. Wisdom, circling, gesturing, revealing itself to its Doom. Good. This is how I chose to be; it is a man’s freedom to choose the manner of his going. I have chosen a beautiful Death and made it in my own image.

His voice descended from its high pitch and his manner became conversational.

—Ordinary men, he said, by which I mean mortal men, are made incomplete by ageing and death. As the years give them wisdom, their failing faculties make a nonsense of it, so that when Death claims them they have little to say to it. I chose to be different. Through longevity I have been able both to grow wise and to retain the faculties which add potency to wisdom. To be wise and powerful is to be complete. That which is complete is also dead. And so I wish to die. Not the paltry fizzling of mortal life, but a minutely-planned and satisfying death. An aesthetic passing on.

The Elixir of Death, the blue release, has no power on Kâf Mountain. It was thus I conceptualized the island, for in building a life one must be conscious of its end. Who would write a story without knowing how it finished? All beginnings contain an end. Unknown to Virgil Jones, unknown to Nicholas Deggle, I planned Kâf Mountain around my death. Around you. The Elixir of Death would have been too easy, too incomplete. One cannot reveal one’s secrets to a drink. And then there is the question of the Phoenician impulse, but more of that later.

The Mountain of Kâf, in short, is a place where death is neither natural nor easy. It must be chosen, and it must be an act of violence against the body. That, after all, is what it always is in truth.

But the Mountain is more than this. It is the Great Experiment. Not in the sense that Virgil Jones understood it; I saw no reason to tell him my true intentions. There is every reason to tell you. You are the Phoenician Death. This is the nature of Kâf: it is an attempt to understand human nature by freeing it from its greatest instinctual drive, the need to preserve the species through reproduction. The Elixir of Life is a beautifully two-edged weapon, removing at a stroke the possibility of reproduction by sterilizing Recipients, and also nullifying the need to reproduce by conferring immortality. The island, furthermore, is plentiful and fertile. Scarcity, too, has been removed. All of which necessitates a profound change in human behaviour, a change which I believed would reveal our true natures far more exactly. It is a fine combination, sterile immortals and fertile land. A most rewarding study.

Analysts of the mythical mountain of Kâf have called it a model for the structure and workings of the human mind. Fitting, then, that the actual Mountain should be a structure created to examine the interests (and enable the death) of one human mind.

Though, in a sense, it is not my intention that my mind should die. This is the purpose of revealing my secrets to the chosen instrument of my death. This is the Phoenician impulse.

When I became Grimus, I took the name from a respect for the philosophy contained in the myth of the Simurg, the myth of the Great Bird which contains all other birds and in turn is contained by them. The similarity with the Phoenix myth is self-apparent. Through death, the annihilation of self, the Phoenix passes its selfhood on to its successor. That is what I hope to do with you. Flapping Eagle. Named for the king of earthly birds. You are to be the next stage of the cycle, the next bearer of the flag, Hercules succeeding Atlas. In the midst of death we are in life.

—What if I refuse?

The question came unprompted from Flapping Eagle’s scared lips. Megalomania is a frightening thing to be circled by.

—You are the next life of the Phoenix, repeated Grimus. The Phoenician Death.

—How can you refuse? said Grimus after a pause. Consider your life: you will see that I have shaped it to this express purpose. In a sense, Flapping Eagle, I created you, conceptualizing you as you are. Just as I created the island and its dwellers with all the selectivity of any artist.

—We existed before you found us, said Flapping Eagle.

—Surely, said Grimus tolerantly. But by shaping you to my grand design I remade you as completely as if you had been unmade clay.

—I don’t believe you, said Flapping Eagle, and Grimus laughed.

—A sceptical Death, he said. Good, good. His voice rose again to its formal high pitch and his fingers fluttered more than ever.

—Do you deny that by selecting you as a Recipient I shaped your life thenceforth? Do you deny that by taking your sister from the Axona I forced your expulsion? Do you deny that by expelling Nicholas Deggle into your continuum I guided you towards Calf Island? Do you deny that by allowing you to wander the world for centuries instead of bringing you here I made you the man you are, chameleon, adaptable, confused? Do you deny that by choosing a man similar in appearance to myself I estimated exactly the effect of such a man on Virgil and on the town of K? Do you deny that I lured you here with the Spectre of Bird-Dog? Do you deny that I have steered a course between the infinite potential presents and futures in order to make this meeting possible? (And then, dropping his voice:) Which of your Lord’s blessings would you deny?

Flapping Eagle was shaken but not wholly convinced. He shook his head.

—Since you do not know how to conceptualize the coordinates of your Dimension, you cannot leave the island, said Grimus. You cannot stay among Kâf’s inhabitants, bearing my face. Your only alternative is suicide, and once I have shown you my marvels you will not wish to do so.

—Show me, said Flapping Eagle.

Flapping Eagle stood in the room he had passed through earlier, the room with veiled objects on podia, wondering what he found most alarming about Grimus. He decided it was the childishness underlying his whole so-called Grand Design, the fulfilment of every half-formed whim, and the strangely infantile rituals he devised to amuse him, like this so-called Dance. Grimus: a baby with a bomb. Or a whole veiled arsenal of bombs. On pedestals.

—The second part of the Dance, Grimus twittered, is a Dance of Veils. In Which Much That Is Wonderful Is Revealed.

He stood by the first podium, a didactic, particoloured owl.

