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Human Nature - Chapter Eight

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Everything Changes

Alexander slowly turned his head towards Bernice and coughed experimentally. The noise echoed around the little dome. He opened his mouth and shouted something, but no sound was audible. Finally, he tried a whisper.

'I didn't understand a word of that. Are they Martians?'

'No. We could do with a few Martians right now. They'd sort those bastards out.' Benny closed her eyes, trying to stop the feeling of panic that was welling up in her stomach. If the fear overwhelmed her, she wouldn't be able to think. 'If I could reach to get the laser cutter out of my pocket, we'd also be better off. Alex, can you think of a really clever way to get out of this?'

'Not at all.'

'Because neither can I, and I really don't want to think about what's going to happen when they get back. So what do you want to think about? Women?'

'Women? If I'm about to be killed, loved one, that's the last thing I want to think about. Were you in love with your knight, Bernice?'

'Oh yes. No doubt about it. Full-scale romance. We nearly got there, too. Another few feet, and - oh, sod it!' She started to pull at the manacles, her wrists chafing white against the cuffs. 'I will not die like this! There's so much more to do! There's my dad out there somewhere, Alex! And that bastard is not going to get his hands on me first! Do you hear me, Alex?'

'I hear you, loved one,' Alexander whispered.

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Benny strained her hands against the manacles until her thumbs started to dislocate with the force of it. If your life depended on it, couldn't you just ignore the pain and wreck your hands?

She gritted her teeth.

Probably not.

Then the metal sheet thumped her in the back.

She waggled her hands to let the blood flow back into them, and the sheet fell backwards, nearly pulling her off her feet. She pulled forward and took the weight of it on her back. At the base of the sheet was a churned-up clump of soil. Two thin metal spikes that had fixed it into the ground had snapped in half.

'I pulled it out of the soil! I bloody pulled it out!' Benny shouted. 'Quickly, Alex, heave!' She hefted the sheet of metal on to her back, still manacled to it, and stamped around behind Alex to lean all of her weight on the back of his sheet. Together, the weight and his efforts snapped the supports on that one too.

'My God, how do we get out?' Alex stumbled forward, tortoise like, carrying his sheet as Benny carried hers.

'Which button was it? I think that's it...' Benny stamped up to a piece of machinery and angled the bottom comer of her sheet at it. She swung the metal deftly and the corner hit a button dead centre.

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A square opening appeared in the side of the dome. 'Come on!' Benny called. 'Run!'

The two awkward fugitives scrambled out into the forest and jogged away as fast as they could manage doubled up.

'At least we'll be safe if they start shooting at us,' murmured Alexander.

'Now these' - Rocastle held up a smooth, shiny-jacketed bullet pulled from the belt that fed the Vickers gun - 'are for enemy armies. Austrians, we might assume, Serbians or Germans. These will go right through the body and leave a clean, decent wound or kill instantly, as such noble enemies deserve.'

The boys were clustered around, listening intently as Rocastle sat on a sandbag behind the machine-gun, their imaginations racing across landscapes of cavalry charges and courageous squares of men in uniform. He held up another bullet, a square, sharp-edged one. 'This is for tribesmen, rebels and those whose creed is unchristian, thus disallowing them from the basic brotherhood of all professional soldiers.'

'Please, sir,' Merryweather raised his hand, 'did you use those in Pretoria?'

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'Well, ah...' Rocastle stroked his moustache thoughtfully. 'What can I say, Captain Merryweather? Mixture of both. Brother Boer doesn't always behave like a serious soldier. Most of them were farmers with knives between their rotten teeth. Not our decision to make; anyhow, use of weapons is down to the C.O. Anyhow, enough stories. Shall we give it a go?'

'Yes, sir!' chorused the boys.

'All right then. Phipps, you've seen how to pass the ammo belt. Pay attention, boys, you'll all get a chance to fire her. Stand clear now. Don't get near the cartridge ejection.'

