There had been no red mist, no descent into sleep.

        And no Change, so far as Barkworth could tell. All he could feel was the hard floor below and that exquisite soft voluptuousness of Estelle above. The scent of her...

        He heard her catch her breath. Giving him a quick peck on the cheek, she rolled off him and carefully got up, tidying her clothing as she did so.

         “I wonder where Carol's got to,” she asked. “Seems we don't have any way of finding each other at all if we part from each other. - Gosh, there hasn't been a Change, has there?”

        “No, I'm pretty sure we'd both know if there had been,” Barkworth replied. “We've certainly known in the past. So Carol's still out there somewhere. Guess we'd better start looking...” he said as he got up himself. “ - Heavens, I hope there won't be a Change if we're ever apart again. We'd probably have no chance of finding each other.”

         She shot him a look of absolute panic. “Then let's never part again for any reason.”

         He didn't know what to say. So he just stepped forward and gave her a quick kiss .

        “Okay. So, let's go find Carol.” he then said. “She knows roughly where we are, so if we can make ourselves more visible...  - I know, let's head back to the top of the dome. Or better yet, just hang in the air a few meters above it. That way we won't look like statues she might think are supposed to be there.”

         “That's a wonderful idea,” she said, obviously relieved. She then began to lift off towards the ceiling, with Barkworth following quickly behind.

         But it didn't turn out to be such a wonderful idea at all. The weather had closed in again and brought a light drizzle with it. The visibility was barely a hundred meters or so.

         “ - Oh gosh - there she is,” Estelle pointed. She then flew off - down towards one of the buildings immediately adjacent to the `Control' building, as Barkworth now thought of it.

        He managed to join her before she was about to flit through the wall just underneath its many-spired roof..

         “ - Carol..!' she shouted. “It's me..!”

         She flew straight as an arrow to her side before Carol could pass through an internal partition.

         “Estelle... Oh thank God you're here..!” she whimpered, then burst into tears. “I've looked everywhere I could think of.”

         Estelle looked anxiously back towards Barkworth, then hugged the girl to her.

         “I'm sorry,” Carol said. “I know I shouldn't have put you in a position of divided loyalties. I should have come with you when you insisted. But that was a wonderful family. I mean, you saw them...”

         “Yes, they were,” she said to Barkworth. “They reminded me of the first family I met on the old raft, the one I huddled under the tent with - needlessly, I know now,” she smiled. “they were so cheerful, weren't they, Carol. I loved being with them too. But...”

         “I know. She adores you, Barkworth. I don't think you have any idea. Please, please, don't hurt her. I - I don't know what I'll do if you do.”

         He didn't know what to say. He had no idea how he could possibly reassure this girl, who was so obviously attached to Estelle.

         It was also clear Carol needed to be here with her in this Lalleldil. She was obviously emotionally unstable in a way which he had seen often with highly intelligent people in that Paradise of Exasperated Existentialism.

         Unfortunately he had never figured out a way of being able to help them, apart from suggesting that they become Conversationalists, or set about acquiring special skills in the hope that they might find a place on the Iskurahi's Preferred List.

         “Look, you're probably never going to like me, Carol. You no doubt see me as someone who has somehow stolen the affections of your closest friend. But Estelle and I found each other long before I was even aware of your existence. So I don't see how I – we – can apologize for what's happened.”

         “ - Barkworth..!” Estelle shouted at him as Carol bawled into her shoulder again.

         “Really,” he said. “Look, I have to say it. This Paradise of Infantile Infatuations we're all ultimately living in is full of highly intelligent girls like Carol who age before their time because they can't find partners. They really need all the help they can get, but there's no-one around to provide it. So they finish up in the Lalleldil system somewhere. They get about eighteen months before they're euthanased, which is all anybody gets, including us. That's the reality of it. And that's what we're all up against.”

         Estelle looked at him totally shocked.

         “So what can we possibly do..?” she asked him, hugging Carol even closer.

