'Jesus, Luis,' she said. 'What do you feed that thing?'

Luis put the toilet lid down and sat on it. 'The only thing it seems to like is Kosher Pareve fruit loops.'

'You can't give it human food.'

'It wouldn't eat anything else. Anyway, think of how little the egg was. It's thriving.'

Swan stared at the animal. It didn't stare back, turning a piece of circuitry over and over at the end of a cylindrical limb. 'Do you think it knows we're talking about it?'

'I don't think it cares. All that interests it is mechanical things, electronic things. I gave it an alarm clock and a child's toy telephone and it plucked them apart.'

Swan leaned against the wall, the towelrack pressing into her back. 'OK,' she admitted. 'You got me. I'm impressed.'

'We should leave it alone,' said Luis, but he didn't get up.

'That coffee must be done.'

'I don't want to go out,' said Swan. 'I want, to watch it'

She gave a little shudder, as though waking up out of a daydream. 'I guess I want to convince myself it's real.'

'It's a fascinating little thing, isn't it?' said Luis.

'Sometimes I find myself watching it for hours. I watch it take some appliance apart and put it back together again, over and over.'

'Just like its daddy,' said Swan. Neither of them moved, and in the kitchen, boiling coffee sludge escaped its saucepan and spread across the stovetop.

Bob called the number for the Eridani's bolthole again and again, but each time all he heard was ringing, a click, and a sort of screeching that got louder and softer.

'Do we have to move again?' said a weary Peri, stuffing her few possessions into a shoulderbag.

'We've gotta get off the grid,' said Bob. 'Isolate ourselves.

Swan's all over the phone system like a rash.'

We went through the whole routine one more time: checkout, sneak out the back way leaving the rent-a-car in the parking lot, taxi to yet another car place. Bob paid cash for the remains of a '71 Travco ('designed and appointed to a.s.sure the finest in plush living for two people') and loaded it up with what remained of his nuclear survival kit. The RV looked like the unnatural offspring of a caravan trailer and a school bus.

'We got one heavily armoured recreational vehicle here, man!'

enthused Bob.

'How are we going to find the Doctor?' said Peri.

Bob said, 'We're gonna mail him a letter.'

Meanwhile, the man in question was sitting in his rented Mercedes, looking up at a cop.

He had got out of the Eridani's apartment building with seconds to spare: just as he was about to knock on their door, he heard the elevator doors ping across the hallway and saw the blue of uniforms inside. He hoofed it down the concrete stairs of the emergency exit two at a time and slid back into his car in the bas.e.m.e.nt garage.

He was sure there was no way the police could have spotted him. But he was pulled over not five minutes after leaving the building. The police car and his car were sitting on the shoulder of the Beltway, the rest of the traffic shooting past in Dopplered spurts.

'Can I see your licence? Please? Sir?' said the cop. He and his partner, sitting back in the patrol car, were a pair of grim blond body-builders who looked like they'd been stamped out of the same mould, like Smurfs.

'Of course, officer. ' The Doctor fished around in his jacket pockets, pulling out all sorts of ident.i.ty cards, spare change, and junk, until he found a wallet containing four American dollars, ten Scottish pounds, an autographed picture of Grace Murray Hopper and a current Maryland driver's licence. The policeman wordlessly wandered back to his car and handed the piece of plastic to his clone.

In that moment when their eyes were off him, the Doctor reached over and opened the glovebox. He knew it was a dangerous thing to do; if they noticed the movement, they would a.s.sume he was reaching for a weapon, getting it ready to use.

He was.

The cop was back. 'You don't mind if we search the vehicle, sir?' he said.

'Of course not, officer. Always more than happy to co-operate with the authorities in pursuit of their duty.' The Doctor got out of the car and stood near the bonnet while the pair of patrolmen sniffed around the trunk and then the glovebox.

The cop straightened up and showed his partner the Eridani device over the roof of the car. 'What do we have here?' he said.

'Seems like we found what we were looking for,' said the other cop. 'I'm going to ask you to come for a ride with us, sir.'

The kids were so raddled that I offered to drive. Bob dozed in the pa.s.senger seat, occasionally emitting directions, until we arrived at a post office. 'Pull over, pull over.' His slurred speech sounded like backmasking.

