Vertigo

three

His first meal in the Werry domicile was even more of an ordeal than Hasson had anticipated. Four places had been set at a circular table in the kitchen, Hasson’s distinguished from the others by the presence of a brimming tumbler of neat whisky which produced a queasy feeling in his stomach each time he looked at it. He sat down with Werry and May Carpenter while her mother, with a black cigarette clinging to her upper lip, orchestrated the meal from a standing position at the cooker. She filled each plate in person from various pans, like an army cook, paying scant heed to stated preferences. Hasson, who liked his steak well done, was given a wedge-shaped slab which had been seared black on the outside but was oozing pinkly from several fissures.

“No sauce for me,” he said as Ginny reached for an outsized ladle.

“Needs sauce,” she replied, dousing everything on his plate with a silty fluid and placing it before him. Hasson glanced at Werry, hoping he would fulfil his obligations as host and come to the rescue, but Werry was busy grimacing happily at May and trying to snatch a ribbon from her hair. He was still wearing his full uniform except for the cap, and looked like a garrison soldier flirting wish a new girl. May responded by frowning at him, tossing her head and continually smoothing her hair down with both hands, an action which might have been designed to show off the voluptuousness of her breasts. Hasson was fascinated against his will, and kept being discomfited by the discovery that at the moment of maximum uplift May’s gaze was always fixed innocently on his face. In desperation, while waiting for Ginny to sit down, he distracted himself with the whisky, taking minute sips and which were barely enough to wet his lips. The months ahead suddenly seemed unbearable, an endurance test he was bound to fail unless his defences were shored up without delay. “Al,” he said, keeping his voice casual, “are there any shops, stores, nearby where I could buy or rent a portable television set?”

Werry raised his eyebrows. “There’s a nutty idea for you! We’ve got a new solid-image job right there in the front room. Two-mete stage. May and Ginny are always watching it, and you can sit with them any time you want. Isn’t that right, May?”

May nodded. “The Nabisco Club is on tonight.”

Hasson tried to smile, unable to reveal that he planned so lock himself in his room and turn it into an outpost of his homeland by taking nothing but British shows from the satellite system. “Ah . … I’m a pretty poor sleeper these days. These nights, I should say. I need a set in my bedroom for when I can’t sleep.”

“Other people need to sleep,” Ginny Carpenter put in as she joined them at the table with a loaded plate.

“I’d be using the ear pieces. There’d be no…”

“Seems a waste of money when there’s a new solid-image set with a two-metre stage right there in the front room,” Werry said carelessly. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, though — I’ll take you into town with me on Tuesday morning and introduce you so my buddy, Bill Raszin. He’ll fix you up at the right price.”

Hasson did a mental calculation and decided he could not wait four days. “Thanks, but if you don’t mind I’d like to…”

“Good food going to waste here,” Ginny reprimanded.

Hasson lowered his head and began to eat. The moose steak was more edible than he had feared, but the flavour which got through the coating of sauce reminded him strongly of rabbit and after a few small mouthfuls he was unable to continue with it. He began marking time by eating thin slices of carrot which had been liberally glazed with brown sugar and which to him tasted like sweets. Werry was the first to notice his lack of appetite and began to chivvy him loudly, only subsiding when Ginny explained that people who were accustomed to a low standard of living were often unable to cope with rich food. Hasson managed to think of several apt replies, but each time he considered putting them into words he saw his father’s panic-stricken eyes and heard the well-remembered voice saying, “Everybody will look at you.” May Carpenter kept giving him sympathetic smiles and making overtly tactful efforts to discuss his journey, but only succeeded in making him feel more gauche and inept than before. He devoted all his mind to ensuring that no particle of food found its way into one of the painful mouth ulcers, and prayed for the meal to come to an end.

“Great stuff,” Werry announced as soon as he had finished his coffee. “I’m going into the office for an hour — just to make sure I’ve still got an office — then I’ll pick Theo up coming out of school and run him home.”

Seizing his chance, Hasson followed Werry out to the hall. “Listen, Al, I might as well admit it — I’ve turned into a real TV fanatic since they brought in these solid-image jobs. Can I ride into town with you and pick myself up a set this afternoon?”

“If that’s what you want to do.” Werry looked puzzled. “Get your coat.”

When he got outside Hasson saw at once that the weather had changed. A shutter of low cloud had been drawn across the sky and the air had a chill metallic smell which promised more snow. Against the leaden backdrop, the light-sculpted aerial highways of the city’s traffic control system glowed vividly and were as solid looking as neon tubes. The gloominess of the overcast re minded Hasson of winter afternoons in Britain and had the effect of improving his spirits a little. In a grey world his bedroom would be a cocoon of safety and warmth, with its door locked and the curtains drawn, and a television set and a bottle to keep him company and absolve him from any need to think or live a life of his own.

On the way into town he gazed about him with something approaching contentment, picking out one Christmas card scene after another. The car was cruising on the main road into town when the radio hissed loudly and a call came through.

“Al, this is Henry Corzyn,” a man’s voice said. “I know you didn’t want any calls this afternoon, with your cousin being here and all that, but we’ve got a serious AC here and I think you’d better come over.”

“An aerial collision?” Werry sounded interested, but not particularly worried. “Somebody taking a short cut? Flying outside the beams?”

“No. Some kids were bombing the east approach, and one of them misjudged it and hit some guy square on. They might both be dead. You’d better get over here, Al.”

Werry swore fervently as he took directions from the police- man and slowed the car into a street leading east. He switched on emergency lights and a siren, and the already sparse surface traffic melted away into the greyness before him.

“Sorry about this, Rob,” he said. “I’ll get it over with as quickly as I can.”

“It’s all right.” Hasson said, his feeling of insularity shattered. He had seen the results of bombing accidents many times during his career and knew the sort of situation into which Werry was now being precipitated. With the advent of the automobile, man had been transformed into the swiftest creature on the face of the earth, given a new dimension of freedom. That freedom had been too much for many people to handle, and the outcome had been a death toll in the same grisly league as those produced by more ancient scourges such as war, famine and disease. Then man had learned to put a judo hold on gravity, turning its strength back on itself, and had become the swiftest creature in the air, and with his new freedom — to soar with the lark and outstrip the eagle, to straddle the rainbow and follow the sunset around the red rim of the world — the Fifth Horseman, the one who rode a winged steed, had come fully into being.

The youngster who might once have killed himself and some of his fellows with the aid of a motor cycle or fast car now had a new repertoire of dangerous stunts, all of them designed to prove he was immortal — all of them frequently demonstrating the opposite. A favourite game was aerial chicken, in which two fliers would grapple high in the air and fall like stones as their CG fields cancelled each other out. The first to break free and check his descent was regarded as the loser: and the other — especially if he had switched off his field and prolonged the fall until the last possible second — was regarded as the winner, even though the winner often became the loser by virtue of misjudging his altitude and ending up in a wheelchair or on a marble slab.

