Land Beyond the Map

I

Roland crane heard the crash of breaking glass in his study from the hall where he had gone to tap the barometer and curse the windy, overcast, beastly weather. The sound echoed hard on a blast of wind that shook the isolated old house. The carpet rippled the length of the hall like an anaconda. The lamp swung from its chain, chasing shadows like bats across the polished paneling of the walls.

He ran angrily back, almost colliding with the incomplete suit of Florentine armor, in time to see the second maid, young Annie, burst into tears.

Strewn at her feet across the Persian carpet, shards of glass glittered in the table-lamp’s illumination like the aftermath of a battle. Crane looked up.

All along the windowless north wall his map frames hung, some faded, some brightly colored, tattered, dimmed with age, charred, stained, inscribed with loving and painstaking care and the lavish curlicues of writing from the hands of men long dead. That wall dominated the room. Across from it the curtained windows and ceiling-high bookshelves counter-pointed in modern somber book-learning the high brilliance of those maps. They spoke of daring and the great venture across unknown oceans, of beckoning mists of undiscovered lands and the siren call of the sea. The salty tang of romance breathed from them into the close confinement of the somber study. From pigment and parchment beckoned the lure of the unknown.

In the center of the Fifteen Eighty Italian of the Florida Gulf and the westward islands a starshaped outline revealed the brighter color of gold leaf beyond where no glass lay to dull the luster.

“I’m sorry, sir. I just don’t know how it happened.”

Annie’s nose was red and her cheeks shook and her whole scrawny frame trembled. She peeked at him over her hands pressed tightly to her wet face. Her bright bird-like brown eyes were moist and overflowing.

Crane’s anger dissipated. Annie was the daughter of old Annie, who had served him as well as she had his father, and that had been back before the first World War, before Roland Crane was thought of, when Isambard Crane was building up the engineering combine that now kept his son in idle luxury. That idleness was relative, though; because of his dislike of business drearinesses Crane’s energies found other outlets. Men of affairs tended to misjudge him on the basis of bis inherited affluence.

The map was unharmed. He took four quick strides to the frame and checked. An odd bluish tinge stained the glass. It had shattered into the shape almost of a perfect seven-pointed star. He turned on Annie.

“That’s all right, Annie. No real damage done. And stop crying, for goodness sake!”

“I’m sorry, sir—”

“What were you doing here at all this time of night?”

Annie gestured to the coffee table. A tea pot covered with a hand-knitted cosy, a cup and saucer, milk and sugar and a heaping plate of buns, with a dish of butter and a knife and toasting fork reminded Crane he had rung for tea.

“Why didn’t Molly bring it?” Molly was the first maid.

“It’s her night off, sir—”

“Oh.” Crane laughed. “Well, it’s not a very pleasant one. The wind must be gusting past seventy. Probably the blast I heard in the hall twisted the fabric of the house in some way, maybe vibration, and the glass must have been weak never mind now. Just clear the glass away. And be careful don’t spear yourself.”

“Yes, sir.”

The telephone rang.

“Oh, drat it,” said Crane ungraciously and crossed to the wall-table where the phone crouched like a sentient spider, connected to the web of the world.

He did not recognize the voice. The storm must have interfered with the telephone line as well as smashing his map glass; he realized it was a woman, but the squawks and ululations and clicks rendered any further guess impossible.

“Mr. Roland Crane?”

“Speaking.”

“The Mr. Roland Crane who is interested in maps?”

Crane’s mental defenses alerted. Before he could make his usual cautious reply, the woman’s voice went on:

“Interested in buying maps? I have something you might care to see.”

“Oh?”

“Perhaps I could come out to Bushmills—?”

“We-ell—”

“I have a car. I’m in the Royal Garage in town. I could be with you in half an hour.”

Crane thought of the drive out from Market Nelson, with the road winding steadily upwards onto the inhospitable moorlands, with the scraggy trees lying flat in the wind and the road glistening with unshed water, the ditches and gutters miniature raging torrents. No weather for a woman. He thought of the Coup des Dames, and smiled wryly to himself; his notions of woman-kind stemmed from the pages of old books, where knights in shining armor defended shrinking damsels from fire-breathing dragons. Today, the girls twisted the necks of the fire-breathing dragons pretty efficiently themselves.

“All right, Miss—?”

“Harbottle.”

He shuddered and went on: “Very well, Miss Harbottle. If you care to drive out in this weather tonight then what you have for sale must be very interesting. Come out, by all means.”

