‘Ah, there you are, Rachel,’ said George affably. ‘Glad you could make it.’

  She greeted them collectively, picking her way gingerly up the littered aisle between the ranked benches. ‘I’m not too late then?’ she inquired.

  ‘No, no,’ Peter Klorner assured her. ‘We’ve had a dry run over the first phase just to check things out and now we’re all ready to go. So far everything looks good.’

  ‘You haven’t discovered anything?’

  ‘We’ve discovered that the E-V.C’s feasible,’ said George. ‘You’re looking at three converted skeptics.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘We guinea-pigged Ian and were treated to a very interesting tour of the night life of Amsterdam. It really does work , Rachel. You’ll be astonished. ’

  ‘But how can it work for Mike if he isn’t here?’

  ‘We got all his last session down on tape. Pete’s linking it in now. Sit yourself down here. If anything does show up it’ll be on the big center screen.’

  George pushed another chair into the semi-circle. Aware of a tightening sensation in the pit of her stomach, Rachel sat down obediently. ‘Does anyone mind if I smoke?’

  ‘Go ahead,’ said George.

  Rachel unzipped her shoulder bag and went through the familiar calming ritual of extracting a cigarette from the pack and lighting it. As she clicked the lighter shut Ian said: ‘All clear here, Mr Klorner.’

  ‘O.K.,’ said Peter. ‘Well, I guess this is it then. Let’s have the other lights off.’

  Ken, the second technician, flicked off the switches leaving Peter Klorner pooled in the amber glow from one bench light. ‘Here goes,’ he said, and pressed a button on the console before him.

  With a faint, dry whisper the tape began to unreel from its spool. As it did so the cathode ray tube came to life, glowing with a cold, bluish light. Rachel stared at the screen and felt the skin all down her back and shoulders crawling into goose flesh.

  ‘We picked up our first clear trace just after twelve,’ said George. ‘That would be about forty seconds in from here. We were recording only from our four P. points and it’s possible the impulse may not register at all.’

  ‘I suspect it will,’ said Klorner.

  The screen flickered and dimmed precipitately, then just as their eyes were adjusting to the new gloom, it blossomed into a myriad twinkling points of light which danced and quivered and rocked up and down in an incomprehensible swirl of chiaroscuro. The coruscation lasted for precisely thirty-two seconds and then faded away.

  ‘Could anyone make anything of that?’ inquired Klorner.

  No one could.

  ‘The second trace showed up about an hour after the first,’ said George. ‘There wasn’t anything in between.’

  Klorner nodded and slipped the recorder into rapid forward. It hummed on smoothly until the screen once again jerked into brightness. Then he stopped it and back-tracked a little, allowing himself a ten second overlap. ‘Well, here’s number two,’ he said. ‘Let’s hope it’s more comprehensible than number one.’

  A shape, vague and yet curiously familiar, filled the upper right quarter of the screen. It seemed to advance and recede and then suddenly it lurched into sharp focus. As it did so the hooked beak opened in a silent squawk of alarm, the powerful wings lifted and spread and the gull swept away to vanish against the blinding white glare of the sun.

  Like a camera panning slowly round, the screen next became a quiver of jostling images of waves, then a dim line of coast, and finally, just before the picture lapsed into darkness once again, there came a vivid close-up of a man’s forearm, a section of a spar, and far away beyond it something that could just possibly have been a sailing ship.

  Klorner stopped the tape. ‘We’ll take another look at that,’ he said. ‘Does it mean anything to anyone?’

  Ken said: ‘That first trace we saw could have been the sun reflected off water, couldn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t understand any of it,’ said Rachel. ‘Is that supposed to be what Mike saw?’

  ‘What else could it be?’ said George.

  ‘Well, a dream or something. For Christ’s sake, George, Mike was here – lying on that trolley over there. He wasn’t floating in the sea, was he?’

  ‘I don’t know, Rachel. Let’s have another look at it. Maybe we’ll spot something we’ve missed.’

  The pictures reformed upon the screen. The gull’s cold eye peered into theirs; the waves glinted and sparkled in the April sunshine; and flickering far away on the northern horizon the coaster Kingdom Come dipped and rose as it came beating up into Taunton Reach.

