The Peacock Cloak

without going through the space in between. I’ve been told that it can tell you of dangers, and draw your attention to things you might wish to know, and even give you counsel, as perhaps it’s doing now. That is some coat!”
    “He is seeking to rile you,” the cloak silently whispered. “You asked me to warn you if he did this.”
    “Don’t patronise me Fabbro,” Tawus said, “I am your copy not your child. You know that to construct this cloak I simply needed to understand the algorithm on which Esperine is founded, and you know that I do understand it every bit as well as you do.”
    Fabbro nodded.
    “Yes of course. I’m just struck by the different ways in which we’ve used that understanding. I used it to make a more benign world than my own, within which countless lives could for a limited time unfold and savour their existence. You used it to set yourself apart from the rest of this creation, insulate yourself, wrap yourself up in your own little world of one.”
    “I could easily have made another complete world as you did, as perfect as Esperine in every way. But any world that I made would necessarily exist within this frame, your frame, and therefore still be a part of Esperine, even if its equal or its superior in design. Do you really wonder that I chose instead to find a way of setting myself apart?”
    Fabbro did not answer. He gave a half-shrug, then looked out at the lake.
    “I’ve not come here to apologise,” Tawus said. “I hope you know that. I have no regrets about my rebellion.”
    Fabbro turned towards him.
    “Oh, don’t worry, I know why you came. You came to destroy me. And of course it is possible to destroy me now that I’m here in Esperine, just as it was possible for you and the others to destroy your sister Cassandra when she tried to place a brake on your ambitions. In order to achieve her destruction you found a way of temporarily modifying that part of the original algorithm that protected the seven of you from physical harm. I assume you have a weapon with you now that works in the same way. I guess it’s hidden somewhere in that cloak.”
    “But knowing it doesn’t help him,” whispered the cloak through Tawus’ skin.
    Another duck had alighted on the water, smaller and differently coloured to the ones that were already there. (It had black wings and a russet head.) Fabbro picked up his binoculars and briefly observed it, before laying them down again, and turning once more to his recalcitrant creation.
    “Be that as it may,” he said, “I certainly wasn’t led to expect an apology. They told me the six of you set out in this direction armed to the teeth and in a great fury. You had a formidable space fleet with you, they said, and huge armies at your back. They told me that cloak of yours was fairly fizzing and sparking with pent-up energy. They said that it turned all the air around you into a giant lens, so that you were greatly magnified and seemed to your followers to be a colossus blazing with fire, striding out in front of them as they poured through the interplanetary gates.”
    Tawus snatched a stone up from the beach and flung it out over the water.
    “You are allowing yourself to be put on the defensive,” warned the Peacock Cloak. “But remember that he has no more power than you. In fact he has far less. Thanks to your foresight in creating me, you are the one who is protected, not him. And, unlike him, you are armed.”
    Tawus turned to face Fabbro.
    “You set us inside this world,” he said, “then turned away and left us to it. And that was fine, that was the understanding from the beginning. That was your choice and ours. But now, when it suits you because you are growing old, you come wandering in to criticise what we have achieved. What right do you have to do that, Fabbro? You were absent when the hard decisions were being made. How can you know that you would have done anything different yourself?”
    “When have I criticised you? When have I claimed I would have done something different?”
    Fabbro gave a short laugh.
    “Think, Tawus, think. Stop indulging your anger and think for a moment about the situation we are in. How could I say that I would have done something different? What meaning could such a claim possibly have when you and I were one and the same person at the beginning of all this?”
    “We began as one person, but we are not one person now. Origins are not everything.”
    Fabbro looked down at his hands,