Bombing was another game played on days when low cloud cover screened participants from the eyes of the law. The rules demanded that one should take up position in cloud above an aerial highway, switch off lift, and fall down through a stream of commuters, preferably without using the CG force to vector the descent in any way. The aim was to strike fear into the soul of the staid, ordinary flyer on his way home from work, and that aim was usually achieved because anybody who thought objectively about the thing realized the impossibility of judging the closing angles well enough to guarantee there would never be a collision. On more than one occasion Hasson had shot pain-killing drugs into bomber and bombed alike, and had stood helplessly by while the Fifth Horseman had added fresh coffin-shaped symbols to his tally.

Werry activated his microphone. “Henry, have you got any IDs?”

“Some. The kid who did it checks out as a Martin Prada, with an address in Stettler.” There was a moment of fretful near silence from the radio. “He might have been holed up in the Chinook all morning. If there was a party up there last night they could be starting to get a bit restless. This low-level stratus we’re getting swallowed up the hotel about an hour ago, so they’re free to come and go as they please.”

“What about the other guy?”

“All I know is he isn’t local. Judging by his gear, he’s up from the States.”

“That’s all we need,” Werry said bitterly. “Any sign of drug abuse on the kid?”

“Al, he hit a light pole on the way down,” the radio said in aggrieved tones. “I’m not about to start poking around in the mess looking for hypo marks.”

“All right — I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.” Werry broke the radio connection and gave Hasson a sidelong glance. “If there’s a US citizen involved it trebles the paperwork. How’s that for bad luck?”

His or yours? Hasson thought. Aloud he said, “What’s the narcotic situation like?”

“Most of the traditional stuff has died out, except for some acid but empathin is getting to be a big problem.” Werry shook his head and leaned forward to scan the horizon. “That’s the one that really beats me, Rob. I can understand kids wanting to get high, but wanting to get mixed up inside each other’s heads, thinking the other guy’s thoughts … You know, we get them down at the station some nights and for a couple of hours — till the stuff wears off, that is — they genuinely don’t know who they are. Sometimes two of them give the same name and address. One of them actually believes he’s the other one! Why do they do it?”

“It’s a group thing,” Hasson said. “Group identity has always been important to kids, and empathin makes it a reality.”

“I leave all that stuff to the psychiatrists.” Werry switched off his siren as a cluster of vehicles with flashing lights appeared on the road ahead. The outskirts of the city had been left behind and the country lay fiat and white all around, looking as though it had been abandoned for ever. Parallel to the road but hundreds of metres above it were two bell-mouthed aerial tunnels, bilaser projections glowing yellow and magenta, which guided fliers who were entering or leaving the city. There was a steady flow of travellers within the insubstantial tubes, but others were swarming down through different levels of the cold air, drawn by the activity on the ground.

Werry brought the car to a halt near the others, got out and picked his way across the snow to a group of men which included two in police flying suits. On the ground. in the midst of the thicket of legs, were two objects covered by black plastic sheets. Hasson averted his eyes and thought determinedly about his television set while a man drew back the sheets to let Werry inspect what lay underneath. Werry talked to the others in the group for a minute, then came back to the car, opened the rear door and took out his flying suit.

“I’ve got to go aloft for a while,” he said, pulling on the insulated one-piece garment. “Henry picked up a couple of blips on his radar and he thinks some of the punks might still be up there.”

Hasson peered up at the all-obscuring cloud. “They’re crazy if they are.”

“I know, but we have to go up and fire off a few flares and stir things up a bit. Let the good citizens see us on the job.” Werry finished zipping his suit and began to don his CG harness, looking tough and competent once more as he tightened the various straps. “Rob, I hate to ask you this, but could you take the car back across town and pick up my boy Theo coming out of school?”

“I should be able to cope if you give me directions.”

“I wouldn’t ask, but I promised him I’d be there.”

“Al, there’s no problem,” Hasson said, wondering why the other man was being so diffident.

“There’s a bit of a problem.” Werry hesitated, looking strangely embarrassed. “You see… Theo is blind. You’ll have to identify yourself to him.”

“Oh.” Hasson was lost for words. “I’m sorry.”

“It isn’t a permanent condition,” Werry said quickly. “They’re going to fix him up in a couple of years. He’ll be fine in a couple of years.”

“How will I recognise him?”

“There’s no problem — it isn’t a special school. Just look out for a tall boy carrying a sensor cane.”

“That’s all right.” Hasson strove to absorb the instructions on how to reach the school and to guess in advance what sort of relationship he might have with a blind boy, and all the while he was reluctantly fascinated by Werry’s preparations for flight, the instinctive rituals a professional never failed to observe before venturing into a perilous environment. All straps properly tightened and secured. Shoulder and ankle lights functioning. Fuel cells in good condition and delivering at the correct level. All the nets, lines and pouches associated with the air policeman’s trade present and properly stowed. Suit heater functioning. Communications equipment functioning. Face plate locked in down position and helmet radar functioning. CG field generator warmed up and all controls on belt panel at correct preliminary settings. Following the pre-flight checks with mind and eye, Hasson was lulled for a moment into visualising what came next — the effortless leap which became a dizzy ascent, the sensation of falling upwards, the patterns of fields and roads dwindling and wheeling below — and his stomach muscles contracted. propelling a sour bile into the back of his throat. He swallowed forcibly and distracted himself by sliding over behind the car’s steering wheel and examining the controls.

“I’ll see you back at the house,” Werry said. “As soon as I can.”

“See you,” Hasson replied stolidly, refusing to pay much attention as Werry touched a control at his belt and was wafted upwards into the cold grey sky at the centre of an invisible sphere of energy, his own micro-universe in which some of the basic dictates of nature had been reversed. The two other cops took off at the same time, stiff-legged, heads tilted backwards as they made cautious ascents into an unnaturally crowded medium.

Hasson started the engine, made a three-point turn and drove back towards the city. The sky had darkened perceptibly as the cloud cover thickened, although it was still mid-afternoon, and the translucent pastel geometries of Tripletree’s traffic control system were stark and garish at the upper edge of his field of vision. He found his way into the commercial centre without difficulty, aided by the fact that the city was entirely laid out on a simple grid pattern, and was leaving it again on the west side when he came to a snap decision about his craved-for television set. Slowing the car down, he began to study the store fronts which were drifting by and was rewarded by finding an electrical dealer within a matter of seconds. He parked just a few lengths beyond the appliance-filled window and walked back to it, experiencing a tremulous joy over the prospect of being safe for that evening and all the evenings to come. The glass door refused to move for him when he tried the handle.

