The Peacock Cloak

speak. Instead, when there were only a few metres between them, he stooped, picked up a stone and lobbed it into the water over the seated figure’s head.
    The ripples spread out over the lake. Among some reeds at the far end of the little beach, a duck gave a low warning quack to its fellows. The man on the log turned round.
    “Tawus,” he exclaimed, laying down his field glasses and rising to his feet with a broad smile of welcome, “Tawus, my dear fellow. It’s been a very long time.”
    The likeness between the two of them would have been instantly apparent to any observer, even from a distance. They had the same lithe bearing, the same high cheekbones and aquiline nose, the same thick mane of grey hair. But the man by the water was simply dressed in a white shirt and white breeches, while Tawus still wore his magnificent cloak with its shifting patterns and its restless eyes. And Tawus stood stiffly while the other man, still smiling, extended his arms, as if he expected Tawus to fall into his embrace.
    Tawus did not move or bend.
    “You’ve put it about that you’re Fabbro himself,” he said, “or so I’ve heard.”
    The other man nodded.
    “Well, yes. Of course there’s a sense in which I am a copy of Fabbro as you are, since this body is an analogue of the body that Fabbro was born with, rather than the body itself. But the original Fabbro ceased to exist when I came into being, so my history and his have never branched away from each another, as yours and his did, but are arranged sequentially in a single line, a single story. So yes, I’m Fabbro. All that is left of Fabbro is me, and I have finally entered my own creation. It seemed fitting, now that both Esperine and I are coming to a close.”
    Tawus considered this for a moment. He had an impulse to ask about the world beyond Esperine, that vast and ancient universe in which Fabbro had been born and grown up. For of course Fabbro’s was the only childhood that Tawus could remember, Fabbro’s the only youth. He was naturally curious to know how things had changed out there and to hear news of the people from Fabbro’s past: friends, collaborators, male and female lovers, children (actual biological children: children of Fabbro’s body and not just his mind).
    “Aren’t those memories a distraction?” the cloak asked him through his skin. “Isn’t that stuff his worry and not yours?”
    Tawus nodded.
    “Yes,” he silently agreed, “and to ask about it would muddy the water. It would confuse the issue of worlds and their ownership.”
    He looked Fabbro in the face.
    “You had no business coming into Esperine,” he told him. “We renounced your world and you in turn gave this world to us to be our own. You’ve no right to come barging back in here now, interfering, undermining my authority, undermining the authority of the Five.”
    (It was Five now, not Six, because of Cassandra’s anni-hilation in the Chrome Wars.)
    Fabbro smiled.
    “Some might say you’d undermined each other’s authority quite well without my help, with your constant warring, and your famines and your plagues and all of that.”
    “That’s a matter for us, not you.”
    “Possibly so,” said Fabbro. “Possibly so. But, in my defence, I have tried to keep out of the way since I arrived in this world.”
    “You let it be known you were here, though. That was enough.”
    Fabbro tipped his head from side to side, weighing this up.
    “Enough? Do you really think so? Surely for my mere presence to have had an impact, there would have had to be something in Esperine that could be touched by it. There had to be a me-shaped hole. Otherwise wouldn’t I just be some harmless old man up in the mountains?”
    He sat down on the log again
    “Come and sit with me, Tawus.” He patted a space beside him. “This is my favourite spot, my grandstand seat. There’s always something happening here. Day. Night. Evening. Morning. Sun. Rain. Always something new to see.”
    “If you’re content with sheep and ducks,” said Tawus, and did not sit.
    Fabbro watched him. After a few seconds, he smiled.
    “That’s quite a coat you’ve got there,” he observed.
    Many of the peacock eyes turned towards him, questioningly. Others glanced with renewed vigour in every other direction, as if suspecting diversionary tactics.
    “I’ve heard,” Fabbro went on, “that it can protect you, make you invisible, change your appearance, allow you to leap from planet to planet