'Oh, don't worry,' he answered, smiling. 'Mac will explain all that.'
He poured some juice into his own glass and said, 'Cheers.' I ignored the toast and listened to the echo of the ping-pong balls.
'You told me,' I continued, 'that all the work was done in this building where we are now.'
'That's right,' he said.
'But where do all the personnel hang out?' I persisted.
'Personnel?' he echoed, frowning. 'There are no personnel. That's to say, there's only Mac, Robbie, Janus-I suppose you'd count Janus-and myself. And now of course you.'
I put down my glass and stared. Was he having me on? No, he seemed perfectly serious. Tossing down his orange juice like a cup-bearer of the gods quaffing ambrosia, he watched me from behind the bar.
'It's O.K., you know,' he said. 'We're a very happy party.'
I did not doubt it. What with cocoa, ping-pong, and the booming bittern, this team of sportsmen would make the members of a Women's Institute seem like trolls.
My baser instincts made me yearn to prick the youngster's pride.
'And what,' I asked, 'is your position on the staff? Ganymede to the professor's Jove?'
To my intense surprise he laughed, and with an ear cocked to the further room, where the sound of balls had ceased, set two more glasses down upon the bar and filled them both with juice.
'How smart of you to guess,' he answered. "That's roughly the idea… to snatch me from this earth to a doubtful heaven. No, seriously, I'm Mac's guinea-pig, along with Janus's daughter and Cerberus the dog.'
At that moment the door opened and two men came into the room.
Instinctively I recognised MacLean. He was fiftyish, craggy, tall, with the pale, rather light blue eyes which I associate with drunkards, criminals, and fighter pilots-in my view the three frequently combine. His lightish hair receded from a high forehead, and the prominent nose was matched by a thrusting chin. He wore baggy corduroy trousers and an immense pullover with a turtle neck.
His companion was sallow, bespectacled, and squat. Shorts and a baggy shirt gave him a boy scout appearance, nor did the circular sweat stains under his armpits enhance his charm.
MacLean advanced towards me holding out his hand, the broad smile of welcome suggesting I had already become one of his small band of brothers.
'I'm so very glad to see you,' he said. 'I do hope Ken has been looking after you all right. Such a wretched evening for your first glimpse of Saxmere, but we'll do better for you tomorrow, won't we, Robbie?'
His voice, his manner, was that of an old-fashioned host. I might have been a late arrival at a country-house shoot. He put his hand on my shoulder and urged me towards the bar.
'Orange juice for all, please, Ken,' he said, and, turning to me, 'We've heard tremendous things about you from A.E.L. I can't tell you how grateful I am to them-to John in particular-for allowing you to come. And above all to yourself. We'll do everything we can to make your visit memorable. Robbie, Ken, I want you to drink to-it's Stephen, isn't it? Shall we say Steve? — and to the success of our joint efforts.'
I forced a smile, and felt it become a fixture on my face. Robbie, the boy scout, blinked at me from behind his spectacles.
'Your very good health,' he said. 'I'm the Johannis factotum here. I do everything from exploding gases to taking Ken's temperature, as well as exercising the dog. When in trouble send for me.'
I laughed, then swiftly realised that the falsetto, music-hall comedian voice was in fact his own, and not assumed for the occasion.
We crossed the corridor to a room facing the front, plain and bare like the one we had left, with a table set for four. A long-faced, saturnine fellow, with close-cropped grizzled hair, stood by the sideboard.
'Meet Janus,' Mac said to me. 'I don't know how they feed you at A.E.L., but Janus sees we none of us starve.'
I favoured the steward with a cheerful nod. He replied to it with a grunt, and I instantly doubted his willingness to run errands for me to the Three Cocks. I waited for MacLean to say grace, which would somehow have seemed in character, but none was forthcoming, and Janus set before him an enormous old-fashioned soup tureen shaped like a jerry, from which my new chief ladled a steaming, saffron-coloured brew. It was surprisingly good. The grilled Dover sole that followed was better still, and the cheese soufflé feather-light. The meal took us some fifty minutes to consume, and by the end of it I was ready to make peace with my fellow-men.
Young Ken-whose conversation during dinner had consisted of a series of private jokes with Robbie, while MacLean discoursed on mountain climbing in Crete, the beauty of flamingoes on the wing in the Camargue, and the peculiar composition of Piero della Francesca's 'Flagellation of Christ'- was the first to rise from the table and ask leave to be dismissed.
MacLean nodded. 'Don't read too late,' he said. 'Robbie will turn your light out if you do. Nine-thirty's the limit.'
The youngster smiled, and bade the three of us goodnight. I asked whether Ken was in training to race the dog around the marsh and back.
'No,' answered MacLean abruptly, 'but he needs a lot of sleep. Let's to billiards.'
He led the way from the dining-room back to the so-called bar, while I prepared myself for half-an-hour or so in the room beyond-nothing loath, for I rather fancied myself with a cue-but as we passed through, and I saw nothing but a ping-pong table and a dart-board, Robbie, noticing my puzzled expression, boomed in my ear, 'A quote from Shakespeare, the Serpent of old Nile. Mac means he wants to brief you.' He pushed me gently forward and then vanished. I followed my leader through yet another door, sound-proofed this time, and we entered the chill atmosphere of what appeared to be half-working lab, half-clinic, streamlined and severe. It even had an operating table under a centre light, and instruments and jars behind glass panels on the walls.
'Robbie's department,' said MacLean. 'He can do anything here from developing a virus to taking out your tonsils.'
I made no comment, having small desire to offer myself as a potential victim to the boy scout's doubtful ministrations, and we passed from the laboratory to the room adjoining.
'You'll feel more at home here,' observed MacLean, and as he switched on the lights I saw that we had reached the electronics department. The first installation to which we came appeared similar to the one we had built for the G.P.O. some years ago that is to say, a computer capable of speech, though its vocabulary was limited and the actual 'voice' was far from perfect. MacLean's box of tricks, however, had various accessories, and I went up to examine them closely.
'He's neat, don't you think?' said MacLean, rather like a proud father showing off his new-born infant. 'I call him Charon 1.'
We all have pet names for our inventions, and Hermes had seemed particularly appropriate for the winged messenger we had developed for the G.P.O. Charon, if I remembered rightly, was the ferryman who conveyed the spirits of the dead across the Styx. I supposed this was MacLean's own brand of humour.
'What does it do?' I asked cautiously.
'It has several functions,' answered MacLean, 'which I'll explain later, but your main concern will be the voice mechanism.'
He went through a starting-up procedure, much as we had done at A.E.L., but the result was very different. The voice reproduction was perfect, and he had got rid of all the hesitation.
'I'm using the computer for certain experiments in the field of hypnosis,' he went on. 'These involve programming it with a series of questions. The answers are then fed back into the computer, and are themselves used to modify the questions that follow. What do you think of that?'
'It's fantastic!' I answered. 'You've gone miles beyond what anybody else is doing.'