Doctor Who_ Slow Empire Part 4

If one is sworn to tell the truth as I myself am in all things then one must occasionally relate of things that are entirely inexplicable, or at the very least as hard to swallow whole as a Stygiian clampet that single creature which lives upon the world of Stygiia, having consumed all else, and was, at last known measurement, some five hundred and fifty-thousand leagues wide.

Such an instance, I must say, is the way in which the Doctor effected our escape from the Inner Court. It is years since then, and, try as I might, I simply cannot fathom how such an errant piece of what was, on the face of it, sheer stupidity, could ever possibly have worked.

As I stood there spouting sheerest nonsense, the Doctor, as has been told, managed in some way to extricate himself from the soldiers who were holding him, and thereafter succeeded in evading leather-clad guard after guard. As he did so, he busied himself moving various repulsive items in the chamber around, seemingly for no reason whatsoever. A bone-inlaid table here, a rack of dangling whips there, the partial remains of a tortured corpse to some other and extingent locale...

As these matters progressed, it seemed to become easier for him to do such things so much so that by the end he was able to position several guardsmen where he wanted them to be, while they looked on dumbly behind their leather masks and waited for some Imperial order that never came. It was as if, by the end, the Doctor had, indeed, the chamber entire under a spell the like of which I'd talked of in my wild and quite frantic improvisation.

I would have liked to believe that my own words played some small part in achieving this strange state but on reflection I believe that just isn't so. I sometimes wonder, though, just what it was that had me pulling such ultimately apposite words and ideas from the very air. I almost believe, sometimes, that in some way of which even he himself was unaware, the Doctor had made his mind and intentions known to me, in some manner of speaking that was unrelated to what we know of as speech.

So, how was this spell cast? How did the Doctor get away with it? Well, having racked my brain for years, I first say that it was a matter of simple astonishment. The Amba.s.sador Morel, the soldiers and the guards and certainly the Emperor simply could not believe that one brought before them would act in such a manner. And, once that initial astonishment had pa.s.sed, pure curiosity had them watching just to see what might happen. By way of much clowning and gesticulation, the Doctor contrived to evidence no sense of being threatening at all and, after all, what kind of threat could he ultimately present with such a weight of armed men on hand?

All such is just puffanstuff and speculation. In the end, I fear, I can only ask you to believe that for some small while the Doctor was allowed to roam the chamber unmolested, changing the position of a table here, a whip rack there, some pitiable dreg of illused mankind somewhere else, until the point in the proceedings where he paused and, as I say, went about his actual conjurations with a will.

'What happened happened back there?' Anji gasped as they ran through the corridors of the palace. 'What did you do? You were running around like something demented, then you shoved at one of the guards and everything went crazy!' back there?' Anji gasped as they ran through the corridors of the palace. 'What did you do? You were running around like something demented, then you shoved at one of the guards and everything went crazy!'

The chaos of events in the Inner Court still raged in her mind, like one of those fever dreams where image upon disjointed image pile up before the mind's eye in a nauseating, strobing ma.s.s that doesn't even have the saving grace of dream logic. People and objects flailing, falling and tangling up among each other, a blaze of energy weapons' discharge that seemed to mow all in its path down indiscriminately while, miraculously, missing the Doctor and his friends as though they were s.h.i.+elded by a collection of personal force-field bubbles. The Doctor taking hold of her and hustling her back through the door through which they'd come in...

'It came to me in a flash,' the Doctor enthused proudly, bounding athletically along as if this were merely a bracing jog through the park. He was probably hoping for the local equivalent of a dip in the Serpentine in the near future. He didn't seem out of breath in the slightest. 'I had this flash of insight into how I could modify the iterations of the immediate probability s.p.a.ce. It's like that game children play where they set up a complicated arrangement of...' He frowned. 'You know, those little plaques with spots on them that you play a game with. Just don't expect me to be able to do it on demand. Or ever again, it seems. Oh, well.'

Behind them, Fitz was casting glances behind him as he ran, no doubt antic.i.p.ating the sudden signs of pursuit. His pace was being slowed as was that of all of them by the rotund form of Jamon de la Rocas, which didn't appear to be exactly built for running, and was already wheezing and gasping like an asthmatic steam locomotive. Anji felt nothing in particular for the man either way, for all it seemed that he had played some small, vague part in their escape, but she knew that the Doctor would never dream of leaving him behind to fend for himself. And neither, in the end, could she. It was just that having a sense of ethics could be a decided inconvenience at times.