The boys hurried behind the machine-gun as Rocastle trained it on a row of straw figures in the middle distance. Phipps got down on one knee and grabbed the belt of ammunition that fed into the side of the gun.

'Is the line of fire clear?' asked Rocastle ritually.

'Yes, sir!' shouted Phipps.

'Stand by to fire.' Rocastle slipped the safety catch off. 'Fire!'

The noise of the bullets ripped up the air, hot cartridges spinning out of the gun. The boys took a step back, gritting their teeth against the urge to put their hands over their ears or to cry. The targets spat straw everywhere, buffeted as they hung as if they were being tom apart by some invisible monster.

'Sir! Christ, sir!' Phipps shouted. 'Stop!'

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'What did you say?' Rocastle bellowed, referring to the blasphemy rather than the sound. Then he saw it himself, and let go of the trigger.

Behind the targets, a dishevelled figure was pushing through the hedge, its school uniform in tatters.

'Tim,' whispered Anand.

The figure wandered up to the targets and touched them gingerly, as if examining them. It turned to look at the group of boys around the machine-gun, and grinned at them.

It was wearing poppies in its hair.

Rocastle stood up, the sudden fear he'd felt when his finger was still on the trigger boiling into rage. 'Captain Hutchinson, I am going to my study. Bring that boy to me. The rest of you are dismissed.'

Hutchinson and Merryweather dragged the unresisting Timothy along the polished corridors to Rocastle's study. 'You're a disgrace to the school uniform,' Hutchinson told him, pulling the flowers from his hair. 'You look like a girl.'

'Really?' Timothy asked. 'A pretty one?'

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Hutchinson punched him hard in the stomach and left Merryweather to straighten him up as he knocked on Rocastle's door. He waited for an answer, then stepped inside and saluted again. 'Prisoner and escort, sir.'

Rocastle looked up from his desk, resisting a sudden impulse to tell Hutchinson that this wasn't a playground game. No. The boy was following proper form. 'Let the, ah, prisoner, in, Captain. You needn't escort him. Then you're dismissed.'

Hutchinson nodded, led Timothy into the room and left, closing the door behind him.

The boy immediately limped over to Rocastle's bookshelves and started scanning them. He didn't even seem to notice the Head, who had begun writing again to give the boy some sense of scale. After a moment, he realised that he was being ignored back, and something snapped inside him. He leapt to his feet. 'Dean! How dare you ignore me!'

'Sorry,' Timothy raised his hands in a gesture of pacification. 'I thought you were busy, sir. That's an early edition of Darwin on your shelf. I thought you - '

'Never mind the bloody books.' Rocastle matched each hissed syllable with a stride round his desk and made the last one into a slap that sent the boy flying into the corner. 'You could have been killed this afternoon! What are you playing at? What are you playing at?'

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'I'm not sure, sir,' Tim sighed, staying where he'd fallen. 'I see so many strange things. I think I've grown up.'

Rocastle laughed bitterly and dragged him to his feet. 'Like hell you have! I've heard enough about your illnesses, your cissy ways, and now the flowers in your hair! A fine miss, you are, boy! Now, are you going to pull yourself together and join in with this outfit? Are you?' He shook Timothy harder and harder, until his head swung from side to side sickeningly.

'Don't-'

'That's sir!' Rocastle bellowed, his face red.

Timothy closed his eyes as he was shaken, drew in a breath and stuck out a finger.

The finger caught Rocastle in the centre of the forehead. He stared at it. Then he crumpled into a heap.

Timothy staggered back, staring down at the body. Then he started to laugh, wiping his mouth on the back of his unbuttoned sleeve. 'You'll die in pain, in ten years, with a tumour on your bowel,' he told the unconscious figure. Then he turned and ran from the room.

Mr Hodges had been kneeling in the middle of the road, praying, when the army convoy rolled up. An officer had hopped out of the first of the dusty green vans, introduced himself as Major Wrightson and asked what the trouble was.

