The Magician's Nephew, by C. S. Lewis. The paperback. The one with all those cute drawings.

I lost it on Denaria VII, victim of a mugging down some back alley, lost it with my cash, my ID and my shoes. I suppose I was lucky not to lose my life. By then I didn't need the book. I could almost recite my favourite pa.s.sages from memory. I identified wholly with Digory, cried when he cried, longed for a girlfriend as tough and sensible as Polly, thought I'd found her when I met Bernice.

That was years later, of course, and Bernice brought a mad uncle of her own to our relationship.

I'd forgotten that old book by then. But now two images in particular came rushing back. First were the rings Digory's Uncle Andrew had given him and Polly. They could take you places. Other worlds. Yellow for the outward journey. Green for the return. The second was the Wood Between the Worlds. A place where every pool was a doorway to another world.

That was where I was now.

I remembered the Doctor giving us the rings when we were married. 'Be nice to them and they'll be nice to you,' he'd told us privately after the ceremony. 'You can ask them things. They'll work for you. They'll take you places. But they only do that together. And only if you ask nicely.'

I looked around. I was in a ... well I was surrounded by ... well, the suns I could see were not really suns, no, they were ... well they were more like windows ... or doorways, stretched out of shape by relativity ... doorways of light that were really embryos, the first seconds and minutes of other times and places, the moments of conception of worlds and times and peoples and galaxies? The birthplace of the Universe. Of all the universes. The Wood Between the Worlds.

I felt cool, calm, very much in control. The sounds I could hear were not quite equations and not quite the tiny voices of growing things being born. I saw the moment of change between what was not and what was.

I should have been, insane. I wasn't. I should have been dead. I wasn't?

I wasn't hungry. I wasn't. thirsty. I wasn't breathing. I - fell out of a burning sky into a lake of boiling sulphuric acid, one ring clutched in each hand, mine and the one I had (stolen) borrowed from Benny, and I felt a bit like my first acid trip, a bit like the first time I made love with someone I really loved, a bit like a little kid who has just got off a rollercoaster, eyes bright, mind spinning like the world had spun around him only moments before, yelling, 'Again, Mum, oh wow, I want to do it again!'

I was still yelling in schoolboy delight when something that looked like a cross between a shark, a squid and a s.p.a.ce cruiser churned out of the brown ocean depths, grabbed me and swallowed me whole.

Being alone in the dark, surrounded by a sloshing ocean of digestive juices, gave me plenty of time to think about what I was going to do when I got out.

Escape was never in any doubt; it was just a matter of waiting. I was protected by a force field. I was going to come out one way or another, eventually. In the meantime, I had several hours in which to consider what I had done, and why.

After the d.a.m.n message from the Astronomer Royal everyone was going to think I had something to do with the horrible mess I had just left behind.

That simply wasn't true. I didn't know why the Ark had picked on me to give a gold-plated invitation to but it should have been obvious to a blind beggar that the Ark had made a c.o.c.k-up. Not as monumental a c.o.c.k-up as dumping a couple of million tons of contagious terraforming virus on to the Earth but still, a fairly large c.o.c.k-up, nonetheless.

It was clear, to me at least, that somebody had to do something about the situation. The Doctor couldn't, or wouldn't, probably. Bernice was in the most foul and unpredictable mood I had ever experienced and Chris was wandering around like a lovestruck teenager with his head in the clouds and his heart stuck on a dead woman. That left me. Benny was right.

Someone had to take action.

I thought about the recording, hologram, telepathic museum pieces, whatever it was we had experienced before I set off. It seemed clear what had happened, all those billions of years ago ... er, now, I mean. Intelligent life on this, the second planet of the Solar System, had been ... would be wiped out by the near pa.s.sage of a black hole. The Cthalctose had somehow managed to build a terraforming platform inside their moon, launching it into s.p.a.ce before the end, in the hope that it would be able to seed Cthalctose life somewhere else in the Universe. Unfortunately for us somewhere else just happened to be the Earth.

Somehow I had to stop that. I had to persuade them that their efforts would not work, perhaps try to get them to target some other world than Earth. A barren one, where there was no life. I didn't know if I would succeed, but I had to try. I had to show Benny that she was wrong about me. I wasn't a failure. I wasn't someone who froze in a crisis. G.o.d knows, I had to move fast enough on occasions in the past, didn't I? Some of those occasions had even saved her life.

The more I thought about our last (screaming row) discussion the more angry I got. There were days when Benny could be annoying, sure, but everyone had days like that. It was only reasonable to suppose that things wouldn't be roses and meals out and good movies between us every single day of our lives. But this! This behaviour was bordering on the psychotic. It worried me and frightened me and it was selfish of her. It made me angry.

It was like she was going mad or something and I was the focus of her madness.

