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.

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.

Chapters 10 to 14

[::: CHAPTER 10 :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::]
Richard made the hastiest departure that politeness would allow. He said thank you very much and what a splendid evening it had beenand that any time Reg was coming up to London he must let him, Richard,know and was there anything he could do to help about the horse. No?Well, all right then, if you’re sure, and thank you again, so much. He stood there for a moment or two after the door finally closed,pondering things. He had noticed during the short time that the light from Reg’s roomflooded out on to the landing of the main staircase, that there were nomarks on the floorboards there at all. It seemed odd that the horseshould only have scuffed the floorboards inside Reg’s room. Well, it all seemed very odd, full stop, but here was yet anothercurious fact to add to the growing pile. This was supposed to have beena relaxing evening away from work. On an impulse he knocked on the door opposite to Reg’s. It took sucha long time to be answered that Richard had given up and was turning togo when at last he heard the door creak open. He had a slight shock when he saw that staring sharply up at himlike a small and suspicious bird was the don with the racing-yacht keelfor a nose. ‘Er, sorry,’ said Richard, abruptly, ‘but, er, have you seen orheard a horse coming up this staircase tonight?’ The man stopped his obsessive twitching of his fingers. He cockedhis head slightly on one side and then seemed to need to go on a longjourney inside himself to find a voice, which when found turned out tobe a thin and soft little one. He said, ‘That is the first thing anybody has said to me forseventeen years, three months and two days, five hours, nineteenminutes and twenty seconds. I’ve been counting.’ He closed the door softly again. Richard virtually ran through Second Court. When he reached First Court he steadied himself and slowed down to awalking pace. The chill night air was rasping in his lungs and there was no pointin running. He hadn’t managed to talk to Susan because Reg’s phonewasn’t working, and this was another thing that he had beenmysteriously coy about. That at least was susceptible of a rationalexplanation. He probably hadn’t paid his phone bill. Richard was about to emerge out on to the street when instead hedecided to pay a quick visit to the porter’s lodge, which was tuckedaway inside the great archway entrance into the college. It was a smallhutchlike place filled with keys, messages and a single electric barheater. A radio nattered to itself in the background. ‘Excuse me,’ he said to the large black-suited man standing behindthe counter with his arms folded. ‘I...’ ‘Yes, Mr MacDuff, what can I do for you?’ In his present state of mind Richard would have been hard-pressedhimself to remember his own name and was startled for a moment.However, college porters are legendary for their ability to performsuch feats of memory, and for their tendency to show them off at theslightest provocation. ‘Is there,’ said Richard, ‘a horse anywhere in the college -- thatyou know of? I mean, you would know if there was a horse in thecollege, wouldn’t you?’ The porter didn’t blink. ‘No, sir, and yes, sir. Anything else I can help you with, MrMacDuff, sir?’ ‘Er, no,’ said Richard and tapped his fingers a couple of times onthe counter. ‘No. Thank you. Thank you very much for your help. Nice tosee you again, er... Bob,’ he hazarded. ‘Good-night, then.’ He left. The porter remained perfectly still with his arms folded, butshaking his head a very, very little bit. ‘Here’s some coffee for you, Bill,’ said another porter, a shortwiry one, emerging from an inner sanctum with a steaming cup. ‘Gettinga bit colder tonight?’ ‘I think it is, Fred, thanks,’ said Bill, taking the cup. He took a sip. ‘You can say what you like about people, they don’tget any less peculiar. Fellow in here just now asking if there was ahorse in the college.’ ‘Oh yes?’ Fred sipped at his own coffee, and let the steam smart hiseyes. ‘I had a chap in here earlier. Sort of strange foreign priest.Couldn’t understand a word he said at first. But he seemed happy justto stand by the fire and listen to the news on the radio.’ ‘Foreigners, eh.’ ‘In the end I told him to shoot off. Standing in front of my firelike that. Suddenly he says is that really what he must do? Shoot off?I said, in my best Bogart voice, “You better believe it, buddy.”’ ‘Really? Sounded more like Jimmy Cagney to me.’ ‘No, that’s my Bogart voice. This is my Jimmy Cagney voice -- “Youbetter believe it, buddy.”’ Bill frowned at him. ‘Is that your Jimmy Cagney voice? I alwaysthought that was your Kenneth McKellar voice.’ ‘You don’t listen properly, Bill, you haven’t got the ear. This isKenneth McKellar. “Oh, you take the high road and I’ll take the lowroad...”’ ‘Oh, I see. I was thinking of the Scottish Kenneth McKellar. So whatdid this priest fellow say then, Fred?’ ‘Oh, he just looked me straight in the eyes, Bill, and said in thisstrange sort of...’ ‘Skip the accent, Fred, just tell me what he said, if it’s worthhearing.’ ‘He just said he did believe me.’ ‘So. Not a very interesting story then, Fred.’ ‘Well, maybe not. I only mention it because he also said that he’dleft his horse in a washroom and would I see that it was all right.’

