Mark Grant

Mark lives in a clearing in the forest in the north of Leri-land, in a house resembling an old log cabin. On your way to the house, on the short track leading into the clearing from the path that runs north to the mountains, you're likely to be accosted by one or more of the clearing's population of horses and unicorns on a hunt for sugar cubes, so remember to bring a plentiful supply with you. Occasionally you may also meet some strangely-attired people wandering around the house or clearing, but don't worry about them - they'll just be friends visiting from elsewhere.

On the west side of the house is a large garage, containing several unusual cars ranging from a 1930s Mercedes to a 1960s Jensen to a 1990s Bugatti, and possibly the occasional small airplane, most of the vehicles partially dismantled, with parts spread across the workbenches. This is also where Mark's pair of pet wolves live for much of the day if he's not home, so don't be scared if you're wandering around and they come to say hello - they don't eat many visitors.... On the east side are some stables where the horses and unicorns can stay in bad weather.

The house itself looks pretty small even compared to the outbuildings, and if you decide to walk in the front door you'll find a hallway with various photographs hung on the walls, and five more doors. On the left, the doors lead into the bedroom (usually untidy, the floor strewn with papers and the books that won't fit on the bookshelves) and the kitchen (just follow the smell of oriental food), on the right into the computer room (containing a wide selection of computers from the old and arcane to state-of-the-art) and the lounge.

At the far end of the hallway is a double door, larger than the others. Opening these takes you into a long corridor, running as far into the distance as you can see, with a further row of doors on each side. The first door opens into Mark's second house, at 'Dinosaur Beach' in the Lower Devonian, the second to the dull red glow of the bloated sun seen from his other house fifteen billion years in the future.

The third door opens from the side of a rock on a beach some sixty thousand light years away, on a planet orbiting a star at the edge a globular cluster up above the galactic plane. There are plenty of toys (beach balls, frisbees, surfboards etc) scattered here to play with under the light of a thousand suns during the day, but most people prefer to visit at night in order to watch the Milky Way galaxy rise up over the horizon, out to sea. The fourth door opens into the beer garden of the 'Temporal Anomaly' pub in the Cretaceous period, the rest.. well, you'll just have to take a look for yourself, if you have nothing better to do for a few centuries... !

As for the owner, well, finding him is the difficult problem - in the morning he'll probably be asleep in bed, as he's never really aquired the knack of getting up before noon (and with the parties in Leri-land running to sunrise if not later, he's not likely to start). The rest of the day (if he's not busy in the garage or computer room, or elsewhere in Leri-land) he could be practically anywhere or anywhen, so if you turn up unexpectedly the best thing to do is probably to call his portable phone from the telephone in the hallway, and wait for him to get home.

In Leri-land he'll probably be dressed in hiking trousers and one of his collection of unusual T-shirts (large enough that it's probably causing a serious bump in the space-time continuum - fortunately there's an infinitely large wardrobe in the bedroom to store them in), but if summoned from elsewhere he's likely to be wearing something bizarrely anachronistic, especially if called back direct from a party with his non-Leri friends at 'Dinosaur Beach' or 'The Temporal Anomaly'.

Some days he'll be writing computer software, either for himself or for friends around the multiverse, others reading or writing stories, occasionally making sculptures or trying to learn the guitar (the latter days you should avoid, but they'll be obvious by the time you get within a mile of the house 8-) !). Other days are spent off travelling and many just wandering around Leri-land meeting people (probably with the wolves following behind - fortunately they've come to a friendly arrangement with Kyra's tigers, though the two species may chase each other around the town for a while on more playful days), relaxing in the Tavern or coffee-shop(s), or listening to the musicians playing in the Jam Room and trying to work out quite how they manage to play guitars with only four fingers (and a thumb).

Continue onward... Mark Nuttall

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