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Hodges told him that he'd had a vision up ahead and been called upon to change his ways. He asked the major to leave him alone, and, with a nod and shrug to his comrades back in the van, the soldier did so.

They drove around him, with great care, and picked up speed as they returned to the centre of the road.

That was when the first van compacted, its front flattening like it had hit a wall. The cap on the radiator blew upwards in a blast of steam. The other two vans braked before they ran into the back of the first.

Mr Hodges had stood up to watch the soldiers scramble out and stare at what was in their way: nothing. The front of the crashed van was rapidly rusting, a thin red layer rising to smudge the air around its bonnet. To Hodges, it made the soldiers look like they were just figures in a painting, staring at a puff of paint that had fallen across the canvas. A smell of passing thunderstorms suddenly filled the air, but this was a clear spring morning.

Some of the men, those who lived through the next few months, claimed that they'd smelt something sulphurous in that suspended red cloud, but the recollections every- body had of the spring of 1914 were full of portents after the fact.

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The major had clambered out of the cab and started shouting at his driver to back up. He probed the red cloud with his baton. With a sudden crash, the whole front end of the van gave way and the cloud grew heavier. It was following a gently upward slope, describing the perimeter of something invisible that the major measured by walking along it, slapping the air with the baton.

The air made a fearful series of echoes.

One soldier had opened his eyes full wide then, and ran to a bush to be sick. His fellows calmed him, and he told them later how the noises had reminded him of something big and terrible, like being buried under a pile of metal and hearing faint voices, the language of which you don't understand. They all felt lonely at the echoes, even Wrightson. He was an Eights enthusiast, and the clash of his stick on the air only made him wonder why he was here, why he wasn't scudding across some bright, flat lake in the sunshine. The echo was like being lost at sea, a little shape rolling in waves that reared like mountains alongside you.

'That's the voice of God, that chime,' Hodges had sighed, his gnarled old face beaming in the first real rays of the morning sun. 'He's coming back today.'

'You may well be right.' The major watched as what had been the bonnet of his van dissolved into an oxidizing cloud. He turned to the man in charge of the following truck. 'Gas masks!'

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The soldiers ran back into the trucks, emerging a moment later wearing the grotesque masks with their dangling filters. The major spent a few moments trying to persuade Hodges to wear one too, to no avail. 'All right. Stanley, Torrence, with me. Let's see how far we can get through this thing.'

Two soldiers shouldered arms and ran to Wrightson's side. They walked up to the barrier, hands outstretched, and touched the smooth surface of the air. 'Wonderful,' Wrightson breathed. He'd been chosen for this job because he'd been part of the only unit in Britain to have been training under gas conditions. If this was the war he could look forward to... well, it was different, anyway. 'Try and push through it,' he ordered. The three men advanced, heaving against the barrier, their palms feeling the slight warmth of it.

'Sir!' called Stanley. 'Look!'

A soldier was running towards them on the other side of the barrier, waving his arms urgently. 'Ah, good, now we'll get some answers,' muttered Wrightson. 'Hey there, who are you with' The thought died in his mouth as he recognised the Royal Artillery shoulderflash. Somebody from his own regiment in fact... Oh my God,' Stanley whispered. The man on the other side of the barrier was Stanley too.

'Don't touch it!' he was shouting. 'Don't -'

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The Stanley on this side of the barrier thought of himself for a moment, and then he was the dome, stretched across the countryside in an arc, and glad to be everywhere the dome touched at once. He resolved himself into being a hundred yards down the road, and saw his former self, that silly old thing, trudging up to the barrier. He ran forward, shouting for him not to touch it.

Torrence, who was a lot less of a churchgoer than Stanley, found that he'd lived in the past and would live in the future. He saw the view from the longhall in Dublin and felt the bones of a roe deer between his teeth as the sun rose over Ethiopian plains. He saw Torrence continued, his name and his cell memory, across generations. He saw that he would have children and that they would prosper. And here he was, as yet unmarried.