[::: CHAPTER 11 :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::]
Gordon Way drifted miserably along the dark road, or rather, triedto drift. He felt that as a ghost -- which is what he had to admit to himselfhe had become -- he should be able to drift. He knew little enoughabout ghosts, but he felt that if you were going to be one then thereought to be certain compensations for not having a physical body to lugaround, and that among them ought to be the ability simply to drift.But no, it seemed he was going to have to walk every step of the way. His aim was to try and make it to his house. He didn’t know what hewould do when he got there, but even ghosts have to spend the nightsomewhere, and he felt that being in familiar surroundings might help.Help what, he didn’t know. At least the journey gave him an objective,and he would just have to think of another one when he arrived. He trudged despondently from lamppost to lamppost, stopping at eachone to look at bits of himself. He was definitely getting a bit wraithlike. At times he would fade almost to nothing, and would seem to belittle more than a shadow playing in the mist, a dream of himself thatcould just evaporate and be gone. At other times he seemed to be almostsolid and real again. Once or twice he would try leaning against alamppost, and would fall straight through it if he wasn’t careful. At last, and with great reluctance, he actually began to turn hismind to what it was that had happened. Odd, that reluctance. He reallydidn’t want to think about it. Psychologists say that the mind willoften try to suppress the memory of traumatic events, and this, hethought, was probably the answer. After all, if having a strange figurejump out of the boot of your own car and shoot you dead didn’t count asa traumatic experience, he’d like to know what did. He trudged on wearily. He tried to recall the figure to his mind’s eye, but it was likeprobing a hurting tooth, and he thought of other things. Like, was his will up-to-date? He couldn’t remember, and made amental note to call his lawyer tomorrow, and then made another mentalnote that he would have to stop making mental notes like that. How would his company survive without him? He didn’t like either ofthe possible answers to that very much. What about his obituary? There was a thought that chilled him to hisbones, wherever they’d got to. Would he be able to get hold of a copy?What would it say? They’d better give him a good write-up, thebastards. Look at what he’d done. Single-handedly saved the Britishsoftware industry: huge exports, charitable contributions, researchscholarships, crossing the Atlantic in a solar-powered submarine(failed, but a good try) -- all sorts of things. They’d better not godigging up that Pentagon stuff again or he’d get his lawyer on to them.He made a mental note to call him in the mor... No. Anyway, can a dead person sue for libel? Only his lawyer would know,and he was not going to be able to call him in the morning. He knewwith a sense of creeping dread that of all the things he had leftbehind in the land of the living it was the telephone that he was goingto miss the most, and then he turned his mind determinedly back towhere it didn’t want to go. The figure. It seemed to him that the figure had been almost like a figure ofDeath itself; or was that his imagination playing tricks with him? Washe dreaming that it was a cowled figure? What would any figure, whethercowled or just casually dressed, be doing in the boot of his car? At that moment a car zipped past him on the road and disappeared offinto the night, taking its oasis of light with it. He thought withlonging of the warm, leather-upholstered, climate-controlled comfort ofhis own car abandoned on the road behind him, and then a suddenextraordinary thought struck him. Was there any way he could hitch a lift? Could anyone actually seehim? How would anyone react if they could? Well, there was only one wayto find out. He heard another car coming up in the distance behind him and turnedto face it. The twin pools of hazy lights approached through the mistand Gordon gritted his phantom teeth and stuck his thumb out at them. The car swept by regardless. Nothing. Angrily he made an indistinct V sign at the receding red rearlights, and realised, looking straight through his own upraised arm,that he wasn’t at his most visible at the moment. Was there perhapssome effort of will he could make to render himself more visible whenhe wanted to? He screwed up his eyes in concentration, then realisedthat he would need to have his eyes open in order to judge the results.He tried again, forcing his mind as hard as he could, but the resultswere unsatisfactory. Though it did seem to make some kind of rudimentary, glowingdifference, he couldn’t sustain it, and it faded almost immediately,however much he piled on the mental pressure. He would have to judgethe timing very carefully if he was going to make his presence felt, orat least seen. Another car approached from behind, travelling fast. He turnedagain, stuck his thumb out, waited till the moment was right and willedhimself visible. The car swerved slightly, and then carried on its way, only a littlemore slowly. Well, that was something. What else could he do? He wouldgo and stand under a lamppost for a start, and he would practise. Thenext car he would get for sure.

[::: CHAPTER 12 :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::]
‘...so if you’d like to leave a message, I’ll get back to you assoon as possible. Maybe.’ Beep. ‘Shit. Damn. Hold on a minute. Blast. Look... er...’ Click. Richard pushed the phone back into its cradle and slammed his carinto reverse for twenty yards to have another look at the sign-post bythe road junction he’d just sped past in the mist. He had extractedhimself from the Cambridge one-way system by the usual method, whichinvolved going round and round it faster and faster until he achieved asort of escape velocity and flew off at a tangent in a randomdirection, which he was now trying to identify and correct for. Arriving back at the junction he tried to correlate the informationon the signpost with the information on the map. But it couldn’t bedone. The road junction was quite deliberately sitting on a page divideon the map, and the signpost was revolving maliciously in the wind.Instinct told him that he was heading in the wrong direction, but hedidn’t want to go back the way he’d come for fear of getting suckedback into the gravitational whirlpool of Cambridge’s traffic system. He turned left, therefore, in the hope of finding better fortune inthat direction, but after a while lost his nerve and turned aspeculative right, and then chanced another exploratory left and aftera few more such manoeuvres was thoroughly lost. He swore to himself and turned up the heating in the car. If he hadbeen concentrating on where he was going rather than trying to navigateand telephone at the same time, he told himself, he would at least knowwhere he was now. He didn’t actually like having a telephone in hiscar, he found it a bother and an intrusion. But Gordon had insisted andindeed had paid for it. He sighed in exasperation, backed up the black Saab and turnedaround again. As he did so he nearly ran into someone lugging a bodyinto a field. At least that was what it looked like for a second to hisoverwrought brain, but in fact it was probably a local farmer with asackful of something nutritious, though what he was doing with it on anight like this was anyone’s guess. As his headlights swung aroundagain, they caught for a moment a silhouette of the figure trudging offacross the field with the sack on his back. ‘Rather him than me,’ thought Richard grimly, and drove off again. After a few minutes he reached a junction with what looked a littlemore like a main road, nearly turned right down it, but then turnedleft instead. There was no signpost. He poked at the buttons on his phone again. ‘...get back to you as soon as possible. Maybe.’ Beep. ‘Susan, it’s Richard. Where do I start? What a mess. Look I’m sorry,sorry, sorry. I screwed up very badly, and it’s all my fault. And look,whatever it takes to make up for it, I’ll do it, solemn promise...’ He had a slight feeling that this wasn’t the right tone to adoptwith an answering machine, but he carried straight on. ‘Honestly, we can go away, take a holiday for a week, or even justthis weekend if you like. Really, this weekend. We’ll go somewheresunny. Doesn’t matter how much pressure Gordon tries to put on me, andyou know the sort of pressure he can muster, he is your brother, afterall. I’ll just... er, actually, it might have to be next weekend. Damn,damn, damn. It’s just that I really have promised to get, no, look, itdoesn’t matter. We’ll just do it. I don’t care about getting Anthemfinished for Comdex. It’s not the end of the world. We’ll just go.Gordon will just have to take a running jump -- Gaaarghhhh!’ Richard swerved wildly to avoid the spectre of Gordon Way whichsuddenly loomed in his headlights and took a running jump at him. He slammed on the brakes, started to skid, tried to remember what itwas you were supposed to do when you found yourself skidding, he knewhe’d seen it on some television programme about driving he’d seen agesago, what was the programme? God, he couldn’t even remember the titleof the programme, let alone -- oh yes, they’d said you mustn’t slam onthe brakes. That was it. The world swung sickeningly around him withslow and appalling force as the car slewed across the road, spun,thudded against the grass verge, then slithered and rocked itself to ahalt, facing the wrong way. He collapsed, panting, against the steeringwheel. He picked up the phone from where he’d dropped it. ‘Susan,’ he gasped, ‘I’ll get back to you,’ and hung up. He raised his eyes. Standing full in the glare of his headlights was the spectral figureof Gordon Way staring straight in through the windscreen with ghastlyhorror in its eyes, slowly raising its hand and pointing at him. He wasn’t sure how long he just sat there. The apparition had meltedfrom view in a few seconds, but Richard simply sat, shaking, probablyfor not more than a minute, until a sudden squeal of brakes and glareof lights roused him. He shook his head. He was, he realised, stopped in the road facingthe wrong way. The car that had just screeched to an abrupt halt almostbumper to bumper with him was a police car. He took two or three deepbreaths and then, stiff and trembling, he climbed out and stood up toface the officer who was walking slowly towards him, silhouetted in thepolice car’s headlights. The officer looked him up and down. ‘Er, I’m sorry, officer,’ said Richard, with as much calmness as hecould wrench into his voice. ‘I, er, skidded. The roads are slipperyand I, er... skidded. I spun round. As you see, I, I’m facing the wrongway.’ He gestured at his car to indicate the way it was facing. ‘Like to tell me why it was you skidded then, exactly, sir?’ Thepolice officer was looking him straight in the eye while pulling out anotebook. ‘Well, as I said,’ explained Richard, ‘the roads are slipperybecause of the mist, and, well, to be perfectly honest,’ he suddenlyfound himself saying, in spite of all his attempts to stop himself, ‘Iwas just driving along and I suddenly imagined that I saw my employerthrowing himself in front of my car.’ The officer gazed at him levelly. ‘Guilt complex, officer,’ added Richard with a twitch of a smile,‘you know how it is. I was contemplating taking the weekend off.’ The police officer seemed to hesitate, balanced on a knife edgebetween sympathy and suspicion. His eyes narrowed a little but didn’twaver. ‘Been drinking, sir?’ ‘Yes,’ said Richard, with a quick sigh, ‘but very little. Twoglasses of wine max. Er... and a small glass of port. Absolute max. Itwas really just a lapse of concentration. I’m fine now.’ ‘Name?’ Richard gave him his name and address. The policeman wrote it alldown carefully and neatly in his book, then peered at the carregistration number and wrote that down too. ‘And who is your employer then, sir?’ ‘His name is Way. Gordon Way.’ ‘Oh,’ said the policeman raising his eyebrows, ‘the computergentleman.’ ‘Er, yes, that’s right. I design software for the company.WayForward Technologies II.’ ‘We’ve got one of your computers down the station,’ said thepoliceman. ‘Buggered if I can get it to work.’ ‘Oh,’ said Richard wearily, ‘which model do you have?’ ‘I think it’s called a Quark II.’ ‘Oh, well that’s simple,’ said Richard with relief. ‘It doesn’twork. Never has done. The thing is a heap of shit.’ ‘Funny thing, sir, that’s what I’ve always said,’ said thepoliceman. ‘Some of the other lads don’t agree.’ ‘Well, you’re absolutely right, officer. The thing is hopeless. It’sthe major reason the original company went bust. I suggest you use itas a big paperweight.’ ‘Well, I wouldn’t like to do that, sir,’ the policeman persisted.‘The door would keep blowing open.’ ‘What do you mean, officer?’ asked Richard. ‘I use it to keep the door closed, sir. Nasty draughts down ourstation this time of year. In the summer, of course, we beat suspectsround the head with it.’ He flipped his book closed and prodded it into his pocket. ‘My advice to you, sir, is to go nice and easy on the way back. Lockup the car and spend the weekend getting completely pissed. I find it’sthe only way. Mind how you go now.’ He returned to his car, wound down the window, and watched Richardmanoeuvre his car around and drive off into the night before headingoff himself. Richard took a deep breath, drove calmly back to London, let himselfcalmly into his flat, clambered calmly over the sofa, sat down, pouredhimself a stiff brandy and began seriously to shake. There were three things he was shaking about. There was the simple physical shock of his near-accident, which isthe sort of thing that always churns you up a lot more than you expect.The body floods itself with adrenaline, which then hangs around yoursystem turning sour. Then there was the cause of the skid -- the extraordinary apparitionof Gordon throwing himself in front of his car at that moment. Boy ohboy. Richard took a mouthful of brandy and gargled with it. He put theglass down. It was well known that Gordon was one of the world’s richest naturalresources of guilt pressure, and that he could deliver a ton on yourdoorstep fresh every morning, but Richard hadn’t realised he had let itget to him to such an unholy degree. He took up his glass again, went upstairs and pushed open the doorto his workroom, which involved shifting a stack of BYTE magazines thathad toppled against it. He pushed them away with his foot and walked tothe end of the large room. A lot of glass at this end let in views overa large part of north London, from which the mist was now clearing. StPaul’s glowed in the dark distance and he stared at it for a moment ortwo but it didn’t do anything special. After the events of the eveninghe found this came as