The phone went dead at once. That might be a fallen telegraph pole just as easily as the replacement of the receiver.

He watched as Annie finished clearing away the glass. Odd that the glass had broken at all, really, just like that; but that had been a treasure bought entire — frame, map, glass and all. The glass was old and weak. He made a mental note to check all the other framed charts and maps. Those housed in the ponderous sliding drawers of the cabinets were preserved better, perhaps; but he would have missed that oriflamme of color along the wall.

Maps perhaps formed too great a part of his life. He had tried various of the other ways rich men spent their days and had found them all uniformly dull, pompous or cruel. His interest in maps stemmed from that early odd experience; he had told the story a few times but, meeting raised eyebrows and smiling incredulity, hadn’t bothered lately. He wondered now, not for the first time, if he followed a will o’ the wisp. The main fact that the search went on still was good enough.

The buns toasted well before the banked fire roaring in the hearth. Wasteful, perhaps; shedding a benison, yes. And that was what counted with Roland Crane.

He poured milk and added tea and sugar and lay back in his winged armchair with the sliding seat and back fixed in the most comfortable position years of experience had taught him. It was good to be alive. It was good to be rich with financial cares handled by a remote glass-walled office in the City of London. It was good to live a full life in these bleak moorlands of the west country, and to go off on a dig during the season, working with men and women who shared his archaeological dedication. The idle wasting away of life in frittering pursuits that was a disease with the rich would have killed him inside three months.

Next season would be — if he was lucky — Turkey. A great deal to be dug up there, to be found, to be added to the store of human knowledge. Many of mankind’s origins were to be discovered there and Crane’s wealth would once more be willingly thrown into the work of unfolding the veil of the past. Yes, it was good to have a purpose in life.

He drank more tea and ate a toasted bun, liberally smeared with good rich farm butter, and lay back in the great winged armchair, well content.

He wondered, not without a twinge of muted excitement, what this strange woman would be bringing him tonight out of the storm.

Miss Harbottle had wasted no time. She’d probably driven up that winding road with the wipers tick-tocking across the windshield, the tires hissing in the rain, the main beams scything ruthlessly ahead, a cigarette held casually between her lips, clocking a steady sixty.

She looked that sort of girl.

Annie ushered her in, said that she would bring fresh tea, and closed the door silently. Miss Harbottle advanced with outstretched hand. Crane took it, looking at her, suddenly and disastrously uncomfortable.

Miss Harbottle’s fair wavy hair had been cut murderously short. She had a face that could find a match only in those old books of high romance that Crane had read and pored over as a child, a face that made the faces of modern magazine advertisement girls look the vapid blanks they were. She wore slacks and a short leather coat, an attire for which she apologized at once.

“Felt it more suitable for the weather. Filthy ride.”

“Yet you came anyway,” Crane said, showing her to a chair. “It must be very important.” He looked vainly for a case.

She laughed, sitting down. “I’m afraid I played a little deception on you, Mr. Crane. I have no maps to sell.”

Crane sat up. “Well, what on earth—?” he began.

Her face, while still retaining all its vitality and vivacious radiation of breeziness that had so befuddled Crane, became at once somber, penetrating and intelligent. The impression she gave Crane was of an elfin sprite full of feminine loveliness and charm barely concealing the practical toughness of a dynasty-toppling Empress. She leaned forward.

“I’m not selling maps, Mr. Crane. But I am interested in acquiring a map—”

“I’m sorry, Miss Harbottle.” Crane was brusque and annoyed. “If you knew I collected maps you should also have known I do not-sell. I—”

“I know, Mr. Crane. I am interested in one special map. A map which I believe, you, also, do not have.”

“Oh?”

Her eyes were hidden now behind down-dropped lids. He wondered for a panic-stricken instant what she was thinking; then he rallied. That was between him and his memories alone.

“Well, Miss Harbottle—”

“And my name isn’t Harbottle. That happens to be the nam? of the proprietor of the Royal Garage. I used it on the spur of the moment.”

“But why—?”

“Mr. Crane. If I told you that I am looking for a certain map and came to you for assistance, what would you say?”

“Well… only that if I could help you, I would, of course. But I think it very unlikely.”

“So do I.”

“What! Well, then?” Crane was exasperated.

“Mr. Crane.” The girl whose name was not Harbottle spoke with concentrated seriousness.

Her eyelids rose and her eyes — of a deep and disturbing blue — held Crane’s hypnotically. “I am interested in a map — a map that has been torn down the center.”

