Pip trotted amongst the remains of the gazebo. His random wanderings around the village had finally taken him to the garden of Montgomery-Jones' manor house and the moment he'd seen the pile of crooked beams, still roughly arranged in a many-sided pyramidal shape, the sub-personality in his head had squirmed with excitement.
He was compelled to look at each twisted beam and each loose blackened piece with an intensity not normal for a dog. But a dog's sense of sight is flat and colourless. It's the rich world of smell that makes a dog a dog and even Pip's inbred nostrils made a human's olfactory sense look distinctly short-changed. His nose could detect subtle differences of odour in a way that can only be compared to how a human eye can distinguish between shades of colour. In his doggy mind a picture of smells was built up, equivalent to a human's visual picture.
The damaged structure was a veritable feast of smells from the acid tang of melted metal; the pungent whiff of burned wood to the sharp smell of ozone. And underlying it all was the scent of humans.
******
"Haven't you, ah, connected with our spy yet?" asked Lungwil.
"Will you shut up!" said Ranthar. "You can see exactly what I can see. Stop distracting me." Ranthar shut its three eyes again and adjusted one of the many knobs attached to the lacework of rods, struts and straps that encased its head. Lungwil, closed its eyes and placed its four hands over a similar headpiece bedecking its long head. It didn't actually make any difference, covering the headpiece with its hands, but it made the gangly creature feel more at ease. Its headpiece was slaved to Ranthar's through which it could see and hear everything that the other courtier was tuned into. Any feedback from their own thoughts was prevented from being relayed to the subject they were dealing with - or so they believed. Unbeknownst to either of them, the block was compromised by a toothpick which had been carefully placed inside the equipment to connect two of the twenty-one geometrical shapes that made up the framework into which both headpieces were plugged.
"Bring up the power slowly," said Lungwil. "We, ah, don't want our, um, usage noticed." It opened its eyes and looked around guiltily.
"For the hundredth time, Lungwil, shut up and let me get on with it. I know what I'm doing."
"Yes, like when you lost the human in mid-air," muttered Lungwil, shutting its eyes again.
"I salvaged that!" snapped back Ranthar. "You know very well I managed to use the last of the energy to position the human right over one of the kynbar's bloated vegetables. I saved its life."
Lungwil sniffed and turned its head away, a gesture that was entirely lost since they both had their eyes closed.
Ranthar continued to adjust the knobs. After a few minutes, his frown of annoyance gave way to elation. "Got it! I've made contact. Time to report in, my spy."
Through the headpieces the two courtiers experienced Pip's every sight, sound, taste, smell and touch.
"It's a bit, ah, shorter than the one we've got locked up in the storeroom," said Lungwil.
"Perhaps it's lying down," said Ranthar.
******
Pip was no stranger to oddness. Having the genetic memory of a wolf crammed into the stunted body of a Chihuahua tends to lead to bizarre behaviour. Like the uncounted number of times he had taken on Mr Nelson's Alsatian in disagreements about being in the same immediate vicinity as one another. He had scars from some of those encounters. On more than one occasion, if it hadn't been for Mrs Dillinger leaping to his aid, handbag flying, he would have had the unfortunate experience of viewing an Alsatian's throat from the inside. But despite this, his irrational faith in his strength remained unshaken, a faith which sprang from his belief that he was human. He believed this with every ounce of his being, which, it could be argued, was not very much given his small size, but what he lacked in size he made up for in conviction.
He stiffened when he heard the voices in his head, but since he didn't smell or see anyone nearby, he continued with his odd compulsion to investigate the gazebo ruins.
A breeze wafted an especially interesting scent towards him and he followed it to where three beams converged at ground level. He thrust his nose into the space between the blackened members and sniffed, drawing the smells deep into his nasal cavity. There were at least fourteen different shades of aroma he could distinguish straight away.
He sniffed again. There was no mistaking it, some of the smells came from a cat. This was going to keep him busy.
******
"What in Hollow is going on?" said Ranthar. "I can't make head or tail of it. It feels like I'm seeing odours." It flicked a switch on the machine and both courtiers removed their headpieces.
"Hem. Maybe the, ah, human is just too alien for us," said Lungwil.
"It can't be. We were able to make sense of our hostage's senses while we transported it here. How can the two aliens be so different?"
"Of course, it could be in a different, ah, state, so to speak," said Lungwil, steepling the fingers of his four hands and settling himself back in his chair.
"What are you talking about?"