—Beneath personality, he said, is concealed an essence. The Meta-Physicists of Oxyput VII have perfected a tool for the detection of this essence. I acquired one on my travels. It is based upon a simple concept: that Essences are of two kinds: atomic, complete, static on the one hand, or on the other, ionic, incomplete, dynamic. What might be termed Ions in the Soul. (A short laugh.) The device I am about to show you is called an Ion Eye. It can examine and record the particular Ionic structure of any Dynamic Essence. Through centuries of experimentation, the Oxyputians have analysed the meanings of these Ionic patterns. This knowledge is also at my disposal. I used it to aid me in the conceptualization of none other than a certain Flapping Eagle.

He unveiled the Ion Eye. It was a simple black box. On its front face were rows and rows of tiny glass windows.

—Stand in front of it, please.

Flapping Eagle complied and at once lights appeared in the tiny windows, a complex pattern of lights.

—Your Ionic Pattern, said Grimus, is the strongest destructive pattern I have ever seen. If one were superstitious, one could argue that it is this essence that Mrs Cramm spotted in your palm, this essence which caused your people to mistrust you, this essence which lies at the root of your misfortunes on Kâf Island. For my purposes, it made you an eminently suitable angel of death. You and your sister. Though her pattern is rather less well-defined than yours.

Grimus moved to a pair of pedestals, which stood close together at one end of the room. He unveiled one.

Flapping Eagle found himself looking at the Water-crystal.

—I see you recognize this, said Grimus. Virgil’s diary. Good, good. It was through this that I found you and then tested you with the Ion Eye, through this that I followed you all the way here. But its companion is almost more interesting. It does not occur in Virgil’s diary, because I concealed it from him. It is the Crystal of Potentialities. In it I can examine many potential presents and futures and discover the key moments, the crossroads in time, which guide us down one or the other line of flux. If you understand what I mean by that.

Flapping Eagle shook his head—no—as he stared at the second, unveiled crystal globe. This was filled, not with water, but with a kind of smoke.

—I’m afraid you always see through a bit of a haze, said Grimus. Ah, but you do not understand. Let me refer to incidents you yourself remember. Twice in the very recent past, you have experienced crossroad-points. For instance. Had I not conceptualized a protective barrier around you, you would no doubt have drowned as you floated in to the island. Obviously I allowed some water to enter your system. Verisimilitude is important. And a second moment: when you unconsciously spoke the name Elfrina to La Cherkassova. I’m sure you perceived how that one small moment changed the course of your life. Though it is fair to say that if you hadn’t made it so easy for me I’d have had to find another way of detaching you…. Anyhow. You see what I mean. Crossroad points. I have been husbanding you—and others—along the right road for a very long time now. That is what I mean when I say I have made you. I have been constructing the Perfect Dimension, in which everything goes according to plan.

You will say: it didn’t. I didn’t anticipate the treachery of Nicholas Deggle. To which I reply: one of the greatest qualities of a well-formed Concept is flexibility. One can turn disadvantages into advantages. Thus Deggle’s expulsion became a simple way of drawing you into the net. Thus the K-people’s dislike of me helped them to react correctly towards you. (Though by denying them access to the Rose I would have fostered that dislike anyway.)

—You denied them the Rose, said Flapping Eagle.

—Naturally, said Grimus. For one thing, it had nothing to do with their reasons for being here. Immortality was their choice, not exploration. The Rose was mine.

—And Virgil’s, said Flapping Eagle. Grimus ignored him.

—This is the Perfect Dimension, he said. In another potential Dimension, you never came to Calf Island. In another, I never found the Stone Rose. In yet another, I continue to live, for ever, prisoner to my own ideas. But here, it must all be as I intended it.

His hands were working feverishly now, his voice was piercingly shrill.

—Supposing I had succumbed to Dimension-fever? asked Flapping Eagle.

—You couldn’t possibly, said Grimus. Your Ions were too strong. Notice the means you used to vanquish your monster: Chaos. The true weapon of the destroyer. Your unconscious mind knew exactly what it was doing.

—There was a risk, said Flapping Eagle.

—Nonsense, said Grimus. With Virgil Jones, the Gorf Koax as well as myself looking over your shoulder? Nonsense. You played your hand well, though, I don’t deny you that.

Something snapped inside Flapping Eagle at the sight of that face, so much his own and yet so little his own, smiling at him benignly. Or perhaps it would be more exact to say that a number of things fell into place. An old, old memory stirred: the memory of a man searching for a voice in which to speak. Flapping Eagle, in the company of the orchestrator of his life, had finally found such a voice for himself.

—Played my hand well, he repeated with quiet fury. A revealing metaphor, don’t you think? The Stone Rose has warped you, Grimus; its knowledge has made you as twisted, as eaten away by power-lust, as its effect has stunted and deformed the lives of the people you brought here. This is a game, isn’t it, a game you’re enjoying? An infinity of continua, of possibilities both present and future, the free-play of time itself, bent and shaped into a zoo for your personal enjoyment. Yes, you have made me, I grant it. Yes, you have brought me here in the condition you wanted for the lunatic purpose you envisaged. You are so far removed from the pains and tormented of the world you left and the world you made that you can even see death as an academic exercise. You can plan your own death as a kind of perfect game of chess. But in the end it all depends on me, Grimus, in some way which you haven’t yet explained. It all hangs on my choice and I tell you now I am not going to play. Virgil asked me to destroy the Stone Rose. I am now convinced he was right. It has already shattered too many lives. Too many possibilities of happiness. I said it to the goddess Axona in my fever and I say it to you: Grimus, I shall destroy you if I can.

