‘When I was growing up Mother Sage didn’t let me play with the slave children.’ Roy was surprised at himself for voicing a childish grievance he could not recall ever feeling. What a silly thing to say! he thought. What must the others be thinking of me?

   They had been taking turns to tell the stories of their lives from before the trek began. It helped to while away the longer evenings now that winter was approaching, and was relaxing after the lecture sessions when they shared their expertise, and attempted to take notes by the light of crude torches and firelight. They had divided into specialist groups as soon as sufficient people had joined: groups of ten or so huddling over the big books, drawing up contents lists and indexes to pass on to other groups. By the end of the trek they hoped to have collated all the indexes, so that all the ancient knowledge was accessible.

   Most of the men’s stories were very similar. They simply related accounts of the progress of their education, the compilation of their books, and insights and ambitions that arose from time to time. They had been strictly separated from village life by their Mother Sages, as all the guardians had been called. Roy had hung back from telling his story, increasingly reluctant the more of the others he heard. As he had feared, his story was different, and might appear threatening to the others, and to the realisation of their cherished goal. But it was really too soon to be sure. Taking turns, and telling a little each evening, meant that only early lives had been related, and his story was not very different from theirs at that stage.

   He looked around at the listeners. The whitely lit faces, veiled by woodsmoke, appeared friendly enough; no smirks or frowns. He went on.

I do not play with the slave children because, since I am a lord, I have to be grave and studious and not run around laughing or go splashing in the river as the slave children do.

   We treat our slaves very well and they are happy and well fed. Mother Sage told me that in the ancient days slaves were made to work until they dropped from exhaustion, and beaten if they disobeyed or tried to run away. Our slaves bring us food and other necessities and they bow smilingly as they back respectfully away. From our hill we can see them working in the village gardens , by the river and over the first firebreak in the nearer forest. They never seem to stop; they are busy all the time at one small task or another, but they giggle and hum little tunes as they go. Mother Sage finds them annoying and silly. I try to follow her example because she is so wise and knowledgeable, but I cannot help seeing their ways as charming.

   The slaves understand ancient language, which is the language Mother Sage taught me. But they also have a language of their own which I cannot follow. It consists of signs and facial movements and sing-song sounds; very fluid and complicated, and seems confusing to me, with so much to take in at once. Ancient language, which Mother Sage and I use for speech and writing, is based on everything in the world having a name, and actions and operations on things having names, and then one strings the names and actions together in a single long thread. Mother Sage says that ancient language is logical; it uses the higher functions of the human brain. She says the slaves’ language -should one call it a ‘language’ when it involves more than just the tongue? -is like the grunting and signalling that lower animals do.

   I only discovered quite recently that the slaves can write down their language – or perhaps I should say that they have a system for writing, which might, for all I know, have no relation to the miming. It consists of squiggles and little pictures, all over the place on the page, not in an orderly sequence like ancient language has to be. The young ones use scraps of paper to write messages -’love notes’, Mother Sage calls them – to hide in the gardens and forest for others to find.

   Mother Sage and I are writing down books of mathematics for the New Beginning which is going to be brought about. I do most of the writing because Mother Sage is very frail and her hands are painful and deformed. She has a wonderful gift which she calls ‘eversight’ which enables her to see anything and everything that happened in the past in all places in the world. She scans this knowledge and picks out the parts needed for the New Beginning. I wish that I had this gift, but Mother Sage is proud of the fact that I do not. She says that I am one of the rare people who have the higher kind of mind which is logical, and who have an inward focus of conscious attention so that they can reason. She says that my eversight is there, but is in a dark chamber of my consciousness, so that it does not distract me from my reasoning. She taught me mathematics from my earliest years in order to develop my inward thought and make me forget eversight. She says that eversight is a primitive kind of awareness that even plants and rocks and rivers possess. I asked her if the slaves have it, and she said, ‘Of course,’ very dismissively.

   The slaves bring us paper for the book, and they take away paper with writing on which we have discarded when new information requires changes to be made. They use the other side of our scrap paper for their silly notes. I asked Mother Sage where the paper comes from. She told me that the slaves make it from plants which they grow in the gardens; the same kind of plants as those from which they get fibres to make the fabric for clothing. I was interested to know how this was done but Mother Sage said it was ‘just craft work’. She says that I need not know about the slaves’ work because it will be superseded by ‘technology’, which is a word she says with great reverence. When we have technology we will be able to use fire to melt down rocks to make tools and, in due course, we will have machines driven by fire. It is mainly the theory on which technology is based that Mother Sage scans the past for, and I have to write down.

