Vertigo

two

Technical difficulties had dosed the transcontinental air corridor west of Regina, so Hasson completed his journey by rail.

It was mid-morning when he reached Edmonton, and on stepping down from the train he was immediately struck by the coldness of the sun-glittering air which washed around him like the waters of a mountain stream. In his previous experience such temperatures allied with brilliant sunshine had only been encountered when patrolling high above the Pennines on a spring morning. For an instant he was flying again, dangerously poised, with a flight of gulls twinkling like stars far below, and the weakness returned to his knees. He looked around the rail station, anchoring himself to the ground, taking in details of his surroundings. The platform extended a long way beyond the girdered roof, dipping into hard-packed snow which was criss-crossed with tyre tracks. City buildings formed a blocky palisade against the snowfields he could sense to the north. Hasson, wondering how he was going to recognise his escort, examined the people nearest to him. The men seemed huge and dauntingly jovial, many of them dressed in reddish tartan jackets as though conforming to tourists” preconceived notions of how Canadians should look.

Hasson, suddenly feeling overwhelmed and afraid, picked up his cases and moved towards the station exit. As he did so an almost handsome, olive-skinned man with a pencil-line moustache and exceptionally bright eyes came towards him, hands extended. The stranger’s expression of friendliness and pleasure was so intense that Hasson moved out of his way, fearful of perhaps obstructing a family reunion. He glanced back over his shoulder and was surprised to find there was nobody close behind him.

“Rob I” The stranger gripped both of Hasson’s shoulders. “Rob Hasson I It’s great to see you again. Really great!”

“I …” Hasson gazed into the varnish-coloured eyes which stared back at him with such intemperate affection and was forced to the conclusion that this was his Canadian host, Al Werry. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Come on, Rob — you look like you could do with a drink.” Werry took the cases from Hasson’s unresisting fingers and set off with them towards the exit barrier. “I’ve got a bottle of scotch in the car outside — and guess what.”

“It’s your favourite. Lockhart’s.”

Hasson was taken aback. “Thanks, but how did you…?”

“That was quite a night we had in that pub — you know the one about ten minutes along the highway from Air Police HQ. What was it called?”

“I can’t remember.”

“The Haywain.” Werry supplied. “You were drinking Lockhart whisky. Lloyd Inglis was on vodka, and I was learning to drink your Boddington’s ale. What a night!” Werry reached a sleek-looking car which had a city crest on its side, opened its trunk and began loading the four cases, thus giving Hasson a moment in which to think. He had the vaguest memory of an occasion seven or eight years earlier when he had became involved with providing hospitality for a group of Canadian police officers, but every detail of the evening was lost to him. Now it was obvious that Werry had been one of the visitors and he felt both embarrassed and alarmed by the other man’s ability to recall an unimportant event with such clarity.

“Hop in there, Rob, and we’ll shake this place — I want to get you to Tripletree in time for lunch. May is cooking up moose steaks for us, and I’ll bet you never tasted moose.” While he was speaking Werry slipped out of his overcoat, folded it carefully and placed it on the car’s rear seat. His chocolate-brown uniform, which carried the insignia of a city reeve, was crisply immaculate and when he sat down he spent some time smoothing the cloth of the tunic behind him to prevent it being wrinkled by the driving seat. Hasson opened the passenger door and got in, taking equal care to ensure that his spine was straight and well supported in the lumbar region.

“Here’s what you need,” Werry said, taking a flat bottle from a dash compartment and handing it to Hasson. He smiled indulgently, showing square healthy teeth.

“Thanks.” Hasson dutifully accepted the bottle and took a swig from it, noticing as he tilted his head that there was a police style counter-gravity harness flying suit lying on the rear seat beside Werry’s coat. The neat spirit tasted warmish, flat and unnaturally strong, but he pretended to savour it, a task which became Herculean when it seared into one of the mouth ulcers which had been troubling him for weeks.

“You hold on to that — it’s more’n an hour’s run to Tripletree.” Werry spun up the car’s turbine as he spoke and a few seconds later they were surging into a northbound traffic stream. As the car emerged from among the downtown buildings expanses of blue sky became visible and Hasson saw above him a fantastic complex of aerial highways. The bilaser images looked real but not real — curves, ramps, straights, trumpet-shaped entrances and exits, all apparently carved from coloured gelatine and bannered across the sky to guide and control the flux of individual fliers whose business brought them into the city. Thousands of dark specks moved along the insubstantial ducts, like the representation of a gas flow in a physics text.

