by Guy Haley
"It's that way," said Richards. "Trust me, I have retained a link into the skin of the world. I can feel Rolston through it. He's over there." He pointed into the mist. "Somewhere."
"Oh, puh-lease," said the bear, walking on. Richards did not follow. "Stay here and sulk if you like," the toy called back, "but I'm going this way. I'm not sticking about on these moors till my stitching rots. I'm positive this is the right way."
"Well, I'm not," said Richards. "Not in the slightest. I defy even you to find your way off these moors."
"We'll see about that. I'm the brains of this outfit."
"Your head's full of stuffing."
"That's as may be, but it's better than what's in your head." The bear stopped and looked back. "Shit for brains," he said, and looked immensely pleased with himself.
"That's just juvenile," said Richards. "Come on! Pl'anna told me that Rolston was in Pylon City. He's that way." Bear squelched as he walked away. "Look, we both want to get there!"
"It's not that wa-ay!" sang Bear.
"Even if he's not there, we should go and find him!" said Richards. The bear carried on walking.
"Oh, for fuck's sake!" Richards swore. "Come back!"
"No."
Richards began a long tirade aimed at the back of the soft toy.
"I'd save your breath if I were you," said Tarquin. "He strikes me as rather pig-headed."
"Are you being funny?" said Richards. He was cold and annoyed.
"No, no, perish the thought," said the lionskin. "I'd never try to cheer myself up. Best dwell on my new status as outerwear with a frown, don't you think?" the lion grumbled. "It's perhaps best that we don't go to Pylon City anyway. The pylons have been here for a lot longer than most things here."
"They're from Reality 19, the Dragon Era game cycles," said Richards shortly.
"If you say so. I am a creature of this place, I lack your useful external perspective. As far as I am concerned the pagoda was part of a land now long dead, shattered some time past by Lord Penumbra's armies. There are pylons like it everywhere. That tower was evil. It sucked me in. Though I was told never, ever to go there as a cub, I did."
"Curiosity skinned the cat, eh?" said Richards.
"That is very unkind and also a mixed metaphor. It's not surprising really, that even a mighty being such as myself should be so bewitched. Legend has it that it was the only remnant of an ancient civilisation. All other trace of it had been completely wiped away by time. But the Dragon Tower remained. Too evil to die, apparently. That is how he trapped me."
"Or you're just exceedingly gullible. Are lions as bright as dogs? I always wondered that," said Richards
The lion growled. "How was I to know I was going to spend two hundred years as a fence post? I couldn't escape, and that dwarf could turn me to stone any time he wanted, it was child's play to him! Child's play!" The lion let out a low rumble, making Richards acutely aware he was wearing a dangerous carnivore round his neck.
"Sorry," said Richards. "I'm tired and cold and hungry, none of which I have much experience with. It's all a bit wacky, and none of it is real, which is irritating."
"And you are?" said the lion archly.
"Point taken," conceded Richards.
"Listen to me," said Tarquin. "People went into that tower and they didn't come out as people. Circus herded them into boxes as pigs. They went off on the cable. They came back as pork. Many use the cables for their own purposes, like in Pylon City, but mark my words, they all hide tight away when the black boxes of Lord Hog come through."
"Ah, look," said Richards, who wasn't really paying attention. The big bear had stopped. "Bloody animal!" said Richards, and ran after him.
"OK, Richards," whispered Bear, "I agree, I'm sorry, I'm wrong. Let's go your way. I don't like this way." He pointed at a shape in the mist.
"Eh? But that's just a sheep or something," said Richards peering at it. "Sheep aren't going to hurt a big…".
"Just shut up and run!" hissed Bear.
"There will be no running, not now or during any part of the course of my presidency," said an American voice. An animal came out of the mist, panting happily. Mostly it was some kind of large boxer dog, all lean and eager. Mostly, apart from the head.
"Is that just me," said Richards, "or does that dog have the head of President Nixon?" He folded his arms.
"It's certainly not its own head," replied Bear hoarsely, and stood behind Richards, beans rattling as he shook.
"Grrr! Rufff!" said President Nixon. "There will be no whitewash at the White House."
"Hit it, Mr Richards! Hit it, ooh, it gives me the fear."
"If you're so bothered, you hit it," said Richards.
"You don't win campaigns with a diet of dishwater and milk," said Nixon, baring its teeth. It came closer, the oversized head wobbling comically on the body's slender neck.
"This is interesting," said Richards. "Hello, boy," he said to the dog in that ludicrous voice that people speak to dogs in.
Bear wailed. "Keep it away! Keep it away! That thing gives me the horrors."
"You cannot win a battle in any arena merely by defending yourself!" said Nixon. "Ruff! Ruff!" barked the former president of the United States, a loop of drool hanging from his dewflaps. "Communist leaders believe in Lenin's precept: Probe with bayonets. If you encounter mush, proceed; if you encounter steel, withdraw." It bared its fangs further. Richards frowned. Nixon's two canine teeth were long and yellow. Not dirty-teeth yellow, but bright, thermonuclear yellow. The familiar tripartite symbol on each tooth's tip confirmed it.
