It was a chill November evening of the old-fashioned type.

The moon looked pale and wan, as if it shouldn't be up on a night like this. It rose unwillingly and hung like an ill spectre.

Silhouetted against it, dim and hazy through the dampness which rose from the unwholesome fens, stood the assorted towers and turrets of St Cedd's, Cambridge, a ghostly profusion of buildings thrown up over centuries, medieval next to Victorian, Odeon next to Tudor. Only rising through the mist did they seem remotely to belong to one another.

Between them scurried figures, hurrying from one dim pool of light to another, shivering, leaving wraiths of breath which folded themselves into the cold night behind them.

It was seven o'clock. Many of the figures were heading for the college dining hall which divided First Court from Second Court, and from which warm light, reluctantly, streamed. Two figures in particular seemed ill-matched. One, a young man, was tall, thin and angular; even muffled inside a heavy dark coat he walked a little like an affronted heron.

The other was small, roundish, and moved with an ungainly restlessness, like a number of elderly squirrels trying to escape from a sack. His own age was on the older side of completely indeterminate.

If you picked a number at random, he was probably a little older than that, but - well, it was impossible to tell. Certainly his face was heavily lined, and the small amount of hair that escaped from under his red woollen skiing hat was thin, white, and had very much its own ideas about how it wished to arrange itself. He too was muffled inside a heavy coat, but over it he wore a billowing gown with very faded purple trim, the badge of his unique and peculiar academic office.

As they walked the older man was doing all the talking. He was pointing at items of interest along the way, despite the fact that it was too dark to see any of them. The younger man was saying 'Ah yes,' and 'Really? How interesting…' and 'Well, well, well,' and 'Good heavens.' His head bobbed seriously.

They entered, not through the main entrance to the hall, but through a small doorway on the east side of the court. This led to the Senior Combination Room and a dark-panelled anteroom where the Fellows of the college assembled to slap their hands and make 'brrrrrr' noises before making their way through their own entrance to the High Table.

They were late and shook off their coats hurriedly. This was complicated for the older man by the necessity first of taking off his professorial gown, and then of putting it back on again once his coat was off, then of stuffing his hat in his coat pocket, then of wondering where he'd put his scarf, and then of realising that he hadn't brought it, then of fishing in his coat pocket for his handkerchief, then of fishing in his other coat pocket for his spectacles, and finally of finding them quite unexpectedly wrapped in his scarf, which it turned out he had brought after all but hadn't been wearing despite the damp and bitter wind blowing in like a witch's breath from across the fens.

He bustled the younger man into the hall ahead of him and they took the last two vacant seats at the High Table, braving a flurry of frowns and raised eyebrows for interrupting the Latin grace to do so.

Hall was full tonight. It was always more popular with the undergraduates in the colder months. More unusually, the hall was candlelit, as it was now only on very few special occasions. Two long, crowded tables stretched off into the glimmering darkness. By candlelight, people's faces were more alive, the hushed sounds of their voices, the clink of cutlery and glasses, seemed more exciting, and in the dark recesses of the great hall, all the centuries for which it had existed seemed present at once. High Table itself formed a crosspiece at the top, and was raised about a foot above the rest. Since it was a guest night, the table was set on both sides to accommodate the extra numbers, and many diners therefore sat with their backs to the rest of the hall.

'So, young MacDuff,' said the Professor once he was seated and flapping his napkin open, 'pleasure to see you again, my dear fellow.

Glad you could come. No idea what all this is about,' he added, peering round the hall in consternation. 'All the candles and silver and business. Generally means a special dinner in honour of someone or something no one can remember anything about except that it means better food for a night.'

He paused and thought for a moment, and then said, 'It seems odd, don't you think, that the quality of the food should vary inversely with the brightness of the lighting. Makes you wonder what culinary heights the kitchen staff could rise to if you confined them to perpetual darkness. Could be worth a try, I think. Got some good vaults in the college that could be turned over to the purpose. I think I showed you round them once, hmmm? Nice brickwork.'

All this came as something of a relief to his guest. It was the first indication his host had given that he had the faintest recollection who he was. Professor Urban Chronotis, the Regius Professor of Chronology, or 'Reg' as he insisted on being called had a memory that he himself had once compared to the Queen Alexandra Birdwing Butterfly, in that it was colourful, flitted prettily hither and thither, and was now, alas, almost completely extinct.