'We're making good time, nonetheless,' the Doctor said. Again, there was that slightly disquieting sense of his finis.h.i.+ng a conversation that had never been spoken aloud. 'If we can backtrack to the place where you were being held, I think I can get us where we're going before they manage to raise any widespread alarm.'

'And where exactly are we going?' Anji asked.

'I'd have thought that would be perfectly obvious,' said the Doctor.

The confusion in the Inner Court was still, in fact, to some extent under way as little ripples of iterative chaos theory played themselves out. One of the bandsmen, who had thus far survived physically unscathed, attempted to climb from under a guard who had fallen on him and stand up, caught his piccolo-like sidearm on one of the buckles strapping the guard into his leather, and shot himself in the foot. He then then hopped back with a yelp, smacking against a hanging torture victim, whose lifeless body swung to topple the single occasional table still standing, which supported a heavy vase, which fell to brain yet another bandsman who had been on the point of returning to consciousness... hopped back with a yelp, smacking against a hanging torture victim, whose lifeless body swung to topple the single occasional table still standing, which supported a heavy vase, which fell to brain yet another bandsman who had been on the point of returning to consciousness...

After a while, very carefully, the Amba.s.sador Morel climbed to his feet. An energy weapon, possibly a harmonica gauge, had taken him neatly in the upper right arm. The wound had cauterised, but the pain was intense. Around him, those guards and bandsmen who had survived were finally on the point of pulling themselves together.

On his skeletal divan, the Emperor was staring numbly at the stump of a hand that had been sliced cleanly off. He swatted viciously at his female servants, who had miraculously remained unscathed (at least so far as recent events were concerned) as they fussed over him, and lurched up in a tottering but incandescent rage.

'I will have them found!' he shrieked. 'You will have them brought to me! Oh, I'll teach them how it falls to despoil the Imperial member! Such excruciation shall I contrive that the very G.o.ds themselves shall '

'Oh, do shut up,' Morel told him. 'Remember that you practise your little hobbies at my indulgence. You live live on my sufferance, come to that.' He smiled prissily. 'Never fear. The miscreants shall be brought to what pa.s.ses for justice. I know, after all, to precisely where they will be heading.' on my sufferance, come to that.' He smiled prissily. 'Never fear. The miscreants shall be brought to what pa.s.ses for justice. I know, after all, to precisely where they will be heading.'

'You're lost, aren't you?' said Anji. 'Go on, admit it, you've got us lost.'

'Not at all,' said the Doctor. 'We're very close, now. I can feel it.'

Anji forbore to comment. They had reached the Chamber of Transference without encountering any undue problems. There had been a few dicey moments in sneaking past the soldiers barracked there, but in the end it had been easier than she'd expected. Whatever alerts and alarms were being instigated, they obviously hadn't made it this far.

Now they were in a network of functionally drab maintenance tunnels. Anji formed the impression that they were now some way underground, but for the rest of it, the tunnels were a maze of twisting branches and she had lost whatever sense of direction she might have had if she had known a thing about their location in the first place. The Doctor, she supposed, might have a more finely tuned instinct in that department but that would do them no good at all if the tunnel they were in didn't actually lead anywhere.

'I trust you'll not find this an impecunious question,' said Jamon de la Rocas, who it seemed to Anji was making a great show of his fort.i.tude at keeping up with Anji, Fitz and the Doctor, despite the fact that they had long slowed to barely more than a walking pace, 'but does the remotest possibility occur that our perambulatory excesses might be nearing some properly apt degree of termination?'

'Pardon?' said Anji.

'Are we nearly there yet, I think he means,' said Fitz.

'Nearly there,' the Doctor said with cheerful rea.s.surance. He had found a doorway. He looked through it. 'Only this isn't it.'

This was a chamber filled with cages something like those Fitz and Anji had been put into in the Chamber of Transference. Here, however, there was a single occupant to each cage, and that occupant was surrounded by strange-looking items of machinery that bleeped and gurgled happily as they exchanged fluids via clear but fleshy-looking tubes. was a chamber filled with cages something like those Fitz and Anji had been put into in the Chamber of Transference. Here, however, there was a single occupant to each cage, and that occupant was surrounded by strange-looking items of machinery that bleeped and gurgled happily as they exchanged fluids via clear but fleshy-looking tubes.

