Cloud Castles (2 page)

I tossed the magazine aside and checked my little computer. The fax dump was choked with messages; so was the answering machine facility – congratulations all. Tapping a few keys dumped them down the line to home office for my PA team to answer. But as I broke contact a window flashed up suddenly in the centre of the screen, the format reserved for urgent system warnings. I peered closer at the glaring red pixels.

Interface what with what? I’d never seen this one before. I was pretty sure this machine didn’t have any such ports, let alone any means of interfacing them. A joke? A virus, maybe? It had a suggestion of hidden meaning,
double entendre
, even. More probably I’d accidentally triggered some redundant developers’ instruction left lying around in the operating software. I touched the
OK
icon, and the frame faded; but with
the persistence of liquid crystals the bare letters lingered an instant like fading fires. I shut the lid and went off to shower and change.

By rights I should have forgotten the whole thing. But an hour later, duly showered, changed into casuals and armed with a great big gin and tonic, I was still brooding about it – if only because I had something worse to brood over when I stopped. The hotel bar terrace was empty – hardly surprising. The management had done its best with marble and shrubs and striped awnings, but they couldn’t gloss over the car park annexe beyond, and the grotty row of dwarf conifers marking its boundary with the hotel next door, a better view than the multi-lane road out front, but not much. Still, it was peaceful; and at least the car park opened up a great swathe of unobstructed sky. After days stuck in the exhibition centre the sheer sight of it eased my claustrophobia wonderfully. I ordered another g and t, and settled back to admire.

Above the stunted treelets the clouds came surging up in steep walls of blazing white shot with deep grey, unstained by the smokes of human stupidity. In the crisp air of early autumn, still faintly sun warmed, they loomed stark and solid against one of those darker azures that draw the eye into infinity. It’s common enough to see patterns in the clouds, but this one stood out clear as a painting. To either side they became high craggy rock-faces, higher on the right and linked by a striated slope soaring to a level summit, the base of a flattened V. You could almost believe you were looking up a broad road curving between high cliffs towards the crest of a mighty mountain pass, and rearing above it, like a sentinel, the summit of a white tower. The falling sun tinged tower and path a fiery pink. A dramatic backdrop, fit for a great drama, a film or an opera or something; yet nature and chance alone had created it in minutes, and in minutes more it would be gone.

It reminded me that at least I could slip away for a few days’ climbing now, though I’d be lucky to find anywhere that unspoilt. A few days? I could spend the rest of my life climbing. I was a success now – wasn’t I?

I’d built up our shipping firm so well that when Barry retired early the step from deputy to managing director was almost automatic, young as I was. But now my friend and deputy Dave was running things better than I ever did, and
what was I? A figurehead. Not that he meant to cut me out. For all his usual disrespectful banter, he still deferred to me over anything I chose to take an interest in, sometimes almost embarrassingly. But wherever I looked, I found his hand firmly on the tiller, steering the whole enterprise with the cheerful autocracy he’d inherited from his West African chieftain ancestors – and this while bringing up a big family into the bargain. He was everything I’d tried to be, and more; my solutions had been good, his were better, and I began to understand why Barry had quit. But I was barely past forty, fit and fond of my work – what else did I have to love, after all? Over the years I’d had ideas about how our business really ought to operate – crazy ones, mostly, but I’d begun to fiddle with them, and …

And suddenly C-Tran was a reality in seventeen countries, ready to launch in ten more, with a massive expansion programme to spin its web out beyond Europe to envelop the world. But not in my hands. It had gone beyond me and my vision now, beyond any one man’s control. All I had to do was give interviews, chair the odd consortium meeting and rake in the cash with both hands. That was my success, one mighty bound, from helmsman to figurehead again. Not all the millions would give me the satisfaction I’d got from the bagful of battered guineas,
moidores, reales
and soft Spanish ounces I’d held as hard-won profit in my first trading voyage on those stranger, wider oceans that flowed between the worlds of the Spiral. That had been two years ago, when the growing pains of the new system had pressed in on me. In desperation I’d fled, crossed the threshold and found old friends, a captain and crew and goods to trade from one strange port to another. Then just a year later I’d done the same again, this time as my own captain on a longer haul. Longer, more perilous and this time with less profit, but it was a start.