Grimus applauded gravely.

—Ah, a spirited death, he said. Good. Good.

Flapping Eagle gathered his strength to do—what?— he could not form any plan. He stood helplessly, clutching his ju-ju stick, as Grimus laughed.

—I shall destroy you, repeated Flapping Eagle, but not in the way you want. I will not assume your mantle.

Grimus said: —I think it’s almost time to tell you my plan for my death, which is, of course, my plan for you. But before I do, I should like to set at rest certain misapprehensions you appear to be fostering. Please follow me.

He went through the door into the Kâf-room, the empty area with the letter Kâf on a wall. Flapping Eagle followed, seeing no reason not to. He still needed Grimus, needed him to find the Stone Rose.

—You say I am detached from my creation, said Grimus. This room will bear witness I am not. And who do you think it is that watches over K? Do you not think those aged houses would have fallen down by now? Do you not think that much-tilled soil would be exhausted by now? Did you ever wonder why Mr Gribb never ran out of paper or where the metal hinges which held the doors on were made? The truth is, Flapping Eagle, a Conceptual Dimension like Calf Island needs constant fostering and Re-Conceptualizing at regular intervals, in order to preserve its existence. If I am to die without a successor the island will crumble. You have to take my place.

—You said this room was to bear witness, said Flapping Eagle.

—Yes, yes, said Grimus, showing a trace of irritation. Very well. Think of anywhere on the island. Anywhere at all.

—Just think about it? asked Flapping Eagle, wondering what was coming.

—Yes. Think hard.

Flapping Eagle found the picture of Dolores’ house forming in his mind. It would be interesting to see what had become of her…

And suddenly they were there. In the cottage. The cottage was here, in the room, in Grimushome. The jigsaw, there. The pot of root-tea, there. The rocking-chair, there…

In the rocking-chair, Nicholas Deggle.

—He can’t see us, said Grimus.

—How are you doing this? Flapping Eagle’s voice was unsteady again.

—An adjustment of the Rose. I use it to keep watch on the island when I’m tired of using the Watercrystal. So much more detail here. By the way, Dolores O’Toole is dead.

The scene faded. Once more, an empty room.

—You see, said Grimus. I’m not really out of touch.

No, thought Flapping Eagle. You have reduced all other lives to the same level of unreality as your own. They are fictions now, illusions called up by Conceptualizing and the Rose… they cannot move you in this form. They don’t affect you. Aloud he said: —I disagree.

Grimus turned and walked from the room in that stylized bird-gait of his.

—The third part of the Dance will now begin, he said. I shall explain the manner of my death.

Flapping Eagle, seated once more in the rocking-chair. Grimus, circling around him once more.

—Grimus, said Flapping Eagle. Some questions.

—Questions? Good. Good.

—Why does the Effect leave you unscathed?

—Good question, said Grimus, and fell silent. It was as though he was thinking of the answer.

Eventually he said: —I was once a prisoner of war. Every day I feared I would be killed. It was that kind of war. I sat in trucks with dozens of others and they drove us to the execution-ground and blindfolded us. We heard soldiers coming, orders to aim … the bullets did not come. It was an expert torture. And sometimes, just to keep us believing, they really did shoot people. But it was the torture they liked. Some people died of heart attacks. Not me. I learnt two things about myself: first, that it was a matter of the utmost aportance to me whether my body lived or died. Second, that at some future time, I wanted to be the one to organize my life. Exactly as I wished it.

And so you built your own prison, thought Flapping Eagle.

—Aportance? he said.

—When a thing is neither important nor unimportant, said Grimus, when, in fact the concept of importance ceases to have meaning, you have understood aportance. This is why the Inner Dimensions could not hurt me: I am pliable, willing to believe anything, willing to accept any new horror, any vile truth about myself. I have no secrets from myself. So I can live with the Inner Dimensions. They coexist with my conscious self, continually. Do you see?

—Yes, said Flapping Eagle. I see.

—Another question, said Grimus. One tells one’s Death everything.

—Yes. Just one more. (I’ll reserve the blinks for a better moment. There will be a better moment, he told himself.)

—All the people on the island, he said, seem to come from a time roughly contemporaneous with the time I took the Elixir. So do you, in fact.

—Observant of you, said Grimus. Several reasons, really. One, I didn’t want to cause vast social problems by combining cavemen and astronauts. Two, I find my own time a great deal more interesting than either the past or the future. And three, it proved easiest to transport people from parallel dimensions if one fixed upon a constant time. Made the settings easier and so forth. No more questions?

—Yes, said Flapping Eagle, remembering.

Grimus clucked his tongue in admonition. —Such mental imprecision, he said.

—Don’t you consider your Experiment to have been a failure since the Effect has changed its course so completely?

He kept his voice deliberately level, abstract.

—Not at all, said Grimus. Good question. Not at all. My, you ask good questions. (Again, a slight feeling that something had got under his skin.) It merely changed the nature of the experiment. And helped with the necessary alienation. It is important that K should dislike me. For my Death, you know. For my Death.

—All right, said Flapping Eagle, seeing no alternative.

Tell me about it.

—Simple, said Grimus. I have put Bird-Dog through a course of deep hypnosis. At a given command she will Travel to Liv’s house. I shall of course open the Gate. She is instructed to tell Liv she hates me—and for the sake of verisimilitude I have abused her for centuries, so she shouldn’t find it too difficult to obey the post-hypnotic suggestion. She hates me and wants me killed. Liv, of course, has had her hate of me (carefully-nurtured by me, might I add) revived recently by her adventure with you. Obviously she knows, now that she is no longer in her trance, that her plan misfired somewhat, her sexual revenge I mean. So she will be very bitter, and will agree. The flux-lines say she will. I have examined them. Free will really is an illusion, you know. People behave according to the flux-lines of their potential futures.

