Cloud Castles Read online

  CLOUD CASTLES

  MICHAEL SCOTT ROHAN

  www.sfgateway.com

  Enter the SF Gateway …

  In the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it), Gollancz, Britain’s oldest and most distinguished science fiction imprint, created the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series. Dedicated to re-publishing the English language’s finest works of SF and Fantasy, most of which were languishing out of print at the time, they were – and remain – landmark lists, consummately fulfilling the original mission statement:

  ‘SF MASTERWORKS is a library of the greatest SF ever written, chosen with the help of today’s leading SF writers and editors. These books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written.’

  Now, as we move inexorably into the twenty-first century, we are delighted to be widening our remit even more. The realities of commercial publishing are such that vast troves of classic SF & Fantasy are almost certainly destined never again to see print. Until very recently, this meant that anyone interested in reading any of these books would have been confined to scouring second-hand bookshops. The advent of digital publishing has changed that paradigm for ever.

  The technology now exists to enable us to make available, for the first time, the entire backlists of an incredibly wide range of classic and modern SF and fantasy authors. Our plan is, at its simplest, to use this technology to build on the success of the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series and to go even further.

  Welcome to the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy. Welcome to the most comprehensive electronic library of classic SFF titles ever assembled.

  Welcome to the SF Gateway.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Gateway Introduction

  Contents

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Website

  Also By Michael Scott Rohan

  Dedication

  Author Bio

  Copyright

  Knowest thou the mountain, with its bridge of cloud?

  The mule plods warily; the white mists crowd.

  Coiled in their caves the brood of dragons sleep;

  The torrent hurls the rock from steep to steep …

  Knowest thou the land? So far and fair!

  Thou, whom I love, and I will wander there.

  Goethe, tr. Flecker

  Prologue

  The Spiral …

  ‘Tell you something, Steve,’ said Jyp (that evening when the Wolves were running, and he took me to see Le Stryge). ‘The world’s a lot wider place than most folk ever realize. They cling to what they know, to the firm centre where everything’s dull and deadly and predictable. Where the hours slip by at just sixty seconds to the minute from your cradle to your tombstone – that’s the Core. Out here, out on the Spiral, out towards the Rim – it’s not like that. It’s adrift, Steve, in Time and in Space as well. And there are more tides than one that ebb and flow about its shores. One time or another maybe everybody’ll find one lapping about their feet – and they look out on infinite horizons! Some bow down, slink away, forget; but others, they take a step forward, they cross those chill wide waters – from Ports like this one, often enough, where comings and goings over a thousand years and more have tied a knot in Time, to all the corners of the wide world. Lord, lord, how wide! And Steve, know what? Every which one of those corners is a place. Places that were, that will be, that never were save that the minds of men gave them life. Lurking like shadows cast behind the real places in that reality of yours, shadows of their past, their legends and their lore, of what they might have been and may yet be, touching and mingling with every place at many points. You can search your whole life long and never find a trace of them, yet once you learn you may pass between them in the drawing of a breath. There, west of the sunset, east of the moonrise, there lies the Sargasso Sea and Fiddler’s Green, there’s the Elephants’ Graveyard, there’s El Dorado’s kingdom and the empire of Prester John – there’s everywhere. Riches, beauties, dangers – every damn thing within the mind and the memory of men, and more too, probably. But are they the shadows, Steve – or is your reality theirs?’

  I had no answer for him. I still don’t.

  Chapter One

  The driver stamped on the brake. The car swerved violently, and the bottle sailed past us, lazily almost, and popped into fragments on the scarred pavement. No flames, just a spattering of stale beer. That made us a lot luckier than many others today.

  Lutz was leaning out of the window shouting, but the armoured police stationed around the hotel were already surging out towards the little knot of rioters, who scattered, baying like animals and hurling any missiles that came to hand. They were brandishing torn fragments of a banner whose pole had evidently been put to other uses. I made out part of the slogan – something … RAUS!