“Pretty, isn’t it? Some system!” Werry leaned forward, peering upwards with enthusiasm.

“Very nice.” Hasson tried to find a comfortable posture in the car’s too pliant upholstery as he studied the three-dimensional pastel-coloured projections. Similar traffic control techniques had been tried in Britain back in the days when there still had been hope of reserving some territory for conventional aircraft, but they had been abandoned as too costly and too complicated. With million of individuals airborne above a small island, many of them highly resistant to discipline, it had been found most expedient to go for a simple arrangement of columnar route markers with bands of colour at different altitudes. The most basic bilaser installations could cope with the task of projecting the solid-seeming columns, and they had a further advantage in that they left the aerial environment looking comparatively uncluttered. To Hasson’s eyes, the confection hovering above Edmonton resembled the entrails of some vast semi- transparent mollusc.

“You feeling all right, Rob?” Werry said. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

Hasson shook his head. “I’ve been travelling too long, that’s…”

“They told me you got yourself all smashed up.”

“Just a broken skeleton,” Hasson said, modifying an old joke. “How much did they tell you, anyway?”

“Not much. It’s better that way, I guess. I’m telling everybody you’re my cousin from England, that your name’s Robert Haldane, that you’re an insurance salesman and you’re convalescing from a bad car smash.”

“It sounds plausible enough.”

“I hope so,” Werry drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, signalling his dissatisfaction. “It’s a funny sort of set-up, though. With England having separate air police, I mean. I never thought you’d get mixed up with big-time organised crime.”

“It was just the way things worked out. Lloyd Inglis and I were busting a gang of young angels, and when Lloyd got killed the…” Hasson broke off as the car swerved slightly. “I’m sorry. Didn’t they say?”

“I didn’t know Lloyd was dead.”

“I can’t take it myself yet.” Hasson stared at the road ahead, which was like a black canal banked with snow. “One of the gang was the son of a mob chief who was buying up respectability as if it was developed land, and the boy was carrying papers which were going to wipe out his old man’s investment. It’s a long story, and complicated …” Hasson, tired of talking, hoped he had said enough to satisfy Werry’s professional curiosity.

“Okay, let’s forget all that sort of stuff, cousin.” Werry smiled and gave Hasson an exaggerated wink. “All I want is for you to relax and get yourself built up again. You’re goin” to have the time of your life in the next three months. Believe me.”

“I do.” Hasson glanced discreetly, gratefully, at his new companion. Werry’s body was hard and flat, with a buoyant curvature to the muscles which suggested a natural strength carefully maintained by exercise. He seemed to take an ingenuous pleasure in the perfection of his uniform, something which combined with his Latin-American looks to give him the aura of a swaggering young colonel in a revolutionary republic. Even his handling of the car — slightly aggressive, slightly flamboyant — spoke of a man who was perfectly at home in his environment, taking up its challenges with a zestful confidence. Hasson, envious of the other man’s intact and gleaming psychological armour, wondered how it had been possible for him to forget his first meeting with Werry.

“By the way,” Werry said, “I didn’t tell the folks at home — that’s May and Ginny, and my boy Theo — anything about you. Anything apart from the official story, that is. Thought it better just to keep things to ourselves. It’s simpler that way.”

“You’re probably right.” Hasson mulled over the new information for a moment. “Didn’t your wife think it a bit odd when you produced a brand-new cousin out of thin air?”

“May isn’t my wife — not yet anyway. Sybil left me about a year ago, May and her mother only moved in last month, so it’s all right — I could have cousins all over the world, for all they know.”

“I see.” Hasson felt a throb of unease at the prospect of having to meet and cohabit with three more strangers, and it came to him once again that he had joined the ranks of life’s walking wounded. The car was now speeding along a straight highway which cut through immensities of sun-blinding snow. He fumbled in his breast pocket, produced a pair of darkened glasses and put them on, glad of the barrier they set up against the pressures of an unmanageable universe. He shifted to an easier position in his seat, cradling the unwanted bottle of whisky, and tried to come to terms with the new Robert Hasson.