  As the images faded and died for the second time Ian said: ‘If I didn’t know it was impossible I’d swear that those were the Blackdown Hills. I’ve stared at them from my bedroom window for the past fifteen years.’

  ‘He’s right, you know,’ said Ken. ‘That could well have been Staple Hill.’

  ‘Oh, come off it!’ said George. ‘It could have been anywhere! And since when has Blackdown been a seaside resort?’

  ‘Do you want another look at it?’ said Klorner. ‘Or shall we press on to the next?’

  ‘Let’s go on,’ said George. ‘We can always come back to it again.’

  The third and final vision was, if anything, even more incomprehensible: a brief but extraordinarily vivid close-up of an old man with white whiskers and wind-blown hair leaning down toward them and reaching out to trace some mysterious mark upon them with the extended index finger of a right hand that loomed so huge as to completely block out the sky.

  Over lunch in the canteen the four men tried to make sense of what they had seen. Rachel listened to their talk of psychokinetic fields, pineal points and O.O.B.E.’s while she pecked dispiritedly at her plate of egg mayonnaise. Finally, when there was a lull in the conversation, she said: ‘I don’t know whether there’s any point in my mentioning this but I’m sure I’ve dreamed of that weird old man.’

  The others eyed her speculatively. ‘Well, who is he?’ asked George.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she confessed. ‘All I know is that for the first two nights after Mike went into his coma I had the same extraordinarily vivid dream. I was sitting with a lot of other people on a hillside somewhere and we were listening to that old man. He was telling us a story about a mysterious white bird that would somehow change us all into something else – something marvelous. I know it sounds crazy but it wasn’t. It was – I don’t really know how to describe it – as though everything suddenly made sense for the first time in my life. I knew what I was for – who I was.’ She flushed, shook her head in confusion and muttered: ‘Sorry. God knows what made me tell you about it.’

  Peter Klorner frowned. ‘You’re quite sure it was the same man?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Quite sure. I couldn’t be mistaken about that.’

  ‘And you’ve never seen him apart from those dreams?’

  ‘Never. Until just now, that is.’

  Klorner plucked his lower lip thoughtfully. ‘Well, there must be a connection somewhere. The question is where?’

  ‘Inside Mike, presumably,’ said George.

  Klorner nodded. ‘Have you checked to see if he’s still registering in the pineal area?’

  ‘No,’ said George. ‘Do you think we should?’

  ‘Yes, I do. Presumably the hospital will co-operate?’

  ‘I’m sure they will. After all, Jim Phillips is at least as concerned about Mike as we are.’

  ‘Then I suggest we make arrangements to take a specimen recording for an E-V.C. processing. If he’s still registering we could see about transferring our set-up to the hospital. It shouldn’t be too difficult.’

  ‘O.K.,’ said George. ‘I’ll go and phone Jim right away.’

  When Dr Richards had left the canteen Ian said: ‘You know, the more I think about it the more convinced I become that those were the Blackdown Hills.’

  ‘And how do you explain the sea, Ian?’ demanded Rachel.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ he said. ‘But did you by chance see that “Forecast” program on the telly last week?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘What about it?’

  ‘Calder and Winkley and some others were doing an extrapolation of climatic changes. They had this big relief model of the British Isles in a huge tank. They turned on the tap to show what would happen if the ice-caps melted. One of the first places to go under was Somerset.’

  ‘So.’

  ‘So we’d be under the sea, wouldn’t we? And Blackdown would be the new coastline.’

  Rachel smiled. ‘It’s an ingenious idea,’ she said. ‘But you’re forgetting one thing. It hasn’t happened.’

  ‘Not yet,’ he agreed. ‘But it might. The point they were making was that it’s beginning to look as if we’re on the brink of some pretty dramatic weather change.’

  ‘Are you trying to suggest that Mike’s O.O.B. experience – if that’s what it was – is some sort of future contact?’

  ‘I don’t know what it was,’ he retorted. ‘Do you?’

