BRIAN ALDISS
Dracula Unbound

FOR FRANK

who was sitting at our dining table when the spectre arose

Nicht sein kann, was nicht sein darf.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

About the Author

Author’s Note

Copyright

About the Publisher

Introduction

‘I have to get on that train. I’m sure it could be done. It’s no worse than your sky-diving. Leap into the unknown – that’s what we’re all about, darling!’

‘Oh shit,’ she said.

And occasionally that is what a writer asks of his reader: take a leap into the unknown.

Bram Stoker was a man of the theatre, but he also wrote Dracula, a book never to be excelled in horror. I had already written of Frankenstein when, one fine morning on Boars Hill – the place we lived when the children and our cats were young – I realised: here was a pair. Frankenstein and Dracula. So I sat down at my desk and switched on my computer . . .

A lot of weight goes into what one might consider an over-ambitious thriller. Well, I have nothing against these considerations, or against thrillers. And I’m definitely on the side of over-ambition.

As proof of the latter, I went to Chelsea in London to inspect the famous Bram Stoker’s house. But for the purposes of my story, I removed it to my house on Boars Hill, a mile or so outside Oxford. Just to make it creepier.

Just for fun.

Dracula Unbound is a frivolous book in some aspects, but at its core is a serious consideration. For countless centuries, humankind considered Earth to be the centre of the universe: solid, immoveable, and indeed named after its most basic feature, the ground on which we walk. We still have no other, no better, name for it. Earth. (How about Hyperdrome?)

It was only in the year 1610 A.D. that everything changed. The astronomer Galileo Galilei had a telescope; he developed and improved its lenses and trained it on the great planet Jupiter. There he espied what came to be known as the Medicean stars – ‘four planets never seen from the beginning of the world right up to our day’ – in orbit about Jupiter. These are the bodies we now know as Io, Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede. Each has been visited in its turn by science fiction writers.

From that date on, only the deluded could believe in Earth’s centrality within the universe. Galileo wrote of his amazing discoveries in a book known in English as The Starry Messenger (Sidereus Nuncius). A copy of the book was sent at once to the English king, James the First. More importantly, the celebrated mathematician John Kepler also received a copy, and wrote that he at once accepted these discoveries: ‘Why should I not believe a most learned mathematician?’ he exclaimed.

Later, Kepler wrote The Dream (Somnium). Part of the purpose of his story was to describe what practicing astronomy would be like from the perspective of the Moon, to show the feasibility of a non-geocentric system. Some therefore regard Kepler as the first science fiction writer.

Galileo was warmly received by the ruling Medicis. But as the world changed about him, his personal world also changed. An account of some of these remarkable events is contained in a book by Dava Sobel, entitled Galileo’s Daughter. (Happily, I resemble Galileo in at least one respect: I too have a loving, brilliant and supportive daughter.) Through his eldest daughter Maria Celeste we learn something of Galileo and of life as it was before the dawn of the Renaissance. As a result of this remarkable period and what followed, we now see ourselves adrift in a solar system which forms just a minor part of the galaxy.

In my story, Van Helsing says of Bram Stoker, ‘He regards himself as discovering the secret of the universe, which of course he is about to reveal. You can never trust a man who thinks he knows the secret of the universe.’

Brian Aldiss

Oxford, 2013

Gondwana Ranch

Texas 75042

USA

18 August 1999

Dearest Mina,

Soon we’ll be living in a new century. Perhaps there we shall discover ill-defined states of mind, at present unknown. You, who have returned from the dead, will be better able to face them than I.

For my own part, I am better prepared than I was to acknowledge that many people spend periods of their lives in more unusual mental states – not neurotic or psychotic – than science is at present inclined to allow. I also know those nameless psychic states valued by many rebels of society. They are not for me. In the account that follows – in which we both feature – there’s terror, horror, wonder, and something that has no name. A kind of nostalgia for what has never been experienced.

Did all this happen? Was I mad? Did you pass through those dreadful gates at the end of life? I still see, with shut eyes but acute mental vision, those unhallowed things that appeared. And I believe that I would rather be mad than that they should run loose on the world.

Have patience and hope. We still have a long way to go together, dearest.

Your loving Joe

A sale of books was held in the auction rooms of Christie, Manson & Woods, Park Avenue, New York, on 23rd May 1996.

A first edition of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula was sold for £21,700 to an anonymous buyer. The volume was published in Cr. 8vo. by Constable & Co. of Westminster, in May 1897, bound in yellow boards blocked in red. This copy was in remarkably fine condition.

On the flyleaf was written, in faded Stephens’ ink:

To Joseph Bodenland,

Who gave the mammals their big chance –

And me a title –

Affectionately

This perplexing message was dated Chelsea, May 1897, and signed with a flourish by the author, Bram Stoker.

In the region of the planet enduring permanent twilight stood the Bastion.

All the territory about the Bastion was wrinkled and withered as aged skin. Low ground-hugging plants grew there, some with rudimentary intelligence, capable – like the creatures inhabiting the Bastion – of drinking human blood.

Six men were walking in single file through this dangerous area, progressing towards the dark flanks of the Bastion. The men were shackled to each other by a metal chain clamped to their upper arms. In the heat of the perpetual evening, they were scantily clad. They went barefoot.

They made no haste as they progressed forward, walking with heads and shoulders drooping, their dull gaze fixed on the ground. The stiffness of their movements owed less to the weight of their chains than to a prevailing despair, to which every limb of their bodies testified.

Low above them flew the guardian of this human line. The flier exhibited a degree of majesty as his great wings beat their way slowly through the viscous air. He was as much a creature of custom as the six men below him, his duty being merely to see that they returned to the warrens of the Bastion.

Before their fighting spirit was eroded, these six had often in the past plotted escape. It was rumoured that somewhere ruinous cities still stood, inhabited by tribes of men and women who had managed to hold out against the Fleet Ones as the centuries declined: that somewhere those virtues by which humans had once set great store were still preserved, against the onslaught of night.

But no one incarcerated in the Bastion knew how to reach the legendary cities. Few had stamina enough to endure long journeys overland.

All the six desired at present was to return to their prison. Their shift as cleaners in the Mechanism was over for the day. Soup and rest awaited them. The horror of their situation had long since dulled their senses. In the underground stabling, where humans and animals were indifferently herded together, the myrmidons of the Fleet Ones would bring round their rations. Then they could sleep.

As for the weekly levy of blood to be paid while they slept … even that nightmare had become mere routine.

So they negotiated the path through the bloodthirsty-plants and came with some relief to the stoma gaping at the base of the Bastion, waiting to swallow them. The guardian alighted, tucked away his wings, and directed them through the aperture. Hot and foetid air came up to meet them like a diseased breath.

The concretion into which they disappeared rose high into the saffron-tinted atmosphere, dominating the landscape in which it stood. It resembled a huge anthill. No conceptions of symmetry or elegance of any kind had entered the limited minds of its architects. It had reared itself upwards on a random basis. Its highest central point resembled a rounded tower, reinforcing the impression that the whole structure was a kind of brute phallus which had thrust its way through the body of the planet.

Here and there on the flanks of the Bastion, side features obtruded. Some resembled malformed limbs. Some twisted upwards, or sideways. Some turned down and burrowed again into the ravaged soil, serving as buttresses to the main structure.

The main portions of the Bastion lay below ground, in its unending warrens, stables, and crypts. The structure above ground was blind. Not a window showed. The Fleet Ones were no friends of light.

Yet on higher levels orifices showed, crudely shaped. Much coming and going was in evidence at these vents. Here the Fleet Ones could conveniently launch themselves into flight: as they had done at the beginning of time, so now at its end.

Only the orifice at the top of the pile, larger than all the others, was free of sinister traffic. It was reserved for the Prince of Darkness himself, Lord Dracula. This was his castle. He would launch himself from this great height whenever he was about to go on a mission into the world – as even now he was preparing to do.

As the shift of six began its winding descent into underground levels, to rest in the joyless inanition of slaves, four other men of different calibre were preparing to leave the Mechanism.

These four, in luckier days, had been scientists. Captive, they remained free of shackles, so that they could move without impediment in the building. The genetically non-scientific species who held them in captivity had abducted them from various epochs of past history. They were guarded. But because they were necessary for the maintenance of the Mechanism, their well-being within the Bastion was assured. They merely had to work until they died.

The leader of the quartet came down from the observatory, checking the time on his watch.

This leader, elected by common consent, was a tall man in his late thirties. The Fleet Ones had captured him from the Obsidianal Century. His brilliant mind and indomitable spirit were such that others took courage from him. Someone once claimed that his brain represented the flowering of the sapient Homo sapiens. The plan about to be transformed from theory to action was a product of his thought.

‘We have two minutes to go, friends,’ he said now, as they were closing down their instruments.

The Mechanism – ignorantly so called by the Fleet Ones – was a combined solar observatory and power house. All space observatories had long been destroyed by the deteriorating sun.

It was the power function which was all important. From the platforms of the Mechanism, shelving out like giant fungi, the solar satellites were controlled which drained the energies of the sun. These energies were redirected to meet the needs of the Fleet Ones. And in particular the needs of the Fleet Ones’ single innovatory form of transportation.

The scientists were forced to work for their hated enemies. They ran everything as inefficiently as possible. Because the Mechanism was lighted brilliantly to allow the humans to work, the Fleet Ones would not enter. They posted their guardians outside, continually circling the immense structure.

‘Delay here,’ said the leader, sharply. The four of them were in the foyer, preparing to go off shift and be returned to the Bastion. He glanced again at his watch.

‘According to our predictions, there’s now a minute to go.’

Beyond the glass doors, they could see the familiar tarnished landscape like a furrowed brow. In the distance, failed hills, shattered river beds, all lost in an origami of light and shade. Nearer at hand, the prodigious thrust of the Bastion, circled by leathery fliers. As a sudden stormy wind buffeted them, the fliers resembled dead leaves blowing at autumn’s call. Shunning the light, they had no knowledge of the phenomenon approaching from space.

