Vanessa nodded. She opened a cigarette box on the table nearby and gave him one silently. “ It was a spiral flow. In towards the centre. Hypnotists use things like that, don’t they ?”

  Colin slapped his knee. “ I knew it put me in mind of something. Yes, of course they do. That’s what put us under—must have been ! But—” his voice grew puzzled, “—I never heard of a gadget that w orked on people who were unprepared. You have to co-operate actively in order to be put under, don’t you ?”

  “ So I’ve always heard.” Vanessa took a deep drag on her cigarette. “ Me, I’ve always been too fond of my mind to hand it over to anyone else.”

  “ I know exactly what you mean.”

  “ And I don’t see you could have found tw'o people more unprepared than we were,” Vanessa went on, reverting to his earlier remark. “ I had a feeling about that place—I know you did, because you warned me to come out. If I had sense, I’d have done it. It got my nerves on edge ; that man in the robe, particularly.”

  “ You know how it affected me ?” Colin looked at her squarely, knowing that she was one person who wouldn’t take the statement with a smile, no matter how ridiculous it sounded on the surface. “ I felt as if I’d walked into another world. Not off to another planet, or anything of that nature—”

  “ Like one of these ‘ planes ’ the spiritualists talk of.” Vanessa nodded full understanding.

  “ Exactly. And—” Colin shivered a little, “—of the other worlds I’ve heard of, this one could have done duty for just one. Hell.”

  “ Things working differently. I have a nightmare—that is, I used to when I was a kid. In it, I was always doing something perfectly ordinary, which took—you know—a bit of e*tra attention ? And then it wouldn’t go right.”

  “You would be sitting in class at school,” said Colin with sudden cold certainty, “ and you would work out a problem and get the answer right. And the teacher would tell you it was wrong, and you couldn’t say anything.”

  Vanessa was looking at him with her mouth just a little open. When she spoke, she sounded breathless. “ Colin, I asked you before, and this time I want to know. Who are you ?”

  The doorbell buzzed. Colin had barely had time to be surprised at her question, and part of his mind was still available to think in ordinary channels—so much of his life had to be spent entering other people’s personalities that some of it rubbed off ; sometimes his own thoughts followed the grooves worn for it by adjustment to thousands of strangers who were at home in the world.

  He said, “ Who’s that ? Your—boy friend ?”

  Still keeping her eyes on him, Vanessa slowly shook her head. “ Larry’s in Northumberland,” she said. “ I don’t know who it could be—”

  She got up and walked over to the door.

  There was a man in an overcoat on the threshold—tall, with a certain dignity of manner ; his hair was brown and crisp and oddly cut, as though it sometimes had to follow the shape of a head-dress that was not a hat. He seemed uncomfortable, though his clothes fitted him excellently ; Colin was reminded of someone who has been talked into a part in amateur theatricals without really wanting to be.

  “ Good morning,” said the stranger ; his voice was distant and resonant. “Are you Vanessa Sherriff?”

  “ Yes.”

  “ And is Colin Hooper with you ?”

  A hint of shrilli ess rode on the edge of Vanessa’s tone, like the bright line down the sharpened blade of a knife. “Now look, cobber,” she said with exasperation, “ I’m getting pretty bloody sick of people asking me if I’m me ! What’s it to you ? Why don’t you get out of here and start minding your own business ? It helps !”

  Two things were gnawing at Colin’s mind. He got up and came to stand at Vanessa’s shoulder, staring the stranger in the face.

  “ Yes,” said the man, heaving a sigh. “ Yes, you are he.” He sounded distressed. “ This, perhaps, you will not understand—indeed, it would be better that you did not. But I must tell you this—that you must go away, far away. Alone, each of you. Or you will be in terrible danger !”

  “ I don’t know who you are,” began Colin. Vanessa broke in.

  “ Whoever he is, he’s ripe for the giggle emporium, isn’t he ?”