   I have had to work very hard recording all these important theories from the past; some are highly complicated, and so obscure that I wonder what use they can possibly be. To encourage me in the work, Mother Sage sometimes describes the technology itself, and the way people lived in those days. Mother Sage is very old and could die at any time. Without her eversight it would seem to me as if the slaves’ way of providing for our needs was the only one possible; and the amazing advantages that could be brought about by technology would hardly occur to me in my wildest fancies. For instance, I might imagine how it would be to fly through the sky like a bird, but I would not know that it is possible to build a great container with wings in which hundreds of people are carried through the skies from one side of the world to the other. Indeed, without Mother Sage’s knowledge I would not know that the world is a great globe without edges which we could travel round and round endlessly.

   It seems to me that one of the greatest wonders of the ancient times was artificial light, whereby the activities of the day can be carried on during the night when the sun is lighting the other side of the world. Mother Sage says that even people as primitive as our slaves used to have artificial light, simply by setting fire to bits of wood or sticks of fat or dishes of oil. In the very beginning of the ancient times people captured fire from the wild, and then discovered how to make sparks of fire by rubbing rough surfaces together until they become hot enough to set dry vegetation alight. I asked Mother Sage why the slaves do not make artificial light in this way, and why we do not have it. She seemed disturbed by my question. She sank deep in thought for a while, and then she said that she would have to tell me more about the slaves’ way of life, but not yet because it would distract me from our work on the New Beginning.

   Mother Sage says that the New Beginning will bring an even better world than there was at the height of the technological age. This is because we shall be able to choose which technology to employ, whereas before no one knew what would be invented next and so technology was developed step by step as it happened, and some was crude and dirty until it was perfected or superseded. She says that we shall be able to avoid the injustice and suffering there was in the ancient days, which came about as an accidental result of the way the tasks of life were divided between people. Certain small groups of people acquired positions of power over big groups of others, and often these relationships were customary rather than functional. ‘Exploitation’ is the word she uses for this unfairness. I asked her if our use of the slaves is not exploitation. She was irritated at this, and told me that she had said she would tell me about the slaves later on, and not to concern myself about them.

   Mother Sage and I worked on our book of the New Beginning for many years, all through my childhood until I was full grown. Our daily routine was to rise at dawn and, after a little food, Mother Sage was helped by her maidservant or myself to her special place at the top of our hill. She said that the view from there to the far horizon helped her eversight traverse the huge distances into the past. While she was at vigil I did my copying out from the day before. She was brought down at midday. We had our main meal at that time, and then Mother Sage would dictate to me what she had seen in the morning. She had taught me a special script for note-taking called ‘shorthand’. At dusk we had our last meal and then we went to bed.

   There was much rewriting to do to organise the mathematical knowledge into various subjects, and we devised a complex indexing system so that we could connect the work together in other ways than its main sequence. The working sheets were kept in stiff paper folders, and there were neat little bone clips to hold the sheets together. The final writing out was onto big sheets folded double, which came in bundles of four. These had to be written with great care with newly-made reed pens, in which the tiny inner reed you press on to release the ink is springy, and allows fine lines to be made.

   Mother Sage told me about the technology there used to be for the mechanical writing called typing and printing. There were machines which stored what you had written, in such a way that it could be corrected without visible alteration or being copied out again. Many copies could be produced of the same writing for different people to read. There were printed books available to everybody, in brightly coloured covers and with pictures inside. It certainly was a splendid time. Mother Sage is right to want to brings these wonders back. I often wished we could make a start with the writing machines.

   We eventually reached a stage at which some of the subjects were sufficiently complete to be considered finished, although Mother Sage said it was not possible to record everything on any subject, although our particular area of knowledge, mathematics, is the easiest from that point of view, because mathematics is not a matter for opinion or selection, it just is, so when we had recorded it, it was done.