Just outside the doors, fluttering like a bat, the lead guardian on duty came down to an unsteady landing. He braced himself against the wind.

Lifting a hand to shield his brow, he stared in at the scientists, his red eyes set amid the dark skin and fur of the sharp-fanged visage. He beckoned to them.

They made some pretence of moving towards the doors, heading instead for a metal reception counter.

Thirty seconds to go.

The lower western sky was filled with a sun like an enormous blossom. It was the flower which had already destroyed all the flowers of Earth. Imperfectly round, its crimson heart crackled with stamens of lightning. The solar wind blew its malevolent pollens about the planets. Round it orbiced the four solar stations which were leaching it of its energies, sucking them down into the subterranean storehouses of the Mechanism. On the face of this great helium-burner moved vortices which could swallow worlds. They showed like rashes of a disease, as if they worked at the débridement of an immense bloated organ.

In the midst of this solar turmoil – as those in the observatory had discovered – a magnesium-white eruption flowered.

‘Now,’ cried the leader. The thirty seconds were up.

They flung themselves down on the floor behind the metal barrier, burying their heads in their arms, closing their eyes.

Precisely on the time they had estimated, the shell flash ejected from the sun. It illuminated the world with floods of light and fury. Screaming wind followed it in a shock wave, travelling along down the throat of the system until, many hours later, it punched itself out beyond the heliopause and far into outer space. As it radiated outwards, it licked with its scorching tongue much of the atmosphere from the vulnerable worlds in its path.

Only the four scientists were prepared for the event.

They lay behind their shelter while the world smouldered outside. Their guardian had fallen like a cinder.

They rose cautiously at last. They stood. They stared at each other, stared at the blackened landscape outside, where the Bastion remained intact. Then, according to plan, they headed for the stairs leading to the upper floors.

Their hair sparkled and sang as they moved. Electrostatic action in the tormented air rendered the elevators inoperative.

Oxygen was scarce. Yet they forced themselves on, knowing they must act now, while the Fleet Ones were stunned.

Through waves of heat they climbed, dragging the vitiated air into their lungs. On one landing they collected a wing from a store cupboard, on another landing another wing. Sections of body structure, improvised from dismantled parts of the Mechanism, were also gathered as they climbed. By the time they reached the observatory on the highest level, they needed merely to secure the various parts together and they had a glider large enough to carry a man.

The landscape they surveyed was covered in fast-moving smoke. The pall washed against the two edifices of Bastion and Mechanism like a spring tide.

One detail they did observe. The bloodthirst-plants were cautiously poking their muzzles from the ground again. They were intelligent enough, yet part of nature enough, to sense when the shell flash was coming, and to retreat underground from it. But the men wasted little time in observing the phenomenon.

‘Is the air calm enough for flight?’ a small bearded man asked the leader. ‘Suppose all the cities containing men have just been destroyed by fire?’

‘We’ve no alternative but to try,’ said the leader. ‘This is our one chance. The next shell flash is many lifetimes away.’ Yet he paused before climbing into the glider, as if to hear what his friends had to say at this solemn moment.

The bearded man perhaps regretted his hesitations in the face of the other’s courage.

‘Yes, of course you must go,’ he said. ‘Somehow we have to get word of what is happening here back to the far past. Stoker has to be informed.’

The scientist standing next to him said, in sorrowful disagreement, ‘Yet all the old legends say that Dracula destroyed Stoker.’

The leader answered firmly, addressing them all, with the sense of parting heavy upon them. ‘We have argued the situation through sufficiently. Those old legends may be wrong, for we well understand how history can be changed. Our given three-dimensional space is only one dimension within the universe’s four-dimensional space. Time is a flexible element within it. No particle has a definite path, as the uncertainty principle states. We have been enslaved here at the end of the world in order to help generate the colossal voltages the Fleet Ones require to regiment those paths. I shall seek out the other end of their trail – and there I believe the legendary Stoker is to be found. It is Stoker after all who is one of Earth’s heroes, the stoker – as his name implies – who brought fire with which to burn out a great chance for all mankind.’

‘So he did,’ agreed the others, almost in chorus. And one of them, the youngest, added, ‘After all, this horrendous present, according to the laws of chaos, is a probability only, not an actuality. History can be changed.’

The leader made to step into the glider. Again the bearded man detained him.

‘Just wait till these winds have died. The glider will have a better chance then.’

‘And then the Fleet Ones will be back on the attack. It’s necessary that I go now.’

He looked searchingly into their faces. ‘I know you will suffer for this. My regret is that we were unable to fashion a plane large enough to carry all four of us. Always remember – I shall succeed or die in the attempt.’

‘There are states far worse than death where the Fleet Ones are concerned,’ said the bearded man, mustering a smile. He made to shake the leader’s hand, changed his mind, and embraced him warmly instead.

‘Farewell, Alwyn. God’s grace guide you.’

The leader stepped into the machine.

The others, as prearranged, pushed it to the edge of the drop – and over. The glider fell until its wings bit into the air. It steadied. It began to fly. It circled, it even gained height. It began heading towards the east.

The scientists left behind stood watching until the glider was faint in the murk.

Their voices too went with the wind.

‘Farewell, Alwyn!’

1

State Route 18 runs north from St George, through the Iron Mountains, to the Escalante Desert. One day in 1999, it also ran into a past so distant nobody had ever dared visualize it.

Bernard Clift had worked in this part of Utah before, often assisted by students from Dixie College with a leaning towards palaeontology. This summer, Clift’s instincts had led him to dig on the faulty stretch of rock the students called Old John, after the lumber-built jakes near the site, set up by a forgotten nineteenth-century prospector.

Clift was a thin, spare man, deeply tanned, medium height, his sharp features and penetrating grey eyes famous well beyond the limits of his own profession. There was a tenseness about him today, as if he knew that under his hand lay a discovery that was to bring him even greater fame, and to release on the world new perspectives and new terror.

Over the dig, a spread of blue canvas, of a deeper blue than the Utah sky, had been erected, to shade Clift and his fellow-workers from the sun. Clustered below the brow of rock where they worked were a dozen miscellaneous vehicles – Clift’s trailer, a trailer from Enterprise which served food and drink all day, and the automobiles and campers belonging to students and helpers.

A dirt road led from this encampment into the desert. All was solitude and stillness, apart from the activity centred on Old John. There Clift knelt in his dusty jeans, brushing soil and crumbs of rock from the fossilized wooden lid they had uncovered.

Scattered bones of a dinosaur of the aurischian order had been extracted from the rock, labelled, temporarily identified as belonging to a large theropod, and packed into crates. Now, in a stratum below the dinosaur grave, the new find was revealed.

Several people crowded round the freshly excavated hole in which Clift worked with one assistant. Cautious digging had revealed fossil wood, which slowly emerged in the shape of a coffin. On the lid of the coffin, a sign had been carved:

Overhead, a vulture wheeled, settling on a pinnacle of rock near the dig. It waited.

Clift levered at the ancient lid. Suddenly, it split along the middle and broke. The palaeontologist lifted the shard away. A smell, too ancient to be called the scent of death, drifted out into the hot dry air.

A girl student with the Dixie College insignia on her T-shirt yelped and ran from the group as she saw what lay in the coffin.

Using his brush, Clift swept away a layer of red ochre. His assistant collected fragile remains of dead blossom, placing them reverently in a plastic bag. A skeleton in human form was revealed, lying on its side. Tenderly, Clift uncovered the upper plates of the skull. It was twisted round so that it appeared to stare upwards at the world of light with round ochred eyes.

The head offices and laboratories of the thriving Bodenland Corporation were encompassed in bronzed-glass curtain walls, shaped in neo-cubist form and disposed so that they dominated one road approach into Dallas, Texas.

At this hour of the morning the facade reflected the sun into the eyes of anyone approaching the corporation from the airport – as was the case with the imposing lady now disembarking from a government craft in which she had flown from Washington. She was sheathed in a fabric which reflected back something of the lustre from the corporation.

Her name was Elsa Schatzman, three times divorced daughter of Eliah Schatzman. She was First Secretary at the Washington Department of the Environment. She looked as if she wielded power, and did.

Joe Bodenland knew that Elsa Schatzman was in the offing. At present, however, he had little thought for her, being involved in an argument with his life’s companion, Mina Legrand. While they talked, Bodenland’s secretary continued discreetly to work at her desk.

‘First things first, Birdie,’ said Bodenland, with a patience that was calculated to vex Mina.

Mina Legrand was another powerful lady, although the genial lines of her face did not proclaim that fact. She was tall and still graceful, and currently having weight problems, despite an active life. Friends said of her, affectionately, that she put up with a lot of hassle from Joe; still closer friends observed that of late he was putting up with plenty from Mina.

‘Joe, your priorities are all screwed up. You must make time for your family,’ she said.

‘I’ll make time, but first things first,’ he repeated.

‘The first thing is it’s your son’s wedding day,’ Mina said. ‘I warn you, Joe, I’m going to fly down to Gondwana without you. One of these days, I’ll leave you for good, I swear I will.’

Joe played a tune on his desk top with the fingers of his left hand. They were long blunt fingers with wide spade-like nails, ridged and hard. Bodenland himself resembled his fingers. He too was long and blunt, with an element of hardness in him that had enabled him to lead an adventurous life as well as succeeding in the competitive international world of selling scientific research. He set his head towards his right shoulder with a characteristic gesture, as he asked: ‘How long has Larry been engaged to Kylie? Under a year. How long have we been pursuing the idea of inertial disposal? Over five years. Millions of dollars hang on today’s favourable reception of our demonstration by Washington. I just have to be here, Birdie, and that’s that.’

‘Larry will never forgive you. Nor will I.’