         “The only solution anybody ever finds, unfortunately, is just to get on with whatever life you've got until you find something you want to do. Some people find it quickly, most find it eventually, the rest never do. So they die, something they actually welcome by then. But I for one am not quite ready for that, else I wouldn't be here. So we'll just have to get on with it, like everybody else. We've obviously been put in here to solve a puzzle, as a way of solving the puzzle of ourselves.”

         “What a horrible universe...” Estelle breathed, looking at him.

         “I know, I'm sorry. You might think I'm being harsh, but most of us Conversationalists have long reached the same conclusion, and that it's best to work from there as best we can. Not everybody's so cheerless Out There,” he pointed to the sky. “There are plenty of religions, sports, hobbies and other such glee clubs you can join, but bright people don't last long in them.  Now, Carol, you seem to think this place might be the long lost Atlantis. I'm surprised you're not dead keen to start exploring it yourself. You said it was big back in 1968. Didn't you think so back then?”

        "But you told me that it never existed!” she wailed. “And that all this is in our heads! So it's bullshit..!”

         She screamed the word so loud Barkworth actually wondered why nobody around them heard her.

         Not that there were many people around at all, Barkworth now saw when he looked. They were standing in what was clearly a chemistry lab of some sort, with various tubes and retorts, balances, Bunsen-like burners, and the inevitable Otindas. And it was all staffed by people of all kinds and ages wearing stained white coats which seemed all but universal in the very few chemistry labs left anywhere in Paradise.

         “I'm afraid the whole of Paradise is bullshit, Carol,” Barkworth said to her. “So get used to it. Adapt.”

         “Or die..!” she flung back at him.

         “That's right.” he replied simply.

         He then thought he'd better at least try and get her off this train of thought. For Estelle's sake as much as Carol's.

         “Look, we can't be sure the Rolodon didn't somehow miss seeing this raft. It missed almost the entire life of Jesus, and what huge ructions that caused. But then he was just one of thousands of prophets in his times, so it had no reason to pick up on him. It caught a glimpse of a man carrying a cross to Calvary, but only in passing on its way to somewhere else. People liked to believe it was him, but it could have been anybody; it happened a lot back then. The story of Jesus as we came to know it only really began after he was long gone. You might say he was the only one of those prophets to finally get lucky.”

        “But how could the Rolodon miss something like even the old Aotere?” Estelle said. “If it was unique as you say, then it couldn't possibly have missed it.”

        Carol smiled so broadly it looked almost like a cheer.

         “Alright, Barkworth,” Estelle tried to be conciliatory. “We obviously have to do something while we're here. Might as well continue our explorations. What else is there to do anyway? - Is that all right with you, Carol?”

         “'S'pose so. So lead the way, our lord and master. Though I still think you're an arsehole.”

         “Carol..!” Estelle tried to look sternly at her, but had to break out in a fit of giggles that rivaled even Quincey's.

         Barkworth poked his tongue out at the girl.

         They quickly gave up trying to fly prone as they normally did when moving horizontally. `Imagine that we're standing on some sort of magic carpet, which in a way is exactly what we're doing,' Barkworth had suggested.

         They had also decided to skip examining the rest of the central Control Building. Carol had looked through it while she was trying to find Barkworth and Estelle and, apart from the two top floors, described it as being like `the worst Civil Service office blocks in Wellington'.

         “The only difference is there's no pen and paper,” she had said. “Only those Otinda-things. Haven't they invented that stuff yet?”

         “Apparently not,” Barkworth had laughed. “Guess if you don't need it, why invent it?”  

        They systematically looked through all the other buildings that immediately surrounded Central Control, and found they too were all filled with pure science labs of all disciplines,  maths, physics, medicine, materials science, organic chemistry, often with entire buildings devoted to each. Unfortunately it was hard to see what projects they were working on since, although all three had some knowledge and interest in science, they had no experience of actually working in it. As Carol put it: “It's like performing in a symphony orchestra compared to just listening to a recording. I've always been quite happy with just the recording.”

         The second and third row of buildings outside the central complex were clearly devoted more to applied science and technology. Their projects were much easier to understand because they revolved around products that the good citizens of the Aotere would use in their homes and daily lives. Electric motors occupied a large space in one building, Lotsus to create the energy to drive them completely took up another. Otindas occupied attentions in the next one they saw, computers in another.