   Mother Sage had me put all the bundles into a basket for the slaves to take down to the village, where someone would bind them into a volume. I was surprised, because I did not know that the slaves made books. I asked Mother Sage about this and she confirmed that they do not have any books. I thought she would need to explain to the slave how the binding was to be done, but she did not do so. A few days later, a slave I had not seen before brought the volume to us. The bundles had been stitched together into a single block between protective covers of some hard material with animal skin stretched over it. I was very impressed and I asked him how he had done it. He cocked his head on one side and smiled at me. Then he said, slowly and carefully, ‘I followed the patterns of the doing of book binding.’ Mother Sage then waved him away, and also waved away my question before I could ask it. This too was part of the telling about the slaves which would come in due course.

‘I think that is all from my childhood,’ Roy said. He rubbed his eyes and peered at the audience for signs of disapproval or suspicion. There were a few slightly puzzled looks, but no one said anything; they all looked ready for sleep. There was a flurry of activity as the fire was closely covered with green wood to keep it smouldering through the night. They lay down where they were, huddled in fur cloaks. Each kept to his personal space. Roy wished he could sneak away and snuggle up with his Fey, but before he had joined the trek it had been decided to segregate the sexes. There was talk of a mass wedding when they reached the new city, and then, he supposed, little houses would be built for couples and their children, just like in the ancient days. Roy’s memory flashed back to the little girl in the first sleeping house he had shared in the village, and what she had done to him. There won’t be anything like that, he thought, as he drifted off to sleep. His suppressed eversight took over as he dreamed, and gave him a glimpse of the ancient times.

At last I’m at the front of the queue. The uniformed official examines the scrap of paper which is meant to qualify me to get away from this place. He looks dubious. The extra code added by the official at the other desk, obtained from the devices he jabbed and peered at or spoke to, was supposed to be a confirmation of a confirmation of a firm reservation booked in full confidence another lifetime from here.

   The official gestures me aside and reaches towards the next person in the queue. After examining his tatty slip meticulously, with a sigh as of disappointment he does some slow motion filling out and stamping, and then hands the person a crisp new slip of card. The recipient gives me a glance of smug commiseration. ‘Bin here three days. Camped out there,’ he says, gesturing towards the big glass doors beyond the first set of barriers and officials’ booths. Outside are vehicles of all sizes, some proud and gleaming, disgorging fat important people, their luggage eagerly grabbed by would-be porters; others dusty wrecks dangling with tinsel and holy pictures. Makeshift habitations clutter the approach, beggars and trinket sellers with faces contorted by doleful or beaming encouragement.

   I have been here less than a day, although the clocks go more slowly here than anywhere else in the world. Already encamped inside are heaps of brown people wrapped in copious reddish or dirty white garments, surrounded by skinny big-eyed children and bundles of cloth and string. Will they ever qualify to get out of here? Is this an appropriate route for those kind of people? Should they not be trudging along a dusty track somewhere? I look for the number of my escape route on a great black board currently cranking its information around. I spot it. A flashing indicator tells me it’s now or never. I can feel my heart thudding with fear. How will I ever get away?

   I can see the means of escape through some enormous windows. A bulging metal canister, sagging, monstrous and ridiculous with its little wings and minuscule wheels, sits in the blazing sun while attendant vehicles and tiny people meander lazily around it. More officials guard a stairway to the canister’s bosom.    Looking at the monster my hope sinks deeper. This thing is supposed to fly! to lift into that diaphanous blue nothingness above? Impossible. The Laws of Science will not let it. I shall have to invent a new geometry, with an ideal quadric surface way over there in the hazy distance; so the massive monster can trundle away on its small wheels, reach the surface and be transformed instantly into a zipping mosquito which shoots across the globe until it meets the surface again and materialises massively on the further side. And I get out into the damp cool summer of home.

   But not yet. I am on tiptoes, arms bent, fingers spread like a frog, poised for a leap through the glass barrier, if only it would melt away. I feel something on my buttock and look behind me. One of the dark, big-eyed urchins grins up. She pulls at my trousers. I step back automatically, breaking the suction against the glass. More eager hands manoeuvre me over to the heap of people on the floor. I allow myself to be drawn in. Stroking, rubbing, licking and nibbling drown my body in sensation. Innocent sensuality.

   Fey’s baby drowning in the pool; innocent neglect. Are the children eating it? innocent carnivores, chewing red flesh. Human animals at last; innocent, dedicated to pleasure, giggling and burbling.

