Heave up. Over the top. Down and round it comes.

Heave up. Over the top. Down and round it comes.

The sun beat down on Rumtum’s broad back and a cool summer breeze just as quickly brushed its warmth aside, giving him as always the perfect balance of temperature. He heard children laughing as they ran up the mountain. Someone had made them a kite from twigs and animal skins.

Heave up. Over the top – wave cheerily – down and round it comes.

Turning the wheel completed Rumtum’s life. It gave him purpose. It made him valued by all who lived on the mountain. Everyone was his friend, and he had a job without risk, pressure or stress. He could spend his day thinking about whatever took his fancy, humming or singing to himself as he so wished. The weather was always just right, his job security was one hundred percent, and decades into the future, when his strength failed him, he would be well provided for. He might even then become a full-time storyteller. He simply hadn’t the time now to tell people all the wonderful tales – well, he thought they were wonderful, anyway – that he had thought up while turning the wheel.

The mountain community felt supremely lucky to have Rumtum. Heck, what were the odds of having someone do their compulsory stint at the wheel when they came of age and then actually like it so much that they volunteered to take it on as a full-time career? They had drawn up a generous contract for him on the spot, with provision for regular holidays and flexi-leave (of which he had accumulated a staggering amount in credit after only a few years on the job), but he loved his daily routine and was uninterested in the complications of a multi-structured lifestyle. He was happy. They were happy. Somebody had to turn the wheel, after all: It was the wheel of life.

Heave up. Over the top. Down and round it comes.

Rumtum slept soundly. No rain or lightning disturbed him in his hole in the mountainside. Yet every night, exactly half way between dusk and dawn (though how he could be so certain of the time without owning a clock was one of life’s many little mysteries), he arose to relieve himself on the green grassy slopes outside.

Nobody saw him. The people of his world slept soundly and safe without exception. What was the need for night watchmen when the entire mountain was surrounded by water, as far as the eye could see even on a clear day? And the mountain was everything – a single island on an ocean world, alone and content. No boat had ever ventured far enough out to contradict that world view, and Rumtum believed, as they all did, that none ever would – there was nothing more out there to find, and therefore no reason to look.

Ah, that felt good. Rumtum crouched to wash his hands in the brook. That was when he saw it – a distant light, a fire far, far away.

Rumtum was puzzled. He had never known of anyone besides himself to be up at this hour. Curiosity banishing weariness, he stumbled down the gentle slopes to find out who it was and exchange a friendly word or two.

Ten minutes later, he was still stumbling, and the light didn’t seem to be getting any closer.

Twenty minutes after that, he reached the shoreline at the base of the mountain and felt the undrinkable salt water lapping at his toes. The clouds had parted, unveiling a truly magnificent sky – millions of stars shining on a canvas of absolute black, for there was no moon above the horizon tonight.

But the flickering firelight was still out there somewhere across the wide water, neither brighter nor dimmer than when he had first seen it from outside his home. So somebody was out on a boat in the middle of the night. He could make neither head nor tail of it. He couldn’t understand why anyone would go out to sea on a clear day, let alone after dark.

Rumtum sat down and decided to spend the rest of the night here, waiting either for morning light to dispel all mystery or for the unknown soul to come in to shore and explain him or herself. He began to hum.

Rumtum awoke with a start. It was still night, but something had changed. The distant fire was no longer steady, but flashing on and off in an irregular pattern. And once he had wiped away the sleep and adjusted his eyesight, Rumtum saw that there were now two sources, and… yes, a flicker like lightning passing between them, first in one direction and then the other, accompanied each time by explosive bursts that he convinced himself he could actually hear.

It was Significant. He might even go so far as to call it Portentous. For all he knew, there might even be Ramifications.

Now, Rumtum was no fool. He may have spent his days turning the wheel, but he had come up with plenty of wild stories as he did so, and too many of them had the hero witness a life-changing event and then either turn his back on it to seek help or wait until later to tell somebody about it. Invariably on his return no evidence remained, and nobody believed him when he described what he had seen. The hero would then have to set out alone on his adventure, pass through untold dangers and hardship and eventually emerge triumphant and a greater person than he had been at the story’s beginning.

But Rumtum had no wish to be any more than he was right now – if he had, he would not be turning the wheel day in and day out. Nor had he any wish to be the hero or have an adventure, and despite what others thought of his job he certainly had no taste for hardship.

Rumtum backed away up the mountainside, keeping his squinting eyes forever fixed on the flashing lights beyond the horizon, across that infinite ocean. He knew every square inch of the area by touch alone, and soon found himself stepping backwards through the open door of the habitation hole closest to the shoreline. Without a word, and still gazing out at the mysterious lights, he pulled the reluctant occupant from his warm bed, dragged him outside before he could properly wake up and ask what was going on, faced him in the right direction and pointed.