“Ah!” said Crane, and was silent.

In the room the feeling of tension was as strong a reality as the wind that clawed at the windows and buffeted the walls outside. A door banged somewhere far off above; probably the beds were being turned down. Annie must have assumed that Miss Harbottle who was not Harbottle would be staying the night. It would be a charitable gesture to offer and everyone knew that Crane was not the man for monkey tricks with females. Crane ignored all these outside unimportant sounds.

A map, torn down the center!

An old map, on thick curling paper with print that was difficult to read. Yet not too old. Young enough to be used by a motorist wanting to find his way along mainroads in the country. Along roads that had run in the same grooves since the time men traversed them searching for fresh flints long before the Romans came. A map that did exist — or had existed — an ordinary map, a cheap mid-nineteenth century map printed all in black.

Yes, Crane knew of a map that had been torn down the center.

But was that map the one this girl was talking about?

The answer to that question could only be: “yes!”

Crane composed himself. He poured more tea. His hand trembled so slightly that the tea fell neatly enough into the cup; its scatter would have covered half a crown.

“You’d better tell me the rest of it, Miss Har — I beg your pardon…”

“Polly Gould.”

“Miss Gould, then perhaps we can — Polly Gould? You’re not Allan Gould’s sister?”

“No.” Then, at his expression, she said flatly: “I’m his cousin.”

“Most odd. I mean, ringing me up and spinning a yarn about having a map to see and being a Miss Harbottle…. Why didn’t you try to see me in the ordinary way?”

Her expression baffled him; but for a fleeting instant he didn’t like what he saw. Then she said: “You’re a rich man, Mister Crane. From all accounts, very rich. You live alone with a few servants, stuck out in the middle of this bleak moorland. I’ve had dealings with very rich people a few times before and I can say candidly that I do not like them. They’ve fallen into the trap of believing that money compensates for the lack of normal human qualities—”

“Please, Miss Gould—”

“Oh, I’ve heard about your archaeological pursuits and no doubt you feel you are doing a good job — but that’s purely relative. I couldn’t take the chance that you’d be like all the rest and refuse, offhandedly and offensively, to see me.”

“But you’re Allan Gould’s cousin!” Crane was determined not to become annoyed. “Surely that must have made you understand I’d see you—”

“Allan told me what an odd fish you were — his expression, I’m merely reporting — and how damned glad he was he hadn’t been born with all your inherited wealth. No, Mr. Crane. Subterfuge it had to be. You rich and we ordinary people inhabit two different dimensions.”

“I remember Allan being a wild one. Always dissatisfied with what he had, always reaching out after fresh experiences. He even bucked army tradition to the extent of volunteering for any crazy scheme that came along….” Crane had been shaken by this girl’s verbal bludgeoning. He knew rich people were disliked as a matter of principle; but she seemed so cold-blooded about it all. But he had to know what she knew about a map that had been torn down the center. He shifted in his armchair and said: “Well, then — can you tell me if there is any more news about Allan?”

“None.” Polly Gould’s manner subtly changed, as though through her tough matter-of-factness she had remembered an old and painful wound. “Since he disappeared no one has heard a word. And that was five years ago. So we’re not likely to hear anything now.”

“No. I’m sorry. You were fond of him?”

“Pretty much.” She was offhanded about it now; it cut deep. “He was in love with me. Wanted to marry me. I wasn’t and didn’t. I sometimes wonder if — but then — what with the map and all I just can’t make up my mind….”

Her distress was obvious.

Crane felt unnecessary.

He realized that she’d spoken as she had earlier to show him how she felt, to put her cards on the table, to be honest with him. But this, this about Allan Gould — this meant much more to her.

“Well, anyway,” he said brusquely, “perhaps you’d care to tell me why you’ve come to see me.”

“The other day I was speaking to Tom Bowles — you don’t know him and, anyway, he isn’t important.”

Crane felt sorry for poor Tom Bowles. Being so summarily dismissed by this girl was something like the end of the world. Her dismissal of him — well, now, that was a different category of Armageddon.

“He mentioned that he’d heard a funny story from friends and they’d picked it up from overhearing an Admiral talking in his club.” She shot him an oblique inquiring look, as though weighing him afresh. “The story was so odd that it was worth repeating.”

Crane nodded. “You can spare me the story. I know.”

Polly Gould put down her cup and stared directly at Crane. “I don’t know it all, not the details. But I want you to tell me. It is very important that you do so, Mr. Crane.”

