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Tighe stopped, standing beside the Wizard’s cradle. The Wizard’s leather face was in full profile as he examined one of his screens.

‘It’s a good job you woke me, actually, my boy,’ he was saying. ‘I think my Lover is closer than is entirely comfortable. It may be this is the time to leave.’

Tighe lifted the gun and levelled its stocky barrel at the side of the Wizard’s head. The old man was staring at his screens, his face in profile; his eyes, from Tighe’s perspective, lined up one behind the other; his eyeholes the only weak space in his strengthened skin.

The Wizard glanced round, before turning his head back, focusing on the screens before him. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said indulgently. ‘I saw it already. It’s very nice.’

Tighe fired the gun.

The bullet passed through the Wizard’s left eyeball, snapped the bones in the bridge of his nose and passed directly out through his right eyeball. It sheared away and ricocheted off the curved metal wall behind the Wizard’s
cradle, bounced once, and then twice, screeching with each change of trajectory. It smashed into one of the Wizard’s four screens a heartbeat after having been fired, whistling so close to Tighe’s own head that he felt the puff of air as it passed. The screen cracked and splintered. But the Wizard did not see this because both of his eyeballs had been mashed by the shot.

The Wizard howled. For a moment that was all he did. He didn’t move a muscle, except to let out a high-pitched howl of agony and surprise. Then both of his hands came up, clutching at his wounds as the blood started coming out of the holes in his leather face.

Tighe stepped back, his heart pumping hard. There was a deep terror lurking somewhere inside him. He didn’t want to think about that. He didn’t want to look at the body of his pashe on the floor behind him. He didn’t want to stay in this space at all.

The uncanny screechy howl of pain from the Wizard’s face did not seem human. It did not seem to Tighe that he had injured a human being.

He stepped awkwardly over to the ladder and hauled himself up it. Just before he passed up into the green room above, he saw the Wizard’s cradle spin round, so that the Wizard’s sightless head turned to face him. ‘Boy!’ screamed the Wizard. ‘Boy! What did you do?’

‘For my pashe!’ yelled Tighe, and pulled himself up into the upper chamber. As an afterthought he yelled down, ‘For my pahe too.’

‘I’ve turned the pain off now,’ came the Wizard’s voice from downstairs. ‘You idiot boy! What did you think you were going to do?’

Tighe stumbled awkwardly, trying to position himself in the exact centre of the upper room without falling over. ‘Your magic won’t help you see in your blindness, I think,’ he called. He felt a pervasive sense of exhilaration.

There was the sound of movement in the room below. ‘Idiot,’ shouted the Wizard. ‘I thought you were stable! How obvious that you’re not! Where do you think you’re going? There’s nowhere for you to go.’

‘I’m going away from you,’ yelled Tighe.

‘Idiot – I’ll turn off your muscles with a switch! I’ll operate you by remote control. I’ll force you to cut off your own fingers, to break off your own teeth and use them to scratch out your eyes! You’ll know what my anger is like.’ The Wizard’s threats sounded bizarre in his high-pitched voice. ‘There!’ he called. ‘There! I told you. Maybe I can’t see for now, but I can
feel
my way over my controls. How do you like
that
, eh?’

Tighe did feel a twinge, a tingle of cramp that ran all the way down his spine, like the uncomfortable numbness of an arm caught underneath during sleep that flails helplessly when you wake up. But the sensation soon passed.

He reached with his foot, stamping on the patch of floor that he had seen the Wizard press when they had left the craft earlier. Nothing happened.

‘You can’t control me!’ he called gleefully to the room below. ‘My pashe pulled your machinery out of my head just after you installed it! I’m free.’

He pushed down on one of the nubbins on the floor. Still nothing happened. He was too excited to think clearly. How had the Wizard operated the elevator device? Where had he put his foot?

There was a bark of what might have been laughter from below. ‘Did she, now? That doesn’t surprise me. She was never stable.’ Another laugh. ‘Ironic! I thought this one was doing so well! Still, she can’t have got
everything
out, or I wouldn’t have been able to track you. There was something left behind, and it will have grown into
something in
your head.’ There was a stamping noise, and then a crash, and the Wizard cursed. ‘Damn you boy, this is
most
inconvenient. Have you any idea how long it will take me to fit new eyes?’