a pleasant surprise. At the other end of the room were a couple of long tables smotheredin, at the last count, six Macintosh computers. In the middle was theMac II on which a red wire-frame model of his sofa was lazily revolvingwithin a blue wire-frame model of his narrow staircase, complete withbanister rail, radiator and fuse-box details, and of course the awkwardturn halfway up. The sofa would start out spinning in one direction, hit anobstruction, twist itself in another plane, hit another obstruction,revolve round a third axis until it was stopped again, then cyclethrough the moves again in a different order. You didn’t have to watchthe sequence for very long before you saw it repeat itself. The sofa was clearly stuck. Three other Macs were connected up via long tangles of cable to anuntidy agglomeration of synthesisers -- an Emulator II+ HD sampler, arack of TX modules, a Prophet VS, a Roland JX 10, a Korg DW8000, anOctapad, a left-handed Synth-Axe MIDI guitar controller, and even anold drum machine stacked up and gathering dust in the corner -- prettymuch the works. There was also a small and rarely used cassette taperecorder: all the music was stored in sequencer files on the computersrather than on tape. He dumped himself into a seat in front of one of the Macs to seewhat, if anything, it was doing. It was displaying an ‘Untitled’Excel spreadsheet and he wondered why. He saved it and looked to see if he’d left himself any notes andquickly discovered that the spreadsheet contained some of the data hehad previously downloaded after searching the World Reporter andKnowledge on-line databases for facts about swallows. He now had figures which detailed their migratory habits, their wingshapes, their aerodynamic profile and turbulence characteristics, andsome sort of rudimentary figures concerning the patterns that a flockwould adopt in flight, but as yet he had only the faintest idea as tohow he was going to synthesise them all together. Because he was too tired to think particularly constructivelytonight he savagely selected and copied a whole swathe of figures fromthe spreadsheet at random, pasted them into his own conversion program,which scaled and filtered and manipulated the figures according to hisown experimental algorithms, loaded the converted file intoPerformer, a powerful sequencer program, and played the resultthrough random MIDI channels to whichever synthesisers happened to beon at the moment. The result was a short burst of the most hideous cacophony, and hestopped it. He ran the conversion program again, this time instructing it toforce-map the pitch values into G minor. This was a utility he wasdetermined in the end to get rid of because he regarded it as cheating.If there was any basis to his firmly held belief that the rhythms andharmonies of music which he found most satisfying could be found in, orat least derived from, the rhythms and harmonies of naturally occurringphenomena, then satisfying forms of modality and intonation shouldemerge naturally as well, rather than being forced. For the moment, though, he forced it. The result was a short burst of the most hideous cacophony in Gminor. So much for random shortcuts. The first task was a relatively simple one, which would be simply toplot the waveform described by the tip of a swallow’s wing as it flies,then synthesise that waveform. That way he would end up with a singlenote, which would be a good start, and it shouldn’t take more than theweekend to do. Except, of course, that he didn’t have a weekend available to do itin because he had somehow to get Version 2 of Anthem out of the doorsometime during the course of the next year, or ‘month’ as Gordoncalled it. Which brought Richard inexorably to the third thing he was shakingabout. There was absolutely no way that he could take the time off thisweekend or next to fulfil the promise he had made to Susan’s telephone-answering machine. And that, if this evening’s débacle had not alreadydone so, would surely spell the final end. But that was it. The thing was done. There is nothing you can doabout a message on someone else’s answering machine other than letevents take their course. It was done. It was irrevocable. An odd thought suddenly struck him. It took him by considerable surprise, but he couldn’t really seewhat was wrong with it.

[::: CHAPTER 13 :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::]
A pair of binoculars scanning the London night skyline, idly,curious, snooping. A little look here, a little look there, just seeingwhat’s going on, anything interesting, anything useful. The binoculars settle on the back of one particular house, attractedby a slight movement. One of those large late-Victorian villas,probably flats now. Lots of black iron drainpipes. Green rubberdustbins. But dark. No, nothing. The binoculars are just moving onwards when another slight movementcatches in the moonlight. The binoculars refocus very slightly, tryingto find a detail, a hard edge, a slight contrast in the darkness. Themist has lifted now, and the darkness glistens. They refocus a very,very little more. There it is. Something, definitely. Only this time a little higherup, maybe a foot or so, maybe a yard. The binoculars settle and relax -- steady, trying for the edge, trying for the detail. There. Thebinoculars settle again -- they have found their mark, straddledbetween a windowsill and a drainpipe. It is a dark figure, splayed against the wall, looking down, lookingfor a new foothold, looking upwards, looking for a ledge. Thebinoculars peer intently. The figure is that of a tall, thin man. His clothes are right forthe job, dark trousers, dark sweater, but his movements are awkward andangular. Nervous. Interesting. The binoculars wait and consider,consider and judge. The man is clearly a rank amateur. Look at his fumbling. Look at his ineptitude. His feet slip on thedrainpipe, his hands can’t reach the ledge. He nearly falls. He waitsto catch his breath. For a moment he starts to climb back down again,but seems to find that even tougher going. He lunges again for the ledge and this time catches it. His footshoots out to steady himself and nearly misses the pipe. Could havebeen very nasty, very nasty indeed. But now the way is easier and progress is better. He crosses toanother pipe, reaches a third-floor window ledge, flirts briefly withdeath as he crawls painfully on to it, and makes the cardinal error andlooks down. He sways briefly and sits back heavily. He shades his eyesand peers inside to check that the room is dark, and sets about gettingthe window open. One of the things that distinguish the amateur from the professionalis that this is the point when the amateur thinks it would have been agood idea to bring along something to prise the window open with.Luckily for this amateur the householder is an amateur too, and thesash window slides grudgingly up. The climber crawls, with some relief,inside. He should be locked up for his own protection, think the binoculars.A hand starts to reach for the phone. At the window a face looks backout and for a moment is caught in the moonlight, then it ducks backinside to carry on with its business. The hand stays hovering over the phone for a moment or two, whilethe binoculars wait and consider, consider and judge. The hand reachesinstead for the A-Z street map of London. There is a long studious pause, a little more intent binocular work,and then the hand reaches for the phone again, lifts it and dials.

