‘Such as?’ he’d challenged her.
She shook her head, grimacing at him. ‘You’ll not draw me that way.’
They checked into a hotel on the edge of the moor some ten miles away from where Sue lived. After a wash and a quick meal they discussed where to start Fran had been studying the ordnance survey map and she pointed to an area of marshland where the blue lines of the streams and rivers seemed to peter out. He nodded.
‘That’s what I had in mind,’ he agreed.
He had no very great faith in his theory, only a deep-seated conviction that Rhys was wrong and this might be one way to prove it.
The road across the moor was a straight, bleak ribbon of tarmac, totally deserted and stretching as far as the horizon where it seemed to terminate sharply as though on the very brink of the world. They followed it for about five and a half miles on the clock before pulling off on to the gravelled verge.
Matt switched off the engine and got out. The wind hummed across the telephone wires which were strung on high, lonely poles spaced regularly along one side of the road. A distant bird call, persistent. Whispers through the swaying furze, its masses of yellow flowers brilliant against the dark green spiny plants.
The surface was very uneven, full of little hollows and hillocks; the vegetation was thick and tangled. It might be teeming with worms, slipping easily through the ravel of roots, alerted to their arrival. Both he and Fran had been issued with specially reinforced overalls and flying boots but he still felt vulnerable. When asked what he thought would be the safest clothing, he’d answered simply, ‘Chain mail.’ He hadn’t been joking, either.
‘No rabbit droppings,’ observed Fran suddenly.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘The ground’s usually covered with rabbit droppings. I used to come here with my husband. Takes me back.’ She looked around wrily. ‘No worms in those days, though,’ she added. ‘Pity.’
Matt suggested she might prefer to stay in the Landrover but she told him crisply not to be daft. She was going to stick with him. They chose a path and struck out across the moor, Matt going first and keeping a sharp watch out for worms. He felt very nervous, as though some primeval instinct were warning him of danger lurking among the furze. When the path unexpectedly ended he begged Fran again to go and wait in the Landrover, as there was no point in them both taking risks, but she refused and they went on.
Another five minutes and the ground became wet, dipping into a hollow. They could no longer see the road, nor the top of the Landrover. If it hadn’t been for the stark, granite tor about a mile ahead he’d have lost all sense of direction. His foot suddenly sank into the morass.
‘U-urgh!’ He pulled back, trying to keep his balance. The mud sucked at his boot as if trying to swallow it; there was a squelchy phlut! as he succeeded in freeing himself.
He examined the marshy patch in front of him. Parts of it were smooth water, reflecting the constantly-shifting clouds and the blue of the sky; other sections were like a thick soup of mud, seemingly solid — treacherously so, as he discovered when he probed them with a stick. Clumps of grass and reeds formed a scattering of islands; if they wanted to go on they’d have to step from one to the next, hoping each was firm enough to hold them.
‘Where are they?’ Fran demanded. ‘The worms?’
‘This is where we’d expect them,’ he agreed.
When he’d asked the Ministry for a bottle of blood there had been a few raised eyebrows and someone had asked, ‘Pig or cow?’ He’d said it didn’t matter so long as it was fresh. Before he’d left that morning, they’d handed him several flasks. He unscrewed the top of one of them now and splashed the blood over the miry ground.
Fran watched him apprehensively, glancing around every so often to make sure nothing was creeping up on them from the rear.
‘Blood attracts them better than offal,’ he explained. It steadied his nerves to talk about it. ‘Can’t imagine why. Must be some reason.’
She glanced around again, jumpy. ‘Not working this time, is it?’ That odd note in her voice was almost one of relief.
‘I think that’s clear water over there, isn’t it?’ he asked, feeling very uneasy and needing some excuse to move. ‘If we work our way round to it… I’ll go first again, but keep your eyes skinned.’
‘No need to tell me that,’ she responded fervently. ‘Come on, let’s go over there. This spot gives me the willies. Don’t understand why, there’s nothing here, nothing I can see, nothing tangible, but…’ Trying to lighten her tone, she added: ‘But maybe it’s the pixies. Dartmoor was always like this. Human beings are very transient, aren’t they? Insignificant, really. I often felt it up here. And we could easily be replaced by some other dominant life form.’
‘You’ve been listening to Rhys,’ he scoffed, deliberately.
‘Oh, not from space! That idea’s just zany. But the dinosaurs died out, didn’t they? And civilizations have disappeared.’ She shuddered. ‘D’you think the worms could do that to us?’
They reached the clear water whose otherwise calm surface rippled under the wind. The mood of the moor was darkening as heavy rainclouds gathered; dramatically, the sun’s rays passed through a single gap to illuminate the distant tor.
‘Try the blood sacrifice!’ Fran half-joked. ‘Or better still, let’s get away while we can.’ She looked behind her and around in every direction, scanning the ground through her binoculars as well as with the naked eye. ‘They’re here somewhere,’ she announced, quite convinced. ‘But I can’t see them.’
Matt didn’t try the blood immediately. Instead, he assembled the fishing net on the end of its extending rod and let it drag through the water. His catch was disappointingly small — hardly more than a few leaf fragments and a couple of insects which had been dancing on the surface — but he transferred it to the specimen jar, adding more water, then going through the same process again.
When he’d finished, he fitted the lid and returned the jar to his bag. It was time for the blood again. The flask was still half-full and he emptied it completely into the water. If he expected worms to swim suddenly into sight as they’d done in the sewers, he was mistaken. The water discoloured, and that was all. He scooped some up into his second specimen jar, fished around with his net, and finally — feeling empty and dissatisfied, as though he’d wasted his time — said he was ready to go.
This time Fran led the way, crashing through furze and fern, stumbling when her foot caught in the tangled vegetation, kicking herself free impatiently, whacking the plants with her stick to warn any hidden worm of what to expect if it dared confront her.
But none did. They arrived back at the Landrover on the roadside without having seen a single one.
Back at the hotel Matt found a message waiting for him from Sue; she’d taken Jenny out to a tennis party at a friend’s house. It would do her good to see some new faces, but he was welcome to call after breakfast the following morning if he wished. He showed it to Fran without comment. When she passed it back to him, she merely said she was glad she didn’t have to spend the evening alone after all.
He fetched the microscope from the Landrover and for the greater part of the evening they peered through it at drops of water from the specimen jars. They were neither of them very skilled, nor too certain what they should be looking for, though Fran had used a microscope before at college.
A despatch rider had been detailed to collect the jars for laboratory tests, but he was late. When he eventually arrived and they’d handed them over, they went down to the bar for a drink. Only two other people sat there, both local, and the landlord grumbled that the worm-scare had killed the holiday trade. He’d had ninety per cent cancellations, yet he’d still not seen a worm. It was ridiculous.