If Lope de Vega, Dognahnyi or Sudra were present at all, they were not among this shorter platform queue of so-called stragglers. They probably only had tickets for the more populous queues on other platforms. We perhaps shall never know.

This time, however, what was already certain, the main protagonists were due (by dint of the railtrack's pre-laid direction within Inner Earth) to by-pa.s.s Klaxon City, thus hopefully enabling them an easier path towards the goals they thought they sought.

Another or the same train disappeared with great whinings of fire-cranked pain (fed upon nuggets of blackened Angevin)... down the steep slope towards the centre of the Earth, ratchetting upon funicular gravity-braces. Aboard this corridorless vehicle, mock-timed for other eras when steam was the only motive force behind such iron beasts of transport, those in one carriage were immediately disappointed that there was no on-board lighting. Amy and Arthur were scared, but Greg managed to light a spill (one he used for his pipe). The glow upon their faces was more than just ghostly. It was comforting, too.

They felt the juddering of the gravity-braces as they slipped across the sleepers of time as well as of dream upon another set of sleepers: themselves. The Sleeper Express for the ends of the world.

In timely fashion they skirted a visibly far-stretching dune-curved lobe within a gigantic cavity, lit only by a subdued Sunnemo. Greg quenched the spill as they watched awe-inspired the glistening tracks vastly undulate into the numinous distance with a renewed flurry of choking smoke or steam: inferred to be thus choking since plumes of such emissions had only been cursorily test-run within mock-ups of these cavities or chambers, but the authorities had hoped for the best-in that the natural vents of an organic planet would naturally cope with such human interventions as fire-cranked transport.

Then utter blackness again, eventually dimly inflamed by another spill.

Followed, a few hours later, by a bright c.h.i.n.k of a few seconds as the pyloned city of Klaxon was by-pa.s.sed-viewed between the margins of a lightning crack in an otherwise unilluminated cavity of Earth's most elephantine junction of rail-tunnels. The train's whistle-becoming more like a siren by dint of the echoing cavity's configuration of s.p.a.ce and sound-blasted out for the first time (with the shuddering imminence or immanence of seemingly religious 'antipodal angst') as the train continued its nigh unstoppable steam-driven course through a more benighted night than even those previously imagined.

Scene: Lecture Room of Earth Towers Hall, London. Delving further into 'Nemonymous Night' as a work of fiction, many reviews have pointed out how the characters remain fluid, difficult to nail down, even not always the same person! Therefore sympathy or empathy with the protagonists remains elusive. Normally a disastrous situation for the efficacy of any novel or set of novels. A sign of failure.

Hopefully, they are sufficiently allusive to warrant further consideration in the light of the author's intent (as far as I can ascertain without recourse to any debate on 'The Intentional Fallacy' upon which subject I currently keep my powder dry). That intent, then, however difficult it is itself to nail down (like the characters), seems to me-as I implied before-to stem from an attempt at making any empathy as untenable as possible. However, I've met this author head on (determined to play the game on my own terms) and I feel that one can put yourself in the role of Greg or Beth, whichever one is chosen to be more likely to be empathisable for you. The 'vexed texture of text' and/or 'a novel growing up as it is written with very little retrospective revision by the author except for typos or grammatical mistakes' help one in this attempt to empathise and become involved and to suspend disbelief in the-what is it?-SF novel within a Jonathan-Swiftian or Jules-Vernian or Marcel-Proustian 'Inner Ear' or perceived dune of trackable fictionality by drilling through for the oil of its plot. In other words, the empathy becomes more powerful from the fact there is little a.s.sistance by the author towards any empathy at all. You need, therefore, to insert yourself.

Before I came on to the podium here today, I scribbled out-at the last minute-with this small stub of a pencil (holds it up to applause) a few more notes as a.n.a.logy and to serve as my own aide memoire. I'll read them out verbatim: "The method of fiction in 'Nemonymous Night'. Like trying to crawl through a long horizontal hedge. It's easier than you thought. Coming out at the end of the hedge-find oneself lodged on a cliff-face. No way forward. Yet, the hedge going backwards has turned itself against you. More nettles. More spiky obtrusions pointing in the wrong direction..."

