Chapters 5 to 7

[::: CHAPTER 5 ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::]
High on his rocky promontory the Electric Monk continued to sit on ahorse which was going quietly and uncomplainingly spare. From under itsrough woven cowl the Monk gazed unblinkingly down into the valley, withwhich it was having a problem, but the problem was a new and hideousone to the Monk, for it was this -- Doubt. He never suffered it for long, but when he did, it gnawed at thevery root of his being. The day was hot; the sun stood in an empty hazy sky and beat downupon the grey rocks and the scrubby, parched grass. Nothing moved, noteven the Monk. But strange things were beginning to fizz in its brain,as they did from time to time when a piece of data became misaddressedas it passed through its input buffer. But then the Monk began to believe, fitfully and nervously at first,but then with a great searing white flame of belief which overturnedall previous beliefs, including the stupid one about the valley beingpink, that somewhere down in the valley, about a mile from where he wassitting, there would shortly open up a mysterious doorway into astrange and distant world, a doorway through which he might enter. Anastounding idea. Astoundingly enough, however, on this one occasion he was perfectlyright. The horse sensed that something was up. It pricked up its ears and gently shook its head. It had gone into asort of trance looking at the same clump of rocks for so long, and wason the verge of imagining them to be pink itself. It shook its head alittle harder. A slight twitch on the reins, and a prod from the Monk’s heels andthey were off, picking their way carefully down the rocky incline. Theway was difficult. Much of it was loose shale -- loose brown and greyshale, with the occasional brown and green plant clinging to aprecarious existence on it. The Monk noticed this withoutembarrassment. It was an older, wiser Monk now, and had put childishthings behind it. Pink valleys, hermaphrodite tables, these were allnatural stages through which one had to pass on the path to trueenlightenment. The sun beat hard on them. The Monk wiped the sweat and dust off itsface and paused, leaning forward on the horse’s neck. It peered downthrough the shimmering heat haze at a large outcrop of rock which stoodout on to the floor of the valley. There, behind that outcrop, waswhere the Monk thought, or rather passionately believed to the core ofits being, the door would appear. It tried to focus more closely, butthe details of the view swam confusingly in the hot rising air. As it sat back in its saddle, and was about to prod the horseonward, it suddenly noticed a rather odd thing. On a flattish wall of rock nearby, in fact so nearby that the Monkwas surprised not to have noticed it before, was a large painting. Thepainting was crudely drawn, though not without a certain stylish sweepof line, and seemed very old, possibly very, very old indeed. The paintwas faded, chipped and patchy, and it was difficult to discern with anyclarity what the picture was. The Monk approached the picture moreclosely. It looked like a primitive hunting scene. The group of purple, multi-limbed creatures were clearly earlyhunters. They carried rough spears, and were in hot pursuit of a largehorned and armoured creature, which appeared to have been wounded inthe hunt already. The colours were now so dim as to be almost non-existent. In fact, all that could be clearly seen was the white of thehunters’ teeth, which seemed to shine with a whiteness whose lustre wasundimmed by the passage of what must have been many thousands of years.In fact they even put the Monk’s own teeth to shame, and he had cleanedthem only that morning. The Monk had seen paintings like this before, but only in picturesor on the TV, never in real life. They were usually to be found incaves where they were protected from the elements, otherwise they wouldnot have survived. The Monk looked more carefully at the immediate environs of the rockwall and noticed that, though not exactly in a cave, it wasnevertheless protected by a large overhang and was well sheltered fromthe wind and rain. Odd, though, that it should have managed to last solong. Odder still that it should appear not to have been discovered.Such cave paintings as there were were all famous and familiar images,but this was not one that he had ever seen before. Perhaps this was a dramatic and historic find he had made. Perhapsif he were to return to the city and announce this discovery he wouldbe welcomed back, given a new motherboard after all and allowed tobelieve -- to believe -- believe what? He paused, blinked, and shookhis head to clear a momentary system error. He pulled himself up short. He believed in a door. He must find that door. The door was the wayto... to... The Door was The Way. Good. Capital