         “Seems they haven't invented keyboards either,” Carol observed. “They're all touch and voiced controlled, just like Otindas. Obviously they don't write novels here.”

         “Can they read or write at all in the way we understand?” Estelle wondered. “Sure, they have math symbols and the like, but that might be all.”

         “Maybe that's all they need” Carol said. “In fact they don't seem to have any sort of culture at all. No art, literature, anything like that.”

         “Only these superb buildings,” Barkworth said. “Which is a puzzle. If their lives are solely based around science, as it certainly seems, why bother? Why not just boxes? Or a single building that covers the entire raft? They'd be much better off storing their fresh water under cover than going to the trouble of building fancy canals.”

        “That seagulls can crap into,” Carol laughed.

         “And something else I've just thought of,” Estelle observed . “No airplanes. We haven't seen a single one. Have you ever come across a civilization this advanced that can't fly, Barkworth?”

         “Only the one, but that was solely for religious reasons. Their God resided in Heaven, just like ours did back on Earth. They thought they might be struck down if they even thought about trying to enter his Domain. I met a guy from that World. He preferred the real Paradise to the one he grew up believing in. ”

          “It's a wonder something like that didn't happen on Earth,” Carol laughed. “God held up a lot of our science.”

         If he was pleased to hear her laugh, Estelle was visibly overjoyed.

         “Actually, you know, if they did have planes here, where would they fly them to? A raft like this would have to stay well clear of any coast. They'd also have to be either seaplanes or helicopters, with all the support facilities that go with them. They probably couldn't see any point.”

         “But they must have thought about it though,” Carol replied. “I saw in the Teklanmeh somewhere that the dream of flight is universal in the Human Mansion. It's a wonder some race of humans somewhere in Paradise didn't evolve wings.”

         Almost as if to prove her point, the very next `works lab' as Carol described it showed they were working on what appeared to be a flying platform. At first he thought it was just a truck like the one they had seen earlier, but its framework was disk-shaped and had no wheels that Barkworth could see.

         “Holy heaven...” he said, looking at Carol, then at Estelle. “If they get something like this off the ground, then Space isn't far away. Then Contact. That could be quite bizarre if we are so far back in time that Egypt is just starting to build its pyramids. - Hope we get to see that happen.”

          The rest of the central raft complex was, as Barkworth pretty much expected, like a standard university; classes of instruction, tutorials and the like. There was however absolutely nothing of the `humanities', the nearest to those they could find were classes in ethics and morality. “Or how to be a real character and a helplessly compliant person at the same time,” as Carol had put it.

         Barkworth wondered if he was witnessing another Quincey in the making. But somehow he doubted it. Carol simply didn't have the bloody-minded resilience Quincey had had and which always somehow prevented her from toppling over into the pits of despair.

         Except that one last time, on Insipena with it's Poet Birds.

         “...Is that all us humans can ever hope to do? Build Palaces of Shit?" Quincey's last words to him rang in his mind.

         “I really would like to peek inside one of those canal-side buildings you described to me earlier,” Estelle said. “That might give us a better perspective on what's going on here.”

         “It's all just too squeaky clean to be true,” Carol smiled. “Life surely can't be that boring on Atlantis, can it?”

         “I have to admit I've had that thought in the back of my mind myself,” Barkworth agreed. “Mind you, science labs on most pre-Contact worlds were just as much hotbeds of passion, intrigue, and bloody-minded politicking as in any other of their organizations. We didn't see any of that because we don't stay around long enough.”

         The floor of first building they entered featured what Barkworth at first thought was play-acting. A groups of young people stood around in a circle watching half a dozen others shouting and screaming at each other, pointing fingers and hurling what sounded like accusations. Yet it seemed orderly, nobody interrupted anybody else, interjections from the audience were quickly objected to by the two adults supervising the group.

         “Could this be some sort of Court of Law?” Carol asked. “Or something like it. Could be just play-acting though.”

         “From what Barkworth said earlier, it's probably both,” Estelle said. “But I can't see quite what its supposed to achieve.”