The deceptively commonplace term “nervous breakdown’, he had discovered, was a catch-all for a host of devasting mental and physical symptoms — but the knowledge that he was suffering from a classical and curable illness did nothing to alleviate those symptoms. No matter how often he told himself he would be back to normal in the not too distant future, his depressions and fears remained implacable enemies, swift to strike, tenacious, slow to relinquish their grip. In his own case, he appeared to have regressed emotionally to relive the turmoils of adolescence.

His father, Desmond Hasson, had been a West Country village storekeeper driven by circumstances to work in the city, and had never even begun to adapt to his new surroundings. Naive, awkward, pathologically shy, he had lived out the life of a hopeless exile a mere two hundred kilometres from his birthplace, bound by the rigidity of his outlook, always whispering when in public lest the difference in his accent should draw curious glances. His marriage to a tough-minded city girl had served only to let the incomprehensible strangeness of the world of factories and office blocks invade his home, and he had become perpetually reserved and uncommunicative. It had come as a bitter disappointment to him to find that his son responded naturally and easily to an ur- ban environment, and for some years he had done his best to correct what he regarded as a serious character defect. There had been the long, uninformative walks in the country (Desmond Hasson knew surprisingly little about the world of nature he espoused); the futile hours of fishing in polluted streams; the boredom of enforced labour in a vegetable garden. Young Rob Hasson had disliked all of those things, but the real psychological marks had been caused by his father’s attempts to mould his essential nature.

He had been a gregarious boy, not averse to speaking his mind, and the worst personality conflicts had arisen from this fact. Time after time he had been quelled, humbled, desolated by the admonition — always delivered in a shocked and betrayed undertone — that a proposed course of action would cause people to look at him. He had grown up with the implanted conviction that the most scandalous thing he could ever do would be to draw the attention of others in public. There had been other strictures, notably those concerned with sex, but the principal one, the one which clung longest and made life most difficult, had been that concerning the need for self-effacement. Even as a young adult, at college and during a brief spell in the army, each time he had been called upon to get up on his feet and address any kind of assembly he had been plagued and undermined by visions of panic-stricken blue eyes and by the parental voice whispering, “Everybody will look at you!”

Hasson had eventually broken the conditioning, and — with his father long dead — had thought himself free of it for ever, but the impact of nervous illness appeared to have shattered his adult character like a glass figurine. It was as if his father had begun to achieve a posthumous victory, recreating himself in his only son. He found it intensely difficult to sustain any kind of a conversation, and the thought of having to enter a house of strangers filled him with a cool dread. Hasson stared sombrely at the unfolding alien snowscapes and yearned desperately to be back in his two-roomed flat in Warwick, with the door locked and the undemanding companionship of a television set for solace.

Al Werry, as though sensing his need, remained silent in the following hour except for the passing on of scraps of information about local geography. In between times, the police radio made occasional popping and growling noises, but no calls came through on it. Hasson took the opportunity to recharge his spiritual batteries and was feeling slightly more competent when a tangle of pale-glowing aerial sculptures appeared above the horizon, letting him know they were drawing close to Tripletree. He was taking in the broad outlines of the traffic control system when his eye was caught by the silhouette of a peculiar structure close to the city, stark against the background of luminous pastels. From the distance it resembled a monstrous, single-stemmed flower, grown to a height of perhaps four hundred metres. He speculated briefly about its purpose, then turned to Werry.

“What’s that thing?” he said. “It can’t be a water tower, or can it?”

“There’s nothing wrong with your eyes, Rob.” Werry spent a few seconds staring straight ahead, satisfying himself that he too could see the object clearly. “That’s our local landmark, Morlacher’s Folly — otherwise known as the Chinook Hotel.”

“Strange architecture for a hotel.”

“Yeah, but not as strange as you would think. You know what a chinook is?”

“A warm breeze you get in the wintertime.”

“That’s right, except that we don’t always get it. Around here it has a habit of streaming over us at a height of a hundred or two hundred metres. Sometimes as low as fifty. It can be ten below zero at ground level, so we’re going around freezing, and up there the bird’s are sunbathing at ten and fifteen degrees above. That’s what was in old Harry Morlacher’s mind when he built the hotel — the residential part is right up there in the warm air stream. It was meant to be a high-priced R R spot for oil execs from all over Athabasca.”

“Something went wrong?”

