‘Nothing that seems to make any difference.’

  ‘Come along to the office with me and I’ll find you some Sieston . It’s the best there is. I daresay we could manage a cup of tea too, if you’d fancy it.’

  It was then that, quite unable to prevent herself, Rachel burst into tears.

  Shortly after eight that evening the telephone rang in Dr Carver’s flat. Rachel walked out into the hall and picked up the receiver.

  ‘Is that you, Rachel? George here.’

  ‘Oh, hello, George.’

  ‘Have you had supper?’

  ‘No. Not yet.’

  ‘So if I picked up some exotic concoction from the Chinese takeaway and brought it round I might persuade you to share it with me?’

  ‘You might.’

  ‘Excellent. Switch on the oven and expect me in about twenty minutes.’

  The line went dead. Rachel replaced the receiver, wandered through into the kitchen and turned on the cooker almost without realizing she was doing it.

  At eight-thirty precisely there was a ring at the front door bell and she opened it to disclose Dr Richards standing on the threshold with a dripping umbrella in one hand and a paper carrier in the other. From beneath the arm which held the carrier a wrapped bottle protruded. ‘Chicken and prawn chop-suey and sweet and sour pork with selected trimmings,’ he announced. ‘Here, catch hold of the bottle.’

  Rachel led the way into the kitchen and while she decanted the food into the hot dishes, George found a corkscrew and set to work. ‘I called in at the hospital on the way,’ he said, ‘and had a chat with Phillips. I gather you were up there this afternoon.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was there.’

  ‘They really do seem to have everything under control, don’t they?’

  Rachel glanced at him but said nothing. The cork emerged with a quiet ‘plop.’ George poured a little of the wine into a tumbler, tasted it, swallowed it, and then filled the two glasses. He handed one to Rachel, lifted his own and touched it against hers. ‘Cheers,’ he murmured. ‘To Mike.’

  Rachel’s lips moved but no sound emerged .

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Come on, let’s cart this lot through into the other room.’

  They sat opposite each other with the tray of food on a low table between them. ‘I put through a Transatlantic call to Pete Klorner this afternoon,’ said George, spooning chop-suey on to a plate and handing it to her.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Pete Klorner. The chap I met when I was over in the States. At Stanford. I told you about him, didn’t I?’

  ‘Did you? Oh, yes, I believe you did. Well?’

  ‘He’s coming over.’

  ‘Oh, is he? Why?’

  ‘He thinks he might be able to help.’

  Rachel laid down her fork and took a sip at her wine. ‘Help?’ she repeated vaguely. ‘Help Mike?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But how can he?’

  ‘I’m not sure he can, Rachel, but I think there’s just a chance. So does he.’

  ‘And who’s paying for this? You?’

  ‘The Department, naturally. I spoke to the Prof about it this morning. He’s all in favor.’

  Rachel nodded. ‘And what does your Mr Klorner think he can do?’

  ‘Primarily he believes he can help us establish the nature of Mike’s O.O.B. contact.’

  Rachel stared at him. ‘You don’t mean that.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I do,’ said George. ‘And so does he.’

  ‘And what then?’

  ‘Pete’s pretty sure there’s a direct causal connection between that contact and Mike’s coma. He believes he knows a way of resolving those patterns we taped off the pineal area. I know it sounds incredible, Rachel, but Klorner’s not the kind of chap who’d say that if he didn’t mean it. All right, so maybe it’s a hundred to one shot, but what else is there?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said listlessly. ‘What about that drug you were using?’

  ‘Mike cleared the last trace of Y-dopa from his system more than thirty-six hours ago. I checked with Phillips.’

  Rachel speared a morsel of chicken and chewed it in silence for a while. ‘And just supposing, for the sake of argument, that Klorner’s right,’ she said at last. ‘What happens then?’

  ‘I just don’t know, Rachel. We’re all groping in the dark. But I suppose it’s possible – just possible – that if we can manage to track down Mike’s contact – track it down in the flesh I mean – then …’

  ‘Then what, George?’

