"That's what he wants you to think! Maybe he's really an alien! Maybe the rest of them are even smaller than he is! How do you know he isn't really a giant alien from a very small race of aliens? Eh?"

"Don't be stupid!" I screamed into the phone, gripping it sorely with my burned hand.

"Well, don't say I didn't warn you!" Eric shouted.

"Don't worry!" I shouted back.

"Anyway," Eric said in a suddenly calm voice, so that for a second or two I thought somebody else had come on the line, and I was left somewhat nonplussed as he went on in level, ordinary speech: "How are you?"

"Eh?" I said, confused. "Ah… fine. Fine. How are you?"

"Oh, not too bad. Nearly there."

"What? Here?"

"No. There. Christ, it can't be a bad line over this distance, can it?"

"What distance? Eh? Can it? I don't know." I put my other hand to my forehead, getting the feeling that I was losing the thread of the conversation entirely.

"I'm nearly there," Eric explained tiredly, with a calm sigh. "Not nearly here. I'm already here. How else could I be calling you from here?"

"But where's 'here'?" I said.

"You mean you don't know where you are again?" Eric exclaimed incredulously. I closed my eyes again and moaned. He went on; "And you accuse me of forgetting things. Ha!"

"Look, you bloody madman!" I screamed into the green plastic as I gripped it hard and sent spears of pain up my right arm and felt my face contort. "I'm getting fed up with you calling me up here and being deliberately awkward! Stop playing games!" I gasped for breath. "You know damn well what I mean when I ask where 'here is! I mean where the hell are you! I know where I am and you know where I am. Just stop trying to mess me about, OK?"

"H'm. Sure, Frank," Eric said, sounding uninterested. "Sorry if I was rubbing you up the wrong way."

"Well-" I started to shout again, then controlled myself and quieted down, breathing hard. "Well… just… just don't do that to me. I was only asking where you are."

"Yeah, that's OK, Frank; I understand," Eric said evenly. "But I can't actually tell you where I am or somebody might overhear. Surely you can see that, can't you?"

"All right. All right," I said. "But you're not in a call-box, are you?" "Well, of course I'm not in a call-box," he said with a bit of an edge in his voice again; then I heard him control his tone. "Yeah, that's right. I'm in somebody's house. Well, a cottage actually."

"What?" I said. "Who? Whose?"

"I don't know," he replied, and I could almost hear him shrug. "I suppose I could find out if you're really that interested. Are you really that interested?"

"What? No. Yes. I mean, no. What does it matter? But where- I mean how- I mean who do you-?"

"Look, Frank, " Eric said tiredly, "it's just somebody's little holiday cottage or weekend retreat or something, right? I don't know whose it is; but, as you so perceptively put it, it doesn't matter, all right?"

"You mean you've broken in to someobdy's home?" I said.

"Yeah; so what? I didn't even have to break in, in fact. I found the key to the back door in the guttering. What's wrong? It's a very nice little place."

"Aren't you frightened of getting caught?"

"Not much. I'm sitting here in the front room looking down the drive and I can see way down the road. No problem. I've got food and there's a bath and there's a phone and there's a freezer- Christ, you could fit an Alsatian in there — and a bed and everything. Luxury."

"An Alsatian!" I screeched.

"Well, yes, if I had one. I don't, but if I did I could have kept that in there. As it is-"

"Don't," I interrupted, closing my eyes yet again and holding up my hand as though he was there in the house with me. "Don't tell me."

"OK. Well, I just thought I'd ring you and tell you I'm all right, and see how you are."

"I'm fine. Are you sure you're OK, too?"

"Yeah; never felt better. Feeling great. I think it's my diet; all-"

"Listen!" I broke in desperately, feeling my eyes widen as I thought of what I wanted to ask him. "You didn't feel anything this morning, did you? About dawn? Anything? I mean, anything at all? Nothing inside you — ah — you didn't feel anything? Did you feel anything?"

"What are you gibbering about?" Eric said, slightly angrily.

"Did you feel anything this morning, very early?"

"What on earth do you mean — 'feel anything'?"

"I mean did you experience anything; anything at all about dawn this morning?"

"Well," Eric said in measured tones, and slowly, "Funny you should say that…."

"Yes? Yes?" I said excitedly, pressing the receiver so close to my mouth that my teeth clattered off the mouthpiece.

"Not a damn thing. This morning was one of the few I can honestly say I experienced not a thing," Eric informed me urbanely. "I was asleep."

"But you said you didn't sleep!" I said furiously.

"Christ, Frank, nobody's perfect." I could hear him start to laugh.

"But-" I started. I closed my mouth and gritted my teeth. Once more, I closed my eyes.

He said: " Anyway, Frank, old sport; to be quite honest, this is getting boring. I might call you again but, either way, I'll see you soon. Ta ta."

Before I could say anything, the line went dead, and I was left fuming and belligerent, holding the telephone and glaring at it like it was to blame. I considered hitting something with it, but decided that would be too much like a bad joke, so I slammed it down on the cradle instead. It chimed once in response and I gave it another glare, then turned my back on it and stamped downstairs, threw myself into an easy chair and punched the buttons on the remote control for the television repeatedly through channel after channel time after time for about ten minutes. At the end of that period I realised that I had got just as much out of watching three programmes simultaneously (the news, yet another awful American crime series and a programme on archaeology) as I ever got from watching the damn things separately. I hurled the control unit away in disgust and stormed outside in the fading light to go and throw a few stones at the waves.

9: What Happened to Eric

I SLEPT fairly late, for me. My father had arrived back at the house just as I returned from the beach, and I had gone to bed at once, so I had a good long sleep. In the morning I called Jamie, got his mother, and found out he had gone to the doctor's but would be straight back. I packed my day-pack and told my father I'd be back in the early evening, then set off for the town.

Jamie was in when I got to his house. We drank a couple of cans of the old Red Death and chatted away; then, after sharing in elevenses and some of his mother's home-made cakes, I left and made my way out of town for the hills behind.

High on a heathered summit, a gentle slope of rock and earth above the Forestry Commission's tree line, I sat on a big rock and ate my lunch. I looked out over the heat-hazed distance, over Porteneil, the pastureland dotted white with sheep, the dunes, the dump, the island (not that you could see it as such; it looked like part of the land), the sands and the sea. The sky held a few small clouds; it beat blue over the view, fading to paleness towards the horizon and the calm expanse of firth and sea. Larks sung in the air above me and I watched a buzzard hover as it looked for movement in the grass and heather, broom and whin beneath. Insects buzzed and danced, and I waved a fan of fern in front of my face to keep them away as I ate my sandwiches and drank my orange juice.

To my left, the mounting peaks of the hills marched off northward, growing gradually higher as they went and fading into grey and blue, shimmering with distance. I watched the town beneath me through the binoculars, saw trucks and cars make their way along the main road, and followed a train as it headed south, stopping in the town then going on again, snaking across the level ground before the sea.