Anji stared through the doorway at the cages. 'Those are...'

'Yes,' said the Doctor. 'The same creatures that overran the TARDIS, the ones that followed us out. I was told that creatures of this sort were routinely put to death. I a.s.sumed they had been.'

'Maybe they're doing experiments on them,' Anji said. 'Something like secret government alien autopsies at Roswell. We saw what that so-called Emperor of theirs got up to...' She shuddered a little at the memory of it. 'And something like that would be right up his street.'

'I don't think so,' said the Doctor, thoughtfully. 'Do you see those wounds? They've been patched up. This is more medical than experimental surgery...'

It was at that point that a man entered the chamber from another door. He was dressed in blood-red robes and instead of a speculum he wore a collection of what appeared to be miniature telescopes attached to his hat, but there was no mistaking that he was the local equivalent of a surgeon, scientific or otherwise.

The Doctor pulled Anji back from the doorway.

'This is something we can think about at another time,' he told her. 'When we've all had a chance to think things through and decide what should be done. For the moment let's just concentrate on getting out of our immediate troubles.'

At last, after several more wrong turnings and diversions, the precise nature of which need not concern us,10 the Doctor and his friends found the spiral ramp that led up into the apartments of the Amba.s.sador Morel. the Doctor and his friends found the spiral ramp that led up into the apartments of the Amba.s.sador Morel.

'There she is!' the Doctor exclaimed enthusiastically, pointing to the TARDIS. 'I knew they wouldn't have moved her. That Morel chap struck me as a one not to let go of something that he's put his mind on...'

'How right you are, Doctor,' said the Amba.s.sador Morel, stepping from behind a curtain across an alcove. Several other curtains swept back to reveal a number of battered but patently alive, angry and considerably reinforced bandsmen. Reinforced in numbers, that is, and in the general strength of the weaponry they carried such as rapid-fire harmoniums, maraca-grenades and tuba-bazookas.

'You certainly took your time, Doctor,' said Morel. 'We've been waiting here for quite some while. The time for games is over, as are tricks, deceits and so-called sorceries. You appear to value the lives of your friends if not your own, so if you don't open your magic box now now they will die. I apologise for having to put the matter so bluntly, but I've had quite enough. It's as simple as that.' they will die. I apologise for having to put the matter so bluntly, but I've had quite enough. It's as simple as that.'

The Doctor looked in Morel's eyes and, evidently, decided that the Amba.s.sador was not lying. He walked to the TARDIS door. 'I have to warn you,' he said, mildly, his hand on the latch, 'that I have no idea what might come out at this point.'

'I believe,' said Morel, 'that I'll take my chances. Open the door.'

'Well, just don't say I didn't warn you.' The Doctor closed his eyes as though to s.h.i.+eld them from some potential and unknowable blast, wrenched the door open and stepped sharply out of the way.

Absolutely nothing happened.

'Well, I have to admit, that was a bit anticlimactic,' said the Doctor. He seemed disappointed rather than anything else. 'Oh, well, I've always said that it takes a '

There was a sound. A sound so hideous something between a glutinous roar and a shriek that nothing could be as terrible as the images it conjured up.

And then something every bit as terrible as those images burst from the TARDIS, closely followed by something different in actual form but of equal or even surpa.s.sing hideousness. And a worse one followed after that.

The bandsmen reacted instantly and automatically, blazing away with their lethal instruments. One of them frantically worked the action on his repeating penny whistle, before a monstrous creature fell upon him and bit his head off.

'Come along!' Anji realised that the Doctor had somehow spirited himself across the gap between the TARDIS and herself, Fitz and Jamon de la Rocas, as if by magic, and was urging her towards it. 'I think we'll all of us make it if we're quick.'

'Fall back!' the Amba.s.sador Morel was shouting from somewhere nearby. 'Fall back!'

'Are you mad?' Anji asked the Doctor as a concussion from the pitched if somewhat cramped battle between bandsman and monster nearly knocked her off her feet. 'There are more of those... things things in there. We'll all die!' in there. We'll all die!'

'I... don't think so,' the Doctor said, an energy beam from an automatic sousaphone fizzing past his left ear. 'It's hard to explain, but I think we'll be all right. Look at it this way: it's certain death to stay here here, so at this point we might as well take a leap into the unknown.'

