But where was that? Orwell College? Just to think about it was like a physical injury, for some reason, a sore place under my breastbone. No wonder humans talked about breaking their hearts.
Or the Institute? To do that, I would have to walk into the sea and channel those sparkling particles. It would take most of my remaining energy. In practical terms, I knew I had enough for one shot. But if that failed—
It needed planning, taking stock of the position of the moon, prevailing winds, earth vibrations. It was not something to do on the spur of the moment.
And yet the wind, pushing me towards the sea…. Was that chance?
Or could it possibly be the Institute trying to restore communication?
Once I would have known, without having to think about it. Now I was floundering.
I stopped and half-turned so that the wind was behind me, the sea at my back.
The Institute had pushed me so hard to come to Earth. Had they really lost all interest? Or was this silence deliberate? Maybe they wanted to throw me back on my solo resources and force me to explore more than I'd bargained for.
I shook my head. It felt wrong. The Institute was what humans would call bureaucratic and controlling. But it was not usually devious. Never in my experience.
What has happened? Why have they abandoned me?
It burst out of me so ferociously that I stumbled and almost fell over. It was like a human cry of anguish, almost tangible. It appalled me. Before this body, I had never felt anything like it. It shook me.
And any telepath in broadcast range would be feeling pretty shaken, too. Humans didn't use mind-to-mind communication like we did, but they had a small number of natural telepaths. If there were one on the beach right now, that could present a problem.
I pulled myself together and revolved slowly, on the spot, looking for signs of distress among the now distant beach-walkers. Someone on their knees clutching their ears, maybe. Or one of the dogs, howling in pain.
But there was nothing. All was as it had been. As it should be.
It was a relief. I must have mistaken the force of my own feelings. Because I felt so much, I'd thought I was broadcasting. Yet another sign of how I was losing touch with who I really was.
Logic, I thought. Use logic. You haven't lost that.
I began to walk again. There were some brightly painted one-storey sheds to my left, with a sort of wooden way in front of them. They had shutters, as if there were windows behind them. They looked as if they had their eyes closed. Sleeping until summer, I thought, amused.
A gust of wind made me stagger and brought me out of my reverie. I looked around and saw that I was very close to the water. Either the tide was coming in or I had been walking towards it on an involuntary trajectory.
Chance again?
I suddenly had a nasty thought. Maybe the project was going so badly that the Institute had decided to discontinue it. With Peter Abel gone and me in no position to take over, maybe they had done so already. Both, of course, were my fault, one way and another.
Would they discontinue me?
Maybe there was no point in preparing careful calculations. Maybe I should just walk into the ocean and see what happened.
Stop trying so hard, Selsis. Let what will be, be.
Oh well, Peter Abel had ended in his mountains. The sea would do me fine.
I began to walk forward.
And a voice behind me said, "Are you all right?"
Chapter Three
For a moment I thought it was a voice in my head.
But then I realised that it was real human man. Which meant it was much too late to try the Nothing to see here. Just shifting shadows trick. Mind suggestion only works when people aren't paying attention.
So I drew a deep, revivifying breath, squared my shoulders and turned round.
He was taller than me and very windblown. His hair must have been tied back, but now long fronds of it were blowing this way and that across his face, like seaweed over rock. All I could make out was a great beak of a nose and hard grey eyes. Not the sort of eyes that I—well, the human that it looked as if I was becoming, anyway—would have expected to ask someone whether they were all right. Especially not a stranger on a chilly beach just as it was coming on to rain.
"Can I help you?" I said, in the tone the School Secretary used to repel rampaging parents. It worked like a bucket of icy water emptied from a great height on their heads. Well, it usually did. When she did it, anyway.
I clearly didn't have her touch.
This man just looked impatient. "You called out."
"No, I didn't."
"I heard you. Right in my ear. It's still bloody echoing."
Ouch. "You're mistaken."
It started to rain in earnest. Maybe he'd run for shelter, I thought hopefully.
