On the Wednesday of that week in January, Matthew stayed home, tensely waiting. Nesta went off to school as usual, unaware that anything untoward was happening. She was always the first to leave the house: school was a good long bus-ride away. Matthew’s bank was much closer and he usually went by car. Alison’s work at the university was part-time, and much of it she did at home.
‘I think you should tell her tonight,’ said Matthew. ‘We can both tell her, if you like, but I think she will be more comfortable hearing it from you.’
Alison gave her husband a look of amusement. She had long since grown to know and love his Earth face – his crinkled fair hair that never looked quite as neat as it should, his blue eyes that were wide and innocent. On their home planet, he had looked very different of course, but the character that looked out of those innocent eyes was the same. He was the dreamer of dreams, she was the practical one.
‘I think we should wait till you know that they want to talk to you,’ she said. ‘There has been no signal yet. If you have to go for instructions, then I shall be left alone with Nesta, for however long it takes. Then will be time enough to tell her.’
Matthew still looked worried.
‘We don’t even know what the signal will be. This has never arisen before. What if I don’t recognize it?’
‘You will,’ said Alison. ‘There would be no point otherwise. And if no signal comes within the next three days, I think you should enter the ship in any case.’
‘I can’t do that!’ said Matthew. ‘How could I do that? Unless I am wanted, it won’t let me in.’
‘And if it won’t let you in,’ said his wife logically, ‘then you mustn’t be wanted and we can just forget all about it till June.’
But the signal did come. And in a way that was surprisingly easy.
Early on Thursday morning, well before daylight, the clock radio by their bed began to buzz like an angry bee. The buzz grew louder till first Alison and then Matthew woke up. Alison stared in silence at the clock’s red digits but her tired senses could not register the time.
‘What on earth is that?’ said Matthew, yawning.
At the sound of his voice, the buzzing stopped.
Then a voice he recognized, a metallic, staccato voice, began to speak. Matthew had heard it every year for the past fourteen years; every year from the first to the third of June, this voice had fed him information and asked him questions. Now it was speaking out of the radio in his room. Its English, as always, was not quite on key and sounded foreign. Its timbre was much more metallic than usual, as if this unaccustomed medium interfered with its clarity.
‘You-have-heard-the-news,’ it grated. ‘There-is-need-to-instruct. Tomorrow-after-sunset-you-must-come-to-the-source.’
That was all. The clock went back to being its normal self.
‘So that’s it,’ said Matthew. He sat up and swung his feet to the floor.
‘That’s it,’ said Alison with a sigh. ‘But do get back into bed, Mattie. It’s only four o’clock. It will be easier to think it all out in the morning. These Earth bodies need their sleep!’
But when morning came it brought no relief. The whole of Thursday passed like time spent in a waiting room.
On Friday, Nesta set off for school totally unaware of the shocks life had in store for her. Alison went with her to the gate, not something she always did, but not altogether unusual.
‘Take care,’ she said, giving her a parting hug.
‘I will, Mom,’ said Nesta, smiling. ‘Take care, yourself!’
‘It looks like rain,’ said her mother. ‘Have you got your umbrella?’
‘Here in my bag,’ said Nesta, pointing down to the pouch that held it.
‘Well, bye then, and take care,’ said Alison again.
Nesta gave her a quizzical look.
‘Have you got a premonition or something?’ she said with a laugh. ‘I always take care! And if I don’t go soon, I’ll miss the bus!’
Alison stood and watched her to the end of the street where she turned and waved.
‘Did you say anything to her?’ asked Matthew when she went indoors.
‘No, not yet. This afternoon will be time enough. What could I possibly say in five minutes?’
They sat by the fire, saying little but thinking more.
‘I do want to go back,’ said Matthew after one long silence. ‘The will-o’-the-wisp memory of Ormingat haunts me, as if there were a great emptiness in my life. There are mornings even now when I feel like poor old Caliban, awakening from a dream of sounds that give delight and hurt not . . .’
‘I know,’ said Alison, not totally convinced. ‘And the joy of going home ought to be uppermost in my mind too, but this is home for me now, this Earth, this town, this street, this house. Oh Mattie, I love England as if I had been born here.’
‘You will carry the memory with you, Athelerane,’ said Matthew softly. ‘It will be part of your being.’
‘Like the memory of Ormingat?’ said his wife with a smile enigmatic and sad.
‘Probably,’ said Matthew, taking her hand in his. ‘It is not such a bad way to remember.’
But his imagination went far beyond hers. His vision of Ormingat was spiritual; hers was physical and somehow false. No two beings in the universe are totally identical; and those who think have each their own array of thoughts.
At three o’clock, Matthew and Alison went out in silence to drain the pond at the bottom of the back garden. It was not raining, but moisture hung in the air and Mattie’s hand and arm were chilled to the bone as he reached down into the pondweed to pull out the plug.
‘Now we shall wait for Nesta,’ said Alison as the water drained sluggishly away leaving slimy green fronds clinging to the basin. It was not quite like the normal garden pond. In its centre, on a great stone lily pad, sat what can be best described as a monolith, carved in the form of a frog.