The first regathering of its steam by the train within Inner Earth was at Whof.a.ge. It would be folly to pretend that this was anything other than a short cessation for reprovisioning or renewed fire-cranking or water/carbonised-angevin re-stocking. The pa.s.sengers were intended to stay in the vicinity of the station awaiting announcements from the mini-tannoy system that had been set up merely within the hearing-range of the station itself. Whof.a.ge had no ambition to become another Klaxon, it seemed. Whof.a.ge's tannoys could hardly be heard, except for a pitiful cartoonish squeak punctuating the steam-burnished hiss of the mighty iron beast that still billowed visible smoky off-detritus into the crowded atmosphere.

It is also folly to use the word 'station'-as it was more like an old-fashioned halt from that idyllic period in English history depicted by 'The Railway Children'. Greg and Beth, together with their own two children, stretched their legs along the dark-roofed platform-amazed that a cave was provided, one not dissimilar to the buffet used in the film 'Brief Encounter'. Steaming samovars of freshly-infused concoctions of Indian leaf, plus various tiers of cream or coconutty cakes. And a large old-fashioned clockwork clock that told surface time, for the benefit of the smooth throughput of surfaceers such as Greg and his family. Amy and Arthur shuddered in their thin-limbed smocks, because the station was merely a dank, troublous tunnel-such as those tunnels punctuating the ca.n.a.ls of surface England whereby Narrow Boats plied their own ancient, sluggish, chilly, gloom-filled, chugging paths of broken water-and the shyfryngs were almost second nature. Even Beth felt the gnawing to the very bottom bone. They were all relieved to get into the relative cosiness of the cave, where they could replenish their stock of good-will and pluck.

Upon their alter-nemos' first visit to Whof.a.ge, they had not been able to explore the city at all. In fact, a pa.s.sing subterfuge of memory seemed to tell them that they had by-pa.s.sed this city altogether in the Drill, just as, on this journey, they had by-pa.s.sed Klaxon. Therefore, there was a temptation to leave the jurisdiction of the squeaky tannoys in the station and just poke their heads out for a moment and view the vistas available, including the previously unknown pyramid on the hill (equivalent in historical interest to Klaxon's Canterbury Oak or, on the surface, the Colchester Tree)-and, having discussed the chances of managing this without missing the train's departure (i.e. discussing these chances with the buxom white-overalled tea-lady behind the cave's counter)-they took off on Poliakoff-type adventures within the purlieus of Whof.a.ge and beyond the catchment area of the station premises, let alone just its tannoys. And perhaps those adventures are worthy of a whole book in themselves.

They were surprised, for example, that there were many other pa.s.sengers on the train-judging by the very short queue of them that had boarded on the train's first inward outward-journey. Many of these shadowy individuals eschewed a trip round the city, but a number did take the same risk as Greg and his family took. How many managed to get back to the train before it departed remains an exciting conundrum of rushed running and panting moments of dire stress. Each a book in itself.

The city was rather Eastern European in atmosphere, with a mighty cathedral on huge stilts that seemed to be around every corner they turned. No sign of the pyramid on the hill and there were rumours that it had toppled a few years before-killing three million citizens in the process. The city was a strange contrast to the close-ordered darkness of most of the erstwhile train journey-with m.u.f.fled sirens from the front pullman-as well as being an equal contrast to the fleeting vistas of Sunnemo-lit dunes or lobes that took the continuously curving railtrack upon their backs. For something to be a contrast to two quite opposing contrasts simultaneously said a lot for the power of Whof.a.ge as a contrast.

By-pa.s.sing the various books that will one day be available to tell of the adventures of Greg and his family in Whof.a.ge, they returned to the station just in time to hear the tannoy's announcement of their train's impending resumption of its journey to the Earth's Core.

After leaving Whof.a.ge Station, it wasn't long before the train came to a series of irritating halts... with intermittent hisses of brakes.

