space of four or five human generations but because the different strains of the organisms interbred. Their subsequent generations, being much faster than ours, soon lost their differentiation. The outbreak of monstrosity that occurred in Boston in the twenties, as variously chronicled by Pickman and Reid, was a strictly temporary affair; it hardly spanned a couple of human generations. My theory is that the trigger lost its potency, because the imported organism carrying it either interbred with its local counterpart or ran into some local pathogen or predator that wiped it out. The reverse process might easily have occurred, of course — at least in big cities — but I believe that there's a better chance of finding the trigger molecule over here, where families like the Pickmans and the Eliots probably originated, than there is in Boston or Salem.'
'I see,' I said. While he was leafing through the books, I went to the window to look out over the chine.
To the right was the English Channel, calm at present, meekly reflecting the clear blue September sky. To the left was the narrow cleft of the chine, thickly wooded on both sheer slopes because the layers of sedimentary rock were so loosely aggregated and wont to crumble that they offered reasonable purchase to bushes, whose questing roots could burrow deep enough not only to support their crowns but to feed them gluttonously on the many tiny streams of water filtering through the porous rock. Because the chine faced due south, both walls got plenty of sunlight in summer in spite of the acute angle of the cleft.
Directly below the window, there was only a narrow ledge — almost as narrow now as the pathway leading down from the cliff-top — separating the front doorstep from the edge. When the house had been built, way back in the seventeenth century — some fifty or sixty years before Richard Upton Pickman's ancestor had been hanged as a witch in Salem — the chine had been even narrower and the ledge much broader, but it had been no fit home for acrophobes even then. If it hadn't been for the vital importance of the smuggling trade to the island's economy, the house would probably never have been built, and certainly wouldn't have been kept in such good repair for centuries on end by those Eliots who hadn't emigrated to the New World in search of a slightly more honest way of life. The bottom had dropped out of the smuggling business now, of course, thanks to the accursed European Union, but I didn't intend to let the place go — not, at least, until one landslip too many left me no choice.
By the time I turned round again, Alastair Thurber had sorted out no less than six of Pickman's old books, along with a mere four that just happened to be of similar antiquity.
'That's about it, I think,' he said. 'Would you care to show me around the rest of the house, pointing out anything that your grandfather might have brought back from Boston?'
'Certainly,' I said. 'Would you prefer to start at the top or the bottom?'
'Which is more interesting?' he asked.
'Oh, most definitely the bottom,' I said. 'That's where all the most interesting features are. I'll take you all the way down to the smugglers' cave, via the spring. We'll have to take an oil-lamp, though — I never have got around to running an electric cable down there.'
As we went down the cellar steps, which he handled with rigid aplomb, I filled in a few details about the history of smuggling along the south coast — the usual tourist stuff — and added a few fanciful details about wreckers. He didn't pay much attention, especially when we went down through the trapdoor in the cellar into the caves. He was a little disappointed by the spring, even though he was obviously relieved to reach the bottom of the parrot-ladder. He had obviously expected something more like a gushing fountain, and probably thought that the Heath-Robinsonesque network of copper and plastic tubing attached to the pumps wasn't in keeping with the original fitments. I was careful to point out the finer features of the filtration system.
'The water's as pure as any mains water by the time it gets up to the tank in the loft,' I told him. 'Probably purer than much mainland water, although it's pretty hard. The real problem with not being connected to the mains is sewerage; the tanker that comes once a fortnight to drain the cesspool has to carry a specially extended vacuum tube just for this house. They have to do it, though — regulations.'
He wasn't interested in sewerage, either. In fact, he lost interest in the whole underground complex as soon as he realized how empty it was of artifacts that might have been brought back to the old country from the home of the bean and the cod. The smugglers' cave left him completely cold; there obviously wasn't a lot of romance in his soul.
He didn't notice anything odd about the kitchen, but he scanned the TV room carefully, in search of anything unmodern. Then I took him upstairs. He didn't waste much time in the bedroom, but when he got to the lumber room, his eyes lit up.
'If there's anything else,' I said, unnecessarily, 'this is where you'll find it. It'll take time, though. Help yourself, while I fix us some lunch.'
'You don't have to do that,' he said, for politeness' sake.
'It's no trouble,' I assured him. 'You'll probably be busy here all afternoon — there's a lot of stuff, I'm afraid. Things do build up, don't they? It was a lot tidier when I last moved back in, but when you live alone.»
'You haven't always lived here, then?' he said, probably fearing that there might be some other premises he might need to search.
'Dear me, no,' I said. 'I was married for ten years, when we lived in East Cowes, on the other side of the island. This is no place for small children. I moved back here after the divorce — but anything that came back from the U.S.A. in the thirties will have stayed here all along. Couldn't rent the place, you see, even as a holiday cottage. It was locked up tight and nobody ever broke in. Not a lot of crime on the island.'
I left him alone then in order to make the lunch: cold meat from the farmers' market and fresh salad, with buttered bread and Bakewell tarts, both locally baked, and a fresh pot of tea. This time I used two bags of Earl Grey to one of Brown Label, and I ran the water from the other tap.
'What I don't understand,' I said, as he tucked in, 'is where the anatomy of the terrible and the physiology of fear fit in. What do cancers and trigger molecules have to do with latent instincts and hereditary memories?'
'Nobody understands it yet,' he told me. 'That's why my research is important. We understand how genes function as a protein factory, and the associated pathology of most cancers, but we don't understand the heredity of structure and behavior nearly as well. The process controlling the manner in which the fertilized ovum of a whale turns into a whale, and that of a hummingbird into a hummingbird, even though they have fairly similar repertoires of proteins, is still rather arcane, as is the process by which the whale inherits a whale's instincts and the hummingbird a hummingbird's. Most of human behavior is learned, of course — including many aspects of fear and horror — but there has to be an inherited foundation on which the learning process can build. The fact that Pickman's recessive gene, once somatically activated, caused a distinctive somatic metamorphosis rather than simple undifferentiated tumors indicates that it's linked in some way to the inheritance of structure. It's a common fallacy to imagine that individual genes only do one thing — usually, they have multiple functions — and the genes linked to structural development routinely have behavioral effects too. I suspect that the effects Pickman and his relatives suffered weren't just manifest in physical deformation; I suspect that they also affected the way he perceived and reacted to things.'
'You think that's why he became an artist?'
'I think it might have affected the way he painted, and his choice of subject-matter — his understanding of the anatomy of the terrible and the physiology of fear.'
'That's interesting,' I said. 'It took your grandfather differently, of course.'
Mercifully, he wasn't holding his tea-cup. It was only his fork that he dropped. 'What do you mean?' he asked.
'Art isn't a one-way process,' I said, mildly. 'Audience responses aren't created out of nothing. Mostly, they're learned — but there has to be an inherited foundation on which the learning process can build. It's right there in the story, if you look. Other people just thought that Pickman's work was disgustingly morbid, but your grandfather saw something more. It affected him much more profoundly, on a phobic level. He knew Pickman even better than Silas Eliot — they, your grandfather, and Reid were all members of the same close-knit community. It must have been much easier for you to obtain a sample of his DNA than Pickman's, and you already had your own for comparison. Are you carrying the recessive gene, Professor Thurber?'
A typical academic, he answered the question with a question: 'Would you mind providing me with a sample of your DNA, Mr. Eliot?' he asked, reaching the bottom line at last.
'You've been trampling all over my house for the last two hours,' I riposted. 'I expect you probably have one by now.'
He'd picked up his fork automatically, but now he laid it down again. 'Exactly how much do you know, Mr. Eliot?' he asked.
