PART THREE
1.
They were standing on the square of an unfamiliar town. The rectangular façades of the houses leaned off in different directions forming strange rhombuses. The lines which should have been straight wobbled, as though warping with warmth.
It was a fluid world. Matter and the criteria of existence were in suspension.
The air was transparently lilac, the sunshine was green, and there were even two suns, at opposite sides of the sky, although, of course, it was unlikely to really be the sky.
“Yes, we installed lighting here,” said a voice. “Otherwise everything was rather on the underground side.”
There was no birdsong, not a breath of wind. Only silence, and the voice.
“There is no wind underground,” the commentator went on.
Basalt was under their feet. It was polished a