“Everything went wrong.” Werry gave a quiet snort, a sound which might have been indicative of appreciation, awe or contempt. “None of the construction outfits around here had ever tried building a giant lollipop before, so the costs kept going up and up till Morlacher was down to near his last cent. Then they developed new ways of scooping up the tar sands and cleaned out what was left of the easy stuff in a couple of years. Then mono- propellant engines came in and nobody had much use for our oil any more, so the Chinook Hotel never took in a paying customer. Not one ! Talk about a fool and his money!”

Hasson, who had little expertise with money, clicked his tongue. “Anybody can make a mistake.”

“Not that sort of mistake. It takes a special talent to make that sort of mistake.” Werry grinned at Hasson and adjusted the angle of his cap, looking scornful, tough, healthy and well adjusted, the picture of an up-and-coming career cop, a man with complete confidence in his own abilities. Hasson felt a fresh pang of envy.

“Still, it makes a good talking point,” he said.

Werry nodded. “We’ll be going right by it on the way into town. We can stop there and you can have a close look.”

“I’d like that.”

There was little else of interest in the flat white landscape and Hasson kept his gaze fixed on the remarkable structure as it steadily expanded in the frame of the car’s windshield. It was only when they approached to within a kilometre that he began to appreciate the full daring of the unconventional architecture. The central column looked impossibly slim as it soared skywards to blossom outwards into an array of radial beams supporting the circular mass of the hotel proper. It gave the appearance of having been forged from a single piece of stainless steel, although he was sure that seams would become visible upon close inspection. Sunlight glinted on the glass and plastics exterior of the hotel section, making it look remote and unattainable, an Olympian resort for a godlike breed of men.

“There isn’t much room inside that stem for a lift… elevator,” Hasson commented as the car reached the outskirts of Tripletree and began to pass widely separated high-income dwellings perched on snow-covered hummocks.

No room,” Werry said. “The plan was for two tubular scenic elevators running up beside the pylon, but things never got that far. You can see the holes for them on the underside of the hotel.”

Hasson, narrowing his eyes against the intense light from the sky, had just managed to pick out two circular apertures when his attention was caught by a moving speck in the upper air close to the hotel. “There’s a flier up there.”

“Is there?” Werry sounded uninterested. “Could be Buck Morlacher- old Harry’s son. Buck or one of his men.”

“The place isn’t in use, is it?”

“It’s in use, all right — but not the way the Morlachers had in mind,” Werry said grimly. “We’ve got angels here too, you know, and the Chinook makes a dandy roost for them. At night they come in from all over the province for their get-togethers.”

Hasson visualised the task of trying to police the huge eyrie at night and there was an icy heaving in his stomach. “Can’t you seal the place up?”

“Too much glass. They can pick a window anywhere and cut through the bars and they’re in.”

“What about CG field neutralisers? A building like that must have had them to keep off peepers.”

“The money ran out before they were installed.” Werry glanced at his wristwatch. “Look, Rob, you must be real hungry by this time, I’ll take you right on home now to eat and we can stop by for a look at the hotel some other time. How does that sound to you?”

Hasson was on the point of falling in with the suggestion out of courtesy when he realized he had no desire for food. Furthermore, making a closer inspection of the fantastic building would stave off the ordeal of having to meet the other members of Werry’s household.

“I couldn’t look at food just yet,” he said, testing the position. “A column that height must have one hell of a foundation.”

“Yeah — in the ground, where you can’t see it.”

“All the same…”

“Tourists,” Werry sighed, swinging the car to the left to pick up a tree-lined avenue which ran towards the hotel. At this proximity, for the occupants of a vehicle, the building registered on the vision as nothing but a silvery mast sprouting from behind ordinary buildings and making a dizzy ascent to unseen regions. The idea of following that slim pylon upwards for four hundred metres and finding a world of conference halls, ballrooms, cocktail bars and bedrooms seemed utterly preposterous, as much a part of a fairy tale as a giant’s castle at the top of a beanstalk.

Hasson looked about him with interest as the car reached a flat and undeveloped tract of land which would have formed spacious grounds for the hotel. Its boundary was marked by a four-strand wire fence which had been knocked down in several places, and here and there beneath the snow it was possible to pick out old scars made by earth-moving equipment. The air of desolation, of a battle that had been lost, was added to by the state of the low circular building which surrounded the base of the support column. Most of its windows had star-shaped holes and the walls were colourful samplers of aerosol graffiti. A strip of waterproof skin that had almost been detached from the roof stirred gently in the breeze.