  Probably Kapitalisten – or Juden; they were beginning to equate the two again, openly. As they passed the car they kicked it, thumped the roof, beat and spat on the windows. I glimpsed blunt, coarse faces, jail-cropped heads, round eyes staring, mouths stretched wide with wordless shrieks of hate – so many of them alike, somehow, as if the kinks in their minds created some common cast.

  Lutz snorted and sat heavily back, brushing down his thick white hair with both hands. ‘’S tut mir leid, Stephen,’ he rumbled. ‘These baboons! They do not realize at just whom they are throwing things!’

  I didn’t suggest their aim might improve if they did. Baron Lutz von Amerningen was a little too sure of his own importance to appreciate that; besides, the success of the launch had left him in one of his high expansive moods. I’d as soon have pricked a baby’s balloon. A hotel flunkey opened the door, and Lutz bounced out after me. He wrapped a massive arm around my shrinking shoulders, and breathed sour Dom Perignon into my face; the launch had been lavish. ‘Now, you’re sure you won’t come straight on with me? We could catch a set or two of tennis, a sauna, a few drinks …’

  ‘Lutz, thanks, but really – I still have things to do—’

  ‘This evening, then? You are not just going to sit and vegetate, a fit young fellow like you? Sure, you are tired now, but that’s just the excitement. You need to unvind, boy!’

  Lutz’s English was so good he could have perfected his accent too. I’d decided he just liked the Erich von Stroheim effect.

  ‘Look at me, I’m years older and effery bit as fit! I don’t just flop down, I keep going! Partying! That’s the way to stay young! So – tonight, out at my place, I am giving one of my liddle affaires!’ He chuckled, and passed me a stiff white envelope. ‘You have not been to one before, eh? It will be an education – you know?’

  ‘Lutz, that’s … incredibly kind of you,’ I said, slightly dazed. I knew, all right. The fourteenth Baron von Amerningen’s ‘little affaires’ were famous, the stuff of tabloids the world over, not that reporters or paparazzi ever got beyond the front gate. Or mere business associates. Well, as of now I probably was one of the idle rich. ‘I’ve got a lot of stuff to attend to,’ I repeated, ‘and I’m feeling worn out.’ That at least was the truth, in a way. But I didn’t want to offend him outright. ‘Maybe I could look in a bit later, if that’s—’

  ‘Of course, of course!’ He waved a massive flipper of a hand, ‘You know the way? Okay! Don’t just sit in your room sucking at a bottle! Or any other solitary vices, hah? Well, ciao, bambino!’

  I returne
d his goodbye flourish as his stretched-Merc limousine purred back out onto the rubbish-strewn road. The street was empty now, but a stink lingered in the air, partly the garbage from scattered dustbins, and partly other odours from the city centre where they were still strong. Smoke from the burnings, the pepper gas they’d started using instead of tear gas and CS, petrol from the Molotov cocktails – I could taste it on my tongue, and I wanted to spit.

  ‘Bummer, isn’t it?’ remarked another guest hurrying down to the taxi rank, stuffing bundles of trade-fair literature into his attaché case. ‘You know they overturned my cab? Tipped it right over! Goddamn fascist bastards! You over for the fair too – hey, aren’t you Stephen Fisher? Right, right!’ He grabbed my hand and pumped it with slightly awestruck enthusiasm. ‘Jerzy Markowski, VP, Roscom-Warzawa, electronics sub-assemblies, that kinda thing! Hey, that was some show you gave us! One helluva eye-opener! Know what all this paper is? New business that’s suddenly becoming cost-effective, that’s what! Haven’t seen the figures yet, but we’re gonna be buying a lot of C-Tran capacity!’ His face fell. ‘And our goddamn competitors, you bet! You won’t forget us?’