Anyhow. They will attempt to drum up support, being sufficiently in awe of me not to attempt my murder on their own. Here again your mishaps in K were exactly correct. K is now more antagonistic to me than ever. And so we come to my murderers. A fascinating trio. Flann O’Toole is one. The thought of playing Napoleon, of leading an invading army, will be irresistible to him. The second is Peckenpaw. For him it will be a revenge for the death of his friend and a chance to return to the chase, the thrill of the chase. The third is more unlikely, perhaps. Mr Moonshy will join the merry band. He will tell himself it is to free the island from tyranny. Perhaps it will be. Perhaps he is really more interested in Trina Cherkassova than he allows. Those are the three who will come through the Gate, which I shall leave open. Flann O’Toole, as no doubt you noticed, has very powerful hands.

Strangled’s hands, remembered Flapping Eagle.

—The key figure in all this, said Grimus equably, is Liv. It is her passion which will drive them. Not Bird-Dog’s: she is a Spectre of Grimus. Not their own, for it is tempered with fear. It is Liv who will push them. Thanks to you. Angel of Death. You have prepared the Mountain of Kâf to turn upon the Simurg. And you will be the new master, because I shall have taught you how.

—You really wish to die like that, at the hands of a mob? asked Flapping Eagle.

—Of course, said Grimus with simple insanity. I have planned it for years. It is both psychologically and symbolically satisfying. The period of stability containing the seeds of its own downfall. The cataclysm being followed by a new and very similar order. It is aesthetic. It is right,

Grimus hopped across the room and pulled on a bell-cord. Though it was late at night, Bird-Dog was with them within a minute, panting and out of breath. Again Flapping Eagle felt a helpless rage at seeing his flesh and blood so humbled. Perhaps he, too, was as trapped as Bird-Dog, he thought, and then attempted without success to expunge the thought from his mind.

—Bird-Dog, said Grimus.

—Yes.

—This is my final order to you, said Grimus.

—Yes, said Bird-Dog, starting.

—The Order is Final, said Grimus.

Bird-Dog turned and walked towards the door. Flapping Eagle rushed to her and grasped her by the shoulders. —Don’t go, he said. Fight your conditioning. Say no.

—I want to go, said Bird-Dog quietly. I want him killed.

Grimus laughed happily in the background as Flapping Eagle released his sister. Who walked out of the room and shut the concealed door behind her.

Violence was all Flapping Eagle had left.

—Grimus, he said. If you don’t show me the Stone Rose now I shall happily strangle you myself for what you have done to my sister. Now, before your well-planned death can occur, as you say it will. It will be a miserable, meaningless death, Grimus.

—My, said Grimus. How cross you do get. I was just going to the Rose anyway. I have to set it in order to open the Gate.

He moved to the corner of the room nearest the centre of the house.

And pushed open a second secret door. Inside, at the heart of the house, was the Rose Room.

So that was why the house was such a crazy shape. Its labyrinthine excesses fogged the brain to such an extent that the presence of this small room went completely unnoticed. Flapping Eagle, who had been concentrating on the shape of the house when he arrived, had not even begun to guess at the room’s existence.

—Come, said Grimus. This is the last part of the Dance of Wisdom and Death.

The Stone Rose was actually not a rose at all. Flapping Eagle watched as Grimus set it, as it lay in its coffin in the small secret room, and began to understand.

Around the top of a central shaft, or stem, were a series of thin, star-shaped slabs of stone. Flapping Eagle counted seven such slabs. The top two had four points each, the next eight, the next sixteen, and so forth. Each slab rotated independently around the central stem. Setting the Rose appeared to consist of aligning the slabs in different relationships to each other. This is what Grimus was doing now. About halfway down the Stem, at convenient holding-height, was a sort of bulge.

—In some Dimensions, said Grimus, the Object is different. It varies according to the capabilities of the ruling species, you see. There are settings for space-warp, Travel to parallel dimensions, and so forth.

Flapping Eagle spoke.

—I haven’t changed my mind, Grimus, he said. I am going to break that thing. You can’t control it. It controls you. And then there are the blinks. The Rose is damaged, Grimus. It is dangerous. It has made you dangerous.

Grimus’ eyes gleamed for a moment, then went dull.

—Please, he said, and there was a new pleading tone in his voice. I would like to show you just one more discovery of mine. If it does not persuade you of the enormous value of the Rose, of the importance of preserving it and maintaining it when I am dead, then I will allow you to do whatever you wish. Just one discovery.

Flapping Eagle could not deny him. It was a small thing to concede. Now that he had the Rose in his reach, Grimus could not hold him back. After all, Flapping Eagle told himself, he was armed. Not just with bow and arrow, but with a powerful obligation. To Virgil. To his own, destructive past. This time his Ions could be put to good use: if he was a destroyer, let him at least destroy dangerous things.

Grimus had moved to a darkened corner of the small room. He took a cloth off a small object lying there. It was a transparent, spherical shape with a hançlle on each side. As Grimus picked it up by one of its handles, it began to glow.

—I foresaw I would have great difficulty in getting you to see my point of view, he said. It was for this reason that I conceptualized the Subsumer. If you take the other handle, we can communicate telepathically. Through the medium of this sphere. Are you willing?

