The Fetch (21 page)

It had been hard to gain
access – even though she rejected the comparisons between mind and computer, she still found herself thinking in crude and basic computer jargon – to Michael’s dream mind, the harmonic memory plane where he would be storing the dream structures of the actual psychic event associated with each apportation. Unlike ordinary memory storage, these packages were mainly impulse-noise and transient-RNA, cyclical and shifting little whirlpools that were very hard to phase into.

She had sung the cadences that she believed would trigger the cortic-aural access, but he had simply smiled and shifted, obviously comfortable with the sound, but not responding. As she sang she watched the vocal signal of his own song, recorded on tape at the time of her visit to his house. She could see the points of access, the stress points where her own vocalization would need to establish a monotonal contrast, but she couldn’t manoeuvre her own voice into quite the right position.

She felt like a child, targeting a pin-point of light to shoot it. The comparison made her smile.

Her song flexed. She struggled to combine the signals, the living signal of her voice, and the static signal of Michael’s voice-profile. All the time the feedback from the chair showed red.

Then – strike! – the feedback lines flushed green and Michael went strangely stiff.

And she managed to enter him. With questions, of course, not with her mind.

She listened to the voice, to the memory of a journey:

The beach is a scary place. The Fish Lizards hide in the waves and strike suddenly on to the shore. Their jaws have a formidable array of fang-like teeth. The Sea Dragons are as long as their contemporaries, but rather broader. The beach is very dangerous, but I can run across it and call from the quarry.

Where is
this beach? Tell me more about the beach
.

It’s where the Wealden disappeared. Very quietly and gradually the forest and plains, the tall trees and hideous reptiles of the Wealden passed away—

Who has told you this? These aren’t your own words
.

—The slow sinking of the whole area caused deeper and deeper water to appear in the creeks and river channels. The lakes that ended the Chalk Age had an immense duration in time and space – they were vast meres, bordered by extensive marshes – they are Limbo, and the Fish Lizards prey upon the Limbo souls—

If the beach is so dangerous, why do you go there before you ‘fetch’
?

Have to go through it to hold on to Michael—

Who is talking to me now?

Michael’s shadow.

Chalk Boy?

No. Chalk Boy is hiding. I’m Michael’s shadow. I come into Michael to make him visible. Then he can breathe real air. But when he’s breathed properly I guide him through Limbo to other times.

Tell me how you guided him to the golden wolf-girl …

(But Michael twisted uncomfortably in his chair, head shaking, flecks of spittle at the corners of his mouth. His tongue licked out and his eyes half opened, like those of a corpse. Before Françoise could interrupt proceedings, however, he had calmed.)

My shadow is sinking into ice. I am moving at great speed. Now I can breathe again and everything is still. It’s so cold. Deep snow has piled against the lodge. I am by the huge pile of Mammoth bones, touching their icy surfaces. The old man has been here with his two drums and selected five of the long-bones to repair the Moon Lodge where the women go, which blew down in the storm. I move over the snow
like a shadow. Only the dogs can see me, and they snap and miss. I flow into the Drum Lodge and reach for what the old man is working on. He is unaware of me. The lodge smells badly of fresh skins, blood and fat. The fire in the centre is dull, but there is drifting ash in the air and a haze covers the bright animals and grinning faces drawn on the skins. Two women watch me, they can see me now, but they cover their faces with crossed pieces of bone and I can’t see them. The old man holds out his pipe to me. The paint is fresh on the white bone. His eyes are narrow and he is smiling. He follows me with his eyes as my shadow passes round the smoky room, always holding out the pipe. His words are like hisses, but I can hear that he is asking a question. I don’t want the bright bone pipe. I want brighter things for Daddy, but they are not here. I have come to the wrong place. I move slowly, like wading in deep water. When I reach for the pipe my hand misses and touches the spikes of hair on his head, making them bend. They are sticky with fat. The rest of his hair is hanging in bunches and decorated with painted shells and stones. His head rattles as he turns to follow me. The women are visible again and they are crawling through the low tunnel, between the door frame of white bones, and making funny sounds. So I fetch the pipe and the lodge collapses, the fire is scattered, and the old man screams and curls into a ball, holding his arm. The pipe is broken, but I run with part of it through the snow and the shadow leaves me on the beach and I am back in my castle … But Chalk Boy is laughing … he is mocking me, mocking me …

Michael! Sing to me. Sing to me, Michael
.