He fell from the barrier, his mind blinking off like a speck of static, dead.

Wrightson flashed upwards through the atmosphere, yelling as he encompassed the globe of the Earth inside his body.

Suddenly he stopped. Great stellar teeth flashed at him. 'Is it time?' enquired a surprisingly soft voice from a bright star that flashed past. He was left stumbling in its trail.

'I don't know. Is it?'

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Whatever was associated with the object turned, and Wrightson caught a look of agonised imprisonment from it... from her. And then she was gone.

Earth returned like a knot in his stomach. He took his palms off the barrier, and looked down to see Torrence lying there. He would have done something, but Stanley was running towards the barrier again. This time he wasn't alone.

A young man was holding his hand.

The soldier and the boy ran right through the barrier. Stanley collapsed into Wrightson's arms.

Timothy looked around at the soldiers. 'More of you? Well, don't do anything rash.'

'Now, wait a moment,' Wrightson began, 'what...'

'Actually,' Tim interrupted him, 'don't do anything at all. Especially to this wall, whatever it is.' With a grin of accomplishment, he turned on his heel and ran back through it.

The soldiers watched him go. Wrightson got a stretcher party together for the unfortunate Torrence.

'Sir,' said Stanley, grabbing his superior by the forearms, 'did you see it? Is it the Lord, sir?'

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'If it is,' Wrightson spoke loudly, so his men could hear, 'then he's got the Artillery here to guard him. We'll form a perimeter round this thing, one man every hundred yards. Keep an eye on your neighbour, don't touch the wall. Meanwhile, I'll try to get a wire through to HQ.' He lowered his voice again and disengaged from Stanley's grip, patting the man gently on the shoulder.

They shared a long release of breath. 'In short,' muttered the major, 'holy flaming cow.'

Benny and Alexander ran through the forest, carrying the big metal sheets on their backs.

'How far is it to this blacksmith of yours?' Benny panted.

'It's over the hill.'

'So am I. This is the sort of thing they tried to make me do when I was in military training.'

'You were going to be a soldier? Do they let ladies do that in the future?'

Benny was about to reply with something apt, but then she saw a figure standing behind the trees in front of them and a surge of fear swept through her. 'Alex, look!'

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As Alexander swung his burden to see, the lithe figure broke from cover. It was a schoolboy, Benny was relieved to see, albeit a very messy one. He stood watching them for a moment.

Benny noticed that he was holding something. Was that a cricket ball? Then she realised. Just as Timothy turned and ran.

'Wait, stop!' Benny yelled. 'He's got the bloody Pod!'

She tried to run after him, but fell, halfway up the slope that Timothy had scrambled away up. Alexander hobbled over, and with much effort, got her back to her feet again.

'We, loved one, are in no position to take part in a chase.'

'I know, damn it,' Benny sighed. 'But unlike everybody else, we now know who's got what we're looking for.'

Nathan Bottomley was a blacksmith, farrier and metalworker. He was known to everybody in Farringham from those occasions when he'd come into a house and bash the boiler with a spanner, listen to the chime and then mutter: 'No, that's absolutely ridiculous. You were hoping for hot water at Christmas?'

He was currently attending to the first of a pair of new shoes for the old Lucas mare, hammering the red hot metal against his anvil, holding it in the clamp. An edition of Sons and Lovers was propped open by a metal doorstop beside him. He had opened up the big doors to his workshop by the stream to let the cool breezes in, but it wasn't as satisfying a day as he had expected. It wanted to storm, but couldn't. A bit of rain would be a relief.

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'Nathan!' Bottomley looked up at the urgent call and saw a bizarre sight trudging into his yard. Alexander Shuttleworth and a girl in trousers, with dirty great sheets of metal on their backs. 'Nathan...' Alexander leaned heavily on the wheel of a threshing machine that was in for repair. 'Help...'

Hoff looked up at the sky and shook his head. 'That dome's doing bad stuff with time.'

