He started to crawl again, hauling himself round the pool, disturbing pellets and insects, and heading off towards the lake at one point, then coming back, back to the same point as before, and stopping, gazing transfixed at the pool and the rock.

What had he been doing?

Helping the locals, as usual. Honest counsel; advisor, keeping the loonies at bay and people sweet; later leading a small army. But they'd assumed he'd betray them, and that he'd use the army he'd trained as his own power base. So, on the eve of their victory, the very hour they'd finally stormed the Sanctum, they'd struck at him, too.

They'd taken him to the furnace room, stripped him naked; he'd escaped, but soldiers had been pounding down the stairs and he'd had to run. He'd been forced into the river, when they cornered him again. The dive almost knocked him out. Currents took him and he spun, lazily… he woke up in the morning, under a winch housing on a big river barge; he had no idea how he'd got there. There was a rope trailing astern, and he could only guess he'd climbed up that. His head still hurt.

He took some clothes which were drying on a line behind the wheelhouse, but he was seen; he dived overboard with them, swam to the shore. He'd still been hounded, and all the time he was forced further away from the city and Sanctum, where the Culture might look for him. He spent hours trying to work out how to contact them.

He'd been on a stolen mount, skirting the edge of a water-filled volcanic crater when the robbers struck; they'd beaten him and raped him and cut the tendons in his legs and tossed him into the stinking, yellow-tinged waters of the crater lake, then thrown boulders at him as he tried to swim away, using only his arms, legs floating uselessly behind him.

He knew one of the rocks would hit him sooner or later, so he tried to coax up some of that wonderful Culture training, quickly hyperventilated, and then dived. He only had to wait a couple of seconds. A big rock splashed into the water, in the line of bubbles he'd left when he dived; he embraced the rock like a lover as it wobbled down towards him, and let it take him deep into the darkness of the lake, switching off the way he'd been taught to, but not really caring very much if it didn't work, and he never woke up again.

He'd thought ten minutes when he dived. He woke up in crushing darkness; remembered, and dragged his arms out from under the rock. He kicked for the light but nothing happened. He used his arms. The surface came down to meet him, eventually. Air had never tasted so sweet.

The walls of the crater lake were sheer; the tiny rock island was the only place to swim to. Screeching birds lifted from the island as he thrashed his way ashore.

At least, he thought, as he dragged himself onto the rock through the guano, it wasn't the priests that found me. Then I'd really have been in trouble.

The bends set in a few minutes later, like slow acid seeping into every joint, and he wished the priests had got him.

Still — he told himself, talking to keep his mind away from the pain — they would come for him; the Culture would come down with a beautiful big ship and they would take him up and make it all better.

He was sure they would. He'd be looked after and made better and he'd be safe, very safe and well looked after and free from pain, back in their paradise, and it would be like… like being a child again; like being in the garden again. Except — some rogue part of his mind reminded him — bad things happened in gardens too, sometimes.

Darckense got the armoury guard to help her with a door that was stuck, along the corridor, just round the corner. Cheradenine slipped in and took the autorifle Elethiomel had described. He got back out, covering the gun in a cape, and heard Darckense thanking the guard profusely. They all met up in the rear hall cloakroom, where they whispered excitedly in the comforting smell of wet cloth and floor polish, and took turns holding the gun. It was very heavy.

"There's only one magazine!"

"I couldn't see the others."

"God you're blind, Zak. Have to do, I suppose."

"Ugh; it's oily," Darckense said.

"That stops rust," Cheradenine explained.

"Where are we supposed to let it off?" Livueta asked.

"We'll hide it here and then get out after dinner," Elethiomel said, taking the weapon from Darckense. "It's Big-nose for studies and he always sleeps right through anyway. Mother and father will be entertaining that colonel; we can get out of the house and into the woods and fire — not "let off", actually — fire the gun there."

"We'll probably get killed," Livueta said. "The guards will think we're terrorists."

Elethiomel shook his head patiently. "Livvy, you are stupid." He pointed the gun at her. "It's got a silencer; what do you think this bit is?"

"Huh," Livueta said, pushing the point away from her. "Has it got a safety catch?"

Elethiomel looked uncertain for just a moment. "Of course," he said, loudly, then flinched a little and glanced at the closed door to the hall. "Of course," he whispered. "Come on; we'll hide it here and come back for it when we've got away from Big-nose."

"You can't hide it here," Livueta said.

"Bet I can."

"It smells too much," Livueta said. "The oil smells; you'd smell it as soon as you walked in here. What if father decides to go for a walk?"

Elethiomel looked worried. Livueta moved past him, opened a small high window.

"How about hiding it on the stone boat?" Cheradenine suggested. "Nobody ever goes there at this time of year."

Elethiomel thought about this. He grabbed the cloak Cheradenine had wrapped the gun in originally and covered the weapon again. "All right. You take it."

Still not far enough back, or not far enough forward… he wasn't sure. The right place; that was what he was looking for. The right place. Place was all important, place meant everything. Take this rock…

"Take you, rock," he said. He squinted at it.

Ah yes, here we have the nasty big flat rock, sitting doing nothing, just amoral and dull, and it sits like an island in the polluted pool. The pool is a tiny lake on the little island, and the island is in a drowned crater. The crater is a volcanic crater, the volcano forms part of an island in a big inland sea. The inland sea is like a giant lake on a continent and the continent is like an island sitting in the seas of the planet. The planet is like an island in the sea of space within its system, and the system floats within the cluster, which is like an island in the sea of the galaxy, which is like an island in the archipelago of its local group, which is an island within the universe; the universe is like an island floating in a sea of space in the Continua, and they float like islands in the Reality, and…

But down through the Continua, the Universe, the Local Group, the Galaxy, the Cluster, the System, the Planet, the Continent, the Island, the Lake, the Island… the rock remained. AND THAT MEANT THE ROCK, THE CRAPPY AWFUL ROCK HERE WAS THE CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE, THE CONTINUA, THE WHOLE REALITY!

The word was caldera. The lake was in a drowned caldera. He raised his head, looked out over the still, yellowish water towards the crater cliffs, and seemed to see a boat made of stone.

"Scream," he said.

"Piss off," he heard the sky say, unconvinced.

The sky was full of cloud and it was getting dark early; their language tutor took longer than usual to fall asleep behind his high desk, and they almost decided to abandon the whole plan until tomorrow, but couldn't bear to. They crept out of the classroom, then walked as normally as they could, down to the rear hall, where they picked up their boots and jackets.

"See," Livueta whispered. "It smells a bit of gun-oil anyway."

"I can't smell any," Elethiomel lied.