Hasson stepped back and stared at the lighted interior with disbelieving eyes, wondering how a downtown store — even a small one — could be closed so early in the day. He swore at his bad luck, feeling cheated and persecuted, then became aware of a man watching him from the window of the adjoining premises. Unwilling to give up his electronic talisman when it had almost been within his grasp, he entered the other store and discovered it specialised in health foods. The shelves were overloaded with packets and bottles, and the air was charged with conflicting yeasty, malty and herbal odours. Behind a cluttered counter was a small, middle-aged man of Asian descent who regarded Hasson with knowing, sympathetic eyes.

“Next door,” Hasson said. “What’s happening next door? Why is there nobody there?”

“Ben has stepped out for five minutes.” The small man had a precise dry voice. “He’ll be right back.”

Hasson frowned and shifted from one foot to the other. “I can’t wait. I’m supposed to be somewhere else.”

“Ben will be back any minute, any second even. There’ll be no delay, Mr Haldane.”

Hasson looked at the storekeeper in surprise. “How did you know my…?”

“You’re driving Reeve Werry’s car, and you speak with a British accent.” The man’s eyes developed a humorous twinkle. “Simple, isn’t it? I keep passing up chances to be mysterious and inscrutable, but with a name like Oliver there’s no point in my overdoing the Oriental bit, is there?”

Hasson eyed the small man sombrely, wondering if he was being ribbed. “Are you sure he’ll be right back?”

“Positive. You can wait in here if you like.”

“Thanks, but…”

“Perhaps I can sell you what you need.”

The unusual phrasing, plus some indefinable quality in the storekeeper’s voice, alerted the dormant cop in Hasson, making him wonder what might actually be on offer. His mind flicked over a list of possibilities — drugs, women, gambling facilities, contraceptives, stolen property — then decided that nobody but a fool would proposition a relative of the local police chief on such a short acquaintanceship. And Oliver, whatever else he might be, was no fool. “I don’t need anything.” Hasson picked up a small bottle of lime green pills, glanced in-curiously at the label and set it back on the shelf. “I’d better go.”

“Mr Haldane!” Oliver’s voice remained light, his manner easy but his eyes disturbed Hasson. “Your life is entirely your own concern, but you are not at ease with yourself — and I can help. Believe me, I can help.”

Good sales pitch, Hasson thought defensively. He was choosing words to cover his retreat when a burly grey-haired man passed the store window and waved in at Oliver. Almost immediately there was the sound of the adjoining door being opened and Hasson stared towards the sweet, relieved of the need to speak.

“So long, Mr Haldane.” Oliver smiled, looking compassionate rather than disappointed at the loss of a possible sale. “I hope you’ll call again.”

Hasson paused outside in the bitterly cold air, feeling he had had a narrow escape of some kind, and hurried into the electrical store. It took him less than five minutes to purchase a small solid image television set, using some of the dollar currency which had been issued to him before he left England. He carried it out to the car, placed it carefully on the rear seat and resumed driving westwards in the direction of the school. Its location became apparent from a distance because two tree-like bilaser projections linked it into the aerial traffic system. Hasson could see hundreds of tiny figures representing students and parents floating up the ruby-coloured outward stem and dispersing at different altitudes.

The school itself turned out to be a cluster of not too modem buildings surrounding a large take-off area and car park. Students and a scattering of teachers were still emerging from some of the doors, and the sight of them reassured Hasson that he was not late. He stopped the car and got out, with only a moderate twinge from his back, and looked around for Theo Werry. There were several knots of teenagers within a radius of fifty paces, each of them seething with playful energy as the young people responded to the open air and freedom from school restrictions.

Most of them seemed oblivious to anything outside their immediate areas, but he noticed that his arrival in the police cruiser had wrought a change in one group. Its members had drawn closer together for a few seconds and then reformed into a pattern which allowed a majority to observe his movements. Hasson’s trained eye, without his bidding, detected the whispering and shuffling of feet and, above all, the sight preening movements of the shoulders which told him that young braves were entertaining thoughts of violence.

Sheer force of habit caused him to try assessing the command structure of the set, and he at once picked out a suited-up redhead of about eighteen — some four years older than his companions — who was standing in a slightly different attitude to the others and occasionally fingering his nostrils as he stared intently into the middle distance. Why am I doing this? Hasson thought, as he noted the heavily ornamented, non-standard straps of the man’s CG harness and the faint rectangular markings on the flying suit which showed that its patches of fluorescent material had been removed to make the wearer harder to track in flight. The suit also looked wet, as though it had recently been worn in cloud. At that moment a younger member of the group turned towards him and Hasson experienced a nervous jangling in his stomach as he saw the slim white tube of a sensor cane in the boy’s hand. He began walking in Hasson’s direction, watched by his companions.

Hasson put on a smile of greeting and felt it dissolve into a novocaine numbness as he remembered it could not be seen. Theo Werry was a tall, black-haired boy with finely moulded features, pale skin and the beginnings of a moustache and beard shadow which signalled his approaching manhood. His eyes looked clear and normal, fully under control, and only the tilted- back angle of his head and an unnatural serenity of expression revealed that he was blind. Hasson felt a pang of combined rage and pity which raked him with its intensity, and his thoughts promptly seized on Al Werry’s statement that the boy’s condition was soon to be cured. He stood without moving as Theo approached him. The boy walked slowly but with assurance, angling his cane in such a way as to gain maximum information about Hasson’s position and size from its invisible laser rays.

“Hello, Theo,” Hasson said. “I’m Rob Haldane. Your father got called out on a job so he asked me to meet you.”

“Hi.” Theo made an adjustment to the ear piece which translated the signals from his cane into audio tones. He extended his left hand. Hasson gripped it with his own left, taking care to achieve a clean handshake.

“I’m sorry you’ve been troubled,” Theo said. “I could have made it home by myself.”

“It’s no trouble.” Hasson opened the passenger door of the police cruiser. “Would you like to get into the car?” He was surprised to see Theo shake his head.

“I’d prefer to fly back, if you don’t mind. I’ve been cooped up all day.”

“But…”

“It’s all right,” Theo said quickly. “I’m allowed to go up, as long as I’m tethered to another flier. You’ll find my suit and harness in the trunk of the car.”

“Your father didn’t mention anything like that.” Hasson began to feel uncomfortable. “He asked me to pick you up in the car.”

“But it’s all right — honestly. I often fly home from school.” A note of impatience had crept into Theo’s voice. “Barry Lutze has offered to go with me, and he’s the best airman in Tripletree.”

“Is that the redhead you were talking to?”

“That’s him. The best flier in the country.”