‘You will, Mina. So will Larry. Because you two are human. Washington ain’t.’

‘All right, Joe – you have the last word as usual. But you’re in deep trouble as of now.’ With that, Mina turned and marched from the office. The door closed silently behind her; its suction arm prevented it from slamming.

‘I’ll be down there just as soon as I can,’ Bodenland called, having a last-minute twinge of anxiety.

He turned to his secretary, Rose Gladwin, who had sat silently at her desk, eyes down, while this heated conversation was going on.

‘Birth, death, the great spirit of scientific enquiry – which of those is most important to a human being, Rose?’

She looked up with a slight smile.

‘The great spirit of scientific enquiry, Joe,’ she said.

‘You always have the right answer.’

‘I’m just informed that Miss Schatzman is en route from the airport right now.’

‘Let me know as soon as she arrives. I’ll be with Waldgrave.’

He glanced at his watch as he went out, and walked briskly down the corridor, cursing Washington and himself. It annoyed him to think that Larry was getting married at all. Marriage was so old-fashioned, yet now, on the turn of the century, it was coming back into fashion.

Bodenland and his senior research scientist, Waldgrave, were in reception to welcome Miss Schatzman when she arrived with her entourage. She was paraded through the technical floor, where everyone had been instructed to continue working as usual, to the laboratory with the notice in gilt on its glass door, INERTIAL RESEARCH.

Bodenland’s judicious answers in response to her questions indicated that Schatzman had been properly briefed. He liked that, and her slightly plump forties-ish figure in a tailored suit which signalled to him that human nature survived under the official exterior.

Various important figures were gathered in the lab for the demonstration, including a backer from the Bull-Brunswick Bank. Bodenland introduced Schatzman to some of them while technicians made everything finally ready. As she was shaking hands with the Bank, one of Bodenland’s aides came up and spoke softly in Bodenland’s ear.

‘There’s an urgent call for you from Utah, Joe. Bernard Clift, the archaeologist. Says he has an important discovery.’

‘Okay, Mike. Tell Bernard I’ll call him back when possible.’

In the centre of the lab stood a glass cabinet much resembling a shower enclosure. Cables ran into it from computers and other machines, where two assistants stood by a switchboard. The hum of power filled the air, lending extra tension to the meeting.

‘You have all the technical specifications of the inertial disposal principle in our press and video pack, Miss Schatzman,’ Bodenland said. ‘If you have no questions there, we’ll move straight into the demonstration.’

As he spoke, he gave a sign and an assistant in a lab coat dragged forward a black plastic bag large enough to contain a man.

Waldgrave explained, ‘The bag is full of sand, nothing more. It represents a consignment of nuclear or toxic waste.’

The bag was shut in the cabinet, remaining in full view through the glass as computers briefly chattered their calculations.

‘Energy-consumption rates are high at present. This is just a prototype, you appreciate. We hope to lower tolerances in the next part of the programme, when we have the okay from your department,’ Bodenland said. ‘Obviously energy-input is related to mass of substance being disposed of.’

‘And I see you’re using solar energy in part,’ Schatzman said.

‘The corporation has its own satellite, which beams down the energy to our dishes here in Dallas.’

Waldgrave got the nod from his boss. He signalled to the controls technician, who pressed the Transmit pad.

The interior of the cabinet began to glow with a blue-mauve light.

Two large analogue-type clocks with sweep-hands were visible, one inside the cabinet, one on a jury-rig outside, facing the first one. The sweep hand of the clock in the cabinet stopped at 10.16. At the same time, the clock itself began to disappear. So did the black plastic bag. In a moment it was gone. The cabinet appeared to be empty.

A brief burst of applause filled the room. Bodenland appeared noticeably less grim.

The party went to have drinks in a nearby boardroom, all tan leather upholstery and dracaena plants in bronze pots. There was a jubilation in the air which even the formality of the occasion did not kill.

As she sipped a glass of Perrier, Schatzman said, ‘Well, Mr Bodenland, you appear to have invented the long-awaited time machine, no less.’

He looked down into his vodka. So the woman was a fool after all. He had hoped for better. This woman was going to have to present his case before her committee in Washington; if she could reach such a basic misunderstanding after studying all the documentation already sent to her over the computer line, the chances for government approval of his invention were poor.

‘Not a time machine, Ms Schatzman. As we’ve made clear, our new process merely halts time-decay – much as refrigeration, let’s say, slows or halts bacterial action. We found a sink in real time. The bag in the cabinet disappeared because it became suddenly stationary with regard to universal time-decay. It remained – it remains at 10.16 this morning. We are the ones who are travelling forward in time, at the rate of twenty-four hours a day. The bag remains forever where we put it, at 10.16. We can reach back and retrieve it if necessary, though the expenditure of energy increases geometrically as we progress further from entry point.

‘The inertial disposal process is far from being a time-machine. It is almost the reverse.’

Ms Schatzman did not greatly enjoy being talked down to. Perhaps her remark had been intended humorously. ‘The department will need to enquire into what happens to substances isolated in 10.16, or any other time. It would be irresponsible simply to isolate considerable amounts of toxic waste in time with no clear picture of possible consequences.’

‘How long do you estimate such an enquiry might take?’

‘We’re talking about something unprecedented, a disturbance in the natural order.’

‘Er – not if you have an understanding of the science of Chaos.’

She understood she had been snubbed. ‘An enquiry will of course occupy some weeks.’

Bodenland took a generous swig of his vodka and inclined his head in her direction.

‘The disposal of toxic waste represents one of the world’s most pressing problems, Ms Schatzman. No one wants the stuff. Only a decade ago the cost of disposal of nuclear waste as prescribed by US law was $2,500 per tonne. It’s twenty times higher now, and rising. Only last week the death of a whole village through the dumping of an illegally manufactured pesticide, Lindane, was reported in Bulgaria.

‘That’s where we come in. Bodenland Industries have developed a foolproof way of ridding the world of such evils. All we need is your department’s clearance. You must persuade your committee not to stand in the way of progress.’

She pronounced the last word at the same moment as he did. ‘Progress,’ echoing it ironically. ‘“Progress” cannot be achieved at the expense of safety. You’re familiar with that concept. It’s what we call the Frankenstein Syndrome.’ She attempted lightness of tone. ‘You know the Department will do what it can, Mr Bodenland. You also know how thoroughly this new advance will have to be investigated. We have our responsibilities – there are security aspects, too. May I suggest that meanwhile you turn your inventive mind to other matters?’

‘Sure,’ he said, setting his glass down and rising. ‘I’m going to turn my inventive mind to being a late guest at my son’s wedding.’

A jazz band was playing an arrangement of ‘Who’s Sorry Now?’ when Joe Bodenland entered the main reception rooms of the Gondwana Ranch, the home in which he and Mina had lived for a decade. At present it was full of flowers and guests.

Some of the wedding guests were dancing, some drinking, and some no doubt otherwise engaged. The caterers hired for the occasion were bearing savoury and sweet dishes to and fro, while the popping of champagne corks could be heard above the noise of the band.

Bodenland exchanged compliments and good wishes with a number of family friends as he made his way to where Larry Bodenland stood with his bride, receiving congratulations.

Kylie greeting Joe warmly enough, flinging her arms round his neck and kissing him on the mouth. Kylie was a beautiful girl with a round face on which good features were set wide apart, giving her a singularly open appearance. Joe had already discovered that Kylie was no mere innocent. She had – beside the considerable fortune accruing from her father’s transport business – a sharp and enquiring mind. But for the moment it was enough to feel her slender body against his as he revelled in her sunny good looks and wished her all future happiness.

‘Just see that Larry behaves himself,’ he said, giving her an extra hug.

Larry overheard the remark. As he shook his father’s hand, he said, ‘How about behaving yourself, Joe? How come you were late for my wedding? Was that deliberate? We know how irrational you are on the subject of matrimony.’

‘Now don’t you two start in,’ Kylie said. ‘Not today of all days.’ She raised a hand half-way to her throat, as if to indicate the crucifix hanging there. ‘You know my funny religious principles, Joe, and you must honour Larry for respecting them.’

‘Well, bless you both, and I hate myself for missing the ceremony. Don’t blame me – blame the Department of the Environment in Washington, who nailed me to this morning’s appointment.’

‘Family certainly can’t compete with a whole Department of the Environment,’ Larry said, huffily.

‘Joe has to follow his daemon,’ Kylie said, winking at her new father-in-law.

‘What demon’s that?’ asked Larry.

‘Now, Larry – your pop is a technophile of the old school. He’s crazy about machines and you must allow him that.’

‘Just as you’re crazy about religion, if I can put it that way.’

‘Religion still has a place, even in an age of science, and —’

‘Spare us!’ cried Larry. ‘I need another drink. It’s my wedding day.’ As he turned away, his mother came up, smiling in a brittle way at Joe.

‘You missed the ceremony and hit the champagne,’ she said angrily. ‘Larry and Kylie will never forgive you for this.’

‘I’m sorry, Mina.’ He took her hand, looking compassionately into her green eyes. For all his kind of hasty blindness, one of his characteristics, he knew very well what was in her mind at that moment. They had had another son, Larry’s older brother Dick, killed in an automobile crash together with his young wife Molly. Dick had always been his father’s favourite, a brilliant youngster, athletic, and with a deep interest in science, particularly particle physics. Molly too had been clever and high-spirited, a redhead whose body, at the age of twenty-two, had been inextricably merged with her husband’s in the fatal crash. It was Molly, not Dick, who returned to Joe in dreams. Dick had gone beyond recall, leaving no space for his younger brother in his father’s affections.

With the long habit of a couple who have spent years together, Mina understood something of what passed through Joe’s mind. Her mood softened.

She said, ‘Odd how Kylie has the religious impulse, just like Molly.’ It was the first time Molly’s name had passed between them in years. ‘I hope that doesn’t mean …’

‘Molly wasn’t religious. She just had an intense interest in the supernatural.’