The aliens had taken up a place in a cluster of trees above the town and were training a variety of scanning devices on the valley below.

'Oh?' August looked up for a moment. 'I thought you had the technology sorted out?'

'I thought so too.' Hoff shook his head again, and was silent.

'This is a complete waste of time.' Greeneye was pacing back and forth, twirling the dials on his particular scanning unit randomly. 'The Pod isn't showing up as a mutation agent or broadcasting on any electromagnetic wavelength. We'd need to be psychic.'

'That,' hissed Serif, grabbing the scanner off him, 'is one of the things we shall be, if we can find the Pod!'

'Greeneye's just hungry!' Aphasia teased. She didn't have a scanner. She'd just narrowed her eyes and was turning her head in an imperceptibly slow arc.

'She'll still be there when we get back,' said August. 'I just hope that you do your business behind the screen or something.'

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'I want to watch!' moaned Aphasia.

'You can.' Greeneye ruffled her hair. 'Tell you what, you can have her pancreas afterwards.'

'I've got the pancreas, I've got the pancreas!' sang the little girl, glancing up at Serif. 'And you haven't, and you haven't...'

Serif raised a dangerous eyebrow and stalked off.

'Got something!' Hoff stabbed a stubby finger on to his scanner unit. 'A source producing rapidly decaying particles in negative time. Way beyond the technology levels here.'

'Could be an effect of the time shield?' August glanced at the figures. 'Except - it's moving! Come on!'

The Aubertides ran downhill towards town, Serif pursuing them with broad strides in an attempt to catch up.

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'So, what do we do now?' asked Alexander.

Bernice was gritting her teeth as Bottomley hammered a sharp metal tool into the fastening of her left manacle. 'We find that boy with the Pod, and help out with his, admittedly so far rather successful, plan to hide it. How would he have got hold of the thing, anyway?'

'Well, the orchard where you say you left it is part of the Marcham estate, old Mrs Marcham's place, but it's notoriously ill-tended. She doesn't get out much, and so her staff leave the fruit to rot. It's a huge area, and it snakes right round the forest and the school, with all sorts of secret places. The place is therefore beloved to wasps and boys of Hulton College.'

'Where Dr Smith works. I see.'

'And, of course, schoolboys love to get hold of mysterious things.'

'So I remember.' Benny triumphantly broke free of the first manacle and waggled her hand to get the blood circulating again. 'Your average fifth former's got his finger in more pies than Mr Kipling.'

The blacksmith glanced between the two manacled figures propped up against his workshop wall. 'I'm astonished. You've met Rudyard Kipling?'

Benny burst out laughing and used her free hand to pat the man on the shoulder. 'No,' she assured him. 'But I know a man who has. Hopefully.'

Bottomley shrugged and continued his work.

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Dr Smith had placed a ladder against the wall of the cottage and climbed up it, while Joan held it steady. He undid the catch on a hatch in the ceiling and opened it, then climbed up into the loft. A moment later he called: 'Come up here and see!'

Joan gingerly climbed the ladder, and John helped her step out on to the beams of the little loft. He'd lit an oil lamp hanging on a hook, which gave the wooden space a gentle lemon hue. It had started to rain outside, and the sound of raindrops formed a gentle patter on the roof. The gaps between the beams were only plasterboard, so the two lovers took care to step only on the wood. Mouse-eaten cardboard boxes, orange crates and suitcases secured by belts were piled around the cool stone arch of the walls.

Smith squatted, lost his balance, waved his arms and was only saved from falling by Joan putting a hand on his shoulder. 'Thank you,' he said. He started to untie one of the suitcases.

'So what is it about this umbrella that so intrigues you?' Joan asked. 'I thought we might get on with the business of jam.'

'It's just -' Smith opened the first suitcase and began to sort through the items he found there - 'I remember a strange umbrella, but I don't. I know I had one, but I don't remember carrying it... using it... getting it.'