“Really?” Hasson glanced across the intervening ground at Lutze, who immediately turned away and began staring into the distance while he stroked his nostrils between his finger and thumb.

Theo smiled. “Can I have my suit and harness, please?”

Hasson continued appraising Lutze while he came to a decision. “Sorry, Theo. I can’t take that responsibility — not without your father’s express consent. You can see my position, cant you?”

“Me? I can’t see anything,” Theo said bitterly. He found the car with his cane, got into it and sat down. Watched intently by the other boys, Hasson lowered himself into the driving seat and tried not to wince as the nerves in his back reacted violently to the flexure. He started the engine, drove away from the take-off area and turned towards the city. Theo maintained a reproachful silence.

“It’s a lousy day for flying, anyway,” Hasson said after a time. “Far too cold.”

“The chinook can make it warmer up top.”

“There’s no chinook today-just low cloud and a katabatic wind falling down from the mountains. Believe me, you’re better off out of it.”

Theo showed signs of interest. “Do you fly a lot, Mr Haldane?”

“Ah… no.” Hasson realized he had made a mistake in reviving the subject of flying in the presence of a sky-struck boy. “I don’t fly at all, as a mater of fact.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.” The apology showed the boy felt a shameful admission had been made, and in spite of all the dictates of his common sense Hasson was suddenly unwilling to let the matter drop. “There’s nothing wrong with travelling in comfort, you know.”

Theo shook his head and spoke with bland certainty. “You’ve got to fly. When I can see again I’m going to live up there. It’s the only way.”

“Who says?”

“Barry Lutze, for one — and he knows. Barry says you can tell a good airman just by looking at him.”

Hasson recognised a disturbing echo of the angels” aced, the unsystematic and semi-instinctive mode of thought — too primeval to be classed as a philosophy — which was born in the minds of some who flew like supermen far above the drowsing earth. It was a dangerous aced, and one he seemed to have been fighting for the whole of his life. He recalled noticing the condensation on Lutz’s flying suit and once again, entirely without volition, the policeman in him began to test patterns of ideas.

“Barry seems to tell you lots of things,” he said. “Do you know him well?”

“Pretty well: Theo replied with simple pride. “He talks to me a lot.”

“Was he doing a bit of cloud-running this afternoon?”

Theo’s face altered. “Why do you want to know?”

“No special reason,” Hasson said, realising he had given himself away. “I’m just interested. Was he aloft?”

“Barry spends most of his time aloft.”

“It’s not the sort of weather I’d pick to go drilling holes in clouds.”

Who said he was flying in cloud?”

“Nobody.” Hasson, now anxious to abandon the subject, scanned the twin lines of unfamiliar buildings ahead of the car. “I’m not sure if I remember the way home from here.”

“Is there a sort of brown glass building at the next intersection?” Theo said. “A furniture store with a projection of a big armchair on the roof?” “Yes — just ahead of us.”

“Make a left there and follow the road till you pick up the north freeway. It’s a bit longer that way, but it’s easier when you don’t know the place too well.”

“Thanks.” Hasson carried out the instruction and glanced curiously at his passenger, wondering if Theo still possessed some degree of sight.

“I can just about tell night from day,” Theo said, “but I’ve got a good memory.”

“I wasn’t going to. …”

Theo smiled. “Everybody’s surprised to find I’m not completely helpless. I keep a map of the city in my head and I check off my position on it. I move a little dot along the streets.”

“That’s really something.” Hasson was impressed by the boy’s fortitude.

“The system doesn’t work in the air, that’s all.”

“No, but you’ll be fine in a couple of years, won’t you?” Theo’s smile hardened. “You’ve been talking to my father.” Hasson gnawed his lower lip, having learned yet again that Theo was a highly perceptive person with no interest in making small talk. “Your father did tell me you’d be having an operation or something like that in two years” time. Perhaps I picked him up wrong.”

“No, you picked him up right,” Theo said easily. “I’ve only got to wait another two years — and that’s nothing, is it? Nothing at all.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Hasson mumbled, wishing the conversation had never got starred, wishing he could be alone in his room, secure, with the door locked and the curtains drawn and all the world a television stage. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and concentrated on following the traffic markers on the road which looped northwards around the outskirts of the city. The road passed through a cutting which enclosed it between steep snowy banks, shutting off all signs of habitation and creating the impression that he was driving in a wilderness.

Hasson was watching a slaty triangle of sky opening out to receive him when something struck the car with enough force to make it rock slightly on the suspension. The impact appeared to have been on the roof, but nothing that could have caused it bounced down on to the pavement.

Theo sat up straight. “What was that?”

“I think we’ve got company,” Hasson said. He trod gently on the brake pedal and at the same instant a flier made a swooping descent to land on the road about a hundred metres ahead. The flier was a big man who was wearing a black suit, a harness with fluorescent orange straps and — in spite of the fading light conditions — mirror-lensed sun glasses. Hasson immediately recognised Buck Morlacher and made a simultaneous guess that his partner, Starr Pridgeon, was at that moment perched on the roof of the car, having matched velocities in the air and dropped on to it. A wave of irritation, rather than anger, caused him to react as his former self. The car was still losing speed gradually as it neared Morlacher, but Hasson kicked down on the brake and jolted the vehicle to a halt. A blue-suited figure tumbled down the sloping windshield, struck the nose of the car and slid the rest of the way down on to the road.

Hasson, now regretting his impulsive action, sat perfectly still as the figure sprang to its feet and he saw the thin, venomous face of Starr Pridgeon coming towards him. Pridgeon wrenched open the driver door and his eyes widened in surprise.

“Hey, Buck,” he called. “This ain’t Werry — it’s his Goddamn cousin from Goddamn England.”

Morlacher paused briefly, then continued his approach to the car. “I’ll talk to him, anyway.”

“Right.” Pridgeon put his head right inside the car until his face was almost touching Hasson’s. “What was the idea?” he whispered. “What was the idea puffin” me down on the road like that?”

Hasson, numb with apprehension, shook his head and somehow chose the exact words Pridgeon had used earlier when he had felled Al Werry. “It was a pure accident.”

Pridgeon’s expression became murderous. “You want me to drag you out of there?”

“It was an accident,” Hasson said, gazing straight ahead. “I’m not used to this sort of car.”

“If I thought you had enough…”

“Come out of there,” Morlacher said to Pridgeon, appearing at his elbow. Pridgeon withdrew, scowling, walked round to the other side of the car and stared in at Theo Werry. The boy remained motionless, his face calm.

Morlacher stooped to look in at Hasson. “What’s your name? Halford or something like that, isn’t it?”

“It’s Haldane.”

Morlacher appeared to digest the information for a moment, the two triangles of red glowing on the pink background of his face. “Where’s Werry?”

