Fire Pattern

CHAPTER 4

As soon as he reached home Jerome washed his face with cold water and brushed his teeth to rid himself of the lingering aftertaste of bile.

It was half an hour before noon and the house and its furnishings had a faint air of unfamiliarity. At first he put it down to something like the insomnia effect, to his being home at an unusual time, then he realized there had been a shift in his perception of the entire universe. Everything seemed slightly alien to him now that he had seen the unthinkable happen. On the previous day he had become convinced that spontaneous human combustion was a reality, but the knowledge had been isolated in his head. Now he knew about the fire death in his heart and guts, as part of his direct experience, and there was the problem of adjusting to a world in which such things could occur.

He was also conscious of significant changes affecting the phenomenon itself. The entire history of SHC had been characterized by lack of pattern, by a sheer randomness which defeated all attempts to find an underlying mechanism. There had been only one previous occasion when it had seemed that a hint of order might be introduced and that had been as far back as 1938. On April 7th of that year three men—one near Nijmegen in Holland, one near Chester in England and one on a ship steaming south of Ireland—had become classic examples of SHC at exactly the same time. But the simultaneity of their deaths had only served to add mystery to mystery. There had been no more visible correlations until the deaths of Art Starzynski and Sammy Birkett and now the pendulum had swung the other way.

Jerome had no hesitation in ruling out coincidence, which meant that Doctor Pitman was starkly revealed as a connecting link. For hundreds of years the fire death had preserved its essential mystery—but now, suddenly, the phenomenon was yielding secrets to an amateur investigator. Jerome frowned, took off his glasses and began to polish the lenses as he considered the implications. The assumption of mediocrity guided researchers in fields as diverse as cosmology and particle physics. All egotism gone, burned away in the flame which had devoured Birkett, he had to accept that he was no more gifted than any of the countless others who had pitted themselves against the riddle of SHC, and yet unless his conclusion about Pitman was totally false—he had made a major breakthrough in little more than a day. Either he was fantastically lucky, or the parameters of the problem were changing.

What the hell am I trying to say? Jerome demanded of himself irritably. Why am I trying to tie extra knots in the string?

He put his glasses on again and his gaze steadied on the modest collection of liquor bottles on the living room sideboard. They had scarcely been touched since Carla’s death, but the clean taste of gin might help to restore a feeling of sanity to his world. It might also quell the tremors which had been coursing through him since he had watched Birkett’s face burn outwards from the mouth.

He mixed a gin and club soda and, not bothering to fetch ice, sat down to marshal his thoughts. An idea to be considered was that in yielding to sheer fright he had proved himself completely inept as a reporter. Any newsman with courage and the right instincts would have seized the opportunity to make a name for himself—and there was still time for Jerome to do the same. The chances were that Birkett’s remains had not yet been discovered in the seclusion of the summerhouse. All Jerome had to do was go back there, telephone the police, start filing sensational and highly profitable stories with major news agencies, stir up a hornets’ nest.

Sipping his drink, he tried to imagine himself facing up to Doctor Pitman, hard-nosing his way through all the consequent furore, and his mood altered for the worse as he realized he was not up to it. The next best thing would be to call Anne Kruger and turn everything over to her, but even that much seemed beyond him. He was gripped by a numb timidity. Given a free choice he would have run for cover, perhaps to the privacy and safety of the chalet at Parson’s Lake.

Wondering if his feelings were a typical aftermath of shock, Jerome made a conscious effort to induce relaxation while he was finishing his drink. His heartbeat was alternating between birdlike flutters and periods of suspenseful pounding. He was reluctant to believe that the tightness he had recently been experiencing in his chest after exertion was anything to worry about, but it seemed advisable to calm down as thoroughly as possible and think clearly about his next move. The problem lay with the problem—because it had changed, almost beyond recognition.

He was reminded of the way in which a decaying smoke ring can still be seen as a torus long after a newcomer to the room would observe only formless ribbons drifting in the air. The great enigma of SHC remained, but its outlines were being distorted by a more urgent question—if latching on to Doctor Pitman or an equivalent elsewhere was so easy why had nobody done it before? And that question led directly to another. Was he, in his heart, attributing sinister motives to Pitman? An obvious interpretation of events was that an innocently prescribed drug, or a rare combination of drugs, had led to freakish tragedies—but Jerome’s subconscious mind seemed to have other…

The buzzing of the telephone made him flinch. He stared at it for a few seconds, knowing that the caller was his editor or a deputy, then got out of his chair and picked up the instrument. Anne Kruger wasted no time on preliminaries.

“Just tell me one thing,” she said. “Is this Thursday?”

As always, her brand of heavy sarcasm needled him. “Let’s see. Yesterday was Wednesday, so—unless there’s been a drastic revision in the calendar—it’s safe to assume that this…

“Don’t try to be funny, Ray.”

You started it, he thought. “What can I do for you, Anne?”

“Have you considered writing news stories?”

“That’s what I’m doing,” Jerome said. “I can concentrate better at home.”

“Oh? And what red-hot page-one lead are you concentrating on at the moment?”

Only an eyewitness account of a second SHC death! Go on, man, say it! Tell her about the two fire deaths clearly linked by the same doctor. Boost yourself to the skies in her estimation. Make a name for yourself in journalism…

“Ah…well…it’s a bit difficult for me to…” Jerome was appalled to hear himself begin to stammer. “I’m still organizing my notes for the Starzynski piece.”

“Still! Have you done anything about the new pictures?”

“Not yet. You see…”

“Forget about the pictures,” Anne cut in, her voice cold. “I’ll put Cordwell on to that side of it. You, my friend, have an entire page of this newspaper to fill, and you’ve got two hours in which to do it. I advise you to start writing immediately because I’m going to be watching your copy come in. And if it doesn’t come in, you needn’t come in either. Not ever. Got that?” The telephone clicked and began a complacent purring.

Jerome gave a shaky laugh as he set the phone down. His first reaction was indignation over the way Anne had spoken to him, but a moment’s reflection told him he deserved all he had got, plus a lot more. He had won the position with the Examiner on the strength of having been part-time editor of an engineering society journal, and he liked to think he brought unusual and valuable attributes to the job, but events were proving just how shallow his conceits were. Any sub-literate dolt dragged out of a pool hall would have been more useful to the newspaper than a reporter who did not report.

Why had he not simply opened his mouth and told Anne about Birkett’s death? Furthermore, what was stopping him from phoning her back and belatedly putting things right?