As the car came to a halt Hasson noticed another vehicle — an expensive-looking, wine-coloured sports model — parked just inside the line of the fence. A fur-hatted man in his thirties was leaning against it with a shotgun cradled in his arms. He was wearing a one-piece flying suit, the glistening black material of which was crossed by the fluorescent orange straps of a CG harness. Hearing the other car arrive, he turned his head towards Werry and Hasson for a moment — flashing sunlight from mirrored lenses — then resumed his concentrated study of the lofty upper section of the hotel.

“That’s Buck Morlacher,” Werry said. “Guarding the family investment.”

“Really? With a gun?”

“That’s just for show, mainly. Buck likes to think he’s a frontiersman.

Hasson paused in the act of opening the car door. “He isn’t wearing panniers. Don’t tell me he flies with a shotgun just held in his hands.”

“No chance!” Werry tugged the peak of his cap down a little. “It wouldn’t matter much, anyway. There’s nobody around here for it to fall on.”

“Yes, but …” Hasson stopped speaking as he realized he was on the verge of interfering in things which were not his concern. One of the most universal and necessary legislations relating to personal flight was the one which forbade the transportation of dense objects, except in specially approved pannier bags. Even with that precaution the annual death toll from falling objects was unacceptably high, and there was no country in the world where the breaking of that particular law did not bring severe mandatory penalties. All Hasson’s instincts told him Morlacher had just flown with the gun, or was about to fly, and he felt a profound relief over the fact that the law enforcement task was not his. It was work for a fit, hard man in full possession of himself.

“Are you getting out?” Werry said, again glancing at his watch.

“Can’t see anything from in here.” Hasson pushed open the passenger door, swung his feet sideways and froze as his back locked itself into immobility with a sensation like bone grinding on dry bone. He caught his breath and began trying different grips on the doorframe as he struggled with the engineering problem of how to hoist his skeleton into an upright position. Werry got out at the other side without noticing, adjusted his cap, checked to see how his gleaming boots were faring on the snow, tugged his tunic straight at the back, and approached Morlacher with careful tread.

“Mornin’, Buck,” he said. “Going to do a little duck shooting?”

“Go away, Al — I’m busy.” Morlacher continued staring upwards, his eyes hidden behind chips of pale blue sky. He was a large, overweight man with copper-coloured hair and a triangular patch of bright pink on each cheek. His lips were drawn back, exposing teeth which seemed to be inhumanly thick and strong, with heavy molars in place of incisors, Hasson immediately felt afraid of him.

“I can see you’re busy,” Werry said pleasantly. “Just wondered what you’re busy at.”

“What’s the matter with you?” A look of impatience appeared on Morlacher’s face as he lowered his head to stare at Werry. “You know I’m doing the work you should be doing — if you’d any balls. Why don’t you just get back into your kiddycar and leave me to it? All right?”

Werry glanced back at Hasson, who had managed to draw himself into a standing position with his arms along the top of the car door. “Now you listen to me, Buck,” Werry said. “What makes you…?” “They were up there last night again,” Morlacher cut in. “Having one of their dirty parties — violating my property — violating it, do you hear? And what do you do about it? Nothing. That’s what you do — nothing!” Morlacher scowled, pulling his colourless eyebrows together, and directed his mirrored gaze towards Hasson as though becoming aware of him for the first time. Hasson, still trying to establish whether or not he could stand up unsupported, looked away into the distance. He detected a movement at the upper edge of his vision and raised his eyes to see a flier swooping down from the hotel.

“There might be one or two of them still holed out up there,” Morlacher went on, “and if that’s so, Starr and I are going to flush them out and deal with them ourselves. The old way.”

“There’s no need for that sort of talk,” Werry protested. He was staring, perplexed, at Morlacher when the descending flier closed in on him from above and behind. He was a wispy- bearded youngster, wearing a blue flying suit and carrying a pump-action shotgun slung across his back. As Hasson watched, he moved a hand to his belt and deliberately switched off his counter-gravity field while still three metes in the air. He dropped instantaneously, but the momentum remaining from his curving descent brought him into a thudding collision with Werry’s shoulder. Werry sprawled on the ground, his face driven into the snow.

“Sorry, Al. Sorry. Sorry.” The young man helped Werry to his feet and began brushing show from his uniform. “It was a pure accident — the glare from the snow blinded me.” He was winking at Morlacher as he spoke.