  Dr Richards spread his hands helplessly. ‘At least it’ll be something,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, you’re right, of course, George,’ she said. ‘At least you’ll be doing something. It’s better than sitting around here till it’s time to crawl up to the hospital for another session in front of those bloody monitor screens.’

  ‘Come on, you’re not eating,’ he said. ‘Try some of this one. It’s really good.’

  Rachel allowed him to put some more food on her plate. ‘These O.O.B.’s,’ she said. ‘What are they really , George?’

  ‘We don’t honestly know. Ex-corporeal mind to mind contact seems the best bet. That was Mike’s theory anyway.’

  ‘So this “contact” he had – or you think he had – that means what? That he was in someone else’s mind?’

  ‘We think it’s possible.’

  ‘Is it, George? Really?’

  ‘Well, Mike thought so too, you know.’

  She nodded. ‘And if you do succeed in tracking down this – this “contact” – this other person – what do you expect to find? Mike’s mind for Christsake?’

  Dr Richards’ face was expressive but he only shrugged.

  ‘And what then? Do you say to him or her or God knows what: “Got you, Mike! I claim my ten thousand pounds in Eurobonds!” or is it: “Release him! I hereby exorcise ye in the name of Beelzebub!”?’

  ‘You know,’ said George with a wry grin, ‘I believe I might even do that if I thought it would get him back to us.’

  ‘I’m sorry, George. Honestly I don’t mean to be bitchy. It’s just that you can’t imagine how useless I feel – futile. Tell me, when do you expect Klorner?’

  ‘On Friday.’

  ‘Will he be staying at the Center?’

  ‘He’s booked into the V.I.P. wing.’

  ‘Can I get to meet him?’

  ‘Of course. I think you ought to anyway. Why don’t we make a date for lunch on Saturday? That’ll give him time to get over the worst of his S.S. lag.’

  Rachel was late for the lunch appointment. Flood water had undermined the foundations of a bridge just outside Petherton and the road was temporarily closed for repairs. Forced to make a wandering detour through a labyrinth of unfamiliar lanes, she arrived at the Center, hot and bothered, twenty minutes adrift, and learned from Reception that Dr Richards was waiting for her in the lounge.

  She found George standing at the bar with his back to her, apparently deep in conversation with a gray-haired, middle-aged man, who was dressed all in black – or at least in a suit of so dark a gray as made no difference. He caught sight of her immediately and murmured something to George who turned round, smiled, and waved her over. ‘I was just beginning to wonder where you’d got to,’ he said. ‘What happened? ’

  Breathlessly she explained and apologized, while Klorner smiled benignly and told her how he had been surprised by the extent of the flooding around Bristol. ‘From the air it’s beginning to look like the Everglades,’ he observed. ‘Your farmers must be getting pretty worried.’

  Rachel allowed George to supply her with a Campari-soda and set about making herself agreeable. ‘George told me you’d once been at Hampton, Mr Klorner,’ she said. ‘When was that?’

  ‘The late ’60’s, Miss Wyld. A long time ago.’

  ‘And you haven’t been back to England since?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Several times. But only on vacation. I still have family living in Yorkshire.’

  Rachel was surprised. ‘Then you aren’t a real American?’

  ‘I am now,’ he said. ‘But I was born in Sheffield.’

  George said: ‘If no one objects I think we might well be advised to take our drinks through into the dining room while there’s still some food left.’

  Over lunch Rachel plucked up the courage to ask Klorner directly how he thought he could help Mike.

  ‘I’m not sure that I can, Miss Wyld – I wish I were – but it just so happens that I am the possessor of certain technical data that we researched in Hampton in ’68 – data which, for a variety of ethical reasons, have never been exploited. My hope is that they may help us to analyze the nature of Doctor Carver’s coma.’

  ‘And what sort of data are they?’

  Klorner laid down his fork, dabbed at his lips with his napkin and took a thoughtful sip at his Reisling. ‘Basically they are concerned with a technique we discovered for displaying encephalic voltages – “brain-waves,” if you like – in different planes. We called it the “Encephalo-Visual Converter” – E-V.C. for short. I’ve got Dr Richards’ team working on it right now.’

  ‘And what does it do?’

  ‘Hopefully it will enable us to see what Doctor Carver was thinking.’