Crane scowled at the fire. “I can’t see how this very funny story — to quote your friends — can have any bearing on your visit. It merely explains how you know I am interested in a map that has been torn down the center.”

“I guessed you would say that.” The fire leaped up, throwing a lurid flickering glow across their faces, picking out the silver glitter of the crossed rapiers on the wall, flinging back a blinding reflection from the broken map case. “I can tell you that Allan had that map—”

“He had it!”

“Yes. He had it. He used it. Just as you did.”

“My God!” Crane sat in a cold sweat. That someone he had once known, an old army friend, had actually possessed the map — his map! — and he hadn’t known — it struck shrewdly. And Allan had actually used it. Incredible.

Polly said: “You’d never told Allan the story. I didn’t know until Tom told me. Perhaps, if you had—”

“You think he disappeared — there?”

“I don’t know what I think. Perhaps, if you tell me the story and fill in details, I might have something more to go on than a fifth-hand account told with all the boring club-jargon thrown in. Well?”

“I can hardly refuse.” Crane sat back in his chair. His voice sank, so that Polly leaned forward, hands under chin and elbows on knees, to hear him. The firelight caught her face, limned it cameo-like against the shadows of the study.

“I must have been five or six at the time. We were touring — father, mother, Adele and myself — but touring where I cannot remember. The experience was so strange that none of us mentioned it afterwards, and now that my parents are dead and Adele is — well” — he swallowed and went on — “that doesn’t matter in this context. She cannot tell me. Finding out just what did happen is what matters.”

“I know about your sister,” Polly said softly. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, they look after her well. She plays with her dolls and her pretty ribbons and lets them wash her face and dress and undress her. She’ll be thirty-four next birthday.”

Polly remained silent.

After a moment Crane said: “We had a big red car. I remember that because all cars were black in those days. A big tourer and I loved to sit up front with the hood down and let the slipstream whip into my face. I can feel it now.” He put one hand to his cheek and rubbed, thoughtfully. “We were going from one town to another — naturally, I don’t know where — and I was anxious to get there for an ice cream. I remember bits and pieces, flashes of memory, elusive patterns; not the whole thing in a nicely ordered sequence. To remember anything at all from that age means it must have impressed me very forcibly. This did.”

“Yes?”

“Just as we were leaving the outskirts father realized he didn’t have a map. I believe it was my fault; I’d used his map to make a paper hat. Anyway. There was a junk shop, you know, old stuff people toss out and that lies in windows gathering dust for years on end. Then a rich American happens by and pays enough to keep the owner living for another five years. There was a book tray outside. Twopence each. Nothing much under a shilling these days. Father asked the man if he had a map. He had. He had a map all right.”

“The map.”

“Yes. The map. It was folded into the back of a guide book. Father just tossed the book onto my lap and we set off. The next flash that comes is of father using words I didn’t understand and of mother shushing him. There was only half the map there. Someone had torn half of it off.”

“Wasn’t a remark passed…”

“My mother, I think. She had a whacky sense of humor. It may have been father; it doesn’t matter. They said: ‘I suppose when we reach the torn part of the map we’ll all fall off the edge.’ It made me laugh.” Crane fiddled with the teacups, thinking back, feeling the sun and air and the way the big old red tourer rolled around corners. He could see the map spread out on the seat between him and his father, his father, upright behind the wheel, leather gauntleted hands so firm on the wheel, so gentle with the old paper of the map.

“We drove on in the sunshine through green fields, not a house or a soul in sight. The telegraph posts were all leaning at crazy angles and the road was very white and dusty. Then father said: ‘Well, hold on, folks. This is where we all fall off.’ And we all laughed. We were still laughing when the gray mist closed down dankly from nowhere.”

He shivered.

“You couldn’t see a thing. One minute we were driving in the sunshine, doing fifty along the white road. The next we were groping forward in a dense mist. It was still warm. The car still ran. Father dropped the speed to ten miles an hour, and we groped on. Then I started to cry.”

“You were frightened?”

“Yes. Well, scared, wondering what it was all about and what it would be like to fall off a map. When Adele said: ‘We’re not really going to fall off the end of the world, silly!’ it only made it worse. I cried all the harder. Eventually father decided to turn back. We retraced our course and came out into the sunshine again. When father checked the map, and mother, too, we found that the mist began at exactly the place where the map was torn.”

Polly Gould shivered and moved closer to the fire.