Jerome looked down at the telephone and experienced something close to panic as he realized that, not only was he quite incapable of picking it up, he could not face the prospect of being in range of it for the rest of the day. It was an open gateway through which anybody could invade his home, and what he needed was a period of undisturbed peace in which to pull himself together. A vision of the chalet at Parson’s Lake flickered briefly in his mind. Invitingly.

Suppressing a pang of shame, he allowed himself to consider the idea of simply running away to the country for a few days. It would be an immature and irresponsible action, one which was quite likely to cost him his job, but the lake would guarantee him the tranquillity he so desperately craved. Nobody at the office even knew about the holiday home, so there would be no interruptions, nothing to hinder his attempts to rebuild a rational model of the universe inside his head. Again the image of the low-roofed chalet appeared behind his eyes, so clearly that he could almost smell the pine forest backdrop, and before he could even admit to what was happening he was in the bedroom packing a holdall.

The task occupied little more than five minutes, but he could visualize Anne Kruger already standing by a computer terminal in the Examiner’s office, already growing impatient as she waited for his first paragraphs to appear on the screen. All at once nothing in the whole world mattered more to him than escaping from the house before the telephone rang again. He grabbed the tartan bag, strode to the front door and, pausing only to switch on the burglar alarm, went out into the noon sunshine. The avenue, with its glowing lawns and wine-coloured shingle roofs, was a picture of placid normality—except, Jerome reminded himself, any of its inhabitants might suddenly burst into flame. Anybody who had newly acquired that burden of knowledge was entitled to go into retreat for as long as he wanted. He got into his car, slinging his bag on to the seat beside him, and drove in the direction of the state highway which would take him west.

Fifteen minutes out of Whiteford he noticed that his fuel tank was registering quarter full, the level at which he always filled up again. His sense of urgency had not lessened, but old habits prevailed. He pulled into a self-service station he had used several times in the past and which derived most of its business from local farmers. There was the usual cluster of dust-streaked cars and pick-ups parked outside the adjoining lunch counter, and he could see a mechanic at work beneath a car in the maintenance bay. Nobody here was worried about abruptly torching up, burning outwards from the mouth.

Jerome got out of the car, fed a credit card into a pump and began filling his tank. He had been watching the gaseous shimmering around the nozzle for only a few seconds when he developed the uncomfortable conviction that somebody was staring at him. He turned his head and saw, some ten paces away, a man of about thirty dressed in hunting clothes. The man had a city-dweller’s pallor which contrasted oddly with his sports garb, but something about him proclaimed abundant physical strength. He continued openly staring at Jerome with an expression which suggested mild contempt.

Puzzled and irritated, wondering if he could be straying into a bad day at Black Rock situation, Jerome opened his mouth to ask what the stranger found so interesting in him. Then he thought better of it. He was no fighter, and the other man’s physical presence was strangely daunting. Trying to be casual about it, Jerome averted his gaze, but not before he had seen the man smile a derisive, pike-mouthed smile which showed only his bottom teeth. Jerome kept his eyes on the dancing ruby numerals of the pump’s register and was relieved to hear footsteps moving away in the direction of the service bay. He guessed the man had run into car trouble, was seething over the delay and was taking it out on anybody who went near him.

And if that was a psychological duel, I got whipped, Jerome thought, yearning for the seclusion of Parson’s Lake. It had never been a popular location for holiday homes, thanks to the marshy nature of the shore, and the handful of houses that did exist were likely to be empty in midweek. He had been there only once since Carla had died. On that occasion the chalet had felt unbearably lonely, but now it seemed a haven, free from horrors and petty aggressions, a place where a thinking man could contentedly spend the rest of his days. Anxious to complete the journey, he finished pumping gas, retrieved his card and got into the car. A glance at the maintenance bay showed that the disconcerting stranger was watching the mechanic at work on his car. Jerome accelerated out on to the highway, oppressed by a feeling that he had narrowly avoided serious trouble, and settled down for the rest of the sixty kilometre drive.

He made one more stop to buy groceries and reached the lake by early afternoon. The water was an expanse of pure indigo liberally sewn with sun-diamonds and, as he had hoped, there was a stillness in the air which proclaimed absence of people. He stopped the car in the small clearing beside his own chalet and got out, breathing deeply.

His rowboat was in place under its slick cover at the water’s edge, awaiting a fresh coat of varnish. That was a job he might tackle to keep his hands busy while he was getting his thoughts together. The house itself, partially hidden by feathery clumps of oleander, seemed to bid him a mute welcome and he congratulated himself on having retained it. Their insurance had fallen far short of meeting the costs of Carla’s terminal illness and after her death there had been a big temptation to let the chalet go, but now his decision to keep it was proved good. In fact, if Anne Kruger went as far as firing him and he was forced to cut back, he would incline towards selling the house in Whiteford and retiring to the country.

Already beginning to feel restored and comforted, he took his box of groceries from the trunk of the car and carried them on to the screened verandah. A raised nail made itself felt through the sole of his shoe—another homely chore to be taken care of. He opened the front door with his key, went into the hall and carried the food towards the kitchen at the rear of the house. The living room was on his right. He glanced through its open door as he went by, continued on for two more paces and stopped, frowning, as he identified what was wrong with his eidetic image of the room.

One of the pair of shotguns which usually hung above the fireplace was missing.

Still clasping the weighty cardboard carton, he backtracked and went into the living room. The support brackets were still in place, so the gun had not fallen and bounced out of sight behind a chair. The only other explanation which sprang to mind was that the house had been burgled—but why would a thief not have taken both weapons?

“No, you haven’t been robbed,” said a man’s voice from the innermost corner of the room.

The box slipped from Jerome’s arms as he spun to his left and saw the dark-suited, apple-cheeked old man who was holding the missing shotgun. Time almost stopped for Jerome. He saw the box drift towards the floor in slow motion, its contents shifting as they became relatively weightless. He took in and identified every detail of the intruder—the abundant silver hair, the gold watch chain across the vest, the large square hands. He heard the box strike the floor, then came the first sledgehammer beat from his heart. And it hurt. There was a roaring in his ears and it seemed that the next heartbeat was never going to come…

“Don’t be stupid,” the old man commanded, laser-eyed. Be calm, I tell you! Breathe easy!”

Jerome sucked in air, and part of him was dully astonished to feel a curious placidity flood through his system. It was as though a hypodermic of powerful tranquillizer had gone straight into an artery. He backed away from the other man, no longer in shock but in a way more deeply afraid than before.

“You’re Pitman,” he accused. “How did you do that?”

Doctor Pitman gave a paternal smile. “It’s easy when you know how. More important, young man, how long is it since you’ve had a medical check-up?”

