She looked at him as if he were mad.
«Well, here it is,» said her father, plonking the thing down on the table. «Just a pot, as you see. She's only six,» he added with a grim smile, «aren't you, dear?»
«Seven,» said Sarah.
The pot was quite small, about five inches high and four inches across at its widest point. The body was almost spherical, with a very narrow neck extending about an inch above the body. The neck and about half of the surface area were encrusted with hard-caked earth, but the parts of the pot that could be seen were of a rough, ruddy texture.
Sarah took it and thrust it into the hands of the don sitting on her right.
«You look clever,» she said. «Tell me what you think.»
The don took it, and turned it over with a slightly supercilious air. «I'm sure if you scraped away the mud from the bottom,» he remarked wittily, «it would probably say „Made in Birmingham“.»
«That old, eh?» said Sarah's father with a forced laugh. «Long time since anything was made there.»
«Anyway,» said the don, «not my field, I'm a molecular biologist.
Anyone else want to have a look?»
This question was not greeted with wild yelps of enthusiasm, but nevertheless the pot was passed from hand to hand around the far end of the table in a desultory fashion. It was goggled at through pebble glasses, peered at through horn-rims, gazed at over half-moons, and squinted at by someone who had left his glasses in his other suit, which he very much feared had now gone to the cleaner's. No one seemed to know how old it was, or to care very much. The young girl's face began to grow downhearted again.
«Sour lot,» said Reg to Richard. He picked up a silver salt cellar again and held it up.
«Young lady,» he said, leaning forward to address her.
«Oh, not again, you old fool,» muttered the aged archaeologist Cawley, sitting back and putting his hands over his ears.
«Young lady,» repeated Reg, «regard this simple silver salt cellar.
Regard this simple hat.»
«You haven't got a hat,» said the girl sulkily.
«Oh,» said Reg, «a moment please,» and he went and fetched his woolly red one.
«Regard,» he said again, «this simple silver salt cellar. Regard this simple woolly hat. I put the salt cellar in the hat, thus, and I pass the hat to you. The next part of the trick, dear lady… is up to you.»
He handed the hat to her, past their two intervening neighbours, Cawley and Watkin. She took the hat and looked inside it.
«Where's it gone?» she asked, staring into the hat.
«It's wherever you put it,» said Reg.
«Oh,» said Sarah, «I see. Well… that wasn't very good.»
Reg shrugged. «A humble trick, but it gives me pleasure,» he said, and turned back to Richard. «Now, what were we talking about?»
Richard looked at him with a slight sense of shock. He knew that the Professor had always been prone to sudden and erratic mood swings, but it was as if all the warmth had drained out of him in an instant. He now wore the same distracted expression Richard had seen on his face when first he had arrived at his door that evening, apparently completely unexpected. Reg seemed then to sense that Richard was taken aback and quickly reassembled a smile.
«My dear chap!» he said. «My dear chap! My dear, dear chap! What was I saying?»
«Er, you were saying „My dear chap“.»
«Yes, but I feel sure it was a prelude to something. A sort of short toccata on the theme of what a splendid fellow you are prior to introducing the main subject of my discourse, the nature of which I currently forget. You have no idea what I was about to say?»
«No.»
«Oh. Well, I suppose I should be pleased. If everyone knew exactly what I was going to say, then there would be no point in my saying it, would there? Now, how's our young guest's pot doing?»
In fact it had reached Watkin, who pronounced himself no expert on what the ancients had made for themselves to drink out of, only on what they had written as a result. He said that Cawley was the one to whose knowledge and experience they should all bow, and attempted to give the pot to him.
«I said,» he repeated, «yours was the knowledge and experience to which we should bow. Oh, for heaven's sake, take your hands off your ears and have a look at the thing.»
Gently, but firmly, he drew Cawley's right hand from his ear, explained the situation to him once again, and handed him the pot.
Cawley gave it a cursory but clearly expert examination.
«Yes,» he said, «about two hundred years old, I would think. Very rough. Very crude example of its type. Utterly without value, of course.»
He put it down peremptorily and gazed off into the old minstrel gallery, which appeared to anger him for some reason.
The effect on Sarah was immediate. Already discouraged, she was thoroughly downcast by this. She bit her lip and threw herself back against her chair, feeling once again thoroughly out of place and childish. Her father gave her a warning look about misbehaving, and then apologised for her again.
«Well, Buxtehude,» he hurried on to say, «yes, good old Buxtehude.
We'll have to see what we can do. Tell me…»
«Young lady,» interrupted a voice, hoarse with astonishment, «you are clearly a magician and enchantress of prodigious powers!»
All eyes turned to Reg, the old show-off. He was gripping the pot and staring at it with manic fascination. He turned his eyes slowly to the little girl, as if for the first time assessing the power of a feared adversary.
«I bow to you,» he whispered. «I, unworthy though I am to speak in the presence of such a power as yours, beg leave to congratulate you on one of the finest feats of the conjurer's art it has been my privilege to witness!»
Sarah stared at him with widening eyes.
«May I show these people what you have wrought?» he asked earnestly.
Very faintly she nodded, and he fetched her formerly precious, but now sadly discredited, pot a sharp rap on the table.
It split into two irregular parts, the caked clay with which it was surrounded falling in jagged shards on the table. One side of the pot fell away, leaving the rest standing.
Sarah's eyes goggled at the stained and tarnished but clearly recognisable silver college salt cellar, standing jammed in the remains of the pot.
«Stupid old fool,» muttered Cawley.
After the general disparagement and condemnation of this cheap parlour trick had died down — none of which could dim the awe in Sarah's eyes — Reg turned to Richard and said, idly: «Who was that friend of yours when you were here, do you ever see him? Chap with an odd East European name. Svlad something. Svlad Cjelli. Remember the fellow?»
Richard looked at him blankly for a moment.
«Svlad?» he said. «Oh, you mean Dirk. Dirk Cjelli. No. I never stayed in touch. I've bumped into him a couple of times in the street but that's all. I think he changes his name from time to time. Why do you ask?»
CHAPTER 5
High on his rocky promontory the Electric Monk continued to sit on a horse which was going quietly and uncomplainingly spare. From under its rough woven cowl the Monk gazed unblinkingly down into the valley, with which it was having a problem, but the problem was a new and hideous one to the Monk, for it was this — Doubt.
He never suffered it for long, but when he did, it gnawed at the very root of his being.
The day was hot; the sun stood in an empty hazy sky and beat down upon the grey rocks and the scrubby, parched grass. Nothing moved, not even the Monk. But strange things were beginning to fizz in its brain, as they did from time to time when a piece of data became misaddressed as it passed through its input buffer.