Tighe stamped furiously, as if performing a ritual dance, dabbing at dozens of points round about the centre-point of the room with his toe. There was another series of crashing noises, this time close under the hatchway.

‘I can hear your feet, boy,’ growled the Wizard from below.

Suddenly Tighe was rising. He must have hit the right spot. He was lifted up, and the hole in the roof irised open. The cold air rushed and swirled, and tiny pieces of snow flurried in. And then he was on the roof and the cold was bitter. He knew it was, because his ungloved hand, still clutching the gun, felt the chill immediately. Tighe stuffed the gun into his pocket and fumbled the glove over his numb fingers. Then he stepped forward, hoping that the Wizard did not have a way of turning off the filament devices in his gloves and shoes. A thread leapt out to meet the ice and Tighe started away from the Wizard’s craft.

He made his way through a prolonged snowstorm, climbing away eastward. He had no idea where he was going, or what fate awaited him, as long as he could put as much distance as possible between himself and the Wizard. He passed rapidly over the ice.

After a while the air around him cleared and Tighe looked over his shoulder. The sky was a blue so intense it seemed unreal. It seemed bright and clean as newly washed plastic, close enough to kiss. Tighe paused, panting. His sinuses hurt with breathing in the freezing air.

He looked up and saw a blurry-edged cloud of snow descend the wall until it was all round him and he couldn’t see anything more than his own gloved hands before his face. He clambered further along.

The air cleared again, and a shadow passed over the wall in front of him. He looked over his shoulder to see the silver shape of the Wizard’s craft swing through the sky. He whimpered in terror.

‘Tighe!’ boomed a voice from the craft. ‘Tighe!’

Tighe stopped and clung to the ice, pressing up against it, hoping that motionlessness would protect him.
He cannot see
, he told himself.
His eyes are gone. He cannot see me, he is hoping I will call out or move and give myself away to his devices. But I will not
.

The silver shape passed away to the east and then with a whine of motors it rose and passed up.

Tighe breathed heavily. He looked away to his right; looking east. This was the end of the wall, he could see that. Instead of a continuing vista, there was a stretch of ice perhaps fifty arm’s lengths, perhaps further (it was difficult to gauge it), and then blue sky. The sky was not only behind him; it was above and below and away to the right. Soon there would be nothing but sky. And then what would he do?

And then what?

Looking up, Tighe could see the silver shape descending again. ‘Tighe!’ boomed the amplified voice of the Wizard. ‘Tighe! Make yourself known, boy! Make yourself known.’

Tighe clung as still as possible. He even tried to still his breathing.

‘Don’t be a fool, boy! My sensors tell me you’re around here somewhere. Shout out – move around and my sensors will pick you up more precisely. Then you can climb back aboard.’ The words distorted and echoed strangely against the ice.

The Wizard’s craft disappeared downwall, his words still booming and echoing. They dissolved into the general hiss and hurry of the snowflake-filled air. When he could no long hear it, Tighe started climbing eastwards, palm over palm.

Then, growing in volume again, the Wizard’s voice swelled into hearing once more. Tighe cursed silently and stopped where he was. The craft was coming down from above, the words wailing and grumbling incomprehensibly until Tighe was able to tune into what they were saying, ‘… rather than let that happen.’
Aphen-aphen-phen . phen
wobbled the words. ‘I can do it! I control all my machines from where I am. I’ll turn off the heating in your suit and you’ll freeze to death!’ The echo bounced about in diminuendo,
death! death! death!
T’d rather kill you than let you go – I spent such effort trying to
find
you.’ The words smeared and Tighe lost track of them.
Find
you.
Find
you.

The Wizard’s craft disappeared below. Tighe resumed his eastwards climb, uncertain of his destination. But it made him feel better to be moving.

There was another blinding flurry of torn-up snow fragments and the cold pushed itself deeper into Tighe’s face. It seemed to catch because although the flurry cleared the cold continued worming its way inside. Tighe’s fingers started hurting; then his feet. Soon the chill had spread all over his body. It seemed the Wizard had made good his threat: whatever magic it was that provided heat in Tighe’s suit had been cancelled.

From above came the warbling and humming of the Wizard’s magnified voice once again. It called down to Tighe from above and slowly angled to the horizontal as the silver craft descended once again.