‘You’ve forgotten, Joe. Maybe just as well.’ She took his arm. ‘Let’s take a turn outside. It’s not too hot. I’m sorry I flew off the handle earlier. But Larry and Kylie are our only kids now. Let the dead bury the dead.’

As they reached the terrace, he half-turned to her, smiling.

‘That’s kind of a dumb expression, when you think, isn’t it? “Let the dead bury the dead …” What a macabre scene that conjures up! They’d have a problem with the shovels, eh?’

She laughed. The terrace, which overlooked the swimming pool, was roofed over with reinforced glass, the supporting pillars of which were entwined with different colours of bougainvillea. He took Mina’s hand and they began to stroll, happy to get away from the noise indoors.

A phone on the wall rang as Joe and Mina were passing it. She answered by reflex, then passed the receiver to her husband with a wry look. ‘You’re wanted, Joe. The world needs you.’

He stood in the partial shade, gazing at her face, listening to his old friend Bernard Clift speaking slowly to conceal his excitement.

‘Bernie, that can’t be,’ Bodenland said. ‘It’s impossible. You must have got it wrong. You know you’ve got it wrong. Your reputation —’

He listened again, shaking his head, then nodding. Mina watched him with amusement, as his eyes lit up.

‘I’ll be right over,’ he said, finally, ‘and I may bring some of the family along.’

As he hung up, Mina said, ‘Some fresh madness brewing! Whatever it is, Joe, count me out. I want to take part in an air display over Austin tomorrow.’

‘You can freefall any time, Mina. This is terrific. Would you have wanted to have been fishing in Bermuda while the Revolution was going on on the mainland?’

‘It was Bernie Clift?’

‘Clift doesn’t fool around. He’s made a find in Utah.’

He explained that Clift had rung to tell him about the discovery of a human-like skeleton. Clift had subjected fragments of bone to carbon-dating analysis. The remains dated out as 65.5 million years BP, before the present. This checked out with their discovery in late Cretaceous rock. They came from a time over sixty million years before mankind in its most primitive form walked the earth.

‘That doesn’t make any kind of sense,’ Mina said.

‘It’s a revolution in thought. Don’t ask me what it means but this we really have to see. It’s – well, incredible.’ He whistled. ‘Just to prove that Larry and Kylie do mean something to me, we’re going to take them along too.’

He was already moving back into the house. She caught his sleeve impatiently.

‘Joe, easy now. You’re so impetuous. Larry’s off in a couple of hours to honeymoon in Hawaii. They’re not going to want to stop off in Utah, to help us.’

He was looking at his watch.

‘They’ll love it, and so will you. That’s wonderful desert country where Bernie is. Utah’s Dixie, they used to call it. If we move, we can be there by nightfall. And remember, tell no one why we are going. Bernie’s discovery stays under wraps for now. Otherwise the world’s media will be on his back. Okay?’

She laughed, not without a hint of bitterness. ‘Oh, Joe – are you allowing me time to pack?’

He kissed her. ‘Grab your toothbrush. Tell Kylie to shake the confetti out of her hair.’

2

As the helicopter spiralled downwards over the Escalante Desert, a light flashed up at it, the setting sun reflected from the windscreen of a parked car. Looking down, Joe Bodenland could see cars and trailers clustered round a square of blue canvas. Four minutes later, they were landing nearby in a whirl of dust.

Joe was first from the copter, giving Mina a hand, followed by Kylie, looking around her rather nervously, with Larry, who had piloted them, last. Bernard Clift was standing there, waiting to greet them.

‘There’s an atmosphere of something here,’ Kylie told him, as they were introduced. ‘You must feel it, Bernie. I can’t explain it. I don’t like it. Oppressive.’

Clift laughed shortly. ‘That’s the Bodenland family, Kylie. You have to get accustomed to them. Now listen, Joe, I’m grateful for your prompt arrival, although frankly I didn’t expect you all to show up. We can find a place for you to sleep.’ He ran a hand through his hair in a self-conscious gesture. ‘This discovery is so important – and top secret. I have shut down our one phone line to Enterprise. The students are forbidden to leave the site, at least without my express permission. No radioing or any form of communication with the outside world. I’ve made them all swear to keep secrecy on this one, until I’m ready.’

‘As a matter of interest, Bernie,’ Bodenland said, ‘how did you get them to swear?’

He laughed. ‘On their mother’s virginity. On whatever they took seriously. Even the Bible.’

‘I’d have thought that custom had worn thin by now,’ Joe said.

‘Not with all of us, Joe,’ said Kylie, laughing.

Clift looked at her approvingly, then said, ‘Well, come and see before the light fades. That’s what you’re here for.’

He spoke jerkily, full of nervous energy.

As they followed him along a narrow track among low sage winding up the mountain, he said, ‘Joe, you’re a rational man and a knowledgeable one, I figured you’d know what to make of this find. If it’s what I think it is, our whole world view is overturned. Humans on the planet sixty million years earlier than any possible previous evidence suggested. A species of man here in North America, long before anything started crawling round Olduvai Gorge …’

‘Couldn’t be a visitor from somewhere else in the universe? There’s just the one grave?’

‘That’s why I’m insisting on secrecy. My findings are bound to be challenged. I’m in for the Spanish Inquisition and I know it. But if we could find a second grave … So I don’t want anyone interfering – at least for a few days.’

Bodenland grunted. ‘Our organization has its own security unit in Dallas … I could get guards out here tomorrow prompt, if you need them. But you must be wrong, Bernie. This can’t be.’

‘No, it’s like the comic strips always said,’ Larry remarked, with a laugh. ‘Cavemen contemporary with the brontosaurus and tyrannosaurus. Must have been some kind of a race memory.’

Ignoring her son’s facetiousness, Mina said, ‘Bernard, hold it. I’m not prepared for this ancient grave of yours. I’m no dimmer than the next guy, but I can’t attach any meaning to sixty-five million years. It’s just a phrase.’

Clift halted their ascent abruptly. ‘Then I’ll show you,’ he said.

Bodenland glanced quickly at his friend’s face. He saw no impatience there, only the love a man might have for the subject that possessed him and gave his life meaning.

Before them, streaked now by the shades of advancing evening, was a broken hillside, eroded so that strata of rock projected like the ruins of some unimaginable building. Sage grew here and there, while the crest was crowned by pine and low-growing cottonwoods.

‘For those who can read, this slope contains the history of the world,’ Clift told Mina. ‘What interests us is this broken line of deposit under the sandstones. That’s what’s called the K/T boundary.’

He pointed to a clayey line that ran under all the shattered sandstone strata like a damp-proof course round a house.

‘That layer of deposit marks a division between the Cretaceous rocks below and the Tertiary rocks above. It represents one of the most mysterious events in all Earth history – the extinction of the dinosaurs. It’s only centimetres thick. Below it lie kilometres of rock which is – as you might say – solidified time, the long millennia of the ages of reptiles. It has been verified beyond doubt that the K/T deposit line was laid down sixty-five million years BP, before present. Our grave lies just below that line.’

‘But there were no humans living then,’ Mina said, as they started walking again, taking a trail to the left.

‘The K/T layer preserves evidence of a worldwide ecological catastrophe. It contains particles of shocked minerals, clues to massive inundations, soot which bears witness to continental-scale firestorms, and so on. Some gigantic impact occurred at that time – scientists guess at a meteorite capable of creating a vast crater, but we don’t really know.

‘What we do know is that some large-scale event ended a majestic era of brilliant and strange living things.

‘Our grave suggests that what perished at the end of the Cretaceous Period – or the Mesozoic Era, which contains all reptilian periods – was not only the dinosaurs but also a human-like race perhaps so thinly distributed that no remains have turned up – till now.’

‘Homo Cliftensis,’ said Kylie.

They halted where the sandstones had been excavated and there were tokens of human activity, with planks, brushes, jackhammers, and a wheelbarrow incongruous nearby. They stood on a bluff overlooking the desert, across which mesas were sending long fingers of shadow. A well of shadow filled the excavation they now contemplated, as it lay like a pool below the ancient crusts of the K/T boundary.

Kylie shivered. But the air was cooling, the sky overhead deepening its blue.

Two students, a man and a woman, were standing guard by the dig. They moved back as the new arrivals appeared. Clift jumped down into the hole and removed a tarpaulin, revealing the ancient grave. The skeleton remained lying on its side, cramped within the coffin for an unimaginable age. The Bodenland family looked down at it without speaking.

‘What’s all the red stuff?’ Kylie asked, in a small voice. ‘Is it bloodstains?’

‘Red ochre,’ Clift said. ‘To bury with red ochre was an old custom. The Neanderthals used it – not that I’m suggesting this is a Neanderthal. There were also flowers in the grave, which we’ve taken for analysis. Of course, there’s more work to be done here. I’m half afraid to touch anything …’

They looked down in silence, prey to formless thought. The light died. The skeleton lay half-buried in ochre, fading into obscurity.

Kylie clung to Larry. ‘Disturbing an ancient grave … I know it’s part of an archaeologist’s job, but … There are superstitions about these things. Don’t you think there’s something – well, evil here?’

He hugged her affectionately. ‘Not evil. Pathetic, maybe. Sure, there’s something disconcerting when the past or the future arrives to disrupt the present. Like the way this chunk of the past has come up to disrupt our wedding day.’ Seeing Kylie’s expression cloud over, he said, ‘Let the dead get on with their thing. I’m taking you to have a drink.’

‘You’ll find a canteen at the bottom of the hill,’ said Clift, but he spoke without looking away from his discovery, crouching there, almost as motionless as the skeleton he had disinterred.

The sun plunged down into the desert, a chill came over the world. Kylie Bodenland stood at the door of the trailer they had been loaned, gazing up at the stars. Something in this remote place had woken unsuspected sensibilities in her, and she was trying to puzzle out what it was.

