“Spoken like a patriotic Bellogardian! My father hoped that science and the birth of newmagic might set us free. Might let us decide our destiny. Here we are. We’re set free-after a fashion. What are we doing with our freedom? We’re pawns collaborating in a property game.”

  “More than mere pawns!”

  “Ultimately, what are we?”

  “Ultimately, does another magical world await us-beyond this one? According to astrologer Matyash there are at least seven. Eight, if you count Bellogard-Chorny. Do we have to wreck them all?”

  Sara hid her face in her hands and wept.

  I thought that she wept for the worlds we might destroy en passant. I tried to comfort her, to reconcile her to this unenviable prospect. Presently she raised her head and stared at me. She seemed elsewhere, disconnected, like an eidolon.

  “My father,” she said quietly. “Bishop Lovats the perceptive, the beloved.. .Someone once asked whether Lovats would have preferred to ‘experiment’ with a magic woman. Yes, he would. Of course. He did. Bishop Lovats experimented with Squire Sara. With his magic daughter. The magic father’s seed in the magic daughter’s womb might have conceived a granddaughter endowed with intensified magic. even though the twelve had already been born. The granddaughter might have possessed wildmagic. Therefore the father possessed the daughter. Not brutally or offensively. Oh no. Ever so gently. Several times, when the moon’s horoscope favoured fruitfulness.

  “No wildmagic grandchild was conceived. Or else it was conceived but blood washed it away. Because the twelve had already been born.”

  She blinked and shook her head as though snapping out of a trance.

  “What nonsense. What things one invents. Maybe I could believe that such a thing happened-because, if it had, then I would really have known my father! I’ve listened to too many of young Albert’s stories.”

  I felt stunned. Sara did not refer to this again. Nor did I.

  Throughout the second week our portfolio expanded dramatically. We signed a contract for our book, earning enough credit to maintain us in imprisoned comfort at the Palazzo for months to come. Over the weekend in the hotel room we told our story to a trio of author-interviewers.

  I suggested that we invent a pack of lies. Sara insisted that we tell the truth in the hope of alerting some luminary of the calibre of Lovats, Augusti, or even Matyash.

  Personally I thought Sara was being disingenuous. How could we aim to become monopolist, thus triumphantly causing world-doom-and simultaneously subvert monopolist philosophy? Subvert, with what possible outcome? Would a monetary guru ride to our rescue, proposing an alternative magicoeconomic strategy? Would enlightened mobs storm the bank, defuse its magic, establish common ownership by everyone of everything? Would that not be a very Antibankerish act? To avoid a quarrel I kept quiet about my qualms.

  Once we began to recount our adventures a kind of storymagic swept me into the swing of fulsome frankness. Our interviewers soaked up our story like sponges and departed to squeeze themselves into a book, which they estimated would take about a week to produce. They wouldn’t commit themselves “credibility-wise”.

  Half-way through the third week one of the leading property magnates went bankrupt trying to pay rent to us. The bank had dealt him a run of bad luck. We took over his assets; we raised his mortgages.

  Two days later, another of the “top thirty” fell foul of us.

  Worse! Dozens of small speculators were coming to grief by now, going bankrupt and exploding. We sat in our hotel room like a trio of bombardiers, blasting citizens of Monopolis to pieces financially and literally. This was the opposite of any orthodox siege; three invaders were laying siege to a whole city with the full connivance and say-so of its treasury and without needing to stir from their billet (apart from a quick dash to the magic box). Connivance on the part of the bank was amply demonstrated-and Sara’s thesis proved-when Securicorpsmen, the police of the bank, threw a cordon round the Palazzo to keep anxious, hostile crowds at bay. We still did not land in jail or pay any taxes.

  We saw death in the street below when poor speculators used the boxes on utility poles and went bang, messily. An avalanche began, a crash of portfolios proud and humble. Soon, throughout Monopolis hundreds of new paupers were exploding.