'How strange. I do like this attic of yours, it reminds me of Christmas. A wonderful darkness and light at the same time.' Joan sat on a packing case and looked around primly. 'When I was a girl, we were the first people in our town to have a Christmas tree. My father saw the big one in London that Prince Albert had brought over, and thought that it was a good idea. At first, visitors would comment on how strange it was to have a tree inside the house, but then they all started to have them, so Father felt vindicated.'

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'My father wasn't that sort of person.' Smith glared at a pair of juggling balls he'd pulled from the case, threw them up in the air, tangled his arms and missed catching them. 'He was in the Navy, a military man. He went missing.'

'Did you ever discover what had become of him?' Unseen by Smith, Joan had taken the ring he'd given her from the pocket of her cardigan, and was turning it over in her fingers.

'No. Everybody thought that he was a traitor, but I don't think that's true.'

'My goodness. And what about Verity, your former fianc\xE9e?'

'Former? Does that mean I have one now?'

'Don't count your chickens.'

'I haven't seen her in years. Except... in a dream. She married a teacher - or was it a soldier?'

'You told me it was a sailor.'

'Did I? Perhaps it was. I'm very confused.'

'You do seem to be a trifle perturbed, today. Why, for instance, did you insist that we walk so swiftly away from the end of the field? I nearly dropped my blackberries, you rushed me so.'

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'I just thought there might be a storm. Perhaps it's my finger.' He held up the wounded stump. He'd reached the bottom of the suitcase without success. 'Perhaps this is all my finger. Septic, poisoned. Perhaps I'm losing my mind.'

Joan went to him and kissed the top of his head. 'Not at all. But you have been through a terrible adventure. Perhaps you've been a bit too brave. You haven't even told the Head about it, yet.'

'No, I suppose I haven't. Do you think I should take some time off?'

'Perhaps it would help you to think it through. And on that matter, John, while you are so churned up, should I take it that your proposal was merely speculative? I should be glad to do so and await later confirmation.'

'No!' He grabbed her hand. 'No, I'm uncertain about a lot of things, but that's the one thing I am sure of. It was sudden, I know, but it's certain. It's the thing I'm hanging on to.'

Joan released the breath she'd been holding. 'Well, then I shall take you seriously, and you will have my answer. For now, we shall take a look at that finger, and then perhaps have a cup of cocoa.'

Smith stood up to embrace her. 'I was just thinking of cocoa. You always seem to say just the right thing.'

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Alexander and Benny were making their way through the streets of town, walking quickly and keeping a lookout for the boy they'd seen. It was good to be free of their metal burden. There was a general sense of tension about the place this Saturday teatime. People were out on their steps, looking at watches and talking to each other excitedly over fences. In the market square, the stallholders were packing up, but one or two of the carts seemed to have returned, and their occupants were conducting hand-waving arguments with those that remained. The gentle rain, the first onset of the storm that was approaching, was making the pavements glisten.

They passed the town telephone box, an ornate red construction with a tiny pagodalike point on top. A man in a neat tweed suit and bowler was stepping out of it and locking it behind him.

'I say, Horace!' Alexander ran over to him. 'What's going on?'

'Line's down,' Horace, whose job it was to sit in the box, make the connection for whoever wanted to make a call, and then stand outside waiting for them to complete it, explained. 'If you want to call anyone, you could ask at the school. At least I get to go home early.'

From somewhere in the distance, there came the crack and boom of an explosion. Horace pricked his ears up. 'Hey-ho, the boiler's blown on the engine!'

'Couldn't it be the OTC at the school again?' Alexander asked.

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'No, my old man used to be the fireman on a train. That's the sound of an engine going up. Hope no poor soul was caught in that. See you at the meeting, eh, Alexander?'

'Damn,' whispered Benny when he'd gone. 'You could cut the atmosphere here with a knife.' People were gathering in groups looking to the east, where a plume of smoke was drifting from the direction of the branch line. 'What's this meeting he was talking about, anyway?'