When he had telephoned with the invitation a few days previously, he had seemed extremely keen to see his former pupil, and yet when Richard had arrived this evening, a little on the late side, admittedly, the Professor had thrown open the door apparently in anger, had started in surprise on seeing Richard, demanded to know if he was having emotional problems, reacted in annoyance to being reminded gently that it was now ten years since he had been Richard's college tutor, and finally agreed that Richard had indeed come for dinner, whereupon he, the Professor, had started talking rapidly and at length about the history of the college architecture, a sure sign that his mind was elsewhere entirely.

'Reg' had never actually taught Richard, he had only been his college tutor, which meant in short that he had had charge of his general welfare, told him when the exams were and not to take drugs, and so on. Indeed, it was not entirely clear if Reg had ever taught anybody at all and what, if anything, he would have taught them. His professorship was an obscure one, to say the least, and since he dispensed with his lecturing duties by the simple and time-honoured technique of presenting all his potential students with an exhaustive list of books that he knew for a fact had been out of print for thirty years, then flying into a tantrum if they failed to find them, no one had ever discovered the precise nature of his academic discipline. He had, of course, long ago taken the precaution of removing the only extant copies of the books on his reading list from the university and college libraries, as a result of which he had plenty of time to, well, to do whatever it was he did.

Since Richard had always managed to get on reasonably well with the old fruitcake, he had one day plucked up courage to ask him what, exactly, the Regius Professorship of Chronology was. It had been one of those light summery days when the world seems about to burst with pleasure at simply being itself, and Reg had been in an uncharacteristically forthcoming mood as they had walked over the bridge where the River Cam divided the older parts of the college from the newer.

'Sinecure, my dear fellow, an absolute sinecure,' he had beamed. 'A small amount of money for a very small, or shall we say non-existent, amount of work. That puts me permanently just ahead of the game, which is a comfortable if frugal place to spend your life. I recommend it.'

He leaned over the edge of the bridge and started to point out a particular brick that he found interesting. 'But what sort of study is it supposed to be?' Richard had pursued. 'Is it history? Physics?

Philosophy? What?'

'Well,' said Reg, slowly, 'since you're interested, the chair was originally instituted by King George III, who, as you know, entertained a number of amusing notions, including the belief that one of the trees in Windsor Great Park was in fact Frederick the Great.

'It was his own appointment, hence "Regius". His own idea as well, which is somewhat more unusual.'

Sunlight played along the River Cam. People in punts happily shouted at each other to fuck off. Thin natural scientists who had spent months locked away in their rooms growing white and fishlike, emerged blinking into the light. Couples walking along the bank got so excited about the general wonderfulness of it all that they had to pop inside for an hour.

'The poor beleaguered fellow,' Reg continued, 'George III, I mean, was, as you may know, obsessed with time. Filled the palace with clocks. Wound them incessantly. Sometimes would get up in the middle of the night and prowl round the palace in his nightshirt winding clocks.

He was very concerned that time continued to go forward, you see. So many terrible things had occurred in his life that he was terrified that any of them might happen again if time were ever allowed to slip backwards even for a moment. A very understandable fear, especially if you're barking mad, as I'm afraid to say, with the very greatest sympathy for the poor fellow, he undoubtedly was. He appointed me, or rather I should say, my office, this professorship, you understand, the post that I am now privileged to hold to - where was I? Oh yes. He instituted this, er, Chair of Chronology to see if there was any particular reason why one thing happened after another and if there was any way of stopping it. Since the answers to the three questions were, I knew immediately, yes, no, and maybe, I realised I could then take the rest of my career off.'

'And your predecessors?'

'Er, were much of the same mind.'

'But who were they?'

'Who were they? Well, splendid fellows of course, splendid to a man.

Remind me to tell you about them some day. See that brick? Wordsworth was once sick on that brick. Great man.'

All that had been about ten years ago.

Richard glanced around the great dining hall to see what had changed in the time, and the answer was, of course, absolutely nothing. In the dark heights, dimly seen by the flickering candlelight, were the ghostly portraits of prime ministers, archbishops, political reformers and poets, any of whom might, in their day, have been sick on that same brick.

'Well,' said Reg, in a loudly confidential whisper, as if introducing the subject of nipple-piercing in a nunnery, 'I hear you've suddenly done very well for yourself, at last, hmmm?'

