CHAPTER 34
The storms of the day before, and of the day before that, and the floods of the previous week, had now abated. The skies still bulged with rain, but all that actually fell in the gathering evening gloom was a dreary kind of prickle.
Some wind whipped across the darkening plain, blundered through the low hills and gusted across a shallow valley where stood a structure, a kind of tower, alone in a nightmare of mud, and leaning.
It was a blackened stump of a tower. It stood like an extrusion of magma from one of the more pestilential pits of hell, and it leaned at a peculiar angle, as if oppressed by something altogether more terrible than its own considerable weight. It seemed a dead thing, long ages dead.
The only movement was that of a river of mud that moved sluggishly along the bottom of the valley past the tower. A mile or so further on, the river ran down a ravine and disappeared underground.
But as the evening darkened it became apparent that the tower was not entirely without life. There was a single dim red light guttering deep within it.
It was this scene that Richard was surprised to see from a small white doorway set in the side of the valley wall, a few hundred yards from the tower.
'Don't step out!' said Dirk, putting up an arm, 'The atmosphere is poisonous. I'm not sure what's in it but it would certainly get your carpets nice and clean.'
Dirk was standing in the doorway watching the valley with deep mistrust.
'Where are we?' asked Richard.
'Bermuda,' said Dirk. 'It's a bit complicated.'
'Thank you,' said Richard and walked groggily back across the room.
'Excuse me,' he said to Reg, who was busy fussing round Michael Wenton-Weakes, making sure that the scuba diving suit he was wearing fitted snuggly everywhere, that the mask was secure and that the regulator for the air supply was working properly.
'Sorry, can I just get past?' said Richard. 'Thanks.'
He climbed back up the stairs, went back into Reg's bedroom, sat shakily on the edge of the bed and picked up the phone again.
'Bermuda,' he said, 'it's a bit complicated.'
Downstairs, Reg finished smearing Vaseline on all the joins of the suit and the few pieces of exposed skin around the mask, and then announced that all was ready.
Dirk swung himself away from the door and stood aside with the utmost bad grace.
'Well then,' he said, 'be off with you. Good riddance. I wash my hands of the whole affair. I suppose we will have to wait here for you to send back the empty, for what it's worth.' He stalked round the sofa with an angry gesture. He didn't like this. He didn't like any of it.
He particularly didn't like Reg knowing more about space ime than he did. It made him angry that he didn't know why he didn't like it.
'My dear fellow,' said Reg in a conciliatory tone, 'consider what a very small effort it is for us to help the poor soul. I'm sorry if it seems to you an anti-climax after all your extraordinary feats of deduction. I know you feel that a mere errand of mercy seems not enough for you, but you should be more charitable.'
'Charitable, ha!' said Dirk. 'I pay my taxes, what more do you want?'
He threw himself on to the sofa, ran his hands through his hair and sulked.
The possessed figure of Michael shook hands with Reg and said a few words of thanks. Then he walked stiffly to the door, turned and bowed to them both.
Dirk flung his head round and glared at him, his eyes flashing behind their spectacles and his hair flying wildly. The ghost looked at Dirk, and for a moment shivered inside with apprehension. A superstitious instinct suddenly made the ghost wave. He waved Michael's hand round in a circle, three times, and then said a single word.
'Goodbye,' he said.
With that he turned again, gripped the sides of the doorway and stepped resolutely out into the mud, and into the foul and poisonous wind.
He paused for a moment to be sure that his footing was solid, that he had his balance, and then without another look back he walked away from them, out of the reach of the slimy things with legs, towards his ship.
'Now, what on earth did /that/ mean?' said Dirk, irritably mimicking the odd triple wave.
Richard came thundering down the stairs, threw open the door and plunged into the room, wild-eyed.
'Ross has been murdered!' he shouted.
'Who the hell's Ross?' shouted Dirk back at him.
'Whatsisname Ross, for God's sake,' exclaimed Richard, 'the new editor of /Fathom/.'
'What's /Fathom/?' shouted Dirk again.
'Michael's bloody magazine, Dirk! Remember? Gordon chucked Michael off the magazine and gave it to this Ross guy to fun instead. Michael hated him for that. Well, last night Michael went and bloody murdered him!'
He paused, panting. 'At least,' he said, 'he was murdered. And Michael was the only one with any reason to.'
He ran to the door, looked out at the retreating figure disappearing into the gloom, and spun round again.
'Is he coming back?' said Richard.
Dirk leapt to his feet and stood blinking for a moment.
'That's it…' he said, '/that's/ why Michael was the perfect subject. /That's/ what I should have been looking for. The thing the ghost made him do in order to establish his hold, the thing he had to be fundamentally /willing/ to do, the thing that would match the ghost's own purpose. Oh my dear God. He thinks we've supplanted them and that's what he wants to reverse.
'He thinks this is their world not ours. /This/ was where they were going to settle and build their blasted paradise. It matches every step of the way.
'You see,' he said, turning on Reg, 'what we have done? I would not be surprised to discover that the accident your poor tormented soul out there is trying to reverse is the very thing which started life on this planet!'
He turned his eyes suddenly from Reg, who was white and trembling, back to Richard.
'When did you hear this?' he said, puzzled.
'Er, just now,' said Richard, 'on… on the phone. Upstairs.'
'What?'
'It was Susan, I don't know how - said she had a message on her answering machine telling her about it. She said the message… was from - she said it was from Gordon, but I think she was hysterical.
Dirk, what the hell is happening? Where are we?'
'We are four billion years in the past,' said Reg in a shaking voice, 'please don't ask me why it is that the phone works when we are anywhere in the Universe other than where it's actually connected, that's a matter you will have to take up with British Telecom, but -'
'Damn and blast British Telecom,' shouted Dirk, the words coming easily from force of habit. He ran to the door and peered again at the dim shadowy figure trudging through the mud towards the Salaxalan ship, completely beyond their reach.
'How long,' said Dirk, quite calmly, 'would you guess that it's going to take that fat self deluding bastard to reach his ship? Because that is how long we have.
'Come. Let us sit down. Let us think. We have two minutes in which to decide what we are going to do. After that, I very much suspect that the three of us, and everything we have ever known, including the coelacanth