[In Transition]

In my time, may I say, I have had the pleasure of travelling in quite some various enumeration of conveyances, carriages and suchlike vehicular contrivances. I have hung, precariously, from the Dangling Howdahs that depend from the great sky elephants that soar majestically over the pampas veldts of the Suminarian Panaplectorates, by means of the methane-filled bladder sacs that those remarkable creatures utilise for that purpose, and woe betide the poor unfortunate who might find himself in a position directly under them when a certain call of nature might make its effect quite abruptly known.

I have stood on the observation deck of a Doprovanian mole train as it industriously chews through the living rock that divides one bubble-cavern habitation from another. (The commonality of that world believe that the universe itself consists of such bubble caverns in an infinity of rock, the truth of such matters being known only to a select few.) The view from that observation deck, unsurprisingly, perhaps, was not of particular note.

I have found myself on self-sufficient siege engines, each the size of a city as a pa.s.senger and, briefly, as one of the treadmill slaves that propelled the engine into battle. I have inhabited cabins that have been forcibly inserted within the bowels of a living, ambulatory Glastrali Behemoth; I have hazarded my life on the great Slipstream Rafts that perpetually surf the riptides that girdle the water globe of Guli; I have even found myself exploded from the horrifying maw of a gigantic cannon in a projectile bound for some world or other's moon.

All of which is to the purpose that I have travelled more than most, by means that provoke looks of askance at the merest telling of them, but I have yet to encounter an egress, the means of which confounded the sensibility and the expectation so, as that of the Doctor and his so-called TARDIS...

'I just knew knew we'd be all right,' the Doctor said, looking over such controls as still seemed to remain undamaged. 'I can't put it any other way than that. It's the same way that you can walk into a room and feel it welcome you or not, or know whether you'd be happy in a house, or look at someone or something and tell instantly if it's friendly...' we'd be all right,' the Doctor said, looking over such controls as still seemed to remain undamaged. 'I can't put it any other way than that. It's the same way that you can walk into a room and feel it welcome you or not, or know whether you'd be happy in a house, or look at someone or something and tell instantly if it's friendly...'

Fitz looked around at the remains of the creatures that littered the console room, and thought that 'friendly' was not exactly the word that came to mind. There were no marks of violence on the remains, nothing to indicate just what precisely had killed them, but there was a certain crumbling, rotting quality that, on the whole, had the mind thinking that it would be far better off thinking about something else. Anything else would probably do.

'The thing I've noticed about people and things who look friendly,' he said, 'is that most of the time they turn round and try to bite your head off and eat it.'

'There is that, I suppose.' The Doctor regarded a fallen creature. 'On the other hand, when this chap's fellows came bursting out I could see that they were on their last legs or tentacles, or pseudophilia or whatever. It seemed reasonable to a.s.sume that the old girl had done something something to protect herself from the interlopers. Some form of blanket particle emission that accelerated physical ageing, perhaps.' to protect herself from the interlopers. Some form of blanket particle emission that accelerated physical ageing, perhaps.'

Fitz noticed that the Doctor was personifying the TARDIS again, as though it were some living thing as opposed to a machine. He did this sporadically, seemingly at random, and seemed completely unaware in himself that he was doing it. It was either some latent piece of personality resurfacing, some profound and mystical link between Doctor and TARDIS, or merely random noise produced by a still somewhat fragmentary personality. Fitz didn't know enough about such things to say.

'Well, let's just hope she she knows who her friends are,' he said aloud. 'I don't know about you, but I quite like the age I am knows who her friends are,' he said aloud. 'I don't know about you, but I quite like the age I am now now, thank you very much.'

'I wouldn't worry about that,' the Doctor said, peering at a still-operational display. 'From what I can make out, time manipulation as such doesn't seem to be an option any more. Not for the foreseeable future, at least.'

'The creatures wrecked the controls?' Fitz said with a sinking feeling. It is one thing, after all, to find oneself wandering erratically through the universe at the whim of forces one does not quite understand but it's another to understand that the agent of those forces is quite definitively broken.

'Not exactly,' the Doctor said, still watching the display. 'It seems that, before they died, the creatures were trying to make certain modifications, trying to subvert some basic processes to some end I can't, I'm afraid, make head or tail of but that's not the problem.'

'The problem being?' Fitz said.