"Engineering works," suggested Greg.

Unusually, illumination within the carriage was a few notches of glimmer above pure darkness-thanks, it seemed, to a few uncertain c.h.i.n.ks in the cavity-walls that allowed a thin effulgence from an ever-weakening Sunnemo... or so Greg a.s.sumed. His two children were sitting patiently on the opposite side of the carriage-far too patient to be believed possible, but they were probably over-awed by the novelties involved in this journey-as they had yet insufficiently evolved to be able to empathise with-or, rather, "wear"-their alter-nemos who had already travelled throughout Inner Earth during earlier times.

"It's a pity we couldn't visit Sudra this time," said Beth, the children's mother. Greg nodded, as she continued: "I hope her shoe business is keeping its head above water."

"Bound to be," said Greg, "with all those preparing for war."

"I don't know if she has military footwear in some of the displays."

Greg laughed, saying: "Well, those jingle-jangly ones are certainly not suitable for spies!"

At that point, the train began to travel forward more consistently, if still painfully slowly-leaving Sunnemo's dim light behind.

The two children took this opportunity-amid much fidgeting-to attend to some necessary matters of ablution or body-dispersal.

"Can't you do that a bit more quietly?" snapped Beth.

Greg lit another spill, but the children had, by then, resumed their more natural sitting positions. Amy tugged up and down the padded armrest from its slot in the seat's back-as if rehearsing some future tantrum.

"That's enough of that," said Greg, as the train finally picked up speed.

The train roared through the tunnel cavities like dust through a vacuum's nozzle. Hours of wild churning pa.s.sage (each chug having become a rough transition towards a uniform teeth-grinding surge) as the train's travel touched upon the fasttracks... with the carriage vibrating and each pair of points being crossed with surprising ease as the train plunged onward alongside the very close proximity of the black cavity walls that formed the untouching but closely-hugging tunnel-sides. The pa.s.sengers became accustomed to their own nerves, as they attempted to sleep.

Eventually, the train emerged into a more consistent area of Sunnemo light, where the cavity walls widened sufficiently to allow the appearance of surface travel, the striated mould on the rocks even granting the terrain a feel of fields: dunes of traditional countryside vanishing towards the horizon where Arthur imagined an English village nestled with its churchspire prominent... but not prominent enough yet to see. The trees were mysterious figures-perhaps setting out for Dunsinane.

Soon, however, Arthur (yawning and rubbing his sleepy eyes) saw the terrain had become less 'traditional' and in a field of mould turned brown, if not black, he saw thousands of boys squatting: each with a single overgrown ear: surrounded by bottles and cans and packets: delving into the subcarpet of Inner Earth with trowels.

Upon a distant hill sat a giant Toilet Frog, as if overseeing the 'labourers'.

Arthur silently wept. He realised, frighteningly, that one could not escape the dream sickness-even here within Inner Earth, where they had all been a.s.sured dreams would be easily distinguishable from reality... as they had earlier been promised would be the case in the erstwhile zoo grounds of man-city, an area of the past which had been forgotten amidst subsequent events, forgotten not only by Arthur but, sadly, by us, too. Even fiction has its own version of pitiful senility amid the other realities to which it ever tries to cling.

Scene: Lecture Hall, Earth Towers Hall, London "A new theory has emerged. We now need to proceed speedily from hypothetical literary matters concerning the use of Fiction as the New Magic in the role either of genuine cure or, at least, of constructively believable panacea. The Art of Fiction needs, therefore, to progress towards a stricter and more verifiable account of what happened or what will happen in the final war between humanity and a terrible foe and, subsequently, by extrapolation, to become a means to the end of neutralising the results of that very war.

"Heretofore, it was believed (and I am the first to admit that I was one of those believers) that the Core-aka Earth's Core, Mount Core, Sunnemo, Jules Verne's Centre Of The Earth-housed a single malignancy known as the Angel Megazanthus or the Infinite Cuckoo or other possible names that were listed by various protagonists. Gradually, however, queries began to crop up as to whether its initial appearance as a malignancy represented in effect a benign force in disguise. One that fought on humanity's behalf.

