'Meg! Look! It's a Lower Palaeolithic Abbevillian hand axe!'

'It is? You astound me, Colin.'

'Hold it. Feel it. Look at it. But keep it over the cushion.'

Meg took the stone in her hand.

'Turn it. It'll tell you.'

Meg moved the stone around in her palm and fingers.

'Good grief. It's alive.'

'It is! You can feel it!'

The stone fitted her hand. The smooth curves were against her skin. The rough serrations were outside her thumb and fingers, and the fluted point below.

'Is it human?' she said.

'Hominin. Just about,' said Colin. 'h.o.m.o erectus, perhaps, or h.o.m.o heidelbergensis; but definitely not sapiens or sapiens sapiens.'

'Lower Palaeolithic?' said Meg. 'So how old are we talking here?'

'About half a million years.'

'"About"?'

'It's impossible to be more accurate. There's no context.'

'Where did you find it?'

'I didn't. R.T., the Director, he dug it up when he was planning the telescope. It was directly beneath where the light of the focus would be when it's in the zenith.'

'Mm. That is remarkable,' said Meg. 'It is amazing. I agree.'

'You don't know how much,' said Colin. 'It's half a million years old, but he found it under the turf, on top of soil that's only ten thousand, at most.'

'How do you account for that?'

'I can't. It shouldn't have been there.'

'Let's get real,' said Meg. 'I grant you it handles as if it's a tool, but are you sure it's not natural?'

'I'm positive. It's a cobble made from a flake. It has smooth natural facets and naturally rounded b.u.t.t, all showing derived features, which means at one time it was rolling around in water; a brook or river, say. Then someone picked it up; chose it; worked it. The end has been pointed, by pressure or indirect percussion, though that, I must say, is unusual, and a sinuous edge has been formed through bifacial chipping and step flaking to give a triangular section. The opposite edge has been heavily blunted. All the flake scars appear to be contemporaneous and non-derived. Secondary silication of the scars is uniform and complete. Somehow it has been protected from the Anglian and subsequent glaciations. It shouldn't be possible for it to have survived here. Yet it has. Of that there can be no doubt.'

Meg turned the stone over and over in her hand. 'OK,' she said. 'I don't get the technical malarky, but it sits one way, and one way only, and right.'

'I told you it would tell you,' said Colin.

'Yep. I wasn't tuned in. I am now. You've converted me. "This stone is poor, and cheap in price; spurned by fools, loved more by the wise."'

'Sorry?' said Colin.

'I'm translating. You say you're c.r.a.p at Latin. Well, this asks the Grail Question. And, come to think of it, the Grail can be a stone, too.'

'I don't understand what it is you're saying.'

'You don't understand? That's a relief. I was beginning to feel a bit of a bozo.'

'I've heard of it, but I don't know what it is,' said Colin. 'The Question.'

'"What is this thing? What does it mean? Whom does it serve?" If those mediaeval r.e.t.a.r.ded adolescents of the Round Table hadn't been so a.n.a.lly retentive but had asked the Question straight off, a lot of knights would have been out of a job quick smart.'

Meg turned the stone.

'That's just what R.T. used to do,' said Colin. 'He found it comforting. But he couldn't see that it was anything more than what he called "tactile".'

'I know what he meant,' said Meg. 'It's a feely. Yes. Better than worry beads, any day. There could be quite a market. The way the smooth goes into the sharp and out again; and the ripples in the scars; like sea sh.e.l.ls.'

'That's the conchoidal fracture,' said Colin.

'And how've you come by it?' said Meg.

'R.T. gave it to me.'

'Gave it to you? Why?'

'He said I had more need of it now than he had.'

'Oh? How's that?'

'I resigned from my post.'

's.h.i.t and derision. Colin? What did I tell you? I can't be doing with martyrs. Is this how you fail better? Have you not got one single ounce of gumption in you?'

'I know. But I felt I must. Had to. Immediately. But he wouldn't accept it.'

'I should think not. You prannock. You total pillock.'

'He gave me this instead.'

'Good on him. Did you tell him what it was?'

'I tried to tell him, but he didn't seem to be interested.'

'Wise man.' She turned the stone. 'How black is that?'

