was back where I’d started from, lying in the dark.”
I frowned. “How did you get back there?”
“I just don’t know,” he said. “Still don’t. It always happens, that’s all I know. When the sun comes up, my mind washes away. If I’ve gone any distance, I know I have to get back. I run. I can run really fast. I know I’ve got to be back—home,” he said, with a sort of breaking-up laugh, “before the sun comes up. I’ve learned to be careful, to give myself plenty of time.”
He was still and quiet for a while. I asked, “Why do you kill things?”
“No idea.” He sounded distressed. “If something comes close enough, I grab it and twist it till it’s dead. Like a cat lashing out at a bit of string. Reflex. I just know it’s something I have to do.”
I nodded. “Do you go looking—?”
“Yes.” He mumbled the word, like a kid admitting a crime. “Yes, I do. I do my best to keep away from where there might be people. It’s all the same to me: sheep, foxes, men. I’d go a long way away, into the mountains, if I could. But I have to stay close, so I can get back in time.”
I’d been debating with myself, and I knew I had to ask. “What were you?” I said. “What did you do?”
He didn’t answer. I repeated the question.
“Like you said,” he replied. “I was a schoolteacher.”
“Before that.”
When he answered, it was against his will. The words came out slow, flat; he spoke because he had to. “I was a Brother,” he said. “When I was thirty, they said I should apply to the Order, they thought I had the gift, and the brains, and the application and the self-discipline. I passed the exam and I was at the Studium for five years. Like you,” he added.
I let that go. “You joined the Order.”
“No.” The flat voice had gone; there was a flare of anger. “No, I failed matriculation. I retook it the next year, but I failed again. They sent me back to my parish, but by then they’d got someone else. So I ended up wandering about, looking for teaching work, letter-writing, anything I could do to earn a living. There’s not a lot you can do, of course.”
Suddenly I felt bitter cold, right through. Took me a moment to realize it was fear. “So you came here,” I said, just to keep him talking.
“Eventually. A lot of other places first, but here’s where I ended up.” He lifted his head abruptly. “They sent you here to deal with me, am I right?”
I didn’t reply.
“Of course they did,” he said. “Of course. I’m a nuisance, a pest, a menace to agriculture. You came here to dig me up and cut my head off.”
This time, I was the one who had to speak against my will. “Yes.”
“Of course,” he said. “But I can’t let you do that. It’s my—”
He’d been about to say life. Presumably, he tried to find another way of phrasing it, then gave up. We both knew what he meant.
“You passed the exams, then,” he said.
“Barely,” I replied. “Two hundred seventh out of two hundred twenty.”
“Which is why you’re here.”
His white eyes in the ash-white moonlight. “That’s right,” I said. “They don’t give out research posts if you come two hundred seventh.”
He nodded gravely. “Commercial work,” he said.
“When I can get it,” I replied. “Which isn’t often. Others far more qualified than me.”
He grunted. It could have been sympathy. “Public service work.”
“Afraid so,” I replied.
“Which is why you’re here.” He lifted his head and rolled it around on his shoulders, like someone waking up after sleeping in a chair. “Because—well, because you aren’t much good. Well?”
I resented that, even though it was true. “It’s not that I’m not good,” I said. “It’s just that everyone in my year was better than me.”
“Of course.” He leaned forward, his hands braced on his knees. “The question is,” he said, “do I still have the gift, after what happened to me. If I’ve still got it, your job is going to be difficult.”
“If not,” I said.
“Well,” he replied, “I suppose we’re about to find out.”
“Indeed,” I said. “There could be a paper for the journals in this.”
“Your chance to escape from obscurity,” he said solemnly. “Under different circumstances, I’d wish you well. Unfortunately, I really don’t want you cutting off my head. It’s a miserable existence, but—”
I could see his point. His voice was quite