“Over on the east side,” Hasson said, submitting to the interrogation. “There was an AC.”

“A what?” Morlacher demanded suspiciously.

“An aerial collision. Two people dead. He had to be there.”

“He should have been there before somebody got killed.” Morlacher was speaking in tones of barely suppressed rage, a fact which Hasson noted and found slightly puzzling — Morlacher had not struck him as being particularly humanitarian or public spirited in his outlook. He was pondering the matter when he heard a click on his right and turned his head to see that Pridgeon had opened the passenger door and was peering in at Theo with a kind of brooding, clinical interest. Theo, although he must have heard the noise and felt the influx of cold air, did not move in any way.

Hasson tried to put aside the distraction. “It’s hard to show up before an accident.”

“Accident my ass,” Morlacher growled. “That was no accident. Those hopped-up young punks get away with murder. We let them get away with murder.”

“One of them got killed as well.”

“You think that makes things right?”

“No.” Hasson had to concede the point. “But it shows…” “The other man who got hit wasn’t just anybody, you know. He was an important visitor to our country. An important visitor — and look what happens to him!”

“Did you know him?” Hasson’s attention was distracted from the subject of the dead flier by the fact that Pridgeon had spread one of his hands out and was holding it a bare centimetre away from Theo’s nose. The boy sensed its presence almost at once and jerked his head back. Pridgeon’s mouth twitched with amusement behind the wispy tendrils of his moustache and he repeated the experiment, this time holding his hand a little further away. Hasson stared down at his own hands gripping the steering wheel and tried to comprehend what Morlacher was saying.

“… in all the media tonight,” the big man thundered, “and what will the message be? I’ll tell you what the message will be. They’ll be saying it isn’t safe to fly north of Calgary. They’ll be saying this is cowboy country up here. I tell you, it’s enough to make a man…” Morlacher’s peg-like front teeth came together with an audible click, shutting off a flow of words as his anger went beyond the limits of articulation.

Hasson gazed up at him, mute, helpless, baffled, wondering what was coming next, wondering if the predatory strangers would resort to violence against a sick man and a blind boy. Beside him, Theo was rocking his head from side to side in an effort to escape the unseen proximity of Pridgeon’s hand. “When you see Werry tell him I’ve had enough,” Morlacher said at last. “You tell him I’m full up to my back teeth with this sort of thing, and that I’m coming over to his place to see him. Got that?”

“I’ll tell him,” Hasson said, relieved to see that Morlacher’s hand was now resting on the flight control panel on his belt.

“Come on, Starr — we’ve got work to do.” Morlacher moved a switch and was hurled upwards into the sky, disappearing from Hasson’s restricted field of view in a fraction of a second. On the other side of the car, Pridgeon snapped his fingers loudly in Theo’s face, causing the boy to flinch, then performed his intimidatory trick of suddenly fixing Hasson with a bleak, hostile stare. He backed away from the car, still staring, leaped upwards and was gone. There was a silence disturbed only by the flustering of the breeze in the car’s open doors.

Hasson gave an uncertain laugh. “What was all that about?”

Theo compressed his lips, refusing to speak.

“It was nice of them to drop by and see us,” Hasson said, trying to make light of his sense of inadequacy and shame. “Friendly people you have around here.”

Theo put out his right hand, pulled the passenger door shut and shifted slightly in the seat, signalling that he wanted to go home. Hasson took a deep breath as he closed his own door and set the car rolling again. They emerged from the cutting. Scattered houses, some of them already showing lights, became visible far off to one side. In all other directions a vast unfamiliar land stretched away to the dimness where the snow was turning as grey as the sky. Hasson felt totally alone.

“I wasn’t quite sure what to say back there,” he ventured. “Only having been in town a few hours … not really knowing anybody… I wasn’t quite sure how to handle the situation.”

“It’s all right,” Theo replied. “You handled it exactly the way my father would have done.”

Hasson weighed the comment and understood that he had been insulted, but he decided against trying to put up a defence. “I can’t understand why Morlacher is so upset — is he the city mayor or something?”

“No, he’s just our friendly local gangster.”

“Then what’s on his mind?

“You’d better ask my father about that. He works for Morlacher, so he should know.”

Hasson glanced at Theo and saw that his face was pale and stern. “That’s going a bit far, isn’t it?”

“You think so? All right, let’s put it this way.” Theo spoke with a bitterness which made him sound like a much older person. “Mr Morlacher put my father into the reeve’s job, and he did it because he knew he would be completely ineffectual. The idea was that Mr Morlacher would be able to do anything he wanted around Tripletree without being inconvenienced by the law. Now the situation has changed and Mr Morlacher needs some hard-nosing done on his behalf — and there’s nobody to do it for him. I’m sure you can appreciate the humour in that. Everybody else in town does.”

The boy’s words came across like a carefully planned and rehearsed speech, one which had been repeated many times to many people, and Hasson realized he had dipped his toes into a deep dark pool of family relationships. Shocked though he was by Theo’s cynicism, he made up his mind to backtrack before getting involved in other people’s problems. He was in Canada for no other reason than to rest and recuperate, and at the end of his allotted time he was going to flit away, as free and unencumbered as a bird. Life, he had learned, was difficult enough…

“I think we’ll be home in a few minutes,” he said. “There’s a road ahead which looks like the northbound motorway, freeway.”

“Make a right there, then take the third on the right,” Theo replied, an odd inflection in his voice making him sound almost disappointed over Hasson’s failure to respond to his set piece. He changed his position in the seat several times, looking moody and intelligent, giving the impression that his mind was far from being at ease.

“The accident this afternoon,” he said. “Was it a bad one?”

“Bad enough — two people dead.”

“Why was Mr Morlacher talking about murder?”

Hasson slowed down at the intersection. “As far as I know some mental subnormal started bombing the east approach — with the inevitable result.” “Who says it’s inevitable?”

“A character called Isaac Newton. If somebody is crazy enough to switch off in mid-air it only takes him seven seconds to reach terminal velocity of two-hundred kilometres an hour, and no matter what sort of vector he tries to add …” Hasson paused as he became aware of Theo’s unseeing eyes being turned towards him. “We get to know about that sort of thing in the insurance business.” “I suppose you would,” Theo said thoughtfully.

Hasson fell silent, wondering if the stories he had heard about the uncanny perceptiveness of some blind people could be true. He followed the directions given him by Theo and brought the car to a halt outside Al Werry’s house. Theo made an adjustment to the control on his cane bringing life to the inset ruby beads, got out of the car and began walking towards the house. Hasson lifted his television set out of the rear seat and followed him, glad to turn his back on the darkening world.

