CHAPTER XII

Hazard wasn’t particularly surprised when Claire Croly’s red Saxo made its way up the lane to the Old Vicarage six weeks later. She could have posted him a complimentary copy of the issue that contained her name-free account of the exotic haunting of Tenebrion Wood and the mysterious death of Adrian Stimpson, ecomartyr—but she was never going to do that now that she knew the way to where he lived. Hazard didn’t invite her into the house, though. He was in the cemetery when she arrived, and it was among the tapestried gravestones—observed by wild bees, but with no Lampyridae or moths in evidence, it being not long after noon—that he received his gift. It was summer now, and the day was glorious. The overgrown graves were beautifully green, and the wild flowers that grew in profusion were as colorful a flock of alien species as any painter in Bedlam could have imagined.

“I can see why you like this place so much,” the reporter said. “It must be at its best now.”

“Pretty much,” Hazard agreed, knowing that the young woman was hinting that it wasn’t at its best at all just now. She had seen it at its best, and knew what its best really was, even if it had only attained it briefly, and might never attain it again.

“I’ve thought about writing an article about what we saw that night,” she said. “I’ve tried, in fact, but I can’t get a viable handle on it, story-wise. I know you explained it all, and I’ve tried to understand it. I think I do, except for the chemistry, but I can’t make it plausible as a series of deductions, in such a way that our readers would be able to grasp it. It’s too complicated.”

“It is complicated,” Hazard admitted, blandly. “Reality is like that. And it isn’t plausible, in any way that your readers could digest. Reality is like that, too.”

“You can be a patronizing bastard sometimes, can’t you?” she said, but without any real venom or animosity. He supposed that they must know one another well enough by now to have a joking relationship of sorts.

“I try,” he replied. He was joking too, but he suspected, on thinking about it, that he really did try, sometimes. It was one of the things that seemed to be expected of a university lecturer. It came with the image.

“You’re still on your own, I suppose?” she asked, looking over at the house, although there was surely nothing about its appearance that betrayed the continued loneliness of his existence. “The little wife hasn’t come back?”

“No,” he admitted, curtly.

“But you still see a fair amount of Helen the biochemist?”

“A fair amount. We’re working in association, but we mostly meet at the university to discuss findings and procedures. She doesn’t visit me here—she doesn’t own a car.”

“And you’re still in touch with the batty old lesbian?”

“She’s not batty; she’s exceedingly sane, and always intellectually stimulating company. We’re still in touch. She takes an interest in our work. She doesn’t have a car either, though.”

“She and the postgrad aren’t really an item, are they?”

“Not as far as I know. It’s not something we discuss.”

“No, of course not—you’re an entomologist and she’s a biochemist. No time for trivia, when the two of you are on the track of liquid life. After all, you don’t need a wife or a girl-friend do you, when you have all of this.” Her broad gesture indicated the churchyard, but was really intended to designate its insect life. She was still pretending to be joking.

“I could probably fit you into my schedule if you wanted to volunteer for the role,” he said. “Even an entomologist has to make the effort to be a well-rounded human being.”

“I’ve heard better chat-up lines,” she told him, plausibly, “and I’d be bad for your image as a serious scientist. To be honest, though, you’re not my type. Far too fond of beetles.”

“As the great J. B. S. Haldane once said, when asked what a lifetime of study had taught him about the mind of the Creator, it would appear that God has an inordinate fondness for beetles, so I’m in the very best company there. Haldane was talking about the Christian God, of course, but the implication of Nature remains the same no matter how you animate it behind the scenes. My fondness isn’t that unusual—remember the ancient Egyptians and fascination with their scarabs—and the affection is fully in tune with the world we live in. Can you be as confident about your affections?”

Her expression didn’t give her the appearance of someone who could, but she wasn’t about to be drawn into any kind of confession. “It’s a pity your wife didn’t feel the same,” she said, instead.

“True,” Hazard admitted. “But she couldn’t help the way she felt. As I’ve explained to you before, the mind can play tricks when the senses are displaced into a new environment. Many things we’ve subconsciously ceased to notice are suddenly conspicuous by their absence, and vice versa. Jenny thought living out in the country, next door to an old churchyard, would be romantic. She hadn’t expected it to be scary, and she couldn’t quite get her head around the notion that its seeming scariness was all in the eyes and ears of the beholder. She thought the place was haunted. She couldn’t accept that the lights were just Lampyridae—to her, they really became lost souls, enigmatic night-spirits. She just couldn’t shake the notion loose, even though she knew it wasn’t true. It was simply too plausible. On the other hand, maybe Steve was right too—maybe, at an even deeper level, she just couldn’t stand living with me any longer.”

“He’s right more often than one might think,” Claire Croly told him. “He’s right about your not being safe, even here. The day might well come when the Evil Developers’ bulldozers appear, even on this remote horizon.”

“Not in my lifetime,” Hazard assured her. “There are no dominoes hereabouts of the kind he pointed out to me on his road map. Even if the farmer who owns the local fields weren’t descended from a long line of agricultural geniuses, he’d never let go of his heritage the way the owner of Tenebrion Farm did. When it comes to stubbornness, he’d make even Steve look like a quivering mass of querulous capitulation. I’ve got the one and only hole in the patchwork. If there’s a single safe residential dwelling within a hundred miles, this is it. The landscape’s not natural, of course—everything the eye can see in every direction is the product of human artifice and the spirit of technological endeavor—but it’s green, and it’s alive. Every year it dies, and every year it comes back to life, always changing, adapting, evolving. Especially the cemetery, where there really is life after death….and then some.”

The reporter condescended to smile. Considering that he wasn’t her type, and that he sometimes came across in her eyes as a patronizing bastard, she didn’t seem to dislike him—or perhaps she simply thought that one day, she’d get a story out of him that she could actually use.

“It really wasn’t haunted, back in the days when your wife ran away, was it?” she said.

“No,” he replied, even though he knew exactly what she was going to say next, “it wasn’t.”

“But it is now,” she said, fulfilling his private prophecy to the letter. “Isn’t it?” She didn’t mean that it was haunted by ghosts; she knew that the presence he’d imported from the late, lamented Tenebrion Wood was much more interesting night-spirit than that, at least to him.

“Oh yes,” he said, serenely, and with satisfaction. “It is now.”