“Father laughed it off. He was a big man. Isambard Crane. Biggest engineer in all the west country. ‘Probably a local freak,’ he said. I didn’t know what he meant; but it sounded comforting. We went on again. We crept through the mist, hearing nothing apart from the rumble of the car. Then, after about ten minutes, the mist began to thin.”

Crane put the cup down. He guessed he’d break it if he went on with story holding it in his hand.

“The mist shredded away. We were out in the sunshine again. Father laughed and said that was that. We went on around a bend in the road and then — then—”

“Yes?”

“A confusion. A roaring from the engine as father turned the car around fast, tires spinning. A distant glimpse of turrets and towers, of fire and smoke and the thin keening of trumpets. I cannot bring that scene to mind though I have tried many and many a time. A silver globe from which spurted livid tongues of flame. A tall structure which I think of always as a tree, laminated, many branched, and yet so huge no tree exists on the same scale. A vibration in the air, a gossamer sheening of the atmosphere that set a rippling curtain, many folded, between us and the scene beyond.” Crane shook his head. “I have tried to recapture the feelings we all had, the inexplicable sense of dread, the heightened pulse-rate, the dread knowledge that this place was evil — and yet evil designed for one end, that of good — inexplicable as that sounds.”

“Inexplicable — and almost crazy.”

Crane smiled wryly at Polly. “Yes, Miss Gould. Crazy.”

“You ran through an industrial fog-belt into one of those god-awful industrial towns, all smoke and soot and flame; and the feeling of evil, of men’s lives being warped and crushed, is strong enough there to curl a philosopher’s beard.”

“So I have thought many times. That must be the answer. You travel through the Welsh valleys, some of the most beautiful scenery God put on this Earth — and then you stumble across the foulness of a mining town huddled under its reeking smoke — like a cess-pit at the bottom of a garden. To a child’s eyes a factory belching smoke and steam and flame as the Bessemers tilted would appear as a cacophonous mystery, a place of terror and fascination and repugnance. Oh, yes, Miss Gould, don’t think I haven’t thought about this.”

“I believe you have, Mr. Crane. I merely said that to test your reactions. At least you’re not completely dominated by terror-memories; you can still be logical. You forgive me? Good. Now, Allan—”

“Yes. Your cousin. He had this map—”

“What happened afterwards? To the map, I mean.”

“Father turned the car around fast. We went out of there and through the mist without slackening speed until we reached the sunshine once more. Then we backtracked and found a fork which took us a longer way around. We didn’t speak much of what we had seen.”

“All right. Frankly, Mr. Crane, I cannot see what this did to you. And your sister Adele’s reaction seems quite out of proportion. You ran into an industrial belt and saw the monstrous growth of factories with a child’s eyes. I had been hoping you would help me with my search for my cousin. It seems I was mistaken.”

“Just a minute. I’ve told you the story that is current. I haven’t added further details, details I have told no one. It seems also pretty plain why I want the map…. Adele haunts me and there must be a chance for her…. Well, I won’t elaborate on that. But right now I think it only fair for you to give me your side of the story.”

“That’s simple enough. Allan planned a long motoring holiday. He was on leave—”

“He stayed on as a regular? Yes, of course. I decided that soldiering and Cranes didn’t go hand in hand. I think I was right.”

“Maybe you were. He’d found a girl friend — Sharon something-or-other — and they were going to do the Grand Tour of Ireland.”

“Ireland!”

“Yes. You knew Allan had disappeared in Ireland?”

“Yes. Yes, of course. But I didn’t know he had the map. You mean — all this happened to me in Ireland?”

“If it happened, Mr. Crane.”

“What d’you mean — if? I may be crazy; but as surely as I sit here, I went through that mist and saw another world.”

Ireland. So all his motoring excursions about the bylanes of England had been fruitless. He had no memory of crossing the sea, when, as a child, he had begun that momentous tour with his family. Ireland. Well, if enchantment did enter the picture then Ireland was the right place for that.

Polly stared at him. “Did you say another world, Mr. Crane?”

“Yes. And not only do I mean a different world from the one a child had experienced.” Wind caught terrier-like at the windows, soughing at the panes, shaking the stout walls of the old house. The fire leaped up in yellow and orange arabesques and shadows wavered eerily on ranked books. “Another world. A different world from anything we could ever know, or anything we could dream of.”

“Perhaps you’d better finish your story.”

“When you tell me what happened to Allan.”