Hasson felt a rush of adrenaline through his system as he looked at Al Werry, waiting for him to take the action the situation cried out for. Werry straightened up and looked uncertainly down at the newcomer who was stooped before him brushing his clothes with exaggerated gestures of concern. Now, Hasson willed. Now, before any more time passes. Now, while he’s set up for you in all his arrogance.

Werry shook his head and — disastrously — began to smile. “Know something, Starr Pridgeon? I don’t think you’re ever going to get the hang of that harness.”

“Know something, Al? I think you’re right.” The youngster gave a bray of laughter and in the middle of it, just as Morlacher had done, turned and fixed his gaze on Hasson as though seeing him for the first time. Hasson, veteran of a thousand such encounters, recognised the imitative borrowing of a mannerism and guessed at once that Morlacher was the dominant partner of the pair. He remained leaning on the car door, tentatively trying to straighten his back as Pridgeon came towards him. Pain flared in his joints. They were machine bearings which had been sabotaged with carborundum powder, robbing him of mobility.

“This must be Al’s cousin from England,” Pridgeon said. “What do you think of Canada, Al’s cousin?”

I haven’t had time to form an opinion,” Hasson said steadily.

Pridgeon glanced at the others. “Don’t he talk nice?” He ruined back to Hasson. “Wasn’t that accident the dumbest thing you ever saw?”

“I didn’t really see it.”

“No?” Pridgeon examined him critically for a moment. “You a cripple or something?”

To his horror, Hasson found his lips arranging themselves in the shape of a smile. “Almost.”

“Huh!” Pridgeon walked away looking dissatisfied and stood beside Morlacher, and Hasson realized the older man had summoned him with a slight inclination of his head. His guess about the relationship was confirmed, but the insight was worthless.

“Did you see anything up there?” Morlacher said to Pridgeon, as though they were alone together and nothing had happened.

“Nope. Anybody’s up there, they’re keeping away from the windows.”

“I’ll go up with you.” Morlacher began tightening the straps of his harness.

“Just so long as you don’t carry that shotgun with you,” Werry said severely. “We can’t have you just blasting off at people.”

Morlacher continued addressing Pridgeon. “I’ll take this shotgun up with me, and if I see anybody I’ll blast off at them.”

“Well, I don’t know how you characters feel, but I’m hungry,” Werry said, suddenly breezy and jovial as he turned to Hasson. “Come on, Rob — May’s going to get mad at us if we don’t show up in time for those steaks.” He walked to his car and dropped into the driving seat, causing the vehicle to rock on its suspension. Hasson, who had just established that it was now safe for him to move, lowered himself back into the car and closed the door. He placed his hands on his knees and gazed fixedly at them while Werry started the car, drove it in a semicircle across the uneven snow and took them back out to the road. A minute of silence was all he could endure.

“Al,” he said quietly, “are you going to put in a call?”

“A call?” Werry sounded genuinely surprised. “What for?”

“You saw Pridgeon commit a TDO — he was carrying a shotgun on an ordinary shoulder sling. And Morlacher’s going to do it, too.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that too much. Besides, it was on Buck’s private property.”

“Which doesn’t count in air law.”

Werry laughed. “Relax, Rob. This isn’t the old country. People aren’t shoulder to shoulder on the ground here. We’ve got millions of square kilometres of open land you could drop whole city blocks on without anybody paying any heed.”

“But …” Hasson tightened his grip on his knees, and the knuckles shone through the skin like ivory hillocks, each bifurcated by a thin pink line. He had realized why he could not remember his first meeting with Werry — the man he had believed Werry to be simply did not exist.

“Pridgeon knocked you down on purpose, you know,” he said, reminding himself it was none of his business, but unable to keep the words in check.

He’s always horsing around like that,” Werry replied carelessly. “High spirits. It doesn’t mean a thing.”

That’s where you’re wrong, Hasson thought. The symbolism meant every thing. “From what I saw…”

“I thought you didn’t see anything,” Werry cut in. “When Starr asked you, you said you hadn’t seen anything.”

