Chapters 8 and 9

[::: CHAPTER 8 ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::]
‘Come in, dear fellow, come in.’ The door to Reg’s set of rooms in college was up a winding set ofwooden stairs in the corner of Second Court, and was not well lit, orrather it was perfectly well lit when the light was working, but thelight was not working, so the door was not well lit and was,furthermore, locked. Reg was having difficulty in finding the key froma collection which looked like something that a fit Ninja warrior couldhurl through the trunk of a tree. Rooms in the older parts of the college have double doors, likeairlocks, and like airlocks they are fiddly to open. The outer door isa sturdy slab of grey painted oak, with no features other than a verynarrow slit for letters, and a Yale lock, to which suddenly Reg at lastfound the key. He unlocked it and pulled it open. Behind it lay an ordinary white-panelled door with an ordinary brass doorknob. ‘Come in, come in,’ repeated Reg, opening this and fumbling for thelight switch. For a moment only the dying embers of a fire in the stonegrate threw ghostly red shadows dancing around the room, but thenelectric light flooded it and extinguished the magic. Reg hesitated onthe threshold for a moment, oddly tense, as if wishing to be sure ofsomething before he entered, then bustled in with at least theappearance of cheeriness. It was a large panelled room, which a collection of gently shabbyfurniture contrived to fill quite comfortably. Against the far wallstood a large and battered old mahogany table with fat ugly legs, whichwas laden with books, files, folders and teetering piles of papers.Standing in its own space on the desk, Richard was amused to note, wasactually a battered old abacus. There was a small Regency writing desk standing nearby which mighthave been quite valuable had it not been knocked about so much, also acouple of elegant Georgian chairs, a portentous Victorian bookcase, andso on. It was, in short, a don’s room. It had a don’s framed maps andprints on the walls a threadbare and faded don’s carpet on the floor,and it looked as if little had changed in it for decades, which wasprobably the case because a don lived in it. Two doors led out from either end of the opposite wall, and Richardknew from previous visits that one led to a study which looked muchlike a smaller and more intense version of this room -- larger clumpsof books, taller piles of paper in more imminent danger of actuallyfalling, furniture which, however old and valuable, was heavily markedwith myriad rings of hot tea or coffee cups, on many of which theoriginal cups themselves were probably still standing. The other door led to a small and rather basically equipped kitchen,and a twisty internal staircase at the top of which lay the Professor’sbedroom and bathroom. ‘Try and make yourself comfortable on the sofa,’ invited Reg,fussing around hospitably. ‘I don’t know if you’ll manage it. It alwaysfeels to me as if it’s been stuffed with cabbage leaves and cutlery.’He peered at Richard seriously. ‘Do you have a good sofa?’ he enquired. ‘Well, yes.’ Richard laughed. He was cheered by the silliness of thequestion. ‘Oh,’ said Reg solemnly. ‘Well, I wish you’d tell me where you gotit. I have endless trouble with them, quite endless. Never found acomfortable one in all my life. How do you find yours?’ He encountered,with a slight air of surprise, a small silver tray he had left out witha decanter of port and three glasses. ‘Well, it’s odd you should ask that,’ said Richard. ‘I’ve never saton it.’ ‘Very wise,’ insisted Reg earnestly, ‘very, very wise.’ He wentthrough a palaver similar to his previous one with his coat and hat. ‘Not that I wouldn’t like to,’ said Richard. ‘It’s just that it’sstuck halfway up a long flight of stairs which leads up into my flat.As far as I can make it out, the delivery men got it part way up thestairs, got it stuck, turned it around any way they could, couldn’t getit any further, and then found, curiously enough, that they couldn’tget it back down again. Now, that should be impossible.’ ‘Odd,’ agreed Reg. ‘I’ve certainly never come across anyirreversible mathematics involving sofas. Could be a new field. Haveyou spoken to any spatial geometricians?’ ‘I did better than that. I called in a neighbour’s kid who used tobe able to solve Rubik’s cube in seventeen seconds. He sat on a stepand stared at it for over an hour before pronouncing it irrevocablystuck. Admittedly he’s a few years older now and has found out aboutgirls, but it’s got me puzzled.’ ‘Carry on talking, my dear fellow, I’m most interested, but let meknow first if there’s anything I can get you. Port perhaps? Or brandy?The port I think is the better bet, laid down by the college in 1934,one of the finest vintages I think you’ll find, and on the other hand Idon’t actually have any brandy. Or coffee? Some more wine perhaps?There’s an excellent Margaux I’ve been looking for an excuse to open,though it should of course be allowed to stand open for an hour or two,which is not to say that I couldn’t... no,’ he said hurriedly,‘probably best not to go for the Margaux tonight.’ ‘Tea is what I would really like,’ said Richard, ‘if you have some.’ Reg raised his eyebrows. ‘Are you sure?’ ‘I have to drive home.’ ‘Indeed. Then I shall be a moment or two in the kitchen. Pleasecarry on, I shall still be able to hear you. Continue to tell me ofyour sofa, and do feel free in the meantime to sit on mine. Has it beenstuck there for long?’ ‘Oh, only about three weeks,’ said Richard, sitting down. ‘I couldjust saw it up and throw it away, but I can’t believe that there isn’ta logical answer. And it also made me think -- it would be reallyuseful to know before you buy a piece of furniture whether it’sactually going to fit up the stairs or around the corner. So I’vemodelled the problem in three dimensions on my computer -- and so farit just says no way.’ ‘It says what?’ called Reg, over the noise of filling the kettle. ‘That it can’t be done. I told it to compute the moves necessary toget the sofa out, and it said there aren’t any. I said “What?” and itsaid there aren’t any. I then asked it, and this is the reallymysterious thing, to compute the moves necessary to get the sofa intoits present position in the first place, and it said that it couldn’thave got there. Not without fundamental restructuring of the walls. So,either there’s something wrong with the fundamental structure of thematter in my walls or,’ he added with a sigh, ‘there’s something wrongwith the program. Which would you guess?’ ‘And are you married?’ called Reg. ‘What? Oh, I see what you mean. A sofa stuck on the stairs for amonth. Well, no, not married as such, but yes, there is a specific girlthat I’m not married to.’ ‘What’s she like? What does she do?’ ‘She’s a professional cellist. I have to admit that the sofa hasbeen a bit of a talking point. In fact she’s moved back to her own flatuntil I get it sorted out. She, well...’ He was suddenly sad, and he stood up and wandered around the room ina desultory sort of way and ended up in front of the dying fire. Hegave it a bit of a poke and threw on a couple of extra logs to try andward off the chill of the room. ‘She’s Gordon’s sister, in fact,’ he added at last. ‘But they arevery different. I’m not sure she really approves of computers verymuch. And she doesn’t much like his attitude to money. I don’t think Ientirely blame her, actually, and she doesn’t know the half of it.’ ‘Which is the half she doesn’t know?’ Richard sighed. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s to do with the project which first made thesoftware incarnation of the company profitable. It was called Reason,and in its own way it was sensational.’ ‘What was it?’ ‘Well, it was a kind of back-to-front program. It’s funny how manyof the best ideas are just an old idea back-to-front. You see therehave already been several programs written that help you to arrive atdecisions by properly ordering and analysing all the relevant facts sothat they then point naturally towards the right decision. The drawbackwith these is that the decision which all the properly ordered andanalysed facts point to is not necessarily the one you want.’ ‘Yeeeess...’ said Reg’s voice from the kitchen. ‘Well, Gordon’s great insight was to design a program which allowedyou to specify in advance what decision you wished it to reach, andonly then to give it all the facts. The program’s task, which it wasable to accomplish with consummate ease, was simply to construct aplausible series of logical-sounding steps to connect the premises withthe conclusion. ‘And I have to say that it worked brilliantly. Gordon was able tobuy himself a Porsche almost immediately despite being completely brokeand a hopeless driver. Even his bank manager was unable to find faultwith his reasoning. Even when Gordon wrote it off three weeks later.’ ‘Heavens. And did the program sell very well?’ ‘No. We never sold a single copy.’ ‘You astonish me. It sounds like a real winner to me.’ ‘It was,’ said Richard hesitantly. ‘The entire project was boughtup, lock, stock and barrel, by the Pentagon. The deal put WayForward ona very sound financial foundation. Its moral foundation, on the otherhand, is not something I would want to trust my weight to. I’verecently been analysing a lot of the arguments put forward in favour ofthe Star Wars project, and if you know what you’re looking for, thepattern of the algorithms is very clear. ‘So much so, in fact, that looking at Pentagon policies over thelast couple of years I think I can be fairly sure that the US Navy isusing version 2.00 of the program, while the Air Force for some reasononly has the beta-test version of 1.5. Odd, that.’ ‘Do you have a copy?’ ‘Certainly not,’ said Richard, ‘I wouldn’t have anything to do withit. Anyway, when the Pentagon bought everything, they boughteverything. Every scrap of code, every disk, every notebook. I was gladto see the back of it. If indeed we have. I just busy myself with myown projects.’ He poked at the fire again and wondered what he was doing here whenhe had so much work on. Gordon was on at him continually about gettingthe new, super version of Anthem ready for taking advantage of theMacintosh II, and he was well behind with it. And as for the proposedmodule for converting incoming Dow Jones stock-market information intoMIDI data in real time, he’d only meant that as a joke, but Gordon, ofcourse, had flipped over the idea and insisted on its beingimplemented. That too was meant to be ready but wasn’t. He suddenlyknew exactly why it was he was here. Well, it had been a pleasant evening, even if he couldn’t see whyReg had been quite so keen to see him. He picked up a couple of booksfrom the table. The table obviously doubled as a dining table, becausealthough the piles looked as if they had been there for weeks, theabsence of dust immediately around them showed that they had been movedrecently. Maybe, he thought, the need for amiable chit-chat with someonedifferent can become as urgent as any other need when you live in acommunity as enclosed as a Cambridge college was, even nowadays. He wasa likeable old fellow, but it was clear from dinner that many of hiscolleagues found his eccentricities formed rather a rich sustained diet-- particularly when they had so many of their own to contend with. Athought about Susan nagged him, but he was used to that. He flippedthrough the two books he’d picked up. One of them, an elderly one, was an account of the hauntings ofBorley Rectory, the most haunted house in England. Its spine wasgetting raggedy, and the photographic plates were so grey and blurry asto be virtually indistinguishable. A picture he thought must be a verylucky (or faked) shot of a ghostly apparition turned out, when heexamined the caption, to be a portrait of the author. The other book was more recent, and by an odd coincidence was aguide to the Greek islands. He thumbed through it idly and a piece ofpaper fell out. ‘Earl Grey or Lapsang Souchong?’ called out Reg. ‘Or Darjeeling? OrPG Tips? It’s all tea bags anyway, I’m afraid. And none of them veryfresh.’ ‘Darjeeling will do fine,’ replied Richard, stooping to pick up thepiece of paper. ‘Milk?’ called Reg. ‘Er, please.’ ‘One lump or two?’ ‘One, please.’ Richard slipped the paper back into the book, noticing as he did sothat it had a hurriedly scribbled note on it. The note said, oddlyenough, ‘Regard this simple silver salt cellar. Regard this simplehat.’ ‘Sugar?’ ‘Er, what?’ said Richard, startled. He put the book hurriedly backon the pile. ‘Just a tiny joke of mine,’ said Reg cheerily, ‘to see if people arelistening.’ He emerged beaming from the kitchen carrying a small traywith two cups on it, which he hurled suddenly to the floor. The teasplashed over the carpet. One of the cups shattered and the otherbounced under the table. Reg leaned against the door frame, white-facedand staring. A frozen instant of time slid silently by while Richard was toostartled to react, then he leaped awkwardly forward to help. But theold man was already apologising and offering to make him another cup.Richard helped him to the sofa. ‘Are you all right?’ asked Richard helplessly. ‘Shall I get adoctor?’ Reg waved him down. ‘It’s all right,’ he insisted, ‘I’m perfectlywell. Thought I heard, well, a noise that startled me. But it wasnothing. Just overcome with the tea fumes, I expect. Let me just catchmy breath. I think a little, er, port will revive me excellently. Sosorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.’ He waved in the general directionof the port decanter. Richard hurriedly poured a small glass and gaveit to him. ‘What kind of noise?’ he asked, wondering what on earth could shockhim so much. At that moment came the sound of movement upstairs and anextraordinary kind of heavy breathing noise. ‘That...’ whispered Reg. The glass of port lay shattered at hisfeet. Upstairs someone seemed to be stamping. ‘Did you hear it?’ ‘Well, yes.’ This seemed to relieve the old man. Richard looked nervously up at the ceiling. ‘Is there someone upthere?’ he asked, feeling this was a lame question, but one that had tobe asked. ‘No,’ said Reg in a low voice that shocked Richard with the fear itcarried, ‘no one. Nobody that should be there.’ ‘Then...’ Reg was struggling shakily to his feet, but there was suddenly afierce determination about him. ‘I must go up there,’ he said quietly. ‘I must. Please wait for mehere.’ ‘Look, what is this?’ demanded Richard, standing between Reg and thedoorway. ‘What is it, a burglar? Look, I’ll go. I’m sure it’s nothing,it’s just the wind or something.’ Richard didn’t know why he was sayingthis. It clearly wasn’t the wind, or even anything like the wind,because though the wind might conceivably make heavy breathing noises,it rarely stamped its feet in that way. ‘No,’ the old man said, politely but firmly moving him aside, ‘it isfor me to do.’ Richard followed him helplessly through the door into the smallhallway, beyond which lay the tiny kitchen. A dark wooden staircase ledup from here; the steps seemed damaged and scuffed. Reg turned on a light. It was a dim one that hung naked at the topof the stairwell, and he looked up it with grim apprehension. ‘Wait here,’ he said, and walked up two steps. He then turned andfaced Richard with a look of the most profound seriousness on his face. ‘I am sorry,’ he said, ‘that you have become involved in what is...the more difficult side of my life. But you are involved now,regrettable though that may be, and there is something I must ask you.I do not know what awaits me up there, do not know exactly. I do notknow if it is something which I have foolishly brought upon myself withmy... my hobbies, or if it is something to which I have fallen aninnocent victim. If it is the former, then I have only myself to blame,for I am like a doctor who cannot give up smoking, or perhaps worsestill, like an ecologist who cannot give up his car -- if the latter,then I hope it may not happen to you. ‘What I must ask you is this. When I come back down these stairs,always supposing of course that I do, then if my behaviour strikes youas being in any way odd, if I appear not to be myself, then you mustleap on me and wrestle me to the ground. Do you understand? You mustprevent me from doing anything I may try to do.’ ‘But how will I know?’ asked an incredulous Richard. ‘Sorry I don’tmean it to sound like that, but I don’t know what...?’ ‘You will know,’ said Reg. ‘Now please wait for me in the main room.And close the door.’ Shaking his head in bewilderment, Richard stepped back and did as hewas asked. From inside the large untidy room he listened to the soundof the Professor’s tread mounting the stairs one at a time. He mounted them with a heavy deliberation, like the ticking of agreat, slow clock. Richard heard him reach the top landing. There he paused in silence.Seconds went by, five, maybe ten, maybe twenty. Then came again theheavy movement and breath that had first so harrowed the Professor. Richard moved quickly to the door but did not open it. The chill ofthe room oppressed and disturbed him. He shook his head to try andshake off the feeling, and then held his breath as the footstepsstarted once again slowly to traverse the two yards of the landing andto pause there again. After only a few seconds, this time Richard heard the long slowsqueak of a door being opened inch by inch, inch by cautious inch,until it must surely now at last be standing wide agape. Nothing further seemed to happen for a long, long time. Then at last the door closed once again, slowly. The footsteps crossed the landing and paused again. Richard backed afew slight paces from the door, staring fixedly at it. Once more thefootsteps started to descend the stairs, slowly, deliberately andquietly, until at last they reached the bottom. Then after a fewseconds more the door handle began to rotate. The door opened and Regwalked calmly in. ‘It’s all right, it’s just a horse in the bathroom,’ he saidquietly. Richard leaped on him and wrestled him to the ground. ‘No,’ gasped Reg, ‘no, get off me, let me go, I’m perfectly allright, damn it. It’s just a horse, a perfectly ordinary horse.’ Heshook Richard off with no great difficulty and sat up, puffing andblowing and pushing his hands through his limited hair. Richard stoodover him warily, but with great and mounting embarrassment. He edgedback, and let Reg stand up and sit on a chair. ‘Just a horse,’ said Reg, ‘but, er, thank you for taking me at myword.’ He brushed himself down. ‘A horse,’ repeated Richard. ‘Yes,’ said Reg. Richard went out and looked up the stairs and then came back in. ‘A horse?’ he said again. ‘Yes, it is,’ said the Professor. ‘Wait --’ he motioned to Richard,who was about to go out again and investigate -- ‘let it be. It won’tbe long.’ Richard stared in disbelief. ‘You say there’s a horse in yourbathroom, and all you can do is stand there naming Beatles songs?’ The Professor looked blankly at him. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry if I... alarmed you earlier, it wasjust a slight turn. These things happen, my dear fellow, don’t upsetyourself about it. Dear me, I’ve known odder things in my time. Many ofthem. Far odder. She’s only a horse, for heaven’s sake. I’ll go and lether out later. Please don’t concern yourself. Let us revive our spiritswith some port.’ ‘But... how did it get in there?’ ‘Well, the bathroom window’s open. I expect she came in throughthat.’ Richard looked at him, not for the first and certainly not for thelast time, through eyes that were narrowed with suspicion. ‘You’re doing it deliberately, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘Doing what, my dear fellow?’ ‘I don’t believe there’s a horse in your bathroom,’ said Richardsuddenly. ‘I don’t know what is there, I don’t know what you’re doing,I don’t know what any of this evening means, but I don’t believethere’s a horse in your bathroom.’ And brushing aside Reg’s furtherprotestations he went up to look. The bathroom was not large. The walls were panelled in old oak linenfold which, given the ageand nature of the building, was quite probably priceless, but otherwisethe fittings were stark and institutional. There was old, scuffed, black-and-white checked linoleum on thefloor, a small basic bath, well cleaned but with very elderly stainsand chips in the enamel, and also a small basic basin with a toothbrushand toothpaste in a Duralex beaker standing next to the taps. Screwedinto the probably priceless panelling above the basin was a tin mirror-fronted bathroom cabinet. It looked as if it had been repainted manytimes, and the mirror was stained round the edges with condensation.The lavatory had an old-fashioned cast-iron chain-pull cistern. Therewas an old cream-painted wooden cupboard standing in the corner, withan old brown bentwood chair next to it, on which lay some neatly foldedbut threadbare small towels. There was also a large horse in the room,taking up most of it. Richard stared at it, and it stared at Richard in an appraising kindof way. Richard swayed slightly. The horse stood quite still. After awhile it looked at the cupboard instead. It seemed, if not content,then at least perfectly resigned to being where it was until it was putsomewhere else. It also seemed... what was it? It was bathed in the glow of the moonlight that streamed in throughthe window. The window was open but small and was, besides, on thesecond floor, so the notion that the horse had entered by that routewas entirely fanciful. There was something odd about the horse, but he couldn’t say what.Well, there was one thing that was clearly very odd about it indeed,which was that it was standing in a college bathroom. Maybe that wasall. He reached out, rather tentatively, to pat the creature on its neck.It felt normal -- firm, glossy, it was in good condition. The effect ofthe moonlight on its coat was a little mazy, but everything looks alittle odd by moonlight. The horse shook its mane a little when hetouched it, but didn’t seem to mind too much. After the success of patting it, Richard stroked it a few times andscratched it gently under the jaw. Then he noticed that there wasanother door into the bathroom, in the far corner. He moved cautiouslyaround the horse and approached the other door. He backed up against itand pushed it open tentatively. It just opened into the Professor’s bedroom, a small room clutteredwith books and shoes and a small single bed. This room, too, hadanother door, which opened out on to the landing again. Richard noticed that the floor of the landing was newly scuffed andscratched as the stairs had been, and these marks were consistent withthe idea that the horse had somehow been pushed up the stairs. Hewouldn’t have liked to have had to do it himself, and he would haveliked to have been the horse having it done to him even less, but itwas just about possible. But why? He had one last look at the horse, which had one last lookback at him, and then he returned downstairs. ‘I agree,’ he said. ‘You have a horse in your bathroom and I will,after all, have a little port.’ He poured some for himself, and then some for Reg, who was quietlycontemplating the fire and was in need of a refill. ‘Just as well I did put out three glasses after all,’ said Regchattily. ‘I wondered why earlier, and now I remember. ‘You asked if you could bring a friend, but appear not to have doneso. On account of the sofa no doubt. Never mind, these things happen.Whoa, not too much, you’ll spill it.’ All horse-related questions left Richard’s mind abruptly. ‘I did?’ he said. ‘Oh yes. I remember now. You rang me back to ask me if it would beall right, as I recall. I said I would be charmed, and fully intendedto be. I’d saw the thing up if I were you. Don’t want to sacrifice yourhappiness to a sofa. Or maybe she decided that an evening with your oldtutor would be blisteringly dull and opted for the more exhilaratingcourse of washing her hair instead. Dear me, I know what I would havedone. It’s only lack of hair that forces me to pursue such a hecticsocial round these days.’ It was Richard’s turn to be white-faced and staring. Yes, he had assumed that Susan would not want to come. Yes, he had said to her it would be terribly dull. But she hadinsisted that she wanted to come because it would be the only way she’dget to see his face for a few minutes not bathed in the light of acomputer screen, so he had agreed and arranged that he would bring herafter all. Only he had completely forgotten this. He had not picked her up. He said, ‘Can I use your phone, please?’