I tried to control the anger I felt. It was stupid. I needed a clear head to deal with this situation. To prove to her she was wrong, that I could solve problems and help out in crises.

To prove to her that I could stop this mess before it even started.

There you go, Benny, I would say. There's the Earth, clean and neat again, just like it was two weeks ago. Clever huh? Call it an 'un-birthday present'.

The quote would swing it. She loved Caroll. But she would also have to see that I had succeeded where she and the Doctor had not even tried.

So I had taken her ring, put them together and asked them nicely to bring me back to here? To Cthalctose, the planet the Astronomer Royal had been talking about, six billion years ago.

Something b.u.mped against me. My eyes were slowly adjusting to the darkness - it wasn't quite complete - and, in the dim light-of what I supposed was some kind of gut flora, I noticed I was surrounded by partially digested crystalline bones. There weren't many and what few there were broke up as I watched, melting away into the slurry of brown liquid surrounding me.

I felt something then. Something in my head. A voice. No - a feeling. No - a response to a feeling, my feeling, my anger.

The gut flora pulsed brightly around me, waves of colour and shape. At the same time feelings entered my head. Soothing feelings. Not words.

Emotions. A sense of calmness. Don't be frightened. I am curious. I cannot digest you. Are you alien?

Great. I had been wondering how to contact the Cthalctose. Apparently I had been swallowed by one.

No? You were swallowed by a Vehicle. I am a Provider. I bring food and information and messages to the Landlocked Ones. I will take you to them if you wish. The Astronomer Royal will be very interested to know what you can tell him of the Other.

Once again the sensation in my head wasn't one of words so much as feelings. Don't be scared. We're going for a ride. It'll be nice. We can tell each other stories. Swap stuff. The gut flora glimmered in time with the feelings pulsing through my head. Suddenly I smiled, then laughed. Benny would have got the joke too. The thing that had swallowed me wasn't a life form so much as a tool. A means of transport. I was in communication with an intelligent stomach.

The Vehicle released me (I'm going to use that word, released - anything else would just be too disgusting to think about) on to a rocky shelf at a depth of about five fathoms. About a kilometre away I could see a churning glow in the ocean. The Provider told me in soothing feelings it was a nursery, currently occupied by several children. That is, I saw the image of a nursery, a warm safe place where no predators gathered to hunt the anemone-like crystalline Cthalctose young, but the word I gave the picture was not nursery: it was volcano. I realized quickly this was in fact one of the smaller volcanoes in the chain I had seen girdling the planet's equator, in the Astronomer Royal's guided tour of his own solar system, before I had left the Moon.

Realizing this I also appreciated how unlucky the Cthalctose had been, in cosmic terms. By rights, any species whose young are born inside an underwater volcano should've had no difficulty whatsoever dealing with almost any of life's other little problems. Of course, most species didn't have the bad luck to have a black hole orbiting within their solar system.

I stood on the shelf as the Provider Vehicle swam off into the ocean. What was going to happen now? Where was the Astronomer Royal? What was I going to say to him when he did choose to show up?

At that moment the rocky shelf I was on moved. It wasn't a shelf. It was a tentacle. A thick, crystalline, rock-coloured tentacle. It moved and I fell over, a slow-motion swan-dive in the acid ocean. I landed on the tentacle and began to roll. I grabbed helplessly for a handhold, wrapped both arms around a barnaclelike encrustation. No - around a barnaclelike animal as large as a tractor tyre. I clung tightly to the projection as the tentacle accelerated through the water. At first I thought the owner of the tentacle was shooting along like a squid with its tentacles - and me - in tow. Then I realized I was moving sideways. No, not quite sideways. In an arc. I peered into the murk. Judging by the sweep of the arc, the tentacle must be as long as several train carriages. And now the tentacle began to curl, the surface crumpling, tiny crystalline folds and wrinkles appearing in what I now took to be skin. We slowed abruptly. I rocked forward, my grip breaking, and somersaulted over the tentacle. Then I was falling slowly through a murky rain of particulate matter. The rain ceased abruptly as I fell through a strong current.

Then I saw him. The Astronomer Royal. He was beautiful. A six-hundred-metre-wide anemone made of translucent crystal through which bioluminescence blazed in incredibly intricate patterns. He filled the relatively clear s.p.a.ce in the ocean bed into which I was falling. Tea-coloured acid swirled around and through him. He was inhaling the particulate matter I had just fallen clear of through a number of mouths.

There were about twenty mouths and each was more than fifteen feet in diameter. They were ringed with crystalline muscle and lined with strainers like a whale's baleen. They were orange, yellow, purple, green . . . actually they were changing colour like an octopus, almost too fast for me to follow.