“Yes, but…” Hasson was stung by Werry’s remark, mainly because there was no denying it, and he lapsed into a shamed, recriminatory silence. The car reached the business section of Tripletree and he began to study the unfamiliar design of the various stores and office buildings, retreating inwards, picking out unfamiliar elements, noting the different ways in which it was possible to combine windows, walls and doors, and nostalgically comparing what he saw to the homely architecture of English rural villages. The pavements were crowded with lunch- time shoppers, many of whom wore brightly coloured flying suits as protection against the cold. Two policemen — one of them fat and middle-aged, the other looking barely pubescent — nodded amiably at Werry as the car paused at an intersection. He gave them a parody of an official salute, then nodded and grinned, secure and comfortable again in his role, as the fat man wielded an imaginary knife and fork. Both policemen turned immediately and hurried into a hamburger bar.

“Always eating, those two,” Werry commented. “Still, it means I generally know where to find them.”

Hasson, surprised at the degree of informality in Werry’s relationship with his men, seized on it as yet another indicator that he was alone, adrift, orphaned in an alien world. He was sinking luxuriously to new depths of gloom when he became aware that the car was again entering a residential area after having traversed only three or four downtown streets.

“How many people live in Tripletree?” he said, looking about him in some surprise.

“Twenty-six thousand at the last count.” Werry gave him a humorous glance. “We still call it a city, though. When the provinces all became autonomous and got their own governments they wanted to be as much like real honest-to-God countries as they could, so they didn’t issue charters for anything but cities. There aren’t any villages or towns in Alberta. Just cities. Hundreds of them.” He laughed and flicked up the peak of his cap, his bonhomie apparently fully restored.

“I see.” Hasson tried to digest the information. “And how many men in your department?”

“Actually on the street — four. That was half of my force you saw disappearing into Ronnie’s diner. The other half handles air traffic.”

“It doesn’t seem enough men.”

“I manage — and the job carries the official rank of reeve. If I transfer to a big city it’ll be as reeve.”

Hasson tried to visualise ways of running an effective police force with only four men, but his imagination balked at the task. He was on the point of asking further questions when Werry slowed the car down and turned into a short avenue of white- painted frame houses. The snow had not been cleared from it, as in the main thoroughfare, and it lined the street in fudge- coloured ridges. Hasson’s heart began to pound as he realized they had reached Werry’s home and he was dose to the meeting with his family. The car crunched to a halt about halfway along the avenue, outside a house which was partly hidden by several young fir trees.

“This is it,” Werry said cheerfully. “Rob, you’ll have your feet under the table in no time.”

Hasson tried to smile. Just remember, Dr Colebrook had told him once, a person who has had a nervous breakdown and dealt with it successfully is far better equipped to face life than somebody who has never been through the experience. The battle for self-control reveals inner strengths and reserves which otherwise would never have been discovered. Remembering the words, Hasson tried to draw comfort from them as, fearful of looking at the house in case he encountered strangers” eyes, he opened the car door and lowered his feet to the ground. He discovered that getting out a few minutes earlier at the hotel had helped to free his spine and lumbar muscles, and that he was able to stand up quite normally. Grateful for the respite, he insisted on taking two of his cases out of Werry’s hands and carrying them up the path to the house. Werry opened the outer and inner front doors with a flourish and ushered him into an atmosphere which smelt warmly of cooking, wax polish and camphor. A staircase ran up from the right side of the smallish hail, whose space was further encroached upon by an old-fashioned coatstand which was bulging with a variety of heavy garments, quilted flying suits and CG harnesses. Framed photographs and some highly amateurish watercolours hung on the walls, creating an air of domesticity which made Hasson feel more of an exile than ever because the home to which they belonged was not his home.

He was looking around him, smothered and tapped, when a door at the end of the hall was opened by a woman of about thirty. She was of medium height and fair haired, with a lean- hipped yet busty figure, and the exact kind of full-lipped, sulky good looks that Hasson had seen in a hundred old fiat-screen movies in cinema clubs. This he thought, was the saloon girl who enjoyed her work, the gangster’s girl friend, the chick on the back of the big bike, the roadside café waitress for whose favours truck drivers beat each other down with chair legs. She was dressed for the multiple part, in high-heeled shoes, toreador pants and a white T-shirt, Hasson was unable to meet her gaze.

“May,” Werry said, his voice filled with omnidirectional pride, “I’d like you to meet my cousin, Rob Haldane. He’s been travelling for days and he’s hungry. Isn’t that right, Rob?”

