«Stamp?» said Reg.
«Yes, you must know,» said Dirk, «very famous stamp. Can't remember anything about it, but it comes from here. Mauritius. Famous for its very remarkable stamp, all brown and smudged and you could buy Blenheim Palace with it. Or am I thinking of British Guiana?»
«Only you,» said Richard, «know what you are thinking of.»
«Is it Mauritius?»
«It is,» said Reg, «it is Mauritius.»
«But you don't collect stamps?»
«No.»
«What on earth's that?» said Richard suddenly, but Dirk carried on with his thought to Reg, «Pity, you could get some nice first-day covers, couldn't you?»
Reg shrugged. «Not really interested,» he said.
Richard slithered back down the slope behind them.
«So what's the great attraction here?» said Dirk. «It's not, I have to confess, what I was expecting. Very nice in its way, of course, all this nature, but I'm a city boy myself, I'm afraid.» He cleaned his glasses once again and pushed them back up his nose.
He started backwards at what he saw, and heard a strange little chuckle from Reg. Just in front of the door back into Reg's room, the most extraordinary confrontation was taking place.
A large cross bird was looking at Richard and Richard was looking at a large cross bird. Richard was looking at the bird as if it was the most extraordinary thing he had ever seen in his life, and the bird was looking at Richard as if defying him to find its beak even remotely funny.
Once it had satisfied itself that Richard did not intend to laugh, the bird regarded him instead with a sort of grim irritable tolerance and wondered if he was just going to stand there or actually do something useful and feed it. It padded a couple of steps back and a couple of steps to the side and then just a single step forward again, on great waddling yellow feet. It then looked at him again, impatiently, and squarked an impatient squark.
The bird then bent forward and scraped its great absurd red beak across the ground as if to give Richard the idea that this might be a good area to look for things to give it to eat.
«It eats the nuts of the calvaria tree,» called out Reg to Richard.
The big bird looked sharply up at Reg in annoyance, as if to say that it was perfectly clear to any idiot what it ate. It then looked back at Richard once more and stuck its head on one side as if it had suddenly been struck by the thought that perhaps it was an idiot it had to deal with, and that it might need to reconsider its strategy accordingly.
«There are one or two on the ground behind you,» called Reg softly.
In a trance of astonishment Richard turned awkwardly and saw one or two large nuts lying on the ground. He bent and picked one up, glancing up at Reg, who gave him a reassuring nod.
Tentatively Richard held the thing out to the bird, which leant forward and pecked it sharply from between his fingers. Then, because Richard's hand was still stretched out, the bird knocked it irritably aside with its beak.
Once Richard had withdrawn to a respectful distance, it stretched its neck up, closed its large yellow eyes and seemed to gargle gracelessly as it shook the nut down its neck into its maw.
It appeared then to be at least partially satisfied. Whereas before it had been a cross dodo, it was at least now a cross, fed dodo, which was probably about as much as it could hope for in this life.
It made a slow, waddling, on-the-spot turn and padded back into the forest whence it had come, as if defying Richard to find the little tuft of curly feathers stuck up on top of its backside even remotely funny.
«I only come to look,» said Reg in a small voice, and glancing at him Dirk was discomfited to see that the old man's eyes were brimming with tears which he quickly brushed away. «Really, it is not for me to interfere» —
Richard came scurrying breathlessly up to them.
«Was that a dodo?» he exclaimed.
«Yes,» said Reg, «one of only three left at this time. The year is 1676. They will all be dead within four years, and after that no one will ever see them again. Come,» he said, «let us go.»
Behind the stoutly locked outer door in the corner staircase in the Second Court of St Cedd's College, where only a millisecond earlier there had been a slight flicker as the inner door departed, there was another slight flicker as the inner door now returned.
Walking through the dark evening towards it the large figure of Michael Wenton-Weakes looked up at the corner windows. If any slight flicker had been visible, it would have gone unnoticed in the dim dancing firelight that spilled from the window.
The figure then looked up into the darkness of the sky, looking for what it knew to be there though there was not the slightest chance of seeing it, even on a clear night which this was not. The orbits of Earth were now so cluttered with pieces of junk and debris that one more item among them — even such a large one as this was — would pass perpetually unnoticed. Indeed, it had done so, though its influence had from time to time exerted itself. From time to time. When the waves had been strong. Not for nearly two hundred years had they been so strong as now they were again.
And all at last was now in place. The perfect carrier had been found.
The perfect carrier moved his footsteps onwards through the court.
The Professor himself had seemed the perfect choice at first, but that attempt had ended in frustration, fury, and then — inspiration!
Bring a Monk to Earth! They were designed to believe anything, to be completely malleable. It could be suborned to undertake the task with the greatest of ease.
Unfortunately, however, this one had proved to be completely hopeless. Getting it to believe something was very easy. Getting it to continue to believe the same thing for more than five minutes at a time had proved to be an even more impossible task than that of getting the Professor to do what he fundamentally wanted to do but wouldn't allow himself.
Then another failure and then, miraculously, the perfect carrier had come at last.
The perfect carrier had already proved that it would have no compunction in doing what would have to be done.
Damply, clogged in mist, the moon struggled in a corner of the sky to rise. At the window, a shadow moved.
CHAPTER 30
From the window overlooking Second Court Dirk watched the moon. «We shall not,» he said, «have long to wait.»
«To wait for what?» said Richard.
Dirk turned.
«For the ghost,» he said, «to return to us. Professor» — he added to Reg, who was sitting anxiously by the fire, «do you have any brandy, French cigarettes or worry beads in your rooms?»
«No,» said Reg.
«Then I shall have to fret unaided,» said Dirk and returned to staring out of the window.
«I have yet to be convinced,» said Richard, «that there is not some other explanation than that of… ghosts to» —
«Just as you required actually to see a time machine in operation before you could accept it,» returned Dirk. «Richard, I commend you on your scepticism, but even the sceptical mind must be prepared to accept the unacceptable when there is no alternative. If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands.»
«Then what is a ghost?»
«I think that a ghost…» said Dirk, «is someone who died either violently or unexpectedly with unfinished business on his, her — or its — hands. Who cannot rest until it has been finished, or put right.»
He turned to face them again.
«Which is why,» he said, «a time machine would have such a fascination for a ghost once it knew of its existence. A time machine provides the means to put right what, in the ghost's opinion, went wrong in the past. To free it.