[::: CHAPTER 9 ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::]
Gordon Way lay on the ground, unclear about what to do. He was dead. There seemed little doubt about that. There was ahorrific hole in his chest, but the blood that was gobbing out of ithad slowed to a trickle. Otherwise there was no movement from his chestat all, or, indeed, from any other part of him. He looked up, and from side to side, and it became clear to him thatwhatever part of him it was that was moving, it wasn’t any part of hisbody. The mist rolled slowly over him, and explained nothing. At a fewfeet distant from him his shotgun lay smoking quietly in the grass. He continued to lie there, like someone lying awake at four o’clockin the morning, unable to put their mind to rest, but unable to findanything to do with it. He realised that he had just had something of ashock, which might account for his inability to think clearly, butdidn’t account for his ability actually to think at all. In the great debate that has raged for centuries about what, ifanything, happens to you after death, be it heaven, hell, purgatory orextinction, one thing has never been in doubt -- that you would atleast know the answer when you were dead. Gordon Way was dead, but he simply hadn’t the slightest idea what hewas meant to do about it. It wasn’t a situation he had encounteredbefore. He sat up. The body that sat up seemed as real to him as the bodythat still lay slowly cooling on the ground, giving up its blood heatin wraiths of steam that mingled with the mist of the chill night air. Experimenting a bit further, he tried standing up, slowly,wonderingly and wobblingly. The ground seemed to give him support, ittook his weight. But then of course he appeared to have no weight thatneeded to be taken. When he bent to touch the ground he could feelnothing save a kind of distant rubbery resistance like the sensationyou get if you try and pick something up when your arm has gone dead.His arm had gone dead. His legs too, and his other arm, and all historso and his head. His body was dead. He could not say why his mind was not. He stood in a kind of frozen, sleepless horror while the mist curledslowly through him. He looked back down at the him, the ghastly, astonished-looking him-thing lying still and mangled on the ground, and his flesh wanted tocreep. Or rather, he wanted flesh that could creep. He wanted flesh. Hewanted body. He had none. A sudden cry of horror escaped from his mouth but was nothing andwent nowhere. He shook and felt nothing. Music and a pool of light seeped from his car. He walked towards it.He tried to walk sturdily, but it was a faint and feeble kind ofwalking, uncertain and, well, insubstantial. The ground felt frailbeneath his feet. The door of the car was still open on the driver’s side, as he hadleft it when he had leaped out to deal with the boot lid, thinking he’donly be two seconds. That was all of two minutes ago now, when he’d been alive. When he’dbeen a person. When he’d thought he was going to be leaping straightback in and driving off. Two minutes and a lifetime ago. This was insane, wasn’t it? he thought suddenly. He walked around the door and bent down to peer into the externalrear-view mirror. He looked exactly like himself, albeit like himself after he’d had aterrible fright, which was to be expected, but that was him, that wasnormal. This must be something he was imagining, some horrible kind ofwaking dream. He had a sudden thought and tried breathing on the rear-view mirror. Nothing. Not a single droplet formed. That would satisfy a doctor,that’s what they always did on television -- if no mist formed on themirror, there was no breath. Perhaps, he thought anxiously to himself,perhaps it was something to do with having heated wing mirrors. Didn’tthis car have heated wing mirrors? Hadn’t the salesman gone on and onabout heated this, electric that, and servo-assisted the other? Maybethey were digital wing mirrors. That was it. Digital, heated, servo-assisted, computer-controlled, breath-resistant wing mirrors... He was, he realised, thinking complete nonsense. He turned slowlyand gazed again in apprehension at the body lying on the ground behindhim with half its chest blown away. That would certainly satisfy adoctor. The sight would be appalling enough if it was somebody else’sbody, but his own... He was dead. Dead... dead... He tried to make the word tolldramatically in his mind, but it wouldn’t. He was not a film soundtrack, he was just dead. Peering at his body in appalled fascination, he gradually becamedistressed by the expression of asinine stupidity on its face. It was perfectly understandable, of course. It was just such