8.7: A standoff in the dark
pTravis has the feeling that he should play for time. Though why? Is he somehow waiting for Fabian? In one of the fantasy books of his youth, a species of horse – the ranyhyn – could pre-empt when they might be summoned and traverse many leagues to arrive just when needed. Fabian is the opposite. Lacking psychic foresight, he could only set off on seeing the need or hearing about it and, being a snail, albeit a racing snail, he would take some time to cover even a fraction of a league, however far that is. “Even if that were written by the Poet, what of it? Why should we listen to him?” “A foolish question, lizard! We all know his supernatural wisdom. Recall you not his miracles and inventions? That time he transformed three stale pints of keg Skol lager into three foaming pints of cask Tetley’s Bitter? Or his contrivance, in a mystic bakery-disguised pub in Cambridge, of the first pint of Caffrey’s cream flow from a simple keg of tedious Irish bitter and the nitrogen intended fo...