Bob jumped out of the campervan while I kept the motor running, dashed up to the post office boxes, fumbled with the keys, and pushed a postcard into one of the boxes. He looked up and down the street once, startled, as if suddenly remembering we were supposed to be on the run. Then he collapsed back into the pa.s.senger seat and erupted into mighty snores.

Somewhere around here, I realised I'd forgotten all about Trina's birthday. I slapped my hand against the car door and cussed. I'd promised to take her out for surf 'n' turf. There was nothing I could do about it now I couldn't even phone her.

We headed out along 270, past the tatty yellow ribbons still tied to telephone poles, until the strip malls tapered out into houses and then into nothing, just the highway.

Two.

By midnight we felt safe enough to stop and sleep.

Peri and Bob had got so used to my quiet presence that they talked as if I wasn't there. I sat in the pa.s.senger seat of the Travco, trying to make myself comfortable, while they lay in the sleeping bags in the back, muttering about whether the Doctor was OK and if he could find us. Centre of their world.

Boy, it was brown back there in the Travco. Brown brown brown. The national colour of the Seventies. Bob had chivalrously taken the sofa under the mangled venetians, while Pert got the 'bedroom'. They had the heater on full, running off the generator. I suppose I could have stretched out on the floor, but I didn't fancy being trodden on.

We were pulled over in a scenic lookout. Other than their murmuring, it was deadly quiet. I had a view of pine trees standing like dark giants, rearing up from the hillside and staring down at the gravel arc of the lookout. There was no moon. If I ducked my head a little, I could see a skyful of burning stars.

Oh yeah. I stretched out my legs on the driver's side, my jacket pillowed under my head. The dark is good. It's always good. I remember burning out of Los Angeles in a little Citroen I later crashed in a ditch and left for dead. The California emptiness looked like a video game, looked like Night Driver, just lights in the sky and lights marking the edges of the road, a big black screen. I was invisible then. And the three of us were invisible now. Even Swan couldn't see through the thick black m.u.f.fler we were wrapped in. I nodded off in my diagonal position, warm and toasty in the blast from the van's heater.

I woke up as the sound of another car carried through the night air. A moment later we heard the crunch of tires on gravel. I ducked down, peeking through the pa.s.senger window. The other car was parking in the lookout, a little distance from us.

'It's OK,' I said. 'It's the Doctor.'

Peri and Bob wriggled loose from their sleeping bags and opened the side door of the campervan. The Doctor got inside and closed the door. They scrunched up to make room for him, banging on the back of my seat.

'Thank you for the postcard, Bob,' he said.

'Are you OK?' said Peri, sleepily.

'Manifestly,' said the Doctor.

'Well, how did everything go?'

'Almost without a hitch. I did have a little run-in with some officers of the law.' Peri and Bob's eyes grew huge.

'Fortunately, with the device at hand, it wasn't difficult to persuade them to sit quietly in their patrol car until I had made good my escape.'

'You did what?' I said.

He said grimly, 'I was not exaggerating when I said that, in the wrong hands, the device could be used for mischievous ends. In any case, it's out of the picture now. The device has been safely returned to its owners, and they have retreated to a safer location. I suggest you all get a good night's rest, and tomorrow we'll begin our search for its twin.

Some time later I opened my eyes and saw that the Doctor was standing in the lookout, uh, looking out. His hands were clasped behind his back. Standing so still, in his black suit, he looked like one of the mountains out there in the night, solid and ramrod still. I slipped out of the car, pulling on my jacket, and went to stand beside him.

The air was crisp and clean as though it had just been washed. American forests smell smell different, they have a rich, dirty, wet smell you could cut with a knife. Australian forests have their own delicate, dry smell. It's like comparing coffee to tea. And the sky... instead of the sparkling cross, there's the huge, empty shape of the plough, cranking its way around the northern pole of the sky like a giant handle. different, they have a rich, dirty, wet smell you could cut with a knife. Australian forests have their own delicate, dry smell. It's like comparing coffee to tea. And the sky... instead of the sparkling cross, there's the huge, empty shape of the plough, cranking its way around the northern pole of the sky like a giant handle.

I lit up. In the freezing air, the cigarette felt like it was burning my fingers. The Doctor glanced back towards the car.

'How do you think they're managing?' he asked quietly.

I took a deep, deep drag of that tasty smoke. 'They're knackered,' I said bluntly. 'I think the excitement is wearing off, even for Bob. Peri's just coasting. It's like she's used to things sucking, she expects it.'

