Cloud Castles
CLOUD CASTLES
MICHAEL SCOTT ROHAN
In the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it), Gollancz, Britain’s oldest and most distinguished science fiction imprint, created the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series. Dedicated to re-publishing the English language’s finest works of SF and Fantasy, most of which were languishing out of print at the time, they were – and remain – landmark lists, consummately fulfilling the original mission statement:
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The technology now exists to enable us to make available, for the first time, the entire backlists of an incredibly wide range of classic and modern SF and fantasy authors. Our plan is, at its simplest, to use this technology to build on the success of the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series and to go even further.
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Knowest thou the mountain, with its bridge of cloud?
The mule plods warily; the white mists crowd.
Coiled in their caves the brood of dragons sleep;
The torrent hurls the rock from steep to steep …
Knowest thou the land? So far and fair!
Thou, whom I love, and I will wander there.
Goethe, tr. Flecker
The Spiral …
‘Tell you something, Steve,’ said Jyp (that evening when the Wolves were running, and he took me to see Le Stryge). ‘The world’s a lot wider place than most folk ever realize. They cling to what they know, to the firm centre where everything’s dull and deadly and predictable. Where the hours slip by at just sixty seconds to the minute from your cradle to your tombstone – that’s the Core. Out here, out on the Spiral, out towards the Rim – it’s not like that. It’s adrift, Steve, in Time and in Space as well. And there are more tides than one that ebb and flow about its shores. One time or another maybe everybody’ll find one lapping about their feet – and they look out on infinite horizons! Some bow down, slink away, forget; but others, they take a step forward, they cross those chill wide waters – from Ports like this one, often enough, where comings and goings over a thousand years and more have tied a knot in Time, to all the corners of the wide world. Lord, lord, how wide! And Steve, know what? Every which one of those corners is a place. Places that were, that will be, that never were save that the minds of men gave them life. Lurking like shadows cast behind the real places in that reality of yours, shadows of their past, their legends and their lore, of what they might have been and may yet be, touching and mingling with every place at many points. You can search your whole life long and never find a trace of them, yet once you learn you may pass between them in the drawing of a breath. There, west of the sunset, east of the moonrise, there lies the Sargasso Sea and Fiddler’s Green, there’s the Elephants’ Graveyard, there’s El Dorado’s kingdom and the empire of Prester John – there’s everywhere. Riches, beauties, dangers – every damn thing within the mind and the
memory of men, and more too, probably. But are they the shadows, Steve – or is your reality theirs?’
I had no answer for
him. I still don’t.
The driver stamped on the brake. The car swerved violently, and the bottle sailed past us, lazily almost, and popped into fragments on the scarred pavement. No flames, just a spattering of stale beer. That made us a lot luckier than many others today.
Lutz was leaning out of the window shouting, but the armoured police stationed around the hotel were already surging out towards the little knot of rioters, who scattered, baying like animals and hurling any missiles that came to hand. They were brandishing torn fragments of a banner whose pole had evidently been put to other uses. I made out part of the slogan – something … RAUS!
Probably
Kapitalisten
– or
Juden;
they were beginning to equate the two again, openly. As they passed the car they kicked it, thumped the roof, beat and spat on the windows. I glimpsed blunt, coarse faces, jail-cropped heads, round eyes staring, mouths stretched wide with wordless shrieks of hate – so many of them alike, somehow, as if the kinks in their minds created some common cast.
Lutz snorted and sat heavily back, brushing down his thick white hair with both hands.
‘’S tut mir leid
, Stephen,’ he rumbled. ‘These baboons! They do not realize at just whom they are throwing things!’
I didn’t suggest their aim might improve if they did. Baron Lutz von Amerningen was a little too sure of his own importance to appreciate that; besides, the success of the launch had left him in one of his high expansive moods. I’d as soon have pricked a baby’s balloon. A hotel flunkey opened the door, and Lutz bounced out after me. He wrapped a massive arm
around my shrinking shoulders, and breathed sour Dom Perignon into my face; the launch had been lavish. ‘Now, you’re sure you won’t come straight on with me? We could catch a set or two of tennis, a sauna, a few drinks …’
‘Lutz, thanks, but really – I still have things to do—’
‘This evening, then? You are not just going to sit and vegetate, a fit young fellow like you? Sure, you are tired now, but that’s just the excitement. You need to
unvind
, boy!’
Lutz’s English was so good he could have perfected his accent too. I’d decided he just liked the Erich von Stroheim effect.
‘Look at me, I’m years older and effery bit as fit! I don’t just flop down, I keep going! Partying! That’s the way to stay young! So – tonight, out at my place, I am giving one of my liddle
affaires
!’ He chuckled, and passed me a stiff white envelope. ‘You have not been to one before, eh? It will be an education – you know?’