After about ten minutes a large crowd, mostly of people, had gathered by the waterside, all staring out at the mystery phenomena.

"It’s a storm," said one.

"Rubbish, that’s no storm. Somebody’s out there playing a practical joke with fireworks."

"Don’t be silly – a boat’s on fire."

"All the boats from the nearest port are accounted for – I checked."

"Who saw this first?"

"I don’t know – I heard shouting."

"Somebody pulled me out of bed."

"Does it matter?"

As the debate progressed, Rumtum smiled and stomped back up the hill to his hole and warm sheets. Laying head on straw-filled pillow, he fell instantly into a deep and untroubled sleep. Which was just as well, since he had to get up and go to work come morning.

While Rumtum slept, boats were launched. While Rumtum slept, the flashing ceased. While Rumtum slept, the people rowed out to the point where the lights had been seen. While Rumtum slept, they found the woman, frightened and exhausted and floating in an upturned wardrobe surrounded by the scattered debris of a larger construction that she had destroyed, albeit purely in self-defence.

The mountainside inhabitants had some questions for the survivor of the cupboard catastrophe, but not as many as you or I would have had. They were a level-headed folk who had little truck with superstition, and there was only one rational explanation for her arrival, namely that she hailed from one of the more reclusive settlements on the far side of the island, more than thirty kilometres distant as the crow would have flown, had crows existed.

The woman seemed more upset by what had occurred than were her hosts. They offered her a boat. She declined. The journey around the mountain took weeks on foot, so they concluded that she must therefore have no wish to go back – and who could blame her if the fire of the previous night and the indecipherable patterns of wreckage around the place where they found her were an indication of her former community’s idea of friendly behaviour? So, giving her the benefit of the doubt as they were wont to do, they offered her next a dwelling hole. She declined that also. Perplexed by this, they could think of nothing more to do but shrug their shoulders and go back to their daily routine, leaving the new arrival to her own devices.

She wandered off over the nearby gently sloping fields with an air of frustration. When she saw from a distance a man turning a great wooden wheel that appeared to be driving something deep inside the mountain, her dissatisfaction turned to outright horror, and she fled until the nightmarish apparition was hidden by the rocky terrain.

"What can I do? What can I do?" she sobbed to herself. Then looking up she caught a glimpse of an old stone structure high up on an inaccessible peak – the first actual aboveground building she had come across since being forced to use and lose her wormhole inverter and ending up stranded on this godforsaken island. She blinked at the vision. Then with renewed hope she struck off into the trees, desperate to find a navigable pathway up the steeper slopes to the ancient temple.

Most of us never hear silence. There is always some noise in the background, even if we don’t notice it – distant traffic, the movement of air, the sound of birds, the ticking of a clock, the flowing of water in the drains. When the woman took her final step onto the plateau at the top of the mountain, all that came to an abrupt end. There was an eerie, absolute silence, against which her own breathing, heartbeat and hesitant footfalls sounded loud and intrusive. Row upon row of stone pillars scraped the cloud base that concealed the building’s actual roof. They spoke of an ancient and grand but primitive society of builders, while the total silence despite her close proximity to the sea and a mountainside carpeted with living forest indicated that a higher power now held sway.

She advanced along one of the many pillared aisles, looking continuously from side to side down countless identical rows. If someone was here and wished to hide, it would be easy for them to do so.

And there was somebody here, neither attempting to hide nor to draw attention to herself: An old oracle sat cross-legged in a seemingly arbitrary location between two pillars in the vast, draughty complex. She stared intently at the variety of cards arrayed before her as the dark-haired woman approached. The visitor knew better than to speak first, and instead sat down opposite the oracle to observe the configuration of the cards.

At present six were laid out, two rows of three, one radiating from the position of the oracle’s left hand, the other her right. They all displayed a deep blue sky with a white border, each with a different configuration of stars. The middle card in the left-hand row also had on it the image of a lion. The top card in the right-hand row sported beneath its stars a dolphin.

"In the twinkling of an eye," the old oracle murmured. "Thrice three is once only… down the road from whence it came… the king of cats shall have ado, and none shall sing anon."

She drew from the pack a seventh card and placed it face up in the middle of the formation. It bore a pattern of stars similar to and yet different from the rest. She puzzled over it for a minute, then offered the pack to her guest, face down. "Thrice three is once only," she repeated.

The woman took one card at random, then when the pack remained held up she obediently selected a second. The oracle took them both from her without letting her see what was on them. She placed the first face down across the lion, the other over the dolphin.

"Now," she relaxed and smiled at her visitor for the first time. "What would you like to know?"