Some way off, students were sitting round a campfire, resurrecting old songs and pretending they were cowboys, in a fit of artificial nostalgia.

City ladies may be fine

But give me that gal of mine …

Larry came up behind Kylie and pulled her into the trailer, kicking the door shut. She tasted the whisky on his lips, and enjoyed it. Her upbringing had taught her that this was wickedness. She liked other wickednesses too, and slid her hand into Larry’s jeans as he embraced her. When she felt his response, she began to slide herself out of her few clothes, until she stood against him in nothing but her little silver chain and crucifix. Larry kissed it, kissed her breasts, and then worked lower.

‘Oh, you beast, you beast,’ she said. ‘Oh …’

She clutched his head, but he got up and lifted her over to the bunk.

Lying together on the bunk later, he muttered almost to himself, ‘Funny how the marriage ceremony annoys Joe. He just couldn’t face it … I had to go through with it to spite him … and to please you, of course.’

‘You shouldn’t spite your father. He’s rather a honey.’

Larry chuckled. ‘Pop a honey? He’s a stubborn-minded old pig. Now I’m adult, I see him in a more favourable light than once I did. Still and all … Grocery’s a dirty word to him. He resents me being in grocery, never mind I’m making a fortune. I’ve got a mind of my own, haven’t I? It may be small but it’s my own. To hell with him – we’re different. Let me fix you a drink.’

As he was getting up and walking naked to his baggage, from which a whisky bottle protruded, Kylie rolled on to her back and said, ‘Well, it’s Hawaii for us tomorrow. It’ll be great for you to get from under Joe’s shadow. He’ll change towards you, you’ll see. He may be an old pig but he’s a good man for all that.’

Larry paused as he was about to pour, and laughed.

‘Lay off about Joe, will you? Let’s forget Joe. For sure he’s forgotten about us already. Bernie Clift has given him something new to think about.’

Only a few metres away, Clift and Bodenland were walking in the desert, talking together in confidential tones.

‘This new daughter-in-law of yours – she is a striking young lady and no mistake. And not happy about what I’m doing, I gather.’

‘The religious and the economic views of mankind are always at odds. Maybe we’re always religious when we’re young. I lost anything like that when my other son died. Now I try to stick to rationality – I hate to think of the millions of people in America who buy into some crackpot religion or other. In the labs, we’ve also come up against time. Not whole millennia of time, like you, but just a few seconds. We’re learning how to make time stand still. As you’d expect, it costs. It sure costs! If only I can get backing from Washington … Bernie, I could be … well, richer than … I can’t tell you …’

Clift interrupted impatiently. ‘Rationality. It means greed, basically … Lack of imagination. I can see Kylie is a girl with imagination, whatever else …’

‘You have taken a fancy to her. I saw that when we met.’

‘Joe, listen, never mind that. I’ve no time for women. And I’ve got a hold here of something more momentous than any of your financial enterprises. This is going to affect everyone, everyone on earth … It will alter our whole concept of ourselves. Hasn’t that sunk in yet?’

He started off towards the dark bulk of the mountain. Bodenland followed. They could hear the one group of students who had not yet turned in arguing among themselves.

‘You’re mad, Bernie. You always were, in a quiet way.’

‘I never sleep,’ said Clift, not looking back.

‘Isn’t that what someone once said about the Church? “It never sleeps.” Sounds like neurosis to me.’

They climbed to the dig. A single electric light burned under the blue canopy, where one of the students sat on watch. Clift exchanged a few words with him.

‘Spooky up here, sir,’ said the student.

Clift grunted. He would have none of that. Bodenland squatted beside him as the palaeontologist removed the tarpaulin.

From down in the camp came a sudden eruption of shouts – male bellows and female voices raised high, then the sound of blows, clear on the thin desert air.

‘Damn,’ said Clift, quietly. ‘They will drink. I’ll be back.’

He left, running down the hill path towards the group of students who had been singing only a few minutes earlier. He called to them in his authoritative voice to think of others who might be sleeping.

Bodenland was alone with the thing in the coffin.

In the frail light, the thing seemed almost to have acquired a layer of skin, skin of an ill order, but rendering it at least a few paces nearer to life than before. Bodenland felt an absurd temptation to speak to the thing. But what would it answer?

Overcoming his reluctance, he thrust his hand down and into the ochre. Although he was aware he might be destroying valuable archaeological evidence, curiosity led him on. The thought had entered his mind that after all Clift might somehow have overstepped the bounds of his madness and faked the evidence of the rocks, that this could be a modern grave he had concealed in the Cretaceous strata at some earlier date – perhaps working alone here the previous year.

Much of Bernard Clift’s fame had sprung from a series of outspoken popular articles in which he had pointed out the scarcity of earlier human remains and their fragmentary nature in all but a few select sites round the world. ‘Is Humanity Ten Million Years Old?’ had been a favourite headline.

Orthodoxy agreed that Homo sapiens could be no more than two million years old. It was impossible to believe that this thing came from sixty-five million years ago. Clift was faking; and if he could convince his pragmatic friend Joe, then he could convince the world’s press.

‘No one fools me,’ Bodenland said, half-aloud. He peered about to make sure that the student guard was looking away, watching the scene below.

Crouching over the coffin, he scraped one shoulder against the rock wall and the stained line that was the K/T boundary.

The ochre was surprisingly warm to the touch, almost as if heated by a living body. Bodenland’s spatulate fingers probed in the dust. He started to scrape a small hole in order to see the rib cage better. It was absurd to believe that this dust had lain undisturbed for all those millennia. The dust was crusty, breaking into crumbs like old cake.

He did not know what he was looking for. He grinned in the darkness. A sticker saying ‘Made in Taiwan’ would do. He’d have to go gently with poor old Clift. Scientists had been known to fake evidence before.

His finger ran gently along the left floating rib, then the one above it. At the next rib, he felt an obstruction.

Grit trickled between his fingers. He could not see what he had hold of. Bone? Tugging gently, he got it loose, and lifted it from the depression. When he held it up to the light bulb, it glittered dimly.

It was not bone. It was metal.

Bodenland rubbed it on his shirt, then held it up again.

It was a silver bullet.

On it was inscribed a pattern – a pattern of ivy or something similar, twining about a cross. He stared at it in disbelief, and an ill feeling ran through him.

Sixty-five million years old?

He heard Clift returning, speaking reassuringly to the guard. Hastily, he smoothed over the marks he had made in the fossil coffin. The bullet he slipped into a pocket.

‘A very traditional fracas,’ Clift said quietly, in his academic way. ‘Two young men quarrelling for the favours of one girl. Sex has proved a rather troublesome method of perpetuating the human race. If one was in charge one might dream up a better way … I advised them both to go to bed with her and then forget it.’

‘They must have loved that suggestion!’

‘They’ll sort it out.’

‘Maybe we should hit the sack too.’

But they stood under the stars, discussing the find. Bodenland endeavoured to hide his scepticism, without great success.

‘Experts are coming in from Chicago and Drumheller tomorrow,’ Clift said. ‘You shall hear what they say. They will understand that the evidence of the strata cannot lie.’

‘Come on, Bernie, sixty-five million years … My mind just won’t take in such a span of time.’

‘In the history of the universe – even of the earth, the solar system – sixty-five point five million years is but yesterday.’

They were walking down the slope, silent. A gulf had opened between them. The students had all gone to bed, whether apart or together. Over the desert a stillness prevailed such as had done before men first entered the continent.

The light came from the west. Bodenland saw it first and motioned to his companion to stand still and observe. As far as could be judged the light was moving fast, and in their direction. It made no noise. It extended itself, until it resembled a comet rushing along over the ground. It was difficult to focus on. The men stood rooted to the spot in astonishment.

‘But the railroad’s miles distant —’ Clift exclaimed trying to keep his voice level.

Whatever the phenomenon was, it was approaching the camp at extreme velocity.

Without wasting words, Bodenland dashed forward, running down the slope, calling to Mina. He saw her light go on immediately in the camper. Satisfied, he swerved and ran towards the trailer his son occupied. Banging on the door, he called Larry’s name.

Hearing the commotion, others woke, other doors opened. Men ran naked out of tents. Clift called out for calm, but cries of amazement drowned his voice. The thing was plunging out of the desert. It seemed ever distant, ever near, as if time itself was suspended to allow it passage.

Bodenland put his arm protectively round Mina’s shoulders when she appeared.

‘Get to some high ground.’ He gave Larry and Kylie similar orders when they came up, dishevelled, but stood firm himself, unable not to watch that impossible progress.

The notion entered his head that it resembled a streamlined flier viewed through thick distorting glass. Still no sound. But the next moment it was on them, plunging through the heart of the little encampment – and all in silence. Screams rose from the Dixie students, who flung themselves to the ground.

Yet it had no impact, seemed to have no substance but light, to be as insubstantial as the luminescence it trailed behind it, which remained floating to the ground and disappeared like dying sparks.

Bodenland watched the ghastly thing go. It plunged right into and through one of the mesas, and finally was swallowed in the distances of the Utah night. It had appeared intent on destruction, yet not a thing in the camp was harmed. It had passed right through Larry’s trailer, yet nothing showed the slightest sign of disarray.

Larry staggered up to his father and offered him a gulp from a silver hip flask.

‘We’ve just seen the original ghost train, Joe,’ he said.

‘I’ll believe anything now,’ said Bodenland, gratefully accepting the flask.

When dawn came, and the desert was transformed from shadow to furnace, the members of the Old John encampment were still discussing the phenomenon of the night. Students of a metaphysical disposition argued that the ghost train – Larry’s description was generally adopted – had no objective reality. It was amazing how many of these young people, scientifically trained, the cream of their year, could believe in a dozen wacky explanations. Nearly all of them, it seemed to Bodenland as he listened and sipped coffee from the canteen, belonged to one kind of religious cult or another. Nearly all espoused explanations that chimed with their own particular set of beliefs.