Flapping Eagle hesitated for a moment.

—Are you afraid? asked Grimus in a child’s sing-song voice.

Flapping Eagle said: —No. He could take anything which Grimus, the ancient infant, could take. He had already proved the strength of his will, after all.

He put down his ju-ju stick on the edge of the Rose’s coffin and came up to Grimus. Then, taking a deep breath, he grasped the proferred handle of the—what was it?— the Subsumer.

The last thing he remembered as Flapping Eagle was Grimus’ high, shrill voice saying delightedly: —My old mother always told me, you’ve got to trick people into accepting new ideas.

(I was Flapping Eagle.)

(I was Grimus.)

Self. My self. Myself and he alone. Myself and his self in the glowing bowl. Yes, it was like that. Myself and himself pouring out of ourselves into the glowing bowl.

Easy does it. You swallow me, I swallow you. Mingle, commingle. Come mingle. Grow together, come. You into me into you. His thoughts.

Yes, it was like that, Printing. Like printing. Press, his thoughts pressed over mine, under mine, through and into mine, his thoughts mine. Mine his. The swallow is a graceful bird. Two swallows, and then one half-eagle-half-him and the other half-him-half-eagle. Yes, it was like that. We were one there in the glowing bowl, two here in the flesh. Yes.

My son. The mind of Grimus rushing to me. You are my son, I give you my life. I have become you, I have become you are me. The mind of Grimus, rushing through. The mandarin monk released into me in an orgasm of thinking. The halfbreed, semisemitic prisoner of war and his contradictions, the aportance of self coexisting with the utter necessity of imparting that self, cruel necessity, ineluctable, the mind of Grimus rushing through. Like a beating of wings his self flying in. My son, my son, what father fathered a son like this, as I do in my sterility.

The light faded in the glowing sphere; the transfer was complete. I let go of my handle—my body was mine to command once more. He released his grip as well. The sphere fell.

And shattered on the stone floor.

—Now, he said. Now we are the same. Now you understand.

Mad? What is mad? It would be easy to call him mad, but he is in my head now and I can see his whys. They are not whys which go well into words. The undermining horror of prison camp, the destruction of his human dignity, of his belief in the whole human race; the subsequent burrowing away, away from the world, into books and philosophies and mythologies, until these became his realities, these his friends and companions, and the world was just an awful nightmare; the monkish man finding beauty in birds and stories. And then the Rose and a chance to shape a world and a life and a death exactly as he wanted, and naturally since he had no regard for his species he did not care what he did to them. They had done enough to him. To his birds, he was kind. He gathered them around him and lived out his favourite story, his ornithological myth. Mad? What is mad? To him, ideas were the sole justification for existence; and when he found the knowledge and power to play with his ideas, he could not be stopped. Knowledge corrupts; absolute knowledge corrupts absolutely. Yes, he was mad. But he is in me, and I know him.

There is still an I. An I within me that is not him.

We are at war about the Rose.

—Look, said Grimus. (I was in him as he is in me. The Subsumer works both ways.)

He held up a small mirror, held it against his chest, angled up towards my face.

My hair had become white. It was his face now, his face entirely, his head on my shoulders.

I was Flapping Eagle.

A second secret door, leading into the room where Media slept. This small room, at the very centre of the house, adjoining most of its rooms. Grimus (who was partly Flapping Eagle) led Media by the hand to where I stood, by the coffin which held the Rose.

—Stay here, he said. Look after each other. They will come soon. But even Bird-Dog does not know about this room.

There was fear in his face. I recognized it; it was my fear. It was the me which he had imbibed that was scared of dying.

—You will not harm the Rose now, he said. We are the same.

And he left.

—He’s changed you, she whispered.

Media was looking at me, wide-eyed.

I held her hand. At least she was the same. One constant thing in a transfigured universe.

The Rose. The him in me had a will of its own, and it was forcing me to bow to its wishes. The I in me was weakened, enfeebled by the shock of subsumation. I stood looking at the Rose for a long, long time. The bump on its stem seemed to acquire a great fascination for me, a magnetic attraction. Perhaps it was the him in me which did that.

Suddenly, I grasped the Rose. By the bump. It fitted well into my hand. Then I screamed, and Media screamed. I screamed in pain. She screamed because I disappeared from the room altogether.

I had Travelled.

The pain is caused by one’s first experience of the Outer Dimensions. Suddenly the universe dissolves, and for a fraction of time you are simply a small bundle of energy adrift in a sea of unimaginably vast forces. It is a devastating, agonizing piece of knowledge. Then it—the universe— assembled once again.

When the Gorfs created the Objects which linked the infinity of Conceived and Inconceivable Dimensions, they always included one element which beamed directly to the planet Thera. The bump served that function on the Stone Rose.

I was there, on Thera, beneath the star Nus, at the edge of the Yawy Klim galaxy in the Gorf Nirveesu. In a small airbubble, sitting on a wide flat rock. Being observed.

Outside, yellow sun against black sky, and a number of stone monoliths surrounding me.

—They look like frogs, I thought. Huge stone frogs. (I-me thought it, not I-Grimus. I-Grimus was reserving its powers to fight me over the Rose.)

—Is it Grimus? The thought, unspoken, unformed into words, came into my mind. It was followed by a second, a deeper, wiser thought-form.

—Yes … no … ah, I see. I had the sense of being stripped naked. My mind had been scanned.