The inhabitants of the mountainside continued with their daily chores, irrigating their fields, feeding their animals, maintaining their living holes and, of course, in Rumtum’s case, turning the wheel. All that you would expect from a well-adjusted rural community – well, apart from the wheel thing, obviously.

But with the coming of twilight they stopped working, and many of the adults washed, dressed themselves in their best formal evening wear, and converged on the nearest headland, location of the decadent Chestnut Chambers, the largest semi-underground facility in this part of the island – a tasteful candlelit venue where the good people sat at their leisure, chatting, sipping the excellent local wine and listening to their favourite music being performed by those whose talents, interests and chosen career paths lay in that particular area. Within half an hour a transition had occurred from a simple agricultural lifestyle to what some would call the more sophisticated society of the town, but for the mountain island community it seemed the most natural thing in the world. It was how they had always lived and would ever continue to do so.

The woman from afar entered the room. She was clearly still unhappy with her situation, but appeared now resigned to her fate. She took a drink and sat down at an empty table to listen to the soothing strains of Murky Gloom and his Luminous Quartet.

"I recommend the quiche."

She glanced up to find a handsome yet weather-worn gentleman indicating the local cuisine being served at a nearby table. It did look and smell rather good.

"Venson Dun. May I sit?" She sighed and nodded, expecting there to follow a friendly but comprehensive interrogation. After leaving the oracle she had made what she felt were sufficient enquiries to fashion a reasonable false identity. Now was as good a time as any to test its durability under stress.

"Maria Ellinore," she replied with a polite yet forced smile.

"They also do an excellent approximation of a Spanish omelette," the man remarked conversationally, eyes fixed on the band.

Her head snapped up and she stared at him in shock.

"There are more of us than you know," he went on, his expression a mixture of amusement and sadness. "Don’t be so surprised. I have to say, though, that most of our kind managed to arrive a little less… obviously than your good self. You’ve been up to the temple, I take it?" She nodded dumbly. "Then you know by now that there’s no help to be found in that quarter. Yes, it’s an artificial acoustic vacuum, and was obviously their base of operations while they were setting things in motion here – wheel-shaped and otherwise. But the oracle’s an ignorant. She just lives up there because of the sound vacuum. She has no tech in her cards, and nobody on the island believes in her powers of prediction."

Maria had surmised as much. "Are you an-"

"-interventionist? No." He sipped his wine, then added, almost as an afterthought, "And from this day forth, neither are you."

Maria had been leaning forward intently, but now sat up straight with angry indignation born of long practice at defending her chosen philosophy of life. "What gives you the right to-"

"-tell you how to live? Simple. This is our last chance, our only fallback position. Yes, while you were out there you had the luxury of choice. Defy the enforcers, take advantage of your knowledge of future history and science, and if they catch you nobody suffers but yourself. I was the same. But here things are different. If this place is corrupted, that’s it. Everybody dies. It’s easy to rebel when the only life on the line is your own. But would you gamble with the lives of all the people on this island and all their future descendants, just to make your own lifestyle more comfortable?"

"No, of course not. But the right of freedom to choose…"

"…is null and void. It’s been over-ruled by the duty not to. Had we realised this sooner, we might not be in the mess we are today." He rose to leave, his face expressionless. "Enjoy your meal. I advise you to accept the offer of hospitality extended by these people. I’ll see you here the same time tomorrow, and we’ll introduce ourselves all over again, only this time as lifelong native inhabitants. Start believing your cover story and make no attempt to find the others. The next time we speak, mention nothing of the outside. There is no outside." He smiled as the Luminous Quartet struck up a jazz riff. "And do try the quiche – it’s excellent. Goodnight." With a nod of farewell, he handed his empty glass to a passing waiter and made a dignified exit.

Instinctively, Maria Ellinore looked about the room as hundreds of new thoughts filled her head. One face struck her as familiar – a simple-looking soul sitting alone at a distant table, eyes closed and humming happily to himself in time with the music on stage. After a few seconds she remembered where she had seen him before. Oh, well. She realised there was probably no better place to begin. Taking a deep breath, she rose and crossed the floor to where he sat. The man opened his eyes and blinked.

"Hello. My name is Maria. I’m new to this side of the mountain. I’m expecting to be staying here for some time, but I don’t know anybody…"

He rose and took her proffered hand.

"Rumtum, at your service. I turn the wheel," he added proudly.

Maria Ellinore awoke in an empty habitation hole, and was devastated to find it had not all been a dream. But the sun shone in through the windows, the birds were singing, and distant waves lapped against a rocky coastline. If she was going to have to construct a new life from scratch, she could hardly imagine a more picturesque location in which to do it.

Best foot forward. Rumtum had bashfully lent her a storybook he had written to help her go to sleep. She hated reading, but hadn’t had the heart to tell him that. Now she was determined to turn over a new leaf, and if that meant adopting new pastimes, so be it. She didn’t know whether or not she trusted Venson Dun. He might be an enforcer spy. So might the oracle. But that didn’t matter now. He was right – she no longer had a choice.

