Chapter 17

Reaching out ahead of me, I picked up the glass of cider, lifted it to my mouth and sipped it while contemplating Beta who was clasping her glass in front of her breasts. I was indeed very fortunate to be with a woman so truly beautiful, I mused, boldly resting my arm over her bare shoulders. I was delighted that she didn't resist my approach and indeed returned the affection by placing a hand on my thigh. She gazed up at me and smiled: "It's so nice to be off the City streets. I couldn't bear to live here. It's so noisy. So polluted. And ever so busy. I can't believe we'll ever find the Truth here. We should leave the City and search elsewhere."

I nodded, restoring the glass to the table. "We haven't seen anything here that even resembles the Truth," I admitted. "The City may have everything else, and it seems to have it in abundance. But you're right. The Truth must be somewhere else."

Beta pointed at my nearly empty glass. "Don't hurry your drink! I like sitting here, high above the City and on these comfortable seats. It's so much more relaxing."

The atmosphere was certainly that, as much a result of what we'd consumed as in anything inherent to the environment. A group of baboons excitedly debated politics opposite us. A spider monkey was leaning on the bar and talking to the bar steward: a lion dressed in a tuxedo who was cleaning the inside of a pint glass with a small towel. A group of australopithecines was playing darts in the far corner. And standing at the bar, looming high above everyone, was a very tall figure in a long green overcoat carrying a tri-cornered hat in his enormous paws. His bright button eyes scanned the bar while he waited to be served.

He saw Beta and me, and broke away, still clutching the hundred guinea note he had been gesturing idly towards nobody in particular. He lumbered past the baboons, slightly brushing against an especially aggressive one who might have challenged the teddy bear had he not been so enormous.

"Why hello, young man! And with a young lady. Your wife, perchance?"

"No!" disclaimed Beta, snapping her hand from my lap. "We're just friends."

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have made such a brash presumption. Well good afternoon, young lady. My name is Hubert. I met your friend a few days ago at the castle of a friend of mine..."

"Do you mean Tudor?" asked Beta, recalling my account of the occasion. "Yes, I've known Tudor for a long time. He's a frequent visitor to my Village. My name is Beta."

She leaned forward, requiring me to reluctantly withdraw my arm from her shoulders and shook what she could of his columnar paw.

"I was just buying myself a drink. I'll buy you some too, if you like. What are you having? Cider, isn't it?"

Then, before either of us could protest that one pint of the potent brew was sufficiently intoxicating, he lumbered back to the bar and this time the bar steward served him quite promptly. Hubert returned followed by the lion carrying a tray of drinks which his paws were ill-equipped to manage. The lion thoughtfully fetched a particularly large sofa in which the teddy bear could sit in relative comfort, and then returned to his conversation with the spider monkey, who was rolling a cigarette on the bar surface.

"So!" remarked Hubert after imbibing a long draught of cider. "Like me, your quest has brought you to the City. Unfortunately, I am having little success in my search for relics of the Great Bard. I trust your endeavour is proceeding more profitably? Is your friend accompanying you?"

"Yes, I am," Beta affirmed. "We've not been any more successful than you. We seem to do nothing but wander the streets and get horribly lost."

"Isn't that always the way? The feet get very sore, but if the end is honourable then it must all be worthwhile. As they say, it is the travelling, not the arriving, which makes the journey. Yesterday, I spent many happy hours in the City Library reading the original texts the Great Bard has left. He was greatly influenced by mysticism. He attached great significance to prime numbers, like seventeen, seven and one. He believed them to be symbolic of great truths as they are irreducible but become the basis of all other numbers. Much of his poetry revels in the fundamental properties of number and what it reveals of the world. It should be remembered that in his era there was little thought or knowledge of fractal geometry, curved space or different degrees of infinity. Just imagine what he would do now with concepts like the Gödel Number, the catastrophe theory or the Mandelbrot Set. How that would have inspired him!"

I sipped at the cider and allowed my arm to once again lie unresisted over Beta's shoulders.

"Was it only numbers which inspired him?" she asked.

"He was also excited by concepts of circularity and cyclical behaviour. He often compared life to the sine wave or the sphere. He claimed that life has neither beginning nor end. One is merely the prelude to the other. He was also fascinated by such concepts as the twelve houses of the heavens and the twelve cycles within twelve of the Chinese calendar. He believed that all patterns revealed the basic meaning of life, and often modelled his poetry on exact rhythms and structures borrowed from numerology, astrology, the I Ching, the Tarot and the harmonic scale. To study the Great Bard is to learn much not normally associated with poetry."

Hubert was drinking his cider very rapidly which was appropriate for such a large individual. We had barely drunk down an inch of our glasses when his was emptied. He wiped his mouth with the back of his paw.

"Zounds! That was a drink I needed. Much as I enjoy being in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the City, I much prefer the Country where the air is fresh and where people have more time for company."

He stood up and looked down at the City below where a wisp of smoke was still rising from the site of the recent explosion.

"I shall be leaving the City tomorrow morning, but I have a number of things to do this afternoon. However, it has been charming to meet the two of you. Give my regards to Tudor should you see him."

With that, the teddy bear lumbered out of the bar and into the lift which was only just large enough to accommodate him and a pair of macaques shadowed by his enormous great coat.