"Back off, Fido," said Bear.
"The US government will not bow down to threats. Grrr."
"Save it, sergeant. Let's take this easy. This thing has nuclear teeth."
"That bad?"
"Very, very bad indeed. The last thing we want to do is to detonate this dog. Big boom."
"Apocalyptic type boom or firework type boom?"
"The former. I've been blown up by atom bomb before, it's not fun, so stay calm."
"Ah. OK," Bear rattled.
Nixon retreated and sat. It scratched furiously behind an ear. Then it shook its head, jowls flapping. Strings of dog spit went everywhere. Its collar came off and dropped to the floor.
"What's it doing?" said Bear nervously.
"How the hell should I know?"
The man-dog pushed the collar closer to Richards with its nose, then backed off. "Nixon good boy," it said as it sank back onto its haunches. "Nixon good president."
"Are you going to pick it up then?" said Bear.
"Yes! Yes! For fuck's sake, I'm thinking. Leave me alone."
"It's just sitting there staring at us. Pick it up."
"You pick it up," said Richards.
"It quite obviously gave it to you," said Bear nudging him. The dog growled.
"Good boy!" said Richards. "Good Mr President!" Not taking his eyes off Nixon's face, he crouched down and picked up the collar.
"Eh? A message."
"Where?"
"Here," said Richards, pulling it out, "on the inside."
"Well, what does it say?"
"Will you just give me a chance?" Richards said testily. Nixon looked at them without interest.
"I'm sorry, but that thing gives me the horrors."
"You said that already."
"I always repeat myself when I've got the horrors," said Bear. "It doesn't happen often, I swear." He shifted his weight. "What does it say?"
"Don't you get at me because you're embarrassed." Richards broke the seal and unrolled the missive.
"Dear Richards," the letter said. "Follow the dog. Yours, Rolston."
"Hmmm. Be careful. I don't like the sound of this Rolston fellow," said Bear. Nixon's ears pricked up at the name of his master, and the wind blew a little chiller. "I mean, anyone who has that for a pet can't be entirely on the straight and narrow."
"To be honest, pal, I never really thought Rolston was on the straight and narr
ow," said Richards. "He's got a bizarre sense of humour, and gets involved in some seriously weird shit, this construct notwithstanding, but talking to him will help me clear this up more quickly."
"Hmmm," said Bear.
"Do you actually know where you are going?"
Bear's shoulders sagged. "Um, no. No I don't."
"Well then. Lay on, MacNixon," Richards said to the dog.
"OK, pinko commies. Heel," said the dog.
They followed the dog. It trotted tirelessly, humming "The Star Spangled Banner". Night grew darker. Although Richards and Bear found walking on the springy heather tiring, they did not stop.
The mist cleared, and the sun came up. By noon they came across a lonely sign of habitation. A crossroads cut into the brown and purple of the heather, two sets of parallel quartz and mica ruts, a stripe of grass between them. Where the roads crossed, they formed a glittery X of sand in the landscape.
"That way," said the dog, pointing with its nose down the road leading to the southeast. "Goodbye," said Nixon, and left. As he walked away from the road, back the way they had come, he faded away as he would were he retreating into the mist, though the day was clear as a bell.
"Nixon good boy," said the dead president as he blended into the world. "Nixon good president." The world closed behind him. "I would have made a good pope," came a faint voice, then he was gone.
"Yeah," said Richards, "Maybe a Borgia."
"Grrr," shuddered Bear.
"Here we go," said Richards with satisfaction, pointing to a weathered sign. "Pylon City."
"Nobody likes a smartarse, sunshine," said the bear and let out a shuddery sigh. He reset his helmet. "Just remember, you're still in my custody."
The land dropped until they left the moors behind. Tussocky grass scattered with stunted trees replaced the heather. They crossed a bald stripe of rock, a fault line like a scar where Richards surmised one fragment of a world had been artlessly welded to another, and over it the landscape changed utterly and immediately into a plateau pockmarked by industry.
"This look like a join to you?" said Richards as they crossed it. "Looks like one to me."
The bear did not reply. He was doing his best to look vigilant and dangerous.
Tracks ran among spoil heaps, some well used, some not, leading to machines in various states of disrepair. A narrow-gauge railway came in from the left to run parallel to the road, while the road itself became wider. By the time Richards and Bear were close enough to make out the city in the distance, it was a broad highway of iron plates.
"Aha!" said Bear. "Pylon City."
"Told you," said Richards.
"Shut it, fucko," said Bear.
The road ran to the edge of a steep valley and turned to follow its lip. From below, the shouts of a playful river echoed. The eastern side, lower by some two hundred feet, was cloaked in impenetrable forest, another abrupt change in landscape. The valley divided two worlds, one brown and dead, the other green and lush. The chasm was deep; evening took hold there a full hour before the sun touched the moors. When Richards and Bear reached the dusk-kissed walls of Pylon City the valley was dim with night, and the slag-heaps about the city cast shadows as black as those of pyramids.
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?"
"Th
ey'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.