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Miss Pearce had fled the office the first time the telephone had started actually using itself, her patience with all this sort of thing finally exhausted again, since which time Gordon had had the office to himself. However, his attempts to contact anybody had failed completely.
Or rather, his attempts to contact Susan, which was all he cared about. It was Susan he had been speaking to when he died and he knew he had somehow to speak to her again. But she had left her phone off the hook most of the afternoon and even when she had answered she could not hear him.
He gave up. He roused himself from the floor, stood up, and slipped out and down into the darkening streets. He drifted aimlessly for a while, went for a walk on the canal, which was a trick that palled very quickly, and then wandered back up to the street again.
The houses with light and life streaming from them upset him most particularly since the welcome they seemed to extend would not be extended to him. He wondered if anyone would mind if he simply slipped into their house and watched television for the evening. He wouldn't be any trouble.
Or a cinema.
That would be better, he could go to the cinema.
He turned with more positive, if still insubstantial, footsteps into Noel Road and started to walk up it.
Noel Road, he thought. It rang a vague bell. He had a feeling that he had recently had some dealings with someone in Noel Road. Who was it?
His thoughts were interrupted by a terrible scream of horror that rang through the street. He stood stock still. A few seconds later a door flew open a few yards from him and a woman ran out of it, wild--eyed and howling.
CHAPTER
31
Richard had never liked Michael Wenton-Weakes and he liked him even less with a ghost in him. He couldn't say why, he had nothing against ghosts personally, didn't think a person should be judged adversely simply for being dead, but--he didn't like it.
Nevertheless, it was hard not to feel a little sorry for him.
Michael sat forlornly on a stool with his elbow resting on the large table and his head resting on his fingers. He looked ill and haggard. He looked deeply tired. He looked pathetic. His story had been a harrowing one, and concluded with his attempts to possess first Reg and then Richard.
"You were," he concluded, "right. Entirely."
He said this last to Dirk, and Dirk grimaced as if trying not to beam with triumph too many times in a day.
The voice was Michael's and yet it was not Michael's. Whatever timbre a voice acquires through a billion or so years of dread and isolation, this voice had acquired it, and it filled those who heard it with a dizzying chill akin to that which clutches the mind and stomach when standing on a cliff at night.
He turned his eyes on Reg and on Richard, and the effect of the eyes, too, was one that provoked pity and terror. Richard had to look away.
"I owe you both an apology," said the ghost within Michael "which I offer you from the depths of my heart, and only hope that as you come to understand the desperation of my predicament, and the hope which this machine offers me, you will understand why I have acted as I have, and that you will find it within yourselves to forgive me. And to help me. I beg you."
"Give the man a whisky," said Dirk gruffly.
"Haven't got any whisky," said Reg. "Er, port? There's a bottle or so of Margaux I could open. Very fine one. Should be chambred for an hour, but I can do that of course, it's very easy, I--"
"Will you help me?" interrupted the ghost.
Reg bustled to fetch some port and some glasses.
"Why have you taken over the body of this man?" said Dirk.
"I need to have a voice with which to speak and a body with which to act. No harm will come to him, no harm--"
"Let me ask the question again. Why have you taken over the body of this man?" insisted Dirk.
The ghost made Michael's body shrug.
"He was willing. Both of these two gentlemen quite understandably resisted being... well, hypnotised--your analogy is fair. This one? Well, I think his sense of self is at a low ebb, and he has acquiesced. I am very grateful to him and will not do him any harm."
"His sense of self," repeated Dirk thoughtfully, "is at a low ebb."
"I suppose that is probably true," said Richard quietly to Dirk. "He seemed very depressed last night. The one thing that was important to him had been taken away because he, well, he wasn't really very good at it. Although he's proud I expect he was probably quite receptive to the idea of actually being wanted for something."
"Hmmm," said Dirk, and said it again. He said it a third time with feeling. Then he whirled round and barked at the figure on the stool.
"Michael Wenton-Weakes!"
Michael's head jolted back and he blinked.
"Yes?" he said, in his normal lugubrious voice. His eyes followed Dirk as he moved.
"You can hear me," said Dirk, "and you can answer for yourself?"
"Oh, yes," said Michael, "most certainly I can."
"This... being, this spirit. You know he is in you? You accept his presence? You are a willing party to what he wishes to do?"
"That is correct. I was much moved by his account of himself, and am very willing to help him. In fact I think it is right for me to do so."
"All right," said Dirk with a snap of his fingers, "you can go."
Michael's head slumped forward suddenly, and then after a second or so it slowly rose again, as if being pumped up from inside like a tyre.
The ghost was back in possession.
Dirk took hold of a chair, spun it round and sat astride it facing the ghost in Michael, peering intently into its eyes.
"Again," he said, "tell me again. A quick snap account."
Michael's body tensed slightly. It reached out to Dirk's arm.
"Don't--touch me!" snapped Dirk. "Just tell me the facts. The first time you try and make me feel sorry for you I'll poke you in the eye. Or at least, the one you've borrowed. So leave out all the stuff that sounded like... er--"
"Coleridge," said Richard suddenly, "it sounded exactly like Coleridge. It was like "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". Well bits of it were."
Dirk frowned. "Coleridge?" he said.
"I tried to tell him my story," admitted the ghost, "I--"
"Sorry," said Dirk, "you'll have to excuse me--I've never cross--examined a four-billion-year-old ghost before. Are we talking Samuel Taylor here? Are you saying you told your story to Samuel Taylor Coleridge?"
"I was able to enter his mind at... certain times. When he was in an impressionable state."
"You mean when he was on laudanum?" said Richard.
"That is correct. He was more relaxed then."
"I'll say," snorted Reg, "I sometimes encountered him when he was quite astoundingly relaxed. Look, I'll make some coffee."
He disappeared into the kitchen, where he could be heard laughing to himself.
"It's another world," muttered Richard to himself, sitting down and shaking his head.
"But unfortunately when he was fully in possession of himself I, so to speak, was not," said the ghost, "and so that failed. And what he wrote was very garbled."
"Discuss," said Richard, to himself, raising his eyebrows.
"Professor," called out Dirk, "this may sound absurd. Did--Coleridge ever try to... er... use your time machine? Feel free to discuss the question in any way which appeals to you."
"Well, do you know," said Reg, looking round the door, "he did come in prying around on one occasion, but I think he was in a great deal too relaxed a state to do anything."
"I see," said Dirk. "But why," he added turning back to the strange figure of Michael slumped on its stool, "why has it taken you so long to find someone?"
"For long, long periods I am very weak, almost totally non-existent, and unable to influence anything at all. And then, of course, before that time there was no time machine here, and... no hope for me at all--"
"Perhaps ghosts exist like wave patterns," suggested
Richard, "like interference patterns between the actual with the possible. There would be irregular peaks and troughs, like in a musical waveform."
The ghost snapped Michael's eyes around to Richard.
