The man contrived to swallow four or five spoonfuls and then sank back exhausted against the potter’s arm and closed his eyes again. ‘Set the bowl down against the hearth to hold warm,’ murmured the potter. ‘Happen he’ll take some more by and by. Jane, love, ye’d best have a drop yourself.’

  He eased the man down on to the bed and gathered the blankets up under his chin. Then he went out into the kitchen with Susan, fetched a cup, poured a measure of spirit into it, and handed it to his daughter. ‘Sup it up,’ he commanded.

  Jane took the cup from his hands, raised it to her lips, sipped, and promptly choked.

  Pots laughed and patted her on the back. ‘It’s come a long way, lass,’ he said. ‘It’s a pity to waste it.’

  She took another sip and then handed the cup to him. ‘You finish it,’ she said. ‘It makes my eyes water.’

  The potter tilted his head and drank off the brandy at a gulp. ‘You’ve done a good day’s work, Jane.’

  ‘Where was it they found him, Dad?’

  ‘Out in the Reach somewhere. Off Blackdown Head I think Jonsey said. Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just wondered.’

  ‘But you got through to him, didn’t you?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I don’t think it is Gyre,’ she said. ‘He’s not old enough, is he? But I’m sure I saw Old Peter baptize him, and I felt the Boy there too. But there’s something else. Something I can’t understand at all. ’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘But it doesn’t make sense.’ She looked up at him shaking her head. ‘You see, before I reached him there was another man – someone else. I just don’t understand it.’

  ‘Someone else?’

  She nodded. ‘He was terribly deep down – faint and far away. But he was there, Dad. I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Could have been early memories, couldn’t it?’

  ‘That’s what I thought at first. But now I’m sure it wasn’t. It was someone from the Old Days before the Drowning.’ She sat back on her heels and said with a sudden conviction: ‘Yes! That’s what I was getting on the boat! I couldn’t understand it at all. But it was the same man! And his name’s “Carver,” Dad.’

  ‘Carver, eh? I don’t know of any Kinsman called Carver.’

  ‘No, no,’ she insisted. ‘Carver’s the other one. The one I got to first. I saw this place, Dad – a sort of long white house – and a whole room full of those magic mirrors like in the stories – and a girl with red hair …’ Suddenly, for no reason at all, she was weeping bitterly, the tears runneling down her cheeks as she wailed: ‘Oh, he’s lost, Dad. He’s lost. He’s lost!’

  Pots, totally bewildered, took her into his arms and comforted her as he had not done since she was a small child mumbling to him through tear-swollen lips that the other kids were calling her huesh . ‘There, there, lovey,’ he soothed. ‘Don’t you take on so. There’s no call for tears. You’ve brought him back to us, haven’t you? Without you he’d be lost and gone for sure.’

  He held her head to his shoulder, murmuring to her, and patting her with his broad and gentle hand, until the flood tide of her misery slowly ebbed away.

  One of the two logs which Jane had thrown on the fire smoldered through, broke, and rolled sideways on the stone hearth. A tongue of flame licked along the scorched bark which began to spit and crackle. The man lying on the bed opened his eyes and blinked up at the dancing shadows of the ceiling rafters. Almost at once he became aware of a dull ache in the muscles of his shoulders and upper arms, and crossing his hands over his chest he began abstractedly to massage the bruised flesh. It was then he discovered that a dressing had been bound round his left arm just above the elbow. He explored its surface with the finger-tips of his right hand and so came upon the tender area of the gash made by Napper’s knife.

  Like a baby investigating an unfamiliar building block he picked up the idea ‘wound’, turned it over curiously in his mind for a while and then laid it aside. He rolled his head over slowly, heard the faint rustle of dry straw from the mattress and saw the flame tongues wavering in the hearth. These too he contemplated dully for a while, then let his gaze drift round to the window. Each separate perception he weighed and examined before passing on to the next, seeking for some link which would connect the present to the past and finding none.

  When Jane looked into the room some twenty minutes later she found the man crouching beside the hearth with the blankets wrapped round him. ‘Why didn’t you call out?’ she said. ‘Have you been awake long?’

