The thumping from behind the door got louder. The black smoke was rising in the room, and already he felt light-headed. He pushed hard against the machine with his shoulder; it trundled forward, howling; something gave.

He put his back against the machine and pushed with his feet; there was a bang from in front of the machine and it started to roll away from him; he turned, pushed with his shoulder again, staggering past smoking shelves through a glowing hole into a wrecked room full of tall metal cabinets. Drink spluttered through the gap. He held the machine steady for a moment; he opened one of the cabinets, to find a glittering mass of hair-fine filaments wrapped round cables and rods. Lights winked on a long thin control board, like some linear city seen at night.

He pursed his lips and made a kissing sound at the fibres. "Congratulations," he said to himself. "You have won a major prize." He hunkered down at the humming machine, adjusted the controls to something like the way Stap had had them, but producing a circular field, then switched it to full power.

The blue disc slammed into the grey cabinets in a blinding maelstrom of sparks; the noise was numbing. He left the machine where it was and waddled away under the blue disc, splashing back into the control room. He eased himself over the still unconscious doctor, kicked the containers away from the door and removed the metal tool from the door. The blue beam wasn't extending far through the gap from the control room, so he stood up, shoved the door open with his shoulder, and fell out into the arms of a startled ship's officer, just as the field machine blew up and blasted both of them across the bar and into the lounge. All the lights in the lounge went out.

III

The hospital ceiling was white, like the walls and the sheets. Outside, on the surface of the berg, all was white as well. Today was a whiteout; a bright scour of dry crystals wheeling past the hospital windows. The last four days had been the same while the storm-wind blew, and the weather people said they expected no break for another two or three days. He thought of the troops, hunkered down in trenches and ice caves, afraid to curse the howling storm, because it meant there would probably be no fighting. The pilots would be glad too, but pretend they were not, and would loudly curse the storm that prevented them flying; having looked at the forecast, most would now be getting profoundly drunk.

He watched the white windows. Seeing the blue sky was supposed to be good for you. That was why they built hospitals on the surface; everything else was under the surface of the ice. The outer walls of the hospital were painted bright red, so that they would not be attacked by enemy aircraft. He had seen enemy hospitals from the air, strung out across the white glare of the berg's snow hills like bright drops of blood fallen frozen from some wounded soldier.

A whorl of whiteness appeared briefly at one window as the snow flurry circled on some vortex in the gale, then disappeared. He stared at the falling chaos beyond the layers of glass, eyes narrowing, as though by sheer concentration he might find some pattern in the inchoate blizzard. He put one hand up, touching the white bandage which circled his head.

His eyes closed, as he tried — again — to remember. His hand fell to the sheets over his chest.

"How are we today?" said the young nurse. She appeared at the bedside, holding a small chair. She placed the chair between his bed and the empty one to his right. All the other beds were empty; he was the only person in the ward. There hadn't been a big attack for a month or so.

She sat down. He smiled, glad to see her, and glad that she had the time to stop and talk. "Okay," he nodded. "Still trying to remember what happened."

She smoothed her white uniform over her lap. "How are your fingers today?"

He held up both hands, waggled the fingers on his right hand, then looked at his left; the fingers moved a little. He frowned. "About the same," he said, as though apologising.

"You're seeing the doc this afternoon; he'll probably get the physics to take a look at you."

"What I need is a physio for my memory," he said, closing his eyes briefly. "I know there was something important I had to remember…" His voice trailed off. He realised he'd forgotten the nurse's name.

"I don't think we have such things," she smiled. "Did they have them where you came from?"

"This had happened before; yesterday, hadn't it? Hadn't he forgotten her name yesterday too? He smiled. "I ought to say I don't remember," he said, grinning. "But no, I don't think they did."

He'd forgotten her name yesterday, and the day before, but he'd come up with a plan; he'd done something about it…

"Perhaps they didn't need them there, with that thick skull of yours."

She was still smiling. He laughed, trying to remember what the plan was he'd come up with. Something to do with blowing, with breath, and paper…

"Perhaps not," he agreed. His thick skull; that was why he was here. A thick skull, a skull thicker or at least more hardy than they were used to; a thick skull that had not quite shattered when somebody had shot him in in the head. (But why, when he had not been fighting at the time, when he'd been amongst his own side, his fellow pilots?)

Fractured, instead; fractured, broken, but not smashed irretrievably… He looked to one side, where there was a little cabinet. A fold of paper lay on its surface.

"Don't tire yourself out trying to remember things," the nurse said. "Maybe you won't remember things; it doesn't matter very much. Your mind has to heal too, you know."

He heard her talk, took in what she was saying… but he was trying to remember what it was he'd told himself the day before; that little slip of paper; he had to do something to it. He blew at it; the top of the folded paper slip hinged up, so that he could see what was written underneath; TALIBE. The paper sank back again. He'd angled it — he remembered now — so that she couldn't see.

Her name was Talibe. Of course; it sounded familiar.

"I am healing," he said. "But there was something I had to remember, Talibe. It was important; I know it was."

She stood up, patted him on one shoulder. "Forget it. You mustn't worry yourself. Why not take a nap; shall I draw the curtains?"

"No," he said. "Can't you stay longer, Talibe?"

"You need your rest, Cheradenine," she said, putting one hand to his brow. "I'll be back soon, to take your temperature and change your dressings. Ring the bell if you need anything else." She patted his hand, and went away, taking the small white chair with her; she stopped at the doors, looked back. "Oh, yes; did I leave a pair of scissors here, last time I changed your dressing?"

He looked around him, and shook his head. "Don't think so."

Talibe shrugged. "Oh well." She went out of the ward; he heard her put the chair down on the corridor floor as the doors swung closed.

He looked at the window again.

Talibe took the chair away each time because he'd gone crazy when he'd first seen it, when he woke up for the first time. Even after that, when his mental state seemed more stable, he would shiver, wide-eyed with fear when he woke each morning, just because the white chair was sitting there at the side of his bed. So they had stacked the ward's few chairs out of his sight, in one corner, and Talibe, or the doctors, brought the chair in from the corridor with them when they came to see him.

He wished he could forget that; forget about the chair, and the Chairmaker, forget about the Staberinde. Why did that stay sharp and fresh, after so many years and so long a journey? And yet whatever had happened just a few days ago — when somebody had shot him, left him for dead in the hangar — that was dim and vague as something seen through the storm of snow.