'Choice, Meg, choice. Quality and balance. We may carouse without oblivion. There's a difference between inebriation and exultation. The G.o.d within and the G.o.d without.'

'Just so long as you can tell the difference,' said Meg.

'There's no point in drinking if you are unable to recall the taste,' said Colin. 'Here. Take these two, please. Careful. It would be a tragedy to drop them.'

They went back to the entrance and Colin locked the gate.

'New potatoes, carrots and broccoli, with garlic bread. How does that sound?'

'It sounds pretty good to me,' said Meg. 'Did you grow all this yourself?'

'Apart from the dead sheep. I'll just show the broccoli the water while we have an aperitif.' Colin opened a bottle and poured into crystal gla.s.s. 'Welcome to Imazaz, Meg.'

'Thanks, Colin. Cheers. Down the hatch. Whoa! This is the real stuff!'

'What else should it be?' said Colin.

He lay in the lodge and waited. She would come. Now she would come. He knew.

'A drop more to finish your plate?' said Colin.

'Thanks. What I'd like to know is how do you manage to keep a perspective?' said Meg. 'Don't you get lost in it all? The immensities?'

'It's only maths.'

'"Only".'

'Well of course it's difficult to begin with,' said Colin. 'You have to try not to think of the implications while you're a.s.sembling the data. My first professor had a way of dealing with that. He said that if we go out to the limit of the cosmos and in, to the sub-atomic extreme, the human body is more or less at the middle of mensuration. We're at the point of balance. It may well be that we are that point of balance. Now, since he said it, I can show, from our present knowledge of the cosmos, that he was wrong; but then I don't know how far the particle physicists have moved in the other direction. We may still be at the middle. And that's only for this universe. Anyway, it's a helpful reference point to keep in mind.'

'Leonardo would have loved your professor,' said Meg.

'But there's always the moment when the data are all collected and it's just you and them,' said Colin. 'That's when it can be hard. You're on your own. But it doesn't happen every week, thank goodness. Then you have to treat it as a game, and play around; and sooner or later you "see" the obvious; though proving it can take longer. Much longer. But, at the heart, all discovery is play.'

'How do you know when you've finished?'

'Oh, there's no finish. Sometimes you see the answer first, then spend years finding what the question is. That's the nearest you come to finishing. This is donkey and carrot country. If I ever finished, I don't know what I'd do. I might as well peel potatoes.'

'There's nothing wrong with scrubbing a few spuds,' said Meg, 'to go with the carrots; very tasty, by the way. But are you saying there's no final answer?'

'I hope there isn't,' said Colin. 'I'm for uncertainty. As soon as you think you know, you're done for. You don't listen and you can't hear. If you're certain of anything, you shut the door on the possibility of revelation, of discovery. You can think. You can believe. But you can't, you mustn't, "know". There's the real entropy.'

'How come?'

'I can show you best with a story.'

'Oh, stories! Stories freak me out. Tell me one.'

'Right,' said Colin, and took a mouthful of wine. 'Ready? Well. One day, Vishnu, otherwise Delta Capricorni, is sitting alone on the top of Ch.o.m.olungma.'

'What's that?'

'The highest of all mountains.'

'Do you mean Everest?'

'That's an imposed, impertinent, imperial arrogance,' said Colin. 'Its name is Ch.o.m.olungma; or Sagarmth. Now shall I tell you this story or not?'

'Oops. Into the Naughty Corner, Meg. Please tell me the story.'

'Right. So Vishnu is sitting on the top of Ch.o.m.olungma, and crying.'

'Why?'

'Oh, Meg. Do be quiet. You're worse than a child.'

She turned her mouth down.

'Vishnu is crying. And along comes Hanuman, Alpha Bootes, the monkey G.o.d, and he says, "Why are you crying? And what are all those ants down there on the Earth so excited about?" "They're not ants," says Vishnu. "They're people. I was holding the Jewel of Absolute Wisdom; and I dropped it; and it fell into the World and broke. Everybody down there has got a tiny splinter of it; but they each think they've got the whole thing, and they're all running around and shouting and telling each other, but no one is listening." That's the story.'

'Wow. That's a true story,' said Meg. 'Just love it.'

'For "ants" you could subst.i.tute "cosmologists",' said Colin.

'And most of the medical fraternity,' said Meg. 'So there's the reason why you'd rather be the donkey.'

'There's the reason why I'd rather be the donkey.'

'I'll take a high five on that,' said Meg.

'Take a what?' said Colin.

'Never mind,' said Meg, and lowered her hand.

'Think about it,' said Colin. 'If a painter ever achieved perfection, what else would there be to do? The same goes for a sculptor; or a composer; a potter; or anyone.'

