I did a bit of dodging in and out of those, and round the backs, ducking under guy ropes and round dumps of cardboard boxes. From the inside depths of a stall hung thickly outside with riding jackets I watched the two of them go past, hurrying, looking about them, distinctly anxious.

They weren't like the two Trevor Deansgate had sent, I thought. His had been clumsier, smaller, and less professional. These two looked as if this sort of work was their daily bread; and for all the comparative safety of the show ground, where as a last resort I could get into the arena itself and scream for help, there was something daunting about them. Rent-a-thugs usually came at so much per hour. These two looked salaried, if not actually on the Board.

I left the riding jackets and dodged into the film about sheep dogs, which I dare say would have been riveting but for the shepherding going on outside, with me as the sheep.

I looked at my watch. After two o'clock. Too much time was pa.s.sing. I had to try another sortie outside and find my way to the balloons.

I couldn't see them. I slithered among the crowd, asking for directions.

'Up at the end, mate,' a decisive man told me, pointing. 'Past the hot dogs, turn right, there's a gate in the fence. You can't miss it.'

I nodded my thanks and turned to go that way, and saw one of my trackers coming towards me, searching the stalls with his eyes and looking worried.

In a second he would see me.... I looked around in a hurry and found I was outside the caravan of the fortune-teller. There was a curtain of plastic streamers, black and white, over the open doorway, and behind that a shadowy figure. I took four quick strides, brushed through the plastic strips, and stepped up into the van.

It was quieter inside and darker, with daylight filtering dimly through lace-hung windows. A Victorian sort of decor; mock oil lamps and chenille tablecloths. Outside, the tracker went past, giving the fortune-teller no more than a flickering glance. His attention lay ahead. He hadn't seen me come in.

The fortune-teller, however, had, and to her I represented business. 'Do you want your whole life, dear, the past and everything, or just the future?' 129

'Er...'I said. 'I don't really know. How long does it take?'

'A quarter of an hour, dear, for the whole thing.'

'Let's just have the future.' I looked out of the window. A part of my future was searching among the ring-side cars, asking questions and getting a lot of shaken heads.

'Sit on the sofa beside me here, dear, and give me your left hand.'

'It'll have to be the right,' I said absently.

'No, dear.' Her voice was quite sharp. 'Always the left.'

Amused, I sat down and gave her the left. She felt it, and looked at it, and raised her eyes to mine. She was short and plump, dark-haired, middle-aged, and in no way remarkable.

'Well, dear,' she said after a pause, 'it will have to be the right, though I'm not used to it, and we may not get such good results.'

'I'll risk it,' I said; so we changed places on the sofa, and she held my right hand firmly in her two warm ones, and I watched the tracker move along the row of cars.

'You have suffered,' she said. As she knew about my left hand, I didn't think much of that for a guess, and she seemed to sense it. She coughed apologetically.

'Do you mind if I use a crystal?' she said.

'Go ahead.'

I had vague visions of her peering into a large ball on a table, but she took a small one, the size of a tennis ball, and put it in the palm of my hand.

'You are a kind person,' she said. 'Gentle. People like you. People smile at you wherever you go.'

Outside, twenty yards away, the two heavies had met to consult. Not a smile, there, of any sort.

'You are respected by everyone.'

Regulation stuff, designed to please the customers. Chico should hear it, I thought. Gentle, kind, respected... he'd laugh his head off. She said doubtfully, 'I see a great many people, cheering and clapping. Shouting loudly, cheering you... does that mean anything to you, dear?'

I slowly turned my head. Her dark eyes watched me calmly.

'That's the past,' I said.

'It's recent,' she said. 'It's still there.'

I didn't believe it. I didn't believe in fortune-tellers. I wondered if she had seen me before, on a racecourse or talking on television. She must have.

She bent her head again over the crystal which she held on my hand, moving the gla.s.s gently over my skin.

'You have good health. You have vigour. You have great physical stamina.... There is much to endure.'

Her voice broke off, and she raised her head a little, frowning. I had a strong impression that what she had said had surprised her.

After a pause, she said. 'I can't tell you any more.'

'Why not?'

'I'm not used to the right hand.'

'Tell me what you see,' I said. She shook her head slightly and raised the calm dark eyes.

'You will live a long time.' I glanced out through the plastic curtain. The trackers had moved off out of sight.

'How much do I owe you?' I said. She told me, and I paid her, and went quietly over to the doorway.

'Take care, dear,' she said. 'Be careful.'

I looked back. Her face was still calm, but her voice had been urgent. I didn't want to believe in the conviction that looked out of her eyes. She might have felt the disturbance of my present problem with the trackers, but no more than that. I pushed the curtain gently aside and stepped from the dim world of hovering horrors into the bright May sunlight, where they might in truth lie in wait.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

There was no longer any need to ask where the balloons were. No one could miss them. They were beginning to rise like gaudy monstrous mushrooms, humped on the ground, spread all over an enormous area of gra.s.sland beyond the actual showground. I had thought vaguely that there would be two or three balloons, or at most six, but there must have been twenty.

Among a whole stream of people going the same way, I went down to the gate and through into the far field, and realised that I had absolutely underestimated the task of finding John Viking.

There was a rope, for a start, and marshals telling the crowd to stand behind it. I ducked those obstacles at least, but found myself in a forest of half inflated balloons, which billowed immensely all around and cut off any length of sight.

The first clump of people I came to were busy with a pink and purple monster into whose mouth they were blowing air by means of a large engine-driven fan. The balloon was attached by four fine nylon ropes to the basket, which lay on its side, with a young man in a red crash helmet peering anxiously into its depths.

'Excuse me,' I said to a girl on the edge of the group. 'Do you know where I can find John Viking?'

'Sorry.'