  The dawn of the fifth week. No book had appeared. Doubtless our authors and their publishers had exploded. A fair percentage of the potential readership had followed suit. A cohort of Securicorpsmen continued to surround the Palazzo; being bank personnel they were immune. The street was no longer crowded with distraught spectators. Few pedestrians hurried past, those who did looking haunted. The occasional carriage purred by. An exploded body lay strewn, uncollected. City services were collapsing. At night the lights would flicker and black out; the electricity factory must be undermanned. The water taps wouldn’t always work. The air smelled of spiritual death; a scared silence fell over once-bustling Monopolis.

  We all needed to be together if a crisis occurred, so Albertini moved in at last to share the double room, dragging his mattress with my reluctant assistance. It was some while since Sara and I had made love. How could we do so, when our embraces might be disrupted by the distant “pop” of some hapless wretch disintegrating, all because of us?

  One morning we opened the drapes to find the street deserted. No Securicorpsmen; nobody. Only some corpses in many small pieces.

  We walked downstairs through an empty hotel. No one was about. In the lobby we found the scattered remains of (maybe) the receptionist. We said nothing; the sound of our voices would have seemed obscene.

  One of the magic boxes was glowing and beeping in its booth. Silently we went and stuck our hands into it.

  CONGRATULATIONS, MONOPOLIST! ADVANCE TO GO! GO TO GO! GO!

  The plastic box began to soften and slump. It dripped coldly-no heat was involved. We snatched our hands away, and headed out into the vacant street, the first time in weeks that we had set foot outside the hotel. The cloudless morning sky was a familiar, crackling, vacuous blue. The city buildings were becoming vague in outline.

  We owned Monopolis, and Monopolis-this particular incarnation-was dissolving back into the matrix from which all such cities of Monopolis arose.

  We held hands. Quietly the world tiptoed away.

  “.check at intersection number 1,703.. .bridging from starpoint 21.. .impasse at points 2,171 through 2,191...area around 2,000 is dead, abandon.connect at number 99...this is General Shiro...”

  This flow of orders from an invisible source was gradually drowned by drumming, the clash of metal, cries and screams, a bray of battle trumpets. A frightful clamour reverberated in a blank void. The din of war gave way to cheering, drunken laughter, ribald songs.

  This, too, faded. Of a sudden tents appeared. Pavilions, flags on poles. We were standing in a town of tents. Slim, enticing women wandered arm in arm with tipsy warriors who were dressed in chainmail shirts and leather skirts. Fat old women laboured over cooking fires. Brats scampered about. Babies bawled. Lambs bleated in pens. Chickens pecked the dirt. An ox was being roasted. An injured man lay on a straw pallet, leg wrapped in bloody bandages. A conjuror juggled balls that seemed to change colour in mid-air. A clown stalked by on stilts. Red-faced fellows ambled from a marquee, gripping pots of ale.

  Were we in the midst of a war or a fair-ground? The encampment reeked of smoke, sour beer, blood, charred flesh, perfume, piss.

  A squad of metal-clad spear bearers, led by an officer in silver mail, charged through the melee scattering chickens and knocking over panniers of rice. Skinny curs yapped and cringed. The soldiers pounded to a halt beside us. The officer pointed a finger at me.

  “You, you’re enlisted.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t imagine you can slack just because the war’s over! Now we tidy up this mess. We get the lines sorted out. That’s quite as important. It’ll take long enough. Grab your kit, and fall in.”

  “My wife, my child.” I gestured at Sara and Albertini.

  “They’ll come too. Chattels and impedimenta usually accompany a soldier! Campaigning’s a life’s work, eh?”

  “Who won this war?” asked Sara.

  “How should I know? General Shiro himself doesn’t know yet. Nobody knows till we straighten out the lines, exchange prisoners, clear the living dead away. Fall in!”

  By that evening we understood the situation a bit more clearly courtesy of new comrades in arms.

  For as long as anyone could remember, a long, slow war had been waged between the “Whites” and the “Blacks”. In the beginning there had only been a few isolated groups of White and Black forces scattered apparently at random across vast grassy steppes. Each unit was accompanied by its own tented village of wives, kids, washerwomen, prostitutes, barmaids, cooks, prestidigitators, saltimbancos, chirurgeons, armourers, fiddlers, thieves, vagabonds, invalids, minstrels, tailors, and a dozen other sorts of hangers-on.