  “ I am Kolok,” said the man, and there was something almost impressive about his unruffled dignity. “ You do not know me, though I know more about both of you than either of you knows about the other, believe me. Where I come from, I am a person of some importance, even if I am nothing here—”

  “ President of Andorra, or something ?” Vanessa seemed to be being deliberately crude in her attacks and Colin, suddenly realising that for some reason she was near hysteria, put his arm round her and felt her trembling.

  “ If I told you, you wouldn’t accept it. All I can do is beg you—” his voice took on a pleading tone, “—to obey me. Go away from here ! Never see each other again ! The future of the world depends on it.”

  There was something ludicrous about the words ; nothing about the terrible fervour with which they were spoken. Colin felt shivers slide down his spine.

  They stood in silence for a while, hearing only the beat of rain against the windows. At length Kolok shrugged, his coat riding up on his shoulders.

  “ You will not do it,” he said. “ The others have been more clever than we. And yet, left to yourselves, meeting by chance for the first time tonight, you might have gone your ways for the rest of your lives and never given each other a second thought. Is what I ask so much, then ?”

  “ Yes !” The word had burst from both of them together before they realised what they were going to say. Kolok shook his head in slow pity.

  “ They have indeed been clever,” he said, and a gust of wet wind rattled like a drum-roll on the panes as he spoke. “ I have failed, and that is all. Goodbye.”

  He turned to go, but Colin stepped forward. “ Wait 1” he said. He touched Kolok’s shoulder and felt the cloth dry and rough. The shine of the man’s shoes was fresh and undulled.

  “ You’re dry,” he said wonderingly. “ How— ?”

  “ There is no rain on the road by which I came,” said Kolok. “ Goodbye.”

  At least this evening it wasn’t raining. But it was cold. Colin stamped his feet and tried not to stare too hard at the strange door of last night. Several of Tippet Lane’s overfull population of streetwalkers approached him hopefully, but he had no trouble demonstrating his indifference to them.

  What was behind that door tonight ? Anything ? Just the stacked boxes and the dust—or the blue vastness and the white, whirling disc that could seize the mind and make a man lose six hours without a whimper ? Something dull and prosaic—or a whole new world ?

  He wondered what the passers-by would say if they knew that the temptation behind that door had suddenly made a respectable, social person like himself contemplate house-breaking.

  Vanessa was late ; he felt a stab of relief when she finally appeared, for he had been terrified that she might not appear, even though he knew subconsciously he might trust her with his life. But her lovely face was troubled as she approached at a quick walk, heels rapping the paving.

  “ With me,” she said in a low voice ; not questioning, he fell in beside her and walked on.

  “ What happened ?” he whispered.

  “ Someone’s following me. I know it. I haven’t been able to catch sight of them, but I’m certain. Let’s get somewhere where we’ll be safe—look, over there.”

  She indicated a coffee bar which came into sight over the road, and they crossed a bare few yards ahead of a hurrying taxi ; the driver hooted at them. Not speaking, they entered the bar and took places from which they could see the door.

  Vanessa drew a deep breath. “ I have the same feeling I had last night when we were talking to that man Kolok,” she said. “ Exactly as a cat must feel when its fur is brushed the wrong way—edgy !”

  “ And— ?” Colin prompted.

  “ And I don’t think Tippet Lane is safe for us. Something big is brewing there.” She stiffened. “ Look !”

  Colin strained his eyes past the brightness inside the coffee house, trying to make out what it was that moved on the other side of the road. It looked incomplete. They struggled to bring it into focus, but it refused to come.

  After a little while Colin relaxed, and found that the waitress was impatiently demanding what they’d have ; he ordered absently, and when he looked again the thing had gone.

  There was a girl at the next table ; dark, intense—but not naturally so, as Vanessa was, merely by dint of concentration ; her hair was cut in a pageboy style around her square face, and green-framed glasses with cats’ eye lens forms suggested that she had tried hard to make herself interesting and failed. She had noticed them staring out and followed their gaze ; seeing nothing, she had shrugged. Now that there was a chance of catching their attention, she leaned forward.

