AN A-Z OFPOSSIBLE WORLDS

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This edition was first published by Roastbooks Ltd.

No.31, 93 Albert Embankment, London SE1 7TYwww.roastbooks.co.uk

Copyright A. C. Tillyer 2009

The right of A. C. Tillyer to be identified with this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

ISBN: 978-1-906894-06-1

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without permission in writing from Roastbooks Ltd.

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THE LABYRINTH

It is easy to imagine that the great labyrinth, winding round anentire island in the northern ocean, is the reason behind thefleeting, solitary existence of those who live in it, but this does notexplain why they built it in the first place. Perhaps they really didwant to lose themselves.

Without plan or conference, the early settlers constructed mazesalongside the first houses and roads as if, for them, the unexpectedwas as essential to life as food or sleep. Maybe the labyrinths werenever separate from the houses at all but began as unusuallyshaped rooms, which were extended into the gardens and acrossthe streets, so that neighbours could meet each other accidentallyin their own homes. Before long, there were no ordinary housesleft and the scattered villages were connected by a warren ofmeandering walkways and dead ends. The living spaces becamepart of the walls until the only way to build a new room was tobrick off a section of the maze and add a door on either side, sothat pedestrians could still pass through unhindered. Eventually,the walls became a continuous structure.

The labyrinth did not enter the world’s history books until it wasdiscovered accidentally by a band of fugitive sailors. By then, itwas already well established in its current form but for how longand why, no one can say. The islanders do not keep records of theirpast. As far as they are concerned, they have none. Those whocame before and those who will follow, have lived and will live asthey do. The court transcripts from the trial, which the crew faced

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after they had come home and given themselves up, tells us moreabout the labyrinth than any other source. It is somehow inkeeping with the spirit of the place that the fullest account of lifethere can only be found in a foreign land.

The navigator of the ship, who had acted as their leader, spoke forall of them. Many of their number had disappeared and they facedcharges of murder, as well as mutiny and desertion. The court wasevidently captivated by the navigator’s account, for he was allowedto speak for some time without interruption. He began with a briefbut lucid picture of the depravity and incompetence of the captainand his mates, which had threatened the safety of the ship andtriggered the rebellion. He described how, as the navigator onboard, he was able to plead for the captain’s life but threw in his lotwith the men and joined them to help steer the ship to safety.Without him, he felt sure they would have perished in the icywaters. The captain and his henchmen were given arms, money anda few provisions, then dumped in a boat within sight of land. Themutineers sailed away to find a refuge from justice. When the wallsof the great labyrinth appeared on the horizon; where their mapspredicted nothing but empty seas, they believed they had foundtheir sanctuary.

“We arrived just after dawn,” said the man in the dock. “Weanchored in the offing of a small fishing port. There were boatssailing home with the night’s catch, which passed within shoutingdistance of our ship. Men stood on the decks, gutting their fish,surrounded by gulls. Nobody paid us any attention. We took this asa good omen and several of our number, including myself, rowedashore.”

“As we walked the narrow, winding streets, I began to feel uneasy. Icouldn’t explain why. There were many people milling about and

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although we passed them unmolested, I felt a sense of danger.Something was wrong. As you can imagine, we were looking at theplace as our future home, so I tried to calm myself with the thoughtthat it was simply because we were strangers there and fugitivesfrom the law. But I have been in many ports and this one wasdifferent; it was too quiet. Then one of the men reminded me thatwe needed provisions and I realised what was missing. This wasdawn at a working fishing port, yet there were no market traderssetting up stalls, no errand boys clattering through the streets, nowhistling or shouting, no drunks slumped in doorways. Everyoneappeared to be going about their business but nobody washurrying. They walked calmly, as if sedated, in a world of theirown. No one travelled in pairs and we began to feel uncomfortablein our group.”

“We straggled out into single file. Eventually we accosted an oldwoman who looked as if she was kind, and attempted to act outour needs, pointing to our mouths, rubbing our bellies and offeringher coins. She ignored our money and answered us in a dialect thatwas a strange, sing-song mutation of our own. It was possible tounderstand her words but we could not place her accent. Fromthis, we concluded that somehow, these people were distantdescendants of our own race. We were not entirely pleased withthe discovery. It would make our first days easier but it did not ruleout the chance that our own countrymen would find us here someday.”