  The man raised his head. ‘To whom should I have called?’ he inquired mildly. His voice was low and husky; his question oddly direct, devoid of all subterfuge; and in the flame-light his dark eyes seemed to flicker as if with a gentle and secret amusement.

  ‘I’m Potter Thomson’s daughter and Jane is my given name,’ she said, coming into the room and closing the door behind her. ‘What’s yours, Kinsman?’

  ‘Thomas of Norwich, Jane.’

  ‘Oh, then you’re not Gyre?’ Her question was faintly tinged with disappointment.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Why? Did you expect me to be?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said simply. She took a candlestick from the windowsill, moved across to the fire and touched the wick to the flames. When it was alight she carried it back to the window, drew the curtains across, and set the candlestick down before it.

  The man watched her gravely. Finally he said: ‘Gyre is lying ill on Black Isle in the Western Borders.’

  Jane frowned, shook her head slowly, then came and knelt down beside him. ‘Tell me, Kinsman Thomas,’ she said. ‘How come you were found drifting along in the Somersea?’

  ‘Found by you?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘By Jonsey and Napper. They’re coasters. They brought you ashore at noon in the Kingdom Come .’

  Thomas pondered for a long moment and then said: ‘Where am I, Jane?’

  ‘Why, at Tallon,’ she replied.

  ‘Tallon?’ he repeated. ‘And where is that?’

  ‘Well, on Quantock Isle, of course.’

  He stared at her without speaking for fully half a minute and then he nodded. ‘And what day is this, Jane?’

  ‘The twelfth day of April.’

  ‘Are you sure of that?’

  ‘Why, yes,’ she said. ‘The moon was at first quarter yesterday.’

  ‘And the storm? When was the storm?’

  ‘The big blow was three days ago. Why do you ask?’

  Thomas shivered violently and Jane cried: ‘Lord! What am I about? I’ll fetch you some clothes of Dad’s. He told me I was to call him as soon as you came awake.’ She scrambled to her feet and scuttled out of the room leaving the candle flame flapping like a banner behind her.

  She was back within minutes with a bundle of clothes in her arms. ‘Your own aren’t dry yet,’ she informed him, ‘but these will serve to keep you warm. Shall I help you?’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I seem to have lost the knack of standing. No doubt it will come back to me by and by.’

  She shook out a thick woolen jersey from the bundle and pushed it down over his head. Then she unwrapped the blankets and winced as she caught sight of the scars on his back. ‘Ah, cruel!’ she exclaimed. ‘Who did that to you?’

  Thomas contrived to insert his arms into the sleeves of the jumper and between them they got it on to him. He twisted his hair and beard free. ‘You read the script of the Gray Falcons,’ he said. ‘They write with sharp pens.’

  Jane fetched the stool from beside the bed, helped him on to it, and then guided his bare feet into the legs of her father’s trousers. ‘Hold on to my shoulders, Thomas,’ she commanded. ‘Now. Up!’

  He rose shakily to his feet and stood, rocking unsteadily, while the blankets slid to the floor. Jane ducked down, pulled the trousers up over his nakedness and made the buckle fast at his waist. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that better?’

  ‘Much better,’ he agreed with a wan smile and subsided on to the stool, drawing in a deep breath of relief.

  Woolen socks and leather slippers followed and finally a potter’s smock of blue sailcloth. Jane surveyed the finished effect with satisfaction. ‘We’ll have some supper now directly,’ she said, ‘and then you shall tell us all.’ She gathered up the blankets, shook them, folded them deftly, and laid them on the bed. When she had finished she turned to him and said: ‘Will you tell me one thing first, Thomas? Just one.’

  ‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘If I can.’

  She took a pace toward him and clasped her hands together so tightly that her knuckles gleamed white in the candlelight. ‘It’s Carver,’ she whispered. ‘Who is he, Kinsman Thomas? Who’s Carver?’