"Then, with even more powers of creative meaning and truth, it was proposed that the force inhabiting the Core had not started its life there but had always existed as a generally migrating form in a wider universe... but then it was plucked from its otherwise slow and self-occupied pa.s.sage through s.p.a.ce-time and transported to the Core-perhaps accidentally-by a means of public transport invented by humanity.

"It was a proposal coupled with a diverse concept of dream sickness, a sickness that yet enabled the potentiality for good to evolve."

Stub of pencil: Aide Memoire. I'm getting stuck. The fact that a core could double up as a sun was probably the most crucial 'vision', when Captain Nemo-all those years ago-showed Sunnemo to Mike from the window of the Drill's corporate lounge. And I'm due to explain that the 'skies' of Inner Earth are beginning to be populated with vast machines that rival even Sunnemo in size and it must be wondered if these are related to the Unidentified Flying Objects that often pepper our surface skies. But a singularly outlandish flying-saucer hovers, currently, over Klaxon City, like a spinning wheel churning through soft earth as well as off-detritus. End of notes.

"The fish smelled!"

Arthur smiled as he replaced another divot above the body that he and his younger sister Amy had just buried during a solemn ceremony of childish reveration... marking a departure from life by one of Amy's loved pets.

"He didn't!" Amy dabbed at her eyes.

At that moment, a low-flying helicopter-vanes clacking fast-banked over the apartment towers, criss-crossed as in a display of aviation above the allotments and finally churned quickly into the distance. If children were able to feel their own paranoia for what it was, then Arthur sensed that his worst enemy was the pilot of that chopper spying on him... and, with the sensitivities that only children can feel but not understand, he somehow knew that the pilot was himself (Arthur) from a future he was yet to inhabit.

He turned to Amy, deciding to ignore his dark instincts with regard to the diminishing pinp.r.i.c.k of the helicopter now being lost to the suburban horizon. While both their sibling feelings towards each other were typically abrasive he did, at heart, worry about her and, before being able to stop himself, he proceeded to quench Amy's tears regarding her recently deceased goldfish.

"You've still got a canary in a cage. And that fish really smelled!"

"It only smelled after it died." Her sobs worsened to the extent of giving her words an even higher pitch than normal.

When they had found her dear fish floating at the top of the bowl bloated like a human ear, the room was so filled with fumes, Amy's canary showed signs of soon choking to death itself had not the fish-bowl been removed forthwith to the outhouse. And, if not death, certainly some state between life and death which could not easily be defined.

Arthur stared at Amy, his immediate impulse caught between hugging her and scolding her for being so sentimental, but the words he used to convey this thought to his brain were much simpler than words such as 'scold' or 'sentimental'. He recalled their mother's story of dream sickness and wondered if it would be any use in comforting Amy by reminding her of it in words she could understand. Arthur himself had failed to understand their mother's version of it, but deep within yet another instinct similar to the earlier one regarding the helicopter, he understood the story quite well as he replayed it in his mind.

Once upon a time-their mother had begun by telling them-there was a country where people could not judge between the state of dreaming and that of experiencing real things while awake. A girl called Sudra lived in that country. Not a country of the blind, but a country of dream uncertainty. Sudra loved the new shoes that she had been given for Christmas. But how could she be sure they were new enough? Or even shoes at all in such a world? She decided to visit the wisest man in the country who happened to live in the same village as Sudra and her family. This man told her the shoes were not only new, but also real. She was relieved-at first. Until she worried if the wisest man in the country was a dream himself. Why would the wisest man in the country happen to live in the same village as Sudra? But he had to live somewhere. He had even claimed he was the wisest man in the whole world, not just the wisest man in this particular country. Did this claim not prove he was lying, and, if lying, did not the probability of this being a dream increase considerably? Or lessen? Sudra didn't know where to turn. The shoes were strange shoes since at the front and back of each one were little bells. And they were yellow shoes. Her parents said this would help them find her, should she get lost. But Sudra had never seen shoes like them before in the country where she lived. They must have been specially made. And the family was so poor how could they have afforded such bespoke shoes? She decided to test out the reality of her current thoughts by unthinking them. People got over deaths by unthinking them. They got over grief and pain simply by unthinking them. Yet she still smelled the countryside that surrounded the house, she still smelled all the common and customary smells of the house itself... and even with her eyes closed as she concentrated on unthinking all her doubts, the smell of the smells continued to smell around her. And when the parents entered the room to find her, she had vanished! Only the shoes remained, sitting silently on the yellow carpet. But Sudra's smell remained for her parents to follow.