“The woman seemed puzzled by our request but did not mind usfollowing her. We were surprised to see that she did not seem toknow the way herself but appeared unperturbed when she ran intodead ends. She followed a path that was so convoluted that wehardly knew whether we were doubling back on ourselves orwalking further from the sea. After some time, we arrived back at the

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shore, about a mile down the coast from where our ship was moored.We came across a bucket of fish that had been left on the beach, aswell as several baskets of whelks. The woman placed her string bag ofturnips on a nearby rock, selected a lump of cod for herself andmotioned for us to do the same. She seemed alarmed when we beganto pack up all the fish and refused any payment for her trouble. Wewanted to thank her some more but when we looked up, she wasgone. No one was around, so we helped ourselves to the turnips andwhelks as well, leaving a few coins. I think that was the last time weactually paid for anything with money.”

“It took us many weeks to understand how the labyrinth operatedand I think it is accurate to say that we never understood itsinhabitants. At first, we thought we had stumbled on paradise. Therewas no money or concept of personal wealth among the islanders.Trade, such as it was, existed as a form of barter, yet no one haggledover the value of goods. Everyone always had something to do: theyfished, they tended vegetable gardens, they span wool, fedchickens, tended the sick, painted houses and mended their nets.But all this industry seemed to exist on a purely personal level. Therewere no warehouses or workshops, or organised teams of labourers.They simply employed themselves in whichever way they chose andseemed to change what they did whenever they felt like it. For allthis, there was surprisingly little chaos in the labyrinth. People leftwhatever surplus they had just lying around and when they neededsomething, they went out looking for it until they found what theywanted or something else that would do just as well. There was noone to organise these transactions but nobody took more than theyneeded to survive from one day to the next. As far as we could makeout, there were no hoarders and no shirkers.”

“I remember one morning observing a roof being repaired. A manhad evidently noticed a leak during the night. He went off and

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returned with wood and tiles, then he took a ladder that wasleaning against a wall, where another man was sitting on a sillpainting a window frame. The painter did not complain that hisladder had been stolen from under him. The man climbed up to theroof and began his work. Throughout the morning, various passersby moved the ladder from the roof to the window sill and backagain and once, a woman filled his bucket with tiles and nails,which he hoisted up without a word and continued with his work.The painter finished one coat of paint and left it to dry. After anhour or so, the tiler left his roof and climbed up to the windowsill,where he began to paint the second coat. Before he was done,another man arrived, left some bread and cheese in the street andtook the ladder to carry on with the tiling. When the painter hadfinished the second coat, he refreshed himself with the bread andcheese, then wandered off and never finished the roof repairs,which were completed by a third man. I must say, there wasnothing shoddy about the workmanship but I know of nowhereelse where jobs are completed in this way.”

“At first, we helped ourselves to what we wanted, even saving extrafor the future, but the crew was growing bored and restless, so Isent them off to work with the islanders. I felt that the only way wecould join the community was to contribute to it. Nobody everasked us what we were doing or where we had come from. You canimagine that for us, this was a great relief and initially we thankedour good fortune.”

“I tried to get to know the inhabitants better but never had muchsuccess. People were willing to talk but they had a habit ofwandering away in the middle of a sentence and you were unlikelyto find them again. No one seemed to live in the same place forlong; although there was no shortage of corridor-like rooms inwhich to sleep. Since there were no street names or house

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numbers, there were no addresses. If I asked someone their name,they replied with their age, for the passing of time is the onlyconstant thing in the convolutions of the labyrinth. Here, the dayspassed, not like a rope of beads being fed out behind us but likeraindrops that fall into water and are lost forever.”

“More than this, they did not seem to understand my questions andreplied with an amused shrug or another question, whichamounted to the same thing. If I may consult my notebook, Itranscribed a conversation I had with a native after we had beenthere for about a month. He was around my age and I followed himfor a whole day, working beside him at some half dozen differenttasks. He never actually started or finished anything but he workedwith the same concentration and care at each job. I felt sure that if Ihelped him he would eventually acknowledge me but he never did.In the end, it was me who broke the silence…”

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“Here, of course.”

“Where is here? What is the name of this place?”

“It is a land. Does it need a name?”

“So, were you born here? In this street, perhaps?”

“Maybe, or somewhere else. I can’t remember my own birth, canyou?” He seemed genuinely surprised.

“Well, who is your mother, for instance?”

He laughed. “A woman, without a doubt.”

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“You must know who she is!”

“How can one know a person?”

“But who looked after you when you were a child? Taught you tospeak and count and catch fish, grow food, weave cloth, laybricks? I have seen you do all these things.”

“There are many people living here. You must have noticed themaround.”

“But what about love? You must love somebody.”

“Certainly, I love many people.”

“But you are alone!”

“Well, of course. You cannot be in my mind anymore than I can bein yours.”

“But don’t you want someone to care for you?”

“As I said, there are many people...”