  The man called Thomas stared back at her blankly and yet she sensed that he was not really looking at her at all but at someone or somewhere far, far beyond her. ‘Carver,’ he murmured. ‘Yes …’

  She waited, hardly breathing, watching his face as a cat watches a bird, seeing the shadows of doubt and incomprehension dusking across it like the shadows of clouds on the Somersea. At last he shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Jane,’ he said. ‘I do not know the answer to your question. What made you ask?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘We’ll talk of it some other time. I’ll go and tell them you’re ready now.’

  TWO

  Across the sodden pastures of Sedgemoor the rain came rolling in from the Bristol Channel in a seemingly endless series of slow, gray waves. Though it was only two o’clock in the afternoon the cars on the M5 motorway drove with dipped headlights dragging clouds of spray behind them like trailers of smoke. One of the vehicles on the southbound carriageway – a dark blue Volkswagen – turned off at the junction before Taunton, crossed over the motorway, drove through the village of North Petherton and then turned west, climbing slightly as it headed toward the Quantock Hills. A mile and a half beyond the village it slowed and swung left through a wide stone-pillared gateway beside which stood a white signboard bearing the legend ‘LIVERMORE FOUNDATION. HOLMWOOD HOUSE. POST-GRADUATE RESEARCH CENTER.’

  The blue car drove on down the wide graveled driveway, between huge, dripping beech trees, negotiated the roundabout in front of the Georgian mansion, and followed a macadamed road which led round to what had once been the stable block of the Marquis of Ridgeway’s ancestral home. There in the stable courtyard the Volkswagen came to a halt among a score of assorted vehicles on the parking grid. The engine was switched off, followed by the lights and the windscreen wipers; the driver’s door opened and a young woman climbed out.

  She reached over into the back seat and dragged out a bright yellow waterproof plastic jacket which she draped over her shoulders. This was followed by a shiny black plastic sou’wester hat which she jammed down over her chestnut curls. Then she slammed the door to and set off at a trot across the deserted courtyard, passed under another arch and headed through the teeming rain toward a long, white building which stood some three hundred yards from the main complex. She pushed through the swing doors, dragged off her coat and hat and shook them over the mat. A uniformed porter seated behind a desk at the foot of the stairs looked up and grinned at her. ‘Afternoon, miss. Fine weather for ducks.’

  ‘Hello, Harry,’ she responded. ‘Is Doctor Richards in number 5?’

  The porter glanced down at his console and nodded. ‘That’s right, miss. Do you want me to give him a buzz?’

  ‘Don’t bother. He’s expecting me.’

  She walked past him down a long corridor and turned into the cloakroom where she hung up her jacket and hat and ran a comb through her hair. Then she pushed her way out, walked another twenty paces down the passage and knocked on the door numbered ‘5.’ She could hear voices from inside but no one appeared to have heard her, so she pressed down the lever handle and walked in.

  At the far end of the room three men – two of them wearing white lab coats – were standing beside a wheeled trolley on which a fourth figure was lying. The three looked round as the door opened and the one who was without an overall called out: ‘Ah, there you are, Rachel. Come on in.’

  The girl closed the door behind her and walked forward past the benches banked high with cathode ray encephalographs, sine wave frequency generators and oscilloscopes, and festooned with heavy-duty electric cable. She nodded to the two white-coated technicians and peered down apprehensively at the still figure on the trolley whose head was largely concealed beneath a molded plexiglass helmet from which a multitude of colored wires depended like the locks of a psychedelic medusa. ‘Good God!’ she exclaimed. ‘That’s not Mike, is it?’

  Doctor Richards nodded.

  ‘Is he asleep?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose you could say he was asleep.’

  ‘You don’t sound too sure.’

  ‘I’m not very sure,’ he admitted.

  ‘But he is all right, George?’

  Doctor Richards gestured to where a fluorescent screen was registering a slow and regular pulse of electronic blips. ‘His heartbeat’s as steady as a rock,’ he said. ‘Nothing to worry about there.’

  ‘Then why did you phone me?’

  Doctor Richards looked down pensively at the figure on the trolley, then he pushed back the cuff of his jacket and consulted his wristwatch. ‘Mike should have come round just after twelve o’clock. Now it’s coming up to half-past two. He’s been out for just over three and a quarter hours.’

  ‘Well, why don’t you bring him round? Give him a shot of something? You can, can’t you?’