Larry left the discussion early, dragging Kylie away, though she was clearly inclined to pitch into the debate.

One of the students who had been engaged in the previous night’s scuffle increasingly monopolized the discussion.

‘You guys are all crazy if you think this was some kind of an enemy secret weapon. If there was such a thing, America would have had it first and we’d know about it. Equally, it ain’t some kind of Scientology thing, just to challenge your IQs to figure it out or join the Church. It’s clear what happened. We’re all suddenly stuck here in this desert, forbidden to communicate with our parents or the outside world, and we’re feeling oppressed. Insecure. So what do we do? Why, it’s natural – we get a mass-hallucination. Nothing but nothing happened in Old John last night, except we all freaked out. So forget it. It’ll probably happen again tonight till we all go crazy and get ourselves shipped to the funny farm.’

Bodenland stood up.

‘People don’t go crazy so easily, son. You’re just shooting your mouth off. Why, I want to know, are you so keen to discount what you actually saw and experienced?’

‘Because that thing couldn’t be,’ retorted the student.

‘Wrong. Because you try to fit it in with your partial systems of belief and it won’t fit. That’s because of an error in your beliefs, not your experience. We all saw that fucking thing. It exists. Okay, so we can’t account for it. Not yet. Any more than we can account for the ancient grave up there on the bluff. But scientific enquiry will sort out the truth from the lies – if we are honest in our observations!’

‘So what was that ghost train, then?’ demanded one of the girls. ‘You tell us.’

Bodenland sat down next to Mina again. ‘That’s what I’m saying. I don’t know. But I’m not discounting it on that account. If everything that could not be readily understood was discounted by some crap system of belief, we’d still be back in the Stone Age. As soon as we can talk to the outside world again, I’m getting on to the various nearby research establishments to find who else has observed this so-called ghost train.’

Clift said quietly, ‘I’ve been working this desert fifteen years, Joe, and I never saw such a thing before. Nor did I ever hear of anyone else who did.’

‘Well, we’ll get to the bottom of it.’

‘Just how do you propose to do that, Mr Bodenland?’ asked the girl who had spoken up before. Supportive murmurs came from her friends.

Bodenland grinned.

‘If the train comes again tonight, I’m going to be ready to board it.’

The students set up such a racket, he hardly heard Mina say at his side, ‘Jesus, Joe, you really are madder than they are …’

‘Maybe – but we’ve got a helicopter and they haven’t.’

Towards evening, Mina climbed with Bernard Clift to an eminence above the camp, and looked westwards.

Joe had been away most of the day. After having persuaded Larry and Kylie to stay on a little longer, he had ridden out with them to see if they could track down any signs of the ghost train.

‘What’s out there?’ Mina asked, shielding her eyes from the sun.

‘A few coyotes, the odd madman rejecting this century, preparing to reject the next one. Not much else,’ Clift said. ‘Oh, they’ll probably come across an old track leading to Enterprise City.’

She laughed. ‘Enterprise City! Oh, Joe’ll love the sound of that. He’ll take it as an omen.’

‘Joe doesn’t believe what we’ve got here, does he? That’s why he’s allowing this train thing to distract him, isn’t it?’

Mina continued to stare westwards with shielded eyes.

‘I have a problem with my husband and my son, Bernard. Joe is such an achiever. He can’t help overshadowing Larry. I feel very sorry for Larry. He tried to get out from his father’s shadow, and rejected the whole scientific business. Unfortunately, he moved sideways into groceries, and I can see why that riles Joe. No matter he’s made a financial success, and supplies a whole south-eastern area of the USA. Now marrying into Kylie’s family’s transport system, he’ll be a whole lot more successful. Richer, I should say.’

‘Doesn’t that please Joe?’

She shook her head doubtfully. ‘Whatever else Joe is, he’s not a mercenary man. I guess at present he’s just waiting to see if a nice girl like Kylie can cure Larry of his drinking habits.’

‘As you say, she’s a nice girl right enough. But can she?’

She looked straight at Clift. ‘There’s danger just in trying. Still, there’s danger in everything. I should know. My hobby’s freefall parachuting.’

‘I remember. And I’ve seen the articles on you in the glossies. Sounds like a wonderful hobby.’

She looked at him rather suspiciously, suspecting envy. ‘You get your kicks burrowing into the earth. I like to be way above it, with time and gravity in suspense.’

He pointed down the trail, where three figures on mules could be discerned in a cloud of dust.

‘Your husband’s on his way back. He was telling me he’s also got time in suspense, in his laboratories.’

‘Time isn’t immutable, as the science of chaos proves. Basically Joe’s inertial disposal system is a way of de-stabilizing time. Ten years ago, the principles behind it were scarcely glimpsed. I like that. Basically, I’m on Joe’s side, Bernard, so it’s no good trying to get round me.’

He laughed, but ignored the jibe.

‘If time isn’t immutable, what is it? Being up against millions of years, I should be told.’

‘Time’s like a fog with a wave structure. It’s all to do with strange attractors. I can send you a paper about it. Tamper with the input, who knows what output you’ll get.’

Clift laughed again.

‘Just like life, in fact.’

‘Also subject to chaos.’

They climbed down the hill path to meet Bodenland and his companions, covered in dust after the ride.

‘Oh, that was just wonderful,’ Kylie said, climbing off her mule and giving Mina a hug. ‘The desert is a marvellous place. Now I need a shower.’

‘A shower and a dozen cans of beer,’ supplemented Larry.

‘It was wonderful, but it achieved nothing,’ Bodenland said. ‘However, we have left a pretty trail of flags behind. All I hope is that the ghost train calls again tonight.’

‘What about Larry?’ she asked, when they were alone.

‘He’s off with Kylie tomorrow, whatever happens tonight.’

‘Don’t look so sour, Joe. They are supposed to be on honeymoon, poor kids. Where would you rather be – on a beach in Hawaii, or in this godforsaken stretch of Utah?’

He smiled at her, teasingly but with affection. ‘I’d rather be on that ghost train – and that is where I’m going to be tonight.’

But Bodenland was in for disappointment.

The night brought the stars, sharp as diamonds over the desert, but no ghost train. Bodenland and his group stayed by the mobile canteen, which remained open late to serve them. They drank coffee and talked, waiting, with the helicopter nearby, ever and again looking out into the darkness.

‘No Injuns,’ Kylie said. ‘No John Wayne stagecoach. The train made its appearance and that was it. Hey, Joe, a student was telling me she saw ghostly figures jumping – no, she said floating – off the train and landing somewhere by the dig, so she said. What do you think of that?’

‘Could be the first of later accretions to what will be a legend. Bernie, these students are going to want to bring in the media – or at least the local press. How’re you going to handle that?’

‘I rely on them,’ Clift said. ‘They know how things stand. All the same … Joe, if this thing shows up tonight, I want to be on that helicopter with you.’

‘My god, here it comes,’ Mina screamed, before Bodenland could reply.

And it was there in the darkness, like something boring in from outer space, a traveller, a voyager, an invader: full of speed and luminescence, which seemed to scatter behind it, swerving across the Escalante. Only when it burst through mesas did its lights fade. This time it was well away from the line of flags planted during the day, heading north, and some miles distant from the camp.

Bodenland led the rush for the helicopter. Larry followed and jumped into the pilot’s seat. The others were handed quickly up, Mina with her vidcam, Clift last, pulling himself aboard as the craft lifted.

Larry sent it scudding across ground, barely clearing the camper roofs as it sped up into the night air.

‘Steady,’ Kylie said. ‘This isn’t one of your models, Larry!’

‘Faster,’ yelled Mina. ‘Or we’ll lose it.’

But they didn’t. Fast though the ghost train sped, the chopper cut across ground to it. Before they were overhead, Joe was being winched down, swinging wild as they banked.

The strange luminous object – strangely dull when close, shaped like a phosphorescent slug – was just below them. Bodenland steadied himself, clasped the wire rope, made to stand on the roof as velocities matched – and his foot went through nothingness.

He struggled in the dark, cursing. Nothing of substance was below his boots. Whatever it was, it was as untouchable as it was silent.

Bodenland dangled there, buffeted by the rotors overhead. The enigmatic object tunnelled into the night and disappeared.

The shots of the ghost train in close up were as striking as the experience had been. Figures were revealed – revealed and concealed – sitting like dummies inside what might have been carriages. They were grey, apparently immobile. Confusingly, they were momentarily replaced by glimpses of trees, perhaps of whole forests; but the green flickered by and was gone as soon as seen.

Mina switched the video off.

‘Any questions?’ she asked, flippantly.

Silence fell.

‘Maybe the trees were reflections of something – on the windows, I mean,’ Larry said. ‘Well, no … But trees …’

‘It was like a death train,’ Kylie said. ‘Were those people or corpses? Do you think it could be … No, I don’t know what we saw.’

‘Whatever it was, I have to get back to Dallas tomorrow,’ Joe said. ‘With phantom trains and antediluvian bones, you have a lot of explaining to do to someone, Bernie, my friend.’

Next morning came the parting of the ways at St George airport. Bodenland and Mina were going back to Dallas, Larry and his bride flying on to their Hawaii hotel. As they said their farewells in the reception lounge, Kylie took Bodenland’s hand.

‘Joe, I’ve been thinking about what happened at Old John. You’ve heard of near-death experiences, of course? I believe we underwent a near-death experience. There’s a connection between what we call the ghost train and that sixty-five-million-year-old grave of Bernard Clift’s. Otherwise it’s too much of a coincidence, right?’

‘Mm, that makes sense.’

‘Well, then. The shock of that discovery, the old grave, the feeling of death which prevailed over the whole camp – with vultures drifting around and everything – all that precipitated us into a corporate near-death experience. It took a fairly conventional form for such experiences. A tunnel-like effect, the sense of a journey. The corpses on the train, or whatever they were. Don’t you see, it all fits?’