  The aim of the war was to surround and defend as much territory as possible. At each new stage in the conflict a fresh encampment of Whites-then a fresh encampment of Blacks-would spring magically into existence at whichever point was designated first by General Shiro, then by the enemy general, Kuro.

  After a while camps would link up. Lines of White camps would encircle a few Black camps. Black camps would spring into being behind White lines, trying to forge the “double-eye” formation which was ruled to be invulnerable. To prevent this, White would attempt to cut across Black lines by bringing new camps into existence. Black would seek a path to survival by generating more new camps. Some “single-eye” groups of camps and solitary camps would be surrounded and obliterated. Other such camps would linger on, impotent and ignored, inhabited by the living dead. Now and then a “repeat situation” occurred. Black would wipe out a White camp. White would reinvade, wiping out the Black victor. Black would counterattack, wasting White. Presently the generals’ attention would be diverted elsewhere.

  My new comrades didn’t seem unduly bothered that I was ignorant of the rules of war. Ever since the war began whole mobs of soldiers and camp-followers had been materializing by magic, some well primed for their role, others less so.

  Once a camp had sprung up it wouldn’t shift position as long as the war continued (though it might be obliterated). Minstrels and strays wandered from one camp to another, even across empty steppes, but army units stayed put in their immediate home area. As a result of this the earlier camps had long histories behind them. Tents had been replaced by wooden huts, then by houses of adobe or stone. The troubadours told tales of thriving, quirky, individualistic “cultures”, quirkiest of all in cases where an ancient camp was isolated or on a frontier. The particular camp where we had arrived was a Johnny- come-lately.

  Now, apparently, the war was over. Yet not entirely over. The two sides had been evenly matched in skill. Until the boundaries of Black and White territory were firmed up and rearranged neither knew which had won. Consequently a host of people must uproot themselves and set out on a massive trek, a minor aspect of which I was conscripted to help organize.

  Damn fortunate that “our” camp wasn’t one of the long-settled townships! Us soldiers might have needed to burn it to the ground to persuade everyone to clear out.

  What chaos there was the next morning! What a fuss, what a pother. Only Albertini was in his element.

  Our various squads of soldiery, some still nursing hangovers, got the show on the road after what seemed hours of cajoling and cutting guy-ropes and chasing chickens. Not that there was any road as such! The vanguard tramped a path through the head-high grass. The rest of the lengthy column followed this path.

  My squad was assigned to the rearguard where heavy baggage, mothers burdened with babies (in uterus or out of it), the wounded and the aged gravitated. I was kitted out in a chain-mail shirt and leather skirt. I hadn’t been able to lay my hands on one of those wickedly hooked spears, but Sergeant Hosh- who had inducted me-had supplied a razor-sharp sword which for preference I kept safely in its scabbard.

  Sara stayed as close by me as she could. Albertini scampered to and fro. He soon teamed up with that clown on stilts. The clown proved disposed to act as a mobile watch-tower, keeping an eye out for any laggards or recalcitrants who tried to slip away, to return to the abandoned site which had been home to them for several years.

  I asked spearman Jigo what happened after the lines had been tidied up and the war was decided.

  “If we’ve fought impeccably, like champions,” he told me, “the finishing stage is the way the world will remain for ever after. No point in any further moves!”

  “Do you mean: if we win, the Blacks will still control their own territory?”

  Jigo nodded.

  “In that case what’s the point of the war?”

  “Why, to decide the shape of the map! To make sure that ours is the bigger share!”

  “If it isn’t, how will you feel?”

  “Humiliated-for ever. Don’t speak of it. This is an anxious time.”

  We marched until late afternoon, when a halt was called by the banks of a stream. Tents were pitched. People sprawled or bathed. Fires were lit. Rice was boiled. Cooks cooked, entertainers entertained, whores whored, babies had their bottoms washed.

  We marched for most of the following day. Around two o’clock the clown called down that he could see another White column, complete with civilians, following a course roughly parallel to ours off to the east. At three o’clock he sighted another line of soldiers and followers off to the right. At four o’clock word came back that we had arrived; we must close up and pitch a permanent camp.