They were woken up at first light, as on every other morning of the trek, by the giggling and burbling of the people from the nearest village. They had brought a supply of food and a new joiner, with his Fey carrying his basket of books on her head.

   The people were busy dividing the meat, herbs and fruit between the groups. Each allocation was left in a basket a short distance away from each campfire. Roy crawled out of his cloak, stood up on stiff legs and stomped awkwardly over to the basket for his group. He mimed his thanks to the nearest villager, who bobbed and smiled back.

   A suspicion which had been growing in Roy was confirmed as he lifted the basket. The amount of food being brought to them was not increasing as the numbers on the trek were increasing; if anything it was reducing. Early on, when the travellers were few, it had increased. A rather obvious reality was confronting them: there was a limit to the surplus that a village could supply for the travellers, especially in the winter, when the villagers were barely active in the shorter days, and ate frugally from their meagre stores. The trekkers were going to have to make do with less and less, or find some way of supplementing the donated food. They seemed to regard the provisions as their unquestionable right. He doubted if many of them even knew how to set a trap, let alone be able to tell edible berries or fungus from poisonous ones. Roy decided he should inform someone in authority, even at the risk of giving himself away.

   The trekkers had devised a hierarchical leadership structure quite early in the journey; it had seemed the right thing to do. Roy’s group of specialists had elected a leader who, so far, had had little to do apart from pass on contents lists and indexes for the collation process, although he was treated with deference and courted as if he had favours to award. Roy presumed that he was the one to approach with his concern over the food.

   His name was Alfred, a geometry specialist, with an interest in cartography and astronomy. He was also something of an athlete, one of the few to have trained for the trek. He was a conspicuous figure, often loping ahead, counting his even strides, making detours on either side, and then sitting cross-legged to add to his maps and notes until the rest caught up. Each evening when the sky was clear he spent some time away from the smoky fire, squinting at the heavens and making maps of the most noticeable bodies. His only instrument was a wooden compass. He had already sought out a glass-making technologist, and had handed over his specification for a telescope. He had designed an observatory which he wanted constructed when they got to the city. He was certainly one of the most committed to the New Beginning, whose purpose, he declared, was to bring about the space exploration and colonisation which the ancient technological civilisation had failed to achieve before it collapsed. Roy was nervous of him. But if Alfred wanted all his ambitious plans fulfilled, the travellers had at least to reach their destination, so he should be interested in any problem which came up.    Alfred was exercising when Roy approached him. Roy waited until he was noticed, and then held out the basket.

   ‘Alfred, excuse me disturbing you, but I think we may have a problem with the food,’ Roy blurted out.

‘What’s wrong with the food?’ the group leader asked, peering into the basket as he jogged on the spot.

   ‘Oh, there’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just that they’re not bringing more of it as new people join, so we’re getting less and less each. Not enough less to notice so far. I can tell though by the weight of the basket; and it stands to reason the villages have only so much they can spare us, especially now that winter’s coming.’

   ‘Hmm,’ said Alfred. ‘Looks like enough to me. But if you’re right, we’ll just have to tell them to bring more.’

   ‘But …’ Roy protested tentatively. Just then one of Alfred’s cronies jogged up and jerked his thumb to suggest they have a run together, and Alfred went off with him.

   Roy was even more worried now. He decided to try the only other way he knew to get something done. After breakfast he went to look for his Fey. He knew where she would be: with the villagers. He found them all, humming and nuzzling together. He drew Fey aside and told her his concern. She shrugged and smiled, then went back to the villagers and a rapid miming discussion took place. She turned around and waved cheerily to him. Roy went back to his group to be ready for the day’s journey.

   Breaking camp was easy. The men simply decided by the feel and look of the atmosphere whether to wear their cloaks or have them carried. Then, taking nothing but their basketwork water bottles, they formed a column and started walking. The Feys rolled up any cloaks left behind, picked up the books and papers, and packed them into baskets. They cleared away any unburnt wood and food remains and took them off the road into the forest. Then they lifted the baskets onto their heads and formed their own cheerful little mob following on behind.

   The route, so far, had been along the cleared passage which Roy still thought of as the second firebreak. It curved gently to skirt a steep forested slope which, in the early morning, cast a deep chilly shade over the grassy track. On the other side of the road was a strip clear felled, with stumps of young trees still visible above the grass, and then young trees standing, scarcely a man’s height tall. Beyond that the forest canopy billowed, sunlit pale green, drifting with morning mist.

