Strata

mergingsickeningly into an impossible head, and atop the head were three crowns big enough for houses. Below the heads a cluster of spider legs dangled, each one a hundred metres long.
    The effect was slightly marred by the fact that the far side of the pit could be seen through the image.
    ‘Marco,’ said Silver.
    ‘I don’t think there’s any more to be learned down—’
    ‘Did anything pass you on the way up?’
    ‘I don’t understand.’
    ‘Look up, Marco.’
    ‘Holy shit!’
    Kin choked.
    ‘Do not be afraid,’ said Silver reassuringly.
    ‘Afraid of that?’ said Kin. ‘That monstrosity? I’m just good and angry, Silver. Know what that thing is? A comic scarecrow, an image sent out to scare away anyone who might look into the pit and find out about the disc.
    ‘If we get back I won’t care who built the disc, I’ll see that they’re broken. Busted. Bankrupted. They’ve built a world people sail off the edge of, and get chased by demons and are superstitious because that’s how they survive! I’m beginning to hate it!’
    Marco rose like a rocket in the centre of the image, became a glitter in the eye of Saitan, a spark in the brain of God.
    ‘Intangible,’ he reported. ‘A mere image.’
    The great human face, kingly and cold, twisted. The mouth opened and the pit echoed to a great sad sigh. And a lightning bolt struck out of the smoking sky and melted the dumbwaiter so thoroughly that droplets of hot metal spilled towards the bright obversical sky.
    Hail drummed off Kin’s suit. They were flying now against a deadline.
    In fifty hours, or less, Silver would go mad and attempt suicide. Kung and men could go for a long time without food. Shandi could not.
    The storm raged all round them, but sank away as Marco led them upwards. They burst out of the clouds into a disc sunset.
    It was far behind them, red and angry and barred with cloud. Judging from the sky the whole of the disc was having bad weather, and bad wasn’t really the word. Some of those cloud shapes were mad.
    Marco broke the silence. ‘We have a thousand miles to cover,’ he said.
    ‘That gives us an average speed of twenty miles an hour,’ said Kin. ‘We could easily reach the hub, even with a few rest stops.’
    ‘So we reach the hub. Do we find a dumbwaiter there?’
    ‘Anyone capable of building the disc could build a dumbwaiter.’
    ‘Why didn’t they repair the hole, then? Eirick, Lothar – they are descendants of yourdisc builders, reverted to savagery. Or the disc builders are dead.’
    ‘Okay, have you got any better ideas?’
    Marco snorted.
    Silver was trailing half a mile behind them, a dot against the livid sky. She rumbled politely to show that she was in circuit.
    ‘There is a possibility we may find a ’waiter,’ she said, ‘if the disc was built by the Company. Don’t groan, Kin. In many ways the idea of the disc would fit in with the Policy.
    ‘By the way, there is a raven flying half a mile behind me.’
    Kin stared at the rushing clouds below. Policy. Perhaps the disc was Policy …
    The Great Spindle Kings, Wheelers, paleotechs, ChThones – people of the universe. The universe
was
people.
    Once upon a time astrohistorians had thought in terms of a vast, empty starry stage, a blank canvas waiting for the brush of life. In fact it was now understood that Life of a kind had appeared within three micro-seconds of the monobloc’s explosion. If it hadn’t, the universe would now be randomized matter. It was Life which had directed its growth. Life had once resided in the vast spinning dust clouds that became stars – every star was the skeleton of one of the great dust-accreting dinosaurs of the universe’s Jurassic.
    Later lifeforms had been smaller, brighter. Some, like the Wheelers, had been evolutionary dead ends. Some, notably the Great Spindle Kings and the shameleons, had been successful in the only way that evolution measured success – they survived longer. But even star-striding races died. The universe was tombs upon graves upon mausoleums. The comet that brightened the pagan skies was the abraded corpse of a scientist, three eons ago.
    The Policy of the Company was simple. It was: make Man immortal.
    It would take a while, and had only just started. But if Man could be spread thinly on many different planets, so that he became many types of Man, perhaps he would survive. The Spindles had died because they were so alike. Now, upon dozens of worlds, men were being changed by