‘Professor Bailey? Might I importune you very briefly?’
Bailey stopped. Why could he not be left alone today? The intervention here was from a blond man with an English accent who seemed to have been waiting there for him beside the steps up to the door of the Obediah Laboratories. ‘Yes?’ he said.
‘My name is Rupert Rackenham. I live over in Venice Beach and I’m an old Berlin friend of Adele, your assistant. I’ve been given a freelance commission to write about you for the
‘She has indeed. I’m afraid I’m much too busy.’ That name, Rupert Rackenham, was familiar to Bailey from somewhere, but even more familiar was that voice: not just the accent but the false, practised, opportunistic charm. And yet he knew he’d never met this man. ‘There is all sorts of interesting work going on at CalTech. Perhaps you could talk to one of my colleagues instead. Dr Carradine, for instance.’
‘What does Dr Carradine do?’ said Rackenham.
‘He is building a machine for making eel congee out of electric eels that is itself powered by electric eels. An elegant design.’
‘I’d much rather talk to you, Professor Bailey. It need only take an hour. The
‘No. I’m afraid not. Not this year.’ And he tried to hurry on into the Obediah Laboratories, but the Englishman, undiscouraged, put a hand on his shoulder to slow him.
‘
‘Oh, I’m terribly sorry,’ said the Englishman with a smile, withdrawing his hand not quite straight away. ‘It’s just that I think your son dropped his toy. Wouldn’t want him to lose it. Handsome little object.’
Bailey felt a cold tickle of embarrassment, knowing that at fifteen he was several years too old now to be carrying around a toy of any sort, and he couldn’t look the Englishman in the eye as he took back his steam engine. Nonetheless, he recognised the Englishman, and the Englishman recognised him, because they had seen each other three times before, in other Wisconsin towns. For their itinerary to intersect more than once with some other traveller’s was not that unusual — there were only a limited number of logical routes, for instance, up the western shore of Lake Michigan. Looking out across the empty planes of this state from his bicycle, Bailey had often thought of Lucretius. ‘Space spreads out without bound or limit, immeasurable towards every quarter everywhere. No rest is allowed to the bodies moving through the deep void, but rather plied with unceasing, diverse motion, some when they have dashed together leap back at great space apart, others too are thrust but a short way away from the blow. Many, moreover, wander on through the great void, which have been cast back from the unions of things, nor have they anywhere else availed to be taken into them and link their movements.’ Bailey and his father had not truly linked their movements with the Englishman, but they had wandered on together for a few days, and at first Bailey assumed it was this featherweight acquaintance that the Englishman had taken as a permit for the immediate camaraderie of his demeanour here in the hotel corridor. Only later would he deduce that the Englishman adopted that same demeanour with everyone he met.
‘I see we’re in adjacent lodgings,’ said the Englishman. He held out his hand. ‘Bertram Renshaw. Archaeologist.’
But his father ignored the hand and hurried Bailey into their small double room. After the door was closed he said, ‘Don’t talk to that fellow.’
‘Why, Dad?’
‘There’s something not right about him.’
‘Is he working for Them?’
‘He could be. We’d better leave early tomorrow. We’ll double back towards Madison.’
His father’s criteria for identifying a stranger as an agent of either the Phenscots or the Catholic Church were mysterious to Bailey. Sometimes they wouldn’t even have to encounter a person in multiple towns, as they had the Englishman: just one sighting at a distance would be enough. But this time, Bailey couldn’t disagree with his father. There was indeed something not right about Renshaw. Most likely, his father would have preferred them to make their escape straight away, but for nearly two weeks now he had been wriggling on the hook of an abscessed tooth, and Sheboygan Falls had a good, cheap dentist. So at three o’clock, after setting Bailey his algebra problems for the day, he went out. As usual, Bailey was not to leave the hotel room for any reason, unless his father had not returned within six hours, in which case Bailey was to assume his father had been captured and carry on alone to Tiny Lustre.
The sky was overcast that day and through the window of the hotel room Bailey could see crows flying high up in it like punctuation lost on a blank page. He waited fifteen minutes, then went out into the corridor and knocked on the door of the Englishman’s room. When Renshaw opened it he said, ‘I sure am sorry to bother you, sir, but I was wondering if I might borrow a pencil sharpener. I can’t find mine.’
Renshaw looked pleased. ‘Certainly. Come inside and I’ll look for one.’
For the first few years that he had travelled with his father, Bailey had been very afraid of their pursuers. But lately he had thought more and more about what it might actually be like to meet one of these dark entities. And this was the first chance he had ever had. He knew he ought to feel frightened but he didn’t.
‘Why don’t you sit down, my boy?’ said the Englishman. ‘It might take me a moment or two to find.’ He started rummaging around in a suitcase. ‘Where are you and your father from?’
‘Philadelphia.’
‘That’s a long way to come on a bicycle.’
‘He took me out of school for a year so I could see a little of our country.’
‘A magnificent notion. I come from London, but I’ve been all over this continent. Always something new to see. Mostly travel by motor car myself.’
‘You’re an archaeologist, you said, sir?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you go around looking for bones?’
‘Sometimes. But these days I’m more of an educator. Science isn’t any use, you know, if we scientists keep it all to ourselves.’
‘So you give lectures?’
‘Not often. I’ve found that the general mass of the American public is seldom prepared for the latest discoveries. I prefer to arrange meetings with interested individuals with progressive sensibilities. They, in turn, can use their influence to sow the seeds of this new knowledge.’
‘What knowledge is that?’
Renshaw smiled. Somehow he had still not located the pencil sharpener. ‘Oh, I’m not sure a lad of your age would be far enough ahead in your education.’
Bailey gave the invited response. ‘I’ll bet I am far enough ahead, sir.’
‘Are you quite certain?’ said Renshaw almost coquettishly.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘In that case, my boy, have you ever heard of the Troodonians?’
‘No.’
‘I should have been surprised if you had. Come and assist me with this.’ Another of his cases was almost as big as a tenement stove, and Bailey had to help Renshaw lift it on to the bed. Then Renshaw snapped open four heavy brass catches to bisect the case vertically, and Bailey saw that the left side held the top half of a skeleton and the right side held the bottom half, each bone pulled snugly against the thick black velvet lining by leather loops, so that the case could be used as a sort of display cabinet when it was swung all the way open. Most of the skeleton looked unmistakably humanoid — the feet and the ribs and pelvis — but the skull looked more like a bird’s or a lizard’s. Also, it had a tail, and only four long digits on each hand.
‘What is this?’ said Bailey.
‘I expect you’ve been told that the Red Indians were the first civilisation to inhabit North America,’ said Renshaw. ‘Well, they weren’t. The Troodonians were far more advanced. While the Red Indians were still living in caves and eating worms, the Troodonians were herding livestock and trading goods.’