“Five or six years. I’m not sure. I don’t like having check-ups.”

“Why not?”

“They only try to find things wrong. I prefer not to…” Jerome broke off, suddenly outraged by the sheer enormity of what was happening. “What is this? What the hell is this? What are you doing in my house?”

“I’m only returning the courtesy, Ray—you were in my house this morning.” Pitman continued smiling, showing teeth which still looked healthy in spite of his seventy-odd years. “I thought you wanted to talk to me.”

“I did, but…” Jerome resisted an impulse to back away. “There’s something wrong here.”

“That’s good, Ray. You’re an intelligent man and your brain is functional again—which will make things easier for both of us. I was concerned about you a minute ago.”

“I don’t want your concern.”

“I know,” Pitman said. “What you really want is to find out how I knew about your visit when the only person you met is dead.”

Jerome nodded. “That’s enough for starters. How did you know?”

“It’s very simple, Ray.” Pitman paused as though for dramatic effect, apparently relishing the moment, like a club bore spinning out a dull story. “I’m telepathic. I can tell what people are thinking.”

Jerome almost moaned aloud with relief. All thoughts of Pitman’s connection with the horrors of spontaneous human combustion were banished from his mind by the glad realization that he had been totally wrong about the doctor. The strange circumstances of their meeting, the admittedly impressive hypnotic trick with the eyes, the grand manner—all these things had combined to create in him the feeling that the doctor was a near-superman, dangerously gifted. Now he was revealed as yet another crackpot, someone a rational man could outwit and manipulate. The manipulation would have to be done very carefully because of the shotgun, but even with allowances for that the situation was not as bad as he had feared. Pitman was merely holding the gun, not aiming it at him, and in all probability had not even been able to find the shells.

“I did find the shells,” Pitman said gently. “The pantry was one of the first places I thought of searching.”

Having grasped the lifeline, Jerome had no intention of letting go. “Beautifully done,” he said. “I wasn’t even aware of glancing at the gun.”

“I’m glad you’ve got a logical turn of mind,” Pitman replied. “You must realize, my boy, that my problem has always been the exact opposite of that facing phoney mind-readers. They go to great lengths to convince researchers that they can do things they can’t, whereas I’ve always had to conceal my ability. I’ve often wondered how long it would take me, should the need arise, to persuade a sceptic that I really am telepathic.”

Jerome sniffed. “I doubt if either of us can spare that many decades.”

“You’ve also got a rather acid tongue, haven’t you, Ray?” Pitman paused to give Jerome a look of fatherly reproach. “No, I’d say the job could be done in about one minute flat. Happily, the more rational a person is in his scepticism, the harder it is for him to ignore first-class evidence. Isn’t that so?”

“You’ve got the…ball.” Jerome had been about to mention the gun and had changed his mind on the grounds that it was better to keep the doctor’s thoughts on other things. Part of him marvelled at his own resilience, the ease with which he had slipped into a role implanted in his consciousness by a hundred teleplays. He had never dealt with a genuine madman before, but the technique was almost instinctive—play it cool, establish a bond, wait your chance.

“Here you are, Ray—the sort of evidence for which Rhine would have given his right arm.” Pitman nodded at the davenport in front of the fireplace. “Perhaps you’d like to sit down?”

Jerome shook his head. “I’ll stand.”

“Very well. We’ll make this very simple. I want you to think of a series of objects and I’ll tell you what they are. Is that all right?”

“It’s all right with me,” Jerome said compliantly, realizing he would be called upon to exercise some nice judgment. Obviously he would have to give the doctor a good score to humour him, but exactly how good could it be before the doctor’s suspicions were aroused?

Pitman made an impatient gesture. “Start now. Think of something.”

“Sure.” Jerome assumed an earnest expression while he dealt with a new worry. Had it all been too easy so far? Insane people could be devious and clever—which meant that Pitman could be setting an elaborate trap. It might very well be that telling him he had correctly divined a thought would send him into a homicidal rage.

“I’m not getting anything,” Pitman said sharply. “You must focus your thoughts on some concrete object.”

“Sorry—I’m not used to this.” Jerome, in the spirit of someone reluctantly joining a childish game, visualized a farm tractor.

Pitman said, “A tractor.”

Jerome blinked. He had driven through a lot of farming country to reach Parson’s Lake, had seen quite a few tractors, and the doctor must have done the same. The trick was to be less predictable. He pondered for a moment then visualized a New York taxi.

Pitman said, “A yellow cab.”

That had been another form of transport, too closely linked to a tractor. Jerome thought again, taking longer this time, and imagined himself looking at the Mona Lisa.

Pitman said, “The Mona Lisa.”

The most famous painting in the world. The best-known single object in the world. He should have chosen a really obscure painting—like the faded watercolour of a tea clipper which had hung above the piano in his Aunt May’s front room in Albany.

Pitman said, “A picture of a sailing ship.”

Transport again—the piano itself would have been better.

Pitman said, “A piano.”

Jerome gazed soberly at the doctor for a few seconds and said, “I’d like to sit down now, if you don’t mind.”

“I think you should.” Pitman was no longer smiling. “This has been quite a day for you—and unfortunately it’s far from over.”

Jerome backed away from the fallen box of provisions and lowered himself on to a bentwood chair near the living room door. He felt strangely calm, considering that his universe had undergone yet another upheaval, but his legs were rubbery. It was something of a relief to find that he could still speak without a tremor in his voice.

“The other thing I was going to ask you was how you found out in advance that I was coming here,” he said. “But I guess I already know the answer to that one.”

Pitman brought another bentwood out from the wall and straddled it, moving with the litheness of a much younger man. “You only know part of the answer. You see, I gave you the idea of coming here in the first place—and you may be pleased to hear that I also prevented you telling the whole world what happened to Sammy Birkett. I wasn’t able to exercise direct control—I’m not that powerful—but I was able to upset your judgment. What it boils down to is you’re not as bad at your job as you feared.”

“But that’s…”

“It isn’t impossible, Ray—just difficult. And very tiring. Active telepathy really takes the starch out of me, so I’m glad I don’t have to do it too often.”

“I really don’t know if I can cope with this,” Jerome said helplessly. “I didn’t believe in spontaneous human combustion until yesterday, and I didn’t believe in telepathy until a minute ago…and now…and now you’re here with my gun…Why do you need the gun, for God’s sake?”

“I need it because I may have to kill you,” Pitman replied. “I don’t want to kill you, and I deeply regret having to speak to you in these terms, but there’s so much at stake here that if I can’t get your co-operation I’ll terminate your life. Is that understood?”