A sad or inscrutable ending-their mother had explained-but one that had many possible meanings.

Indeed it did, thought Arthur, as he more simply retold the tale to Amy. And as Amy wiped the tears away, she even smiled. Now the whole world would be her fish. Just one of the tale's many morals.

They laughed as many other morals of their mother's fable took root.

Meanwhile, a huge spinning wheel appeared over the suburban skyline, constructed of many shining metal stanchions and cylinders, its central top c.o.c.kpit filled with the biggest head of an unknown creature the children had ever seen. Soon, however, at a vast slant in the sky, it dipped towards the ground where its spinning edges began to delve: throwing up great cascades of earth like fountains of detritus towards the clouds that soon became gritty themselves. This Unidentified Flying Object soon vanished below the ground towards further skies it hoped existed inside the Earth-or it had simply grounded itself like a pitifully sick whale beaching upon the bank of a river.

"If the fish smelled anything," said Arthur, "it certainly can still smell you, Amy."

And he took her hand to go inside.

"Wait!" shouted Amy. And she picked up her favourite flowerpot nearby, in which sat her favourite doll, and she took this with her as she followed a now freshly unthinking, unthoughtful Arthur overland towards their home.

Scene: In Paternoster Square: just outside Earth Towers Hall, Klaxon City.

"There was no scene-setting," said Crazy Lope, "only the bare stage."

"Did anyone introduce Sudra?" asked Edith with the parasol. Indeed, she bobbed it up and down with the rhythm of her words.

"She did her best. n.o.body knew what to expect." Lope was fascinated by the lady's parasol, if not hypnotised.

"What did Sudra say?" asked the matronly lady, still in tune with the parasol.

"Sudra, Sudra, Sudra, Sudra, why keep saying her name? There's only one person we can talk about at a time."

"Well, what was said?"

"Verbatim? You want it verbatim?"

"As far as possible."

The parasol remained dead still, despite a breeze, as Lope did his best to repeat, for Edith's benefit, the exact words which Sudra used during her speech from the bare stage: "'Speech needs nothing but the words and nothing outside of what was actually said. The explanation of my theory, therefore, will, today, be uninterrupted by scene-setting or, even, questions. I shall simply launch into it, as I have already done with the words about speech above, and then launch out of it before you have the chance to know what has happened. Indeed, a being's most significant sign of humanity is speech. Once upon a time, speech developed slowly but, at least, it did develop and only in rare cases did it remain in the realm of animal grunts. But, now, children are becoming less and less innocent with the onset of an increasingly modern civilisation. Their eyes become cowed with experience, as if they can foresee the s.e.x in which they'll be forced to partake, by gratuitous choice or by love or by l.u.s.t or by rape... or by a combination of any of these. Speech is part of this process, that and self-awareness, body-awareness, gender-awareness, genital-awareness... even before p.u.b.erty. No wonder a sparkling infant soon becomes dowdy and bleary-eyed... with sorrow and sadness underlying the veneer of its happy-go-lucky speech. Another factor, too, is madness. You may feel the impossibility of self-madness. You may look at drunks or lunatics or any of the fringe people in the street mouthing obscenities or simply shouting nonsensical noises or grunting like animals. Indeed, as a side issue, have you noticed how even ordinary, clean-living folk are now more p.r.o.ne to mouthing uncouth words? Anyway, you may be confident in your own sanity but, then, completely unpremeditated, you find yourself shouting out... angry, say, at how the waitress is late with your order or, simply, the stress of an increasingly modern world finally takes its toll on you... and that is merely the beginning of uncontrollable madness taking you over as the language of speech once slowly took you over when you were an infant...'"