‘No, I don’t see that anything fits, Kylie, but you’re a darling and interesting girl, and I just hope that Larry takes proper care of you.’

‘Like you take care of me, eh, Pop?’ Larry said. ‘I’ll take care of Kylie – and that’s my affair. You take care of your reputation, eh? Watch that this ancient grave of Bernie’s isn’t just a hoax.’

Bodenland clutched the silver bullet in his pocket and eyed his son coldly, saying nothing. They parted without shaking hands.

No word had come from Washington in Bodenland’s absence. Instead he received a phone call from the Washington Post wanting an angle on governmental procrastination. Summoning his Publicity Liaison Officer, Bodenland had another demonstration arranged.

When a distinguished group of political commentators was gathered in the laboratory, clustering round the inertial disposal cabinet, Bodenland addressed them informally.

‘The principle involved here is new. Novelty in itself takes a while for governmental departments to digest. But we want to get there first. Otherwise, our competitors in Japan and Europe will be there before us, and once more America will have lost out. We used to be the leaders where invention was concerned. My heroes since boyhood have been men like Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Alva Edison. I’m going to do an Edison now, just to prove how safe our new principle of waste disposal is.’

He glanced at Mina, giving her a smile of reassurance.

‘My wife’s anxious for my safety. I welcome that. Washington has different motivations for delay.’

This time, Bodenland was taking the place of the black plastic bag. He nodded to the technicians and stepped into the cabinet. Waldgrave closed the door on him.

Bodenland watched the two clocks, the one inside the cabinet with him and the one in the laboratory, as the energy field built up round him. The sweep hand of the inside clock slowed and stopped. The blue light intensified rapidly, and he witnessed all movement ceasing in the outside world. The expression on Mina’s face froze, her hand paused halfway to her mouth. Then everything disappeared. It whited out and went in a flash. He stood alone in the middle of a greyish something that had no substance.

Yet he was able to move. He turned round and saw a black plastic bag some way behind him, standing in a timeless limbo. He tried to reach it but could not. He felt the air grow thick.

The stationary clock started to move again. Its rate accelerated. Through the grey fog, outlines of the laboratory with its frozen audience appeared. As the clock in the cabinet caught up with the one outside, everything returned to normal. Waldgrave released him from the cabinet.

The audience clapped, and there were murmurs of relief.

Bodenland wiped his brow with a handkerchief.

‘I became stuck in time, just for five minutes. I represented a container of nuclear waste. Only difference, we would not bring the waste back as Max Waldgrave just brought me back. It would remain at that certain time at which it was disposed of, drifting even further back into the past, like a grave.

‘This cabinet is just a prototype. Given the Department of the Environment’s approval, Bodenland Enterprises will build immense hangars to cope with waste, stow it away in the past by the truckload, and become world monopolists in the new trade.’

‘Could we get the stuff back if we ever wanted to?’ someone asked. ‘I mean, if future ages found what we consider waste to be valuable, worth reclamation.’

‘Sure. Just as I have been brought back to the present time. The point to remember is that at the moment the technology requires enormous amounts of energy. It’s expensive, but security costs. You know we at Bodenland Enterprises are presently tapping solar energy, beamed down from our own satellite by microwave. If and when we get the okay from the DoE, we can afford to research still more efficient methods of beaming in power from space.’

The two men from the Post had been conferring. The senior man said, ‘We certainly appreciate the Edison imitation, Mr Bodenland. But aren’t you being unduly modest – haven’t you just invented the world’s first time machine? Aren’t you applying to the wrong department? Shouldn’t you be approaching the Defence top brass in the Pentagon?’

Laughter followed the question, but Bodenland looked annoyed. ‘I’m against nuclear weapons and, for that matter, I’m enough of a confirmed Green to dislike nuclear power plants. Hence our research into PBSs – power-beam sats. Solar energy, after many decades, is coming into its own at last. It will replace nuclear power in another quarter century, if I have anything to do with it.

‘However, to answer your question – as I have often answered it before – no, I emphatically reject the idea that the inertial principle has anything to do with time travel, at least as we understand time travel since the days of H. G. Wells.

‘What we have here is a form of time-stoppage. Anything – obviously not just toxic wastes – can be processed to stay right where it is, bang on today’s time and date, for ever, while the rest of us continue subject to the clock. That applies even to the DoE.’

As the last media man scooped up a handful of salted almonds and left, Mina turned to Bodenland.

‘You are out of your mind, Joe. Taking unnecessary risks again. You might have been killed.’

‘Come on, it worked on mice.’

‘You should have tried rats.’

He laughed.

‘Birdie, I had an idea while I was in limbo. Something Kylie said stuck in my mind – that the ghost train and the discovery of Bernie Clift’s grave were somehow connected. Suppose it’s a time connection … That train, or whatever it is, must have physical substance. It’s not a ghost. It must obey physical laws, like everything else in the universe. Maybe the connection is a time connection. If we used the inertial principle in a portable form – rigged it up so that it would work from a helicopter —’

‘Oh, shucks!’ she cried, seeing what was in his mind. ‘No, no more funnies, please. You wouldn’t want to be aboard that thing even if you could get in. It’s packed with zombies going God knows where. Joe, I won’t let you.’

He put his hands soothingly on her shoulders. ‘Mina, listen —’

‘How many years have I listened? To what effect? To more stress and strain, to more of your bullshit?’

‘I have to get on that train. I’m sure it could be done. It’s no worse than your sky-diving. Leap into the unknown – that’s what we’re all about, darling.’

‘Oh, shit,’ she said.

3

At some time in the past, the cell had been whitewashed in the interests of cleanliness. It was now filthy. Straw, dust, pages of old newspaper, a lump of human ordure, littered the stone-paved floor.

A mouse ran full tilt along one of the walls. Its coat was grey, with longer russet hair over the shoulders. It moved with perfect grace, its small beady eyes fixed on the madman ahead, and more particularly on his open mouth.

Strapped within a straitjacket, the lunatic lay horizontal on the floor. The straitjacket was of canvas, with leather straps securing it, imprisoning the arms of the madman.

He had kicked his semen-stained grey mattress into a corner, to lie stretched out on the stones, his head wedged in another corner.

He was motionless. His eyes gleamed as he kept his gaze on the mouse, never blinking. His chops gaped wide, his tongue curled back. Saliva dripped slowly to the ground.

The mouse had been foraging in one of the holes in the old mattress when the madman fixed it with his gaze. The mouse had remained still, staring back, as if undergoing some internal struggle. Then its limbs had started to twitch and move. It had slewed round, squealing pitifully. Then it began its run towards the open jaws.

There was no holding back. It was committed. Scuttling along with one flank close to the wall, it ran towards the waiting face. With a final leap, it was in the mouth. The madman’s jaws snapped shut.

His eyes bulged. He lay still, body without movement. Only his jaws moved as he chewed. A little blood leaked from his lips to the floor.

With much cracking of tiny bones, he finished his mouthful. Then he licked the pool of blood from the stained stones.

Outside the cell stretched a long corridor, a model of cleanliness compared with the cell in which the madman was imprisoned. At the other end of the corridor, Doctor Kindness had his office, which connected with a small operating room.

The office was furnished with phrenological and anatomical charts. On one of the wood-panelled walls hung a day-to-day calendar for the current year, 1896, with quotations from Carlyle, Martin Tupper, Samuel Smiles, and other notables.

The furniture was heavy. Two armchairs were built like small fortresses, their soiled green leather bulging with horsehair, their mahogany shod with brass studs.

A general air of heaviness, of a place where, in the interests of medicine, oxygen was not allowed to enter, hung about the room. In the black lead grate, a coal fire had died, in despair at the retreat of the last of the oxygen. Only the black meerschaum pipe of the doctor glowed, sucking oxygen from the lungs of this pillar of the asylum. Clouds of smoke ascended from the bowl of the pipe to the ceiling, to hang about the gas brackets looking for release.

In order to make the room less inviting, a row of death masks stood on the heavy marble mantelshelf above the dead fire. The masks depicted various degrees of agony, and were of men and women who, judging by this plaster evidence involuntarily left behind, had found life with all its terrors preferable to what was imminently to come.

The doctor was perfectly at home in this environment. As he sauntered through, smoking, from the operating room, he set a blood-stained bone-saw down among the papers of his desk before turning to his visitor.

Dr Kindness was pale and furrowed, and enveloped almost entirely in a blood-stained white coat. In his prevailing greyness, his only vigorous signs of life were exhibited through his pipe.

His visitor was altogether of a different stamp. His most conspicuous characteristic was a bushy red beard, which flowed low enough over the lapels of a suit of heavy green tweed to make it impossible to tell if he was wearing a tie. He was of outdoor appearance, solid, and with a normally pleasant expression on his broad face. At this moment, what with the smoke and the bone-saw and the oppressive atmosphere of the asylum, he looked more apprehensive than anything else.

‘Well, it’s done,’ said Dr Kindness, removing the pipe for a moment. ‘If you’d like to come and have a look. It’s not a pretty sight.’

‘Sure, sure, I’d be glad …’ But the ginger man rose from his armchair by the dead fire with reluctance, and was aided into the operating room only by Dr Kindness’s pressure behind him.

The reason for Dr Kindness’s heavy generation of smoke-screen was now apparent. The stench in the operating room was pervasive. To breathe it caused an agitation in the heart.

On a large wooden table much like a butcher’s slab lay a naked male body streaked with dirt. The genitals were scabbed, and whole areas of stomach and chest were so mottled with rashes and ulcers they resembled areas of the Moon’s surface.

The doctor had sawn off the top of the skull, revealing the brain. Blood still seeped from the cavity into a sink.

‘Get nearer and have a good look,’ Dr Kindness said. ‘Light’s rather bad in here. It’s not many people who get the chance to see a human brain. Seat of all wisdom and all wickedness … What do you observe?’