“You make things very clear.” Jerome was surprised to discover that he felt a cold gloominess rather than fear. “Is there any point in my uttering the classic line?”

“I will get away with it, Ray, and I beg you to stop equating this with a scene from a play. I brought some chains in my car, and in a moment we’re going to take your rowboat out to the centre of the lake. There’ll be nobody around to hear the shot, nobody to see your body going overboard…You’ve got to take this thing very seriously.”

“I’m not laughing,” Jerome said. “Look, of course I’ll co-operate. I’d be crazy not to. I promise you I’ll go along with any plan you have in mind.”

“What else could you say?” Pitman stood up and changed his grip on the shotgun, closing his right hand around the trigger guard. “You’ve got your colour back. I do believe you’re fit enough to do a little gentle rowing. Let’s go.”

Jerome got to his feet and now, suddenly, he was afraid. Deathly afraid. “This part isn’t necessary. I swear to you that I’ll…”

Pitman shook his head. “Out to the boat, Ray. Move!”

Jerome walked slowly into the hall. The front door was still open and the scene beyond it could have graced a travel brochure—an acrylic composition of water, trees and distance-blued hills, with nothing in it to indicate that the whole world had gone monstrously wrong. Jerome had never been threatened with a firearm before and now he found himself morbidly conscious of the shotgun and all its engineered detail. As he walked out to the verandah he wondered what state of readiness the gun was in. If the doctor had neglected to release the safety catch it might be possible to wrest the weapon from him.

“Don’t try it,” Pitman said gently. “I’ve never liked guns, but I know how to use one.”

“Is it easy to tell what a person is thinking?”

“When he’s thinking graphically—the way you were doing just now.”

“I see.” Jerome stepped down off the verandah and walked towards his boat. In his mind he conjured up an image of an orange and held it there, trying to make it real, while at another level he thought about the oars lying beneath the boat’s covering. An oar would (see every pore on the orange skin; imagine the smell and the taste) make an effective club if he could get a good grip on it (see the oil spurting as your thumb goes into the peel, feel the pith under your nail) before Pitman realized what he was doing.

“That’s not much better,” Pitman said. “The orange was too irrelevant, an obvious screen. As soon as it appeared I went underneath. In any case, the oars are too heavy.”

“Thanks for the advice,” Jerome said, again wondering at his own adaptability. He was numb with dread at the prospect of a tight-packed cloud of lead pellets storming through his body, and yet his mind was swarming with questions about the doctor and his incredible powers. Was Pitman the only telepath in the world, or was he a member of a talented group? Why the secrecy about mind-reading? Fear of pogroms? And, above all, what was the connection with spontaneous human combustion? There had to be a connection—it would have been the ultimate coincidence if the man who linked two SHC cases was also a telepath by sheer chance—but Jerome could not begin to imagine it. Were it not for his worries about being shot he would be in a state of high excitement at the thought of getting some answers.

He pulled the weighted plastic cover off the boat and set it aside. A spider scuttled away when he moved the oars, which were lying on the crossbenches. Jerome lifted the spider on the blade of an oar and let it escape on to the ground, and when he turned back to the boat he saw that Pitman was retrieving some chains which had been hidden in the sedge grass.

“Is that all you’ve got?” Jerome said, hoping to affect the doctor’s plans. “A set of snow chains?”

Pitman slung the chains into the boat. “It’s enough—a corpse which has been well ventilated doesn’t develop much buoyancy.”

“Oh.” Jerome regretted having brought the subject up. “Is it all a charade, this business about trying to get my co-operation? How do I know you’re not planning to pull the trigger regardless of what I say?”

“I give you my word.”

“What good is it? Come to that, what good will my word be to you?” Jerome felt he was taking a gamble, but there were issues which had to be settled. “I could promise you anything just to get away from you in one piece, then I could go to the police.”

“You couldn’t trick me,” Pitman said. “Remember, I’m the man who can read your mind.”

“I still don’t see why we have to go out on the lake,” Jerome said doggedly. “I can tell you right now that I’m going to agree to anything you propose. That much is obvious, isn’t it?”

“No.” Pitman was smiling again, but his eyes were unreadable. “Most people would regard what I’m going to ask you to do as…well, they would call it betraying the entire human race. It’s quite possible that you’ll feel the same way, that you simply won’t be able to go along with it. Oh, you’ll say you’re going to co-operate, but in your heart you’ll know that you can’t. Perhaps you’ll even be able to deceive yourself, but you won’t be able to deceive me. And if that’s the way it works out—I’ll kill you.”

“Jesus!” Jerome gave a dispirited sigh. “And all because I saw what happened to Sammy Birkett?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Can I at least be told why some people burn up?”

“Push the rowboat into the water, Ray—then steady it while I get in.”

The boat had bedded itself into the soft ground and Jerome had difficulty shifting it until Pitman put one foot on the stern and thrust with surprising force. The craft became easier to handle as it nuzzled into the water. Keeping the shotgun aimed directly at Jerome’s stomach, the doctor stepped into the boat and positioned himself on the aft bench. His movements were easy and economical in spite of his portly form. Jerome, whose arthritic knee was protesting at the effort of dealing with the boat, was chastened to realize that even without the gun the elderly man could probably outmatch him in a struggle. Wincing as the muddy water lapped around his shins, Jerome climbed aboard and used the oars to get the boat free of the rushes and into clear water against a steady breeze. He was breathing hard and the tightness was returning to his chest.

“Row us out to the centre of the lake, but do it gently and don’t overexert yourself,” Pitman said. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

Jerome tried to sneer. “Unless you do it.”

“I understand your feeling that way, but speaking as a medical practitioner I’m advising you to…How old are you, anyway?”

“Fifty,” Jerome snapped. “How old are you?”

An enigmatic expression appeared on Pitman’s face. “The body you’re looking at is seventy-six years of age. I am almost thirty years older.”

Jerome considered the statement. “Talk sense.”

“I’m sorry,” Pitman said, looking genuinely contrite. “This is so difficult. What would you say if I told you I wasn’t born on Earth?”

“I’d say you were a spaceman.”

“Pejorative use of the word, I think, but this is the truth—I was born on a different planet.”

“One I would know about?”

“My people’s name for it is Dorrin.” Pitman’s gaze was steady. “But you know it as Mercury.”