'The problem being that this whole galactic zone the spatial hypersphere encapsulating what they call the Empire seems to exist in a state of sprained s.p.a.ce-time. It's a bit like pulling too hard on one of those plastic loops you sometimes find around aluminium cans. We noticed it before, if you'll remember, but I didn't realise the scale of it. It might be a result of this Transference I've been hearing so much about or that might have evolved as a result of that primal state. In any event, here and now, the fact is that the manipulation of higher dimensional sets, the manipulation of Time even something so simple as exceeding the speed of light is impossible.'

'I don't want to be the one to tell you, Doctor,' said Fitz, 'but, well, uh...' He gestured to where the time rotor, the central column by which the TARDIS manipulated s.p.a.ce and time, rose and fell in a laboured and fitful but patently functional manner.

'That's a part of it,' said the Doctor. 'What we're doing, here and now, is flatly, physically impossible and that basic impossibility is causing very real damage. It's setting up disturbances in well, not time as such, but what we might as well call sequentiality sequentiality. I've been feeling the effects myself a somewhat erratic phasing in and out of my persona into what might have been past lives, future lives or someone else's life entirely. I had an all but irresistible urge, for example, back among those soldiers on Shakrath, to set about purloining one of their penny whistles. It's affecting Anji and yourself, Fitz, but the effects are quite subtle, like playing a familiar tune but with the occasional off-note the occasional segue into or repet.i.tion of phrases and pa.s.sages that should have come earlier, or later, or never at all...'

The Doctor stepped around the central console and stopped before a monitor screen that Fitz, for one, could have sworn hadn't even been there there before, let alone in a state of sudden repair. He noticed that several of the dead and rotting creatures that had filled the chamber, when he first had entered, had vanished quietly away. before, let alone in a state of sudden repair. He noticed that several of the dead and rotting creatures that had filled the chamber, when he first had entered, had vanished quietly away.

'It's affected the TARDIS itself,' the Doctor continued, watching the monitor, which showed a continually s.h.i.+fting collection of branching lines and nodes. 'That's what, I think, allowed the Vortex Wraiths to access some of the deep-substructive processes and manifest themselves. They weren't mere abominations what we felt when we saw them was a reaction to what were, effectively, physical machines meant to house those that were never meant to exist on the physical plane in the first place. Even such a translaminary quasi-s.p.a.ce as the TARDIS interior, do you follow me?'

'Don't look at me,' said Fitz. 'You lost me somewhere around "substructive". Is that actually a word?'

'The on-board repair mechanisms seem to be handling things,' the Doctor said, as if he hadn't heard, 'but the fact remains that if we attempt to push things too far we might end up disappearing up our own singularity and, probably, take this entire section of the universe with us. And I think we've all had quite enough of that that for a while. We can't stay here, though. This Amba.s.sador Morel is no doubt busily trying to lever off the roof as we speak it won't do him any good, of course, but such things are hardly conducive to an atmosphere of peace and quiet.' The Doctor frowned. 'Time travel is right out, and I doubt if we can make any significant distance, in galactic terms, in our present state. For the moment, I think, our best bet might be a simple point-topoint jump to somewhere relatively safe and out of the way. Somewhere we can catch our bearings and give the TARDIS time to heal.' for a while. We can't stay here, though. This Amba.s.sador Morel is no doubt busily trying to lever off the roof as we speak it won't do him any good, of course, but such things are hardly conducive to an atmosphere of peace and quiet.' The Doctor frowned. 'Time travel is right out, and I doubt if we can make any significant distance, in galactic terms, in our present state. For the moment, I think, our best bet might be a simple point-topoint jump to somewhere relatively safe and out of the way. Somewhere we can catch our bearings and give the TARDIS time to heal.'

It was hard to tell, Anji thought, what was the more worrying: the remains of the creatures and the damage they had done, or the fact that they and it were vanis.h.i.+ng softly and silently away, as if they had all come face to face with a Boojum. There was the sense of things being done while the back was turned, a not unfriendly but somewhat pointed sense that certain things were none of your business.

The door to what had once been the Stellarium was simply gone. Anji had half expected to find a congealed lump of some unearthly, unidentifiable matter, the TARDIS equivalent of a healing wound, but instead there was merely a flat expanse of wall, and a table with a potted aspidistra. The chamber that she used as a bedroom seemed precisely as she had left it suspiciously so, as if a copy had been made of it in such detail that it was impossible to be sure if the feeling that it was not the original was actual or mere paranoia. There was a scene in some old sci-fi movie she recalled sitting through, where the inhabitants of a town were being taken over by pod people from the planet Zlorgon, or wherever it was, where the hero explains that the original version of a character had a birthmark in some out-ofthe-way place. The terrifying thing, apparently, was that the pod person copy had exactly the same mark exactly the same mark...