The corner of the Doctor's mouth scrunched into an angry look. 'That young lady has seen me through some very troubled times. And that young man has a great deal of courage and determination. They both deserve better than running from place to place in a constant lather.'

I shrugged. 'If either of them really can't take it, they'll just step out for a packet of peanuts and never come back.' He looked down at me. 'They'll survive,' I said. 'They both believe this is incredibly important.'

'It's more important than I can tell you, Mr Peters.'

'Chick. Please.'

'Chick,' he said. He looked out across the valley again, breathed in that cold clean air. 'May I?' the Doctor reached for my ciggie. I handed it over. He flicked his hand in the air, and suddenly it was gone. He went on as though nothing had happened. 'It's so hard to believe this little world is balancing on the edge of a knife. Every day, any day, at a moment's notice, the sky could fill with deadly lights.'

'I know. Now this thing with Poland. You know, my neighbour's kid plays Missile Command. That home video game. He's still too young to get the joke.'

But the Doctor was shaking his head. 'It's not your petty wars I'm worried about,' he said. That startled the h.e.l.l out of me: one of the facts of life, living in Washington DC, was knowing you were standing in one of the world's biggest nuclear targets.

'Oh, I get it,' I said. 'The aliens. The UFOs are going to come and get us if we don't return their toys'

'A distinct possibility,' he said. 'Though I'm far more worried about what human beings might do with Eridani technology.' He raised a hand to stop me before I could ask again what the devices were supposed to do. 'A cageful of mischievous and belligerent monkeys. And someone throws in a hand grenade for them to play with. There's one more component out there. One more. I'm convinced Miss Swan knows where it is. She will be more determined than ever to keep it out of our hands, to discover its secrets.'

'How much harm can Swan do?' Where the h.e.l.l had he put the lit cigarette? 'Even if she finds the last pieces, won't it be useless on its own?'

'It may actually be more more dangerous without the other components to control it.' dangerous without the other components to control it.'

'Doctor,' I said, 'did you invent it? Is that what this is all about?'

He give me one of his piercing blue looks, and suddenly that safe lambswool feeling of the darkness just flew away, and I had the same feeling I had had with Swan: this was a person who could look right through you and see all your secrets. He lived on another plane, rich with information, with a million data points you had no way of accessing like a four-dimensional monster that can see you when you can't see it.

'Still trying to come up with an explanation you can put into print,' he said.

'Well, I've already decided you can't be a Ruskie, or you'd have found some way of getting rid of me.' I had a sudden flash of being chucked down the side of the mountain in the dark. 'Before now,' I added.

'I see,' said the Doctor. And what are your other theories about my ident.i.ty?'

I ticked them off on my fingers. 'Corporate agent.

Industrial spy. UFOlogist. Undercover military investigator.

Pseudologue. A major unknown hacker that goes without saying. Art thief.'

'Art thief?'

'Well, the "devices" really could be stolen artworks for all I know. So, am I getting warm?'

He just smiled, and went back to stargazing.

'Which of those is Epsilon Eridani?'

The Doctor's finger swept up to point instantly at the star.

'That one,' he said. 'The "Eridani's" jumping off point for your volume of s.p.a.ce.'

I suddenly seemed to see the lines between the stars, the paths taken by all those imaginary starships, hopping from one to the next to the next to the next. 'So how come they haven't taken over the world?'

'Without faster-than4ight travel? Very uneconomical.

Besides, the ecology is all wrong. Mars would be more their cup of tea, if It wasn't already taken.' He spoke not with the feverish excitement of a true believer, but casually; like a lecturer sketching in the basic details for a student.

'So I suppose they're the source of all the UFO sightings.'

'Certainly not. The Eridani have been slingshotting craft through your solar system for centuries, studiously avoiding drawing attention to themselves. It's only now that the human race has developed radio that this mighty bungle has occurred.'

I was getting interested despite myself. His story was so straightforward no ancient civilisations, no higher planes of consciousness. 'So why did they screw up?'

'They simply didn't notice that anyone was here. It only takes eleven years for radio signals to reach Eridani from Earth, but by the time they get there, distance has watered them down to a billionth of their original strength. Put simply; they didn't care and they weren't looking. To them, the Earth is just the equivalent of an interplanetary traffic cone.' I had to laugh at that, but he looked deadly serious. 'And just about as disposable. There must be a world for Peri to come home to,'

he breathed.