—Where are you? I shouted, and the I-Grimus within me told me that these monoliths, lumpy, huge and surrounded in a slight haze, were the most intelligent life-form in any Galaxy, and that the second thought-form had been that of the great thinker Dota himself.

—The non-Grimus element appears to be marginally in command, came a third thought-form.

—Good. Dota again. Listen, he thought at me, slightly too loud, like a man dealing with a stupid foreigner. We are the Gorfs. There then followed a very rapid series of thought-forms which told me the history of tibe race and the Objects.

—We have two great concerns, thought Dota. The first is for the Gorf Koax, who has settled irrelevantly in your Endimions. Should you meet him, kindly let him know that his gross Bad Order has led to his being banned from Thera. He is not welcome here. He stands or falls with your Endimions.

—Ah, I thought.

—Which leads us to our second concern, thought Dota. We are extremely perturbed about Grimus’ misuse of the Rose. It was never intended to be a tool for intra-endimions travel. Nor a magic box for the production of food. It is a flagrant distortion of Conceptual Technology to use the Rose to Conceptualize a packet of (he searched for the right form) coffee.

Most particularly we are worried about the sub-endimions he has set up on the mountain-top. Sub-endimions are Conceptually unsound. A place is either part of an Endimions or it is not. To Conceptualize a place which is both a part of an Endimions and yet secret from it could stretch the Object to disintegration-point. We would like this ridiculous Concept to be dissolved forthwith. That is all. You may return.

I could feel the I-Grimus part of me throbbing angrily at Dota’s reproof. Then I realized there were some questions that could be answered here better than anywhere else.

—Dota, I thought.

—Yes? The thought was curt, the form of a great mind disturbed.

—Are the blinks in our Dimension a result of the mutilation of the Rose?

—We don’t know, came the reply. Yours is the only Object to have been defaced, and the only Endimions which blinks. There may be a cause and effect relationship. There may not. It may be something which should concern you. It may not. We don’t know everything, you understand.

—One more question, I asked. The air in my bubble felt stale. I would have to go soon.

—Well?

—Is it possible to Conceptualize a Dimension … Endimions … which does not contain any Object?

A long pause, in which I felt complex arguments flashing between the assembled Gorfs.

—We cannot be sure, said Dota. For us, the answer would be No, since the very existence of the Endimions relative to us is a function of the Object. But for a dweller in the Endimions … a mental shrug-form followed.

—Goodbye, said Dota’s lieutenant.

I searched in the I-Grimus and found the technique for returning to the Rose. A moment later I stood in the secret room again.

Media looked very relieved!

Flann O’Toole, wearing his Napoleon hat, right hand concealed in his buttoned greatcoat, face whisky-red, climbing the steps. At his side, One-Track Peckenpaw, raccoon hat jammed on, bearskin coat enveloping his bulk, coiled rope hanging over one shoulder, rifle in hand. And behind them, P. S. Moonshy, a glaring-eyed, unshaven clerk. An unlikely trinity of nemesis nearing its goal.

Grimus stood in the shade of the great ash, beside his home, the particoloured head-dress fluttering in the slight breeze, his birds lining his shoulders, clustered around him on the ground, watching over him from the vast spreading branches. His hands twitched; otherwise he was completely still.

And eventually, the four of them stood facing each other, knowing what had to be done.

Grimus said:

—I have learnt all I wish to learn.

I have been all I wish to be.

I am complete.

I have planned this. It is time.

But in his high, shrill voice was the uncertainty of the subsumed Eagle within him, the second self protesting. It had not chosen this death.

Flann O’Toole said: —Where is your machine, Mr Grimus? You kept it a secret from your servant woman, we know that, surely. You’ll not keep it from us.

Grimus said nothing.

—One-Track, said O’Toole, try and persuade the gentleman to converse with us.

A few moments later, when Grimus’ nose was broken, his eyes closing, his skin bruised, and his lips still sealed, O’Toole said: —Don’t kill him, man. Not yet. Peckenpaw released Grimus. Who swayed on his feet as the blood streamed from him, but remained erect. Birds screamed in the tree.

—Search the house, said Flann O’Toole.

One-Track Peckenpaw and P. S. Moonshy went into Grimushome then, but found nothing. They did, however, wreck whatever they could; and when they came out, Grimus’ shrouded collection lay around its pedestals in fragments, the shards of a lifetime’s Travel. The Crystals, broken. The Ion Eye, trodden on and crushed.

Suddenly, as they emerged into the misty dawn light, the whine stopped. Abruptly, without any warning. It was simply no longer there.

Flann O’Toole was watching Grimus; so he saw the face sag, saw the look of horror in the blackened eyes, saw the exhaustion seep through the pain. He saw it, and smiled.

—You found it, then, he said to Peckenpaw.

—We found a whole lot of things, said Peckenpaw. So we broke them all. I dunno what they were.

—O, you found it, said O’Toole. Mr Grimus here has just this minute told me.

Grimus remained silent.

—One more thing, said Peckenpaw. I want Flapping Eagle. Where is he?

Grimus said nothing.

Flann O’Toole put his hands around the battered man’s neck and pressed with his thumbs. —Come now, Mr Grimus, he said. You’ll tell us that, now?

Grimus said: —I expelled him from the island. He is no longer here.

—That is the truth, isn’t it, now? asked O’Toole.

—Reckon so, said Peckenpaw. Nobody in the house. Nobody out here. Flapping Eagle’s a lucky man.

P. S. Moonshy spoke for the first time. —What are we waiting for? he said.

O’Toole favoured him with an amused smile.