[::: CHAPTER 14 :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::]
Susan’s flat was small but spacious, which was a trick, reflectedRichard tensely as he turned on the light, that only women seemed ableto pull off. It wasn’t that observation which made him tense, of course -- he’dthought it before, many times. Every time he’d been in her flat, infact. It always struck him, usually because he had just come from hisown flat, which was four times the size and cramped. He’d just comefrom his own flat this time, only via a rather eccentric route, and itwas this that made his usual observation unusually tense. Despite the chill of the night he was sweating. He looked back out of the window, turned and tiptoed across the roomtowards where the telephone and the answering machine stood on theirown small table. There was no point, he told himself, in tiptoeing. Susan wasn’t in.He would be extremely interested to know where she was, in fact -- justas she, he told himself, had probably been extremely interested inknowing where he had been at the beginning of the evening. He realised he was still tiptoeing. He hit his leg to make himselfstop doing it, but carried on doing it none the less. Climbing up the outside wall had been terrifying. He wiped his forehead with the arm of his oldest and greasiestsweater. There had been a nasty moment when his life had flashed beforehis eyes but he had been too preoccupied with falling and had missedall the good bits. Most of the good bits had involved Susan, herealised. Susan or computers. Never Susan and computers -- those hadlargely been the bad bits. Which was why he was here, he told himself.He seemed to need convincing, and told himself again. He looked at his watch. Eleven forty-five. It occurred to him he had better go and wash his wet and dirty handsbefore he touched anything. It wasn’t the police he was worried about,but Susan’s terrifying cleaner. She would know. He went into the bathroom, turned on the light switch, wiped it, andthen stared at his own startled face in the bright neon-lit mirror ashe ran the water over his hands. For a moment he thought of thedancing, warm candlelight of the Coleridge Dinner, and the images of itwelled up out of the dim and distant past of the earlier part of theevening. Life had seemed easy then, and carefree. The wine, theconversation, simple conjuring tricks. He pictured the round pale faceof Sarah, pop-eyed with wonder. He washed his own face. He thought: ‘...Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair!’ He brushed his own hair. He thought, too, of the pictures hanginghigh in the darkness above their heads. He cleaned his teeth. The lowbuzz of the neon light snapped him back to the present and he suddenlyremembered with appalled shock that he was here in his capacity asburglar. Something made him look himself directly in the face in the mirror,then he shook his head, trying to clear it. When would Susan be back? That, of course, would depend on what shewas doing. He quickly wiped his hands and made his way back to theanswering machine. He prodded at the buttons and his conscience proddedback at him. The tape wound back for what seemed to be an interminabletime, and he realised with a jolt that it was probably because Gordonhad been in full flood. He had forgotten, of course, that there would be messages on thetape other than his own, and listening to other people’s phone messageswas tantamount to opening their mail. He explained to himself once again that all he was trying to do wasto undo a mistake he had made before it caused any irrevocable damage.He would just play the tiniest snippets till he found his own voice.That wouldn’t be too bad, he wouldn’t even be able to distinguish whatwas being said. He groaned inwardly, gritted his teeth and stabbed at the Playbutton so roughly that he missed it and ejected the cassette bymistake. He put it back in and pushed the Play button more carefully. Beep. ‘Oh, Susan, hi, it’s Gordon,’ said the answering machine. ‘I’m juston my way to the cottage. It’s, er...’ He wound on for a couple ofseconds. ‘...need to know that Richard is on the case. I mean reallyon...’ Richard set his mouth grimly and stabbed at the Fast Forwardagain. He really hated the fact that Gordon tried to put pressure onhim via Susan, which Gordon always stoutly denied he did. Richardcouldn’t blame Susan for getting exasperated about his work sometimesif this sort of thing was going on.’ Click. ‘...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 theright height for rabbits to see.’ ‘What?’ muttered Richard to himself, and his finger hesitated fora second over the Fast Forward button. He had a feeling that Gordondesperately wanted to be like Howard Hughes, and if he could never hopeto be remotely as rich, he could at least try to be twice as eccentric.An act. A palpable act. ‘That’s secretary Susan at the office, not you, of course,’continued Gordon’s voice on the answering machine. ‘Where was I? Ohyes. Richard and Anthem 2.00. Susan, that thing has got to be in betatesting in two...’ Richard stabbed at the Fast Forward, tight-lipped. ‘...point is that there’s only one person who’s really in a positionto know if he’s getting the important work done, or if he’s justdreaming, and that one person...’ He stabbed angrily again. He hadpromised himself he wouldn’t listen to any of it and now here he wasgetting angry at what he was hearing. He should really just stop this.Well, just one more try. When he listened again he just got music. Odd. He wound forwardagain, and still got music. Why would someone be phoning to play musicto an answering machine? he wondered. The phone rang. He stopped the tape and answered it, then almostdropped the phone like an electric eel as he realised what he wasdoing. Hardly daring to breathe, he held the telephone to his ear. ‘Rule One in housebreaking,’ said a voice. ‘Never answer thetelephone when you’re in the middle of a job. Who are you supposed tobe, for heaven’s sake?’ Richard froze. It was a moment or two before he could find where hehad put his voice. ‘Who is this?’ he demanded at last in a whisper. ‘Rule Two,’ continued the voice. ‘Preparation. Bring the righttools. Bring gloves. Try to have the faintest glimmering of an idea ofwhat you’re about before you start dangling from window ledges in themiddle of the night. ‘Rule Three. Never forget Rule Two.’ ‘Who is this?’ exclaimed Richard again. The voice was unperturbed. ‘Neighbourhood Watch,’ it said. ‘If youjust look out of the back window you’ll see...’ Trailing the phone, Richard hurried over to the window and lookedout. A distant flash startled him. ‘Rule Four. Never stand where you can be photographed. ‘Rule Five... Are you listening to me, MacDuff?’ ‘What? Yes...’ said Richard in bewilderment. ‘How do you know me?’ ‘Rule Five. Never admit to your name.’ Richard stood silent, breathing hard. ‘I run a little course,’ said the voice, ‘if you’re interested...’ Richard said nothing. ‘You’re learning,’ continued the voice, ‘slowly, but you’relearning. If you were learning fast you would have put the phone downby now, of course. But you’re curious -- and incompetent -- and so youdon’t. I don’t run a course for novice burglars as it happens, temptingthough the idea is. I’m sure there would be grants available. If wehave to have them they may as well be trained. ‘However, if I did run such a course I would allow you to enrol forfree, because I too am curious. Curious to know why Mr Richard MacDuffwho, I am given to understand, is now a wealthy young man, something inthe computer industry, I believe, should suddenly be needing to resortto house-breaking.’ ‘Who -- ?’ ‘So I do a little research, phone Directory Enquiries and discoverthat the flat into which he is breaking is that of a Miss S. Way. Iknow that Mr Richard MacDuff’s employer is the famous Mr G. Way and Iwonder if they can by any chance be related.’ ‘Who -- ?’ ‘You are speaking with Svlad, commonly known as “Dirk” Cjelli,currently trading under the name of Gently for reasons which it wouldbe otiose, at this moment, to rehearse. I bid you good evening. If youwish to know more I will be at the Pizza Express in Upper Street in tenminutes. Bring some money.’ ‘Dirk?’ exclaimed Richard. ‘You... Are you trying to blackmail me?’ ‘No, you fool, for the pizzas.’ There was a click and Dirk Gentlyrang off. Richard stood transfixed for a moment or two, wiped his foreheadagain, and gently replaced the phone as if it were an injured hamster.His brain began to buzz gently and suck its thumb. Lots of littlesynapses deep inside his cerebral cortex all joined hands and starteddancing around and singing nursery rhymes. He shook his head to try andmake them stop, and quickly sat down at the answering machine again. He fought with himself over whether or not he was going to push thePlay button again, and then did so anyway before he had made up hismind. Hardly four seconds of light orchestral music had oozedsoothingly past when there came the sound of a key scratching in thelock out in the hallway. In panic Richard thumped the Eject button, popped the cassette out,rammed it into his jeans pocket and replaced it from the pile of freshcassettes that lay next to the machine. There was a similar pile nextto his own machine at home. Susan at the office provided them -- poor,long-suffering Susan at the office. He must remember to feel sympathyfor her in the morning, when he had the time and concentration for it. Suddenly, without even noticing himself doing it, he changed hismind. In a flash he popped the substitute cassette out of the machineagain, replaced the one he had stolen, rammed down the rewind buttonand made a lunge for the sofa where, with two seconds to go before thedoor opened, he tried to arrange himself into a nonchalant and winningposture. On an impulse he stuck his left hand up behind his back whereit might come in useful. He was just trying to arrange his features into an expressioncomposed in equal parts of contrition, cheerfulness and sexualallurement when the door opened and in walked Michael Wenton-Weakes. Everything stopped. Outside, the wind ceased. Owls halted in mid-flight. Well, maybethey did, maybe they didn’t, certainly the central heating chose thatmoment to shut down, unable perhaps to cope with the supernatural chillthat suddenly whipped through the room. ‘What are you doing here, Wednesday?’ demanded Richard. He rose fromthe sofa as if levitated with anger. Michael Wenton-Weakes was a large sad-faced man known by some peopleas Michael Wednesday-Week, because that was when he usually promised tohave things done by. He was dressed in a suit that had been superblywell tailored when his father, the late Lord Magna, had bought it fortyyears previously. Michael Wenton-Weakes came very high on the small but select list ofpeople whom Richard thoroughly disliked. He disliked him because he found the idea of someone who was notonly privileged, but was also sorry for himself because he thought theworld didn’t really understand the problems of privileged people,deeply obnoxious. Michael, on the other hand, disliked Richard for thefairly simple reason that Richard disliked him and made no secret ofit. Michael gave a slow and lugubrious look back out into the hallway asSusan walked through. She stopped when she saw Richard. She put downher handbag, unwound her scarf, unbuttoned her coat, slipped it off,handed it to Michael, walked over to Richard and smacked him in theface. ‘I’ve been saving that up all evening,’ she said furiously. ‘Anddon’t try and pretend that’s a bunch of flowers you’ve forgotten tobring which you’re hiding behind your back. You tried that gag lasttime.’ She turned and stalked off. ‘It’s a box of chocolates I forgot this time,’ said Richard glumlyand held out his empty hand to her retreating back. ‘I climbed up theentire outside wall without them. Did I feel a fool when I got in.’ ‘Not very funny,’ said Susan. She swept into the kitchen and soundedas if she was grinding coffee with her bare hands. For someone whoalways looked so neat and sweet and delicate she packed a hell of atemper. ‘It’s true,’ said Richard, ignoring Michael completely. ‘I nearlykilled myself.’ ‘I’m not going to rise to that,’ said Susan from within the kitchen.‘If you want something big and sharp thrown at you why don’t you comein here and be funny?’ ‘I suppose it would be pointless saying I’m sorry at this point,’Richard called out. ‘You bet,’ said Susan, sweeping back out of the kitchen again. Shelooked at him with her eyes flashing, and actually stamped her foot. ‘Honestly, Richard,’ she said, ‘I suppose you’re going to say youforgot again. How can you have the gall to stand there with two arms,two legs and a head as if you’re a human being? This is behaviour thata bout of amoebic dysentery would be ashamed of. I bet that even thevery lowest form of dysentery amoeba shows up to take its girlfriendout for a quick trot around the stomach lining once in a while. Well, Ihope you had a lousy evening.’ ‘I did,’ said Richard. ‘You wouldn’t have liked it. There was ahorse in the bathroom, and you know how you hate that sort of thing.’ ‘Oh, Michael,’ said Susan brusquely, ‘don’t just stand there like asinking pudding. Thank you very much for dinner and the concert, youwere very sweet and I did enjoy listening to your troubles all eveningbecause they were such a nice change from mine. But I think it would bebest if I just found your book and pushed you out. I’ve got someserious jumping up and down and ranting to do, and I know how it upsetsyour delicate sensibilities.’ She retrieved her coat from him and hung it up. While he had beenholding it he had seemed entirely taken up with this task and obliviousto anything else. Without it he seemed a little lost and naked and wasforced to stir himself back into life. He turned his big heavy eyesback on Richard. ‘Richard,’ he said, ‘I, er, read your piece in... in Fathom. OnMusic and, er...’ ‘Fractal Landscapes,’ said Richard shortly. He didn’t want to talkto Michael, and he certainly didn’t want to get drawn into aconversation about Michael’s wretched magazine. Or rather, the magazinethat used to be Michael’s. That was the precise aspect of the conversation that Richard didn’twant to get drawn into. ‘Er, yes. Very interesting, of course,’ said Michael in his silky,over-rounded voice. ‘Mountain shapes and tree shapes and all sorts ofthings. Recycled algae.’ ‘Recursive algorithms.’ ‘Yes, of course. Very interesting. But so wrong, so terribly wrong.For the magazine, I mean. It is, after all, an arts review. I wouldnever have allowed such a thing, of course. Ross has utterly ruined it.Utterly. He’ll have to go. Have to. He has no sensibilities and he’sa thief.’ ‘He’s not a thief, Wednesday, that’s absolutely absurd,’ snappedRichard, instantly getting drawn into it in spite of his resolution notto. ‘He had nothing to do with your getting the push whatsoever. Thatwas your own silly fault, and you...’ There was a sharp intake of breath. ‘Richard,’ said Michael in his softest, quietest voice -- arguingwith him was like getting tangled in parachute silk -- ‘I think you donot understand how important...’ ‘Michael,’ said Susan gently but firmly, holding open the door.Michael Wenton-Weakes nodded faintly and seemed to deflate. ‘Your book,’ Susan added, holding out to him a small and elderlyvolume on the ecclesiastical architecture of Kent. He took it, murmuredsome slight thanks, looked about him for a moment as if he’d suddenlyrealised something rather odd, then gathered himself together, noddedfarewell and left. Richard didn’t appreciate quite how tense he had become till Michaelleft and he was suddenly able to relax. He’d always resented theindulgent soft spot that Susan had for Michael even if she did try todisguise it by being terribly rude to him all the time. Perhaps evenbecause of that. ‘Susan, what can I say...?’ he started lamely. ‘You could say “Ouch” for a start. You didn’t even give me thatsatisfaction when I hit you, and I thought I did it rather hard. God,it’s freezing in here. What’s that window doing wide open?’ She went over to shut it. ‘I told you. That’s how I got in,’ said Richard. He sounded sufficiently as if he meant it to make her look round athim in surprise. ‘Really,’ he said. ‘Like in the chocolate ads, only I forgot the boxof chocolates...’ He shrugged sheepishly. She stared at him in amazement. ‘What on earth possessed you to do that?’ she said. She stuck herhead out of the window and looked down. ‘You could have got killed,’she said, turning back to him. ‘Well, er, yes...’ he said. ‘It just seemed the only way to... Idon’t know.’ He rallied himself. ‘You took your key back remember?’ ‘Yes. I got fed up with you coming and raiding my larder when youcouldn’t be bothered to do your own shopping. Richard, you reallyclimbed up this wall?’ ‘Well, I wanted to be here when you got in.’ She shook her head in bewilderment. ‘It would have been a great dealbetter if you’d been here when I went out. Is that why you’re wearingthose filthy old clothes?’ ‘Yes. You don’t think I went to dinner at St Cedd’s like this?’ ‘Well, I no longer know what you consider to be rational behaviour.’She sighed and fished about in a small drawer. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘ifit’s going to save your life,’ and handed him a couple of keys on aring. ‘I’m too tired to be angry anymore. An evening of being lobbiedby Michael has taken it out of me.’ ‘Well, I’ll never understand why you put up with him,’ said Richard,going to fetch the coffee. ‘I know you don’t like him, but he’s very sweet and can be charmingin his sad kind of way. Usually it’s very relaxing to be with someonewho’s so self-absorbed, because it doesn’t make any demands on you. Buthe’s obsessed with the idea that I can do something about his magazine.I can’t, of course. Life doesn’t work like that. I do feel sorry forhim, though.’ ‘I don’t. He’s had it very, very easy all his life. He still has itvery, very easy. He’s just had his toy taken away from him that’s all.It’s hardly unjust, is it?’ ‘It’s not a matter of whether it’s just or not. I feel sorry for himbecause he’s unhappy.’ ‘Well, of course he’s unhappy. Al Ross has turned Fathom into areally sharp, intelligent magazine that everyone suddenly wants toread. It was just a bumbling shambles before. Its only real functionwas to let Michael have lunch and toady about with whoever he liked onthe pretext that maybe they might like to write a little something. Hehardly ever got an actual issue out. The whole thing was a sham. Hepampered himself with it. I really don’t find that charming orengaging. I’m sorry, I’m going on about it and I didn’t mean to.’ Susan shrugged uneasily. ‘I think you overreact,’ she said, ‘though I think I will have tosteer clear of him if he’s going to keep on at me to do something Isimply can’t do. It’s too exhausting. Anyway, listen, I’m glad you hada lousy evening. I want to talk about what we were going to do thisweekend.’ ‘Ah,’ said Richard, ‘well...’ ‘Oh, I’d better just check the messages first.’ She walked past him to the telephone-answering machine, played thefirst few seconds of Gordon’s message and then suddenly ejected thecassette. ‘I can’t be bothered,’ she said, giving it to him. ‘Could you justgive this straight to Susan at the office tomorrow? Save her a trip. Ifthere’s anything important on it she can tell me.’ Richard blinked, said, ‘Er, yes,’ and pocketed the tape, tinglingwith the shock of the reprieve. ‘Anyway, the weekend --’ said Susan, sitting down on the sofa. Richard wiped his hand over his brow. ‘Susan, I...’ ‘I’m afraid I’ve got to work. Nicola’s sick and I’m going to have todep for her at the Wigmore on Friday week. There’s some Vivaldi andsome Mozart I don’t know too well, so that means a lot of extrapractice this weekend, I’m afraid. Sorry.’ ‘Well, in fact,’ said Richard, ‘I have to work as well.’ He sat downby her. ‘I know. Gordon keeps on at me to nag you. I wish he wouldn’t. It’snone of my business and it puts me in an invidious position. I’m tiredof being pressurised by people, Richard. At least you don’t do that.’ She took a sip of her coffee. ‘But I’m sure,’ she added, ‘that there’s some kind of grey areabetween being pressurised and being completely forgotten about that I’dquite like to explore. Give me a hug.’ He hugged her, feeling that he was monstrously and unworthily lucky.An hour later he let himself out and discovered that the Pizza Expresswas closed. Meanwhile, Michael Wenton-Weakes made his way back to his home inChelsea. As he sat in the back of the taxi he watched the streets witha blank stare and tapped his fingers lightly against the window in aslow thoughtful rhythm. Rap tap tap a rap tap a rap a tap. He was one of those dangerous people who are soft, squidgy andcowlike provided they have what they want. And because he had alwayshad what he wanted, and had seemed easily pleased with it, it had neveroccurred to anybody that he was anything other than soft, squidgy andcowlike. You would have to push through a lot of soft squidgy bits inorder to find a bit that didn’t give when you pushed it. That was thebit that all the soft squidgy bits were there to protect. Michael Wenton-Weakes was the younger son of Lord Magna, publisher,newspaper owner and over-indulgent father, under whose protectiveumbrella it had pleased Michael to run his own little magazine at amagnificent loss. Lord Magna had presided over the gradual butdignified and well-respected decline of the publishing empireoriginally founded by his father, the first Lord Magna. Michael continued to tap his knuckles lightly on the glass. A rap tap a rap a tap. He remembered the appalling, terrible day when his father hadelectrocuted himself changing a plug, and his mother, his mother,took over the business. Not only took it over but started running itwith completely unexpected verve and determination. She examined thecompany with a very sharp eye as to how it was being run, or walked, asshe put it, and eventually even got around to looking at the accountsof Michael’s magazine. Tap tap tap. Now Michael knew just enough about the business side of things toknow what the figures ought to be, and he had simply assured his fatherthat that was indeed what they were. ‘Can’t allow this job just to be a sinecure, you must see that, oldfellow, you