  I was surprised he’d managed to recognize me from my brief spiel at the launch, surrounded as I was by holograms and dancers and the whole razzamatazz. But as I came into the lobby I found out how: my face was plastered right across the newsstand. I hadn’t made Time or Newsweek yet, but the Europeans hadn’t wasted any time. There I was staring out from the covers of Elsevier and Spiegel (alongside Lutz, naturally) and The Economist had a cover photo of a crate with a mortarboard and little beady eyes, captioned Smart Packaging? C-Tran – Shipping for a New Europe.

  I picked up a copy, and the man behind the counter smirked and said loudly, ‘Gratulieren, Herr Fisher!’ Heads turned in the foyer; the hotel was lousy with business types for the fair, of course, and suddenly they all wanted to shake my hand, even some big boys from the multinationals. I escaped into the lift with aching fingers and standing invitations to drop by just everywhere from Grenoble to Groton, Conn. I’d felt idiotic at this morning’s extravaganza, as if I was pretending to be some kind of celebrity; now it was dawning on me that that was exactly what I was.

  But all I wanted to be right now was alone.

  That was pretty funny, when you came down to it, me pulling a Garbo. I’d spent years learning not to, and not on any analyst’s couch trip either. On heaving decks and dark jungles, among cloud archipelagos in worlds that stretched out beyond our own like endless shadows in the setting sun. On quests so strange and desperate that the very memories they left were fleeting, all too liable to fade. On the Spiral I’d faced tasks and perils that had taught me the real meaning of success – and I had been forced, at last, to face myself.

  I flipped open The Economist, and my eyes lit on the end of the lead article.

  … the single most dramatic innovation in the movement of goods since the introduction of containerization in the 1960s. Unquestionably it will make Stephen Fisher, both as chief executive and shareholder, the multimillionaire he deserves to be. But C-Tran, like its enigmatic creator, often seems to have its gaze fixed on wider horizons. Undoubtedly, by rendering the tiresome complications of international shipping as irrelevant as yesterday’s frontiers, C-Tran will further draw together an Eastern Europe still torn and tottering from post-Communist trauma, and a West plagued by instability and rising extremism. As such, it may well find its place not only in the dry economic treatises of tomorrow, but also …

  The door indicator chimed softly for my floor. I rolled up the magazine hastily in case somebody caught me reading it, and snorted. Lord, Lord – as an old friend of mine called Jyp was given to say – all that just because of a little boredom! But now it was over. Now it was done. I shoved the plastic keycard into my door so hard I almost bent it.

  I tossed the magazine aside and checked my little computer. The fax dump was choked with messages; so was the answering machine facility – congratulations all. Tapping a few keys dumped them down the line to home office for my PA team to answer. But as I broke contact a window flashed up suddenly in the centre of the screen, the format reserved for urgent system warnings. I peered closer at the glaring red pixels.

  **URGENT**IN IMMINENT EVENT SYSTEM WIPEOUT*INTERFACE PORT S WITH PORT G**URGENT**

  Interface what with what? I’d never seen this one before. I was pretty sure this machine didn’t have any such ports, let alone any means of interfacing them. A joke? A virus, maybe? It had a suggestion of hidden meaning, double entendre, even. More probably I’d accidentally triggered some redundant developers’ instruction left lying around in the operating software. I touched the OK icon, and the frame faded; but with the persistence of liquid crystals the bare letters lingered an instant like fading fires. I shut the lid and went off to shower and change.

  By rights I should have forgotten the whole thing. But an hour later, duly showered, changed into casuals and armed with a great big gin and tonic, I was still brooding about it – if only because I had something worse to brood over when I stopped. The hotel bar terrace was empty – hardly surprising. The management had done its best with marble and shrubs and striped awnings, but they couldn’t gloss over the car park annexe beyond, and the grotty row of dwarf conifers marking its boundary with the hotel next door, a better view than the multi-lane road out front, but not much. Still, it was peaceful; and at least the car park opened up a great swathe of unobstructed sky. After days stuck in the exhibition centre the sheer sight of it eased my claustrophobia wonderfully. I ordered another g and t, and settled back to admire.