'Er, well, yes, in fact,' said Richard, who was as surprised at the fact as anybody else, 'yes, I have.'

Around the table several gazes stiffened on him.

'Computers,' he heard somebody whisper dismissively to a neighbour further down the table. The stiff gazes relaxed again, and turned away.

'Excellent,' said Reg. 'I'm so pleased for you, so pleased.'

'Tell me,' he went on, and it was a moment before Richard realised that the Professor wasn't talking to him any more, but had turned to the right to address his other neighbour, 'what's all this about, this,' he flourished a vague hand over the candles and college silver, '…stuff?'

His neighbour, an elderly wizened figure, turned very slowly and looked at him as if he was rather annoyed at being raised from the dead like this.

'Coleridge,' he said in a thin rasp, 'it's the Coleridge Dinner you old fool.' He turned very slowly back until he was facing the front again. His name was Cawley, he was a Professor of Archaeology and Anthropology, and it was frequently said of him, behind his back, that he regarded it not so much as a serious academic study, more as a chance to relive his childhood.

'Ah, is it,' murmured Reg, 'is it?' and turned back to Richard.

'It's the Coleridge Dinner,' he said knowledgeably. 'Coleridge was a member of the college, you know,' he added after a moment. 'Coleridge.

Samuel Taylor. Poet. I expect you've heard of him. This is his Dinner.

Well, not literally, of course. It would be cold by now.' Silence.

'Here, have some salt.'

'Er, thank you, I think I'll wait,' said Richard, surprised. There was no food on the table yet.

'Go on, take it,' insisted the Professor, proffering him the heavy silver salt cellar.

Richard blinked in bemusement but with an interior shrug he reached to take it. In the moment that he blinked, however, the salt cellar had completely vanished.

He started back in surprise.

'Good one, eh?' said Reg as he retrieved the missing cruet from behind the ear of his deathly right-hand neighbour, provoking a surprisingly girlish giggle from somewhere else at the table. Reg smiled impishly. 'Very irritating habit, I know. It's next on my list for giving up after smoking and leeches.'

Well, that was another thing that hadn't changed. Some people pick their noses, others habitually beat up old ladies on the streets. Reg's vice was a harmless if peculiar one - an addiction to childish conjuring tricks. Richard remembered the first time he had been to see Reg with a problem - it was only the normal /Angst/ that periodically takes undergraduates into its grip, particularly when they have essays to write, but it had seemed a dark and savage weight at the time. Reg had sat and listened to his outpourings with a deep frown of concentration, and when at last Richard had finished, he pondered seriously, stroked his chin a lot, and at last leaned forward and looked him in the eye.

'I suspect that your problem,' he said, 'is that you have too many paper clips up your nose.'

Richard stared at him.

'Allow me to demonstrate,' said Reg, and leaning across the desk he pulled from Richard's nose a chain of eleven paper clips and a small rubber swan.

'Ah, the real culprit,' he said, holding up the swan. 'They come in cereal packets, you know, and cause no end of trouble. Well, I'm glad we've had this little chat, my dear fellow. Please feel free to disturb me again if you have any more such problems.'

Needless to say, Richard didn't.

Richard glanced around the table to see if there was anybody else he recognised from his time at the college.

Two places away to the left was the don who had been Richard's Director of Studies in English, who showed no signs of recognising him at all. This was hardly surprising since Richard had spent his three years here assiduously avoiding him, often to the extent of growing a beard and pretending to be someone else.

Next to him was a man whom Richard had never managed to identify.

Neither, in fact, had anyone else. He was thin and vole-like and had the most extraordinarily long bony nose - it really was very, very long and bony indeed. In fact it looked a lot like the controversial keel which had helped the Australians win the America's Cup in 1983, and this resemblance had been much remarked upon at the time, though not of course to his face. No one had said anything to his face at all.

No one.

Ever.

Anyone meeting him for the first time was too startled and embarrassed by his nose to speak, and the second time was worse because of the first time, and so on. Years had gone by now, seventeen in all.

In all that time he had been cocooned in silence. In hall it had long been the habit of the college servants to position a separate set of salt, pepper and mustard on either side of him, since no one could ask him to pass them, and to ask someone sitting on the other side of him was not only rude but completely impossible because of his nose being in the way.