The hall seemed smaller than before due to the fact that Theo was struggling out of his coat in the centre of it, and this time the aroma of coffee had been added to the background smells of wax polish and camphor. Hasson’s anxiety level increased at the prospect of having to go into the back room, there and then, and sit making conversation with a group of near-strangers. He made immediately for the stairs, fighting off the urge to go up them two at a time before the door to the back room was opened.

“Tell your folks I’ve gone up to unpack,” he said to Theo in a low voice. “Then I’m going to freshen up a bit.”

He reached the landing just as the sound of a door handle turning came from below. He made a panicky rush into his own room, set the television on the bed and locked the door behind him. The room looked dim and strange in the twilight. Faces in framed photographs stared at each other in silent communication, agreeing among themselves that the intruder in their midst should be ignored. Hasson drew the curtains together, switched on a light and busied himself with setting up the television on a table beside the bed. He switched it on, bringing into existence a miniature proscenium under which tiny human figures strutted and strove in a perfect simulation of life.

Hasson doused the light, hurriedly stripped off his outer clothing and — with his eyes fixed on the technicoloured microcosm — got into the bed. He pulled the covers up until they almost covered his head, creating yet another barrier between himself and the universe outside. The coolness of the bedding coming into contact with his back produced painful spasms which caused him to twist and turn for a full minute, but eventually he was able to find a comfortable position and began relaxing his guard. Using the remote control panel, he instructed the set to sample any British television programmes that were available by satellite and promptly discovered that, due to the difference in time zones, he had access to nothing but early morning educational broadcasts. In the end he settled for a holofilm that was being put out by a local station and promised himself he would go back to the store at the first opportunity and buy some library spools of British situation comedies and drama series. In the meantime, he felt warm, tolerably secure, free from pain, absolved from the need to act or think… Hasson was recalled from his electronic demi-world by a persistent tapping on the bedroom door. He eased himself into an upright position and surveyed the room, which was now in darkness, reluctant to leave the cocoon of bedding. The tapping noise continued. Hasson got to his feet, went to the door and opened it to find Al Werry advancing upon him, still in full uniform.

“You can’t see a thing in here,” Werry commented, switching on the lights as he spoke. “Were you asleep?”

“Resting, anyway,” Hasson said, blinking.

“Good idea — you’ll be in good shape for the party tonight.”

Hasson felt something lurch in his chest. “What party?”

“Hey! I see you went ahead and got yourself a TV.” Werry crossed to the television and hunkered down to examine it, a doubtful expression appearing on his face. “Dinky little thing, isn’t it? When you get used to a two-metre job like the one we have down in the front room anything else hardly seems worth bothering with.”

“Did you say something about a party?”

“Sure thing. It won’t be too big — just a few friends coming round to meet you and have a few drinks — but I promise you, Rob, you’ll get a real Albertan welcome. You’re really going to enjoy yourself.”

“I …” Hasson gazed into Werry’s eager face and realized the impossibility of putting him off. “You shouldn’t have gone to any trouble.”

“It’s no trouble — specially after the way you guys looked after me in England.”

Hasson made another attempt to recall their first meeting, the drinking session which Werry appeared to cherish in his memory, but no images were forthcoming and he felt an obscure guilt. “I met up with your friend Morlacher this afternoon, by the way.”

“Is that a fact?” Werry looked unconcerned. “He said the man who got killed today was some kind of a VIP.”

“Bull! He was a buyer for a department store down in Great Falls. He didn’t deserve to get killed, of course, but he was just an ordinary joe up here on an ordinary business trip. Another statistic.”

“Then why did…?”

“Buck always talks that way,” Werry said, losing some of his composure. “He’s got it into his head that the Civil Aviation Authority can be talked into extending the north-south air corridor up past Calgary to Edmonton, maybe even as far as Athabasca itself. He goes on TV, gets up petitions, brings bigwigs here our of his own pocket… Doesn’t seem to realise there Just isn’t enough urgent freight traffic to justify the expense.”

Hasson nodded, visualising the cost of installing a chain of automatic radar posts, energy fences and manned patrol stations to bring a three-hundred-kilometre strip up to the safety standards demanded by the various pilots” guilds. “What’s it to him, anyway?”

“The Chinook. The big lolly. The inn on a pin.” Werry paused to look affronted. “Buck thinks he can still get some of his old man’s money back out of it. He sees it as a luxury airport hotel, convention centre, billion dollar brothel, Olympic games stadium, the United Nations building, Disney planet, last filling station before Mars… You name it — Buck thinks he’s got it.”

Hasson gave a sympathetic smile, recognising the kind of bitter rhetoric used by men suffering from the age-old complaint of a thorn in the side. “He was worked up about it this afternoon.”

“What does he expect me to do?”

“From what I can gather, he’s coming over to tell you what he expects. I told him I’d pass the word on.”

“Thanks.” Werry furrowed the carpet with the toe of a glossy boot. “Sometimes I wish I’d …” He glanced at Hasson from under lowered brows and suddenly smiled, resuming the guise of the insouciant revolutionary colonel. His fingers traced the pencil line of his moustache as though making sure it was still in place.

“Listen, Rob, we’ve got better things to talk about,” he said. “You came here to forget about police work and I’m going to make sure you do. I want you to report downstairs in thirty minutes, spruced up for a party and thirsty as hell. Got it? Got it?”

“I probably could use a drink,” Hasson said. Too much had happened to him in one day and he knew from experience that it would take at least a quarter-litre of whisky to guarantee an easy descent into sleep and no dreams of flying.

“That’s more like my boy.” Werry slapped him on the shoulder and left the room in a flurry of air currents which were scented with a peculiar mixture of talc, leather and machine oil.

Hasson glanced regretfully at the bed and the comfortably glowing television set, then began to do some belated unpacking. Dreadful though the prospect of a party was, it offered him more leeway than an evening cooped up with Al Werry and the three other members of his household. It should be possible for him to get into a corner near the booze supply and sit tight until he could decently retire for the night. That way he would have won through to the next day, when he could think about regrouping his forces to withstand fresh onslaughts.

He gathered up his toiletries, opened the bedroom door a fraction and listened to make sure there was no chance of encountering May or Ginny Carpenter, then set out with stealthy tread towards the bathroom. Part way along the landing he reached another door which was slightly ajar, and was intrigued to see that the room beyond was being alternately lit up and plunged into total darkness every few seconds. Hasson hurried on by, went into the bathroom and spent fifteen minutes an having a shower and generally making himself presentable. He renewed an earlier finding that it is always a stranger who looks back at one from a strange minor. The only explanation he could think of was that people who are familiar with the positioning of their mirrors unconsciously pose, straining towards a desired image of themselves, before turning towards their reflections. In this case, Hasson was taken unawares by the sight of a dark-haired, unobtrusively muscular man whose face was marred by an apprehensive tautness around the mouth and eyes. He stood at the mirror consciously composing his features, trying to eliminate the traces of swain and self-pity he saw there, then left the bathroom and went back along the landing. The intermediate door was still ajar and the light was still flashing on and off behind it. Hasson passed by, but immediately was troubled by fears of some bizarre electrical fault which could ignite the dry timber of the house. He went back, eased the door open a little further and looked into the room. Theo Werry was sitting cross- legged on the bed, holding a table lamp directly in front of his eyes and steadily operating the switch. Hasson backed away as silently as possible and returned to his room, filled with the shameful realisation that there were worse injuries than ruptured spinal discs and broken bones.