  “ I think I know what you’re looking for,” she said with suppressed excitement.

  “ What ?” said Colin, startled.

  “Yourselves !” said the girl in triumph. “A meaning to life—a message which doesn’t call on you to believe the mystical assertions of the religions—”

  Colin stared at Vanessa, who lifted one shoulder.

  Something of the fanatical was in the girl’s eyes as she looked at them challengingly. “ Well, aren’t you looking for a meaning to life ?”

  “ Everyone is,” said Colin with an attempt at patience. He was only listening with one ear ; most of his attention was riveted on any sign there might be of Vanessa’s furtive follower.

  The girl noticed this, and half-relaxed ; they were to be spared the full treatment, then. But she was not giving up without a final shot ; she reached in the handbag she held and brought out a garish leaflet. “ Read this,” she invited. “ It’ll solve your problems if you care to do as it says—and that’s the truth ! It’s knowledge that moves mountains, you know—not faith.”

  She got up and moved away ; Colin glanced at Vanessa. “ Who om earth was she ?”

  “ Real Truther.” Vanessa seemed not to be much interested. “ Larry’s tied up with them somehow—lot of people are nowadays. It’s a humanist religion, if you can follow that ; claims that man is the greatest thing in the universe, and anything that the mind can conceive it can achieve if it works the right way.”

  “ How come I’ve never heard about it ?”

  “You might not have, unless you happened to pass one of their churches, or bumped into one of their street-corner missionaries. They go for very particular classes of people—emotionally underdeveloped, intellectually over-developed, like undergraduates who haven’t adjusted from their adolescent idealisms or loud-mouthed world-savers—” She shrugged.

  “ Humanist religion, eh ?” Colin nodded. “ Something like that was bound to crop up, I suppose. Know how Haldane suggested that if someone at the end of last century had founded a religion whose basic tenets included the existence of the ether and Kelvin causal physics he would have grabbed followers hand over fist and prevented the development of modern science ?”

  “ Eimar O’Duffy,” said Vanessa. “ Spacious Adventures of the Man in the Street : all primitive anthropoid apes climbed trees ten feet high to escape sabre-toothed tigers, so the ones with short tails lived longest. I know.”

  Colin crumpled the leaflet and tossed it aside ; from the distant table to which she had moved the adherent of Real Truth watched the motion pityingly.

  “ And is that all they have to offer ?”

  “ No, there’s something about the coming of the perfect man. Usual Messiah-pattern, except that this fellow’s arrival is scheduled for sometime this year or next. I don’t know what happens after that.”

  Their coffee arrived, and they sat sipping it in silence.

  Vanessa set her cup down with a bang that made heads turn all round the room. “ Colin, it’s getting worse,” she whispered. “ Someone’s very close indeed !”

  Colin covered her hand with his own, trying to squeeze strength into her ; he could feel it himself now, as if he was listening to the measured tread of a firing party walking down a long, echoing passage towards his own death.

  Then there was someone standing beside them, who had stepped from a dark booth at the rear of the room. He looked up. “ You !” he said in amazement and terror, drawing back. “ What do you want?” “ Your safety !” said Kolok briefly. “ Get out of here—quickly ! I’ll do what I can to head them off, but you’ll be twice as safe if you split up—they can’t follow you so easily.”

  Anger rose in Colin’s mind ; he' stood up belligerently. “ Who are you to order us around like this ?” he demanded.

  “ I know what I’m doing, and that’s more than you do !”

  “ Colin, let’s go,” said Vanessa. She stood up beside him. “ I don’t care about him, but let’s just get away.”

  “ All right,” Colin nodded. With several backward glances at Kolok, he made his way to the door behind her, and when they were out on the street looked anxiously both ways.

  “ Where should we go ?” he said. “ Do you know ?”

  Vanessa shook her head ; she sounded scared. “ I can feel them all round us. Let’s just walk until we’re clear—if we can.”