“I see.” Jerome felt appreciably relieved. He had made the mistake of underestimating Pitman where telepathy was concerned and since then had been psychologically disadvantaged at every turn, but at last there had come a development which offered some hope. The doctor still had the upper hand, but if he was deluded enough to believe he was an extraterrestrial that was evidence of a weakness of mind which might be exploited. Jerome thought briefly of the utterly barren, radiation-scoured surface of Mercury, familiar to him from photographs, then with an effort of will changed his visualization to that of an Earth-bound astronomer. He pictured a soft speck of light almost lost in the afterglow of sunset.

“I don’t know much about Mercury,” he said, trying to strike the right note of credulity. “Is it a pleasant place?”

“It’s a hellish place, as you very well know,” Pitman replied. “I told you before, Ray—there’s no point in trying to fool me.”

“All right, I just can’t see how any life could have evolved in a place like that.”

Pitman shook his head. “There was no evolution. Both Earth and Mercury were colonized by human space travellers from another star system. It happened so long ago that we have no records of which star our ancestors came from or why they were attracted to Mercury in the first place. It was hardly an obvious choice for colonization, even though its synchronous rotation meant there was a fairly habitable twilight zone.”

Got you! Jerome thought triumphantly. Your knowledge of your so-called home planet is about forty years out of date. For an instant he was tempted to remain quiet, to encourage the doctor to make more elementary blunders, then he thought better of it. Pitman reacted badly to insincerity.

Jerome cleared his throat and said, “I hate to drag in an awkward fact, but…”

“But Mercury does rotate in respect to the Sun. That fact isn’t awkward, my boy—it’s tragic. When Mercury was colonized it was in captured rotation, keeping one hemisphere away from the Sun, and the Dorrinian people were able to exist there in relative comfort. Our cities were underground, of course, and we had to manufacture our own atmosphere, but the system was viable and stable—until the Days of the Comet.”

“Ah, yes,” Jerome said. “H. G. Wells.”

Pitman sighed his disapproval. “That tongue of yours must cost you a lot of friends.”

“My friends don’t aim shotguns at me.”

“Point acknowledged, but it’s in your own interests to take what I’m saying very seriously. I advise you to keep quiet and absorb the information.”

“Go on.” Jerome rowed in a slow rhythm, the familiar activity pointing up the bizarre nature of the situation. The sunlight was intensely bright on the open stretch of lake and Pitman was delineated with a kind of luminous clarity against a background made up of horizontal bands of water, hushed trees, blue-green hills and sky. With his broad, benign countenance, silver hair and conservative business suit he should have been behind a desk, posing for a let-me-be-your-father advertising shot, instead of sitting in a rowboat with a gun on his knee, interlarding expressions of concern with death threats, fact with fantasy…

“More than three thousand Earth years ago—in the 15th century BC to be precise—a very large comet blundered into the solar system,” Pitman went on, the intensity of his gaze warning Jerome to remain silent.

“It was drawn into the Sun, brushing close by Mercury on the way and imparting to it the spin which is now observed by Earth astronomers, one revolution every fifty-eight Earth days. That was a catastrophe for the Dorrinians, who found the former temperate zone being blasted by the full radiation of the Sun. Most of them died before they could go far enough underground to find shelter. Even those who did survive were hard-pressed to stay alive, because the Sun’s heat penetrated farther into the planetary crust with each new rotation. It is estimated that ninety per cent of the Dorrinian population was lost in the Days of the Comet.”

Jerome nodded, not trusting himself to make any comment. It had taken him a moment to understand why he had found Pitman’s reference to the 15th century BC significant, then his memory had stirred into action. Immanuel Velikovsky, perhaps the crankiest pseudo-scientist of all, had assigned that dating to his giant comet which was supposed to have grazed Earth and caused a number of Biblical “miracles’. In Velikovsky’s scenario the comet had eventually settled down to become the planet Venus, but here it was careering onwards into the Sun and on the way playing havoc with civilization on Mercury. Pitman’s story had the classical attributes of all such fanciful edifices, which were grab-bags of anything which could be filched from other disciplines to mask their essential implausibility. It appeared that being a telepath, assuming the doctor genuinely had the ability, was no defence against eccentricity—but there still remained the enigma of his connection with the fire death…

“You’re not paying attention, Ray,” Pitman reproved. “You should mark the fact that Dorrinian science has evolved differently from that of Earth. The sheer lack of physical resources forced us to concentrate on our mental abilities. We are weak on hard technology and engineering, but we have compensated with our progress on mind-to-mind and mind-to-matter interactions. I have already given you proof of that.”

“I admit I was impressed back there in the house,” Jerome said, deciding to risk open scepticism as a way to keep the doctor talking, “but I’ve just thought of a non-psi explanation.”

“You’d better verbalize it—I can’t read the melange of blurry abstracts in your mind.”

Jerome forced a smile. “That’s neat. Look, I freely concede that you’re an excellent hypnotist—you proved it when you commanded me to get over the shock I had when I found you in the house with a gun.”

“Continue.”

“Well, I’ve also seen a lot of astonishing things done with post-hypnotic commands. You could easily have ordered me to say the name of any object I pictured in my mind, and also to be unaware that I was saying it. And there you have it—a totally convincing demonstration of telepathy.”

“That’s quite…ingenious,” Pitman said. “How do people like you learn to think that way?”

“It was started a long time ago by a character called William of Occam.”

Pitman frowned. “Does Occamism explain why I would go to such lengths to deceive you?”

“Who knows why a…?” Jerome checked himself, aware that he was again straying into dangerous territory.

“Why a crank does anything?” The index finger of Pitman’s right hand slid off the gun’s trigger guard and curled around the trigger itself. can’t really be angry at you, Ray. The so-called rationalist mode of thought has saved my people from exposure time after time when one of us has accidentally given himself away. We’ve had reason to be grateful to your ability to blind yourselves to the obvious, but in this case…I wonder if I should stop wasting my valuable time on you.”

“I promised there’d be no tricks,” Jerome said, dry-mouthed. “That involved speaking my mind, voicing honest doubts—and I’ve just thought of something else.”

“Out with it.”

“I couldn’t fault your telepathy demonstration if it was done over again in front of my video camera.”

“I’ve got a better idea,” Pitman said, laser-eyed. “Try your Occam’s Razor on this.”

Jerome knew several kinds of pain.