‘Lutz, that’s … incredibly kind of you,’ I said, slightly dazed. I knew, all right. The fourteenth Baron von Amerningen’s ‘little
affaires’
were famous, the stuff of tabloids the world over, not that reporters or
paparazzi
ever got beyond the front gate. Or mere business associates. Well, as of now I probably was one of the idle rich. ‘I’ve got a lot of stuff to attend to,’ I repeated, ‘and I’m feeling worn out.’ That at least was the truth, in a way. But I didn’t want to offend him outright. ‘Maybe I could look in a bit later, if that’s—’
‘Of course, of course!’ He waved a massive flipper of a hand, ‘You know the way? Okay! Don’t just sit in your room sucking at a bottle! Or any other solitary vices, hah? Well,
ciao, bambino
!’
I returned his goodbye flourish as his stretched-Merc limousine purred back out onto the rubbish-strewn road. The street was empty now, but a stink lingered in the air, partly the garbage from scattered dustbins, and partly other odours from the city centre where they were still strong. Smoke from the burnings, the pepper gas they’d started using instead of tear gas and CS, petrol from the Molotov cocktails – I could taste it on my tongue, and I wanted to spit.
‘Bummer, isn’t it?’ remarked another guest hurrying down to the taxi rank, stuffing bundles of trade-fair literature into his attaché case. ‘You know they
overturned my cab? Tipped it right over! Goddamn fascist bastards! You over for the fair too – hey, aren’t you Stephen Fisher? Right, right!’ He grabbed my hand and pumped it with slightly awestruck enthusiasm. ‘Jerzy Markowski, VP, Roscom-Warzawa, electronics sub-assemblies, that kinda thing! Hey, that was some show you gave us! One helluva eye-opener! Know what all this paper is? New business that’s suddenly becoming cost-effective, that’s what! Haven’t seen the figures yet, but we’re gonna be buying a
lot
of C-Tran capacity!’ His face fell. ‘And our goddamn competitors, you bet! You won’t forget us?’
I was surprised he’d managed to recognize me from my brief spiel at the launch, surrounded as I was by holograms and dancers and the whole razzamatazz. But as I came into the lobby I found out how: my face was plastered right across the newsstand. I hadn’t made
Time
or
Newsweek
yet, but the Europeans hadn’t wasted any time. There I was staring out from the covers of
Elsevier
and
Spiegel
(alongside Lutz, naturally) and
The Economist
had a cover photo of a crate with a mortarboard and little beady eyes, captioned
Smart Packaging? C-Tran – Shipping for a New Europe.
I picked up a copy, and the man behind the counter smirked and said loudly, ‘
Gratulieren
, Herr Fisher!’ Heads turned in the foyer; the hotel was lousy with business types for the fair, of course, and suddenly they all wanted to shake my hand, even some big boys from the multinationals. I escaped into the lift with aching fingers and standing invitations to drop by just everywhere from Grenoble to Groton, Conn. I’d felt idiotic at this morning’s extravaganza, as if I was pretending to be some kind of celebrity; now it was dawning on me that that was exactly what I was.
But all I wanted to be right now was alone.
That was pretty funny, when you came down to it, me pulling a Garbo. I’d spent years learning not to, and not on any analyst’s couch trip either. On heaving decks and dark jungles, among cloud archipelagos in worlds that stretched out beyond our own like endless shadows in the setting sun. On quests so strange and desperate that the very memories they left were fleeting, all too liable to fade. On the Spiral I’d faced tasks and perils that had taught me the real meaning of
success – and I had been forced, at last, to face myself.
I flipped open
The Economist
, and my eyes lit on the end of the lead article.
… the single most dramatic innovation in the movement of goods since the introduction of containerization in the 1960s. Unquestionably it will make Stephen Fisher, both as chief executive and shareholder, the multimillionaire he deserves to be. But C-Tran, like its enigmatic creator, often seems to have its gaze fixed on wider horizons. Undoubtedly, by rendering the tiresome complications of international shipping as irrelevant as yesterday’s frontiers, C-Tran will further draw together an Eastern Europe still torn and tottering from post-Communist trauma, and a West plagued by instability and rising extremism. As such, it may well find its place not only in the dry economic treatises of tomorrow, but also …
The door indicator chimed softly for my floor. I rolled up the magazine hastily in case somebody caught me reading it, and snorted. Lord, Lord – as an old friend of mine called Jyp was given to say – all that just because of a little boredom! But now it was over. Now it was done. I shoved the plastic keycard into my door so hard I almost bent it.