  She stared at him, and for a moment her eyes were wide with speculation. Finally she turned to Peter Klorner who was listening to their conversation and was not smiling at all. ‘Does it make sense to you, Peter?’ she asked.

  ‘The climatic change certainly does,’ he admitted. ‘There’s been a lot of speculation along those lines in the States recently. As for the rest, let’s just say I prefer to keep my options open till we’ve got more data to work on.’

  Rachel was astonished. ‘You mean you can conceive it as a possibility? I don’t believe it!’

  Klorner regarded her somberly. ‘From my experience I’d say that what takes place in the pineal zone of the human cortex is beyond the present scope of our natural philosophies. It’s a land with laws of its own. I must confess that I can conceive of our tidy linear time scale being of little or no consequence there.’ He permitted himself a quiet smile. ‘Has it ever occurred to you that we are the virtual prisoners of our acquired perceptions? Anything that doesn’t fit we prefer to discount or ignore. It’s very easy to say it can’t happen, therefore it doesn’t.’

  ‘But time …’ protested Rachel and then faltered to a stop.

  ‘Yes?’ he prompted gently. ‘What about it?’

  Rachel swallowed. ‘Yesterday: today: tomorrow. For me that’s time.’

  ‘And how about “Now”?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I suggest that Now is no more than our projected awareness of the immediate future, extrapolated from our memory of the past. In fact Now does not exist. It is an abstraction. A philosophical concept. We live in a perpetual state of becoming and having been. It is perfectly conceivable that all forms of time are but one and the same time observed from differing view-points.’

  ‘Not to me it isn’t,’ Rachel averred stoutly.

  ‘And how if that old man of your dream should prove to exist only in the future or the remote past?’

  ‘Oh, that’s impossible.’

  ‘But not inconceivable?’

  ‘All right. Hypothetically he might. But not really . And the same goes for Ian’s sea.’

  Ken laughed. ‘Be sure to have a good look at Sedge Moor when you’re driving back to Bristol. It might make you change your mind. ’

  ‘Whose side are you on?’ she retorted. ‘I’m beginning to think I’m the only sane person here.’

  Ian grinned. ‘You’re forgetting that we outnumber you three to one, Rachel. In questions of sanity the majority view constitutes the norm. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.’

  Twenty-four hours later they ran the second tape through the E-V.C. It yielded two indisputable contacts spaced approximately three hours apart. The first was a glimpse of a star-embroidered tapestry of a night sky against which the dimly shadowed figure of a girl could be perceived sitting at the helm of a sailing boat which rose and dipped over a plum-dark sea: the second was a curious amalgam of two intertwined visions; one of Mike himself walking with Rachel in the rain beside the river Avon; the other of the girl in the boat leaning over him with anxious eyes. Neither contact lasted for much more than a minute, nevertheless, in Klorner’s opinion, they constituted sufficient evidence to justify transferring the E-V.C. equipment to the hospital and maintaining a constant monitor program.

  TEN

  At noon three days after taking ship from Welshpool, Brother Francis stepped on to the quay at Chardport having successfully completed the first stage of his journey to Corlay. Obeying the instructions he had been given by Kin at New Bristol he inquired the whereabouts of Moxon’s shop and was directed down a cobbled alley beside the fishmarket.

  He found the Harbor Stores easily enough and guessed, rightly, that the gaunt, leather-aproned man who was stooping knee-deep amid a litter of straw unpacking pottery from a wooden crate was Sam Moxon in person. As Francis approached, the shopkeeper straightened up and eyed him curiously.

  ‘Mr Moxon?’

  ‘Aye, sir. The same. What can I do for ye?’

  ‘A word in private with you, sir, if it is not inconvenient.’

  Moxon hesitated for a second and then nodded. ‘If ye’ll just step inside the shop I’ll be with ye directly.’ He took a charcoal stick from behind his ear, made a check mark against a list, then picked up four earthenware mugs in either hand and followed the priest into the shop. He kicked the door to behind him, set the mugs down on the counter, glanced round to make sure they were not overheard and said: ‘Your servant, sir. ’

  ‘I come in Kinship to ask your help, Mr Moxon. Your name was given to me by Mistress Peel in New Bristol. I was directed to her by Sarah and David Lloyd of Black Isle on the Western Borders.’