The other odd thing about him was a series of gestures he made and repeated regularly throughout every evening. They consisted of tapping each of the fingers of his left hand in order, and then one of the fingers of his right hand. He would then occasionally tap some other part of his body, a knuckle, an elbow or a knee. Whenever he was forced to stop this by the requirements of eating he would start blinking each of his eyes instead, and occasionally nodding. No one, of course, had ever dared to ask him why he did this, though all were consumed with curiosity.

Richard couldn't see who was sitting beyond him.

In the other direction, beyond Reg's deathly neighbour, was Watkin, the Classics Professor, a man of terrifying dryness and oddity. His heavy rimless glasses were almost solid cubes of glass within which his eyes appeared to lead independent existences like goldfish. His nose was straight enough and ordinary, but beneath it he wore the same beard as Clint Eastwood. His eyes gazed swimmingly around the table as he selected who was going to be spoken at tonight. He had thought that his prey might be one of the guests, the newly appointed Head of Radio Three, who was sitting opposite - but unfortunately he had already been ensnared by the Music Director of the college and a Professor of Philosophy. These two were busy explaining to the harassed man that the phrase 'too much Mozart' was, given any reasonable definition of those three words, an inherently self-contradictory expression, and that any sentence which contained such a phrase would be thereby rendered meaningless and could not, consequently, be advanced as part of an argument in favour of any given programme-scheduling strategy. The poor man was already beginning to grip his cutlery too tightly. His eyes darted about desperately looking for rescue, and made the mistake of lighting on those of Watkin.

'Good evening,' said Watkin with smiling charm, nodding in the most friendly way, and then letting his gaze settle glassily on to his bowl of newly arrived soup, from which position it would not allow itself to be moved. Yet. Let the bugger suffer a little. He wanted the rescue to be worth at least a good half dozen radio talk fees.

Beyond Watkin, Richard suddenly discovered the source of the little girlish giggle that had greeted Reg's conjuring trick. Astonishingly enough it was a little girl. She was about eight years old with blonde hair and a glum look. She was sitting occasionally kicking pettishly at the table leg.

'Who's that?' Richard asked Reg in surprise.

'Who's what?' Reg asked Richard in surprise.

Richard inclined a finger surreptitiously in her direction. 'The girl,' he whispered, 'the very, very little girl. Is it some new maths professor?'

Reg peered round at her. 'Do you know,' he said in astonishment, 'I haven't the faintest idea. Never known anything like it. How extraordinary.'

At that moment the problem was solved by the man from the BBC, who suddenly wrenched himself out of the logical half-nelson into which his neighbours had got him, and told the girl off for kicking the table.

She stopped kicking the table, and instead kicked the air with redoubled vigour. He told her to try and enjoy herself, so she kicked him. This did something to bring a brief glimmer of pleasure into her glum evening, but it didn't last. Her father briefly shared with the table at large his feelings about baby-sitters who let people down, but nobody felt able to run with the topic.

'A major season of Buxtehude,' resumed the Director of Music, 'is of course clearly long overdue. I'm sure you'll be looking forward to remedying this situation at the first opportunity.'

'Oh, er, yes,' replied the girl's father, spilling his soup, 'er, that is… he's not the same one as Gluck, is he?'

The little girl kicked the table leg again. When her father looked sternly at her, she put her head on one side and mouthed a question at him.

'Not now,' he insisted at her as quietly as he could.

'When, then?'

'Later. Maybe. Later, we'll see.'

She hunched grumpily back in her seat. 'You always say later,' she mouthed at him.

'Poor child,' murmured Reg. 'There isn't a don at this table who doesn't behave exactly like that inside. Ah, thank you.' Their soup arrived, distracting his attention, and Richard's.

'So tell me,' said Reg, after they had both had a couple of spoonsful and arrived independently at the same conclusion, that it was not a taste explosion, 'what you've been up to, my dear chap. Something to do with computers, I understand, and also to do with music. I thought you read English when you were here - though only, I realise, in your spare time.' He looked at Richard significantly over the rim of his soup spoon. 'Now wait,' he interrupted before Richard even had a chance to start, 'don't I vaguely remember that you had some sort of computer when you were here? When was it? 1977?'