Moving slowly and thoughtfully, he dressed in comfortable slacks and a soft maroon shirt, and by the time he had finished guests had begun to arrive for the party. Their voices came up through the floor in irregular waves. They were loud, relaxed and cheerful, as befitted members of the exclusive club for those who felt at home in Al Werry’s house — a club to which Hasson did not belong. He opened the bedroom door three times and turned back three times before mustering enough resolve to go downstairs.

The first person he saw on entering the front room was May Carpenter, now dressed in a few scraps of white diaphanous material, held together by fine gold chains. She turned towards him, smiling, almost swamping him with a composite projection of every screen sex goddess he could bring to mind. He blinked, trying to absorb the visual impact, then became aware of other women in similarly exotic attire and men in colourful braided jackets. It dawned on him that, contrary to the impression he had received from Werry, the occasion was one for dressing up. Everybody, a silent voice reprimanded, is looking at you. He hesitated in the doorway, wondering if there was any way in which he could withdraw.

“There he is,” Al Werry shouted. “Come in and meet the gang, Rob.” Werry came to him, glass in hand, incongruously dressed in his reeve’s uniform minus only the tunic and cap. He gripped Hasson’s elbow and led him towards the others.

Lost for something to say, Hasson glanced down at Werry’s uniform. “Are you on call tonight?”

Werry looked surprised. “Of course not”

“I just thought. . “Say hello to Frank and Carol,” Werry put in and then went on to perform a bewildering series of introductions from which Hasson failed to salvage even one name. Numbed by the succession of smiles, handshakes and amiable greetings, Hasson arrived like a piece of flotsam at a table of drinks presided over by Ginny Carpenter, who was wearing the same coppertex suit he had seen her in earlier. She gazed at him without moving, implacable as a suit of armour.

“Give the man a drink.” Werry said, chuckling. “That’s Rob’s special brand -the Lockhart’s. Give him a good belt,”

Ginny picked up the bottle, examined its label critically and poured out a small measure. “Anything with it?”

“Soda water, thanks.” Hasson accepted the glass and, under Werry’s benign scrutiny, swallowed most of its contents. He was unable to prevent himself flinching as he discovered the whisky had been diluted with tonic water.

“All right, is it?” Werry said. “It took me days to track down that bottle.”

Hasson nodded. “It’s just that I never tried it with tonic water before.”

Expressions of incredulity and delight appeared on Werry’s face. “Don’t tell me Ginny gave you the wrong mixer! What a woman!”

“He oughta to be drinking good rye and ginger ale, same as everybody else,” Ginny said unrepentantly, and Hasson knew she had ruined his drink on purpose. Baffled and depressed by her hostility, he turned away and stood without speaking until Werry had furnished him with a fresh glass, which this time was brimming with almost neat whisky. He moved into a quiet corner and began working on his drink, methodically and joylessly, hoping to anaesthetise himself down to a level at which the nearness of strangers would be unimportant.

The party went on all about him, forming and dissolving different centres of activity, gradually growing louder in proportion to the amount of alcohol consumed. Al Werry, apparently feeling he had discharged all his obligations to Hasson, circulated continuously among his friends, never staying more than a few seconds with any one group, looking healthy, spruce and competent — and totally out of place — in his chocolate-brown uniform. May Carpenter spent most of the time surrounded by at least three men, seeming to be fully absorbed in responding to their attention and yet always managing to intercept his gaze when he looked in her direction. It came to him that Werry and May had one thing in common in that their characters were completely impenetrable as far as he was concerned. In each case the physical presence was so overwhelming as to obscure the inner being. May, for example, was behaving exactly as if she found Hasson interesting, in spite of the fact that he had virtually ceased to exist as far as women were concerned. Perhaps she had a strong maternal instinct: perhaps she met all men on the same terms — Hasson had no way to tell. He toyed with the problem at odd moments between bouts of conversation with men and women who took it in turns to relieve his solitude. The noise level in the room continued to increase. Hasson persevered with his drinking until he had finished the half-bottle of scotch and was obliged to try the rye, which he found bland but reasonably acceptable.

At one stage in the evening, when the lights had been turned down and a number of people were dancing, he made the discovery that the chubby, apple-cheeked young man talking to him was not a farmer, as his appearance suggested, but was actually a physician called Drew Collins. A memory which Hasson had suppressed — that of Theo Werry sitting alone in his room with the table lamp held close to his eyes — sprang to the forefront of his consciousness.

“I’d like to ask you something,” he said, uncertain about the ethics involved. “I know it’s the wrong time and all that…”

“Don’t worry about all that crap,” Drew said comfortably. “I’d write you a prescription on a beer mat.”

“It isn’t about myself- I was wondering if you were Theo’s doctor.”

“Yeah, I look after young Theo.”

“Well…” Hasson swirled his drink, creating a conical depression in its surface. “Is it true that he’ll get his sight back in two years?”

“Perfectly true. Slightly less than two years, in fact.”

“Why does the operation have to wait so long?”

“It isn’t an operation as such,” Drew explained, apparently happy to talk shop. “It’s the culmination of a three-year course of treatment. The condition Theo suffers from is known as complicated cataract, which doesn’t mean the cataract itself is complicated — just that there were other factors involved in his getting it so young. Until about twenty years ago there was only one possible treatment — removal of the opaque lenses — which would have left him with highly abnormal vision for life, but now we can restore the transparency of the lens capsule. It involves putting drops in the eyes every day for three years, but at the end of that time the simple injection of a tailored enzyme into the lenses will make them like new. It’s a genuine medical advance.”

“It certainly sounds that way,” Hasson said. “Except…”

“Except what?”

“Three years is a long time to be left in the dark.”

Unexpectedly, Drew moved closer to Hasson and lowered his voice. “Did Sybil rope you in, as well?”

Hasson stared at him in silence for a moment, tying to hide his confusion. “Sybil? No, she didn’t rope me in.”

“I thought she might have done,” Drew said in confidential tones. “She contacted some of Al’s relations and got them to lean on him, but Al’s the only one who is legally responsible for the boy, and it had to be his own private, personal decision.”