But he was one of the stubborn ones. "You said, 'Why have they abandoned me?' No, make that yelled. Nearly burst my eardrums. Real Maori warrior stuff."
Oh, shoot. The blasted man had to be a natural telepath. Just my luck to fall over one of the 0.0001 per cent of this world's population in Little Piddling on a wet Wednesday. I knew I was glaring at him. He glared back.
"My ears are still ringing," he said, as if explaining to a not very bright class of twelve-year-olds.
Not really helpful.
I swapped to Chairman of the Governors mode, bit of a bully, effortlessly superior. It was good, too. "How ridiculous."
It didn't have the effect I hoped for. He opened his mouth—to argue, I was almost certain—and then closed it again. Not intimidated, alas.
The wind dropped a bit then and he used both hands to push the hair away from his face. And I saw that what I had thought was a glare was more complicated than that. I might not understand humans very well, but I had been conscientiously recording my observations for a year now. This looked…personal.
How could that be? Did this man think he knew me?
I was floundering again. We habitually used mind communication in the Institute. But it had to be voluntary on both sides. We didn't read unexpressed thoughts. On Earth, where people lied most of the time, I'd learned to read faces a bit. But I was really only any good with people I knew. I didn't know him and I couldn't read him.
And then the ground under me gave one of those nasty little lurches that I never got used to and another thought skated into my mind in a whirl of cold panic. Did he think he knew me because we'd met somewhere and I'd forgotten him?
I knew I was losing familiar skills as I adapted to this life form. What if this new brain couldn't hold onto newly gained knowledge either?
My brain scanned this world's memories furiously. He wasn't the doctor with whom I'd made the first big mistake of the project. I'd never forget his face. But someone else? One of the island party, where I'd first floated up out of the water? I'd bonded with the girls, but there had been men there, too. Or one of the librarians who'd helped me in London? Or someone who'd given me directions at a station? Or…? Or…?
Or anyone.
For a moment, I couldn't think. Couldn't move. My thoughts were a total jumble.
Not so the interfering man's. He said, "Come away from the sea."
Now I was really lost. I gaped at him.
"Just three steps."
And he began to back away a little, holding my eyes. I'm not sure he wasn't patting his trousered thigh, the way the woman with the dog had done.
"What?"
"One step then. You can do that. One step towards me."
This sounded like total loopiness. I took refuge in gentle reason. "Why should I step towards you?"
He smiled. It was a surprisingly sweet smile. "Because if you don't, you'll get your feet wet. The tide's turning."
I looked down quickly. Feet. Oh yes. I'd forgotten feet. And he was right, the water was reaching for my boots, a little closer with each wave, then falling back in a spume of frustrated spittle. From that angle the sea didn't look magical at all. Just gr
eedy.
"Not so nice," he said with a nod, as if he were agreeing with me.
Just for a moment I froze. Could he hear me?
In a way, it was not so surprising that he'd picked up my earlier howl into the ether. OK, the Institute had tuned me out, but I was still trying to re-open communication. And yes, sometimes it was involuntary, a sort of Is anybody there? Talk to me.
But overhearing a howl of anguish is a very different thing from eavesdropping on someone's private mind. The first is accidental. The second is deliberate spying.
I said, "I don't know you." And even a non-telepath would have got the message. Pure loathing.
Even so, it didn't deter him. He nodded pleasantly and went right ahead, as if we were in the middle of a cordial conversation.
"Anton. I teach at the crammers up the hill." He jerked his head at the landscape behind him. "Geography and music. I come to the beach most days. Pleased to meet you." And he put out his hand.
I wasn't pleased to meet him, not at all. But the body put out my hand in response, because this social thing of shaking hands seems to be hardwired. He seized it but he didn't shake it. Instead he started to pretty much haul me up the incline of the beach. I tried to dig my heels in to bring us to a halt, but the sand was too soft. I just ended up ploughing two great ruts in it.
From his point of view, it must have felt like dragging a huge rake up the beach. Or maybe landing an enormous fish.