"Switching modes of consciousness. Not just a change of senses, but the entire way of thinking. Like the, ah, slat-beings in the Hogworn quarter. You know, the way they change from some sort of, ah, grub, to a slatted, bipedal thing. Hem. But the strange thing is the way their entire viewpoint of the world changes. When they're grubs their entire sensory input comes through their skin by some sort of chemical process, but when they mature they gain eyes which become their predominant sense. Much like us. Hem." It considered for a moment then said, "I mean, much like our eyes are our predominant sense, not that we only gain eyes when we mature. Or that we grow slats, for that matter."
"I know what you meant. Why can't you just say what you mean without explaining it a hundred different ways? Honestly, how you ever came to be a member of Zharvak's court, I'll never know."
"What makes you think you're so perfect? Hem? Nothing has gone right with your plan since it began."
"Our plan! You've been fully a part of it every step of the way. And it isn't our plan that's gone awry, it's that events have occurred that no-one could have predicted. I mean, did you have any inkling that Bakalwe would be crushed by an alien town materialising right where he was standing? He was supposed to be testing his portal. Which, incidentally, I now believe was actually an Interstitial Travel Device - I mean ITD - despite what he told us."
"Why would he have lied to us about what he was building?"
"For the same reasons we lied to him about how we'd make sure he got all the credit for his invention."
"What difference does it make whether he was building a portal or an ITD?" said Lungwil. It rubbed its forehead.
"Because an ITD is vastly more powerful. Bakalwe claimed a portal would give us the ability to jump about inside Hollow from one place to the next in the blink of an eye. But an ITD gives us the means to jump to anywhere in the universe! It enables us to leave Hollow! The point is that when Bakalwe was killed, all his secret research - sponsored by us at not inconsiderable risk and expense, I might add - were gone in an instant. The moment he tested his experimental device the humans turned up and squashed him flat, taking out not only the only person capable of making an ITD but also the only prototype we had.
"What I've done is adapted our plan to the circumstances. We've lost Bakalwe and his prototype, but gained a fully functioning, ITD and a bunch of humans who know how it works. All we have to do is gain that device for ourselves - once it's been repaired - then we can take us and anything else we want away from here to our own planets, the places we should have been born on instead of inside this festering sphere."
"Let's assume you're right," said Lungwil." I still think there are a couple of holes in your, ah, plan. One: the human's ITD is hardly fully functional. It was destroyed when they arrived. Two: as soon as Zharvak learns of the arrival of these new humans he will take everything for himself and we will be, ah, punished for concealing the facts from him. Three: Oh... Did I say a couple of holes? I meant three. What if the humans repair their device and leave before we've, ah, appropriated it? Hem."
"Of course there's risk!" said Ranthar. "But we have to seize the opportunity! Yes, the human's ITD is in pieces, but it can be rebuilt. All we have to do is use our spy in the human's village to find out as much as we can about the device and its inventor, while back here we pump our hostage for everything it knows. The humans won't leave without the one we've taken hostage, but even if they do, with our spy and our captive we will gain the knowledge to build our own interstitial travel device. We have double insurance. We can't fail." Ranthar looked smugly at Lungwil and carefully placed its tall, crumpled hat back on its head.
"Hem. You're making a big assumption that the humans can repair their device. For all we know, they might just be passengers. Their species might have invented ITDs ages ago and been travelling about for years all over the place," said Lungwil.
"No. If they had, we would have been visited by them before. Bakalwe said Hollow is a magnet for this sort of thing."
"What about the Progs? They could use interstitial travel to go all over the, ah, universe without always ending up at Hollow. Hem."
"I wish you'd use the acronym. You sound so provincial. It's 'IT' not 'interstitial travel'" said Ranthar.
"But you... ah, never mind," said Lungwil. "Anyway, my question remains. How come they could travel interstitially? I mean IT. No not IT... shouldn't I say 'TI' for 'travel interstitially' in this case? Hem? - without being affected by Hollow's so-called, ah, magnetic effect?"
"Forget the damned acronyms!," said Ranthar. "What I mean is the Progs were so advanced no other race has ever come close to doing what they did. They built this gods damned hollow world and placed it in interstitial space smack bang in the path of every attempt by anyone else to travel the interstices. The thing is, they knew how to travel away from it, but no-one else ever has until now!"
Lungwil pursed its lips. "Until today I thought ITDs were myths."
Ranthar's central eye rolled towards the ceiling. "They are clearly not myths because some humans have just arrived with one!"
"Yes, I know that now, hem, but you seem to be claiming you knew all along."
