Strata - By Terry Pratchett Page 0,3

baggy black all-suit.

She was older than twenty-nine worlds, fourteen of which she had helped to build. Married seven times, in varying circumstances, once even under the influence of love. She met former husbands occasionally, for old times’ sake.

She looked up when the carpet cleaner shuffled out of its nest in the wall and started to tidy up the sand trails. Her gaze travelled slowly round the room as though seeking for some particular thing. She paused, listening.

A man appeared. One moment there was air: the next, a tall figure leaning against a file cabinet. He met her shocked gaze, and bowed.

‘Who the hell are you?’ exclaimed Kin, and reached for the intercom. He was quicker, diving across the room and grabbing her wrist politely yet agonizingly. She smiled grimly and, from a sitting position, brought her left hand across and gave him a scientific fistful of rings.

When he had wiped the blood out of his eyes she was looking down at him and holding a stunner.

‘Don’t do anything aggressive,’ she said. ‘Don’t even breathe threateningly.’

‘You are a most unorthodox woman,’ he said, fingering his chin. The semi-sentient carpet cleaner bumped insistently around his ankles.

‘Who are you?’

‘Jago Jalo is my name. You are Kin Arad? But of course—’

‘How did you get in?’

He turned round and vanished. Kin fired the stunner automatically. A circle of carpet went wump.

‘Missed,’ said a voice across the room.

Wump.

‘It was tactless of me to intrude like this, but if you would put that weapon away—’

Wump.

‘There could be mutual profit. Wouldn’t you like to know how to be invisible?’

Kin hesitated, then lowered the stunner reluctantly.

He appeared again. He wiped himself solid. Head and torso appeared as though an arm had swept over them, the legs popped into view together.

‘It’s clever. I like it,’ said Kin. ‘If you disappear again I’ll set this thing on wide focus and spray the room. Congratulations. You’ve managed to engage my interest. That’s not easy, these days.’

He sat down. Kin judged him to be at least fifty, though he could have been a century older. The very old moved with a certain style. He didn’t. He looked as though he’d been kept awake for a few years – pale, hairless, red-eyed. A face you could forget in an instant. Even his all-suit was a pale grey and, as he reached into a pocket, Kin’s hand moved up with the stunner.

‘Mind if I smoke?’ he said.

‘Smoke?’ said Kin, puzzled. ‘Go ahead. I don’t mind if you burst into flame.’

Eyeing the stunner, he put a yellow cylinder into his mouth and lit it. Then he took it out and blew smoke.

This man, thought Kin, is a dangerous maniac.

‘I can tell you about matter transmission,’ he said.

‘So can I. It’s not possible,’ said Kin wearily. So that was all he was – another goldbricker. Still, he could turn invisible.

‘They said that it was impossible to run a rocket in space,’ said Jalo. ‘They laughed at Goddard. They said he was a fool.’

‘They also said it about a lot of fools,’ said Kin, dismissing for the moment the question of who Goddard was. ‘Have you got a matter transmitter to show me?’

‘Yes.’

‘But not here.’

‘No. There’s this, however.’ He made a pass and his left arm disappeared. ‘You might call it a cloak of invisibility.’

‘May I, uh, see it?’

He nodded, and held out an empty hand. Kin reached out and touched – something. It felt like coarse fibre. It might just be that the palm of her hand underneath it was slightly blurred, but she couldn’t be sure.

‘It bends light,’ he said, tugging it gently out of her grip. ‘Of course, you can’t risk losing it in the closet, so there’s a switch area – here. See?’

Kin saw a thin, twisting line of orange light outlining nothing.

‘It’s neat,’ said Kin, ‘but why me? Why all this?’

‘Because you’re Kin Arad. You wrote Continuous Creation. You know all about the Great Spindle Kings. I think they made this. I found it. Found a lot of other things, too. Interesting things.’

Kin gazed at him impassively. Finally she said, ‘I’d like a little fresh air. Have you breakfasted, Jago Jalo?’

He shook his head. ‘My rhythms are all shot to hell after the trip here, but I think I’m about due for supper.’

* * *

Kin’s flyer circled the low offices and headed northward to the big complex on W-continent. It skirted the bulk of what had been Hendry’s machine, its new pilot now laying down a pattern of offshore reefs. The manoeuvre gave