   The marchers came to a ford over a stream, swollen by recent rain, an opportunity to wash and fill water bottles. The routine, sanctified by many repetitions, was for the women to get into a huddle some distance away while the men undressed, floated their clothes across in baskets to the opposite bank of the stream, and swam or gave themselves a hasty rub down in the chilly water. Afterwards they dressed, filled their water bottles and marched on. Then it was the women’s turn: to bathe, pick up the luggage and dash to catch up.

   There was a purposefulness about the march which seemed to discourage conversation along the way. As Roy walked he tried to avoid worrying about his own role in the venture, deliberately concentrating on enjoying the experience and the surroundings. He thought about his dream of the night before; its message seemed to be that there is pleasure where you are, and you ought not to strive to be somewhere else. He was feeling relaxed, and happier than he had been since he had joined the march, when someone came up beside him, panting slightly from the effort to catch up.

   ‘Hello there!’ the man greeted him. ‘I’m Peter from the theology group. We’re trying to get to know everybody, and spread the word around.’    Roy would have preferred to continue enjoying his relaxed mood, but he smiled at Peter and said, ‘Hello, I’m Roy, classical maths. What’s theology? Not one of the branches of knowledge I’ve heard of.’

   ‘Oh dear, not another one!’ Peter’s face contorted with surprise and disapproval. ‘We study the word of God as revealed in the scriptures. Before we came together for this great journey we recorded the words of the holy Bible itself, and the coincidence of our writings is remarkable.’

   ‘It seems a bit of a waste for you all to have come up with the same knowledge. That’s happened with maths too though. It’s a pity really there wasn’t some coordinated guidance right at the beginning.’

   ‘Of course there was guidance, from God himself,’ Peter declaimed.    ‘Who is God?’ Roy felt obliged to ask, inwardly reeling at Peter’s disdainful look which suddenly metamorphosed into a smile of glowing beneficence.

   ‘There is much saving work to be done,’ Peter beamed. ‘But do not despair. We will come amongst you and you will hear all that you need to hear.’ Then Peter interrupted himself to answer Roy’s question. ‘God is the Creator of the universe. Has it never occurred to you what a mystery it all is, and to wonder who made it, and for what purpose?’

   Roy had his own ideas about what made the universe, but they were in the area he felt he had to keep quiet about. Putting that aside, he thought about what Peter had said. What a strange idea: that some one – person, would it be? – had made the universe, like you make a basket or a pen. What would this creator make the universe out of? And how would he have created that? And who created the creator? There was no rationality in these ideas. In the end he just shrugged.

   Peter looked at him thoughtfully. ‘I think I’d like to spend some time with your group,’ he said.

   ‘You’d better talk to Alfred, our leader,’ Roy replied. ‘Do you know him?’ Peter shook his head. ‘Runs about a lot, makes maps, looks at the stars. You’re in luck, there he is, sitting by the side of the road just up ahead.’ Peter trotted off. As Roy passed them he saw Alfred nodding up at Peter. Well, it would make a change from maths.

   As dusk drew near, the marchers could see a cluster of people on the road ahead. It was the usual group from the next village along the way. Their part in the venture had been so reliable it was now taken for granted. The men apparently assumed that all the villages were, conveniently for the provisioning for the trek, a day’s brisk march apart. Roy doubted that, not least because a day’s walk was a different distance in the dry of summer from in the winter. Alfred’s maps were dotted with village positions, all at some fixed distance perpendicular to the camping locations, but he had not visited even one of them since he had left his own. There were no paths from the road to the villages, but Roy knew that village people took care to take different routes when they came to do any clearing and wood harvesting. The reason was probably to avoid any territorial impact on the wide band of wilderness, whose integrity they respected.

   Baskets of provisions were handed out as usual. But then, instead of getting into a sleeping huddle to be there to hand out the morning meal, the villagers melted back into the forest. They left behind them the provisions baskets, and a considerable number of basket traps. None of the men, apart from Roy, seemed to notice. Once they were facing their camp fires the rest of the universe disappeared; everything that mattered was inside their heads. It was time for the lectures and story-telling to resume.