Weeds were caught in them and waved softly. I wondered what sort of weed could survive immersion in a sulphuric acid sea, then giggled madly when I realized I should really be wondering what kind of life form could survive in a sulphuric acid sea. In the end I simply decided not to worry about it.

After falling for another five minutes or so I touched down on the gently pulsing surface of the Astronomer Royal's body. 'Er ... hi,' I said. 'I'm Jason.'

The tentacles continued to curl, producing conflicting currents in the ocean.

And now I became aware that there were other forms lurking in the acidic depths. Hundreds of them. Some large, some small, some shaped like anemones, some like whales with squid growing out of their bellies. One looked like a gently spinning fairground carousel made of sixty-foot-long.

sea horses trailing glowing tentacles. There were a great many of the sharklike Vehicles. I felt the confused emotional montage of many Providers.

And another. The Astronomer Royal.

'Ah,' he said inside my head. 'The alien. Would you like to be a guest star in my current performance?'

I sighed impatiently. 'Listen to me. I haven't got time to mess about.'

I felt the Astronomer Royal inside my head. 'Ah. No. I see. You are not very old. Nor are you likely to live past the dramatic climax of Act Two.'

The dramatic climax of - 'How long is this performance of yours?'

'The overture was five years. The first act four decades. Act Two is expected to run for another seven decades. Act Three another six decades after that. Then there is the epilogue. The artistic appreciation, the wrap party . . . I would say a further six decades. At the least.'

A hundred and ninety years. Nearly two centuries. I almost laughed. Talk about fiddling while Rome burnt. Now there was a joke Benny would have appreciated.

'Joke? You think my performance a joke?' The Astronomer Royal seemed to rumble, a bit like an earthquake, or the nearby volcano.

'No, I'm sure -'

'It is a performance in the highest sense. A quintessential juxtaposition of tragedy and comedy, of emotion and action. Of information and suggestion, threat and remedy. And you mock it?'

I sat down, the better to weather the Royal temper tantrum. 'No. It's like this. I'm not here to judge or criticize, write reviews or even spread theatre gossip. I'm here to ask you a favour.' I took a deep breath and plunged on, before the Astronomer Royal could protest. 'I come from a planet many ... a very long way away. And this planet I come from is in danger. It is dying.'

The Astronomer Royal opened and closed a few of its mouths interestedly.

Something the size of a killer whale barely escaped being squashed in one.

'A dying world? A race against time? I understand! You have a performance of your own. You have come here to observe, at least observe for as long as you are able within your own small lifetime. Observe and make notes and take pointers from my own performance. You are a fan!

My first alien fan! I am surprised and gratified!'

No, no no no no! 'Look. I'm not a fan.' 'Not a fan?'

'No!' My voice was a shout of frustration. With an effort I got my temper under control. He was an alien after all: he probably didn't even realize how badly he was annoying me, how obtuse he was being or how easily he was missing the point. 'That is, what I mean is, I have something far more important to discuss. You see, I know the future. I know what you are going to do on your world's moon - 'You know the climax of my performance?' The Astronomer Royal's voice was a mixture of petulance and anger. 'You aren't a fan and you know the climax of my performance?'

'Yes, that's right, and I'm here to ask you not to do what you're going to do!

Not to seed the Moon with life, not to launch it into s.p.a.ce. If you do that, it'll mean the end for my world.'

The Astronomer Royal suddenly heaved. If I had thought the previous motion was dangerous I soon learnt my mistake. The sea bed for a mile in either direction heaved. Cthalctose spun, and bashed into one another with huge force and were whirled away in the terrible currents. Nearby rocks toppled lazily to the ocean floor with the sound of slow summer thunder.

'You know the climax of my performance? You aren't a fan and you know the climax of my performance, and you want me to alter the ending?'

Tentacles had reached out to grab me, otherwise I would surely have been whirled away with the rest of the audience. The tentacles closed over me with crushing force. 'I see it all now. Yes. Oh yes. You come here, emissary from another world, come in peace, so you say? But we know now why you come! Oh yes, we do. You come not to study at the cilia' of a master but to steal his secrets, to disclose the climax of his own performance and ruin a hundred years of planning and rehearsals! And for what? So your own, miserable existence can be enriched by the tiniest fragment of my own genius! You have come here to steal my thunder and I won't have it!' The tentacle uncurled. I found myself hurtling towards a number of Vehicles.

One of them opened its maw to swallow me whole. 'Vehicles! Providers!

Take this alien pestilence to the nursery and give him to the Royal Polyps!'

I thought fast. This was no good. I'd already been swallowed and half digested once. I didn't want to be so again. Especially not as a precursor to having something even more horrible done to me in the heart of an underwater volcano. A Vehicle swam closer, acid churning in its wake. I tried to imagine what Benny would do.

'Wait!' I shouted. 'What if I can suggest a better way of ending the performance?' The Vehicle stopped.