  The soldiers, whose hooked spears doubled conveniently as scythes, cleared a site and the tented town which we had quit two days earlier was reconstructed. When night fell our elevated clown reported that he could see other tented towns and bonfires to our left, to our right, and ahead of us. Behind us the grassland was deserted.

  Sergeant Hosh stopped by. “Private Pedino, you are demobilized.”

  “I am, sir?”

  “Mission accomplished! Last in, first out. At dawn General Shiro and General Kuro will meet formally to conclude the war. Ah peace, sweet peace-’tis the sweeter after conflict.”

  “I’m sure it is, sir.”

  The clown invited the three of us to share his tent. His name was Koko-derived from the magic name for the “repeat situation” I mentioned earlier. Ingeniously he wore that tent as a costume. His stilts were the poles. His baggy silken robe ballooned out to become the fabric, which he pegged to the ground. The tent was crowded with four of us inside but no one seemed to mind. Koko, still wearing a billowy undershirt and baggy bloomers, lit an oil-lamp for light. Albertini volunteered to fetch supper and ducked out. Ten minutes later our expert scrounger returned with someone’s helmet tucked under his arm. This was filled with saffron rice and chunks of jugged hare. Albertini had also lifted a newly opened bottle of rice wine.

  “Knew we’d needa bucket, didn’t a?”

  We tucked in with our fingers, and passed the bottle.

  “Who grows the rice?” asked Sara. “Who digs the metal to make weapons? Where are the farms and the mines?”

  “Stuff turns up,” explained Albertini, before the clown could do so. Apparently he had checked this out. “Bit like snakedrops a’ the dump. Camps o’ folk pop outa nowhere. Stuff too. World i’n’t full up till the very end, ya see? Gotta be added on to all the time.”

  “Ho ho. The end! Just so.”

  A perpetual grin was painted around Koko’s mouth; tears were painted tumbling from his eyes. Hilarity and grief combined. His voice shook. “Tomorrow’s the fun day when everything stops dead. It will stop dead, you know! And I’ll die laughing.”

  “Jigo told me...”

  “Those silly soldiers-they’re the real clowns! I must be up high on my stilts at dawn to see. Forgive me if the tent collapses.”

  “I feared as much,” I said.

  “Oh, it won’t fall down before then! Never you fear.”

  “Pedino’s talking about the end of the world,” said Sara, licking her fingers. “We’ve seen it happen before.”

  “Oh no you haven’t.”

  “Oh yes we ’ave,” chirped Albertini.

  “Oh no you.. .Cross your heart?”

  “An’ ’ope to die. ’Cept we won’t die, not if wor luck ’olds.”

  “Er, joking apart, dear guests and sharers of my humble tent.”

  Sara proceeded to explain about our travels.

  “Ayee!” cried Koko when she had done. “Would you believe it? That’s an even bigger bleeding comedy than I ever guessed!”

  “We ’ll be up at dawn too,” she vowed.

  “Problem,” said Albertini. “Wha’ magic bails us outa ’ere? Why should it? Wha’ we won this time? Nuthin’”

  “Our side may have won the war,” I said.

  “Fat lotta diff’rence wor presence made.”

  “I’d view things in a different light,” Sara said. “This world’s based on an imaginary grid pattern. Like a chequerboard, only with a lot more squares. Camps occupy these squares, right?”

  Koko shook his head. “It’s the points where the lines meet that count.”

  “Okay then. But the main ingredient, as I understand this war, is that chance plays no part. It’s all a matter of skill and geometrical calculation. Hell, it’s a real war too, just like at home. In Monopolis there were no actual battles. Same with your world, Albertini. But here there’s war. We’re getting closer to home. I feel it in my bones.”

  “Home sweet home is a bloodthirsty war?”

  “Home,” she said to me firmly, “is what goes on in between military actions. It’s the peace which punctuates the skirmishes of war. The ordinary lives.”

  “Which depend on magic conflict for their very existence.”

  “As you’re forever saying!”

  “I’m not. It’s a fact of life. That doesn’t mean I approve of it. Does the sun like being on fire? If it wasn’t on fire, it would be dead. Maybe the sun is writhing in agony.”