'Well, what we called a computer in 1977 was really a kind of electric abacus, but…'

'Oh, now, don't underestimate the abacus,' said Reg. 'In skilled hands it's a very sophisticated calculating device. Furthermore it requires no power, can be made with any materials you have to hand, and never goes bing in the middle of an important piece of work.'

'So an electric one would be particularly pointless,' said Richard.

'True enough,' conceded Reg.

'There really wasn't a lot this machine could do that you couldn't do yourself in half the time with a lot less trouble,' said Richard, 'but it was, on the other hand, very good at being a slow and dimwitted pupil.'

Reg looked at him quizzically.

'I had no idea they were supposed to be in short supply,' he said.

'I could hit a dozen with a bread roll from where I'm sitting.'

'I'm sure. But look at it this way. What really is the point of trying to teach anything to anybody?'

This question seemed to provoke a murmur of sympathetic approval from up and down the table.

Richard continued, 'What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your own mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that's really the essence of programming. By the time you've sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you've certainly learned something about it yourself. The teacher usually learns more than the pupil. Isn't that true?'

'It would be hard to learn much less than my pupils,' came a low growl from somewhere on the table, 'without undergoing a pre-frontal lobotomy.'

'So I used to spend days struggling to write essays on this 16K machine that would have taken a couple of hours on a typewriter, but what was fascinating to me was the process of trying to explain to the machine what it was I wanted it to do. I virtually wrote my own word processor in BASIC. A simple search and replace routine would take about three hours.'

'I forget, did you ever get any essays done at all?'

'Well, not as such. No actual essays, but the reasons why not were absolutely fascinating. For instance, I discovered that…'

He broke off, laughing at himself.

'I was also playing keyboards in a rock group, of course,' he added.

'That didn't help.'

'Now, that I didn't know,' said Reg. 'Your past has murkier things in it than I dreamed possible. A quality, I might add, that it shares with this soup.' He wiped his mouth with his napkin very carefully. 'I must go and have a word with the kitchen staff one day. I would like to be sure that they are keeping the right bits and throwing the proper bits away. So. A rock group, you say. Well, well, well. Good heavens.'

'Yes,' said Richard. 'We called ourselves The Reasonably Good Band, but in fact we weren't. Our intention was to be the Beatles of the early eighties, but we got much better financial and legal advice than the Beatles ever did, which was basically 'Don't bother', so we didn't.

I left Cambridge and starved for three years.'

'But didn't I bump into you during that period,' said Reg, 'and you said you were doing very well?'

'As a road sweeper, yes. There was an awful lot of mess on the roads. More than enough, I felt, to support an entire career. However, I got the sack for sweeping the mess on to another sweeper's patch.'

Reg shook his head. 'The wrong career for you, I'm sure. There are plenty of vocations where such behaviour would ensure rapid preferment.'

'I tried a few - none of them much grander, though. And I kept none of them very long, because I was always too tired to do them properly.

I'd be found asleep slumped over the chicken sheds or filing cabinets - - depending on what the job was. Been up all night with the computer you see, teaching it to play "Three Blind Mice". It was an important goal for me.'

'I'm sure,' agreed Reg. 'Thank you,' he said to the college servant who took his half-finished plate of soup from him, 'thank you very much. "Three Blind Mice", eh? Good. Good. So no doubt you succeeded eventually, and this accounts for your present celebrated status. Yes?'

'Well, there's a bit more to it than that.'

'I feared there might be. Pity you didn't bring it with you though.

It might have cheered up the poor young lady who is currently having our dull and crusty company forced upon her. A swift burst of "Three Blind Mice" would probably do much to revive her spirits.' He leaned forward to look past his two right-hand neighbours at the girl, who was still sitting sagging in her chair.

'Hello,' he said.

She looked up in surprise, and then dropped her eyes shyly, swinging her legs again.

'Which do you think is worse,' enquired Reg, 'the soup or the company?'

She gave a tiny, reluctant laugh and shrugged, still looking down.

'I think you're wise not to commit yourself at this stage,' continued Reg. 'Myself, I'm waiting to see the carrots before I make any judgements. They've been boiling them since the weekend, but I fear it may not be enough. The only thing that could possibly be worse than the carrots is Watkin. He's the man with the silly glasses sitting between us. My name's Reg, by the way. Come over and kick me when you have a moment.' The girl giggled and glanced up at Watkin, who stiffened and made an appallingly unsuccessful attempt to smile goodnaturedly.