  He shook his head. ‘We’ve tried. Twice in fact. I daren’t risk a third yet.’

  ‘Why didn’t it work?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he confessed. ‘I simply don’t understand it. It was just a routine scanning trip. Mike and I have done it a hundred times. Ian and Ken have both done it.’

  One of the technicians said: ‘That’s right, miss. It’s just a bloody bus ride for us.’

  Rachel unzipped her shoulder bag and took out a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. She lit a cigarette, inhaled, and then blew the smoke up into the air above her head. ‘When you say “routine trip,” what am I supposed to understand? ’

  ‘How much has Mike told you about the present program?’ countered Doctor Richards.

  ‘Not much. I know you’re trying to find some new way of displaying neural impulses. I think I got the general drift.’

  George Richards nodded. ‘We’ve been following up a line suggested to me by a chap called Klorner. I met him at Stanford, last year. Apparently he’d been researching in the same field down at Hampton way back in the ’60’s. According to him they’d had some pretty startling results, though he didn’t specify exactly—’

  ‘Hey up!’ called one of the technicians. ‘There’s something coming through on Number 4 again.’

  Doctor Richards swung round and bent over the still figure on the trolley. ‘No sign of R.E.M., Ian.’

  ‘There’s a strong trace showing on Number 7,’ said the other technician.

  ‘That’s P/E and P/G. Four times in the last hour,’ said Doctor Richards.

  Rachel looked from one to the other and intercepted the excited glances they were exchanging. ‘What’s going on?’ she demanded. ‘Is he coming round?’

  The three men were gazing as if spellbound at a single cathode-ray tube which was pulsing out faint circles of bluish light like phantom smoke rings. ‘Well, I’m buggered,’ murmured Ian. ‘Does that signify what I think it does?’

  The other two shook their heads leaving Rachel to ask: ‘Well, go on, Ian. What does it signify?’

  ‘Some sort of contact – we think,’ said Ian.

  ‘What sort of contact?’

  ‘Ah, there you have me,’ he said. ‘Maybe Doctor Carver will be able to tell us when he comes round.’

  ‘I still don’t understand,’ she persisted. ‘What sort of “contact”?’

  Doctor Richards turned to her. ‘Let’s go and get ourselves a cup of coffee, Rachel, and I’ll try to explain. Ian can give us a buzz in the canteen if anything develops. O.K., Ian?’

  The technician nodded and Rachel allowed George Richards to take her by the arm and guide her out of the laboratory.

  The canteen was all but deserted, lunch having finished over an hour earlier, but George was able to obtain two cups of coffee and a packet of cheese and crackers. He carried them across to the window table where Rachel was sitting gazing morosely out at the rain-drenched park. ‘At least it’s hot and wet,’ he said. ‘But that’s about all you can say for it.’ He pulled out a chair and sat down opposite her.

  Rachel nodded. She picked up her cup, raised it to her lips and then set it down again untasted. ‘Mike is going to be all right, isn’t he, George? ’

  ‘Well, of course he is.’ George stripped the cellophane wrapping off his packet of biscuits, rolled it briskly into a ball and dropped it into the ashtray. ‘His autonomic system’s functioning perfectly. Heart going like a metronome. Well, you saw it.’

  ‘Then why doesn’t he come round?’

  ‘Oh, he will, Rachel. It isn’t as if he’d been concussed or anything. He’s just taking his time about it, that’s all.’

  ‘But it hasn’t happened before, has it?’

  ‘Not to this extent, I grant you. But these compound neurodrugs we’re using are tricky things at the best of times. Any slight variation in the body chemistry is liable to affect them. I suppose you and Mike didn’t by any chance have a row this morning?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Why?’

  ‘It was just a thought. A thundering old bust-up can upset the chemical balance for hours afterwards.’ He poised a lump of cheese on a cracker, pushed it into his mouth and crunched it noisily.

  Rachel raised her cup again and sipped at her coffee. ‘What did Ian mean by “contact”?’

  ‘Ah,’ said George. ‘That was really rather naughty of him. I mean it’s just pure speculation. Nothing more.’