But there was something to do here, too.
He left the maze and walked towards the house. It was dawn and very cold. Farlowe's car was parked there. He noticed the licence number. It seemed different. It now said YOU 009.
Maybe he'd mistaken the last digit for a zero last time he'd looked.
The door was ajar. Farlowe and Martha were standing in the hall.
They looked surprised when he walked in.
'I thought the Vampire was peculiar, son,' said Farlowe.
'But yours was the best vanishing act I've ever seen.'
'Martha will explain that, too,' Seward said, not looking at her.' Has she told you her theory?'
'Yes, it sounds feasible.' He spoke slowly, looking at the floor. He looked up. ' We got rid of the Vampire. Burned him up. He burns well.'
'That's one out of the way, at least,' said Seward. 'How many others are there at the fortress?'
Farlowe shook his head. 'Not sure. How many did you see?'
'The Man Without A Navel, a character called Brother Sebastian who wears a cowl and probably isn't human either, two pleasant gentlemen called Mr Mod and Mr Hand-and a man in fancy dress whose name I don't know.'
'There are one or two more,' Farlowe said. 'But it's not their numbers we've got to worry about-it's their power!'
'I think maybe it's over-rated,' Seward said.
'You may be right, son.'
'I'm going to find out.'
'You still want my car?'
'Yes. If you want to follow up behind with whatever help you can gather, do that.'
'I will.' Farlowe glanced at Martha. ' What do you think, Martha?'
'I think he may succeed,' she said. ' Good luck, Lee.' She smiled at him in a way that made him want to stay.
'Right,' said Seward.' I'm going. Hope to see you there.'
'I may be wrong, Lee,' she said warningly. ' It was only an idea.'
'It's the best one I've heard. Goodbye.'
He went out of the house and climbed into the car.
THE ROAD was white, the sky was blue, the car was red and the countryside was green. Yet there was less clarity about the scenery than Seward remembered; Perhaps it was because he no longer had the relaxing company of Farlowe, because his mind was working furiously and his emotions at full blast.
Whoever had designed the set-up on this world had done it well, but had missed certain details. Seward realized that one of the ' alien' aspects of the world was that everything was just a little too new. Even Farlowe's car looked as if it had just been driven off the production line.
By the early afternoon he was beginning to feel tired and some of his original impetus had flagged. He decided to move in to the side of the road and rest for a short time, stretch his legs.
He stopped the car and got out.
He walked over to the other side of the road. It was on a hillside and he could look down over a wide, shallow valley.
A river gleamed in the distance, there were cottages and livestock in the fields. He couldn't see the horizon. Far away he saw a great bank of reddish-looking clouds that seemed to swirl and seethe like a restless ocean. For all the signs of habitation, the countryside had taken on a desolate quality as if it had been abandoned. He could not believe that there were people living in the cottages and tending the livestock. The whole thing looked like the set for a film. Or a play - a complicated play devised by the Man Without A Navel and his friends-a play in which the fate of a world-possibly two worlds-was at stake.
How soon would the play resolve itself? he wondered, as he turned back towards the car.
A woman was standing by the car. She must have come down the hill while he was looking at the valley. She had long, jet black hair and big, dark eyes. Her skin was tanned dark gold.
She had full, extraordinarily sensuous lips. She wore a welltailored red suit, a black blouse, black shoes and black handbag.
She looked rather sheepish. She raised her head to look at him and as she did so a lock of her black hair fell over her eyes.
She brushed it back.
'Hello,' she said.' Am I lucky!'
'Are you?'
'I hope so. I didn't expect to find a car on the road. You haven't broken down have you?' She asked this last question anxiously.
'No,' he said. 'I stopped for a rest. How did you get here?'
She pointed up the hill. ' There's a little track up there - a cattle-track, I suppose. My car skidded and went into a tree.
It's a wreck.'
'I'll have a look at it for you.'
She shook her head. ' There's no point - it's a write-off. Can you give me a lift?'
'Where are you going?' he said unwillingly.
'Well, it's about sixty miles that way,' she pointed in the direction he was going.' A small town.'
It wouldn't take long to drive sixty miles on a road as clear as this with no apparent speed-limit. He scratched his head doubtfully. The woman was a diversion he hadn't expected and, in a way, resented. But she was very attractive. He couldn't refuse her. He hadn't seen any cart-tracks leading off the road.
This, as far as he knew, was the only one, but it was possible he hadn't noticed since he didn't know this world. Also, he decided, the woman evidently wasn't involved in the straggle between the fortress people and Farlowe's friends. She was probably just one of the conditioned, living out her life completely unaware of where she was and why. He might be able to get some information out of her.
'Get in.' he said.
'Oh, thanks.' She got in, seeming rather deliberately to show him a lot of leg. He opened his door and slid under the wheel.
She sat uncomfortably close to him. He started the engine and moved the car out on to the road again.
'I'm a stranger here,' he began conversationally.' What about you?'
'Not me-I've lived hereabouts all my life. Where do you come from - stranger?'
He smiled.' A long way away.'
'Are they all as good looking as you?' It was trite, but it worked. He felt flattered.
'Not any more,' he said. That was true. Maniacs never looked very good. But this wasn't the way he wanted the conversation to go, however nice the direction. He said: ' You're not very heavily populated around here. I haven't seen another car, or another person for that matter, since I set off this morning.'
'It does get boring,' she said. She smiled at him. That and her full body, her musky scent and her closeness, made him breathe more heavily than he would have liked. One thing about this world-the women were considerably less inhibited than on his own. It was a difference in population, perhaps. In an overcrowded world your social behaviour must be more rigid, out of necessity.
He kept his hands firmly on the wheel and his eyes on the road, convinced that if he didn't he'd lose control of himself and the car. The result might be a sort of femme fatality. His attraction towards Sally and Martha had not been wholly sexual.
Yet he had never felt such purely animal attraction, that this woman radiated. Maybe, he decided, she didn't know it. He glanced at her. There again, maybe she did.
It said a lot for the woman if she could take his mind so completely off his various problems.
'My name's Magdalen,' she smiled. ' A bit of a mouthful, What's yours?'
It was a relief to find someone here who didn't already know his name. He rejected the unliked Lee and said: 'Bill-Bill Ward.'
'Short and sweet,' she said.' Not like mine.'
He grunted vaguely, consciously fighting the emotions rising in him. There was a word for them. A simple word- short and sweet-lust. He rather liked it. He'd been somewhat repressed on his home world and had kept a tight censorship on his feelings. Here it was obviously different.
A little later, he gave in. He stopped the car and kissed her.