Hasson searched his memory and dredged up a vague recollection of Werry mentioning that his former wife’s name was Sybil. A glimmer of partial understanding appeared in his mind.

“Well,” he said guardedly, “there are things for and against this new treatment.”

Drew shook his head. “The only thing against it is the three- year delay, but — especially for a youngster — that’s a small price to pay for perfect vision.

“Is it?”

“Of course it is. AJ made the decision, anyway, and Sybil should have stuck with him over it and backed him up, if only for Theo’s sake. Personally, taking everything into consideration, I think he made the right decision.”

“I suppose …” Hasson, recognising dangerous conversational waters ahead, cast around for a change of subject and for no reason he could explain his mind fastened on the man he had encountered in the downtown health food shop. “Do you get much competition from alternative medicine around here?”

“Practically none.” Drew glanced sideways and raised his eyebrows as he was joined by Ginny Carpenter. “Albertan law is pretty strict about that son of thing, Why do you ask?”

“It’s nothing much. I bumped into an interesting character today — an Asian who runs a health food shop. He said his name was Oliver.”

“Oliver?” Drew looked blank.

“That’s Oily Fan,” Ginny put in, cackling like a Disney witch. “You wanna stay away from him, boy. You wanna stay away from all those Chinks. They can live where white folks would die off “cause all they ever think about is how to make money.” She swayed for a moment, glass in hand, her triangular face flushed with alcohol. “Do you wanna know how those sons make money in their corner stores when there’s no customers in?”

“What I want is another drink,” Drew replied, moving off.

Ginny caught his arm. “I’ll tell you what they do. They can’t bear to let a minute pass without making money, so they just stand there at the cigar counter opening match boxes and taking one match out of each. I’ve looked in and seen them at it — just standing there! One match out of each box! Nobody would ever miss one, but when they’ve done it fifty times they’ve got an extra box to sell. White folks wouldn’t go to all that trouble, but the Chinks just stand there. . . One match out of each box!”

Hasson considered the story briefly, classified it under the heading of “Racist Apocryphal” and simultaneously picked our a flaw in its internal logic. “Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

Ginny mulled over his words and seemed to note their ambivalence. “Do you think I made all that up?”

“I didn’t mean to imply …” Hasson smiled apologetically, dreading a confrontation with the flinty little woman. “I think I need another drink, too.”

Ginny waved expansively in the direction of the table. “Go ahead and soak it up, friend.”

Hasson thought of a number of retorts ranging from the coldly sarcastic to the crudely obscene, but again in his mind there was a verbal log-jam complicated by undercurrents of embarrassment, exhaustion and fear. He found himself mumbling thanks to Ginny and backing away from her like a courtier excusing himself from a royal presence. He topped up his glass, aware that he was drinking too much, and decided to adopt Werry’s technique of continually moving from one locus to another until he could decently withdraw to the fortress of his room. In a short time the excess of strong drink combined with his tiredness to produce in him a trance-like state in which the room became an encompassing screen upon which human forms were flat and meaningless projections, like the patterns radiated by a guttering fire.

At one stage Hasson was dumbfounded to realise he had been drawn into some kind of inebriated game whose rules were never made clear to him, but which engendered a great deal of stumbling in darkness, whispering, laughing, and slamming of unseen doors. It came to him that his chance of escape had arrived, that with any luck at all he could be safe in bed before his absence was even noticed. He tried to take his bearings in the darkness and set out for the door which opened into the hall, but his progress was impeded by others who seemed to possess a magical ability to know exactly what they were doing and exactly where they were going in the absence of light. A door opened in front of him, revealing a dimly lit room, and several hands pushed Hasson forward. He heard the door slam behind him and in the same moment became aware that he was alone in the kitchen with May Carpenter. His heart began an unsteady pounding.

“Well, this is a surprise,” she said in a low voice, coming towards him. “What sign have you got?”

“Sign?” Hasson stared at her in bewilderment. In the low- centred mellow light her flimsy party clothing appeared hardly to exist at all, turning her into a feverish erotic vision.

“Yes. I’ve got Libra.” She held up a card with a drawing of a pair of scales. “What have you got?”

Hasson spread the fingers of his right hand and looked down at it. He was holding a card which also bore the sign of Libra.

“The same,” May said. “That’s lucky for both of us.” With no trace of hesitation she put her arms around his neck, drawing his face down to meet hers. In the instant before the kiss Hasson saw her open mouth grow large with its nearness, large as any screen goddess’s mouth in photographic close-up, as simplified and idealised as any sex symbol’s mouth on a movie poster, all flawless mathematical curvatures and billowing crimson and stepped white planes, filling his eyes. During the kiss he experienced a sense of unreality, but at the same time his hands and body were receiving other messages, reminding him that the business of life was life and that it had not done with him yet. The revelation unnerved him with its forcefulness and simplicity, driving him to separate himself from May so that he could look at her again.

“This is good,” he said, desperate for time in which to think, “but I’m very tired — I have to go to bed now.”

“Perhaps it’s just as well,” May replied with a husky candour which Hasson found infinitely flattering and thrilling.

“Please excuse me.” He turned, managed to identify the door which led directly into the hail and went through it. The hail was empty and in darkness, but somebody had used the bulging coat-stand as a support for a flying suit which had been left with the helmet in place and the shoulder and ankle lights flashing. Hasson squeezed past the golem-figure, went upstairs to his room and locked its door behind him. He went to the window, parted the curtains and looked out at the unfamiliar nightland. Snow was sifting down from the overhanging darkness. Immediately outside the window was a large, bare tree through the twigs of which a street lamp shed its radiance in concentric frosty circles. Myriads of glimmers, sparkles and reflections seemed to have been carefully placed on tangents to the circles, creating the sense of looking down a long illuminated tunnel wound with gossamer.

Hasson surveyed the view for perhaps a minute, trying to come to terms with the realisation that he had first seen it only twelve hours earlier, that he had completed less than a day of rest and recuperation. His mind was swollen with newly implanted memories of faces, voices, names and ideas as he went to the bed, stripped off his clothing and put on his pyjamas. As was usual at night, he was moving easily and without discomfort-the prolonged spell of activity having freed his joints and muscles — but it was time for his night-cap of pain.

He lay down on the bed and as soon as his back, now unprotected by day clothing, came in contact with the mattress a war began. The conflict was between various muscle groups, to see which would gain the advantage in new states of relaxation or tension, to see which could fire the greatest salvoes of agony — and in every case the loser was Hasson. He endured the struggle in silence until the spasms became infrequent, and very soon after that he had fallen asleep, a wounded warrior, exhausted, defeated in every skirmish of the day.