—Mr Moonshy is in a hurry, he explained apologetically to Grimus. And now that we have completed our task, there is little point in delaying matters, Mr Grimus. I’d be grateful if you’d stand just here.

He moved Grimus to a position directly under the thickest branch of the tree.

Grimus said: —I have no reason to live. It is planned.

O’Toole smiled. —O, good, he said. Most co-operative of you, Mr Grimus.

Beads of cold sweat mingled with the congealing blood on Grimus’ face.

—Why, Mr Grimus, said Flann O’Toole. I do believe you’re frightened.

—Not I, said Grimus. Him.

—Is there a fire lit anywhere in the house? asked Flann O’Toole.

—I saw one, said Peckenpaw. In the entrance hall.

—Good, said Flann O’Toole.

As the three assassins moved away, down the stone steps, the great ash blazed behind them, and the body of a man, ridiculously small against the trunk to which it had been tied, grew charred and blackened in the flames. Suddenly it fell, as the fire licked through the rope which held it, and lay on the ground as the blaze grew stronger. Branches crashed in showers of sparks and smoke around and over him, forming an incandescent tomb. And around the column of smoke, a great dark cloud of circling, shrieking birds, swooping and shrieking, pronounced his epitaph.

There was no Gate now. Calf Island was one place again. The steps led down to Liv’s house, which was solid, visible. With the end of the whine had come the end of the Sub-dimension. There were no ghosts now.

Bird-Dog sat slumped against the foot of the steps, and stiffened as the three men reached her. They passed her without speaking.

The blackveiled woman came out of her small black house. Bird-Dog watched her speak to the trio, followed O’Toole’s pointing arm to the rising pillar of smoke. Liv nodded, quickly, and went indoors. The assassins continued down the Mountain to K.

A moment later, Liv Sylwan Jones emerged once more. She held a knife in her right hand, a knife which had carved innumerable ugly things from the wood of the encroaching trees. She sat down on the ground.

With the knife in her right hand, and with intense concentration, she slit the vein in her left wrist. Then she transferred the knife to that hand and set about slashing the right wrist, equally methodically.

Bird-Dog came over to her and stood in front of her, saying nothing, silently looking on. Liv Sylwan Jones returned her gaze.

—It’s done now, she said, jerking her head at the column of smoke.

Like Grimus, Liv had chosen her moment of death. Death on the Mountain of Kâf must be chosen. A selected violence against the body.

With exaggerated care, she drew a red line with the knife, a thin, leaking red mouth, grinning bloodily from ear to ear, beneath her chin.

Bird-Dog watched it drip.

A small mound of disturbed earth, freshly-turned, stood in the forest behind the blackwashed house. A wooden carving lay upon it, a distorted, open-mouthed death’s head.

A woman in a black robe, her face hidden behind a black veil, walked away from it, away into the black house, averting her eyes from the rising smoke and sat, perfectly still, upon the one chair, amid the filth and mould, and began to chant an old, half-forgotten, half-remembered Axona hymn to death.

—My God, said Nicholas Deggle.

Virgil Jones turned towards him, slowly.

—The Stem, said Deggle. It’s gone. Quite gone.

He began to search desperately around the small, rickety shack. Virgil hauled himself out of his rocking-chair and went outside.

—Well done, he said, looking up the Mountain. Well done.

Deggle came out to join him. —It’s nowhere to be found, he said.

—The Rose has been broken, said Virgil Jones.

—What do you mean?

—I mean that Flapping Eagle has succeeded. Brilliantly.

Nicholas Deggle charged into the forest.

A while later, he returned, full of bewildered surprise.

—There’s no whine, he said. Nothing. We can go up to K.

—I’m going to the beach, said Virgil Jones.

Mr Virgil Jones, a man devoid of friends and with a tongue rather too large for his mouth, was fond of descending this cliff-path on Tiusday mornings, to indulge his liking for Calf Island’s one small beach. Below him, under the shifting greysilver sands, lay the body of Mrs Dolores O’Toole.

Mr Jones stood, facing away from the sea, looking towards the massive forested rock of Calf Mountain, which occupied most of the island except for the small clearing, directly above the beach, where Mr Jones and Dolores had lived. The body of Mrs O’Toole lay between him and the forested slopes.

—Crestfallen, murmured Mr Jones to himself, with his back to the sea. Crestfallen, the sea today.

Well, well, thought the Gorf Koax. A fascinating new status quo. Flapping Eagle and the girl Media replacing Grimus and Bird-Dog. Bird-Dog replacing Liv. Elfrida Gribb replacing Media. Virgil Jones returned to the foot of the island. And the other, earlier re-orderings: Alexei Cherkassov replacing his father. Mr Moonshy replacing Mr Page.

But most interesting of all is the fate of the Rose. Without it, Flapping Eagle is powerless. He is an exile at the top of the mountain. The peak implies no kind of superiority now.

—What are you going to do? Media had said.

Outside, the assassins faced the feathered Grimus.

Inside, in the secret room, I (I-Eagle) was engaged in a furious battle with the I-Grimus within.

—You must preserve the Rose, said I-Grimus. You need it for the constant re-conceptualization of the island. As I explained. You must preserve the Rose. Relativity holds good even between dimensions. They exist only in conjunction with one another, as functions of one another. Destroy the Rose, and you destroy our link with the Dimensión-continua. We cannot survive that.

—Grimus misused the Rose, remembered I-Eagle. The blinks are proof that it is both damaged and being stretched to breaking-point. We cannot continue to use it as Grimus did.