Tighe could feel the chill in his bones now. He was shivering, which made it hard to place his hand-holds. He could no longer feel his fingers. The Wizard’s voice came into focus.

‘… you. Don’t fight it! Believe me this cold will kill. I know you’re suffering. I can do more!’ More! More! More! echoed the ice. The wind scuffed and hissed around the words. ‘I can disable the filaments that work from your gloves and feet; you won’t be able to grip! You’ll fall off the world.’

Tighe tried barking his defiance, but his throat seemed to have frozen. Breath hissed painfully out. No!

‘Idiot boy!’ came the Wizard’s booming voice.

The silver craft was passing much closer to the ice on this occasion. It
was a little above and an arm’s length to the side, and was drifting down. Fearftil that it would knock him off the wall, or squash him like an insect, Tighe struggled to make his pain-chilled limbs move, to clamber a little to the side.

There was a crack that buckled the air and a wash of a sharp, metallic smell. Tighe looked up to see a second silver craft sweeping down from above. The cracking noise percussed a second time, so loud it actively hurt. A beam of white light flickered into existence between the two craft; and the Wizard’s machine dazzled, light shining in all directions. There was a huge whining noise and then another crack. This time a strand of blackness appeared, reaching from one craft to the other; as purely defined against the blue sky as if it had been black thread. This did not produce a glittering light-effect off the silver of the Wizard’s craft. Instead there was a rapid series of croaky
whomph
noises and a bole of smoke coughed out of the side.

Tighe glimpsed, briefly, a hole in the side of the Wizard’s calabash and black smoke sputtering out, as the whole machine veered sharply into the wall. It crunched enormously against the ice and Tighe felt the wall itself shudder.

With a sinking sensation in his belly, Tighe felt the world slip, slide downwards.

The Wizard’s craft, rebounding from the ice, part fell and part flew down and away. Tighe had a fleeting sense of a crushed-in side of silver, of smoke dribbling from the machine, and then it sped with a rush of following air and dwindled rapidly into nothing.

Tighe clung more desperately to the ice; but it lurched and slid again and then it was falling.

He knew he was falling because his gut told him; but he pressed himself against the chilly bosom of the ice, turned his face towards the wall. He couldn’t see movement.

The frozen air pushed at him from below.

The world heaved and danced. His frozen joints burned with sudden pain as everything stumbled sharply left. The world was shadowed and then lit, and Tighe had the vague apprehension that he was tumbling strapped to an enormous flake of ice. Then the ice began to break into pieces.

A portion of ice tore away to Tighe’s right, and then another, peeling itself away from Tighe’s filament grip. He looked over at it, too chilled and icy to feel fear. He could see the wall of ice sweeping up past him, the ripples and folds in the wall scrolling past.

A crack appeared in the ice directly in front of his face, and with a twitch of muscle Tighe disengaged his filament grip. He started to separate from the ice just as it fragmented. A gust from below caught him and turned him
upside down, and then he was tumbling. He put his frozen legs together and his kite-pilot’s instinct operated his body beyond his stunned semi-consciousness. He flattened his angle, brought his head back up.

The second silver calabash, the one that had attacked the Wizard’s craft with its beam of black light, swept past him again and again. It was as if there was an endless supply of these machines, each hanging in the air a thousand yards above the other: as if Tighe were stationary in air, and this parade of upward-rising silver machines were streaming past him.

There was an explosive, sore percussion, and Tighe’s head creaked with pain. He had, he distantly realised, been hit by one of the pieces of falling ice. The collision pushed him away. The repeating image of the rising silver machine dwindled, shrank.

Tighe may have passed out; he wasn’t certain. He didn’t feel so cold any more. In fact, he could feel a delicious warmth seeping through his bones. His fingers flared into achy life again and then warmed to a more comfortable temperature.

But he was passing in and out of consciousness.

It seemed to Tighe that he was falling in pure space; there no longer was any wall. All around him was blue sky, with an iterated pattern of white patches that might have been clouds, sweeping up and past and away over and over again. Tighe was warm, except at his face where the chill wind through which he moved made his lips and nose numb and spread blunt fronds of pain into the bridge of his nose, into his forehead. But otherwise he felt almost babyish.