Lope paused from quoting Sudra, with tears in his eyes.

"Is that all that was spoken by Sudra?" asked the dowager, wondering why she, Edith, was still holding up the parasol when the sun had long since vanished behind the clouds.

"I may not have quoted exactly."

"Yes, but was there any more?"

"I don't know. I had to leave the theatre in a hurry to meet you here."

"I wouldn't have minded if you stayed to hear the end."

"Well, I felt too sad to listen to more. I recognised myself in that bit about madness. And in that bit about children growing up too quickly."

"We all grow old too quick. There's nothing new in that."

"And we all grow confused and unsure of our bearings."

"And of who is speaking..."

"...to whom?"

"Yes."

"Well, maybe G.o.d meant it to happen this way."

At this moment, crowds began to pour silently from the Hall's entrance at the other side of the square. Many of them raised umbrellas over their heads as it was now raining. And many did not. Sudra, uniquely coloured, was among them pushing a doll-in a toy pram or wheeled flowerpot depending on the distance with which one was viewing it. A zoom lens would have revealed a stub of a pencil stuck in one of the doll's eyes, perhaps evidence of an earlier tantrum-also that Sudra was bare-footed. At least, one hopes that Sudra had reached the outside, because a giant complex UFO accidentally clipped a pylon and finally collided with the Hall where she had been speaking... followed by a roar of splintering off-detritus more suitable for a strapped-bomb christened Sunnemo finally imploding.

The waitresses were generously supplied, almost one for each table.

The tea-room was very swish, plenty of smooth freshly laundered white linen, silver napkin rings embossed with antlered deer and pentinent youths, st.u.r.dy chunky heavy-duty yet good quality cutlery... and large bowls of fresh flowers p.r.i.c.ked out in bright colours and still drenched in dew.

He ordered a tier of cakes, licking his lips at the thought of the custard slices, cream cones, coconut pyramids, battenburgs topped with whipped almond, spicy bread-and-b.u.t.ter pudding baked to a rich brown crust, waffles dripping in wild honey...

The particular waitress attending to his needs was no older than his own daughter, the prettiest of the whole bunch, he thought. She wore a uniform which, rather than hiding her figure, accentuated its more sensuous angles, as if an artist had finished off an otherwise boring portrait with the subtle pastel striptease of water-colour.

The skirt-length was below her knees, but the slender calves and dimpled ankles were all the more enticing for that. The stockings were of such low denier, they took nothing from the flesh.

The tea infused him, like a heady drug. The blends reached to the back of his throat, even before he lifted the bone china to his lips. And he stared dreamily across the tea-room, as the waitress turned her back to fetch from the display counter further cakes he had ordered. Her rear proportions were slight enough to retain the integrity of the skirt-length, but womanly enough to produce folds, pleats, flairs and a long sculptured quarter-moon down each side... that made him want to touch, if only fleetingly.

The other waitresses were nothing in comparison: mere bodies holding up their uniforms like clothes-horses for airing. One even had a face that reminded him of his nightmares... and she had the temerity to scold his own waitress for picking up the cakes with her fingers rather than with the tongs.

He half rose from his chair, as if to remonstrate: he could not wish for anything better than to have the comestibles handled by his waitress, to produce a new flavour, whether imaginary or not, that would backwash the roof of his mouth with the froth of love...

He thought better of it. The tongs would have to do. The winsome one returned with the second tier of cakes, smiling fit to take sunshine into the dreariest late afternoon.

Her skirt-length lightly brushed his arm, inadvertently, and he bit his tongue painfully to stop himself from...

She had gone far too quick. Evidently the end of her duty, disappearing into the kitchen, with not even a backward glance for her erstwhile loyal loving customer.

His teeth entered an angel cake, leaving daubs of red where his injured tongue had probed its texture...