Twice before I’d been driven to seek the Spiral, once by chance and curiosity, once by need. Now I wasn’t driven, but drawn – and the pull was tearing me in two. What did I have to live for, stuck here like a maggot in the Core, when out there was a universe of infinite possibilities? The Core paled before its fierce bold colours. But this world I knew, I could control – as far as men can, and better than most. And the Spiral had a curious way of magnifying both strengths
and weaknesses. Better I solve my problems here, or out there they might rise up and overwhelm me.

After all, I knew what the worst one was. Here or there, Core or Spiral, I was alone. The stupidity, the guilt, the cold emptiness of my past life I’d thrown off. I’d resolved to live again, to make real friends, relate, marry even. But I was past forty now, and they lied when they said I didn’t look it; I did, from inside. And I was used to living my work, eating and sleeping it, too. Not a good start. And the Spiral itself got in my way. How could I explain a double life like that? Or involve any woman I knew? Claire and Jacquie, they’d both seen it. They’d both backed off from it, and from me. By now, no doubt, they’d forgotten; people did. There were women out on the Spiral, in plenty; but lasting relationships were rare in that shifting melee of space and time, where to stop for too long was to lose memory and mire down in dull mortality once again.

I drained my glass angrily, and the dregs were bitter. I stared at those clouds, at that great insubstantial barrier, and longed to escape there, wished as deeply as I’d ever wished that I could just go running up and over that pass and out into the wild blue yonder, to lose my restless self in infinity.

The waiter put down another glass, though I didn’t remember ordering. But I didn’t touch it. As I turned to read the bar chit a movement caught my eye, a splash of white, as if those scrubby tree-tops had torn loose a fragment of cloud. But as my eyes focused, my mind blurred. It was a horse, and a pretty big one by the look of it. A grey – which is to say pure, dazzling white – just standing there, with neither rider nor groom nor anybody else in sight. Saddled, bridled, but neither tethered nor hobbled, it calmly lowered its head and began to browse on the meagre grass patch under the trees.

I glanced around again; there really was nobody about. The animal must have strayed from somewhere – a trade-fair presentation, most likely. Thank God our agency’d settled for a big-name dance troupe and some really impressive audio-visuals. Over the last couple of weeks I’d seen others rope in everything from strippers to hippos. Anyhow, somebody ought to do something before the poor animal strayed out onto the
Autobahn
, or encountered one of the car-park speed merchants; and I liked horses. Scooping up a handful of
sugar lumps from the bowl on the table, I vaulted over the rail and made my way across the tarmac with studied ease, careful not to alarm.

I needn’t have bothered. It looked up and saw me, tossed its head a little and just stood there, as if waiting. ‘You’re a tall fellow, aren’t you?’ I said quietly, and the closer I got, the bigger it looked – not as bulky as a Shire or Percheron, but tall and solid, like a very large hunter. I couldn’t name the breed; there was nothing of the Arab or Lippizaner about that long head. The tackle was strange, too: heavy and ornamented, with a high-pommelled saddle, but not cowboy style, more oriental, if anything. I peeled the paper off the long sugar lumps; it sniffed them and took them with a delicate curl of the lip, and let me stroke its slab-muscled neck and shoulder; it felt well fed, well groomed. But then it looked around and snorted, as if to say,
Well – what’re you waiting for?

This was no stray publicity fodder. This had the smell of the Spiral about it – of magic, and of mystery. And the Spiral could be a horribly dangerous place. But right then I didn’t give a damn. I tried the girth, and it was rock firm. I caught the pommel, set one foot on the concrete verge, the other to the stirrup and swung myself up and over. My foot slid into the other stirrup almost without trying; they could have been set for me. And the instant they took the weight, the great horse whinnied and wheeled, and plunged towards the screen of trees.

I ducked as the foliage rushed towards me, grabbed frantically at the reins and found them looped around the pommel. But before I could rein in, we burst through the trees, and the soft clump of dry grass beneath the hooves changed. Not to the dull clop of tarmac; earth drummed and stone rattled as the great beast’s gait settled to an easy canter. I looked down – and almost lost my stirrups. The ground beneath those effortless hooves was invisible, lost in the flowing grey mist that enveloped us, so we seemed to be hardly moving, just racing on the spot with the mist flowing by us, as if the hoof-beats struck it solid for a moment, only to melt away again as they passed. Except that, as I stood in my stirrups and cast about, I could sense something else: the ground was sloping, we were rising, rising fast. Then, abruptly, brightness burst around us, and the fresh bite of open air. Dazzled, I blinked at the looming shadows above; were those still clouds? But I had to look
away and down again – and this time I did lose my stirrups, and had to cling frantically to the pommel.