The Royal seaquake stopped.

The Astronomer Royal's mouths opened and closed interestedly.

'How?'

Good. Yes. Excellent. How was I going to make good on that suggestion?

Once again I had seen Benny proved right. I never thought about anything before I did it. I just dug big holes for myself. 'Um,' I said. 'You could ... well, perhaps it would be worth considering ... that is to say what about changing the ending so you don't . . .' Oh yes, very good, Jason. But how?

I couldn't think.

The Astronomer Royal eventually gave up waiting for an answer. For a being whose normal life span was in excess of half a millennium he seemed unfairly impatient.

'As I thought. Everyone's a critic. No one has the artistic genius to back up their cra.s.s and obviously derived suggestions. Vehicles! Providers! Give him to the children.'

'Wait!' A moment of inspiration struck me. 'Please wait!' I pulled the last half a dozen of the Doctor's force-field emitters off my wrist, those I should have given to any of the NASA technicians who were still alive. 'Let me ask you a question. How do you suppose I've survived in your ocean so far? I've been swallowed and digested and puked up and crushed by large tentacles. I'm still alive because of one of these things.'

'These things?' There was doubt in the Astronomer Royal's voice. But curiosity as well. 'They are so small. I can hardly see them.'

'They are called force-field emitters. I don't know how they work, exactly, but I do know they can be used to harness energy and control it. Do you have nuclear fusion? Fission? Ion drives?'

'We understand these things you speak of. The Royal Polyps play with them from time to time. But you know what children are like They tire quickly.'

'Well, with these things here you can make your Polyps' toys into s.p.a.ceships bigger than you ever dreamt of. You will have the power of your sun at your finger - tentacletips. You will be able to get everyone off the planet before it is destroyed. You'll be able to live. You'll all be able to live!'

'Live?' The Astronomer Royal mouthed the word as if it were a novelty.

Perhaps it was. I didn't know how long he'd been living with the notion that his generation would be the last. That he himself would probably witness the extinction of his species.

'Yes. Live. You know, somewhere else. Another planet? There are loads around.'

'I know! I am the Astronomer Royal?'

'Yes of course. I'd forgotten that in the ... uh ... immensity of your performance?' Ah Benny. If you could only see me now. It's not so hard.

By now the audience was drifting back. The Astronomer Royal considered.

He looked at the various members of the audience. He thought about it some more. A small tentacle - no bigger than an elephant's trunk - plucked the force-field emitters from me, held them and examined them with intricate thoroughness.

'Hexagonal crystalline structure? We understand this. Polarized lines of force. We understand this. Quantum particle emission using normal s.p.a.ce and time as a conduit for a cohesive tripolar field. Ah. This we do not understand. But we can learn. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps we can live.

We will have our best Engineers work on the problem at a molecular level.'

Things like sea urchins swam out of the Astronomer Royal's mouth. They had long, fine spines with which they propelled themselves through the acid sea. They swam up to the force-field emitters and lifted them from the tentacle. Some held them, some examined them with their spines.

Meanwhile the Astronomer Royal seemed to reach a decision. 'Until we know all that can be known about these objects you will remain our guest.

Since the estimated time for understanding these objects and recreating them is many times your own lifetime, we will now have you placed in suspended animation. Your presence will also act as insurance against something going wrong, or others of your kind coming to change the climax of our new performance.' What? 'No, wait, I've - The Astronomer Royal ejected more Engineers. Now I was worried. If they could examine things at a molecular level did that mean they could get inside my force field? I , scrabbled for Benny's ring. Time to kiss this place goodbye. The engineers attached themselves to me. Their spines rubbed against the force field, a couple of millimetres from my face. Despite my safety I began to feel claustrophobic. And which pocket had I put the ring in? Left or right? Was it under that hankie? Beside the wallet?

Something tickled my face.

The urchin spines were inside the force field. They were touching me, exploring me, learning about me. I felt a tickling sensation in my ear, all over my skin. Were they inside my body now? I tried to shout. There didn't seem much point. I didn't feel any pain. I didn't feel any fear.

I didn't feel anything at all in fact. For more than a thousand years.

I dreamt. Of course they weren't dreams: they were performances. Other people's experiences, an emotional flood of them, accelerated almost to nonsense by the slowing of my own metabolism. I saw images from the greatest and the weakest of the Cthalctose minds. I saw them build and fight and destroy and build again. I saw them learn about the force fields; I saw them think about the applications of the technology they now owned; I saw them build schools and hospitals and extend life and banish poverty. I saw them build great cities in the ocean, free themselves from the confines of the rocks to which they would normally be fixed for their whole adult life.

I saw them evolve from a race of thinkers to a race of builders. They took abstract philosophy, art and history and fused them with the new science to form a powerful whole.