have to pay your way or how would it look, how would itbe?’ his father used to say, and Michael would nod seriously, and startthinking up the figures for next month, or whenever it was he wouldnext manage to get an issue out. His mother, on the other hand, was not so indulgent. Not by alorryload. Michael usually referred to his mother as an old battleaxe, but ifshe was fairly to be compared to a battleaxe it would only be to anexquisitely crafted, beautifully balanced battleaxe, with an elegantminimum of fine engraving which stopped just short of its gleamingrazored edge. One swipe from such an instrument and you wouldn’t evenknow you’d been hit until you tried to look at your watch a bit laterand discovered that your arm wasn’t on. She had been waiting patiently -- or at least with the appearance ofpatience -- in the wings all this time, being the devoted wife, thedoting but strict mother. Now someone had taken her -- to switchmetaphors for a moment -- out of her scabbard and everyone was runningfor cover. Including Michael. It was her firm belief that Michael, whom she quietly adored, hadbeen spoiled in the fullest and worst sense of the word, and she wasdetermined, at this late stage, to stop it. It didn’t take her more than a few minutes to see that he had beensimply making up the figures every month, and that the magazine washaemorrhaging money as Michael toyed with it, all the time running uphuge lunch bills, taxi accounts and staff costs that he would playfullyset against fictitious taxes. The whole thing had simply got lostsomewhere in the gargantuan accounts of Magna House. She had then summoned Michael to see her. Tap tap a rap a tappa. ‘How do you want me to treat you,’ she said, ‘as my son or as theeditor of one of my magazines? I’m happy to do either.’ ‘Your magazines? Well, I am your son, but I don’t see...’ ‘Right. Michael, I want you to look at these figures,’ she saidbriskly, handing over a sheet of computer printout. ‘The ones on theleft show the actual incomings and outgoings of Fathom, the ones onthe right are your own figures. Does anything strike you about them?’ ‘Mother, I can explain, I --’ ‘Good,’ said Lady Magna sweetly, ‘I’m very glad of that.’ She took the piece of paper back. ‘Now. Do you have any views on howthe magazine should best be run in the future?’ ‘Yes, absolutely. Very strong ones. I --’ ‘Good,’ said Lady Magna, with a bright smile. ‘Well, that’s allperfectly satisfactory, then.’ ‘Don’t you want to hear -- ?’ ‘No, that’s all right, dear. I’m just happy to know that you do havesomething to say on the matter to clear it all up. I’m sure the newowner of Fathom will be glad to listen to whatever it is.’ ‘What?’ said a stunned Michael. ‘You mean you’re actually sellingFathom?’ ‘No. I mean I’ve already sold it. Didn’t get much for it, I’mafraid. One pound plus a promise that you would be retained as editorfor the next three issues, and after that it’s at the new owner’sdiscretion.’ Michael stared, pop-eyed. ‘Well, come now,’ said his mother reasonably, ‘we could hardlycontinue under the present arrangement, could we? You always agreedwith your father that the job should not be a sinecure for you. Andsince I would have a great deal of difficulty in either believing orresisting your stories, I thought I would hand the problem on tosomeone with whom you could have a more objective relationship. Now, Ihave another appointment, Michael.’ ‘Well, but... who have you sold it to?’ spluttered Michael. ‘Gordon Way.’ ‘Gordon Way! But for heaven’s sake, Mother, he’s --’ ‘He’s very anxious to be seen to patronise the arts. And I think Ido mean patronise. I’m sure you’ll get on splendidly, dear. Now, if youdon’t mind --’ Michael stood his ground. ‘I’ve never heard of anything so outrageous! I --’ ‘Do you know, that’s exactly what Mr Way said when I showed himthese figures and then demanded that you be kept on as editor for threeissues.’ Michael huffed and puffed and went red and wagged his finger, butcould think of nothing more to say. Except, ‘What difference would ithave made to all this if I’d said treat me as the editor of one of yourmagazines?’ ‘Why, dear,’ said Lady Magna with her sweetest smile, ‘I would havecalled you Mr Wenton-Weakes, of course. And I wouldn’t now be tellingyou straighten your tie,’ she added, with a tiny little gesture underher chin. Rap tap tap rap tap tap. ‘Number seventeen, was it, guv?’ ‘Er... what?’ said Michael, shaking his head. ‘It was seventeen you said, was it?’ said the cab driver, ‘‘Causewe’re ‘ere.’ ‘Oh. Oh, yes, thank you,’ said Michael. He climbed out and fumbledin his pocket for some money. ‘Tap tap tap, eh?’ ‘What?’ said Michael handing over the fare. ‘Tap tap tap,’ said the cab driver, ‘all the bloody way here. Gotsomething on your mind, eh, mate?’ ‘Mind your own bloody business,’ snapped Michael savagely. ‘If you say so, mate. Just thought you might be going mad orsomething,’ said the cabbie and drove off. Michael let himself into his house and walked through the cold hallto the dining room, turned on the overhead light and poured himself abrandy from the decanter. He took off his coat, threw it across thelarge mahogany dining table and pulled a chair over to the window wherehe sat nursing his drink and his grievances. Tap tap tap, he went on the window. He had sullenly remained as editor for the stipulated three issuesand was then, with little ceremony, let go. A new editor was found, acertain A. K. Ross, who was young, hungry and ambitious, and he quicklyturned the magazine into a resounding success. Michael, in themeantime, had been lost and naked. There was nothing else for him. He tapped on the window again and looked, as he frequently did, atthe small table lamp that stood on the sill. It was a rather ugly,ordinary little lamp, and the only thing about it that regularlytransfixed his attention was that this was the lamp that hadelectrocuted his father, and this was where he had been sitting. The old boy was such a fool with anything technical. Michael couldjust see him peering with profound concentration through his half moonsand sucking his moustache as he tried to unravel the arcanecomplexities of a thirteen-amp plug. He had, it seemed, plugged it backin the wall without first screwing the cover back on and then tried tochange the fuse in situ. From this he received the shock which hadstilled his already dicky heart. Such a simple, simple error, thought Michael, such as anyone couldhave made, anyone, but the consequences of it were catastrophic.Utterly catastrophic. His father’s death, his own loss, the rise of theappalling Ross and his disastrously successful magazine and... Tap tap tap. He looked at the window, at his own reflection, and at the darkshadows of the bushes on the other side of it. He looked again at thelamp. This was the very object, this the very place, and the error wassuch a simple one. Simple to make, simple to prevent. The only thing that separated him from that simple moment was theinvisible barrier of the months that had passed in between. A sudden, odd calm descended on him as if something inside him hadsuddenly been resolved. Tap tap tap. Fathom was his. It wasn’t meant to be a success, it was his life.His life had been taken from him, and that demanded a response. Tap tap tap crack. He surprised himself by suddenly punching his hand through thewindow and cutting himself quite badly.

Chapters 15 to 36

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