"Bakalwe said he was developing a portal for travelling inside Hollow, but if you had been paying attention, you would have noticed that his prototype comprised a single device - not two portal ends - but although I thought it odd, I never questioned him because I assumed he knew what he was doing. What he was actually up to became clear when these humans arrived with their device! Think about that! They didn't use a portal! They didn't need two ends! Their device had created a field outside itself that snapped up a chunk of their miserable planet and brought it here with itself to Hollow. That's the way the Progs must have left Hollow! And that's what Bakalwe was working on."
"That makes no sense at all," said Lungwil. "How can the Progs have departed like that? There wouldn't be anything left of this world if they kept tearing chunks out of it."
"Again, you miss the obvious! The Progs were more refined than that. Their ITDs were properly designed and would have used only enough energy to carry the devices and their occupants. Evidently the humans overloaded their device and brought more than they bargained for. They made a mistake that allowed Hollow to draw them in, or - and this is what I think - the fact that they arrived exactly in the time and place where Bakalwe was testing his device leads me to believe that his experimental device enhanced Hollow's usual magnetic effect on the interstices at the same moment the humans activated their ITD."
"So what? I still don't get your point. Hem."
Ranthar shut its eyes, and took several deep breaths. "It's simple." It opened its eyes and spoke slowly and carefully. "The humans did not go to their intended destination because Bakalwe's device strengthened Hollow's own interstitial magnetic effect and drew them here instead."
"Or it's the first time they have ever, ah, used their ITD and it was drawn to Hollow just like portals are."
"No. Their ITD is too large to have been the first one they'd ever made. No-one would be foolish enough to build such a huge prototype therefore they must have travelled by ITD before and thus we can safely assume that the only race, beside the Progs, who have ever discovered interstitial travel are these humans."
"We can't be sure about that. Hem."
"No, I'm sure that's what our hostage said it was. Human."
"That's not what I meant." Lungwil waved all four of its hands. "I meant we can't be sure that the humans are the only ones who have interstitial travel. We can't be certain that the Progs had it either. Where's the evidence? Where are the Progs' devices?"
"We've been through this before," said Ranthar through tight lips. "Look, I grant you we have no physical evidence as such. But the clues are all around you: Hollow has loads of beings from different planets. How did they get here? A handful have come through portals of their own making, but most of them - up until now - were transported by the Progs, just as your and my ancestors were. We know from the remaining fragments of the Progenitor's records that they meticulously recorded every species they brought here, and I have deduced that IT was the means by which they did it." Ranthar gave Lungwil a smug look. "Logic, my dear friend. Logic. You see, I have worked it all out."
"Hem. Oh, er... I see. I think." Lungwil looked nonplussed. "I'm not sure your, ah, argument makes sense. Hem. In any case, why did the humans destroy their device?"
"I don't think they meant to. I think it was overloaded by Hollow's attractive forces which caused its force-field to expand to the size of their village. Why else would they transport a whole community along with their homes and all?"
"I suppose so. Hem. It certainly seems like they left in a hurry."
"It doesn't matter. We know their ITD worked because they are here. Once we have our hands on their device, we'll use the knowledge we'll extract from our captive - who said he is an IT expert - to turn it to our own use."
******
In a darkened room nearby a shadowy cloaked figure took off a headset - identical to the ones the pair of courtiers were using - and placed it on the table at which he sat. For several minutes he sat in stillness save for the tapping of a finger - long, bony and human - against the tabletop, his face hidden deep in the hood of his black gown.
The last few days had been full of surprises, what with the sudden arrival of a village from Earth along with God knows how many people, then the revelation that Bakalwe, a scientist shunned by his peers for his outlandish theories, had actually succeeded in creating a small working model of an Interstitial Travel Device. The evidence was compelling. The records left by the creators of Hollow were clear that the outside-in world was placed at some kind of multi-dimensional interstitially geometric centre and that it exerted an enormous attractive force through the interstices. But for the human village to materialise within Hollow at precisely the point where Bakalwe was testing his model was more than just coincidence. It pointed firmly to the fact that Bakalwe's experimental ITD had formed a node of attraction within Hollow itself. If Hollow was like a gigantic magnet whose force could be felt throughout the interstices, then the miniature ITD had been like a tiny super-magnet within Hollow.
The man's finger continued to tap a slow, measured rhythm. Since his arrival in the city of Skarnelm three hundred and twenty-six years ago, he had worked hard to become one of the most powerful people in the known world. The populace had trembled in fear at his name. Vester. The only human of any political significance; the power behind the throne.