         The next building however provided a clue. The floor they visited here appeared to be set up like a prison. Jail cells extended around its walls, with a common area in the center that was partitioned into squares by low walls. Students dressed in uniforms were inflicting cruelties on prisoners in all manner of ways, beatings, floggings, using batons to administer electric shocks.

         But in a particularly bizarre twist, he saw in one cubicle prisoners and guards swap clothes, then roles as the new prisoners beat their old guards. Yet it still did not look like play-acting, as Barkworth had seen before some of the injuries they received drew blood.

         “Oh gosh, that's just so awful.” Estelle said in a low voice.

         But to Barkworth it was a revelation. “There was a famous experiment done in old Earth something along these lines,” he said, “back in your old century Carol, though I don't remember when, or much of the details. That too was a university experiment, with students acting out these roles. It was supposed to last for a week, but they had to stop it in half that time because the students took their roles too seriously and some were getting injured. I don't know what the outcomes for them were, whether minds were damaged, but it certainly provided one hell of an education for everybody, and way beyond the bounds of that university. It looks like all these `classes' here, if you can call them that, are based on a similar philosophy.”

         “I still don't see it,” Estelle said. “I'm sure there must be better ways to educate young people about the vicissitudes of the Human Condition. This is totally dehumanizing.”

         “That's exactly it!” Barkworth shouted. “That's precisely what they are doing. Expunging their humanity so they can better practice their religion – science.”

         “That's ghastly – if it's true,” Estelle said. “I certainly hope it isn't.”

         “It's certainly scary. Brrrrhh... “ Carol visibly shivered as she looked around her. “Makes me wonder if there's something even more horrible we've missed about this place.”

        “Like how they deal with their Mad, Bad, and Sad,”  Estelle said. “I'm not sure I really want to see that."

         “Where to next?” Barkworth said as they started to make their way across the bridge back towards the `residential zone' as Carol had called it. “Perhaps we'd better explore those galleries a bit more. We can come back here later if you like, but I think they're more important. Wouldn't want to miss anything in the next Change like we did on the old Aotere.”

         “I wonder if we haven't already seen the best bits.” Estelle observed. “Not that I'm really sure we've really learned all that much,” she turned to Carol. “What would you rather do? Houses or galleries?”

         “We didn't learn anything because we have no idea how it all happened,” Barkworth protested. “It's too bad we didn't get to see anything of the building of this new Aotere. Or the science they must have developed on the old raft just to get it started. How on Earth did they figure out how to make the plastic they used to build it? And to make it in the vast quantities they would have needed. - We might be watching the orchestra perform, but we didn't see how it came into being nor who wrote the music they're playing.”

         “And you just want to look at the hall they're playing it in?” Carol laughed at him.

         “Carol...” Estelle said to her in a warning tone. “If Barkworth leaves us, I'm leaving with him. You'll be on your own. Do you want that?”

         She lifted off. Barkworth did the same, Carol reluctantly followed.

  
        They had followed along a different road from the first so that they would see  a different part of the gallery building from what they had already. Once they reached the corridor leading from the road, they turned left into the first gallery.

         They quickly found themselves immersed in crowds of people in all manner and variety of bright clothing. Barkworth's first impression was that it looked like a vast pre-Contact shopping mall from the early part of the 21st Century. But as they meandered through it, it  appeared to be organized more like a Polynesian open market with a profusion of goods for sale on long trestle tables, from produce including tropical fruits and vegetables, home appliances, and all the other kinds of nick-nacks and ornaments that might be found in an Aotere home. The men and women serving behind the tables chatted with each other just as much as with their customers. Barkworth couldn't help feeling as delighted as he had when he first encountered such a market in Rarotonga, still held in spite of the cashless society of the rest of Paradise. The `cash' was actually used in gambling, which was one of the few uses for money left anywhere.

         “Gosh...!” Estelle exclaimed. “Last time I saw anything like this was on one of the first worlds Carol and our other friends visited, called Mifassassi - ”

         “Yes,” said Carol delightedly. “Except they used money. These folk don't. They are literally giving that stuff away.”

         And so it appeared, as Barkworth watched more closely.