“That’s right.” Hasson agreed, accepting that there was no diplomatic way of making Werry see that his principal requirement was for solitude and rest. “How do you do?”

“Hello, Rob.” May took his extended hand, and on the instant of contact gave him a sudden smile, coy and direct at the same time, as though some unexpected human chemistry had been worked, taking her by surprise. The trick was so unsubtle that it embarrassed Hasson, and yet he immediately felt flattered.

Werry beamed at them both. “We ought to have a drink. What did you do with the bottle, Rob?”

“Here.” Hasson discovered he had slipped the bottle of whisky into his topcoat pocket. He was in the act of producing it when they were joined in the hail by a sharp-featured, thin-shouldered woman of about sixty. She was modishly dressed as though about to set off for a party, with an abundance of jewellery and hair tinted to match her coppertex suit.

“And this is Ginny Carpenter — May’s mother,” Werry said. “Ginny, meet Rob.”

“Pleased.” She looked up at Hasson through narrowed eyes and made no move to shake hands. “You’re the one who nearly killed hisself in a car.”

Hasson was taken aback. “That’s right.”

“Haven’t they got any good hospitals back in England?”

“Now, Ginny,” Werry put in placatingly. “Rob’s had all the hospital treatment he needs. He’s here to rest and build himself up.”

“He needs it,” Ginny said, still examining Hasson critically. “Have to see what a couple of months of good food will do for him.” Hasson tried to think of a swift retort which would let the woman know he had been accustomed to eating well all his life and expected to continue doing so when he left Canada, but the abrasiveness of her manner had thrown his thoughts into disarray. He stared down at her, dumb and helpless, as he strove to find the right words.

“Were you about to have a belt?” she said, forestalling him, glancing significantly at the bottle in his hand. “If you need it, go right ahead and have it — the smell doesn’t bother me.”

The phrases which Hasson so desperately needed to put together collided with those which were already swirling in his mind, rendering him even more incapable of speech than before. He turned to the others in the little group. Werry was nodding eagerly, expectantly, as though enjoying a bantering contest between life-long friends: May was still regarding him with wide- eyed, misty candour, projecting waves of startled tenderness. Hasson suppressed an urge to flee. “That’s my bottle, Ginny,” Werry said, after what seemed a long time. “Rob brought it in from the car for me.”

“Why didn’t he say so?” Ginny snapped as she went back into the room from which she had emerged. “I’m going to put the steaks under the grill. Come on, girl! You’re not very ambitious today, and there’s a load of extra work to do.” May obediently followed after her, giving Hasson a last liquid look as she closed the door.

“That Ginny’s a real character,” Werry said, chuckling. “Always the same — doesn’t care what she says to anybody. You should have seen your face when she made the crack about bending your elbow!”

Hasson smiled in return, strickenly, wondering how insensitive it was possible for a man to be. “I’m a bit tired. If you don’t mind, I’d like to go up to my room.”

“You’ve hardly touched this,” Werry said disappointedly, holding the whisky bottle up to the light. “I got it specially for you.”

“Thanks, but I’m. . . Is my room upstairs?”

“Follow me.” Werry picked up the larger pair of cases and led the way up the narrow stair. He installed Hasson in a pleasant square room which had a double bed and framed photographs of ice hockey teams on the walls. The furnishings were modern except for one glass-fronted bookcase filled with dark cloth-bound volumes whose titles had been eroded to isolated specks of gold or silver. There were two windows admitting a white light whose main direction was upwards, reflected from the snow outside, creating am airy ambience similar to that of the passenger cabin of the flying boat in which he had crossed the Atlantic. Hasson surveyed the room, seeing it with a presternatural clarity which came from the knowledge that it was to be his private fortress for months to come. He checked that there was a lock on the door and almost at once picked out the best place to set up a portable television.

“Bathroom and toilet are just along the landing,” Werry said helpfully. “As soon as you get yourself sorted out come down to lunch. Theo is getting out of school early today, and he’ll want to meet you too.”

“I’ll be right down,” Hasson replied, willing the other man to leave. As soon as he was alone he lay down on the bed, coaxing his body into relaxation, staring at the shifting twig patterns on the ceiling. Where are they? he thought Where are the inner strengths and reserves that Dr Colebrook promised me? He pressed the back of a hand to his lips and closed his eyes to shut out the merciless white radiance which surrounded him like a besieging army on all sides.