His lofty position had of course come with perks, one of which was access to the Progenitor's records - those mysterious beings who had created the world of Hollow. Teams of scholars had spent years analysing only a fraction of the records. But what dangerous knowledge those translations were. Knowledge that had to be kept secret, revealed only to a select few. Especially knowledge of how the Progs travelled to and from Hollow. Although, thankfully, there appeared to be little in the Progs' records regarding the specifics of interstitial travel, there were still enough references to offer tantalising clues. It was those clues, that area of knowledge, he had clamped down on the hardest. Forbidden. Pain of death. These were words with which, in times past, he had laced his speech when addressing new recruits to the thin ranks of the empire's scientists. Unlocking the secret of interstitial travel would bring too many new people, too many new ideas, too many new technologies to Hollow, destroying the wealth and power enjoyed by the ruling classes of Skarnelm and ruining his three centuries of careful planning and management.
But all that control had changed just over a year ago when Zharvak - curse him! - had become emperor. In a move that was either brutishly cunning or simply ignorant - Vester couldn't decide which - Zharvak had demoted him to Master of Royal Ceremonies. To the outside world it had looked like a promotion, but to anyone who moved within the corridors of power it sent a clear signal he was no longer in charge.
No longer did he have any political influence, no more could he use fear to control the nobility. He had found himself reduced to a mere flunky, a minor official whom Zharvak ignored apart from when it came to matters of court protocol.
It had gone on long enough! Soon he would have control of Bakalwe's equipment. Soon he would be able to do more than tip-toe around Zharvak. No more would he have to attempt to influence the loud-mouthed idiot emperor through careful remarks. He would use Ranthar and Lungwil's equipment to re-establish his power and dispense with anyone who stood in his way.
To complicate matters though, just before the ditch-born-son-of-a-harlot Zharvak had become emperor, Bakalwe had turned traitor. The scientist had been one of the select few permitted to access the Progs records. This was back when Vester had thought Bakalwe was one of the empire's subservient scientists who didn't dare cross the line.
But Bakalwe had crossed the line, his burning curiosity drawing him into forbidden areas. He had been careful to keep his insights into the workings of the interstices to himself, but the strain had showed. The scientist was a nisix - a difficult species to read - but with hindsight it was obvious he had been up to something illegal, what with his angry outbursts, and him becoming more and more reclusive. Those symptoms must have been the result of stress, but it wasn't until Bakalwe had espoused what seemed to be absurd theories that Vester had become suspicious.
Then Bakalwe had disappeared.
That was unusual. Scientists didn't simply vanish. No-one knew where he had gone. The guards on the gate of the scientific community's compound hadn't let him out - they were notoriously impossible-to-bribe brankians - which meant he was either still in the compound or perhaps he had escaped using some illicit knowledge gleaned from his studies of the Progs.
But it had turned out to be simple. Bakalwe had used one of the oldest tricks in the book: he had hidden in a laundry trolley and been wheeled out of the compound under a pile of dirty lab coats by a laundry worker too dim to wonder why the trolley was so difficult to push that day. And right past the noses of those cursed, supposedly sharp-as-a-razor, brankian guards! Their heads had decorated the spikes on the compound's gate for several weeks.
All that had happened in the last months of the previous emperor's reign. When emperor Peskahr had unexpectedly passed away while performing a tricky manoeuvre involving no fewer than eight members of his harem, Vester found himself fighting for survival. In the turmoil following the old emperor's death and Zharvak, assuming the crown, Vester had had no time to pursue the maverick scientist. His hasty demotion to Master of Ceremonies had left him floundering.
In an effort to retain some power, he had focussed on spying on all the nobles of the court, looking for material to use for blackmail purposes. Frustratingly, he could no longer make use of his network of spies, since one of them would be bound to report him to Zharvak, and so he had been forced to do his spying himself and be selective about who he spied upon. Ranthar and Lungwil, two of the most unimportant, idiotic members of the royal court had seemed unworthy and, frankly, too stupid to be of any threat and thus he had ignored them.
Two days ago, a sudden increase in power usage had led him to turn his attention to the pair once he had traced the source of the power surge. He had been astounded to discover that Bakalwe had been very much active until earlier that morning and had been secretly sponsored by Ranthar and Lungwil.
It had been tempting to immediately denounce the courtiers and the deceased Bakalwe as traitors, but that would have meant revealing his hand to Zharvak who would have been more than a little concerned that his Master of Royal Ceremonies was interested in greater things than the correct protocols to use in courtly proceedings.
Instead, he had begun monitoring the courtiers closely, even using false promises of freedom from prosecution to conscript their hairy assistant, Hulger, as his spy. He had been surprised to learn how far Bakalwe had come with his research into interstitial travel. More importantly, he learned of the other amazing equipment the scientist had created. Powerful tools that could he could use to return himself to power.
