Twenty-one - Exit
The windran with Droover...
He opened the way: a slipperyhandle, but Silver got to grips with it, bathing himself next inlight.
He climbed inside and sealed thehatch, progressed to its sister lock. Beyond that stretched aninterior he recognized from training films and mock-ups, the engine'ssupporting lattice of walkways and galleries, inspection tunnels andfreefall zones, the connective tissue surrounding the major organs...
Stroma.
The fuel-tanks and converters hungin the void like an armoured maze around, before him.
John Silver ventured deeper. Tohim, it was a whole new world, a whole new experience. He thought ofMortimer, what his friend might learn from this. He wished he couldbe here. Silver hated being lonely...
He gagged at a sharp pain in hischest.
‘Droover K?’
‘Yeah...who is it?’
He took another step.
She kissed him.
Proem - A Kitten
It jumped offthe chair and scampered toward the far side of the room. I watchedits erratic voyage with a smile. It curved between chair legs andpaused to examine an uprooted tuft of carpet, pawing the errantstrand like it were special, there just for that purpose, belongingto no other outside realm of weave and colour and pattern, simply atoy placed in the kitten's path, for the kitten. But the young animalsoon tired; the fibre proved no substantial challenge. It set away,flicked its tail, eyed those of us in the room, brushed our knees andelbows as it passed, disturbed the pieces on the game-board, theirbright milieu laid out on the living-room floor. Stupid of us to bethere, the kitten may have thought. But thoughts, the kitten may haveamended, are stupid also, not for us cats who're born with smarts;thinking's for people, because they're uncertain how to behave andneed to weigh up a situation. The kitten smirked wisely. It washedits tail, its hind legs, its belly, rubbed a forepaw over its cutefurry head. The kitten was very neat and precise - in a haphazardsort of way. And then it continued toward the curtain, aperegrination the import of which should not be underestimated. Thekitten sprang left, sudden. Sprang right, a reason for each movementor neither; a purpose or not a purpose. Who can tell? It turnedaround and came charging at the board, knocking cards and counters,mixing tokens, spinning dice, their spots reading differently afterthe kitten's assault: two and four now when previously they readthree and one. Or was it one and three? I shook my head. Monicalaughed. Frank plucked the tuft of carpet and tossed it up, but wasignored. The kitten jumped back on the chair, slyly winked. Wesettled back to the game. Whose turn was it? Kate's? Sal's? Nobodycould remember. Then it was at us again, among our fingers and hands,stealing our attention from the confused game, a random hurricane ofblack fur the eye of which was paired and not quiet, but shiny, likea wet green leaf. I made a grab for its loose neck, just as itsmother would - and missed. The kitten leapt. It reached the curtainsin two great bounds and was soon frantically climbing, an ascent anybit as meaningful as that of K2 or Everest. At the lofty summit itlooked around, regarded us strangely, seeing we'd altered, changedshape, shifted along with the perspective of the room. Its claws drewloops of fabric. Its tongue flew in and out as if sampling therarefied air, dusty near the ceiling, spider-web height. It winked asecond time, this time with excitement, not worldly-wiseness asbefore. And then its tail whacked the cornice and the kitten camespeeding down like some fur-wrapped bobsleigh, a world record in itssights; flat out, braking at the last moment and skidding to a clumsyhalt the wrong side of Byron's upended ashtray. The debris obscuredpart of the board, made areas difficult to negotiate, lettering hardto read, symbols to decipher. But the kitten didn't care. It was awayonce more, bolting into the kitchen, meowing as it rebounded off thecooker and hit the fridge, skating across the worn lino in everydirection expect that which led ultimately to its dish, and food. Iwas glad it wasn't Christmas; the thought of the kitten scaling thetree was too much. But Christmas wasn't too distant, a month. As itwas the uncontrollable creature slept for an hour on a pile of cleanwashing, dusting the coloured materials with ash and hair. And thenit was here, in the wrong place, driving everybody crazy as it madethe game impossible to play, stretching each round as the playersteased and cooed and tickled and chuckled and spoilt and kissed andpicked up and put down quickly, complaining of scratches, talking insilly voices, getting to their feet and walking around, stretchinglike the kitten and forgetting, in these exasperating minutes, allabout the game the rules of which were largely forgotten.
The kitten was more fun, theirfaces said. It didn't yet have a name, at least not one I'd given it.
It had plenty of its own.