  Sam Moxon’s eyes flickered over the priest’s black habit. His doubt was plain to see. ‘The Western Borders,’ he murmured. ‘And what was a gentleman of your calling doing in those parts, if ye don’t mind me asking?’

  ‘I went there in search of Kinsman Gyre.’

  Alarm scrawled anguished lines across the shopkeeper’s face. ‘Wisht, man!’ he hissed. ‘Speak lower if ye must. Know ye not that the whole of Blackdown is under Falcon curfew?’

  Francis shook his head. ‘I stepped ashore but ten minutes ago,’ he said. ‘Apart from my inquiry to seek you out I have spoken to no man.’

  ‘The Bird be praised for that,’ muttered Moxon. ‘The Gray Falcons are stooping everywhere and their beaks are red. You see those pots before you? The man who made them was hanged by the neck on Quantock just two days back and his house fired for the crime of harboring a Kinsman. Speak of Gyre and, priest or no priest, ye’re like to find your tripes dangling from a drawing knife.’

  It was Francis’ turn to stare. ‘Gyre is dead, Mr Moxon,’ he murmured. ‘It is for that I am come here.’

  ‘God rest his sad soul,’ sighed Moxon. ‘Old Peter gone, and now Gyre. Where will it all end?’

  ‘The Falcons did not find him,’ said Francis. ‘He died of a fever on Black Isle. His last act was to lay upon me the task of seeking out Kinsman Thomas of Norwich and delivering into his hands the Boy’s own pipes. I have them here with me in my satchel.’

  ‘Then you are indeed true Kin?’

  Francis nodded and with one accord the two men embraced. As they did so Sam Moxon gave vent to a deep, pent up sigh of relief. ‘Faith, Brother, but ye had me sorely perplexed,’ he confessed. ‘How comes it that ye still wear the blackbird’s plumage?’

  ‘I have served the Church all my life,’ said Francis, ‘and would be serving her still had she not been struck blind. Now I must use what time I have left to undo the wrongs which are being done in her name. I must to Corlay in Brittany and you must speed me on my way.’

  ‘Corlay?’ echoed Moxon. ‘Why Corlay?’

  ‘Gyre dispatched Thomas of Norwich there a month ago.’

  Moxon frowned. ‘So? Then something has surely gone amiss. It was for sheltering the same Thomas that the good potter was hanged on Tallon last Tuesday. Rumor has it that the Kinsman ye seek is now in hiding here on Blackdown. It is for that the birds of prey have been flocking in this past two days. ’

  ‘You are sure of this?’

  ‘Aye. The whisper which reached me was that the potter’s daughter ferried Thomas of Norwich across from Quantock two nights back. Since then a couple of Falcons have seemingly vanished clean off the face of the earth. Their horses were found wandering up on the hills above Clayhidon, but of the riders not a trace.’

  ‘But surely they cannot be laying that at the Kinsman’s door?’

  ‘Any stick will do to beat a dog, Brother, and sorcery has served the Church well enough in the past.’

  Francis nodded. ‘You have no idea where he might be?’

  ‘Well clear of Blackdown, I trust. I’d not give him much longer for this world else. ’Tis said there’s close on a hundred Falcons out scouring the hillsides ’twixt here and Sidbury. They’ve nailed a price of thirty royal crowns on his live head.’

  ‘Thirty crowns!’

  ‘Aye. I heard them crying it in the market yesterday. They must want him badly, poor fellow. Dos’t know why?’

  ‘The Lloyds told me he carries a precious relic to Corlay.’

  ‘No doubt that would explain it,’ said Moxon. ‘But thirty royal is a lot of gold in our part of the world.’

  ‘In any part, Mr Moxon.’

  ‘It won’t tempt the Kinsfolk,’ said Moxon, ‘but they’re scattered thin hereabouts. Mind ye, there’s little enough love felt for the Falcons either, so I’d lay he still has a chance.’