There was the straightforward physical pain of neural overload, centred on his brain…

There was the unmanning psychological pain, shot through with terror, of having another personality enter the temple of his own flesh, dispossessing him, perhaps for ever…

And there was the spiritual pain, the blighting of the soul with sadness and vain regrets, brought on when Nature practises one of her careless genocides on one’s own race. He saw Dorrinian men, women and children die in their millions. He took part in the agonizingly slow retreat to the depths of the planetary crust, while yet more of his kind perished with each awesome transit of the Sun…

There could be no physical escape to Earth for those who survived, but Jerome was vicariously present when the Dorrinian grand plan was conceived and executed. It took generations of selective breeding before the first supertelepaths appeared—individuals who could mentally reach out across space and by sheer concentration of will install their own personalities in Terran bodies. Jerome observed and took part in the surreptitious invasion of Earth, the slow, silent invasion which had been going on for more than three thousand years…

The linen tape binding the oar handle was shiny in places, blackened with use, but when one stared hard at the blackness the warp and weft of the material could still be seen inside it, like a microscopic grid of ivory inlaid in jet. Jerome gazed at the handle for a long time, trying to work out what it was, then he raised his head and made his eyes focus on Doctor Pitman.

He said, “That wasn’t fair.”

Pitman was unruffled. “You’re a hard man to reach, Ray. Quiet arrogance is the worst kind.”

“Even so…” Jerome felt dizzy and sick, suspended between two realities. “How many of you are there on Earth?”

“Not many. A very small proportion of Dorrinians have the required ability. Volunteers for the transfer usually have to spend days preparing themselves, taking special drugs, building up the necessary potential. Even then it’s a hazardous operation. Even for a supertelepath it is extremely difficult to locate the emanations from one target kald among the billions that are broadcasting on Earth.”

“Kald?” Jerome had an uneasy sense of having learned the word and forgotten it a thousand years earlier.

“There’s no equivalent in Earth languages,” Pitman said. “Kald is the Dorrinian word for the entire human entity—not just the body or the mind, but the complex of body, nervous system, brain, mind, spirit, personality and all the associated energy fields. Telepathy is partly a physical process, you see, and that’s what makes the Dorrin-to-Earth transfer so dangerous.”

There was an icy upheaving in Jerome’s subconscious. “Is this anything to do with SHC?”

“Unfortunately—yes. You can think of the kald as being like a flexible lens existing on several levels of reality. The analogy is greatly simplified, you understand, but when a Dorrinian is making a transfer to Earth that lens is adjusted to a focal length equal to the distance between the two worlds. And a lens is a two-way system. There is a narrow cone of influence reaching from Dorrin to Earth, and an opposing counterpart stretching back towards…”

“The Sun!” The gentle movement of the boat beneath Jerome could have been a rocking of the physical horizon.

“That’s correct.” Pitman’s voice was quiet and matter-of-fact, his words quickly fading away into the lake’s surrounding stillness. “Transfers are completely impossible when Mercury as seen from Earth is near the Sun. They are best achieved when Mercury is at its maximum elongation. That’s the safest time, but there’s no guarantee that something won’t go wrong. The Dorrinian may lose control for internal reasons, or there may be a continuum disturbance, or there may be a malign…well, let’s not go into that…

“The consequence is that for an instant the kald lens is disrupted. The needle cones of influence fan out into oscillating hemispheres which encompass the Sun, and solar heat is funnelled into the target body. And people on Earth—the few who choose to pay attention, that is—have another case of spontaneous human combustion to marvel at.”

“I…But…” Jerome suddenly realized he had nothing to say. It was partly an after-effect of his telepathic excursion into the Dorrinian racial consciousness, partly the shock value of what he had just heard, but he found himself overwhelmed, unable to cope with the torrent of new concepts.

“The people who were interested in recent decades have been using computers in their search for patterns in the incidence of SHC,” Pitman continued, almost as though talking for his own benefit. “They’ve had hundreds of dates to feed into their playthings, and I kept waiting for somebody to notice that no case had ever been reported when Mercury was in line with or close to the Sun. That regular trough has been clearly visible in the data right from the beginning, but nobody caught on. Can’t really blame them. Thinking in other categories is all very well, but you can’t help unconsciously setting a limit. What do you say, my boy?”

“I’ve just understood why you talked about my betraying the whole race,” Jerome said, aimlessly trailing his oars in the water. “From what you told me, we only get to know about these transfers of yours that go wrong. Presumably a much greater number of transfers take place without anything going wrong…and…and the word transfer is a euphemism, isn’t it? It’s another way of saying murder.”

Jerome stared at Pitman, wondering how he had brought himself to go so far, surprised to discover that anger and resentment can be more persuasive than fear. All scepticism had been banished from his mind and he now understood the doctor’s earlier cryptic remark about being thirty years older than his body. It meant that the physical form of Robert Pitman, exuding its manicured reassurance and Rotary Club respectability, actually housed a member of an alien race.

Apparently the Dorrinians felt they were entitled to use their mind science and psi-powers as weapons against the ordinary people of Earth, but whether an Art Starzynski or a Sammy Birkett burned up with solar heat in a failed transfer or simply had his personality erased, the end result was the same. It amounted to nothing less than murder. The Dorrinians could no more be justified than invaders using bomb or bayonet—and Jerome resented their actions. He resented their alien presence so passionately that there was no point in his trying to disguise the fact, either from Pitman or from himself.

“I never thought I’d hear myself saying a thing like this,” he told Pitman, but you might as well pull the trigger right now and get it over with. I don’t need to tell you the reason, do I?”

“There isn’t much reasoning going on in that skull of yours at the moment,” Pitman said, beginning to sound exasperated. “The Dorrinians are a highly ethical people who revere life above all else. Would we be having this long and increasingly tedious conversation if I were a murderer?”

“Ethical?” Jerome glanced meaningfully at the shotgun. “Do tell me all about ethics.”

Pitman consulted his gold watch, sighed and replaced it in his pocket. “I don’t like doing this, Ray, because I know it hurts—but you give me no option.”

Jerome saw that the doctor’s blue eyes were again developing their inhuman, laser-like quality. He had time for one spasm of alarm…

The pain was a flower unfolding in his brain with time-lapse rapidity. And with it there was knowledge, wordlessly received knowledge, interlaced with his own memories. The rigid Dorrinian ethic lays down that transfers may only be effected into the bodies of Terrans who are soon to die of incurable disease…Birkett was a cancer patient…the basic mind–matter interaction is control of the biological processes in one’s own body…after a successful transfer a Dorrinian eradicates all the ailments he has inherited…family doctors are in a good position to select suitable target bodies, sometimes without their owners ever realizing they are seriously ill, as was the case with Arthur Starzynski…therefore key Dorrinians living on Earth are often small-town medics…the danger of a transfer failure is ever present…it could lead to extensive loss of life if buildings were set alight, something the Dorrinian ethic cannot countenance…the danger is obviated by introducing a Dorrinian-developed chemical into the target’s system…the chemical is in turn absorbed by the target’s clothing, making the garments into heat barriers…inward reflection of the heat also ensures complete destruction of the corpse, concealing the significant factor of common illness…Pitman administered the chemical in the form of cachous if the target was fond of candy…two failed transfers in a row…bad sign…ominous…Prince Belzor…

Jerome was abruptly returned to the world of blurry sunlight. Gasping, he forced his eyes to range in on Pitman, shrinking him into sharp focus. Pitman was leaning forward and staring intently at Jerome, but his eyes had lost their mesmeric power. For the first time since Jerome had met him he looked troubled, uncertain.