'/Well/, little girl,' he said to her awkwardly, and she had desperately to suppress a hoot of laughter at his glasses. Little conversation therefore ensued, but the girl had an ally, and began to enjoy herself a tiny little bit. Her father gave her a relieved smile.

Reg turned back to Richard, who said, suddenly, 'Do you have any family?'

'Er… no,' said Reg, quietly. 'But tell me. After "Three Blind Mice", what then?'

'Well, to cut a long story short, Reg, I ended up working for WayForward Technologies…'

'Ah, yes, the famous Mr Way. Tell me, what's he like?'

Richard was always faintly annoyed by this question, probably because he was asked it so often.

'Both better and worse than he's represented in the press. I like him a lot, actually. Like any driven man he can be a bit trying at times, but I've known him since the very early days of the company when neither he nor I had a bean to our names. He's fine. It's just that it's a good idea not to let him have your phone number unless you possess an industrial-grade answering machine.'

'What? Why's that?'

'Well, he's one of those people who can only think when he's talking. When he has ideas, he has to talk them out to whoever will listen. Or, if the people themselves are not available, which is increasingly the case, their answering machines will do just as well.

He just phones them up and talks at them. He has one secretary whose sole job is to collect tapes from people he might have phoned, transcribe them, sort them and give him the edited text the next day in a blue folder.'

'A blue one, eh?'

'Ask me why he doesn't simply use a tape recorder,' said Richard with a shrug.

Reg considered this. 'I expect he doesn't use a tape recorder because he doesn't like talking to himself,' he said. 'There is a logic there. Of a kind.'

He took a mouthful of his newly arrived /porc au poivre/ and ruminated on it for a while before gently laying his knife and fork aside again for the moment.

'So what,' he said at last, 'is the role of young MacDuff in all this?'

'Well, Gordon assigned me to write a major piece of software for the Apple Macintosh. Financial spreadsheet, accounting, that sort of thing, powerful, easy to use, lots of graphics. I asked him exactly what he wanted in it, and he just said, "Everything. I want the top piece of all-singing, all-dancing business software for that machine." And being of a slightly whimsical turn of mind I took him literally.

'You see, a pattern of numbers can represent anything you like, can be used to map any surface, or modulate any dynamic process - and so on. And any set of company accounts are, in the end, just a pattern of numbers. So I sat down and wrote a program that'll take those numbers and do what you like with them. If you just want a bar graph it'll do them as a bar graph, if you want them as a pie chart or scatter graph it'll do them as a pie chart or scatter graph. If you want dancing girls jumping out of the pie chart in order to distract attention from the figures the pie chart actually represents, then the program will do that as well. Or you can turn your figures into, for instance, a flock of seagulls, and the formation they fly in and the way in which the wings of each gull beat will be determined by the performance of each division of your company. Great for producing animated corporate logos that actually /mean/ something.

'But the silliest feature of all was that if you wanted your company accounts represented as a piece of music, it could do that as well.

Well, I thought it was silly. The corporate world went bananas over it.'

Reg regarded him solemnly from over a piece of carrot poised delicately on his fork in front of him, but did not interrupt.

'You see, any aspect of a piece of music can be expressed as a sequence or pattern of numbers,' enthused Richard. 'Numbers can express the pitch of notes, the length of notes, patterns of pitches and lengths.'

'You mean tunes,' said Reg. The carrot had not moved yet.

Richard grinned.

'Tunes would be a very good word for it. I must remember that.'

'It would help you speak more easily.' Reg returned the carrot to his plate, untasted. 'And this software did well, then?' he asked.

'Not so much here. The yearly accounts of most British companies emerged sounding like the Dead March from /Saul/, but in Japan they went for it like a pack of rats. It produced lots of cheery company anthems that started well, but if you were going to criticise you'd probably say that they tended to get a bit loud and squeaky at the end.

Did spectacular business in the States, which was the main thing, commercially. Though the thing that's interesting me most now is what happens if you leave the accounts out of it. Turn the numbers that represent the way a swallow's wings beat directly into music. What would you hear? Not the sound of cash registers, according to Gordon.'

'Fascinating,' said Reg, 'quite fascinating,' and popped the carrot at last into his mouth. He turned and leaned forward to speak to his new girlfriend.