letters were always the best way of dealing with things youdidn’t have a good answer to. Brusquely he tugged the horse’s head round and urged it onward anddownward. Within a few minutes more of tricky manoeuvring they hadreached the valley floor, and he was momentarily disconcerted todiscover that the fine top layer of dust that had settled on the brownparched earth was indeed a very pale brownish pink, particularly on thebanks of the sluggish trickle of mud which was all that remained, inthe hot season, of the river that flowed through the valley when therains came. He dismounted and bent down to feel the pink dust and runit through his fingers. It was very fine and soft and felt pleasant ashe rubbed it on his skin. It was about the same colour, perhaps alittle paler. The horse was looking at him. He realised, a little belatedlyperhaps, that the horse must be extremely thirsty. He was extremelythirsty himself, but had tried to keep his mind off it. He unbuckledthe water flask from the saddle. It was pathetically light. Heunscrewed the top and took one single swig. Then he poured a littleinto his cupped hand and offered it to the horse, who slurped at itgreedily and briefly. The horse looked at him again. The Monk shook his head sadly, resealed the bottle and replaced it.He knew, in that small part of his mind where he kept factual andlogical information, that it would not last much longer, and that,without it, neither would they. It was only his Belief that kept himgoing, currently his Belief in The Door. He brushed the pink dust from his rough habit, and then stoodlooking at the rocky outcrop, a mere hundred yards distant. He lookedat it not without a slight, tiny trepidation. Although the major partof his mind was firm in its eternal and unshakeable Belief that therewould be a Door behind the outcrop, and that the Door would be The Way,yet the tiny part of his brain that understood about the water bottlecould not help but recall past disappointments and sounded a very tinybut jarring note of caution. If he elected not to go and see The Door for himself, then he couldcontinue to believe in it forever. It would be the lodestone of hislife (what little was left of it, said the part of his brain that knewabout the water bottle). If on the other hand he went to pay his respects to the Door and itwasn’t there... what then? The horse whinnied impatiently. The answer, of course, was very simple. He had a whole board ofcircuits for dealing with exactly this problem, in fact this was thevery heart of his function. He would continue to believe in it whateverthe facts turned out to be, what else was the meaning of Belief? The Door would still be there, even if the door was not. He pulled himself together. The Door would be there, and he must nowgo to it, because The Door was The Way. Instead of remounting his horse, he led it. The Way was but a shortway, and he should enter the presence of the Door in humility. He walked, brave and erect, with solemn slowness. He approached therocky outcrop. He reached it. He turned the corner. He looked. The Door was there. The horse, it must be said, was quite surprised. The Monk fell to his knees in awe and bewilderment. So braced was hefor dealing with the disappointment that was habitually his lot that,though he would never know to admit it, he was completely unpreparedfor this. He stared at The Door in sheer, blank system error. It was a door such as he had never seen before. All the doors heknew were great steel-reinforced things, because of all the videorecorders and dishwashers that were kept behind them, plus of courseall the expensive Electric Monks that were needed to believe in it all.This one was simple, wooden and small, about his own size. A Monk-sizedoor, painted white, with a single, slightly dented brass knob slightlyless than halfway up one side. It was set simply in the rock face, withno explanation as to its origin or purpose. Hardly knowing how he dared, the poor startled Monk staggered to hisfeet and, leading his horse, walked nervously forward towards it. Hereached out and touched it. He was so startled when no alarms went offthat he jumped back. He touched it again, more firmly this time. He let his hand drop slowly to the handle -- again, no alarms. Hewaited to be sure, and then he turned it, very, very gently. He felt amechanism release. He held his breath. Nothing. He drew the doortowards him, and it came easily. He looked inside, but the interior wasso dim in contrast with the desert sun outside that he could seenothing. At last, almost dead with wonder, he entered, pulling thehorse in after him. A few minutes later, a figure that had been sitting out of sightaround the next outcrop of rock finished rubbing dust on his face,stood up, stretched his limbs and made his way back towards the door,patting his clothes as he did so.