'Oh, the Labour group meets on a Saturday night in the town hall. I'm normally there.'

'Well, if you want to go - '

Alexander sighed and took her by the arm as an old matron passed, flashing the woman a dangerous grin as she glanced disapprovingly at such closeness, such trousers, such a haircut. 'Richard's addressing them.'

'Oh. Sorry.'

'Think nothing of it, loved one. Now, shall we go back to school?'

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Rocastle sat stock still in his armchair, his hands gripping the antimacassars. He'd hauled himself into the chair after he'd passed out... and of course the child had run away. Couldn't have been long unconscious or the boy would have fetched somebody. Or perhaps he'd been too scared to call anyone.

Rocastle had, after all, slapped him across the face.

His father had never done that to him. He'd put him across his knee and thrashed him with his belt often enough, but he'd never delivered something so direct, so tawdry.

And of course you could never tell a boy you were sorry, that you'd only been frightened of gunning him down. He'd wanted to express somehow that the boy's wildness and difference were almost an invitation to others to do that, that the way to get by was to square your back and join the line. Strong youngster like Dean should have been with the others, behind the gun, not in the line of bloody fire. A better teacher, a better leader, could have told him that, could have impressed it upon him. You make a move out of line, boy, and they gun you down.

And then he'd collapsed. He'd done that when he was at the opera once, with dear Cordelia. They'd been laughing as they walked down the steps outside, and the next thing he'd been rolling, down into the gutter under the full moon. A dozen bright young lads had run to him and got him to sit up, and he'd shied them away, scared to the point of tears by the sudden pain in his abdomen.

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That had gone after a few days. He'd got the first symptom on Cordelia's behalf, he'd joked, because she told him she was pregnant that next week. Maybe she had thought she should tell him then, in case he didn't make it. How ironic. He hadn't even seen her body, despite bellowing at the intern that he'd seen men dead three deep on the Spion Kop, that a woman and a baby were the only two dead he'd ever wanted to see.

He should retire. He should -

His teeth set hard together.

What would be left to do then that was hard enough? If he was still a military soul, he'd be like some bloody German, finding insult in his fellow officers all the time, and demanding duels, just so-

There came a knock at the door.

He opened his mouth, and found that all that was going to come out was an almighty sob.

He slapped himself hard across the cheek.

The pain made him sit up. He opened his eyes and they were clear. He stood as the knock came again and adjusted his tie in the mirror by his desk. 'Enter!'

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The bursar, Mr Moffat, a young Scotsman with curly hair and permanently perplexed eyes, entered. 'Excuse me, Headmaster - '

'Ah, Mr Moffat, I've been meaning to have a word with you about Smith. You're both from north of the border. What do you think of him?'

Moffat thought for a moment, surprised by the question. 'I wasn't aware that he was Scottish. He knows as much about Aberdeen as the average Cockney, and seems to have trouble with his accent. Altogether, it's a pretty poor performance.'

'Hmm. And these stories that I've been hearing from town, that a young teacher's romancing a barmaid?'

'Obviously it isn't me, I lodge in the east-wing apartments. You'd know if I was coming and going.'

'Very good. Was that all?'

Moffat stared at him. 'Headmaster, I only came in because there are two visitors to see you. I couldn't find Miss Robertson. Have you given her the weekend off?'

'Eh? Well, no, I don't know what's become of my secretary since she took the day off to visit her parents yesterday. Another tiny drama. Who are these visitors?'

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'A man called Shuttleworth who runs the local museum, and a woman by the name of Summerfield.'

'Shuttleworth... oh my God. All right, give me a moment and then show them in.' He sat behind his desk and found some papers to play with.

A moment later, Alexander and Benny entered.

Benny wasn't feeling very confident. She'd rolled up her trouser bottoms and thrown on a skirt and blouse that Alexander's sister had owned. She thought she looked like a scarecrow. But Rocastle barely gave her a second glance. He rose as Alexander entered and shook his hand warmly. 'Mr Shuttleworth, what can I do for you?'

