But soon his relief was replaced by a greater unease. Thunderclouds didn’t move like that — they planed slowly across the countryside in straight lines, diffusing energy, grumbling, like an advance of arthritic colonels. This one was compact, purposeful, sweeping eastward down a single corridor of wind between the still regions of summer air. He increased his speed to get out of its path, the Rolls exulting up to seventy. At this speed they’d be clear of the cloud’s track in no time.
Or would they? He slacked off and gazed at the hills again. The corridor must be curved, for the cloud was still advancing towards them, moving at the pace of a gale. A few miles more and there was no doubt about it — the thing was aimed at the Rolls, following as a homing missile follows its target. He stopped the car.
“Out you get, Sal, and up the bank. Two can play at that game.”
He followed her slowly through the clinging weeds, gathering his strength, resting his mind. The Motorway ran here through a deep cutting, from whose top he could see for some distance. He unrolled his jersey, took out the robe and put it on. Then he sat beside Sally and stared at the charging cloud, blue-black beneath and white with reflected sunshine through its two miles of height. The thing to do was nudge it aside. Wind from the southwest.
The island drowses with heat. The hills are baked. The mown hayfields drink sun. The woods breathe warmth. And over them all lies air, air twice heated, first as the jostling sunbeams plunge down, again as the purring earth gives back the warmth it cannot drink. Isle wide the air swells with sunlight, lightening as it swells, rising as it lightens, sucking in more air beneath it, cold from the kiss of the Atlantic. Now it comes, broad-fronted over the Marches, comes now,
here,
now,
here,
now in this darkness, in this up-and-down roaring of black, rubbing itself together, three miles high, generating giant forces, poised, ready, smiting down with a million million volts on to the thing it was aimed at .. .
Mastered, overwhelmed, Geoffrey crumpled into a gold shambles. Sally alone, thumbs uselessly in her ears, watched the storm heave its bolts of bellowing light down on the Rolls. The air stank with ozone. The clay of the bank vibrated like a bass string. She rolled on to her belly, buried her face in the grasses and screamed.
The noise was gone, except inside her skull. Dully she sat up and looked down the embankment at the Motorway. The Rolls, charred and twisted, lay in the center of a circle of blackened cement like the others she had seen. Tires and upholstery smoked, the stench of burned rubber, leather and horsehair reeking up the bank on the remains of Geoffrey’s wind. The wind had carried the cloud away, appeased. Her brother lay beside her on his back, with bruise-blue lips and cheeks the color of whitewash. She thought he was dead until she slid her hand under the robe and felt the movement of his breathing.
When a person faints you keep him warm and give him sweet tea. She must get his jersey on, but not over the robe in case someone came by. It was like trying to dress a huge lead doll, and took ages. But it was three hours more before he woke.
Geoffrey came to to the sound of voices. There seemed to be several people about. He kept his eyes shut for the moment.
“You’m sure he baint dead, Missie?”
“Yes,” said Sally. “You can see. His face is the proper color now.”
“Ah, he's a brave one to call a storm like that. I never seed our own weatherman do the like, not living so near the Necromancer as we be. It’s surely taxed un.”
“It always does,” said a voice like a parson’s. “You say he’s a bit simple, young lady?”
“No, I didn’t. He’s quite as clever as me or you, only he can’t talk and sometimes he looks a bit moony.”
“Did you see no one in the wicked machine then?” asked one of the rustic voices. “We did get word as how there was two demons a-driving of it, spitting sparks and all.”
“They been hunting un,” said another peasant, “all along up from Hungerford way. Lord Willoughby seed un out hawking and give the word. And they damn near caught un last night, I do hear/’
“Only she go so mortal fast.”
“Hello,” said the parsony voice. “I think he’s stirring.”
Geoffrey sat up, groaned and looked about him. There were more people round than he’d expected, mostly tanned haymakers, but also an oldish man in a long blue cloak with an amber pendant round his neck. Down on the concrete the superb car reproached him with smoldering, stinking wreckage. He smiled at it, what he hoped was a pleased, idiot smile.
“Yes, Jeff,” cooed Sal. “You did that. You are a clever boy.” He stood up and shifted from foot to foot as the people stared at him. “Please,” said Sally, “could you all go away? I don’t want him to have one of his fits. It’s all right, Jeff. It’s all right. Everybody likes you. You’re a good boy.”
Geoffrey sat down and hid his face in his hands.
One of the rustic voices said, “S’pose we better be getting back along of the hayfield then. Sure you be all right, Missie? We owe you summat, sort of.”
“No thank you, honestly. We don’t want anything.”
“You get along, chaps; I’ll set them on their road and see that they’re properly treated.” This was the parsony voice. Then there was a diminishing noise of legs swishing through grass, and silence.
“You made a mistake there, young lady. If he’d really made the thunderstorm you’d have asked for money, but of course he didn’t have anything to do with it. He might have made that funny little bit of wind from the southwest, but the storm came from the Necromancer, or I’m a Dutchman.”
“I wish you’d go away,” said Sally. “We’re quite all right, really.”
“Come, come, young lady. I have only to go and tell those peasants in the hayfield that I can see what looks like a spot of engine oil on cur dumb friend’s trousers, and then where would you be? Can he talk, as a matter of interest?”
“Yes,” said Geoffrey.
“That’s more like it,” said the man in the blue robe, sitting beside them and gazing down the embankment.
“What was it?” he asked. “Something pretty primitive, by the look of it.”
“A 1909 Silver Ghost,” said Geoffrey, nearly crying.
“Dear, dear,” said the man. “What a pity. There can’t be many of those left. And where were you making for?”
Geoffrey peered at the horizon, working out in his mind the curve of the thundercloud’s path in relation to the hills. He pointed.
“Curious,” said the man. “So am I. A pity we have no map. I was coming up from the south when I first sensed the storm, and you were coming from the northeast. We could do some crude triangulation with a map, but the point is academic. It would have saved us a deal of trouble.”
“I have got a map,” said Sally, “but I don’t know how far it goes. I was still holding it when we got out of the car, but I hid it under my frock when we heard people coming.”
“Oh, how perfectly splendid,” said the man. “You stay up on the bank and keep watch, young lady, while my colleague and I do our calculations down here out of sight.”
As he moved down, Geoffrey saw a gold glint beneath the blue robe.
“Are you a weatherman, too?” he asked.
“At your service, dear colleague.”
“Are you the local chap? Did you make the storm?”
“Alas, I am, like yourselves, a wanderer. And alas too, it is beyond even my powers to make such a storm as that — though I should certainly have claimed the credit for it had I arrived on the scene in time, and profited more from it than you did. You are something of a traitor to the Guild, dear colleague, refusing fees; but we will mention it no more.”