The ginger man leaned over and peered into the skull.

Rather faintly, he said, ‘I observe that the poor feller’s good and dead, doctor. I suppose the corpse will get a decent burial?’

‘The asylum will dispose of it.’

‘I also observe that the brain seems to be rather small. Is that so?’

Dr Kindness nodded. ‘Poke about in there if you wish. Here’s a spatula. You’re correct, of course. That’s an effect of tertiary syphilis. The brain shrivels in many cases. Like an orange going bad. GPI follows – General Paralysis of the Insane.’

The doctor smote himself on the chest and, in so doing, awoke a husky cough. When he had recovered, he said, ‘We doctors are fighting one of mankind’s ancient scourges, sir. Satan and his legions now descend on us in modern form, as minuscule protozoa. As you probably know, this disease threatens the very foundations of the British Empire. Indeed, the Contagious Diseases Acts of the 1860s were passed in order to protect the young men of our army and navy from the prostitutes who spread VD.’

At the mention of prostitutes, the ginger man did a lot of head shaking and tut-tutting. ‘Terrible, terrible it is. And the prostitutes must get it from the men.’

‘The men get it from the prostitutes,’ said Dr Kindness, sternly.

A small silence fell, in which Dr Kindness cleared his throat.

‘And there’s no cure once you’ve contracted it?’ said the ginger man, with a terrified expression.

‘If treated early enough … Otherwise …’ The doctor removed his pipe to utter what was intended to be a laugh. ‘Many of the inmates of this institution die of GPI. Men and women. If you’d like to come back tomorrow, I’ll be able to show you a really excellent corpse of an old woman in her sixties. Mad as a hatter the last eight years.’

‘Thanks, doctor, but I’m busy tomorrow. Sorry to take up so much of your time.’ He thrust his hands deep in his pockets, in an effort to still their trembling.

As he hurried from the bleak building with all its stone wings and stone walls and stony windows, he muttered a verse from Psalm XXVI to himself. ‘Oh shut not up my soul with the sinners: nor my life with the bloodthirsty …’

And as he climbed into his waiting carriage, he said aloud, ‘Holy Lord, but I need a drink. It’s a terrible way for a man to end up.’

Bodenland and Waldgrave were in the construction wing consulting with senior mechanics when a call came through from Bodenland’s secretary, Rose Gladwin, that Bernard Clift wanted to see him urgently.

‘I’ll be there, Rose.’

He could see Clift through a glass door before Clift saw his approach. The younger man still wore the dusty clothes he had had on at Old John in Utah. His whole manner suggested excitement, as he paced back and forth in the waiting room with a springy step, punching the palm of one hand with the fist of the other, and talking to himself with downward gaze as if rehearsing a speech.

‘You’ll wonder what I’m doing in Dallas,’ he began, almost without preamble, as Bodenland went in. ‘I’m on my way to PAA ’99 in Houston. Progress in Advanced Archaeology. We’re still fighting a rump of idiots who think Darwin was the devil. I’ve been scheduled to speak for some months. Well, I’m going to announce that I’ve uncovered a humanoid creature going back some sixty-five million years. I’m in for the Spanish Inquisition, and I know it.’

‘I thought you’d come to inspect our inertial project,’ Bodenland said, smiling.

Clift looked blank. ‘I wanted to see you because I’ve had a rethink about secrecy in the last forty-eight hours. Our security broke down. The students told the tale to a local radio station. I don’t want a garbled message getting about. I have to ask you for some support, Joe – I mean financial. My university won’t fund me on this.’

‘You asked them and they turned you down?’ He saw by Clift’s expression that his guess was correct. ‘They said you were crazy? What makes you think I don’t think you’re crazy? Come and have a coffee, Bernie, and let me talk you out of this.’

Clift shook his head exasperatedly, but allowed himself to be led into the secretary’s room, where he sank into a chair and sipped black coffee.

‘The experts I told you about – both able young men from the archaeological research departments of the museums in Chicago and Drumheller – took a look at the evidence. Of course they’re cautious. They have to make reports. But I think I have won their backing. They will be at Houston, at PAA ’99. Don’t shake your head, Joe. Look at this.’

He jumped up, almost upsetting his cup. From his briefcase he spilled on the table black-and-white photos of the site and the grave, taken from all angles.

‘There’s no way this can be a hoax, Joe.’ He made an agitated movement. ‘It would be to your company’s advantage to associate yourself with this momentous discovery. I’m positive there was a – at least a pseudo-human species contemporaneous with the duck-billed dinosaurs and other giant herbivores and, of course, with major predators such as Tyrannosaurus Rex. I’m going to overturn scientific knowledge just as Lyell and Darwin and others overturned the grip of false religion in the nineteenth century. You realize the amount we know for sure about the Cretaceous is virtually all contained in a lorry-load of old bones? The rest is guesswork. Inspired imagination.’

Bodenland interrupted his eloquence. ‘Look beyond your personal excitement. Suppose you were taken seriously in Houston. Think of the effect on the stock market —’

Clift jumped up, heedlessly upsetting his coffee. ‘I change the world and you worry about the Dow Jones Index? Joe, this isn’t like you! Grasp the new reality.’

‘My shareholders would shoot me if —’

‘Here’s a kind of human with burial customs not unlike ours – flowers in the grave, ochre, even some kind of meaningful symbol on the coffin lid – but below the K/T boundary. Maybe it developed from some offshoot of early dinosaurs. I don’t know, but I tell you that this is – well, it’s greater than the discovery of a new planet, it’s —’

‘Hold it, Bernie,’ said Joe, laughing. ‘I do see that it might be all you say, and more – if it proved to be true. But how could it be true? You want it to be true. But suppose it’s like the Piltdown man, just a hoax. Something some of those brighter students of yours tried on for fun … I can’t possible associate this organization with it at this early stage. We’ve got responsibilities. If you want a few hundred bucks, I’d be glad —’

Clift looked angry. ‘Joe, are you hearing me? I just told you, this is no fucking hoax. How many of the world’s great discoveries have been laughed at on first appearance? Remember how men thought that flying machines were impossible – and continued to do so even after the first flying machine had left the ground? Remember how the great Priestley discovered the role of oxygen in combustion – yet still believed in the old phlogiston theory?’

‘Okay, okay.’ Bodenland raised his hands for peace. ‘Quite contrary to Priestley’s case, in this case popular mythology is entirely on your side. The comic strips and movies have always pretended that mankind and dinosaurs co-existed. You’re just claiming that Fred Flintstone was a real live actual person.’

He saw this remark was not appreciated, and went on hurriedly, ‘Bernie, honestly, I’d be happy if I could swallow all this. Seeing orthodoxies overturned is my kind of meat. But you don’t stand a chance on this one. Go back to the goddamned Escalante, find a second grave in that same stratum. Then I’ll take you seriously.’

‘You will? Okay.’ He paused dramatically and gestured towards the table. ‘Take a look at the photos. You’ve scarcely glanced at them. You’re like the Italian authorities, refusing to look through Galileo’s telescope. You’ve taken it for granted you know what the photos are all about. These are shots of a second grave, Joe. We struck it even when you were leaving to get your plane.’

Bodenland gave his friend one baffled look, then peered at the plates.

The grave much resembled the first, which was why he had hardly bothered to look at the photos. The remains were enclosed in a similar coffin, with the same mysterious sign on the lid. In this case, the lid had been removed with little damage.

The skeleton, sunk in red ochre, lay on its side, in the same position as the first skeleton. Distance shots showed that this grave was no more than fifty metres from the first, still just below the K/T boundary, but deeper into the hill, where the strata curved inward.

‘You observe,’ Clift said, now using his voice of icy calm. ‘The second grave. There are two significant differences compared with our first discovery. In this case, the skeleton is of a female. And she lies with a wooden stake through what was her heart.’

‘I’m sure your beautiful young daughter-in-law would tell you that you know nothing about human nature, Joe,’ Clift said, as they walked through the building. ‘I can’t keep this secret. I’m bursting with it. There’s the scientific aspect, and that’s predominant. This is something that is going to cause shock waves. It’ll be hotly contested. I’m in for the Spanish Inquisition and I know it. I also know I can defend my case.

‘But there’s more to it than that. You’ve had plenty of publicity in your time, what with your association with Victor Frankenstein and Mary Shelley and all that. I also want publicity. I want recognition, as every man does, if he’s honest. Publicity will give me the funding I require.

‘Millions of dollars are needed. Millions. The whole Iron Hills area must be torn apart. We’ve got a new civilization to explore – beyond our dreams. Imagine, civilization started here, in the USA, long before apes came out of the African jungles!’

‘Yes, and when this hits the media, you’re going to have the whole universe invading your pitch. You’re not going to be able to work. The site will be ruined. And I won’t be able to chase that phantom train.’

‘That’s where you can help. If your organization will back me, I want you to get an army of security personnel down at Old John straight away.’

‘Do you want a bed for the night? I’ll ring Mina, if she isn’t twenty thousand feet up.’

‘I’ll ring her, Joe, thanks. And Joe – thanks a million. I know you’ll be in the hot seat too. One day, I’ll return this favour.’

They shook hands.

Joe said, ‘Mina will take care of you. I may be a little hard to contact, just for a while.’

‘How’s that?’

‘Never mind. Up guards and at ’em, Bernie. Shake the world! I’m on your side.’

The great green-and-white waves of the Pacific came curling into Hilo Bay, Hawaii. The foam scattered in the sunlight, the water lost its power, crawled up the volcanic sands, sank down again, and miraculously revived, to make another assault on the beaches.

Larry and Kylie came out of the ocean shaking the water from their hair.

‘I just know something is wrong, Larry. Please let’s get back to the hotel,’ she said.

‘Nothing’s wrong, sweetie. Forget your intuitions. It’s something you ate. How can anything be wrong? We’ve only been down on the beach an hour.’

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