  ‘See?’ Rachel was totally astounded. ‘You don’t mean really see?’

  Klorner smiled and nodded. ‘It sounds fantastic, doesn’t it?’ he said. ‘But that’s just what I do mean.’

  ‘Not just squiggles and dots and what not?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Klorner assured her. ‘The real thing. If he was thinking of Buckingham Palace then we’ll see it – or, more precisely, we’ll see his own visual concept of it. Enough, anyway, to give us some indication of what was on his mind.’

  ‘A thought-seeing machine,’ she murmured.

  ‘You could call it that,’ he admitted.

  ‘Then why hasn’t it been developed?’ she demanded. ‘There must be a fortune in it. ’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘I’m quite sure there is.’

  ‘Well, then?’

  Klorner pursed up his lips and slowly shook his head. ‘The man I worked on it with at Hampton alerted me to some of its problems – principally, the ethics of the thing. In the wrong hands it could prove far more destructive than any H-bomb. It’s only because I sincerely believe that he’d have given me the go-ahead in this particular situation that I’m here today. The Doctor was a truly remarkable man.’

  ‘Was?’ interjected George ‘Is Dumpkenhoffer dead?’

  ‘I really don’t know,’ said Klorner. ‘I completely lost touch with him back in ’69 when I went to the States. But if he is still around I guess I’d have heard by now. He’d be well on into his seventies.’

  ‘How long will it be before you can get this thing working?’ asked Rachel.

  ‘Tomorrow or the day after, given we don’t run into bad snags. It’s mainly a question of wiring up a heap of involved circuits. All the materials we need are here to hand.’

  ‘And can I be there when you switch on?’

  ‘I would consider it a privilege,’ said Klorner graciously. ‘Indeed, if past experience is anything to go by, I’d say that having somebody on hand who has a close emotional relationship with the subject is pretty well essential when it comes to interpreting the precise nature of the signal displayed.’

  ‘That’s me,’ said Rachel. ‘Floods or no floods I promise I’ll be there just as soon as you give me the word.’

  SEVEN

  The long arm of the Sea of Dee which linked the Irish Sea to the Somersea and divided Wales from the Fifth Kingdom, was arguably the most dangerous stretch of water in the Seven Kingdoms. At High Springs the tidal rise in the Midland Gap was close on thirty meters and if a south-westerly gale had piled up the seas in the Severn Reach the consequential clash of raging waters in the narrow defile known as the Jaws of Shrewsbury was utterly awe-inspiring. Not for nothing was the fine white sand which supplied the glass-blowers of Montgomery with the raw material for their crucibles known locally as ‘Drowned Man’s Bone.’

  Living their lives in such close proximity to death had bred into the Western Borderers a contempt for authority which was almost legendary throughout the Kingdoms. For generations most of the local populace had supplemented their meager livelihood with casual piracy and regular scavenging from wrecks. A line of granite forts which stretched from Stoke in the north to Cheltenham in the south on one side of the channel, and from Oswestry to Hereford on the other, testified to the stranglehold which for centuries the Borderers had exerted on this vital trade route. Indeed, well within living memory, there had been a period during which no unescorted trading vessel had been allowed passage through the narrows unless it had first paid tribute to the self-styled ‘Lords of the Isles.’ It had taken the combined action of King Dyffed and the Earl of Stafford, a force of a thousand men and a campaign which had dragged on for the better part of two years before the area was officially declared safe in 2997. For two months the headless body of ‘King’ Morgan fed the crows from an army gibbet on the walls of Welshpool Castle – a gruesome tribute to the force of royal arms.

  In the twenty odd years which had elapsed since Morgan’s summary execution, the narrows had remained nominally free. Fast Welsh longships now cruised up and down the channel from their strongly fortified bases at Wenlock and Oswestry and the passage dues which had previously gone to swell the loot of the ‘Lords’ on Black Isle now filtered down into Dyffed’s granite vaults at Carmarthen and the tithe chests of the Church Militant.

