Strata

coiling around the hill and disappearing into the hushed forest. She told herself she could always turn back if she wanted to, and walked on.
    She saw the elf on a mossy stone at the top of the hill, outlined against the afterglow. It sat crosslegged, hunched over the pipes, intent upon the music.
    Inside the woman who stood entranced, another Kin Arad, imprisoned in the corner of the mind, hammered on the consciousness: (It’s an insect! Don’t listen! It looks like a crossbetween a man and a cockchafer! Look at the antennae! Those things aren’t ears!)
    The music stopped abruptly.
    ‘No—’ said Kin.
    The triangular head turned round. For a moment Kin looked into two narrow, glittering eyes that were greener than the light behind them. Then there was a hiss and a patter of feet over the turf. A little later, there was a rustle in the forest. Then the night closed in again, like velvet.
    At dawn they rose above the forest and headed hubwards, leaving long curling trails in the rising mists.
    On the horizon a pillar of smoke loomed like the finger of judgement. It was so thick it cast a shadow.
    ‘I don’t know what effect it has on the natives, but it terrifies me,’ said Kin. ‘We should have blown up the ship in the air, Marco.’
    ‘Their planet hit us,’ he said testily. ‘It is their responsibility.’
    The forest gave way to fields, striped with crops. A distant man, walking behind a plough drawn by ant-sized oxen, fell on his knees as their shadow passed over him. From the boundaries of the field a dirt road ran through a cluster of turf huts, forded a river and disappeared under the trees.
    ‘He didn’t look like a whizz planetary technician,’ said Kin.
    ‘No,’ said Marco. ‘He looked shit-scared. But
someone
built this disc.’
    Breakfast they had on a cliff top overlooking the sea. Marco watched it carefully. After a while he asked: ‘Kin, if you were the disc master, how would you arrange for tides?’
    ‘Easy. Have a water reservoir under the disc and occasionally allow extra water into the sea. Why?’
    ‘This tide is bloody high. There are half-drowned trees down there. What is the matter? Are you being attacked?’
    ‘Yes, and the sooner I can get a nice hot bath the better. With soap. Soap! Ever since Greenland I’ve been carrying passengers.’
    Marco looked blank. Kin sighed.
    ‘Fleas, Marco. Irritating parasites. Right now I could forget about the Preservation of Extinct Species Law and kill the lot.
    ‘And you can’t scratch very well in a bubble suit.’
    Silver coughed. ‘I too would like the chance of some hygienic reparations,’ she said.
    Marco finally consented to make an extended stop later in the day, after Kin announced that if he did not she would land outside the first building that looked like a tavern.
    As they sped over the sea Silver added, ‘We are heading for Germany. Not a good place.’
    ‘Why?’ asked Marco.
    ‘A battleground. Danes spreading southwardmeeting Magyars heading westward and Turks heading everywhere, with the locals fighting everyone. According to history, that is.’
    ‘Anyone have an airforce?’
    ‘The technology was pri—’
    ‘It was a joke.’
    Kin itched, and stared morosely at the sea. She thought she saw a boat, hull uppermost, rolling in the waves. They were past before she could take a closer look. But she was the first to see the rosette.
    From above, the sea had put forth a flower, green petals edged with white. Losing altitude, they saw the mounds of water burst through the surface every few seconds and spread in a succession of roaring, concentric waves.
    ‘Tide pump,’ said Marco, and flew on.
    They crossed a wide beach, a chequerboard of fields, and a forest. And then a town – small, bucolic, but a town.
    ‘The fortress I can recognize,’ said Marco, pointing to a squat stone building among the canted roofs, ‘but what is the large wooden construction?’
    ‘Could it be a large heated swimming pool?’ murmured Kin. ‘Don’t look at me like that. The Remens had hot baths.’
    ‘Romans,’ corrected Silver. Marco grunted and glided off, leaving them to chase after him.
    ‘Why the big rush?’ said Kin.
    He pointed to the smoke column. Kin had toadmit it was impressive, even at this distance.
    ‘That’s why,’ he said. ‘According to Silver the disc people are ripe for mob hysteria. What do you think they’d be doing now that’s in their sky?’
    They landed in a mixed forest well out of sight