The Darkside Of The Sun

enough to shatter. Let’s split, boss.’
    The buruku was built on the outskirts of the city, where the dry land sloped towards the marsh. It looked like a field of mushrooms under a grey dome. Each mushroom was a reed-woven rath, some of them several times larger than a human geodome. The grey dome was the low-degree force screen, just powerful enough to keep the atmosphere within damp and still. It was polarized too, so that the light that filtered through was dim and subterranean. Inside the air was warm, clammy and smelled of decay. Dom felt that if he breathed deeply horrible moulds would sprout in his lungs. It was what 10,000 phnobes called home.
    Towards the centre of the colony the raths huddled together in a fungal township riddled with alleyways and sprouting several distressingly organic-looking towers and civic buildings. Shops were still open, though it was well past midnight; they mostly sold badly dried fungi, fish or second-hand cubes. From some of the larger raths, bulbous as fermenting pumpkins, came snatches of haunting chlong music. And all around Dom phnobes filled the streets.
    In a purely human environment a solitary phnobe looked either pathetic or disgusting, from its goggled eyes to the slap of its damp feet on the floor. In the rath they loomed like ghosts, self-assured and frightening. Most of the alpha-males carried long double-bladed daggers, and any visitor with a concealed inclination towards shape-hatred ended up walking with his back pressed firmly against a comfortingly solid wall.
    At one point they had to press into the crowd as a wickerwork delivery truck trundled by. It stank: it was powered by a ceramic engine fuelled with fish oil.
    And the air was filled with hissing, a susurration like the wind, the sound of phnobic speech. Dom enjoyed the buruku . The phnobes had a way of life divorced entirely from the carefully stylized penury of a Sadhimist ruling family.
    Dom found Hrsh-Hgn seated in a communal jasca , playing tstame. He glanced up at the two of them, and waved them into silence.
    Dom sat down on the stone seat and waited patiently. Hrsh-Hgn’s opponent was a young alpha-male, who looked at Dom disinterestedly before turning back to the board.
    The tstame men were crude and badly coordinated, which was to be expected from a public set. Even so, they were being directed across the squares with a gawky grace.
    Red’s pawns had dug a defensive trench across one corner of the board. White had tried the same tactic, but had stopped work and the pawns were clustered around one of Red’s knights, who was haranguing them. As Dom watched, Red’s Sacerdote-Shaman brought his mitrepike down on the kill-button of White’s Accountant, and in the ensuing mêlée managed to get several pawns through the crossfire from the Rooks. The King made a brave attempt to run for it but was brought down by a flying tackle from the leading pawn.
    Hrsh-Hgn’s opponent removed his helmet and made a grudgingly complimentary comment in phnobic before loping away. Dom’s tutor turned.
    ‘I want you to help me find Jokers World,’ said Dom.
    He explained.
    The phnobe listened politely. At one point he said: ‘I’d be interessted to know how you survived a black hole that removed Korodore.’
    ‘Yes, and Ig.’
    ‘But no, that is not sso …’ He reached down beside him and picked up a wicker cage. Inside, Ig fizzled.
    ‘I found him in the busshess at the edge of the lawn. He was badly sshaken. He must have left your sshoulder somehow.’
    ‘And you looked after him – that’s surprising, for you.’
    Hrsh-Hgn shrugged. ‘No one elsse would. The fisshermen are supersstitious of them. They ssay they are the ssouls of dead comrades.’
    The swamp creature looped itself around Dom’s neck.
    ‘Are you coming with me … us?’
    ‘Yess, I think sso. I accept bater .’
    ‘I never did find out what that word meant.’
    ‘It refers to the inexorable processesss of what you humans are pleased to call Fate. Where did you think of starting? Don’t look so blank.’
    ‘It’s just that I expected a lecture on my duties as Chairman. As my tutor you were hot on the subject, I seem to remember.’
    The phnobe smiled, switched his headset on and turned to the board. The tstame mannikins stood up, ranged themselves into two neat rows, and marched down a flight of steps that appeared in one of the neutral squares, carrying the temporarily disabled.
    ‘The point doess not arise now,’ he