“What are you sniggering at?” Violet demanded.

“That you think you’re an expert at youknow. The sorry truth is that Clifton gave you good feedback only to increase return business. He told me you were only in it for yourself.”

There was an icky silence, and I could tell Jane was enjoying herself.

“Nonsense,” replied Violet as her self-denial kicked in after a millisecond of doubt. “I can’t think why he would want to lie to you, or why his moonlighting might be suitable talk for a Grey dinner table. But we can clear this matter up once and for all. Eddie, darling, tell Jane how fantastically good I was this morning.”

I closed my eyes and felt sick. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. My only consolation was that I had been thinking of Jane when it happened, which didn’t sound like the sort of excuse I should use.

“Well?” said Violet.

“Yes,” added Jane, with a mixture of hurt and anger in her voice, “how was it? Do tell.”

“Look,” I said, turning to Violet, “I’m not here to give you public feedback every time someone criticizes you.”

“Is that a fact?” she replied, her shrill voice rising. “Then what are you here for? Marriage is a couple mutually joined as one but doing what the higher hue demands. Didn’t your mother teach you anything?”

“Well,” I said, “I’m sure she was going to tell me how insanely bossy up-color girls could be, but then she got the Mildew, and it must have slipped her mind.”

“I’m going to be the wisecracking, acerbic one in this marriage,” retorted Violet. “You’re to be the long-suffering husband who supports his wife with quiet dignity.”

“I’m glad we got that small matter cleared up. Shall we make it part of the vows?”

“Don’t lip me, Russett. I can make this marriage bossy or five decades of living nightmare. Believe me, you’ll prefer bossy.”

We fell silent after that as the age-worn Ford crept slowly up the hill with a cacophony of growls and rattles, squeaks and groans. I looked across at Jane, but she was staring ahead, lips pursed. I needed to talk to her about recent events but didn’t see how I could. Not alone, anyway.

We had been driving toward the dam complex and had by now reached the top of the first one. The effort had been worth it. A shimmering expanse of water hemmed in by rocky valley walls suddenly appeared to greet us. It was spectacularly lovely yet also surprisingly bleak, as frequent rhododendron-halting fires had reduced the vegetation to nothing more than stunted scrub. The road was suffering, too. Where the Perpetulite ran across rock, it had thinned with malnutrition, and small rocky outcrops now poked through the roadway, requiring us to creep over some of the larger obstructions with care.

The road followed the eastern side of the reservoir, passed the remains of an arched bridge and carried on until it petered out into silted-up marshland, where the reed beds were home to waders, spoonbills and, most gloriously, flamingos.

We motored up a short rise where we found a second dam that had been breached long ago and was now once more a valley with a stream running through it. The road twisted and turned and rose, the vegetation became less burned, and pretty soon we were driving across open moorland. We passed a grove of stunted oaks, then two rusted-iron land crawlers, badly eroded by the wind and rain. Then, just when all seemed to be going well, the road abruptly stopped in an erratic plume of errant Perpetulitic growth, with six knotted plastoid tendrils stopped in their tracks by a series of bronze spikes. The Perpetulite had not taken well to the spalling and had gone into an ugly frenzy of errant growth. Lumpy roadway had bulged up, and the white center line had twisted about itself like cream being stirred into coffee.

Jane pulled off the road onto a grassy verge next to a Faraday cage.

“It’s called spalling,” said Tommo, since we were all staring at the panicked manner in which the road had attempted to rejoin with its lost section. “When Perpetulite catches plastoid necrosis , the only way to protect the road system is to amputate and then spike. I don’t think it likes it very much.”

“Like I give a ratfink what the road thinks,” said Violet. “Let’s get on with it.”

“I leave an hour before nightfall,” announced Jane, breaking out the oilcan from the toolbox. “If you’re not here, I go home without you. Have fun now, children, and don’t squabble.”

“You better be here,” said Courtland.

“I’ll be here,” she said, giving him a smile, “but will you?”

She was trying to frighten him, but it didn’t seem to be working.

We gathered our knapsacks, and with little ceremony we walked past the spalled Perpetulite and onto the track of the vanished road, which, despite being fully reclaimed as grassy moorland, was still visible as a flatter section of ground. Almost immediately, I made some lame excuse and hurried back to the Ford, which was being assiduously oiled by Jane with the oversize oilcan.

“I thought you were here because you changed your mind.”

“I thought so, too,” she said without looking at me, “right up until you couldn’t resist giving darling Violet your very best. You had me fooled. For a moment there I thought you were actually quite pleasant.”

“It was an accident.”

“Where did you mean to put it? Her sock?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why should you be sorry?” She took a deep breath. “Whatever it was, Eddie, it’s gone. I don’t care any longer. But since I owe you, here’s some advice: There’s a flak tower three foot-hours away. Don’t go beyond it.”

“I have to. That’s the point of the expedition.”

She shrugged, switched on the ignition, hand-cranked the engine, jumped into the driver’s seat, and without another look at me, moved off in a cloud of smoke.

I sighed, cursed my own weakness, then ran to catch up with the others.

We stuck to the easily recognized path of the gone-away road, and after a half mile of well-grazed moorland we descended a short hill and entered a forest of mature oak. A few trees had fallen across the road but nothing too dramatic.

“We’d get the Ford along here,” said Tommo, who had trotted forward to join me up front.

The road took us around a sweeping curve and then up a slight incline, where, standing forlornly in a sun-dappled glade, we came across a Farmall crawler such as might have been used to assist with logging. This was where the battle to reopen the road had ended thirty years ago, the Farmall abandoned when it was replaced by plow horses as motive power during one of the periodic small stepbacks.

Enthusiasm for keeping the road open had seemingly died with it. I made a note in my exercise book.

“So,” I said to Tommo as we walked past the crawler and around a bramble thicket to rejoin the track of the old road, “what’s going on?”

“Yes, I suppose I should explain.”

“Would you?” I asked. “I’d be really very grateful.”

“No need to be like that.”

“So what are you doing out here? I thought most Cinnabars were cowards.”

“Not most, all,” he replied with disarming honesty.

“I’m still listening.”

“Right. Well, we were talking about your insane mission, and blow me down if Lucy doesn’t go all gooey and say how brave and manly you are. And Courtland and I got to thinking that instead of making it a trip of almost certain death and unspeakable horrors, we could invest in a few safeguards to make the trip work to everyone’s advantage. We had a brief chat, and here we are: Courtland, Violet, me and yourself.”

“And where do the safeguards come into it?”

“You’ll see.”

We had arrived at a stone house by the side of the road. The interior was a sea of brambles, and there was a beech growing in the corner. Next to the building were the remnants of an outhouse that had collapsed long ago, and beneath the carpet of roof tiles, leaf litter and moss were the remnants of a vehicle. Although anything metallic had rusted or corroded away long ago, the plastic still remained, along with four perished rubber tires and a pair of glass headlights, which looked as though they might have been cast yesterday. A flash of white on the ground caught my eye, and I picked up a sun-bleached molar. It was definitely human, although it looked as though someone had stuck some metal neatly onto the worn surface. I tapped the tooth on my palm, and the metal section dropped out. It was heavy and shiny, so I put it in my pocket.