'Watkin loses,' he pronounced. 'The carrots have achieved a new alltime low. Sorry, Watkin, but awful as you are, the carrots, I'm afraid, are world-beaters.'

The girl giggled more easily than last time and she smiled at him.

Watkin was trying to take all this good-naturedly, but it was clear as his eyes swam at Reg that he was more used to discomfiting than being discomfited.

'Please, Daddy, can I now?' With her new-found, if slight, confidence, the girl had also found a voice.

'Later,' insisted her father.

'This is already later. I've been timing it.'

'Well…' He hesitated, and was lost.

'We've been to Greece,' announced the girl in a small but awed voice.

'Ah, have you indeed,' said Watkin, with a little nod. 'Well, well.

Anywhere in particular, or just Greece generally?'

'Patmos,' she said decisively. 'It was beautiful. I think Patmos is the most beautiful place in the whole world. Except the ferry never came when it said it would. Never, ever. I timed it. We missed our flight but I didn't mind.'

'Ah, Patmos, I see,' said Watkin, who was clearly roused by the news. 'Well, what you have to understand, young lady, is that the Greeks, not content with dominating the culture of the Classical world, are also responsible for the greatest, some would say the only, work of true creative imagination produced this century as well. I refer of course to the Greek ferry timetables. A work of the sublimest fiction.

Anyone who has travelled in the Aegean will confirm this. Hmm, yes. I think so.'

She frowned at him.

'I found a pot,' she said.

'Probably nothing,' interrupted her father hastily. 'You know the way it is. Everyone who goes to Greece for the first time thinks they've found a pot, don't they? Ha, ha.'

There were general nods. This was true. Irritating, but true.

'I found it in the harbour,' she said, 'in the water. While we were waiting for the damn ferry.'

'Sarah! I've told you…'

'It's just what you called it. And worse. You called it words I didn't think you knew. Anyway, I thought that if everyone here was meant to be so clever, then someone would be able to tell me if it was a proper ancient Greek thing or not. I think it's /very/ old. Will you please let them see it, Daddy?'

Her father shrugged hopelessly and started to fish about under his chair.

'Did you know, young lady,' said Watkin to her, 'that the Book of Revelation was written on Patmos? It was indeed. By Saint John the Divine, as you know. To me it shows very clear signs of having been written while waiting for a ferry. Oh, yes, I think so. It starts off, doesn't it, with that kind of dreaminess you get when you're killing time, getting bored, you know, just making things up, and then gradually grows to a sort of climax of hallucinatory despair. I find that very suggestive. Perhaps you should write a paper on it.' He nodded at her.

She looked at him as if he were mad.

'Well, here it is,' said her father, plonking the thing down on the table. 'Just a pot, as you see. She's only six,' he added with a grim smile, 'aren't you, dear?'

'Seven,' said Sarah.

The pot was quite small, about five inches high and four inches across at its widest point. The body was almost spherical, with a very narrow neck extending about an inch above the body. The neck and about half of the surface area were encrusted with hard-caked earth, but the parts of the pot that could be seen were of a rough, ruddy texture.

Sarah took it and thrust it into the hands of the don sitting on her right.

'You look clever,' she said. 'Tell me what you think.'

The don took it, and turned it over with a slightly supercilious air. 'I'm sure if you scraped away the mud from the bottom,' he remarked wittily, 'it would probably say "Made in Birmingham".'

'That old, eh?' said Sarah's father with a forced laugh. 'Long time since anything was made there.'

'Anyway,' said the don, 'not my field, I'm a molecular biologist.

Anyone else want to have a look?'

This question was not greeted with wild yelps of enthusiasm, but nevertheless the pot was passed from hand to hand around the far end of the table in a desultory fashion. It was goggled at through pebble glasses, peered at through horn-rims, gazed at over half-moons, and squinted at by someone who had left his glasses in his other suit, which he very much feared had now gone to the cleaner's. No one seemed to know how old it was, or to care very much. The young girl's face began to grow downhearted again.

'Sour lot,' said Reg to Richard. He picked up a silver salt cellar again and held it up.

'Young lady,' he said, leaning forward to address her.

'Oh, not again, you old fool,' muttered the aged archaeologist Cawley, sitting back and putting his hands over his ears.

'Young lady,' repeated Reg, 'regard this simple silver salt cellar.

Regard this simple hat.'

'You haven't got a hat,' said the girl sulkily.

