Tell me again," said Dr. Oliver Payne, itle laboratory overlooking the park. "Either I didnt hear you, or youre talking nonsense. A child from another world?"
"Thats what she said. All right, its nonsense, but listen to it, Oliver, will you?" said Dr. Mary Malone. "She knew about Shadows. She calls them—it—she calls it Dust, but its the same thing. Its
our shadow particles. And Im telling you, when she was wearing the electrodes linkio the Cave, there was the most extraordinary display on the s: pictures, symbols .... She had an instrument too, a sort of pass thing made of gold, with different symbols all around the rim.
And she said she could read that in the same way, and she knew about the state of mind, too—she k intimately."
It was midm. Lyras Scholar, Dr. Malone, was red-eyed from lack of sleep, and her colleague, whod just returned from Geneva, was impatient to hear more, and skeptical, and preoccupied.
"And the point was, Oliver, she was unig with them. They are scious. And they respond. And you remember your skulls? Well, she told me about some skulls it-Rivers Museum. Shed found out with her pass thing that they were much older than the museum said, and there were Shadows—"
"Wait a minute. Give me some sort of structure here. What are you saying? You saying shes firmed what we know already, or that shes telling us something new?"
"Both. I dont know. But suppose something happehirty, forty thousand years ago. There were shadow particles around before then, obviously—theyve been around sihe Big Bang—but there was no physical way of amplifying their effects at our level, the anthropic level. The level of human beings. And then something happened, I t imagine what, but it involved evolution.
Hence your skulls—remember? No Shadows before that time, lots afterward? And the skulls the child found in the museum, that she tested with her pass thing. She told me the same thing.
What Im saying is that around that time, the human brain became the ideal vehicle for this amplification process. Suddenly we became scious."
Dr. Payilted his plastic mug and drank the last of his coffee.
"Why should it happen particularly at that time?" he said. "Why suddenly thirty-five thousand years ago?"
"Oh, who say? Were not paleontologists. I dont know, Oliver, Im just speculating. Dont you think its at least possible?"
"And this poli. Tell me about him."
Dr. Malone rubbed her eyes. "His name is Walters," she said. "He said he was from the Special Branch. I thought that olitics or something?"
Terrorism, subversion, intelligence... all that. Go on. What did he want? Why did he e here?"
"Because of the girl. He said he was looking for a boy of about the same age—he didnt tell me why —and this boy had been seen in the pany of the girl who came here. But he had something else in mind as well, Oliver. He knew about the research. He even asked—"
The teleph. She broke off, shrugging, and Dr. Payne answered it. He spoke briefly, put it down, and said, "Weve got a visitor."
"Who?"
"Not a name I know. Sir Somebody Something. Listen, Mary, Im off, you realize that, dont you?"
"They offered you the job."
"Yes. Ive got to take it. You must see that."
"Well, thats the end of this, then."
He spread his hands helplessly, and said, To be frank... I t see any point in the sort of stuff youve just been talking about. Children from a