As usual when out and about to chat up a client, Chris Pitman felt his mind empty of stress.
It was a time in counterpoint. There was this illusion that he was his own man. Kronenberger, White and Kronenberger, the top real estate agents in Wirral City dropped to a low mush of static in his inner ear. His mortgage, the dripping tap in the attic, the life-shrinking chatter of his sister Mavis who shared his house and the mind bending din of her son Harold became unreal as a mirage.
His ageing convertible was going well, humming along the country road he had taken instead of the more direct route by the motorway. With a bit of luck he would get another two years out of her. On a morning like this one, with some warmth in the April sun and a hard bright reflection coming off the white hood, he could forget the seventy-five thousand kilometres on the clock. She was, anyway, his folly. As Mavis was fond of pointing out, nobody but a fool would run a big American convertible on British roads and when seven-tenths of the weather was against it.
Uneconomic and inconvenient, she was a gesture; a module on an E.V.A., searching for moonrock, of which there was little enough about.
Pitman's abstracted gaze picked up the long rise of the road ahead. It was a straight section laid down on ancient Roman foundations climbing the bland shoulder of a low hill. To the left there was a chequer board of small fields with trim hedges and a single neat farm spread. There was a whole lot of sky and the road went to meet it like a springboard. He stretched out his left hand, index finger vertical, thumb horizontal to make two sides of a view finder and put the horizon on the golden section. It would compose into a picture for his album. Somewhere below the skyline there was an abrupt right-hand turn into the lane that led to Crow Wood Farm, the butt and seamark of the mission.
He rehearsed his opening gambit, "Mr. Joynson? Pitman. Chris Pitman. From Kronenberger's. You called in to ask for an opinion about a piece of land. No problem. But then you'd know that, land being scarce as it is. We have clients who'll give you a top price."
His eye caught his own reflection in the driving mirror and he went off on another tack. He was an accountant by training and his slot in the organisation was in the financial advice field. Kronenberger Senior usually kept him on a tether in a six metre square office. This trip was an unexpected bonus. He said to his reflection, "It is the bright day brings forth the adder."
The saturnine face in the mirror split into a grin which improved it. Kronenberger was always saying, "Look Pitman, work on geniality. You make me nervous. God knows what effect you have on a client. Make him think you're there to measure him for a casket as like as not. It isn't good for business. If you get them thinking about the big questions they'll be reading the small print and then where will we all be?"
Maybe the man had a point. It was an angular face with heavy eyebrows and a hank of dark hair flopped over the right temple, a serious and speculative number.
Movement over the crest of the hill took his attention. A small squat car was outlined against the sky and for a split second the driver and his companion were clear as cardboard cut outs. The man looked too big for the car. He was sitting bolt upright, both hands on the wheel with a battered Trilby square on his head and pulled down to ear level. Beside him was a dumpy woman with a basket on her lap and her chin wedged moodily on its handle.
Black smoke was wreathing from the exhaust. The engine had made a real chore of getting up the reverse slope. The roof dropped below the crest of the hill and the old growler levelled with the tight turn that Pitman was due to take. He slowed a little, recognising that it was a poor place for a side road and reckoning that Highways ought to put in a filter.
When the scene changed it was so fast that he only carried snap pictures on his retina.
A red sports job came over the crest with enough urge to lift its four wheels clear of the road. For a split second there was a strip of sky underneath. It bore down on the banger like a missile. Pitman thought, "God. The fool," and went on as though addressing a judge, "Yes, Sir, I saw it all. There was this couple in a sports car. Came over a blind hill driving like a maniac. Dark auburn, the girl. Yes, that one over there with her neck in a plaster cast. Her hair was flying away like a pennant and she was thumping the driver on his arm. Went slap up his rudder. Dangerous driving. Going too fast to stop. If he wasn't dead you'd have to suspend his licence. As it is they'll have to watch it if he gets his hands on a fiery chariot."
Quick as the thought was, there was a new development before he could properly read it off the mental tape. The driver of the red car had made a last-minute change in direction to beat the road block and the whole action had come so close that Pitman was automatically throwing out an anchor and slamming into reverse.
There was a screech of metal ahead and the saloon whipped off the road as though by sleight of hand, leaping a shallow ditch and going on safari for a distant copse with its driver still batting and his passenger holding her hat. The red car had slewed wheels locked. Then it came round still full of fight and Pitman watched it, too surprised to move as it tore at him point blank.
)
Pitman's Progress. Chris Pitman's liked his aged American convertible. He knew he was taking a risk running it along country lanes, but he wanted to avoid the motorway. Minding his own business, he became entangled in a scene which is played out every day in all corners of the planet--a hill, a fast sports job, another slower car on the blind-side. He felt he was still conscious, that nothing had really changed. Except, from a new viewpoint, he could still see himself in the car. And the severed head in his lap wasn't even his. Now he was in an alternate world. A world where a war between the factions of the dead was played out across time and place. And they all wanted him on their side...