  Above the stunted treelets the clouds came surging up in steep walls of blazing white shot with deep grey, unstained by the smokes of human stupidity. In the crisp air of early autumn, still faintly sun warmed, they loomed stark and solid against one of those darker azures that draw the eye into infinity. It’s common enough to see patterns in the clouds, but this one stood out clear as a painting. To either side they became high craggy rock-faces, higher on the right and linked by a striated slope soaring to a level summit, the base of a flattened V. You could almost believe you were looking up a broad road curving between high cliffs towards the crest of a mighty mountain pass, and rearing above it, like a sentinel, the summit of a white tower. The falling sun tinged tower and path a fiery pink. A dramatic backdrop, fit for a great drama, a film or an opera or something; yet nature and chance alone had created it in minutes, and in minutes more it would be gone.

  It reminded me that at least I could slip away for a few days’ climbing now, though I’d be lucky to find anywhere that unspoilt. A few days? I could spend the rest of my life climbing. I was a success now – wasn’t I?

  I’d built up our shipping firm so well that when Barry retired early the step from deputy to managing director was almost automatic, young as I was. But now my friend and deputy Dave was running things better than I ever did, and what was I? A figurehead. Not that he meant to cut me out. For all his usual disrespectful banter, he still deferred to me over anything I chose to take an interest in, sometimes almost embarrassingly. But wherever I looked, I found his hand firmly on the tiller, steering the whole enterprise with the cheerful autocracy he’d inherited from his West African chieftain ancestors – and this while bringing up a big family into the bargain. He was everything I’d tried to be, and more; my solutions had been good, his were better, and I began to understand why Barry had quit. But I was barely past forty, fit and fond of my work – what else did I have to love, after all? Over the years I’d had ideas about how our business really ought to operate – crazy ones, mostly, but I’d begun to fiddle with them, and …

  And suddenly C-Tran was a reality in seventeen countries, ready to launch in ten more, with a massive expansion programme to spin its web out beyond Europe to envelop the world. But not in my hands. It had gone beyond me and my vision now, beyond any one man’s control. All I had to do was give interviews, chair the odd consortium meeting and rake in t
he cash with both hands. That was my success, one mighty bound, from helmsman to figurehead again. Not all the millions would give me the satisfaction I’d got from the bagful of battered guineas, moidores, reales and soft Spanish ounces I’d held as hard-won profit in my first trading voyage on those stranger, wider oceans that flowed between the worlds of the Spiral. That had been two years ago, when the growing pains of the new system had pressed in on me. In desperation I’d fled, crossed the threshold and found old friends, a captain and crew and goods to trade from one strange port to another. Then just a year later I’d done the same again, this time as my own captain on a longer haul. Longer, more perilous and this time with less profit, but it was a start.

  Twice before I’d been driven to seek the Spiral, once by chance and curiosity, once by need. Now I wasn’t driven, but drawn – and the pull was tearing me in two. What did I have to live for, stuck here like a maggot in the Core, when out there was a universe of infinite possibilities? The Core paled before its fierce bold colours. But this world I knew, I could control – as far as men can, and better than most. And the Spiral had a curious way of magnifying both strengths and weaknesses. Better I solve my problems here, or out there they might rise up and overwhelm me.

  After all, I knew what the worst one was. Here or there, Core or Spiral, I was alone. The stupidity, the guilt, the cold emptiness of my past life I’d thrown off. I’d resolved to live again, to make real friends, relate, marry even. But I was past forty now, and they lied when they said I didn’t look it; I did, from inside. And I was used to living my work, eating and sleeping it, too. Not a good start. And the Spiral itself got in my way. How could I explain a double life like that? Or involve any woman I knew? Claire and Jacquie, they’d both seen it. They’d both backed off from it, and from me. By now, no doubt, they’d forgotten; people did. There were women out on the Spiral, in plenty; but lasting relationships were rare in that shifting melee of space and time, where to stop for too long was to lose memory and mire down in dull mortality once again.