There was the instrument that allowed the operator to speak through a simulacrum created from whatever small objects it could find - leaves, pebbles, dust - hundreds of miles away. Those same forces could pluck a person into the air and carry them to the operator. The operator could even remotely insert a mindlearn - one of the gifts left by the Progs - into the heads of others.
But the most exciting invention to come out of the renegade scientist's fertile mind was the machine that enabled the operator to enter another person's mind, to see and hear everything the subject saw, even to go as far as inserting a sub-personality that gave the operator some degree of control over the subject.
That was the main prize! Zharvak would become his puppet!
All he had to do was bide his time, wait for the moment he could quietly remove Ranthar and Lungwil without causing suspicion, and in the meantime doing everything he could to prevent Zharvak finding out about the equipment.
There was, however, a fly in the ointment. Although Bakalwe's death had instantly removed the threat his ITD would ever be completed, it had been replaced with the bigger threat of the newly arrived humans' fully functioning ITD. But there was something fishy about that. The circumstances of the humans' arrival were unusual, to say the least. Ranthar and Lungwil's belief that the humans knew what they were doing and could repair their device was based on rather shaky assumptions.
His own theory was that their arrival in Hollow was a freak accident.
Damn his lack of power! In his old role, he would have had the newly arrived humans eliminated and that would have been the end of it! Instead, he was having to rack his brains for a means of preventing Zharvak from discovering their arrival.
He used a spare headset Hulger had stolen for him monitor what the courtiers were up to. That way he had access to the same information they had, but with his superior intelligence he would interpret it correctly. He would learn all he needed from the pair and act ruthlessly when the appropriate moment came.
It was vital the courtiers did not know he was watching them. If, by some chance, Zharvak found out what they were up to, his torturers would soon have them squealing like pigs and Vester's arrest would shortly follow. Hulger, the courtiers' shambling, hairy assistant - the only one who knew of his involvement - was a weak link though. If things went wrong, Vester would have to get to him before the torturers did.
An immediate problem was the human Ranthar and Lungwil had brought to Skarnelm. He claimed to be an Interstitial Travel expert, which - although it seemed unlikely - might mean he knew more about interstitial travel than was safe. Zharvak would have that information from him in an eye blink. It was too risky to keep him alive.
A pity. There weren't many humans in Skarnelm. But there was no room for sentimentality. The human captive had to be eliminated.
Carefully, he stowed the headset behind a secret panel in the wall. Satisfied no trace of his activity remained, he silently left the room.
******
Drome unpicked the folded wad of paper and held it up to the feeble light coming from his cell's tiny window. The note was stained and softened by the soup, but something was written on it. Glistening on the damp surface were a few crude shapes that looked as though they had been hastily scrawled in crayon. He couldn't make head or tail of it. He turned the paper around, squinting at it from different angles, then his mind lurched and the shapes swam into meaning.
It was just one word.
Friend.
"Friend?" he said under his breath. Someone here wants to help me? Hulger?
It was clear that Lungwil and Ranthar didn't have his best interests at heart. Everything was so foreign to him, so far outside his experience he felt like a fish out of water. Nothing in his previous life as a help desk technician had prepared him for this. It was a tiny comfort to know that someone in this godforsaken place was his friend.
Was Hulger going to help him? Was the great big furry lump with the soulful eyes trying to tell him help was on the way?
He looked at the note again. Best not to keep it, he decided. What should he do with it? Eat it? It didn't look very appetising, even with the soup stains. The only place in his entire cell that offered the slightest chance of note disposal was the grille set in the floor. He went over to it, holding the dripping piece of paper between thumb and forefinger.
The grille was about twenty inches in diameter and appeared to be made of woven fibres stiffened with resin. There was an eye-watering smell seeping up through its holes that suggested the drain was used less for rainwater than, say, the festering effluent from several years' worth of pig pen muck.
Drome wadded the note and tried to push it between the bars of the grille. It was too fat to fit through and he pushed a little harder, stretching his arms and craning his neck backwards to keep his nose and mouth as far away from the stench as possible.
The grille moved.
It was loose. Oh, that's easy, he thought. He hooked up one edge and dropped the note through the gap. There was a distant soggy plop and Drome let the grille fall back into place, but not before noticing there were fresh marks where the pins that formerly had held the grille securely in place had been sawn through.
He sat back down in the corner furthest from the grille and its awful stink. Before long his head nodded forward and he was asleep. He didn't even wake up when Hulger shambled into the cell and removed the tray, cup and bowl.