The ground was solid enough now, a rough path of light grey stone and dusty soil scattered with pebbles of white quartz, but there wasn’t nearly enough of it. Not far beyond those flying hooves it fell away sharply, and the pebbles they kicked up went bouncing down a sheer stone crag into giddy emptiness, depths I couldn’t guess at. Smooth mist lapped the cliff-face, like a lake of milk. Only it wasn’t mist, because it stretched out from the crag to meet that same infinitely distant azure; it was cloud, and we were above it, climbing a mountain flank. The abyss clawed up at me, and my hands went slick with sweat, but I clung tight to the saddle and the climbers’ litany, that height doesn’t matter, that you can survive a thousand-foot fall and be killed by ten. Gasping, I forced myself to sit up and look up. My eyes adjusted, but I knew already what I was going to see: that selfsame landscape, those same rock walls and between them, rising no more than a couple of hundred feet to the summit of the pass, the road I’d longed to travel, the road I was climbing now. Icy shafts of excitement thrilled through me, only heightened by the swift pang of apprehension. The wind was keen and fresh, and it swept out the tainted city breath from my lungs and poured in life unending. The air was a hundred times more refreshing than the coldest, sharpest gin. I shook off the fear of the abyss, dug my feet back into the ornate metal loops and pressed my knees lightly to the working sides, catching their rhythm and finding my seat, enjoying the animal strength and making it my own. I took the reins, tipped with little cones of silver, and felt the stallion’s swift response, as if acknowledging my control at last. It was what I’d wanted, wasn’t it? And come what may at the pass, at least I’d see the other side.

The road was rough, but the beautiful beast never so much as broke stride, let alone stumbled. His sure hooves struck sparks from the quartz, his harness rang and jingled, his mane flew in the wind like a banner; I found myself laughing aloud with the manic pleasure of it. At the last slope before the crest the path turned inward, away from the cliff; I dug my heels in and flicked the reins gently, urging the horse on. I needn’t have bothered; he went at that slope like the last furlong. We positively flew up and over that crest, and out onto the path
that stretched out beyond. But even as we passed, I heard from high above the urgent chiming of a single bell. That tall pale tower was here with the rest, on the crags of the far wall high above us; it was coming from there; and from somewhere below us a deeper bell answered.

But it was what lay beyond that transfixed me. The mountain flank dropped away again, less steeply; but the path didn’t fall with it. It ran on level along the crag, out and around the curve of the mountainside, looking down over that shimmering sea. The horse was following it as surely as ever, as if to make some urgent rendezvous; he answered my touch, but hardly seemed to need it. Riding almost automatically, I gazed out across the clouds, looking for some clue to where we were going. Other shapes broke its surface, other peaks rising in a jagged row of dragon-teeth, so we were in the midst of a chain; but closer, much closer and lower, something else speared up. A shadowy spike that barely broke the cloud roof, too thin and delicate to be another peak – and too regular. As we moved out along the cliff path the image split; there were two of them, close together, parallel, the same height – identical. And somehow insubstantial, though the sun cast their shadows clearly on that dazzling white.

Then something moved at the edge of my vision – another shadow. Only this one was below the clouds, sliding through them like a fish, swinging parallel to the path. As well I saw it, or I might have had less warning. With alarming suddenness, like a whale, it breached, and rose, fast. I goggled. It was an airship, a dirigible, but not like any model I’d ever seen in pictures, leaner and sleeker than the
Hindenburg
or a Zeppelin. Its white hull swept back in only nine or ten smooth segments to a finned tail made of square sections like a vast box kite, and the motor units belched smoke in sharp little puffs. And yet it was making impressive speed, effortlessly overhauling us, and the cars beneath looked capacious and streamlined. Primitive? Maybe not. I began to see more of an alternative technology about it, sophisticated design operating on simple principles. Certainly it was a beautiful machine, as sleekly functional as a Viking ship. It came swiftly closer, till I could hear the soft gasping chuff distinctly – some kind of a steam engine, surely. I rose
in my stirrups to wave—