[::: CHAPTER 6 ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::]
‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree:’ The reader clearly belonged to the school of thought which holdsthat a sense of the seriousness or greatness of a poem is best impartedby reading it in a silly voice. He soared and swooped at the wordsuntil they seemed to duck and run for cover. ‘Where Alph, the sacred river ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.’ Richard relaxed back into his seat. The words were very, veryfamiliar to him, as they could not help but be to any English graduateof St Cedd’s College, and they settled easily into his mind. The association of the college with Coleridge was taken veryseriously indeed, despite the man’s well-known predilection for certainrecreational pharmaceuticals under the influence of which this, hisgreatest work, was composed, in a dream. The entire manuscript was lodged in the safe-keeping of the collegelibrary, and it was from this itself, on the regular occasion of theColeridge Dinner, that the poem was read. ‘So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round: And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.’ Richard wondered how long it took. He glanced sideways at his formerDirector of Studies and was disturbed by the sturdy purposefulness ofhis reading posture. The singsong voice irritated him at first, butafter a while it began to lull him instead, and he watched a rivulet ofwax seeping over the edge of a candle that was burning low now andthrowing a guttering light over the carnage of dinner. ‘But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover!’ The small quantities of claret that he had allowed himself duringthe course of the meal seeped warmly through his veins, and soon hisown mind began to wander, and provoked by Reg’s question earlier in themeal, he wondered what had lately become of his former... was friendthe word? He seemed more like a succession of extraordinary events thana person. The idea of him actually having friends as such seemed not somuch unlikely, more a sort of mismatching of concepts, like the idea ofthe Suez crisis popping out for a bun. Svlad Cjelli. Popularly known as Dirk, though, again, ‘popular’ washardly right. Notorious, certainly; sought after, endlessly speculatedabout, those too were true. But popular? Only in the sense that aserious accident on the motorway might be popular -- everyone slowsdown to have a good look, but no one will get too close to the flames.Infamous was more like it. Svlad Cjelli, infamously known as Dirk. He was rounder than the average undergraduate and wore more hats.That is to say, there was just the one hat which he habitually wore,but he wore it with a passion that was rare in one so young. The hatwas dark red and round, with a very flat brim, and it appeared to moveas if balanced on gimbals, which ensured its perfect horizontality atall times, however its owner moved his head. As a hat it was aremarkable rather than entirely successful piece of persona!decoration. It would make an elegant adornment, stylish, shapely andflattering, if the wearer were a small bedside lamp, but not otherwise. People gravitated around him, drawn in by the stories he deniedabout himself, but what the source of these stories might be, if nothis own denials, was never entirely clear. The tales had to do with the psychic powers that he’d supposedlyinherited from his mother’s side of the family who he claimed, hadlived at the smarter end of Transylvania. That is to say, he didn’tmake any such claim at all, and said it was the most absurd nonsense.He strenuously denied that there were bats of any kind at all in hisfamily and threatened to sue anybody who put about such maliciousfabrications, but he affected nevertheless to wear a large and flappyleather coat, and had one of those machines in his room which aresupposed to help cure bad backs if you hang upside down from them. Hewould allow people to discover him hanging from this machine at allkinds of odd hours of the day, and more particularly of the night,expressly so that he could vigorously deny that it had any significancewhatsoever. By means of an ingenious series of strategically deployed denials ofthe most exciting and exotic things, he was able to create the myththat he was a psychic, mystic, telepathic, fey, clairvoyant,psychosassic vampire bat. What did ‘psychosassic’ mean? It was his own word and he vigorously denied that it meant anythingat all. ‘And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced: Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst Huge fragments vaulted...’ Dirk had also been perpetually broke. This would change. It was his room-mate who started it, a credulous fellow calledMander, who, if the truth were known, had probably been speciallyselected by Dirk for his credulity. Steve Mander noticed that if ever Dirk went to bed drunk he wouldtalk in his sleep. Not only that, but the sort of things he would sayin his sleep would be things like, ‘The opening up of trade routes tothe mumble mumble burble was the turning point for the growth of empirein the snore footle mumble. Discuss.’ ‘...like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:’ The first time this happened Steve Mander sat bolt upright in bed.This was shortly before prelim exams in the second year, and what Dirkhad just said, or judiciously mumbled, sounded remarkably like a verylikely question in the Economic History paper. Mander quietly got up, crossed over to Dirk’s bed and listened veryhard, but other than a few completely disconnected mumblings aboutSchleswig-Holstein and the Franco-Prussian war, the latter beinglargely directed by Dirk into his pillow, he learned nothing more. News, however, spread -- quietly, discreetly, and like wildfire. ‘And ‘mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river.’ For the next month Dirk found himself being constantly wined anddined in the hope that he would sleep very soundly that night anddream-speak a few more exam questions. Remarkably, it seemed that thebetter he was fed, and the finer the vintage of the wine he was givento drink, the less he would tend to sleep facing directly into hispillow. His scheme, therefore, was to exploit his alleged gifts without everactually claiming to have them. In fact he would react to stories abouthis supposed powers with open incredulity, even hostility. ‘Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean: And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war!’ Dirk was also, he denied, a clairaudient. He would sometimes humtunes in his sleep that two weeks later would turn out to be a hit forsomeone. Not too difficult to organise, really. In fact, he had always done the bare minimum of research necessaryto support these myths. He was lazy, and essentially what he did wasallow people’s enthusiastic credulity to do the work for him. Thelaziness was essential -- if his supposed feats of the paranormal hadbeen detailed and accurate, then people might have been suspicious andlooked for other explanations. On the other hand, the more vague andambiguous his ‘predictions’ the more other people’s own wishfulthinking would close the credibility gap. Dirk never made much out of it -- at least, he appeared not to. Infact, the benefit to himself, as a student, of being continually winedand dined at other people’s expense was more considerable than anyonewould expect unless they sat down and worked out the figures. And, of course, he never claimed -- in fact, he actively denied --that any of it was even remotely true. He was therefore well placed to execute a very nice and tasty littlescam come the time of finals. ‘The shadow of the dome of pleasure Floated midway on the waves; Where was heard the mingled measure From the fountain and the caves. It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!’ ‘Good heavens...!’ Reg suddenly seemed to awake with a start fromthe light doze into which he had gently slipped under the influence ofthe wine and the reading, and glanced about himself with blanksurprise, but nothing had changed. Coleridge’s words sang through awarm and contented silence that had settled on the great hall. Afteranother quick frown, Reg settled back into another doze, but this timea slightly more attentive one. ‘A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora.’ Dirk allowed himself to be persuaded to make, under hypnosis, a firmprediction about what questions would be set for examination thatsummer. He himself first planted the idea by explaining exactly the sort ofthing that he would never, under any circumstances, be prepared to do,though in many ways he would like to, just to have the chance todisprove his alleged and strongly disavowed abilities. And it was on these grounds, carefully prepared, that he eventuallyagreed -- only because it would once and for all scotch the whole silly-- immensely, tediously silly -- business. He would make hispredictions by means of automatic writing under proper supervision, andthey would then be sealed in an envelope and deposited at the bankuntil after the exams. Then they would be opened to see how accurate they had been afterthe exams. He was, not surprisingly, offered some pretty hefty bribes from apretty hefty number of people to let them see the predictions he hadwritten down, but he was absolutely shocked by the idea. That, he said,would be dishonest... ‘Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight ‘twould win me, That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! Those caves of ice!’ Then, a short time later, Dirk allowed himself to be seen aroundtown wearing something of a vexed and solemn expression. At first hewaved aside enquiries as to what it was that was bothering him, buteventually he let slip that his mother was going to have to undergosome extremely expensive dental work which, for reasons that he refusedto discuss, would have to be done privately, only there wasn’t themoney. From here, the path downward to accepting donations for his mother’ssupposed medical expenses in return for quick glances at his writtenexam predictions proved to be sufficiently steep and well-oiled for himto be able to slip down it with a minimum of fuss. Then it further transpired that the only dentist who could performthis mysterious dental operation was an East European surgeon nowliving in Malibu, and it was in consequence necessary to increase thelevel of donations rather sharply. He still denied, of course, that his abilities were all that theywere cracked up to be, in fact he denied that they existed at all, andinsisted that he would never have embarked on the exercise at all if itwasn’t to disprove the whole thing -- and also, since other peopleseemed, at their own risk, to have a faith in his abilities that hehimself did not, he was happy to indulge them to the extent of lettingthem pay for his sainted mother’s operation. He could only emerge well from this situation. Or so he thought. ‘And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair!’ The exam papers Dirk produced under hypnosis, by means of automaticwriting, he had, in fact, pieced together simply by doing the sameminimum research that any student taking exams would do, studyingprevious exam papers, and seeing what, if any, patterns emerged, andmaking intelligent guesses about what might come up. He was pretty sureof getting (as anyone would be) a strike rate that was sufficientlyhigh to satisfy the credulous, and sufficiently low for the wholeexercise to look perfectly innocent. As indeed it was. What completely blew him out of the water, and caused a furore whichended with him being driven out of Cambridge in the back of a BlackMaria, was the fact that all the exam papers he sold turned out to bethe same as the papers that were actually set. Exactly. Word for word. To the very comma. ‘Wave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise...’ And that, apart from a flurry of sensational newspaper reports whichexposed him as a fraud, then trumpeted him as the real thing so thatthey could have another round of exposing him as a fraud again and thentrumpeting him as the real thing again, until they got bored and founda nice juicy snooker player to harass instead, was that. In the years since then, Richard had run into Dirk from time to timeand had usually been greeted with that kind of guarded half smile thatwants to know if you think it owes you money before it blossoms intoone that hopes you will lend it some. Dirk’s regular name changessuggested to Richard that he wasn’t alone in being treated like this. He felt a tug of sadness that someone who had seemed so shininglyalive within the small confines of a university community should haveseemed to fade so much in the light of common day. And he wondered atReg’s asking after him like that, suddenly and out of the blue, in whatseemed altogether too airy and casual a manner. He glanced around him again, at his lightly snoring neighbour, Reg;at little Sarah rapt in silent attention; at the deep hall swathed indarkly glimmering light; at the portraits of old prime ministers andpoets hung high in the darkness with just the odd glint of candlelightgleaming off their teeth; at the Director of English Studies standingreading in his poetry-reading voice; at the book of ‘Kubla Khan’ thatthe Director of English Studies held in his hand; and finally,surreptitiously, at his watch. He settled back again. The voice continued, reading the second, and altogether stranger part of the poem...

[::: CHAPTER 7 ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::]
This was the evening of the last day of Gordon Way’s life, and hewas wondering if the rain would hold off for the weekend. The forecasthad said changeable -- a misty night tonight followed by bright butchilly days on Friday and Saturday with maybe a few scattered showerstowards the end of Sunday when everyone would be heading back intotown. Everyone, that is, other than Gordon Way. The weather forecast hadn’t mentioned that, of course, that wasn‘tthe job of the weather forecast, but then his horoscope had been prettymisleading as well. It had mentioned an unusual amount of planetaryactivity in his sign and had urged him to differentiate between what hethought he wanted and what he actually needed, and suggested that heshould tackle emotional or work problems with determination andcomplete honesty, but had inexplicably failed to mention that he wouldbe dead before the day was out. He turned off the motorway near Cambridge and stopped at a smallfilling station for some petrol, where he sat for a moment, finishingoff a call on his car phone. ‘OK, look, I’ll call you tomorrow,’ he said, ‘or maybe latertonight. Or call me. I should be at the cottage in half an hour. Yes, Iknow how important the project is to you. All right, I know howimportant it is, full stop. You want it, I want it. Of course I do. AndI’m not saying that we won’t continue to support it. I’m just sayingit’s expensive and we should look at the whole thing with determinationand complete honesty. Look, why don’t you come out to the cottage, andwe can talk it through. OK, yeah, yes, I know. I understand. Well,think about it, Kate. Talk to you later. Bye.’ He hung up and continued to sit in his car for a moment. It was a large car. It was a large silver-grey Mercedes of the sortthat they use in advertisements, and not just advertisements forMercedes. Gordon Way, brother of Susan, employer of Richard MacDuff,was a rich man, the founder and owner of WayForward Technologies II.WayForward Technologies itself had of course gone bust, for the usualreason, taking his entire first fortune with it. Luckily, he had managed to make another one. The ‘usual reason’ was that he had been in the business of computerhardware when every twelve-year-old in the country had suddenly gotbored with boxes that went bing. His second fortune had been made insoftware instead. As a result of two major pieces of software, one ofwhich was Anthem (the other, more profitable one had never seen thelight of day), WFT-II was the only British software company that couldbe mentioned in the same sentence as such major U.S. companies asMicrosoft or Lotus. The sentence would probably run along the lines of‘WayForward Technologies, unlike such major U.S. companies as Microsoftor Lotus...’ but it was a start. WayForward was in there. And he ownedit. He pushed a tape into the slot on the stereo console. It accepted itwith a soft and decorous click, and a moment or two later Ravel’sBoléro floated out of eight perfectly matched speakers with fine-meshed matte-black grilles. The stereo was so smooth and spacious youcould almost sense the whole ice-rink. He tapped his fingers lightly onthe padded rim of the steering wheel. He gazed at the dashboard.Tasteful illuminated figures and tiny, immaculate lights gazed dimlyback at him. After a while he suddenly realised this was a self servicestation and got out to fill the tank. This took a minute or two. He stood gripping the filler nozzle,stamping his feet in the cold night air, then walked over to the smallgrubby kiosk, paid for the petrol, remembered to buy a couple of localmaps, and then stood chatting enthusiastically to the cashier for a fewminutes about the directions the computer industry was likely to takein the following year, suggesting that parallel processing was going tobe the key to really intuitive productivity software, but also stronglydoubting whether artificial intelligence research per se,particularly artificial intelligence research based on the ProLoglanguage, was really going to produce any serious commercially viableproducts in the foreseeable future, at least as far as the office desktop environment was concerned, a topic that fascinated the cashier notat all. ‘The man just liked to talk,’ he would later tell the police. ‘Man,I could have walked away to the toilet for ten minutes and he would’vetold it all to the till. If I’d been fifteen minutes the till wouldhave walked away too. Yeah, I’m sure that’s him,’ he would add whenshown a picture of Gordon Way. ‘I only wasn’t sure at first because inthe picture he’s got his mouth closed.’ ‘And you’re absolutely certain you didn’t see anything elsesuspicious?’ the policeman insisted. ‘Nothing that struck you as odd inany way at all?’ ‘No, like I said, it was just an ordinary customer on an ordinarynight, just like any other night.’ The policeman stared at him blankly. ‘Just for the sake ofargument,’ he went on to say, ‘if I were suddenly to do this...’ -- hemade himself go cross-eyed, stuck his tongue out of the corner of hismouth and danced up and down twisting his fingers in his ears -- ‘wouldanything strike you about that?’ ‘Well, er, yeah,’ said the cashier, backing away nervously. ‘I’dthink you’d gone stark raving mad.’ ‘Good,’ said the policeman, putting his notebook away. ‘It’s justthat different people sometimes have a different idea of what “odd”means, you see, sir. If last night was an ordinary night just like anyother night, then I am a pimple on the bottom of the Marquess ofQueensbury’s aunt. We shall be requiring a statement later, sir. Thankyou for your time.’ That was all yet to come. Tonight, Gordon pushed the maps in his pocket and strolled backtowards his car. Standing under the lights in the mist it had gathereda finely beaded coat of matte moisture on it, and looked like -- well,it looked like an extremely expensive Mercedes-Benz. Gordon caughthimself, just for a millisecond, wishing that he had something likethat, but he was now quite adept at fending off that particular line ofthought, which only led off in circles and left him feeling depressedand confused. He patted it in a proprietorial manner, then, walking around it,noticed that the boot wasn’t closed properly and pushed it shut. Itclosed with a good healthy clunk. Well, that made it all worth it,didn’t it? Good healthy clunk like that. Old-fashioned values ofquality and workmanship. He thought of a dozen things he had to talk toSusan about and climbed back into the car, pushing the auto-dial codeon his phone as soon as the car was prowling back on to the road. ‘...so if you’d like to leave a message, I’ll get back to you assoon as possible. Maybe.’ Beep. ‘Oh, Susan, hi, it’s Gordon,’ he said, cradling the phone awkwardlyon his shoulder. ‘Just on my way to the cottage. It’s er, Thursdaynight, and it’s, er... 8.47. Bit misty on the roads. Listen, I havethose people from the States coming over this weekend to thrash out thedistribution on Anthem Version 2.00, handling the promotion, all thatstuff, and look you know I don’t like to ask you this sort of thing,but you know I always do anyway, so here it is. ‘I just need to know that Richard is on the case. I mean really onthe case. I can ask him, and he says, Oh sure, it’s fine, but half thetime -- shit, that lorry had bright lights, none of these bastard lorrydrivers ever dips them properly, it’s a wonder I don’t end up dead inthe ditch, that would be something, wouldn’t it, leaving your famouslast words on somebody’s answering machine, there’s no reason why theselorries shouldn’t have automatic light-activated dipper switches. Look,can you make a note for me to tell Susan -- not you, of course,secretary Susan at the office -- to tell her to send a letter from meto that fellow at the Department of the Environment saying we canprovide the technology if he can provide the legislation? It’s for thepublic good, and anyway he owes me a favour plus what’s the point inhaving a CBE if you can’t kick a little ass? You can tell I’ve beentalking to Americans all week. ‘That reminds me, God, I hope I remembered to pack the shotguns.What is it with these Americans that they’re always so mad to shoot myrabbits? I bought them some maps in the hope that I can persuade themto go on long healthy walks and take their minds off shooting rabbits.I really feel quite sorry for the creatures. I think I should put oneof those signs on my lawn when the Americans are coming, you know, likethey have in Beverly Hills, saying `Armed Response’. ‘Make a note to Susan, would you please, to get an `Armed Response’sign made up with a sharp spike on the bottom at the right height forrabbits to see. That’s secretary Susan at the office not you, ofcourse. ‘Where was I? ‘Oh yes. Richard and Anthem 2.00. Susan, that thing has got to bein beta testing in two weeks. He tells me it’s fine. But every time Isee him he’s got a picture of a sofa spinning on his computer screen.He says it’s an important concept, but all I see is furniture. Peoplewho want their company accounts to sing to them do not want to buy arevolving sofa. Nor do I think he should be turning the erosionpatterns of the Himalayas into a flute quintet at this time. ‘And as for what Kate’s up to, Susan, well, I can’t hide the factthat I get anxious at the salaries and computer time it’s eating up.Important long-term research and development it might be, but there isalso the possibility, only a possibility, I’m saying, but neverthelessa possibility which I think we owe it to ourselves fully to evaluateand explore, which is that it’s a lemon. That’s odd, there’s a noisecoming from the boot, I thought I’d just closed it properly. ‘Anyway, the main thing’s Richard. And the point is that there’sonly one person who’s really in a position to know if he’s getting theimportant work done, or if he’s just dreaming, and that one person is,I’m afraid, Susan. ‘That’s you, I mean, of course, not secretary Susan at the office. ‘So can you, I don’t like to ask you this, I really don’t, can youreally get on his case? Make him see how important it is? Just makesure he realises that WayForward Technologies is meant to be anexpanding commercial business, not an adventure playground for crunch-heads. That’s the problem with crunch-heads -- they have one great ideathat actually works and then they expect you to carry on funding themfor years while they sit and calculate the topographies of theirnavels. I’m sorry, I’m going to have to stop and close the bootproperly. Won’t be a moment.’ He put the telephone down on the seat beside him, pulled over on tothe grass verge, and got out. As he went to the boot, it opened, afigure rose out of it, shot him through the chest with both barrels ofa shotgun and then went about its business. Gordon Way’s astonishment at being suddenly shot dead was nothing tohis astonishment at what happened next.