‘Well, I like them,’ she said, bent down to the nearest one and caressed its ears. It allowed itself to be stroked and waggled its head with pleasure. Their crowd thickened, but I couldn’t tell where they were coming from-just trotting in from nowhere and taking their places at the edge of the pack.

Their inevitable steady increase repulsed me. I said, ‘God, girl, you have a lot of wants.’

‘Compared to you? I bet you’d be buried in a pile by now!’

Sparks began to crackle in the tunnels at the far end. I caught a glimpse of the Gabbleratchet thundering in their depths. It more than filled every passage and morphing beasts charged half-in, half-out of the bedrock. Their backs and the tips of their ears projected from the floors: for them, the rock didn’t exist. Skeleton horses, rotting horses, horses glowing with rude health reached the tunnel mouths. Paws and pasterns projected from the wall-they burst out! The front of the screeching column came down the cavern in a red and black wave.

‘The ‘Ratchet!’

I couldn’t look away. Their screaming was so deafening Cyan and I clamped our hands to our ears. They tore everybody in their path to shreds-obliterated the Neon Bugs on the walls as they passed, and the lights went out.

The Vermiform wrenched us backwards-

– Bright sunlight burst upon us. I squeezed my eyes shut, blinked, and tasted clean, fresh air. A warm breeze buffed my skin…We were on a beach. Cyan yelled, disorientated.

‘Precambria!’ said the Vermiform. We tumbled out of its grasp onto the yielding sand.

‘Good Shift,’ I said.

‘The Gabbleratchet is chasing us!’ It quivered. ‘We doubt we have thrown it off. We will take you on again.’ It pooled down around us, its worms moving fitfully, trying to summon up the energy.

A barren spit curved away into the distance. The aquamarine sea washed on the outside edge, moulding the compact sand into corrugations. Low, green stromatolite mounds made a marsh all along its inside. Behind us, on an expanse of featureless dunes, nothing grew at all. I looked down the spit, out to sea.

A splashing started within its curve. The water began to froth as if it was boiling. Creatures like lobsters were jumping out and falling back, lobes along their sides flapping. They had huge black eyes like doorknobs. One flipped up, and in an instant I saw ranked gills and an iris-diaphragm mouth whisk open and gnash shut.

Hundreds of crab-things scuttled out of the waters’ edge; their pointed feet stepping from under blue-grey shells with arthropod finesse. There were long, spiny worms too, undulating on seven pairs of tentacle-legs.

‘Something’s chasing them,’ said the Vermiform. ‘Oh no. No! It’s here already!’

The patch of frothing water surged closer. Cyan and I stared but the Vermiform started knitting itself around us frantically. Different parts of it were gabbling different things at once: ‘Eat the damn trilobites-hallucigenia-eat the anomalocaris-but LEAVE US ALONE!’

Straight out of the froth the Gabbleratchet rode, without disturbing the water’s surface by so much as a ripple. Dry hooves flying, the stream of hunters arced up against the sun. Red eyes and empty sockets turned to us-

– Endless salt flats. The vast ruins of a city stood on the horizon, its precarious tower blocks and sand-choked streets little more than rearing rock formations in the crusted desert that was once the ocean bed.

‘I’ve been here before,’ I said. ‘It’s Vista.’

‘What’s that in the distance?’ Cyan said, pointing at a bright flash.

‘Probably a Bacchante tribe.’

‘They’re coming closer.’

‘They doubtless want to know what the fuck we are.’

After Vista Marchan fell to the Insects, its society transformed again and again and eventually collapsed completely. At first the people inhabited the city’s ruins, but little by little they left in search of food, surviving as nomads in the desert. Bacchante tribes are either all male or all female and they meet together only once a year in a great festivity. The desert can’t sustain them and their numbers are dwindling, but they roam in and out of Epsilon over the great Insect bridge to survive.

I remembered the only Bacchante I had met. ‘Is Mimosa still fighting the Insects?’

‘Yes, with Dunlin,’ The Vermiform concurred.

‘King Dunlin,’ I said.

The Vermiform produced its woman’s head, and shook it.

‘No. Just Dunlin. He has renounced being king. He now presents himself as simply a travelling wise man. He advises many worlds in their struggle against the Insects.’

‘Oh.’

‘It seems to be a phase he’s going through. He is growing very sagacious, but he hasn’t yet realised the true extent of his power.’

‘Their horses are shiny,’ said Cyan.

The Bacchantes galloped closer. The four polished legs of each mount flickered, moving much faster than destriers with a chillingly smooth movement and no noise but a distant hum.

‘They’re horse-shaped machines,’ I said. ‘They don’t have real heads, and no tails at all. They’re made of metal.’

‘They’re made of solar panels,’ the Vermiform said.

High over the ruined city, the Gabbleratchet burst through.

The Bacchantes halted in confusion. The black hunters were so much worse against the bright sky. They cast no shadow. Dull, cream-yellow jaws gaped, sewn with white molars. The Bacchantes stared, hypnotised.

The Vermiform screamed at the riders, ‘Run!’

The Gabbleratchet plunged down and-

– Splash! Splash!

Freezing muddy water swirled up around me. I sank in a chaos of bubbles. Something tugged me and I broke the surface, spluttering. Up came Cyan, and the Vermiform held us above the algae of a stinking, misty swamp.

The sky was monochrome grey, filled with cloud and a hazy halo where the sun was trying to break through.

‘Infusoria Swamp.’

Cyan wiped slime off her face and hair. ‘Hey! This is my dream and I want to go somewhere nice!’

‘Shut up!’ The Vermiform seethed in fury. ‘All for you, little girl! We don’t see why we have to do this and now we’re being chased! We don’t know how to get rid of it. We don’t know where to go next that won’t kill you!’

She shrieked in frustration, grabbed handfuls of worms and tried to squash them but they forced her fists open and crawled out.

‘Shifting is sapping our strength,’ said the worms.

‘Come on!’ I shouted at it. ‘Let’s go.’

‘It’s my dream so get off me!’

‘Stop squeezing us.’

‘Piss off and keep pissing off, piss-worms!’

A colossal blob of gel flowed towards us on the water’s surface. Flecks and granules churned inside it as if it was a denser portion of the swamp; it extended pseudopodia and started to wrap around the outlying worms.

‘What’s that?’ said Cyan.

‘Amoeba.’ The Vermiform pulled its worms out and hoisted us up higher with a sucking noise.

‘Isn’t it rather large?’

‘We’re very small here.’

‘Look at the sky!’ said Cyan.

The bright patch was growing in size. Violet forks of lightning cracked the sky in two, leapt to the swamp, hissed and jumped between the reeds. The Gabbleratchet arced out.

The Vermiform gave one completely inhuman scream with all its strength and jerked us out-

– A hot plain with cycads and a volcano on the horizon. Giant lizards were stalking, two-legged, across it towards a huge empty sea urchin shell with a sign saying ‘The Echinodome-Sauria’s Best Bars’.

A flash of green on the scorched sands before us. The Gabbleratchet burst towards-

– Cyan screamed and we both fell onto a cold floor, knocking the breath out of us. We were in an enclosed space; we Shifted so fast my eyes didn’t have time to focus.