'I see him somewhere small, dark.'
'Could it be a coffin?'
'I don't know, Roy. It's too blurred. I don't think he has much energy.' He closed his eyes for some moments and slowly swivelled his head from left to right. 'No, very little there. The battery's almost flat, poor thing.'
'What do you mean?'
The medium closed his eyes again. 'He's weak.'
'How weak?' Grace asked, concerned.
'He's fading, his pulse is low, much too low.'
Grace watched him, wondering. How did Max know this? Was he connected across the ether? Just making a guess on a hunch? 'This
small dark place - is it in the woods? In a town? Under ground or above ground? On water?'
'I can't see, Roy. I can't tell.'
'How long has he got?' Grace asked.
'Not long. I don't know if he's going to make it.'
64
'You see, here's the thing, Mike. Not everyone gets to have a lucky day on the same day. So we have a sort of irregular situation here - this is your lucky day and it's my lucky day. How lucky is that?'
Michael, weak, shivering from fever and near-delirious, stared up, but all he could see was darkness. He did not recognize the man's voice; it sounded a hybrid of Australian and south London, spoken quickly, with fast, nervy inflections. Davey with another of his accents? No, he did not think so. His brain swirled. Confused. He did not know where he was. In the coffin?
Dead?
His head pounded, his throat was parched. He tried to open his mouth, but his lips would not part. Ice squirmed through his veins.
I'm dead.
'You were in a horrible wet coffin, getting all soggy and rheumatoid, now you're in a nice, dry, cosy cot. You were going to die. Now maybe you aren't going to die - but I want to stress that's a pretty big maybel'
The voice receded into the darkness. Michael was sinking, going down a lift shaft, down, down, the walls rushing past. He tried to call out, but his lips would not move. There was something pressing tightly around his mouth. All he could do was make a panicky grunt.
Then the voice again, really close, as if the man was in the lift with him. 'Do you know about Schrodinger's Cat, Mike?'
They were still going down. How many floors? Did it matter?
'Did you study physics when you were at school?'
Who was this? Where was he? 'Davey', he tried to say, but all that came out was a murmur.
'If you know anything about science, Mike, you'd know about it. Schrodinger's Cat was inside a box, and was both alive and dead at the same time. That's like you now, my friend.'
Michael felt consciousness slipping away. The lift was swaying on ropes now; darkness seemed to be racing past him, round and round. He closed his eyes. Then felt a blast of heat and saw red through his eyelids. He opened his eyes, then immediately squeezed them shut against a blinding glare of light.
'I don't think you should be going to sleep; you need to keep awake now, Mike. Can't let you die on me, I went to a lot of trouble. I'll give you more water and glucose in a while, got to introduce foods to you slowly. I got trained in all this stuff, you're in good hands. Jungle training. I know how to survive, and help others survive. You're lucky it was me who came along. Need to keep you awake. We'll chat to each other for a while, get to know each other a little better - bond a little, OK?'
Michael tried to speak again. Just a murmur came out. He was trying to remember, the sensation of being lifted from the coffin, of being on something soft in a van - but was that on the stag night? Was this maybe one of his mates? Weren't they dead? Mark? He just wanted to close his eyes and sleep now.
Cold water lashed his face, startling him. His eyes sprang open, blinking into watery darkness.
'I'm just keeping you awake, no offence meant, mate.' The voice sounded more Australian than south London now.
Michael shivered; the water had sharpened him a fraction. He tried to move his arms, to see if he was still in the coffin, but he couldn't move them. He tried to move his legs, but they wouldn't move either; it was as if they were bound together. He tried to raise his head, to touch the lid, but he barely had the strength to raise it a couple of inches.
'Guess you're wondering who I am and where you are?'
Michael closed his eyes tightly again as a blast of light dazzled him, hurting his retinas like sunburn. He emitted another grunt.
'It's OK, Mike, don't bother to try to talk back. It's duct tape - hard to say anything through that. I'll do the talking and you just do the listening - until you're better, that is. We have a deal?'
Michael felt bewildered; but at the same time deeply apprehensive. Nothing was making any sense - he wondered if he was dreaming or hallucinating.
PETER I