   The group leaders were now beginning to organise some cross fertilisation of knowledge between the groups. Their own group was made up of what Alfred called ‘classical mathematicians’. Their knowledge was in use during the most extensive period of the ancient times which Alfred now referred to, in the current jargon, as necrotech, from the culture’s dependence on burning dead organic matter for energy to supplement muscle power. Their expertise was in demand from the technology groups, and two of the group were away giving lectures elsewhere.

   Alfred had invited a mathematician called Jasper to talk to the rest of the group about something new to them called ‘fractal geometry’. Jasper was an expert in developments in geometry from late necrotech, when the collapse was imminent. He had some meticulous drawings he had made of a shape he called a Sierpinski triangle and the effects of various geometric transformations. Roy noticed how grubby the drawings were getting from being handed around camp fires and being pointed at by sooty fingers. Jasper talked about his plans for having a computer built as soon as they reached the new city, and the patterns he would be able to create with it. As an example, he showed them some ferns he had picked up and showed how fractal-like they were, with individual fronds resembling the whole leaf.

   A lively discussion ensued, in which they argued whether nature was explained by this geometry or merely imitated, and to what extent useful models could be made of fractal-like forms in the world, such as cloud formations. Could predictions be made from such models? Jasper explained that a distinction had been made between random irregular forms which occurred in nature, and non-random irregular forms which could be produced geometrically. The geometry had been used to make approximations to natural patterns; there was in theory no limit to how closely nature could be modelled, but that there would always be a difference, which could have unpredictable effects.

   So far Peter, who Roy noticed had joined their group, had not contributed to the discussion. Probably he was out of his depth, his specialty being nothing to do with maths. But Peter came in at this point.

   ‘What you are saying is that we can never completely penetrate the full mystery of Creation. God’s work will always be beyond our understanding.’

   Quite a number of the mathematicians were interested in the God ideas, some sympathetic and others highly critical. The discussion became an argument about whether fractal geometry provided insights into how God had created the world, or showed that creation was inherent in the world, so a creator was unnecessary, which was Roy’s own view. In fact he had been very excited by Jasper’s geometry, as it was consistent with what he had learned of Mother Sage’s own theories about patterns in the world.

   Roy had meant to keep out of the discussion, in case he said too much and provoked suspicion. But then found himself blurting out, ‘Does it matter whether God made the universe or whether it made itself?’

   ‘Of course it matters!’ said Peter, in an astonished tone. ‘Without God there would be no morality. Holy scripture has given us the Commandments which tell us how to live righteously. They have told us we should love God and our parents, and not kill, or be promiscuous, or steal, or lie. Without the Commandments we would behave like animals.’

   ‘I don’t agree,’ said Richard, one of those who had argued against the God ideas. ‘I know right from wrong without reading the Bible, or listening to theologians.’

   Roy had a view on this, and could not resist voicing it. ‘What is right or wrong isn’t absolute; it depends on the power structures of society. It’s only wrong to steal when there is private property. If everybody can help themselves to anything they want, there’s no such thing as stealing.’

   ‘You couldn’t have a society without property,’ said Peter. ‘As I said, people would behave like animals: greedy, selfish, uncontrolled. And anyway, the Commandment not to kill must be absolute. Obviously it’s always wrong to kill another person,’ Peter’s voice rang with confidence.

   Roy was not going to risk saying what he thought about this; it would not do him any good. No one else said anything, apparently conceding Peter’s point.

   At this point Alfred thanked Jasper for his fascinating talk. He then declared it was story time, and invited Jasper to stay. He also announced his decision as group leader that they were to reverse the order of telling. Roy, having been the last before, now had to continue his account from where he had left off the previous night. This increased his anxiety. It was a curious decision; Alfred’s suspicions must be growing, and Roy’s fear returned of the other men’s disapproval of what they might regard as his betrayal of the cause. Perhaps he should lie: tell some innocuous story similar to theirs. But he was almost bound to give away the fact that he had actually been a villager – as he probably already had with his concern over the food. So this could be his only chance to influence any of them. He must take it. Even these few men could make a difference if they were persuaded by what he had to tell them. If only his book had not been lost! In any case he might not get as far as what he called his ‘realisation’ in this part of the telling. Then it would be several nights before his turn came around again. He had no choice but to go on with his story.

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