“Were you followed here, Ray?” he said.

“I don’t believe…How would I know?”

“Think back over the journey,” Pitman said urgently. Did you notice a…?” He stopped speaking, mouth down-curved in shock, and pitched forward as an invisible something hit him with an impact which made the entire boat shudder. An instant later the sound of a gunshot rolled out across the lake, drawing squawks of protest from birds.

Jerome let go of the oars and gripped the side of the boat, which was wallowing in reaction to the crashing sprawl of Pitman’s body. He gaped at the doctor, at the back of his jacket where a ragged hole pulsed crimson, and he struggled to put the evidence together. The evidence said that somebody on the shore of the lake had just shot Pitman with a rifle—but the evidence had to be suspect because too many terrible and unprecedented things had already occurred that day. Jerome scanned the lakeside near his house, the area from which the shot seemed to have come, but was unable to see anything out of the ordinary. Feeling curiously numb, he slid down on to his knees, wondering how he would tend the fallen doctor, and in the instant of lowering his head he felt rather than heard a rushing in the air. It was a fluttery disturbance of the atmosphere, with a hint of power to it, quickly followed by the sound of another shot.

Jerome threw himself to the floor of the boat, appalled by the realization that the gunman—in defiance of all the laws of a formerly sane continuum—had also tried to kill him.

Pitman gave a burbling sigh and one of his hands groped towards Jerome. Spurred by irrational hope, Jerome squirmed a half-circle, keeping below the rowlocks, until he could look into Pitman’s face. All notions about the doctor somehow being fit enough to use his unearthly powers to effect a miracle immediately fled Jerome’s mind. Pitman’s mouth was open, the teeth uniformly red, spanned by a swelling diaphragm of blood.

“You can’t die,” Jerome whispered. “This is all your fault.”

Pitman’s eyelids flickered and the crimson hymen ruptured into gory tatters on his chin. “Sorry…the Prince is…too…” The barely audible words faded and were lost.

“Prince? Prince?” Jerome could hear his own voice rising to an hysterical whine. “I’ve nothing to do with any Prince. You’ve got to tell somebody that.”

He grasped Pitman’s shoulder, gave it a single shake and snatched his hand away, newly educated on the subject of death. There was no sound except for the patient lapping of small waves around the boat. Jerome rolled on to his back and stared into the sky as questions seethed in his mind. Did the person who had murdered Pitman positively want to kill him as well, or had the second shot merely been prompted by some gangsterish idea of doing a tidy job and silencing a witness? Was it likely that the assassin, believing the second shot had hit Jerome, had already fled? That one could be resolved quickly enough, by raising his head and peering over the side of the boat—but visualizing the possible consequences led him to the most important question of all. Was he going to get out of the situation alive?

The answer is NO!

Jerome flinched as the message impacted with his consciousness. There was a moment of fear and confusion—then came the knowledge that he was dealing with a second telepath. And with that knowledge was the understanding that the newcomer’s personality was vastly different from that of Pitman. The doctor had been a mysterious and threatening figure, but he had also—and Jerome could appreciate it more in retrospect—projected regret for what he felt he had to do. That undercurrent of emotion had lent him a certain humanity, a quality which was totally lacking in the mental imprint of his slayer. During the brief psychic contact Jerome had sensed a chilling self-interest, an arrogance and amorality, an utter ruthlessness. There had also been the disturbing suggestion of a potency which far outweighed Pitman’s, of an inhuman power which a superstitious person might describe as satanic.

As the word formed in Jerome’s mind he caught a memory-glimpse of a pale face and a contemptuous smile, a pike-jawed smile which showed only the bottom teeth. The man he had encountered at the filling station! Jerome identified the second telepath, knowing himself to be correct, and in the same moment felt a new kind of darkness gather round him. He knew now that throughout the confrontation with Pitman his despair had never been absolute. There had always been that scintilla of hope, of belief that an oldster with a three-piece suit and a Santa Claus complexion could not actually pull the trigger—but the man from the filling station came into a different category altogether. With him there could be no reprieve.

That is CORRECT!

Again the communication sledged into Jerome with near-physical force, serving as a carrier for other patterns which impressed themselves directly upon his brain. He was compelled to view himself through the eyes of his adversary—weak, cowardly, contemptible, ignorant, insignificant. There was no hatred for Jerome in that other mind, for the simple reason that he was too unimportant. He was nothing more than a temporary inconvenience.

“Why waste time on me?” Jerome said aloud. The boat was more than a hundred metres from the shore and he knew his voice would not carry the distance, but the act of composing a sentence and speaking seemed a good way for a non-telepath to isolate and project a single thought. He braced himself for another intangible hammer blow, but there was no response from the man with the rifle.

“Look, I don’t give a damn about what was going on between you and Pitman,” he said. “All I want is to be allowed to go home. I can’t harm you. Please let me go.”

Again there was no response. Jerome stared into the impartial blue lens of the sky and tried to read the telepathic silence. One interpretation was that the pallid man had accepted the logic of his argument and had quietly departed the scene, but Jerome’s instincts told him otherwise. There had been no reply because the killer on the shore saw no point in replying. He was still there, near the house, waiting for…What was he waiting for?

Jerome had hardly framed the question when the answer came to him. Rowing out to the centre of the lake with Pitman he had been heading into a breeze—and now that same breeze was gently taking the boat back towards its starting point. It would have been quite easy for a man with a hunting rifle to sink the rowboat and force Jerome into the water, but that would require a volley of shots and might attract attention. A much more efficient course was to be patient, to wait a few minutes until the target had helplessly drifted to the shore and despatch him with a single round. In the event, it would not even be necessary to fire the rifle, because the man from the filling station was capable of killing Jerome in a dozen different ways, all of them silent…

So it isn’t going to be my heart that does it, after all, Jerome thought in a kind of arctic bemusement as he lay on his back on the damp timbers of the boat. Pitman’s advice about a check-up was wasted…there isn’t going to be time for my arteries to finish silting themselves up…I had to get in between people from another world who—God knows why—want to kill each other…and there’s damn all I can do about it…because…because…

Jerome abruptly became aware of the shotgun. It was partially underneath Pitman’s prone body and the stock was nudging painfully into his own back. Grunting with the effort, he turned himself over and—hampered by the need to keep below the side of the boat—worked the gun free of Pitman’s dead weight. There was a comforting familiarity about its metalwork and oiled wood. It was no match for a rifle, but if he could keep the weapon hidden until the boat was close to the shore and then get in a quick shot its scattering effect would slightly reduce the odds against him.

