He looked along the fifty yards of country road. The hedges on each side prevented him from seeing what might be past the junction with the wider road. But he trusted her judgement. It had got them this far into the country. He wheeled his vehicle forward another few yards and looked through a gap in the hedge. “If we go along this dirt track,” he suggested, “those trees over there should keep us from being seen.” She nodded. He reached down for his water bottle and drank enough to set his back into another sweat. He pushed his own machine through, and held the sharp branches back so Jennifer could follow.
“Let me go first this time,” he said. He was growing attached to this clever machine, and enjoyed how fast it could go downhill. He got back on and coasted down the bumpy track towards a low building at the end of the field. He felt his hair lift slightly in the welcome breeze, and a chill as the shirt flapped against his sweaty back. For as long as it lasted, he had another of those little impressions that he was actually heading somewhere with a purpose. After a long and pretty blistering day, the sun was going down in the south west—which was the direction in which they were now riding. Still, this turning off their proper direction had got them past the patrol.
Some way beyond the low building, the path turned sharp right—still further away from their proper direction. Before then, it was blocked by a closed gate. Just on the other side, there were more farm labourers, resting with various kinds of food before going back to their last work of the day. He heard their low and tired chatter as he got off his riding machine. He hung back and let Jennifer go forward to the gate. She called out a greeting to one of the older men, who got up and pulled the front lock of his thinning hair. Michael smiled knowingly at the greeting one of the younger men made to him, and nodded as he wheeled the machine past them. He gave a brief but hungry look at the food they were eating. Neither had eaten since morning, when Jennifer had bought something pale and disgusting from a stall within the outer limits of London. With a quick glance back along the dirt road, Jennifer’s thoughts had moved in the same course. She stopped and spoke awhile with another of the men. She then reached into her saddlebag and pulled about a couple of paper money strips. The man laughed and waved a big piece of bread under her nose. She went into a friendly negotiation with him, and eventually pulled out two more of the strips. The man took these and folded them inside the loose and once fine jacket he was wearing, and gave over the bread and a lump of what looked like real cheese.
Michael felt someone tap his shoulder. It was a young man, probably not much older than himself. Also wearing one of those faintly striped jackets, he offered a drink from a flexible bottle. Michael took a mouthful of beer and smiled back at the young man. “Ta!” he said in the noncommittal accent he’d been rehearsing. The young man said something else and laughed. Michael nodded again. Might this have been a reference to the weather? He took and chance and looked up at the sky, which, so far outside London, was almost blue. But the young man frowned and repeated himself.
Michael was about to point at his left ear and give an idiot laugh. But he felt a sudden faint rippling in the pit of his stomach. He forced himself to smile and clutched the handles of his riding machine. He relaxed. It was another attack, and he felt it would continue. At the same time, it was very faint—he could best describe it to himself as a distant sound of thunder. He blinked and looked again at the young man. At once, he let his eyes go out of focus. The young man’s mouth was hanging open, and he was swaying gently back and forth. For the instant their eyes had met, it was as if they were forming a complete understanding of each other. Even now, there were jagged flashbacks of a life that wasn’t his own.
Jennifer broke in, speaking in her approximation to a manly voice. The young man swallowed and began a sentence that had no context but might have been in Greek. He shook his head and walked stiffly away. Alone with Jennifer, Michael stared down at the clicking of cogs and the circular chain that joined them. Most of the clever things in this world were beyond easy understanding. Some were so brilliantly simple, their working could be guessed by looking at them. This machine fell into the latter class. Thinking about it took him away from the vision, still fresh in his mind, of a room filled with flickering screens and with men shouting into communication machines that had stopped working. It had no easy beginning, but would end, he knew, in a falling back into convulsions similar to his own.
Jennifer stopped again and looked at the faded direction sign. Michael stood beside her. “Does it say another forty miles to Dover?” he asked. She looked surprised, but nodded. “Oh, I think I’ve got the secret of your numbers well enough,” he said with quiet pride. “You do realise, I suppose, that we’ve been using positional notation for a long time now? The only oddity about your own numerals is their shape. But, given that they are absolutely regular in every public appearance, they were the first thing I really understood in this country. “But how long, how long, to the great port of Dover, and to the town in where you lives?” he asked in English. “Or go we swiftlike to the Tenterden city?” He put his head back and laughed at the shocked look she gave him.
“How much English do you understand?”
He brushed sweat from his forehead. “More than I can speak. It needs to be simple and spoken slowly—rather like Greek for you.” He smiled and wondered if it would be appropriate to reach over and stroke her shoulder. He decided with a strange feeling in his chest that it wouldn’t. “One of my duties is to learn the language of whichever people I’m trying to butter up. Compared with Arabic, your language has few difficulties. Another month here, and I’d be able to carry on a normal conversation, and read anything that didn’t refer to unknown machines or concepts. Six months, and I could pass as a native.” He looked again at the sign. “It’s almost a pity we’ll soon be out of here.” Perhaps it would, he thought. The words Count Robert came once more into his mind. He put them out again, and stared up and the darkening sky.
“We might be able to sleep in some hay,” she suggested in an oddly neutral voice.
Michael stopped himself from laughing again. “Hay is normally laid up later than June,” he said gravely. “Besides, isn’t it still March in England?” Her face turned down, and she stopped looking anything like a boy. But he could feel the advancing chill of a northern evening. “Whatever the case,” he admitted, “we can’t sleep in the open—not out in the country.” He looked about. This was a narrow and twisting lane, lined with big trees that, if he didn’t know better, he might have taken for a forest. The farm labourers must by now have gone home for the night. This meant that no one would challenge them if they crept into some farm building.
“But we do seem to be skirting Tenterden,” he said. “The Frenchman told us to go straight through.” He watched Jennifer go into a disjointed repetition of what she’d insisted after taking leave of Pierre—that Count Robert could certainly tell them something about Hooper’s scheme. They might even be able to come back with armed assistance. He’d agreed, and her plan did make sense, even if meeting Count Robert wasn’t high on his list of the desirable. Undeniably, though, since getting off that main road, the direction boards had suggested they were going round rather than through Tenterden.
The breeze that had been so welcome earlier turned abruptly cold. Shivering, he reached into his saddlebag for the woollen thing he’d been given that came down to his waist. He stiffened. At the same time, Jennifer clutched at him. He pushed her back and held his breath. He listened. There was the faintest noise of throbbing. He knew the sound of road vehicles. Jennifer was already looking up. She didn’t need to point at the dim shape far over in the gathering darkness of the east. “If it comes this way, we’ll get under the trees,” he said. He looked harder at the bag of floating air. It was miles away.