"What do you think you're doing?" I yelled.
"Saving you from yourself. That sea is dangerous."
He was panting by the time he stopped on a sort of plateau of slightly paler sand. He hadn't got us even halfway up the beach, I saw. The slope up to the scrub and the rainbow huts looked steep. Much steeper than it had seemed coming down to the water's edge. I had to tip my head back to see the road beyond. It seemed impossibly far away. And this end of the beach was deserted, I noted, assessing this new situation.
What's more, he hadn't let go of my hand. In fact, in that split second while I was taking my bearings, he'd grabbed my other wrist as well and pulled me closer, to face him. Not gently.
I thought: good gracious, he is going to hurt me. How extraordinary.
The body said: run.
So I did.
Chapter Four
I don't quite know how I did it. Except that Adaptive Life Forms are known for adapting fast when there is a survival need. Of course, I had acquired data on the difficulties of moving in wet sand over the last few minutes. And, anyway, the sand was not so wet further up the beach. So the going was easier.
But even so, I didn't really expect to get away from my assailant. I had no plan of action. I just ran.
So, when I found I'd escaped, I didn't know what to do. What I wanted, desperately, viscerally, was a home to go to. Somewhere I would be welcomed. Somewhere safe.
That was unexpected. Actually, it was a nasty surprise. When I'd left the college, my only thought was to keep on travelling until I could work out the optimum departure point, date and hour to attempt a return to the Institute. I wasn't even thinking about a home.
But now I was.
Logically, I knew that I needed a place of safety to take stock. But I wanted more than that. I wanted comforting. I wanted a place I could curl up in and be warm and cosy; somewhere I could tell myself a story with a happy ending until I fell asleep, embraced by my dreams. I wanted a human home.
It had to be the effect of this planet and all its emotions. After the first shock, I recognised that.
Great! Just great!
But on that first burst of urgency, I'd reached the sheds with the pointed roofs and dived behind them. Now my chest was heaving and I felt as if I was going to throw up. You can't go into mourning for a home you've never had when you're trying not to vomit. Even this body had its priorities.
I don't know how long it took for the sick feeling to subside. When it did, I sat down rather suddenly, still expecting pursuit. But the man didn't appear. Eventually I got my courage together, crawled to the side of my chosen hut and peered cautiously round. There was no one on the beach.
Keeping low, I wriggled around the hut until I was in the shadowed gap between my hut and its neighbour. From this new position I could survey what looked like the whole beach, right back to the distant steps I had come down from the Promenade.
It was quite empty. Even the dogs had disappeared. There wasn't a living thing in sight except a couple of wheeling gulls against the gunmetal sky.
I couldn't believe it. I whipped round, in case the telepath had worked round behind me. But here the coast road had dwindled to not much more than a lane and it was deserted. So were the hills beyond.
It was raining quite hard by then.
Actually, that was probably the reason for the lack of people. I had already noticed that humans, at least the ones I knew, dived for cover at the first few drops of rain. But it was a new experience for me and I liked the stuff.
So, as soon as I saw I was alone, I stood up and waved my arms about. I may even have danced. I certainly turned my face to the sky and let the rain cascade over all its protuberances—eyebrows, cheekbones, nose, chin—in sybaritic excess. It was wonderfully reviving.
Pretty soon I was drenched. Rain was trickling down my neck. Fat raindrops clung to my eyelashes. They blurred the landscape into an Impressionist dreamscape. It was beautiful. For some reason, it made me feel like dancing some more.
I would have done, too. But then the sky went dark, thunder started and I realised how unpleasant wet clothes were.
My sheltering shed was shuttered and locked up tight. But the next one along was more tumbledown. The boards were rotting at the base and I could see where one of its doors was hanging slightly off true. Between brute force and a certain amount of applied geometry, I managed to pull the wood away from the hinge far enough to get my head and shoulders through at floor height. It was all I needed. I took off my backpack and wriggled through. The poor mistreated door fell back into place behind me.
