My room is small, white, and cozy, with exposed beams and a short, fat, four-poster bed with a pink blanket over a white cotton duvet. I spend most of my time sitting on the bed, writing notes about the Troposphere. I mainly do this to keep my mind off my desperate need to go back there. But Burlem and Lura have forbidden me from going back in, at least for now. They're worried about this mission that Apollo Smintheus has in mind for me, as am I. And it's so clear that getting lost in it is a danger, although I'm sure that I can now get back anytime I want using the underground system. But Lura and Burlem seem unconvinced by this system, even though it must definitely exist. I wish they'd just tell me things directly instead of whispering in the kitchen and then stopping when I go in to make coffee. I know they want to get the book back from Faversham, but I don't know how we could ever do that.
And I'm not sure exactly how I feel about everything. I'm warm, comfortable, and well fed for the first time in ages, but in another sense my life is over. Not over, maybe, that's a bit dramatic, but everything I thought I "had"—my job, my Ph.D., my few friends, my flat, my possessions, my books—I'm pretty sure they're all gone now. And unless Lura changes her mind about me, I'm not going to be able to stay here forever.
On Sunday night I am having the same dream I have had since I got here, in which Apollo Smintheus is standing in front of me saying, "You owe me." I am awoken by the rain pounding the skylight like an industrial machine, and the clock says that it's four A.M. On Monday the sky is drum-metal gray and the morning is broken up with sudden pulses of strip-light yellow lightning. At about midday there's one crack of thunder, and then it stops raining. Burlem has the radio on for a while, and it warns of some huge storm coming, with winds of eighty miles per hour. But the storm doesn't come.
On Tuesday morning the sky is as blue and sharp as a reflection in metal. I'm thinking, Is this the calm? The eye? Lura decides to do some gardening and I just sit there smoking at the dining table while she locates her gardening gloves and goes outside without saying anything to me. Through the window I can see what looks like a falcon perching on one of the telegraph posts behind the house. I wonder if Lura's seen it. It's so beautiful; it's more like something from a book than from real life. It's more like a picture or a word than a thing. And I wonder: Does language distance us from things so much that we can't believe in them anymore? Or is it just because I've been in the Troposphere so much that I'm in the habit of looking at things like that, like the falcon, and assuming that I invented it, and that it's a metaphor for something else? I put out my cigarette. Maybe I should go and try to make peace with Lura. I haven't had any fresh air for days.
She's on her knees by one of the flower beds, turning the soil.
"Hello," I say, walking towards her. "Can I help?"
"No, it's all right," she says without looking up.
I should just go away, but I persist. "Please," I say. "Let me help for a bit?"
She sighs. "Trowels are in the shed."
I get a trowel and a piece of tarpaulin similar to the one Lura's using to kneel on. I walk over and place my tarpaulin next to hers, and start copying what she's doing. We stay like that for five minutes or so before I realize I'm going to have to start any conversation I want to have.
"I'm sorry for turning up the way I did," I say.
"Hm," she says back. The same short closing-down sound she always makes.
"And ... Look. I've been wanting to say this for a few days. I really am sorry that I went into Burlem's head to get here. I do know things about you that you probably don't want me to know and I'm so sorry I've intruded." I take a deep breath. "It's one of those problems with the Troposphere that you don't think about until it's too late and you've already done it. I mean, all my experiences in there so far have really been experimental." I think again; that's not quite true and she knows it. I have to be honest if I want to connect with her at all. "OK, I guess the one time I did use it in a deliberate way was when I wanted to find Saul..."
"Why do you call him 'Burlem' sometimes?" she asks me, still turning the earth.
"Er, I just do," I say. "I think I picked it up at the university. A lot of people there call him 'Burlem' rather than Saul."
"Surely they call him 'Professor Burlem,'" she says, frowning.
"Not the other members of staff." I shrug. "Does it bother you?"
"Yes. But I don't know why."
"I'll stop doing it. I really am sorry, you know."
We both carry on turning the earth. I find an earthworm, which I carefully pick up and move somewhere safer. Lura watches me do this, but I have no idea what she's thinking.
"What did you find out about me when you were in Saul's head?"
"Hardly anything," I say. "I know you slept together in Germany—that's the only intimate detail I do know. There were obviously a lot more details about the two of you, but remember I was just trying to find out where he was, not how he felt about anything, so I followed one set of memories rather than another."
"Hm."
"I really am sorry. Look, you're welcome to go into my head if you want, anytime you want. I've got some pretty sordid stuff in there, including some details I left out of my 'story so far' I told you the other night."
"It's OK. But thanks," she says, and goes back to turning over the reddish earth with her trowel. What I've said seems to have made no difference at all.
But then she smiles.
"I always like to garden when I've got something to turn over in my mind," she says. "It's repetitive and relaxing, don't you think?"
My God. Has she actually just started a conversation with me?
"Yes," I say. "It is, actually."
"Saul has to do everything in a 'Zen' way, at the moment. So he puts his whole being into turning the earth, if that's what he's doing. Not that he ever does the garden. But sometimes when he paints a fence, or wires a plug, you can see him doing it: giving up himself to the activity and not using it as an excuse just to think about something else."
I wonder what she's turning over in her mind. Probably how she's going to ask me to leave. I don't quite know what to say next. But I don't want the conversation to end, either. For the first time since I've been here I don't feel as though Lura despises me.
"Oh, there was another answerphone message earlier," I say.
"Ah. The writer. Again."
"The writer?"
"Yes. This is the problem I'm turning over in my mind." She sighs, and there's a long pause. "Saul tells me you know a lot about thought experiments."
"Yes," I say. "I am—or maybe I should say 'was'—doing my Ph.D. on thought experiments."
"Hm. Would you say that a story can be a thought experiment?"
"Oh yes," I say immediately. "I'd say all thought experiments are stories."
"That's interesting. Why?"
"Well, because all thought experiments take the form of a narrative. Well, the ones I understand do." I realize I'm talking to a real scientist and suddenly see I need a disclaimer. "I'm sure you can tell me about thought experiments that aren't stories. But..."
She's frowning. "No. I like the idea of thought experiments being stories. I suppose if they're not stories then they're actually hard science and not thought experiments at all. Einstein's trains ... Schrödinger's cat. Hmm."
"Yeah—they're two that I'm studying quite closely."
"Well, we'll have to talk properly about them at some point. But, for now, you agree that a thought experiment could be a story?"