Maria dressed in the local style, stepped outside and looked for a good tree. There were plenty. She picked one, sat down against its base, opened the book and began to read.

A fly settled on her arm. She swatted it away. Her nose began to tickle. She sneezed. Her eyes were itching. Her nose was running. The pollen! Quickly – a tissue! She had none!

She ran in panic to the nearest field.

"Gib be a haggerchieb!" she begged.

"What’s a haggerchieb?" wondered the confused farm worker. Maria froze, remembering with horror something she had once read. Criterion 26: None of the island settlers are to come from hayfever-suffering families.

She ran screaming up the hillside.

The man pulled a napkin from his pocket and used it to mop the sweat from his brow.

Rumtum proffered an oblong box lined with gold paper to the depressed figure sulking in the folds of his armchair. From it wafted the irresistible aroma generated by intoxicating liquid gold wrapped in tantalising dark brown chunks of edible heaven.

"Um… we have a certain amount of chocolate, which we keep for special occasions and emergencies. It’s not easy to produce out here, but-"

"Chocolate will do little to solve my current problems," Maria sighed theatrically.

Rumtum shrugged, replaced the lid and hefted the box back onto the top shelf of his food cabinet. Very strange – it always seemed to work for him.

"Wait."

She stood up and wiped the tears from her eyes.

"Yes?" He paused, key in mid-turn.

"I said it’d do little for me… I didn’t say it would do nothing."

Rumtum smiled and opened up the cupboard again. The woman was human after all. "You’re really not from around here, are you? No, don’t answer that. But tomorrow I want to show you something. I have a small amount of leave due – I’m sure someone will cover for me."

As for Spinner, he eventually got his wormhole un-inverted, but his body was a complete write-off. He felt embarrassed more than anything else when he finally arrived on the island. Being more than thirty kilometres in diameter and with small settlements dotted all over – the island, that is – he made contact with a different set of natives from Maria Ellinore. When pressed on the small matter of his appearance, he swore blind that his name was Klumsy Joe MacStrange and he’d simply had a Saxident (the rarely fatal but extremely painful punishment for performing sub-standard jazz in the presence of koalas on steroids), only being Scottish his Saxident involved bagpipes, and so, well, need he go on? The natives said please don’t, and so ended his interrogation.

Once sufficiently recovered, he made his way up to the temple to pay his respects to the oracle. He found her sleeping. She was even asleep in her dreams. Spinner sat down beside her and noted the configuration of stars on the card marked with the image of a dolphin. He waited until the night sky matched that configuration, then wandered down the road to the beach, roared like a lion nine times and waited. At length up swam a real dolphin, who told him in no uncertain terms that he was an idiot but that he’d better climb on, and she would return him safely to the mothership.

Spinner was pleased to be leaving the asylum and returning to a world that made sense.

Maria stood with Rumtum on a balcony-like ridge half-way down the far side of the oracle’s mountain peak. From this perspective she could see the inner portion of the island. Despite appearances from without it was not a single mountainous formation rising up at the centre. It was in actual fact an extinct volcano, the gently sloping crater of which took up about half the island’s surface area. While the people farmed and built their homes on the outer slopes, the inner hollow was carpeted with lush green forests, partially obscured now by the morning mists, from which a veritable orchestra of bird, insect and animal noises rose to greet them, the very antithesis of the artificial silence on the oracle’s plateau.

"Can we go down there?"

"There’s nothing to stop us, but no-one ever does. It would be rude."

"Rude?"

"Yes. You see, it’s their home, not ours. We call it the asylum."

"Asylum?" Asylum seeker. Mental asylum. It sounded such an ugly word for so beautiful a landscape. In her mind it brought with it associations with intolerance, exploitation and confinement.

Rumtum noticed the distaste in Maria’s voice but interpreted it as ignorance. "Yes, it’s a word in our language. It means safety and protection."

"I knew what it meant," replied Maria. "I’d just forgotten." How could she think of polluting such natural vitality with her knowledge of grander human societies? If the word ‘asylum’ here remained unsullied by the dark side of so-called civilisation, perhaps there was hope. She felt her lifelong cynicism lift from her like an oppressively heavy harness that had been dragging her mind down just one road. "Thank you for reminding me." She kissed him lightly on the cheek.

He looked flustered. "I really must be getting back to work. I turn the wheel. I may have mentioned it before. You see, over there a small part of the forest on higher ground is shielded from the prevailing winds by the adjacent mountain wall, and gets next to no rain. The wheel carries water to those trees. Without it they would die. It is in essence a wheel of life."

At last, Maria understood.