'Well, it's quite a delicate matter, actually.' Alexander and Benny sat down in the comfortable chairs of the study, and Benny was surprised to find that hers was still warm. She studied Rocastle as he moved, this man who the Doctor - who Smith - feared so much. His face was ruddy, like he'd just gone through some emotional crisis, and, despite trying to look interested in what Alex was saying, he eyes kept straying. Benny followed the direction of his glance to a tiny cameo of a woman on the wall.

'So,' Alexander was saying, 'I found that, after this party of schoolboys had toured the museum, a certain item was missing. A red pottery sphere, used for cooking by the Iceni tribe. I'd left a display case open for cleaning that afternoon, and there were no other customers, so I reluctantly have to conclude...'

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'This sphere - valuable, was it?'

'Only to an archaeologist.'

'Right.' Rocastle thumped his big palm down on the table and got to his feet. Benny and Alexander did like wise. 'I cannot have this happening. I shall call an assembly instantly, and, if you would be so good as to come with me, we shall discover the culprit.'

'Well, there's no need to - ' Benny began.

'There's every need,' Rocastle replied, rather curtly. 'Can't have my boys' reputation suffering. Come along.' He locked the door of the study behind them as they left, and took a moment to grab a passing first-year, who, after a few quick words, ran off in the direction of the big golden bell that stood on a table in an alcove. He began to ring it with all his strength.

After a minute, bells began to sound from all over the echoing old building. Rocastle stood at a slight distance from his visitors, listening to every one of them like he was following the libretto of a favourite opera.

'I think we've done the worst possible thing for him,' Benny whispered to Alexander. 'We've given him just what he needs.'

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Smith was wearing his apron, making salad sandwiches for tea, rattling round the inside of a jar of mayonnaise with a knife to extract the last drop. Joan was inspecting his bookcases in the front room. She'd re-bandaged his finger, which seemed to be healing nicely with no sign of infection, and they'd had two cups of cocoa each.

Smith found himself wishing that he could ask her to stay the night. That was an outrageous thought, of course. Just expressing it as an idle fancy would probably make her drop him altogether and run from the room. If she wasn't already scared off by his oddness. Mental note: stop being so odd. At least in front of her. But he was starting to rely on her. And that business about being a soldier or not... he didn't feel particularly positive about the military, but it was something that happened, and if it did, why get in the way of a fact of life? It was because Joan had lost someone, he decided. She didn't like to think of any of the boys going the same way. But they were boys, and they dreamed of adventure and glory. Good for them.

And what would he have done if she did stay? A sort of vaguely defined soft thing that she knew more about than he did, and that wasn't right, was it? He'd had trouble with kissing Verity. But if girls didn't do this until they were married, and boys did it before, who did the boys do it with? Mental note: ask the boys.

There came a knock on the door. Smith opened it. There stood a schoolboy. 'Tell me -' began Smith, and then stopped. 'No. What?'

'Please, sir, Mr Rocastle sent me to get you, sir. He's called a general assembly in half an hour.'

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'Has he? All right. Off you go. We'll... I'll be there.' The boy ran off again. Smith glanced up. The sky was dark with squalls and approaching stormclouds.

Joan wandered into the kitchen and plucked her cardigan from the back of a chair. 'I heard. The man's insane. Shall I go first and you follow in a minute?'

'No.' Smith removed the apron, opened a cupboard and absent-mindedly dropped an umbrella into the crook of his arm. 'We'll go together.'

Joan smiled. 'All right. I'll be brave if you are.' She saw the umbrella and gasped. 'John! Is that what you were looking for?'

'Hmm?' Smith glanced down at the object he was carrying and bounced it off his elbow with his hand. 'My goodness!' The umbrella had a garish red handle in the shape of a question mark, currently reversed in Smith's grip. Smith spun it round the right way and replaced it on his arm. He gazed at Joan. 'Isn't it strange what you find when you're looking for something else?'