—The Gorfs made the Rose to link the Dimensions, cried I-Grimus inside me. Break it and you break us. Dota could not conceive of a Dimension without an Object.

—But he said that he could conceive of a Dimension-dweller devising such a Concept, said I-Eagle.

Then the I-Grimus ceased to reason with I-Eagle and flooded me with thought-forms. The Rose enables you to travel, said the forms, and showed I-Eagle a thousand beautiful worlds, a thousand universes to explore. The Rose enables you to learn, said the thought-forms, and revealed a hundred new sciences and a hundred new art-forms, the cream of the infinite galaxies. You have one life, Said the thought-forms. With the Rose you can enter into, and become, a thousand thousand other people, live an infinity of lives, and acquire the wisdom and power to shape your own. And they showed I-Eagle some of the people Grimus had watched and understood, showed the vicarious joys and agonies of countless lives. And one day, said the thought-forms, when you have done all you wished to do, been all you wished to be, you can pass this supreme gift on to another, choose the moment and manner of your going and give the Phoenix a new life, a new beginning.

But I-Eagle had seen too much on Calf Island and outside it, seen too much of the way I-Grimus had ruined lives for the sake of an idea. To I-Grimus ideas, discoveries, learning; these were all-important. I-Eagle saw the centuries of wretched wandering that preceded my arrival, saw the people of K reduced to a blind philosophy of pure survival, clutching obsessively at the shreds of their individuality, knowing within themselves that they were powerless to alter the circumstances in which they lived. The combined force of unlimited power, unlimited learning, and a rarefied, abstract attitude to life which exalted these two into the greatest goals of humanity, was a force I-Eagle could not bring himself to like. I-Eagle saw its effect on Virgil Jones, on Dolores O’Toole, on Liv Jones, on Bird-Dog, his sister even though they had long been estranged. No, I-Eagle thought, the Rose is not the supreme gift.

Then all discussion, whether rational or thought-formal, ceased, and the I-Grimus within released upon I-Eagle the full force of his formidable will. Media saw me (us) stagger and lurch as the war raged within, and she grasped my hand.

Perhaps that was what turned the tide towards I-Eagle. I was not alone. Media was there. Media, one of the many whose lives he had distorted. Media, one of the many to whom I-Eagle felt responsible. The guilt of recent events was still there. I was fighting for the island. He was fighting for himself. And he lost.

Outside, Peckenpaw and Moonshy ransacked the house.

I, I-Eagle, spoke to Media. The I-Grimus had receded within me, a throbbing pain in the back of my head.

—I intend to destroy the Rose, I-Eagle said. I won’t pretend there is no risk. It could unmake us all.

—Grimus’ machine is not worth saving, she said. Do it now. Perhaps it is better to be dead than to live in fear of… this.

I-Eagle nodded and receded once more into my mind, finding the I-Grimus, forcing him to reveal the secrets of the Rose. He was unwilling, knowing why I wanted them, but he was beaten. I found the knowledge within him, and made a setting. Then it was a question of Conceptualization.

First, I-Eagle dismantled the Sub-dimension; that was the easy part. I made a picture grow in my head, a picture of Calf Island as one thing, Grimushome on the peak, the steps leading down to Liv’s outcrop. No Gates, no barriers. I knew when it had worked. It was, in a way, like setting an Inner Dimension. After a while one knew it was there, fixed, as one had thought it. For a moment I was lost in admiration of this Object, so incredibly complex, so incredibly simple. Then I collected myself and set about the harder task.

I began to re-create Calf Island, exactly as it was, with one difference: it was to contain no Rose. I had decided that this was a better alternative than physically breaking the Rose. Less risky, in view of what had happened after Deggle’s attempt.

It was now that the I-Grimus made its last attempt. It showed me something I had forgotten it knew: the coordinates of my Dimension, to which he had expelled Nicholas Deggle so long ago. The meaning was simple: if I chose not to destroy the Rose, I could go back to my own world. I-Grimus preferred to go, with I-Eagle, far away from the Rose, perhaps never to find its counterpart in my Dimension, rather than see it destroyed.

I-Eagle cannot say I was not tempted; but then there was Media again, Media and the rest of them, depending on me.

—O, hell, I said aloud. What would I do there anyway?

And the I-Grimus had no tricks left.

I used him. He had shaped the island in the first place, so he knew it best. I drew his knowledge out of him and used it. It seemed like an eternity, but thought-forms move quicker than anything ever known, so it was actually over very soon.

I stood in the secret room with an awe-struck Media, looking down at the coffin of the Stone Rose.

It was empty.

The Rose had gone, and we had not.

The man who had been Flapping Eagle and was now part-Eagle, part-Grimus, was making love to Media, who had been a whore and was now his mainstay, when the Gorf Koax, who had transported himself to the peak of Calf Mountain, sensed something wrong.

The mists around the island.

The mists which circled and shrouded.

The eternal, unlifting veils.

The mists were growing thicker. Slowly, slowly, they were descending, closing in upon the island on all sides, closer, closer, a dense grey fog now, closing, closing.

And they were not mists.

Deprived of its connection with all relative Dimensions, the world of Calf Mountain was slowly unmaking itself, its molecules and atoms breaking, dissolving, quietly vanishing into primal, unmade energy. The raw material of being was claiming its own.

So that, as Flapping Eagle and Media writhed upon their bed, the Mountain of Grimus danced the Weakdance to the end.