  A hundred yards down the road something moved in an alcove ; Vanessa shuddered, and Cohn felt hairs rise on the back of his neck.

  It might have been an animal, or something stirred by the wind— but he knew it was not.

  Illogical terror growing in them every moment, they turned and twisted and doubled. There was no sign of a taxi, and they were in streets too narrow for buses. Besides, Colin felt that the strain of standing passively at a stop and waiting would have driven him insane.

  They came at last into a small square where there were many people, ordinary-looking people though predominantly young, going into some building at the side of the exit street on the far side. Bewildered, Colin looked about him.

  “ I can’t feel anything now,” he said suddenly, and Vanessa tightened her grip on his hand.

  “ Nor I,” she said, a world of relief in her tone. “ But—where are we ?”

  Someone passing from behind them tapped Colin on the shoulder ; he turned, startled, and saw it was the girl with green-framed glasses.

  “ So you did decide to come,” she said simply. “ I’m glad.”

  Then she passed on, leaving Vanessa staring in horror. “ Why, this must be Mann Square !” she said. “ That’s the Real Truth headquarters over there—their late-night service must be starting.”

  “ Why, Vanessa !” A man’s voice, ebulliently cheerful, came to them, and the owner shouldered his way through the crowd towards them. “ Last place I ever expected to see you—and after all the times I tried to talk you into coming, too !” He came up and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

  “ I—” Vanessa stumbled at a loss for words. “ Oh—Larry, this is Colin Hooper ; Larry Adderley.”

  Larry turned and perhaps noticed him consciously for the first time ; Colin could almost feel physically the sudden flash of hostility which rose in the other, though nothing showed on his smooth, tanned face. Larry was handsome in a slightly weak way ; his hair was fair and curly, and he wore a rather too perfectly tied silk square at his neck. Colin found himself wondering in spite of all what Vanessa saw in him.

  “ Come along, then,” said Larry, after a long, searching stare at Colin. “ The service is due to start in five minutes, and there are some very interesting rumours going around !” He linked his arm in Vanessa’s ; she went along acquiescently, and Colin, helpless to refuse despite his continued sense of urgency which lasted even though his apprehension had faded, fell into step beside them.

  “ Such as what ?” he asked after a bit.

  “ About the arrival of The Man, of course.” Larry seemed to assume that it was Colin who had persuaded Vanessa to attend ;

  thence, obviously, sprang his first jealousy. Colin decided the role was one which he would have to accept ; nodding wisely, he looked ahead up the steps into the building. On either side of the door, signs proclaimed in four-inch sans serif lettering that this was the First London Seat of the Real Truth.

  Mann Square ; the choice was a little too obvious, surely ?

  IV

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  IV

  The hall inside the building was bare and efficient ; circular in plan, it was ringed with concentric circles of seats which were filling steadily from the inside row. He judged that the place would hold about three thousand ; some half of the available space was filled.

  In the centre of the roof was a light, effectively masked by mist to which it gave a quality of luminescence ; under the light and gazing up at it in attitudes which conveyed aspiration, indomitability and achievement, were two superb statues—a man and a woman.

  The seats were very comfortable, and the air was fresh and satisfying with some clean scent ; in spite of himself, Colin found the tension of the moment taking hold of him. He looked for the girl with greenframed glasses, but she was nowhere in sight.

  There was music from somewhere, and the lights were slowly getting dimmer ; the walls seemed to vanish into a vast blue distance. The process was more than half complete before Colin realised what it reminded him of. He seized Vanessa’s hand, and from the trembling he could feel along her arm, he knew she had recognised it too.

  Feeling like an animal caught in a trapfall, he turned his head to see if there was any route of escape, but the people on either side of them, including Larry, were leaning forward with expressions of nearidiot anticipation.

  And then the voice struck from nowhere like the ring of a bronze

  Behind it, unspoken, was the smallest suggestion of contempt for those who did not use their minds, the one thing that set man apart from the animals, the one vital force in the universe. Colin heard gasps from all around, and a hand clutched at his stomach.

 

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