“But if you truly love someone, you want to see them again, to livewith them, protect and cherish them.”

“Protect them from what? There’s no danger. Besides, as I said,there are many to love and be loved...”

“And it is true. There were many people living in the walls of thelabyrinth and although they seemed to form no lasting, personalattachments, there was a sense of warmth and respect in all human

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exchanges. People chatted together, laughed together, ate, workedand fished together, spent the night together and then moved on.To an outsider, their lives seemed unbearably lonely, aimless andgodless, yet there was no trace of discontent among them. Whenasked why they didn’t want to achieve anything in their lives, togive it some meaning, they invariably raised their eyebrows andasked what there was to do in life but live and what meaning couldit have when everybody dies in the end? They were solitary beingsbut they spoke with one voice.”

“For many months we continued to live on our ship, rowing ashorefor food and work. This was partly because the islanders neverspoke to us and the men became agitated if they spent too muchtime in their company. But the main reason was the labyrinth itself,which we feared to venture into too deeply. We are men of the sea;we like open spaces and empty horizons. We understand mapsand charts and the points of a compass. We like to know preciselywhere we are and see where we’re going but none of this waspossible in our new home.”

“It is futile to try and convey the extent of the labyrinth with anycertainty, for it is like nowhere else in the world. There were nohouses on the island or none as we know them. No churches,schools, town halls or public squares; none of those structures thatseem to exist in one form or another, everywhere else in the world.There was nothing but walls, endless walls. As far as I walked andfor as long as I lived in that place, I never saw anything else. Thewalls created passageways with the breadth of roughly the span ofa man’s outstretched arms. Some of them were solid rock and somehad windows and doors, which were never locked. And here is thestrangest thing of all; none of the rooms contained personalbelongings of any kind, although many were decorated in highlyindividual styles. It took us a long time to realise, partly because

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we could not believe it, that nobody lived in any one place formore than a few nights at a time. At the end of the day, they simplywandered from street to street, until they found an empty bed. Theywere undisturbed if others strolled through the room as they slept.”

“Once, we sailed round the island to see if there was ever a breakin the walls but found nothing, except the harbour where we hadfirst arrived. The journey took nearly six days, for the seas in thatpart of the world are treacherous. We did not like to chance thevoyage again and resigned ourselves to getting to know the areaaround the quayside as best we could. It was a formidable task; thealleyways were so tangled and knotted that it was easy to becomedisorientated and lose yourself. As none of the streets had names,it was impossible to ask directions and since the people neverknew where they were, no one could help you anyway. The firsttime I ventured ashore alone, I became so helplessly lost that I didnot return to the ship for several days. I had a particularlyfrustrating conversation with a young man whom I had stopped forhelp. I asked him the way to the sea but he just frowned and lookedpuzzled.”

“But you have just been fishing!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, I went fishing today,” he agreed.

“Well, where have you come from?”

“Down that street,” he said, pointing to the road we were standing in.

“And before that?”

“Another street, I suppose.”

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“Left or right from this one?”

“Before it,” he insisted.

“I realised that I had never heard anyone speak in terms of left andright or even north and south. They seemed to have no concept ofwhere they were in the physical world, only their position in time.Ages and times of day were more important to them thangeography. In a sense, the whole labyrinth is dedicated to time,deliberately constructed to confuse space and make it irrelevant.”

“And where are you going now?” I persisted, but he only smiledpleasantly and carried on walking. I fell in beside him anddemanded that he tell me where he was.

“Here, of course,” he replied with a friendly laugh.

“But why, what for? What are you doing?” I searched his face. Hedidn’t look stupid but he seemed honestly perplexed by myquestions. If anything, he was sorry for me and quite upset that hecouldn’t help. “You’re lost!” I challenged him.

“But how can I be if I don’t mind where I’m going?” he replied andI gave up. When eventually, I rediscovered the ship, I forbade anyman to lose sight of the sea without the aid of a compass. As weonly had two, this restricted our movements considerably.”

“Time went on and the crew began to brood. They were rottingaway on the ship. Since in all probability we would spend the restof our lives here, we needed a long term plan. We would have towrench the islanders out of their strange habits, so that we couldlive with them, for we could not change our ways to fit theirswithout losing our very souls. I decided that the only way to begin

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to conquer the labyrinth was to map it. At the very least, it wouldgive us an overview of the place, just as when you place a grid overa country, you contain it somehow. It was a massive task. Webegan by putting up signs to identify the streets but people simplytook them down or painted over them or worse, moved themsomewhere else. Next, we tried describing each street accordingto the number of windows in it and how they were decorated butthe natives were enthusiastic builders and never tired of makingalterations, curving a corner here, adding a cul-de-sac there andwe had to abandon this approach as well.”