         “Seems they really have created their own version of Paradise,” he said. “Well, in this part of the Aotere at least.”.

         “Where would you rather be?” Estelle asked him. “This one, or the one out there?”

         “You haven't had a chance to see the Paradise `out there' yourself though, have you Estelle?” Carol asked her.

         “I'm sure Carol and I will look forward to showing you around the real one provided we get to leave this one,” Barkworth laughed. “Meanwhile, while we're here...”

         He led them on through to the next gallery. While Carol hadn't quite got the knack of it, he found himself oddly pleased that Estelle had all but lost her off-putting inclination to rush straight through people in a crowd and was instead weaving round them as best she could.

 
        Barkworth liked what he saw in that next gallery straight away.

        “We've seen the bridge,” he said, “now, apparently, the engine room.”

         In spite of its apparent simplicity, he immediately got a sense of its power. A row of what appeared to be four huge electric engines were lined up along the middle of the gallery. These each drove immense water turbines that looked like scaled-up versions of those he had seen on the launch. Beyond the motor-turbine sets he could see a large finned toroidal structure that had many tubes running through its fins. He immediately realized that he was looking at what was almost certainly a tokamak-style fusion reactor.

        These people, whoever they were, had captured the power of the sun when others were only worshiping it as a god.

         “Jesus...” was all he could say.

         Then he remembered something that Carol had said.

         “Didn't you say that Captain Nemo's Nautilus was powered by harnessing the energy of the sun?” he asked her. “These folk have actually done it, thousands of years before the American version of it.”

         “Bullshit...!” she said. “That's flat out impossible. It had been spoken of back on my version of Old Earth, but only as something for dreamers. I know it's common in Paradise, but few people understand just how hard it is to do. Earth never achieved it at all, did it?”

         “That's right,” he had to say, “though we nearly got Lotsu technology. But then only about half pre-Contact worlds get either. But its hard to see what else that thing”, he pointed at it, “could be. It shape means it's unlikely to be a Lotsu. Solar power couldn't do it - did you see any panels anywhere? It could be something wholly new, but it would have to be new to Paradise, and that's extremely unlikely.”

         “What a silly discussion,”  Estelle said. “This whole raft is fictional, so it doesn't matter what powers it.”

         “Might run on bullshit for all we know,” Carol laughed.

         “Would you like to go outside, see where those jets exit?” Estelle suggested diplomatically. “Then we might get a better idea of how fast the Aotere goes. Though I can't imagine why they might need to hurry...”

         “Yeah, why not?” Barkworth said, glad he didn't have to find a way to ask them to go where he wanted to go anyway. “It's not as if we're in a hurry either.”

         With that he lifted off and flew across to and passed directly through the gallery's outer wall, the two women following.

        There wasn't much to see at first. The four tunnels evidently passed beneath a single slightly raised area of the grassy decking before extending about a meter from the raft's outer edge. Barkworth could see as he flew above them what looked like four solid-looking horizontal columns of water spurting out a good twenty meters or so beyond them before crashing in huge clouds of spray into the huge impossibly wide wake behind the raft. The tunnels each had a pair of steering vanes, but he didn't see how they could be of much use in controlling a vessel of that size.  

         Because of the width of the wake it was actually quite hard to see how fast the Aotere was actually moving since there were no real reference points. Barkworth's best guess was that it was no more than ten or fifteen kilometers an hour.

         “How fast does it look to you Estelle?”

         “It's really hard to say, you know,” she said as she looked around her. “maybe ten or so kilometers an hour, but that's really only a guess.”

          “About the same as mine,” he said. “Anyway, better head back. We can't fly out much further anyway, otherwise we'll fly into what feels like a very soft foam rubber.” he glanced back at Carol. “We are only allowed about a kilometer or so from the edge.”

          But Carol had to try. 

         “..Bugger..!” she shouted as she discovered that for herself.

          Barkworth led them back towards the next corridor entrance round from the one they had left to see what the next gallery contained.

          But none of them could make any sense of what they saw there at all. They had gone through the double doors only to find themselves in another corridor. They were separated from the single item they could see within that gallery by a an open-meshed fence that went all the way up to the ceiling.