'Oh,' said Reg, 'a moment please,' and he went and fetched his woolly red one.

'Regard,' he said again, 'this simple silver salt cellar. Regard this simple woolly hat. I put the salt cellar in the hat, thus, and I pass the hat to you. The next part of the trick, dear lady… is up to you.'

He handed the hat to her, past their two intervening neighbours, Cawley and Watkin. She took the hat and looked inside it.

'Where's it gone?' she asked, staring into the hat.

'It's wherever you put it,' said Reg.

'Oh,' said Sarah, 'I see. Well… that wasn't very good.'

Reg shrugged. 'A humble trick, but it gives me pleasure,' he said, and turned back to Richard. 'Now, what were we talking about?'

Richard looked at him with a slight sense of shock. He knew that the Professor had always been prone to sudden and erratic mood swings, but it was as if all the warmth had drained out of him in an instant. He now wore the same distracted expression Richard had seen on his face when first he had arrived at his door that evening, apparently completely unexpected. Reg seemed then to sense that Richard was taken aback and quickly reassembled a smile.

'My dear chap!' he said. 'My dear chap! My dear, dear chap! What was I saying?'

'Er, you were saying "My dear chap".'

'Yes, but I feel sure it was a prelude to something. A sort of short toccata on the theme of what a splendid fellow you are prior to introducing the main subject of my discourse, the nature of which I currently forget. You have no idea what I was about to say?'

'No.'

'Oh. Well, I suppose I should be pleased. If everyone knew exactly what I was going to say, then there would be no point in my saying it, would there? Now, how's our young guest's pot doing?'

In fact it had reached Watkin, who pronounced himself no expert on what the ancients had made for themselves to drink out of, only on what they had written as a result. He said that Cawley was the one to whose knowledge and experience they should all bow, and attempted to give the pot to him.

'I said,' he repeated, 'yours was the knowledge and experience to which we should bow. Oh, for heaven's sake, take your hands off your ears and have a look at the thing.'

Gently, but firmly, he drew Cawley's right hand from his ear, explained the situation to him once again, and handed him the pot.

Cawley gave it a cursory but clearly expert examination.

'Yes,' he said, 'about two hundred years old, I would think. Very rough. Very crude example of its type. Utterly without value, of course.'

He put it down peremptorily and gazed off into the old minstrel gallery, which appeared to anger him for some reason.

The effect on Sarah was immediate. Already discouraged, she was thoroughly downcast by this. She bit her lip and threw herself back against her chair, feeling once again thoroughly out of place and childish. Her father gave her a warning look about misbehaving, and then apologised for her again.

'Well, Buxtehude,' he hurried on to say, 'yes, good old Buxtehude.

We'll have to see what we can do. Tell me…'

'Young lady,' interrupted a voice, hoarse with astonishment, 'you are clearly a magician and enchantress of prodigious powers!'

All eyes turned to Reg, the old show-off. He was gripping the pot and staring at it with manic fascination. He turned his eyes slowly to the little girl, as if for the first time assessing the power of a feared adversary.

'I bow to you,' he whispered. 'I, unworthy though I am to speak in the presence of such a power as yours, beg leave to congratulate you on one of the finest feats of the conjurer's art it has been my privilege to witness!'

Sarah stared at him with widening eyes.

'May I show these people what you have wrought?' he asked earnestly.

Very faintly she nodded, and he fetched her formerly precious, but now sadly discredited, pot a sharp rap on the table.

It split into two irregular parts, the caked clay with which it was surrounded falling in jagged shards on the table. One side of the pot fell away, leaving the rest standing.

Sarah's eyes goggled at the stained and tarnished but clearly recognisable silver college salt cellar, standing jammed in the remains of the pot.

'Stupid old fool,' muttered Cawley.

After the general disparagement and condemnation of this cheap parlour trick had died down - none of which could dim the awe in Sarah's eyes - Reg turned to Richard and said, idly: 'Who was that friend of yours when you were here, do you ever see him? Chap with an odd East European name. Svlad something. Svlad Cjelli. Remember the fellow?'

Richard looked at him blankly for a moment.

'Svlad?' he said. 'Oh, you mean Dirk. Dirk Cjelli. No. I never stayed in touch. I've bumped into him a couple of times in the street but that's all. I think he changes his name from time to time. Why do you ask?'