its own downfall. The cataclysm being followed by a new and very similar order. It is aesthetic. It is right,
Grimus hopped across the room and pulled on a bell-cord. Though it was late at night, Bird-Dog was with them within a minute, panting and out of breath. Again Flapping Eagle felt a helpless rage at seeing his flesh and blood so humbled. Perhaps he, too, was as trapped as Bird-Dog, he thought, and then attempted without success to expunge the thought from his mind.
—Bird-Dog, said Grimus.
—Yes.
—This is my final order to you, said Grimus.
—Yes, said Bird-Dog, starting.
—The Order is Final, said Grimus.
Bird-Dog turned and walked towards the door. Flapping Eagle rushed to her and grasped her by the shoulders. —Don’t go, he said. Fight your conditioning. Say no.
—I want to go, said Bird-Dog quietly. I want him killed.
Grimus laughed happily in the background as Flapping Eagle released his sister. Who walked out of the room and shut the concealed door behind her.
Violence was all Flapping Eagle had left.
—Grimus, he said. If you don’t show me the Stone Rose now I shall happily strangle you myself for what you have done to my sister. Now, before your well-planned death can occur, as you say it will. It will be a miserable, meaningless death, Grimus.
—My, said Grimus. How cross you do get. I was just going to the Rose anyway. I have to set it in order to open the Gate.
He moved to the corner of the room nearest the centre of the house.
And pushed open a second secret door. Inside, at the heart of the house, was the Rose Room.
So that was why the house was such a crazy shape. Its labyrinthine excesses fogged the brain to such an extent that the presence of this small room went completely unnoticed. Flapping Eagle, who had been concentrating on the shape of the house when he arrived, had not even begun to guess at the room’s existence.
—Come, said Grimus. This is the last part of the Dance of Wisdom and Death.
The Stone Rose was actually not a rose at all. Flapping Eagle watched as Grimus set it, as it lay in its coffin in the small secret room, and began to understand.
Around the top of a central shaft, or stem, were a series of thin, star-shaped slabs of stone. Flapping Eagle counted seven such slabs. The top two had four points each, the next eight, the next sixteen, and so forth. Each slab rotated independently around the central stem. Setting the Rose appeared to consist of aligning the slabs in different relationships to each other. This is what Grimus was doing now. About halfway down the Stem, at convenient holding-height, was a sort of bulge.
—In some Dimensions, said Grimus, the Object is different. It varies according to the capabilities of the ruling species, you see. There are settings for space-warp, Travel to parallel dimensions, and so forth.
Flapping Eagle spoke.
—I haven’t changed my mind, Grimus, he said. I am going to break that thing. You can’t control it. It controls you. And then there are the blinks. The Rose is damaged, Grimus. It is dangerous. It has made you dangerous.
Grimus’ eyes gleamed for a moment, then went dull.
—Please, he said, and there was a new pleading tone in his voice. I would like to show you just one more discovery of mine. If it does not persuade you of the enormous value of the Rose, of the importance of preserving it and maintaining it when I am dead, then I will allow you to do whatever you wish. Just one discovery.
Flapping Eagle could not deny him. It was a small thing to concede. Now that he had the Rose in his reach, Grimus could not hold him back. After all, Flapping Eagle told himself, he was armed. Not just with bow and arrow, but with a powerful obligation. To Virgil. To his own, destructive past. This time his Ions could be put to good use: if he was a destroyer, let him at least destroy dangerous things.
Grimus had moved to a darkened corner of the small room. He took a cloth off a small object lying there. It was a transparent, spherical shape with a hançlle on each side. As Grimus picked it up by one of its handles, it began to glow.
—I foresaw I would have great difficulty in getting you to see my point of view, he said. It was for this reason that I conceptualized the Subsumer. If you take the