I stood up and looked around.
It was magic.
I don't mean it was magic getting out of the storm, though that was welcome. I mean the place itself. I'd expected—oh, I don't know, maybe a store of tools, possibly fishing nets or even an old outboard motor, basically a glorified cupboard of hardly-ever-used things. But this was a little house.
I stood up and looked round, almost dazed with delight.
Yes, it was shabby and needed repair. But somebody had really loved it once. There were paintings on the wall, delicate watercolour studies of plants. Everything was small, perfectly fitted to its place. It was like a doll's house.
There was even a bookshelf, stuffed with books. They were mostly paperbacks and looked as if they had been read again and again. Children of The New Forest, The Compleat Angler, Rogue Harries, The Lord of the Rings, Funeral in Berlin. I saw that most of them were novels, a new concept to me. I wriggled with excitement. They would make a nice change from social research. I'd worked my way through six months' back copies of Cosmopolitan magazine on the journey and it had been hard work.
I retrieved my backpack and began to explore. At the back, which was darker, there was a cupboard with a scrubbed pine worktop and a plate rack above it. At the beach end, two folding chairs and a folding table stood propped against the wall. Against one wall there was a beautifully made chest. Someone had made a deep cushion to fit it exactly, with cushion arms and a cushion backrest, so that it was like a half-size couch. If you set up the folding table and set it in front of the couch, you could have four people eating a meal here.
Inside the chest there were blankets, and a patchwork quilt, all carefully folded in brown paper tied with string, and an embroidered tablecloth. They smelled of lavender.
Was there a cooking facility of some kind? I went back to the pine worktop, but no, nothing. That was when it occurred to me—where was the light coming from? I couldn't see any windows, not even above
the doors.
I looked up. But there was a low ceiling above my head.
And then I realised—the ceiling only covered half the length of the shed. That was why the cupboard area was comparatively dark. I backed out from under it and saw the narrowest, steepest little built-in ladder that I could imagine. I ran up it. My head touched the ceiling before I got to the top step.
It was a wide balcony, constructed with the same loving carpentry as the chest below. It contained what I took to be a thin double mattress, encased in a sort of mackintosh envelope. So that explained the blankets.
There were four windows set into the gabled roof, two over the bed, and two over the dining area. You would have to crawl into bed from the foot and you wouldn't be able to sit up when you woke. And a night of passion, as recommended by Cosmopolitan, would probably mean that you risked falling six feet out of bed. But otherwise it was really cosy.
I turned round, leaned back against those doll's house stairs, and laughed until my stomach hurt.
Oh, it was magic all right.
Without even knowing that I was looking, I had found a home.
Chapter Five
The thunderstorm was spectacular but soon moved on. As soon as it had gone, I went outside and scouted round. No one was about yet and all the other sheds were shuttered and locked.
Just beyond the last one, a wooden signpost pointed away from town. It said "Bridle Path". Underneath someone had chalked "NO motorbikes!!!" And underneath that was a weathered notice which flapped in the wind. It had taken a good deal of punishment from the weather and was mostly indecipherable. But by means of unfocusing my eyes, using my deep sight and applying all my remaining deductive powers, I managed to make out something useful. "For Beach Hut Rental enquire at Paper Shop."
Intriguing. It sounded just what I needed. If I could work out what a paper shop might look like.
I went back and stored my backpack out of sight, just in case someone noticed the damaged door and came investigating. Then I made my way up to the road and went back into Little Piddling.
I found the Paper Shop on a corner, one road back from the promenade. As I'd already suspected, it wasn't made of paper. It didn't even sell very much that was made from paper, though I tracked down a notebook of squared paper, which would be perfect for my lunar observations. But actually the shop sold everything. In fact, it was a dragon's hoard cave of new things, very few of which I recognised. But those I did—oh, they were exactly what I'd dreamed of when I first took this assignment.
Beach Hut Surprise: Escape to Little Piddling this summer — six feel-good beach reads to make you smile, or even laugh out loud Page 7