Part 8 (2/2)

Huvan smiles. He is keeping a secret from her, and very pleased with himself he is too. 'That is not dead which can eternal lie,' he says cryptically. 'Waiting for me...'

'Huvan!'

Instantly, the boy is back with her. That feverish stare running up and down her body. 'Don't worry Romana, nothing will happen to you.'

'I'm sorry to say this, Huvan, but you're young. I mean, how do you know Mr Neville isn't trying to trick you too?'

Huvan snorts. For once his arrogance overcomes his awe.

Something is definitely out of kilter with this boy.

Adolescence is one thing, but Romana is beginning to think he is much more hysterical than is normal even for that.

'Young? What do you know? Do you think I'm some sort of kid?'

He is up off the bed, advancing towards her. Romana backs away. Indeed, he shows distinct signs of a deep-rooted ego-deficiency complex. Huvan barks at her, eyes wide and red-rimmed 'How old do you think I am? Eh?'

'I wouldn't like to say. You're obviously mature for your years...'

'How many years?'

Romana feels the cold, black-painted wall against her back.

'I don't know fifteen, sixteen...'

He is glaring right into her face. She feels the hot, lemon breath on her lips. 'I am thirty-four years old,' he states, ever so proud of himself.

Chapter Five.

In the morning, Ponch does not feel well. In fact, he feels like someone has been kicking him repeatedly in the head.

Perhaps someone did, he can't remember. That G.o.dless cam'rale, scourge of the Black Mountains. There should be a law, except there aren't any laws.

He finds himself in a corner of the Janua Foris, wrapped in a blanket. He stands, head drumming, and walks out into the morning. The dry cold air helps him feel a little better as he coughs out the wreckage from last night. The feeble sun is brightening, filtered through the watery sky.

Already the fights have started, out in the tundra, where the ruins of last year's towns.h.i.+p lie like some charcoal skeleton. Fights about furs, fights about money let's face it, fights about anything they can think of.

They have a season before the guild sleds appear, twinkling on the horizon. Ponch has always feared these gigantic metal slugs, their annual crawl over the mountains. Their huge metal hands that grab at the precious furs, greedily bundling them deep inside themselves, as if their mysterious masters can no longer wait; they must have them now. NOW!

He wonders who they are, these guild procurers. What they look like, how they live. He has never wondered this before.

The woman! Miranda Pelham (for Ponch is sure it is she).

How could he forget?

Ponch rushes back through the growing streets, past the trappers who eye him with suspicion. Many grasp their fur bundles close to themselves, as if he's going to steal them.

He races into the inn to find it empty. There is no one around. The fog in his head is bright with the tips of icebergs-nuggets of the story Pelham was telling.

He can't believe he missed the end, it had only just got started.

It is not the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs of the story that have worked on Ponch the funny Doctor, the floating golden palace, the silly lovers in their draperies. It is something else, something he can't quite place or remember. He feels that, somehow, the woman made it clear that the events on Ashkellia (and it's amazing how real that name is to him, more real than his own world, which he never knew even had a name) are related to events in his life, here in this frozen waste. He feels he is undergoing some test, some mystery he must solve. He feels compelled to prove himself worthy.

She is nowhere to be found. He looks and looks but finds no trace that she was ever here. He feels aggrieved, he has better things to be doing, work on his furs that must be completed. This inertia towards the tasks he has performed for his whole life cannot be allowed. He will die if he comes in below quota.

Ponch sits in the snow and thinks about the story. His head reminds him it was his own fault he missed the end.

What a fool!

'Something on your mind?' asks the woman. She is there, sitting next to him, laboured breath falling in droplets from her mouth. In the light she appears almost see-through, ethereal as the ghosts reputed to haunt the foothills he is staring at. Her white furs and the snow contrast with the brown seams of her face.

'I never heard the end,' he says mournfully.

The woman smiles, at her own private joke. 'I never got to the end. Perhaps there is no end.'

'I thought...'

'The story is for you, Ponch. For your ears. It ends when you end it.'

Miranda Pelham raises an arm and points at the sun. 'I am old, Ponch. This sun, also. I sometimes believe this is the last sun.'

He tries to listen, understanding some, the rest dangling just out of his reach. She continues.

'Centuries ago, philosophers and scientists often thought about the end of all things. The physical universe, time itself, ceasing to be.'

'You mean dying?'

'I mean ending, Ponch. The way a story ends, complete, all thematic possibilities explored and exhausted. Universal heat death, some said, and you never know, they may even have been right. I sit here in the cold and think. The last humans, light years and millennia from home. Humanity's end.'

'I don't understand.'

She places a hand on his. The flesh is withered but surprisingly warm. Ponch is entranced by her eyes. 'It doesn't matter. Understanding is incomplete. It's part of the answer, perhaps most of it, but governed by the conscious. And the conscious is such a small thing. The story of the Doctor and the tomb of Valdemar, I think you already know some of why I tell it. I can see it in you, Ponch.'

Quite simply, Ponch doesn't have the faintest idea of what she is going on about. There's no need for the complications.

Part of him just wants to kill her and get them out of the way.

At last, at last, he manages, 'Why does it all have to be so difficult? When we speak to each other, the trappers, we speak plain. What happened, what will happen. Why can't you tell me like that?'

'Why not? Fair enough, my way irritates the h.e.l.l out of some but whoever wanted things to be easy? I might also answer that some of what I say cannot be told easily. That you must make your own meaning. When the time comes, and you are ready, you will understand.'

'If it's a story, you should have more fighting and killing.

Otherwise it's just not interesting. What sort of answer is that?'

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