"That was certainly brief!" remarked Beta. "But Hubert's quest must be inspiration to us."

"Indeed," I agreed, squeezing Beta's shoulder and finding comfort in just sitting so close to her.

We relaxed together for a while, drinking our ciders and watching the company in the bar. Not a great deal was happening. A chimpanzee had joined the spider monkey and the bar steward, and was gesticulating wildly about something that had excited him, his long arms stretched high above his head. A group of ring-tailed lemurs was playing a noisy game of dominoes in a far corner, watched by a pair of tarsiers. A television beamed soundless images of fighting and violence probably taking place in the City. A juke box was playing loud percussive electronic music, punctuated by what sounded very much like religious chants.

The alcohol had a pronounced effect on my bladder as well as on my mind, and I soon felt the need to relieve myself. I drank the last of the cider, and lifted myself up. It was only when I was on my feet, I became aware of just how much I had been affected. Everything was disorientated and I was feeling distinctly unsteady.

"I'll just go to the loo," I heard myself say.

"I must go too," Beta said, drinking most of what she had left and wobbled uncertainly to her feet. I supported her with a hand as she nearly stumbled over a step. We made our way in the direction signposted Toilets across a floor that seemed much more extensive than it did when we'd arrived and through a door that led down an interminable corridor through fire door after fire door, leading to metal plaques adorned by silhouetted figures which made clear which further series of doors was intended for me and which for Beta.

After relieving myself, I studied the reflection in the mirror of someone I barely recognised. It was almost a shock to see myself as others might see me, and I wasn't sure I particularly liked the sight. I blinked and shook my head in the hope that my reflection might improve, but it remained much the same. I shrugged my shoulders and stumbled out into the corridor where Beta was waiting for me.

"Let's get going!" she said adamantly, pushing open a fire-door that led into a corridor which looked exactly like the one we'd come from, but I couldn't be exactly sure through the haze in my mind. Beta however pushed ahead, and I followed her past rows of fire-extinguishers and elegant portraits.

"I'm sure it didn't take as long as this to get to the lavatory!" I remarked, a little puzzled.

"I think you may be right," agreed Beta, pushing open a door to the side marked quite clearly PRIVATE, but which she seemed to think for some reason was exactly the right door to venture through. On the other side was a tall escalator leading upwards where a window of sunlight shone brightly on the uppermost steps. "Does that lead to the roof, do you think?"

"It certainly looks like it," I commented. "A strange place to have an escalator, though."

"Shall we go up?" giggled Beta adventurously. "I wonder what the view's like from the very top of this building."

"I wonder," I agreed, alcohol-emboldened. "Shall we find out?"

Beta giggled again, and placed her foot on the lowest step of the escalator, which suddenly jerked into life on detecting her presence and began moving upwards. I trod onto the step behind her and boldly held her round the waist as we ascended and the window of sunlight came steadily closer. I could smell Beta's hair under my nose and felt it dropping down over my arms and to below her waist. I squeezed her waist slightly, and she turned her head round and grinned welcomingly.

The sun flooded down from a sunny blue sky, accompanied by smells of flowers, grass and fresh air. Towards the top, we squinted in a bright beam of light speckled with hovering specks of seed. From above we could hear the chorus of song birds and the occasional squawk of a peacock. There was also the distinct splash of falling water and the rustle of a breeze through the broad leaves of the spreading trees. As we surfaced, we discovered ourselves in a magnificent garden of water-falls, springs, fruit trees and grass. A lion was sipping at a pond-side beside a tiny fawn. A delicate gazelle gambolled joyfully near a large rose bush. A pachybelodon was scooping up weeds from one end of the pond. Several birds of paradise flew across from tree to tree, watched on by colourful howler monkeys and marmosets. We stepped off the top of the escalator - which stopped the moment we were no longer on it - and looked around us with amazement.

"I certainly didn't expect to find anything like this at the top of the Half Man!" Beta exclaimed, wandering through the long uncut grass, her hands idly pulling off clouds of seed from dandelions.

The top of the escalator from which we had emerged now appeared more like a hole in the ground and the City very distant indeed. Instead of the roar of traffic, the air resounded with the sounds of joyous living. I wondered where the garden might end. It appeared to stretch interminably in all directions, or at least as far as the odd trees and pagodas that were scattered about. None of this disturbed me at all. The effects of drink, I imagined. I glanced around to find Beta, but I couldn't see her at all.

"Beta! Beta!" I called out, disturbing a toucan that crashed out of a tree. "Where are you?"

"Here! Over here!" she called, hidden behind some trees.

I chased around them only to see her run off towards a gazebo beneath a tall beech. I ran after her as she dodged behind it. When I got there, she immediately started running again, laughing childishly, her long hair flowing behind her and her naked body not at all out of place in the luxuriance of the grass and the heat of the sun. For several minutes we chased after each other between the trees and bushes, around the ornate ponds and the buzz of caddis-flies, past the waterfalls, behind the pillars of curiously neglected ornamental buildings and knee-high through wild grasses. I was much more unfit than Beta who was much more accustomed to the outdoor life, and was soon short of breath and sweating profusely in the bright midday sun.

"It's beautiful here!" exclaimed Beta, strolling up to me as I panted and wheezed in the shadow of a tall apple tree. "You wouldn't believe that there was anywhere like this in the City."