Viriconium

She schooled the child to see its future as the crown of a combined empire, to make pretense on Methven’s death to the throne of Viriconium. They are frozen, he thought: caught on a strange journey across an alien planet at the forgotten end of the universe. It is losing the struggle to maintain its inner vision, its hermetic certainty in the face of the void.’ “In the grip of this perceptual stalemate the very substance of the planet had begun to fade, stretch, and tear, like an old net curtain at a window in the Boulevard Aussman. Every morning he would write for perhaps two hours, first restricting himself to the bed by means of three broad leather straps which his father had given him and to which he fastened himself, at the ankles, the hips, and finally across his chest.