Do you take me for a FOOL? The alien thought was loaded with contempt, reinforced by a vision of Jerome as something akin to a hairless baby rat, pink and squirming.

Jerome strove to fend off the intrusion. The shotgun was an old Stevens 12-gauge he had inherited from his father and he had only the vaguest ideas about its performance. He broke it open, with the intention of checking on whether Pitman had put in shells loaded with skeet shot or something with more carrying power, but there came yet another mental assault.

Do you really EXPECT me to ALLOW you to bring your TOY within range?

The baby rat was vivid in Jerome’s mind now—a glistening blob of unformed protoplasm—and the heel of a boot was stamping down on it. Sickened, Jerome concentrated his gaze on the twin yellow-gleaming circles of the cartridge bases, knowing all the while that his adversary had too great an advantage. Even if he got as close as fifty metres the shotgun would be an annoyance rather than a real threat to a rifleman, and the latter’s ability to divine exactly what Jerome was thinking and doing made the situation doubly hopeless. The only factor which might have given him a fighting chance would have been solid lead slugs in the shotgun, but he had never owned that kind of ammunition…

If I can’t fool a mind-reader, Jerome thought as he groped in his jacket for his pocket knife, the least I can do is make things harder for him. Confuse the issue. Use double-think. But how do I do that? No good thinking about something totally irrelevant like an orange…only gives the game away…become an automaton…use reflexes instead of words or thought pictures…oh god one of the shells is jammed in the ejector…should have done something about that thing years ago…and insult the bastard let him know what you think of him…have to pry the shell out with my knife…hello you ugly bastard you’re not just going to walk all over me you know…come out come OUT that’s better…

Jerome threw the knife aside, closed up the shotgun and raised himself high enough to look over the side. He was about eighty metres from the shore and he could see the pallid man standing in the shade of a crack willow near the house. Not giving himself time to think, Jerome sat up higher, put the gun to his shoulder and took aim.

Go ahead! The derisive challenge washed over Jerome. Waste your birdshot!

“Hello, you ugly bastard,” Jerome said aloud, desperately trying to hold the foresight on his target. The slight movement of the boat was making the task difficult, and seconds were slipping by, and no amount of effort on his part could shut out of his mind a memory-image of his knife cutting through the tube of the shell in the right-hand chamber, leaving only a single strand of plastic. The barrage of scorn which was clubbing at his mind became tinged with alarm and the figure on the shore made a sudden movement.

Jerome squeezed off his shot and allowed the recoil to topple him backwards into the boat.

He crouched beside Pitman’s body, ears ringing with manufactured thunder, and tried to feel what was happening at the edge of the lake. He had no doubt that the hundreds of lead pellets massed as a single projectile, still held together by the severed tube of the cartridge, would have been able to carry the distance to the shore and deliver a devastating punch—but had his aim been good enough? Shotgun sights were not designed for that kind of aiming, the boat had been rocking, and he had been in a state of panic. The psychic pressure from the rifleman appeared to have ceased, but that could mean he had decided to lie low and await his chance to end the strange duel.

Jerome weighed the possibilities and reluctantly came to the conclusion that he had nothing to gain by allowing himself to go on drifting towards the shore. If the pallid man had not been put out of action it would be better to find out sooner than later. Jerome gave an unhappy sigh and raised his head, wondering if a person who received a high-velocity bullet between the eyes had time to feel pain or realize what had happened to him.

There was no movement on the shore, nothing out of the ordinary to see. The afternoon sun glowed placidly on the walls of his house, visual echo of a hundred mellow weekends. Jerome studied the area of shade beneath the willow, but the various patches of colour he could distinguish remained ambiguous. He looked around for the oars he had released, found them floating within reach and manoeuvred them up into the rowlocks. In order to row properly he had to slide his feet under Pitman’s body, but the lolling pressure was merely something else to be accepted in a day which was testing his endurance to the limit.

As he pulled towards the side of the lake he imagined a rifle target stitched to his back and visualized it as seen through a sighting scope, growing larger with each second. So clear did the mental picture become that he was forced to wonder if it could be yet another telepathic transmission, a teasing punishment for his act of defiance, and with the accompanying spasm of alarm the tightness returned to his chest. He slackened off his pace, imposed a slow regularity on his breathing and practised the new art of tolerating the intolerable until the boat was nuzzling into reeds and mud. The water reached up to his knees in clamming intimacy as he stepped out.

He picked up the shotgun, got his finger around the second trigger and waded the last few paces on to dry land. The first thing he saw was a hunting rifle lying at the base of the willow tree. On the far side of the tree was visible a khaki-clad shoulder and arm, and Jerome realized that the man from the filling station was sitting with his back to the trunk, facing away from him and the lake. What he could see of the man was perfectly motionless, but the exposed hand was very close to the rifle.

Jerome considered the idea that he was being toyed with, lured into a trap, and was able to dismiss it. The personality with whom he had been in telepathic contact had been far too cold and inhuman to countenance any kind of indirection. Had he been in a position to kill Jerome during the last few minutes Jerome would be dead—it was as simple as that—but perhaps he was only lightly unconscious. Easing his feet out of his waterlogged shoes, Jerome approached the tree in silence. He stooped and gripped the rifle by its muzzle and flung the weapon aside. The exposed hand did not move.

Paradoxically more anxious than before, Jerome circled to the other side of the tree, keeping the shotgun at the ready, and halted as he got his first direct look at the seated figure. The man from the filling station had taken the 12-gauge shell on the right cheekbone. That side of his face was caved in and at the centre of the bloody depression was visible the bright orange plastic of the cartridge tube, barely projecting from the ruptured tissue. His head was in an upright position, tilted back against the tree for support. His right eye was ruined, hidden by pulverized flesh and skin, but the left one was open. He was still alive, in spite of the dreadful wound, and the single eye was staring at Jerome with a kind of serene malevolence.

Jerome backed away, shaking his head, and turned to flee—but he was too late.

The light seemed to appear inside his skull, whiting out his surroundings, whiting out his consciousness, then he was falling through the whiteness into an ocean of white radiance.