  Having had ample opportunity to appreciate its strategic value, Dyffed had allowed Morgan’s own stronghold to remain virtually intact. From the squat watchtower perched on the shoulder of the granite outcrop, still known locally as ‘Morgan’s Mount,’ the ensign bearing the scarlet gryphon on the Sixth Kingdom now streamed in the wind which blew so steadily off the scarp of the Long Mynd some thirty-five kilometers to the south-east. Northwards the great Sea of Dee gleamed in the spring sunshine, dotted with the sails of fishing smacks and coastal traders and patched purple with the shadows of scurrying clouds. So clear was the April air that the watchman’s powerful glass could just distinguish the lower peaks of the far distant Pennines standing sentinel along the westward flank of the Fifth Kingdom.

  One of the boats which the watchman would have observed putting in to Welshpool harbor carried among its passengers that same Advocate Sceptic whom Archbishop Constant had set upon the trail of the Boy Thomas, shortly before issuing his Edict against the Kinsmen. By pure chance, unofficial news of the Edict had percolated through to Brother Francis on the very day that he had first received word that Kinsman Gyre was upon Black Isle.

  His immediate reaction on hearing the news of the Edict was to assume that his interim report to the Archbishop had miscarried. A moment’s further reflection was sufficient to convince him that his personal situation was now extremely precarious. The prudent course would undoubtedly be to hurry back to York and take steps to safeguard his own reputation. He did not doubt that he could do it. And yet he hesitated. In so doing he provided eloquent testimony to the hold which the heresy of Kinship had established over his imagination. As he cast feverishly about for some course of action which would enable him to fulfill his quest and yet avoid the sin of disobedience, casuistry came to his aid.

  The Edict was rumored to have been issued from the Eastern Falconry which would place its execution firmly within the jurisdiction of Simon of Leicester and the Gray Brotherhood. But Archbishop Constant’s fiat overrode the authority of the Brotherhood and he, as the Archbishop’s personal envoy, was carrying upon his person the sealed letter of authority which Constant had given him to assist him upon his travels. His original term of task still had a little while to run and he had as yet received no overriding summons of recall from the Archbishop. Until he did so, could he really be adjudged to have any significant option other than to remain bound by his original oath to pursue his quest with all the zeal and ingenuity at his command?

  That same evening Francis had taken ship at Barrow praying in all humility that he might, by Divine favor, be permitted to reach Gyre before the emissaries of Bishop Simon ran the Kinsman to earth and haled him off to Nottingham for an official inquisition ad extremis in the castle dungeons.

  Within half an hour of stepping ashore at Welshpool, Francis was once again afloat, this time aboard a local crab boat whose two man crew were more than willing to ferry him across the narrows and round the southern point of Black Isle for a silver quarter. The tide being unfavorable they were obliged to disembark him on the jetty at Stone Cross, a cluster of tumble-down sheds and hovels by the water’s edge some two kilometers from the village of Cwymdula which was his destination.

  He scrambled up the rusty iron ladder to the top of the sea-wall and found he was the object of curious scrutiny from a group of ragged urchins. He smiled at them, murmured a greeting, and sketched a perfunctory blessing. At this most of them dropped their gaze, but one, the eldest, stared back at him boldly and then, with insolent deliberation, raised his own grubby hand and made the Sign of the Bird, his extended forefinger tracing the outline of a sprawling letter ‘M’.

  Francis’ heart skipped a beat. ‘Am I among Kinsfolk?’

  Six pairs of eyes regarded him opaquely and then the leader said sullenly: ‘What’s that to en, priest?’

  On the point of framing a reply Francis became painfully conscious of the pitfall underlying the deceptively simple question. Out of the mouths of babes. ‘I come from the far north seeking Kinsman Gyre, my son,’ he replied gravely. ‘Will you take me to him? ’

  There was a moment of hesitation before the child muttered: ‘Us knows of none such,’ and the rest of the little group, taking their cue from him, obediently shook their heads.

  Casting about for some way to reach them Francis had an inspiration. Having caught sight of a bedraggled gull feather lying on the jetty he stooped and picked it up. Holding it as high above him as his arm could reach he said: ‘I am Brother Francis. I come in peace. By the Wings of the White Bird of Kinship I beseech you to conduct me to Kinsman Gyre.’