Читать книгу The Monster Trilogy - Brian Aldiss - Страница 16

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.