(Michael started to cry.)

Mocking Boy … Mocking Boy …

Michael! Sing. Sing ‘Ghostbusters’!

(The boy’s lips moved and, in the faintest of voices, he emitted the hesitant words
of the song … If there’s something strange … in the neighbourhood … Who do you call? … Ghost
busters
…

(And came back from his journey.)

The work in Scotland
finished midway through the second week and Richard found himself unexpectedly released from the project. He was delighted. He gathered his belongings, ran through the driving rain to the main hut and said his goodbyes. Everyone was thoroughly miserable and morale was so low that the Project Director was calling a halt until the spring. The site would be covered. Photographs were now not needed.

Rain lashed the car as far south as Barnard’s Castle in County Durham, but then clearer weather made the drive easier and faster. By four in the afternoon Richard was at the service station at Watford Gap, calling home.

Susan sounded thrilled, and not just because her husband was coming home a week early. There was something waiting for him at home … she wouldn’t say what … no, it was a surprise … but just assume that Santa has visited early this year.

Michael’s fetched something new? From the pit?

Wait and see.

How
is
Michael?

Excited, happy … longing for the story of the lake village you’ve been digging up.

There
is
no story about the lake village. It’s just a
crannog
, there’s no legend associated with it.

Susan laughed. Lover, she said, you’ve got about four hours’ driving to come up with
one. And make sure it involves the Grail. And preferably two of Arthur’s Knights. Any two will do. Michael is longing to hear it. He says … he says he’s already dreamed about the lake village.

He’s dreamed about it? What has he dreamed?

He says there’s something bright there, something to be found, something buried beneath the house with the wooden ‘watching-man’. Does that mean anything to you?

Wooden watching-man? No. At least, not yet. I’m on my way.

There were presents for everybody. Michael had wrapped them in Christmas paper – long since on sale in the shops – and placed them, labelled, on the dining table. There was an orange-crate of other things on the floor, at the side of the room, but these were all broken or ugly, and he knew that his father would probably want to sell them to his friend in London.

He thought he had seen the Grail, but he had been wrong. Nevertheless, the crushed metal vessel – like a miniature witch’s cauldron – that had crashed through the pit a week ago, as he had fetched it, had been full of glittering things, some of them very pretty.

The night after that he had dreamed of the wooden watching-man, its face just two eyes and a grim mouth, its arms stretched out, its legs stuck into the mud with the bright shield between them. On the shield was the face of an animal, surrounded by swirls and lines. It was a funny-shaped shield, in the dream, kinked in the middle, not round or square like a Roman shield. One day he’d like to fetch it, if he could.

Where
was
Daddy? It was getting dark. And he could hear Chalk Boy calling him from the pit. There was a funny breeze in the pit, a freezing wind that just went round and round, between the bushes,
near where the earth was so hot, the earth-spill that Michael knew was from the house, from when he had been born. The funny wind had been there for a day, and although he hadn’t heard from Chalk Boy for weeks now, he could hear the boy’s voice in the distance. Chalk Boy sounded as if he was in pain. It was quite frightening for Michael, and he felt uncomfortable in his castle. But it was there that he had seen the treasure cauldron. And he had fetched it
without
Chalk Boy.

Downstairs, Carol shouted loudly, there was running, a door opening, and outside the sound of the car on the gravel.

Smiling, Michael settled back into the corner of his room, his heart racing as he imagined what his father would feel when he saw the gifts.

‘This one’s for you …’

Richard reached for the small, paper-wrapped object. It was heavy and he almost dropped it as he accepted it from Michael’s shaking grip. The boy watched him eagerly. The family was sitting round the table, while the smell of roast chicken came from the kitchen.

‘Hurry up. Hurry up…’ Michael urged. Richard caught Susan’s eye and she raised an eyebrow.