“Eventually, we were forced to label each crossroad according toour compass readings, which made the maps difficult to follow butwe had no choice. We paced out distances using our own stridesas measurements and in this way, after perhaps six months, wesucceeded in charting the labyrinth from our part of the coast to thecentre of the island, where the walls gave way to vast, barren plainsof shingle, pitted with the haphazard indentations of shallowquarries. The cabin boy thought that the islanders built thelabyrinth because they feared the lonely emptiness of the interior.Perhaps this was true years ago but I am not convinced.”

“In truth, the people made us nervous. Some of the crew felt theywere communicating with each other by their thoughts alone, forhow else could everything run with such ease in the labyrinth? Webegan to worry that they knew we were fugitives and hadconspired to drive us mad by refusing to acknowledge ourpresence. The entire island, not only the people but the wallsthemselves, seemed to be plotting to crush us. It was unbearable.The men were languishing for want of proper human relationships.Many of them had succeeded in spending the night with a womanand it must be said, they seemed to be free to do as they wishedand generous with their favours. At first, the men exalted in this

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state of affairs; a new woman whenever one happened to agree togo with them and no jealous lovers, protective fathers or money totarnish the encounter. Soon, however, when no liaison lasted morethan a night and no woman seemed capable of fidelity or evenmeeting somewhere at a set time and place, the men grewfrustrated, even bitter.”

“I believed that the map was our only chance but we needed theislanders to use it as well. We reasoned that if we could give theman awareness of where they were, they would begin to recognisethemselves as unique individuals. Soon, they would want a hometo call their own and a name to answer to. It would not be longbefore they would begin to see each other as separate entities andform personal relationships. We thought a map would help themto become more like us. It was not without a feeling ofapprehension that we set forth with our map. After all, knowledgeis power and we felt that we now knew that stretch of the labyrinthbetter than they did themselves. If the conspiracy theory wascorrect, our map would be enough to provoke them to rise againstus. It didn’t happen.”

“The people were more than capable of reading it. Indeed, theynever seemed to be anything other than an intelligent, serene race.First, we showed it to random individuals. They grasped what it wasand how to use it almost at once but had no interest in owning onefor themselves. I remember offering my map as a present to a youngwoman whose affection I was hoping to win. I told her proudly thatthis was a complete and accurate picture of her part of the world.She kissed me and said that may be so today but tomorrow it wouldchange. I was greatly frustrated and a little annoyed.”

“It’s better than nothing,” I retorted.

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“Nothing’s better than nothing!” she chuckled.

“In desperation, we began to pin up our maps all over thelabyrinth. We noticed some passers by stopping to look at themwith curiosity and were much heartened by this. But then rivalmaps began to appear. We could hardly believe it but it was true.Someone was making false maps as intricate as our own anddecorating the walls with them. We tried removing them but theyreappeared. People appreciated the false maps more than ours.Indeed, they seemed disappointed when they found one that wasaccurate. They preferred following invented directions as anamusing pastime, using them to lose themselves in the labyrinthand then casting them aside for someone else. It became quite acraze. We were compelled to abandon our project.”

“I decided to try one further tactic. The people had no perception ofa beginning, a middle and an end. I had observed it many times intheir relations with each other. They never told stories or acted outplays, they had no religion or holy books. Even their anecdoteswere told without the colourful brush of exaggeration. They did notspeak much and when they did, they spoke only the truth, withoutfear of being judged or with a desire to impress. For me, this was ahuge loss. Like all sailors, I am a great lover of tales and believe thatthe truth should serve the story, not the other way round. It occurredto me that perhaps, if I could tell them about men with a purpose inlife, if they could understand that sometimes things turn out for thebetter and sometimes for the worse, depending on individualhuman actions. I might introduce the notion of cause and effect, offree will and destiny into their lives. If just once, I thought, theywondered what happened next, they would be changed forever.”

“There were several books on the ship and we set about copyingthem into smaller volumes, which we bound and distributed

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around the labyrinth. In exchange for food, we started leavingbooks. I was adamant that the stories should have happy endingsand we decided to use mostly fairytales. After all, they were goodenough for us at the start of our lives. To our delight, the books wereseized upon. We felt as if we were giving bread to the starving andwe increased our output, certain of success.”