It was the little things that got to you in the end, Anji thought. Big and obvious things could be prepared for, and reacted to consciously; it was the subtleties you didn't consciously notice, yet to which you remained sensitive, that set you on edge.

Of course, some people tended to have the subtlety and sensitivities of a half-brick.

In those last confusing seconds on Shakrath, when the Doctor had bustled them into the TARDIS, Jamon de la Rocas had gone along with them on the basis that, in the end, there was really nowhere else for him to go. Or, as he himself had put it, 'In such a predicament, I feel, it cannot but be anything other than right nay, indeed, a positive duty duty to comport my presence to that of such worthy companions, and thus to offer any small subsidy of a.s.sistance such as might prove to be at my command...' There had been a lot more of it, but the general gist of things was that, so far as de la Rocas was concerned, he was doing them a favour by joining them and having it away on the variously applicable toes. to comport my presence to that of such worthy companions, and thus to offer any small subsidy of a.s.sistance such as might prove to be at my command...' There had been a lot more of it, but the general gist of things was that, so far as de la Rocas was concerned, he was doing them a favour by joining them and having it away on the variously applicable toes.

Now he stared about himself at the creeper-hung chamber eyes alight with the cheerful, shallow kind of wonder of a child who has seen some new thing and finds it quite impressive, but is completely incapable of thinking about what he's seeing in any deeper sense.

'This is most extraordinary,' he said, 'and, frankly, my dear, not a little unbelievable.'

They were in an arboretum of sorts, but instead of shrubs and trees there were organic-looking filigrees of golden wire which had a scintillating quality about them and seemed to hum with half-heard voices. The Doctor had once described this chamber as a manifestation of TARDIS extelligence, which Anji thought of in terms of an incredibly advanced neural net.

'When I first met this Doctor of yours,' Jamon continued, in the tones of one simply talking for the entertainment value of being heard to speak, 'I must confess that I thought him merely from some hole-andcorner province of Shakrath itself. Now I see, now I can only but presume, that he must come from what in worlds and times gone by were called the Unseen Lands, of which in my youth I heard many and diverse tales.' He gestured grandly about him. 'To travel in an engine of such technological advancement, by means that not even the most puissant Technomage in all the Empire could fathom! A very marvel of contrivance! Of course to the credulous, to yourself, it must no doubt seem like purest magic...'

Since she had first met Jamon de la Rocas, Anji had been on the receiving end of the distinct impression that the man had constantly been barely half a sentence away from telling her not to overheat her brain with questions that were more properly meant for the menfolk, and telling her to go and make him whatever the Imperial equivalent was of a cup of tea. Now, hearing the plummy condescension in his voice, she was reminded of the comments of any number of elderly, male relatives in her life before the age of seventeen, when she had packed her bags and got the h.e.l.l out.

'Oh, I don't know about that,' she said, with the kind of smooth sugariness that would have any reasonable listener picking the direction of suitable hills for an immediate and speedy egress. 'I'm sure your own people are just as advanced in their own way. How does this Transference of yours work again?'

Jamon, at some length, described the processes of Transference within the Empire. Anji got the impression that he was trying to blind her with what pa.s.sed for science there.

'So let me get that straight...' she said at last, when he had finished. 'The bodies are destroyed at one end and rebuilt at the other, so nothing physical actually travels?'

'The Soul travels,' said Jamon de la Rocas.

'Does it really?' said Anji. 'So what exactly do you mean mean when you say Soul?' when you say Soul?'

'I mean the Soul,' said Jamon, a little uncertainly in the manner of one who has just had the inkling of a self-referential flaw in the argument previously too big to be noticed. 'The indefinable essence of Man...'

'Well, that's just the point, isn't it?' Anji said brightly. 'The whole indefinability of it? OK, so information information is transferred, but what if that information's only on the level of I don't know words in a letter? The person who sent it isn't actually is transferred, but what if that information's only on the level of I don't know words in a letter? The person who sent it isn't actually there there when you read a letter, is he? You say you've travelled so called to several worlds; well, I'm sure you've run into the occasional big religious argument about what happens when you die on those worlds?' when you read a letter, is he? You say you've travelled so called to several worlds; well, I'm sure you've run into the occasional big religious argument about what happens when you die on those worlds?'