‘Do you know what’s in here?’ he asked with a smile, and she shook her head.

‘It’s a surprise to us all,’ she murmured, but her look told Richard that she’d already seen all the objects that Michael had fetched. This was Michael’s game. She’d been sworn to secrecy.

He unwrapped an egg, slightly larger than a hen’s egg. It was of gold, of course. It was covered with designs. His breath caught, for a moment, in total shock.

Then he said, with a laugh, ‘Where’s the goose?’ and looked under the table.

Michael said earnestly, ‘It’s not a goose’s egg. It’s a Grail treasure.’

‘Don’t you remember the story
of the goose that laid the golden egg?’ Richard smiled as he spoke.

Michael’s face darkened. ‘It’s a
treasure
. It’s not a goose egg.’ He became agitated.

Momentarily taken aback by the vehemence in Michael’s voice, Richard quickly regained the initiative.

‘No. Of course it’s not, Michael. It’s beautiful. By God, it’s beautiful. It’s the best Grail treasure yet!’

Susan had seemed alarmed, but relaxed as the moment of missed-point and anguish passed.

‘What funny – what lovely pictures. They seem to tell a story …’

He turned the lump of gold around. It reminded him of the Phaistos disc, a terracotta disc discovered on Crete and dating from late Minoan times. This egg had a descending spiral channel scored into its skin, a channel that was divided into compartments, or cartouches. In each cartouche was a set of designs: faces, ships, houses, ears of wheat, bronze ingots, signals familiar to him, and others besides that were indecipherable. Each group of glyphs would represent a word. This was writing that pre-dated Linear A.

‘This is
wonderful
. It’s a wonderful present. Thank you. I shall treasure it.’

‘Don’t sell it,’ the boy said hoarsely and with great meaning.

‘Of course not. I shall treasure it.’

Susan leaned forward. ‘Can we open ours now?’

Michael was staring hard at his father, his face open, his eyes filled with a longing that Richard had no idea how to fill. He kept repeating how beautiful the story-egg was. And then he remembered his duty and mentioned that he had a great story for Michael that night, all about the lake-village – he referred to it by the common name of
crannog
, but appended the word ‘castle’ … Castle Crannog – and the story of a Lost Shield.

Michael’s face dissolved into knowingness
and pleasure. He anticipated the story, but also being able to talk about his dream.

Susan unwrapped her present. It was the arm and part of the torso of a silver figure, female, originally, about twelve inches high, Richard guessed. It had been broken raggedly, and there were the marks, on the broken edge, of a blade used violently. A figurine hacked to pieces for booty, perhaps. Michael had thought it part of a doll, and so it was an obvious present for his mother.

Carol was visibly nervous as she unwrapped the paper on the flattened object that was Michael’s gift to her. It was a shell, a brilliant piece of mother-of-pearl, carved delicately to show two horsemen of proud bearing against a high mountain behind. It had been bored round the edge to make twenty tiny holes. Not a necklet, then, but something that had been tied in a frame. Carol thought it was very pretty. Michael said, ‘You can paint it. Or draw it.’ He was still occasionally cautious in his approach to his younger sibling, perhaps remembering the fights of past years, in particular his assault on her when she had tampered with the Mocking Cross.

Carol thanked him, staring at the shell in a confusion of pleasure and puzzlement. When he deemed it appropriate, Richard examined the piece of art carefully. He noticed that the riders were wrapped against the cold. The mountains were not the familiar high hills of Chinese geography, more the mountains of Central Europe. Indeed, the details of the weapons and objects, even the dress of the two horsemen shown, suggested that this shell was something that had been carved four or five thousand years ago.

He could hardly be sure. He just felt that he was holding a preciously saved piece
of proto-Indo-European art.

This was from the first period of real migration history. The riders could have been going west towards Greece and the Danube, or east towards the Ganges and a rendezvous with the Orient that would develop into the earliest of the great myths of India.

If it was real, this shell, and if his interpretation was right, this simple piece of carving was more valuable than anything that had yet come through Michael into the present.