“It took a while before I realised, that although the people werereading the books, they were not doing so from beginning to end.They would pick a page, scan it for a while, flick to another, readsome more, apparently with great interest, then discard it. Thepages became separated from their bindings. You would go tosleep in a room and find a couple of leaves of well thumbed papercarefully pinned to the pillow but on one would be the adventuresof a cut throat pirate and on the other, a gentle tale of rewardedloyalty. The rest would be gone. The islanders enjoyed the storiesfor the sheer pleasure of reading but character, plot and themessage of the tale were of no interest to them.”

“I once saw a boy of maybe twelve, mesmerised by a book as he satleaning against a lobster pot on the beach. I always like to see theyoung reading, so I asked him how he found the story. He couldhardly tear himself away from it.”

“It’s very good,” he murmured and went straight back to the page. Iwatched him read the same paragraph several times, curling histongue round the words. Then suddenly, he jumped up, flung thebook on the sea wall and trotted off.

“You’ve dropped your book,” I said, offering him the tatty volume.

“it's not mine,” he replied. 

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“Even so, you are the reader and have more right to it than anyoneelse, Take it, you must want to know what happens.”

“I’ll read it again later,” he said, not taking the book.

“But you may not find it later!”

“Yes, I will.” He seemed confused by the suggestion. “Look, there’sa piece right there.” He pointed to a loose page anchored by astone on a windowsill.

“But that’s a different story altogether!”

“It’s sure to be good, they all are.”

“But you must want to know what happens in this one?” I shook thepages at his face in a rage. He took a step back, baffled. “Don’t youwant to know how it all ends?” I asked, more gently.

As if to console me, he said, “The way I read, it never ends.”

“I was crushed when our books failed as well. If we could notmake an impression on the minds of the young, what chance didwe have with the adults? I have never felt so insignificant, soperipheral, so utterly replaceable as I did that day. I have alwaysbeen an optimist and a man of action but that morning I wanted tolie down in the sand and let the sea wash me away. I thought ofmyself as someone who liked to roam and avoided putting downroots, but the prospect of knowing no one but the men on the shipfor the rest of my life was horrible.”

“By now, some of the crew had disappeared. Either they were lostin the maze, or more probably, they were lost to themselves. The

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remaining men were starting to walk about with the same sereneexpressions as the natives. Often, they couldn’t tell me what theyhad been doing just an hour before. I began to forget myself. Wewere gradually being engulfed by the endless walls. There areworse fates, it is true. We never wanted for food or shelterthroughout our stay, which as you know, lasted nearly five years,although by my own reckoning, it was nearer three. We were safefrom harm but we were not alive. For all its apparent freedom, thelabyrinth was a prison. We had to escape.”

“I began to understand that places do not exist without the peoplewho live in them. These people were content in their own way but itwas not our way and I was forced to accept that we could neverchange them. Our numbers were beginning to dwindle and Iworried that soon we would not have enough hands to sail the ship.When some of the remaining crew needed reminding of their ownnames, I knew it was time to leave. So we have come home, even ifthat means facing the gallows or becoming a slave in a chain gang.Even a bitter life or a bad end, is better than a living death.”

The rest of the defendants confirmed that the navigator had spokenthe truth. They appeared weary, as if they no longer cared what fatehad in store for them. An expedition was sent to the land where themutineers had released the captain and his cohorts. They werefound to have been living a life of despotic luxury, which they didnot want to leave. Pretending to be gods with their gunpowder andguns, they had terrified and enslaved the native population, whohad been forced to cater to their every whim. They were draggedhome in chains to stand trial for heresy.

The mutineers were cleared of murder but despite a public outcryin their favour, for the eloquence of their leader had touched manyhearts, they were transported to a distant colony, to serve

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sentences of hard labour and exile. Mutiny was a capital offenceand this was all the leniency they could expect.

It is not difficult to write the rest of their story. When their sentenceswere over, many of them stayed in exile together, as if theirexperience in the labyrinth had formed bonds between them thatthey could not break. They lived on an island about three hours sailfrom the mainland, where many other ex-convicts chose to jointhem. The navigator continued to serve as their unofficial leaderand although he had no formal training, he designed a settlementthat his men and others like them, built and inhabited for the rest oftheir natural lives. His city is neat and regular, unlike thehaphazard sprawls of the towns in his native country, which grownaturally, over many generations, this one was completed in lessthan twenty years and is generally regarded as the first example oftown planning. The streets fan out from the seashore like a spider’sweb or the segments in a slice of lemon. There are neat, openparks, broad boulevards and large, paved squares. This was the firstcity to keep its industrial, residential and civic buildings in entirelyseparate zones. Even though it has grown into a thrivingmetropolis, it is quite impossible to get lost in it. It has become amodel town that has been referred to by urban planners ever sinceand versions of it, in one form or another, have been built all overthe world.

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