anexpression as somebody who is in the middle of being shot with his ownshotgun by somebody who had been hiding in the boot of his car might beexpected to wear, but he nevertheless disliked the idea that anyonemight find him looking like that. He knelt down beside it in the hope of being able to rearrange hisfeatures into some semblance of dignity, or at least basicintelligence. It proved to be almost impossibly difficult. He tried to knead theskin, the sickeningly familiar skin, but somehow he couldn’t seem toget a proper grip on it, or on anything. It was like trying to modelplasticine when your arm has gone to sleep, except that instead of hisgrip slipping off the model, it would slip through it. In this case,his hand slipped through his face. Nauseated horror and rage swept through him at his sheer bloodyblasted impotence, and he was suddenly startled to find himselfthrottling and shaking his own dead body with a firm and furious grip.He staggered back in amazed shock. All he had managed to do was to addto the inanely stupefied look of the corpse a twisted-up mouth and asquint. And bruises flowering on its neck. He started to sob, and this time sound seemed to come, a strangehowling from deep within whatever this thing he had become was.Clutching his hands to his face, he staggered backwards, retreated tohis car and flung himself into the seat. The seat received him in aloose and distant kind of way, like an aunt who disapproves of the lastfifteen years of your life and will therefore furnish you with a basicsherry, but refuses to catch your eye. Could he get himself to a doctor? To avoid facing the absurdity of the idea he grappled violently withthe steering wheel, but his hands slipped through it. He tried towrestle with the automatic transmission shift and ended up thumping itin rage, but not being able properly to grasp or push it. The stereo was still playing light orchestral music into thetelephone, which had been lying on the passenger seat listeningpatiently all this time. He stared at it and realised with a growingfever of excitement that he was still connected to Susan’s telephone-answering machine. It was the type that would simply run and run untilhe hung up. He was still in contact with the world. He tried desperately to pick up the receiver, fumbled, let it slip,and was in the end reduced to bending himself down over its mouthpiece.‘Susan!’ he cried into it, his voice a hoarse and distant wail on thewind. ‘Susan, help me! Help me for God’s sake. Susan, I’m dead... I’mdead... I’m dead and... I don’t know what to do...’ He broke downagain, sobbing in desperation, and tried to cling to the phone like ababy clinging to its blanket for comfort. ‘Help me, Susan...’ he cried again. ‘Beep,’ said the phone. He looked down at it again where he was cuddling it. He had managedto push something after all. He had managed to push the button whichdisconnected the call. Feverishly he attempted to grapple the thingagain, but it constantly slipped through his fingers and eventually layimmobile on the seat. He could not touch it. He could not push thebuttons. In rage he flung it at the windscreen. It responded to that,all right. It hit the windscreen, careered straight back though him,bounced off the seat and then lay still on the transmission tunnel,impervious to all his further attempts to touch it. For several minutes still he sat there, his head nodding slowly asterror began to recede into blank desolation. A couple of cars passed by, but would have noticed nothing odd -- acar stopped by the wayside. Passing swiftly in the night theirheadlights would probably not have picked out the body lying in thegrass behind the car. They certainly would not have noticed a ghostsitting inside it crying to himself. He didn’t know how long he sat there. He was hardly aware of timepassing, only that it didn’t seem to pass quickly. There was littleexternal stimulus to mark its passage. He didn’t feel cold. In fact hecould almost not remember what cold meant or felt like, he just knewthat it was something he would have expected to feel at this moment. Eventually he stirred from his pathetic huddle. He would have to dosomething, though he didn’t know what. Perhaps he should try and reachhis cottage, though he didn’t know what he would do when he got there.He just needed something to try for. He needed to make it through thenight. Pulling himself together he slipped out of the car, his foot andknee grazing easily through part of the door frame. He went to lookagain at his body, but it wasn’t there. As if the night hadn’t produced enough shocks already. He started,and stared at the damp depression in the grass. His body was not there.