Strata

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 hadswept 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 whoGoddard 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 them an impressive view of the big collector bowl atop the machine, its interior velvety black.
    ‘Why?’ said Jalo, peering. Kin twirled the wheel.
    ‘Beamed power from orbiting collectors, slaved to the machine. If we flew over the bowl we wouldn’t even leave any ash.’
    ‘What would happen if the pilot made a mistake and the beam missed the bowl?’
    Kin considered this. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘We’d certainly never find the pilot.’
    The flyer skimmed over some more islands. Vatbred dolphins, still frisky after their journey in the megatanker, looped through the waves alongside its shadow. Blast Continuous Creation !
    But at the time it had seemed a good idea. Besides, she had done just about everything else but write a book. The actual writing hadn’t been difficult. The real problem had been learning how to make paper, then hiring a staff of robots and setting them to building a printing press. It had been the first book printed in four hundred years. It had caused quite a stir.
    So had the words inside the expensively-produced card covers. They said nothing new,but somehow she had managed to assemble current developments in geology in such a way that they had