“He wrote that he’d picked up an old guide book and was intrigued by the illustrations. Steel engravings. He also said in his letter that there was an old map in the back that had been torn in half. He said that for the hell of it this girl, Sharon, was going to compare the old routes with the modern. She had a theory that the carriers could find their way about better than modern truck drivers. She was a bit of a crank on things like that. Low heels, hand-woven plaids, wooden utensils from Scandinavia, vegetarian. You know the sort.”

“Hardly the type for Allan, wouldn’t you say?”

“You didn’t see her.”

“Oh.”

“They left Belfast one bright morning and were never seen again. That was five years ago.”

“I thought he wanted to marry you?”

“This was after I told him no. Finally. In a terrible scene. Sharon was to assuage his pangs. Anyway, she’d have made him a better wife than I would have. But, you see, that’s why I feel responsible—”

“No. No, not you, Polly. The map. The damned map. I tell you here and now, Allan did follow that map, he reached the torn-off edge, he groped his way through the mist and one of those blasted clanking monsters got him.” He stopped, realizing what he had said.

“Clanking monsters?”

He made a vague gesture. “Through a child’s eyes. I don’t know what they were. But they came running out of the little trees ahead of us, clanking and shining, with seemingly dozens of legs and spinning treads and long flailing arms reaching out for us. That’s why my father turned the car so fast.” He shook his head. “I haven’t told anyone that, before you.”

“And that’s why your sister Adele is — is the same mental age now as she was then?”

“Yes.”

“That’s why you have this personal grudge against the map?”

Crane scowled. “How can you have a personal grudge against a bit of paper? A loathing, a terror, a mortal fear it might reveal things better left undiscovered, yes. That might lead to you burning the accursed thing; but it would scarcely be a personal grudge.”

“You never did tell me what happened to it.”

“I didn’t think about it at the time. Out of the mist of memory I recall that incident itself. When my father died I went through his effects half expecting to find the guide book locked away in a japanned steel box, with its key attached to the ring he always carried on a chain in his pocket. Nothing, of course. I suppose you can say that the idea of regaining possession of that map has obsessed me. The guide books I’ve pawed through astound even me. But what must have happened is obvious. Father disposed of the book fast at the time. It’s been kicking about junk shops and second-hand bookstalls waiting for a buyer—”

“Allan.”

“Yes.” Crane hesitated, and then said: “Unless other people used the map, went through the mist into the — well, what can we call it but the Map Country — and vanished. And then the people — the beings, entities, aliens, what-have-you — who dwell there simply returned the map to our world and waited for fresh victims.”

“But that presupposes—”

“Yes. It does rather, doesn’t it?”

The tea was cold. The butter melting in the dish looked greasy. All the buns had been toasted and eaten. Crane rang for Annie and when she had cleared away the table he went across to the cabinet and produced bottles. He raised an eyebrow at Polly.

“Same as you. Scotch. Straight.”

“Raw it is. Here.”

As they drank slowly and reflectively, with the fire glow reddening their faces, Crane studied this girl with a slow and appreciative scrutiny that held nothing of insolence or rudeness. She was a woman many men would do many things to possess. She stared into the fire, oblivious of him, and he wondered if she were thinking of Allan and that last quarrel.

Her cousin had rushed off to Ireland in a rage, with a second-best girl friend, had bought the guide book and the map and, thinking to deaden whatever pain he felt over Polly, had followed the map to — to where? To the Map Country.

And that told him precisely nothing.

In a way he could not define he had begun in the last hour or so, talking to this girl, to believe he might at last solve the riddle that had bedeviled him throughout life. He had vague hopes that he might in some as yet only dimly understood way find a cure for Adele; but other reasons had driven him on to seeking the map torn down the center. The piquing of his pride, the knowledge that forces existed outside this normal ordered world, forces that both frightened and fascinated him, the unfounded but tenaciously held belief that his own incomplete personality might be made whole, and the sheer love of digging into the unknown — all these things drove him on in his search to regain the lost key to the Map Country.

He rose and picked from the bookcase the Ordnance Survey of North Ireland. The names rang sweet carillons in his ears. “From Belfast,” he said, musing. “No. The names mean nothing to me — apart from a tang of longing.”

“When do you leave?” Polly asked, with an upward tilt of her head.

He smiled. They were establishing a rapport already and he found the sensation pleasant, restful — and direfully alarming.

“In the morning. I can catch the early train and the plane—”

“I’m coming too, of course.”

“But—”

It took Roland Crane less than thirty seconds to realize that he was seldom going to win arguments with Polly Gould.