          And that item was immense – and looked horribly organic like some kind of giant slug. It pulsed, squirmed, quivered in places, shrunk and expanded again, as if it was digesting something with great difficulty. Around its base and connected to it by narrow tubes were several translucent plastic tanks of various shapes and sizes; fluids of all colors and  consistencies could occasionally be seen pulsing into them. A very large tube ran out from the `slugs' bottom and out through the gallery wall, presumably to the ocean itself.

         “I always wondered if Plato's Atlantis might have an arsehole,” Carol giggled.

         It was only when Barkworth and the others looked up that he realized that `digesting' was exactly what it was doing. High up, slung from a gantry, was a small whale, that looked fresh-caught from the deep South Pacific Ocean.

         “Gosh – could that be the whale that the crew spotted from the bridge?” Estelle said. She explained quickly to Carol what they had seen.

         “We can't really know...” Barkworth said as they all watched it being carried, tilting slowly downward as it went, until it was brought close to what was now obviously the mouth of that giant `stomach'.

         “Holy Heaven...” Barkworth breathed as they watched it being slowly slid into it.

          “Oh my God...” Carol said, turning away. “That's...that's just so horrible...”

          Estelle just gazed on in stony silence.

         “I'm really sorry, girls,” Barkworth had to say. “I really would have preferred you hadn't seen that.”

          He started to move along the passage in the hope that they might soon come to the end of it and find something somewhat less unpleasant.

          But the girls looked less certain.

          “I”m not sure, Barkworth,” Estelle looked at him.

          “I know,” he tried to reassure them. “But it can't get any worse that that, can it? Surely...”

          “Well....” Estelle said, finally coming along and all but dragging a reluctant Carol.

         But it did get worse. Much worse. The first stomach was followed by a second, which Barkworth was not really surprised at considering the length of the galleries they had seen so far. But what was being fed into it was hideous. Corpses, several of them, laid out on what appeared to be a conveyor belt, were being fed into it, one by one. Old people, young people, even children, each with their limbs bound to their bodies with a palely translucent tape. Barkworth was fairly sure they were no longer alive - and he didn't want to speculate about that, but watching them being slid into that pulsing, squirming stomach one by one began to turn his own.

         Carol, mercifully, fainted clean away. Estelle held her, but looked on the point of fainting herself.

         Barkworth supported the two women as best he could, then attempted to drag them straight out through the wall back out onto the outside decking. Fortunately Estelle could see what he was doing and recovered her strength just enough to help with Carol.

         Since there was nowhere to sit except on the grass with their backs to the wall, Estelle lowered Carol down as best she could, then sat down next to her. Barkworth went round to sit on Carol's other side.

 
        The Change, when it came, felt almost merciful as it washed over them.

         Day had suddenly changed into night. Nor were they alone – indeed they were now sitting amongst a crowd of standing people, all obviously trying to get a better view of something. One of them lost his balance and suddenly stepped backwards to stand right in the middle of Carol. She instinctively got up to get out of his way.

         “ - Christ, will you look at this..!” she shouted, pointing in front of her.

         Barkworth and Estelle got up quickly. Being a little shorter, Estelle couldn't quite see over the heads of the people in front of her, so she rose slightly into the air. Barkworth and Carol then did the same.

         The dim quarter moonlight provided just enough illumination to see a row of snow-capped peeks glistening in the distance. The foothills of those mountains however and the lands below them were lit in another way – fires, what appeared to be hundreds of them. It was an exceptionally pretty scene. Barkworth wished he could smell the wisps of smoke that came their way. The people of the raft obviously could, for many were breathing deeply in obvious delight. Most of them were shivering with obvious cold, but were clearly determined to stay as long as they could.

         “That's just - wonderful..!” Estelle said in a low voice.

         “Tierra Del Fuego,” Barkworth said. “Land of fires. I can't be sure if it really is, but it could be we're rounding Cape Horn. Certainly fits Magellan's description though. Lucky the weather's calm.”

         Then, much to Barkworth's surprise, another Change swept over them. He sensed that it was going to be a major one just before his consciousness winked out..