'Black blacker than black,' said Colin. 'Black as carbon; though it is probably a silicate. But when you look, it's got some tiny inclusions. If you look long enough it feels as if you're staring into it, not at it; into. But that's me. I would, wouldn't I?'

'Mm. Perhaps. Then perhaps not.'

Meg laid the flat side in her palm and weighed it.

'This way, it's a heart,' she said. 'But if you turn it this way, the profile is more like that of a car.'

'A car. It is. It is,' said Colin. 'One of those tinted-windowed things they drive round here.'

'Ah, drivers,' said Meg. '"The bimbos of Lower Slobovia," as I've heard tell. I know what you mean. They don't take kindly to being carved up by my bike; not one bit they don't.'

'I've been in a ditch many a time on their account,' said Colin. 'What are they hiding that's so important?'

'Cotton-woolled kids, mainly. But I do agree.'

'Wait a minute,' said Colin. He took the stone from Meg's hand. 'There's something else. Wait a minute.'

He held the stone sideways on. 'No.' He put the stone down on the cushion and sat back, his hands behind him.

'What's the matter?' said Meg.

'No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.'

'Oh, cripes,' said Meg. 'Colin, I thought you said this was social. Come on. Oi. Off. Shift your b.u.m. Move. Over there. Now.'

Colin went wide round the table and sat in the chair, watching the stone.

'What is it?' said Meg.

'Crow. Upper mandible. Crow. Carrion crow. Corvus corone corone. You know. Corneille noire; cornacchia nera; fran dyddyn; varona chernaya; wroniec; nokivaris; Rabenkrahe; svart krka ...'

'Right,' said Meg. 'And not before time. Colin, what is it about crows with you? Eric put in his notes that when he suggested you came here you asked whether I was a witch. Now that's something I get, in one form or another, nearly every time, especially from goofed-up males and loud-mouthed honking know-alls. I'm used to it. But then you asked if I liked crows. It was the first thing you asked me. Did I like crows? So what is it?'

'No.'

'Sorry, but Yes. The stone's trying to help you. Listen to it. What's it telling you? What is it you see?'

'No.'

'Colin. You're not your ordinary anorak routine twitcher with binoculars round your neck and a notebook in your hand. And you don't collect train numbers on Crewe station. You've published; and published d.a.m.ned well, from what I've read about you. So why do you get spooked when it comes to crows?'

'Co-auth.o.r.ed,' said Colin. 'Mainly the raptors, especially kestrel, Falco tinnunculus, commonly windhover. Its usual prey is the smaller mammals, such as mice and voles; even young rabbits. I did not write the chapter on the Corvidae.'

'Why not?'

'Meg. Please.'

'Go there. Tell me. Now's your chance. The stone's on your side.'

'Please. I can't.'

'You can. Come on, chuckles. What's up with crows?'

'And witches. I can't tell them apart. Fact from metaphor. They're every part alike the same to me.'

'Really? I did wonder what all that was about.'

'What all what was about?'

'I was wondering whether you'd say without being shoved.'

'Say what?'

'Eric said that before you went in to see him you'd caused quite a stramash in the waiting area when you shouted at a small kid and his granny.'

'Oh, that.'

'Oh, yes, that. What got into you?'

'She was reading a story to him,' said Colin. 'About a boy going to a witch's house. And I had a flashback. I couldn't help it.'

'Was it a flashback of something that happened or of a dream?'

'I don't know.'

'Can't you remember? Can't you tell the difference?'

'Usually I can. But this was so clear. So vivid. It felt that it had happened. Happened to me. Once.'

'Is it a retrieved flashback from before you were thirteen?'

'It must be.'

'Can you see it now?'

'I don't want to.'

'Tell me.'

'Do I have to?'

'It matters, Colin. It matters a lot. I don't mock witches.'

'I'm in a room in a big house. I don't remember how I've come to be here. Crows are perched on the windowsills outside. And there's a witch, she's standing over me. I know she's a witch. She's all in black, with a cord round her waist. I'm lying on the floor. I can't move.'

'Does she look like me?' said Meg.

'-No. She's older. Fatter and older.'

'You hesitated.'