'Even a physicist?' said Meg. 'I see. Especially a physicist. So you're one of the "try again, fail again, fail better" crew. Without differentiating between science and art. That's excellent.' She laid her knife and fork on the plate and savoured her wine. 'Colin, this has to be the best nosh I've eaten since I don't know when.'

'Good. I'm glad you've enjoyed it. Shall we have our cheese by the fire?'

He put more wood on the embers.

'Why not? But isn't it a bit of a lot dead?' said Meg.

'It needs to breathe, that's all.' He set the cheese board between them on a stool, and opened a bottle. 'I think you'll find this goes particularly well with Stinking Bishop.'

Flames began to curl.

'It goes a treat,' said Meg.

They sat in silence, watching the fire.

'What a day,' said Meg. 'What a day this has been.'

'I hope it still is,' said Colin.

'I'm thinking,' said Meg. 'I'm thinking about two things in particular.'

'Yes?'

'All those names and initials cut in the soft coloured stone at Castle Rock.'

'They do rather spoil the look of the place, don't they?' said Colin.

'But every one of them meant something when they were cut.'

'I suppose they did.'

'And they do now,' said Meg.

'I take your point, even though I may not agree.'

'Then the carving on the hard bit: the face, labyrinth thingy. That's not vandalism, is it? You'd keep that.'

'Naturally,' said Colin.

'Because it's art? Because it's old? It was a graffito when it was fresh, surely, wasn't it?'

'But for other reasons?'

'Such as?'

'Numen?'

'So how old does a graffito have to be before it's numinous?'

'It may not be age alone,' said Colin. 'I acknowledge that "JH" and "AF" bashed inside a heart give a relationship more permanence than it may have had historically, but perhaps the enigmatic graffito, from the beginning, held more of a charge. And holds it yet. The intensity of the moment may remain.'

'Do you mean that?'

'I do. And why was it not cut on the soft rock? It would have been easier.'

'Mm. But not as enduring. I get you. So it was conscious relative permanence. They knew.'

'I can recommend the Stilton.'

'Thanks.'

'What was the second thing?' said Colin.

'The pebbles in the tunnel. How long have they been shut in that stone?'

'Two hundred and forty-three million years; approximately.'

'Two hundred and forty-three million? How can they bear it?'

'Meg, are you claiming that the inanimate is also sensate?'

'Probably not. More like I'm projecting my own twinge of panic. Like taking your vest off under the bedclothes. But I still feel queasy that those lovely things can't move. Perhaps animism is the human default.'

'But they are moving,' said Colin. 'They can't not be.'

'How do you mean?'

'Do you really want me to tell you?'

'I really want you to tell me.'

'Really really?' His eyes were mischief.

'Really really.'

'Really really really?'

'Really really really.'

'Really really really really really?'

'Colin!'

'Let me refresh your gla.s.s. Here comes a party trick.'

'Thanks. That's plenty,' said Meg. 'So what's the party trick?'

'Well now,' said Colin. 'Let's a.s.sume that time is linear and unidirectional, otherwise we could soon be lost.'

'You mean it isn't?' said Meg 'Not in my opinion; and thought experiments show this, but by the nature of things not everyone agrees with the premise. I say that time is multi-dimensional and exists in different forms. We've opted for the advancing linear flow, "The Arrow of Time", because it's the most efficient for our needs, and so the easiest to handle, perhaps for Darwinian reasons.'

'Oh yes. Charlie,' said Meg. 'Where should we be without him?'

'Now then. First there's continental drift. Our piece of the Eurasian sheet is currently moving east by east-north-east at a relative speed of one point nine centimetres per year, which gives an absolute velocity of zero point nine five centimetres per year. Clear?'

'Yerrs ... For the moment. I'll tell you when I'm not. But take it easy.'

'So, I'm the Earth.' Colin spread out his arms, holding his gla.s.s in one hand, the bottle in the other. 'The Earth, at our lat.i.tude, is rotating at one thousand and four point nine one kilometres per hour, like this.' He began to turn slowly. 'And it's moving in orbit around the Sun at one hundred and seven thousand and four point eight seven kilometres per hour.' Still turning, Colin circled the room. 'I'll keep going, but the rest you'll have to imagine. The relative speeds I'm demonstrating are not accurate, but for ill.u.s.tration only. Right?'

'Right. Just about. But watch your gla.s.s.'

'Next, the solar system, let's say this hut, which necessarily would be a lot bigger if it were to scale, is travelling towards the star Lambda Herculis at twenty kilometres per second, and rising at ninety degrees to the plane of the Galaxy at twenty-five thousand one hundred and forty-four point three nine kilometres per hour,' he took a sip of his drink, 'while orbiting the centre of the Galaxy at two hundred kilometres per second. And the Galaxy itself is being drawn by gravitational attraction towards the Local Group at two million one hundred and twenty-one thousand two hundred and ninety-eight point eight kilometres per hour-'