Jeremy was the only person in Overfleet who could count and use numbers; no one else could see the sense in it.

   Soon after he arrived, Jeremy had gone over to see Bill Fratter, the carpenter, to ask him to make a set of children’s building blocks. Bill was working outside in the sunshine assembling drawers for some kitchen furniture. The pieces were stacked up beside him, nicely fashioned shapes in a pale timber with knot holes. A small child worked beside him, collecting each set and leaning the shapes against each other on the ground.

   Jeremy nodded a greeting. Bill nodded back but did not stop tapping in his nails. ‘Okay if I watch for a while?’ There was a gesture of acceptance, and Jeremy sat himself on a stack of timber.

   Bill was a study of colour and form. The bright sun picked out red lights in his rough sandy hair. His forehead was permanently creased with concentration above bristling eyebrows with tufted wings. Pale lashes shaded pale blue eyes. His nose emerged abruptly from the dip between his eyes, and extended down to a fleshy tip. It was red and roughened by the outdoors, as were his long cheeks and jutting cleft chin.

   Jeremy watched Bill’s freckled hands line up the pieces on the small bench between his knees, and hold them as in a vice as he tapped in the nails. Strong calloused hands, but sensitive; an extension of his intelligence.

   Jeremy coughed to break the silence, and asked, ‘What timber is that?’

   ‘Novateak, same as rest,’ Bill said, through the nails parked in his mouth, waving at the pile Jeremy was perched on.

   ‘All cultured, are they?’ Jeremy observed. ‘How does it get here?’

   Bill stopped hammering and spat the nails into his hand. ‘These bits here are from what’s been broken up. Made things too quick years ago. Doing them again.’

   That seemed a good opportunity to ask Bill about the building blocks Jeremy needed. The two of them went into the workshop and rummaged in Bill’s box of small pieces. Bill seemed happy to oblige.

   As they walked back to the sunny side of the workshop, Jeremy saw a stack of apparently new lengths of various thicknesses and colours, and asked Bill about them.

   ‘We order that up from time to time. Takes a while though to culture. We take a cart over the hill where you came by. No supply channels big enough in the village.’

   ‘Why don’t you use the forest?’ Jeremy looked up the tree-covered hillside above them.

   ‘Not ready yet, those trees. My father’s father planted some of them up yonder. When this young missie’s child is grown – he rested his hand on her red-gold hair – he may have a bit of that timber if he wants it.’ Then Bill looked at him a little warily. ‘Not to burn, mind,’ he muttered, recharging his lips with nails.

   Bill’s helper was scarcely more than a toddler, so Jeremy supposed Bill meant four generations, or about a hundred years, for the trees to grow to maturity. Fair enough. But wouldn’t it be easier to say so?

   ‘They have to be a hundred years old before you fell them? That seems a long time. I suppose they are hardwood trees?’

   Bill’s face darkened. He said nothing and went on with his work. He was making it understood that he had no idea what Jeremy meant by a hundred years, and did not want to know.

   Bill was no exception. No one in the village besides Jeremy knew numbers, except perhaps Denis Jarvis. Well, he could recite the numbers up to twenty, and tried to pretend he knew more, but Jeremy doubted if he understood the concept of number, ‘Or even the concept of concept – now there’s a thought!’ Jeremy mused smugly.

   Denis Jarvis was the headmaster of the village school. It had been his idea that a little knowledge of drawing up plans and working things out – ‘mathematics’ – would help the village become more self-sufficient. They might be able to make a decent loom for fine woollen cloth. They could construct a mechanical mill, to be powered by the main stream.

   They would need someone who had made a proper study of the subject, and no one in the village qualified. So he had put in a request through the intos, and a few insiders with the requisite knowledge, and located near their part of the world, had been suggested. He had spoken to each of them. Only one of those identified was willing to come out – that was Jeremy – but Jarvis thought he would fit in well.

   The proposal had divided the village. Some were curious, and willing to give the mathematics teacher a try. Others, Bill among them, warned that it would be the first step back to necrotech: they would be burning down the forest, poisoning the river, and all dying of dreadful diseases. Others said that if this sort of thing was going to happen, they were going to leave Overfleet, and maybe start a village somewhere else. But in the end it was agreed that Jarvis should ask Jeremy to come out: the first new villager since their grandparents had emerged and built the village. Jarvis had suggested that one of the other teachers at the school – perhaps Angela Astbury? – should go with him over the hill to fetch the new arrival.

   On the day Jeremy was to come out Mr Jarvis and Angela set off at dawn for the long trek to the nearest main branch of the intos, and the spot where Jeremy would be directed to from the inside. In companionable silence, they hiked up through the new forest, over the top of the hill and up and down the succession of rolling hills down to the plain. Before climbing the last hill, they rested for a while by a stream, and Jarvis told her as much as he knew about the young man.

   ‘He’s an academic,’ Jarvis said, ‘Not one of those game players, acting about all the time. Clever chap. Took up browsing when he was a lad, and got into the old science archives. He’s done a bit of storyframing, I believe – old-style science fiction with space rockets and bug-eyed monsters – that sort of thing. But mostly he’s been trying to figure out how people used to think in the days of machinery.’ He avoided the word ‘necrotech’, but he noticed Angela’s slight frown.

   Jeremy was a young adult when Jarvis contacted him. Although he had never ventured outside the intos, he had kept himself physically fit, and was not semi-paralysed from lethargy like so many insiders. He liked learning for its own sake, and had spent most of his time investigating necrotech science and mathematics. His was a solitary exploration – few people shared his interest in the discredited paradigms of past ages – and so Jeremy had no experience as a teacher or communicator. But the intos had found very few candidates for the position, and none of them were any more suitable than Jeremy; and they were all too wrapped up in their stories. Fortunately Jarvis took a liking to Jeremy, and persuaded him to give the Overfleet School a try. What tempted him was the prospect of interesting children in his unusual field; at least, in half of his unusual field: Jarvis had made it clear he wanted no experiments in necrotech science practised in his classrooms, only mathematics.

   Angela listened politely as Jarvis spoke, interested but still puzzled about why they needed the new teacher’s knowledge. ‘Why are you so sure this is a good idea, Mr Jarvis? Why do we need this ‘mathematics’. You said it would help us to make more things? But we make such a lot already, and learn as we go along, and show the younger ones how. You know we can’t be completely independent of the intos. We couldn’t make our own tools, for example – not without digging in the mountains for …’ she waved vaguely at the barren slopes. ‘Well, whatever it was they used to use. So does it really matter what we get from the intos: tools and materials, or finished products – things we can’t make? And what makes you think we haven’t got the balance about right already?’

   ‘What we make is,’ he hesitated, ‘Well – simple and crude. We could make things better if we knew about precise shapes and geometry and measurement. And we could make all sorts of things we can’t make now – like nice fine cloth, as I said at the meeting.’

   ‘Yes, but if we made machines, which is what you’ve been suggesting, there’d be less work, after we’d finished making the machinery that is, and people like to work – it’s what real reality is all about, like Hardcastle said. He was right: we like doing spinning and knitting by hand, and grinding our grain between the stones.’

   ‘The grinding stones are cultured,’ he observed, and kicked a rock into the stream.

   ‘Exactly! That’s what I was saying. Biotech produces all the materials we need without digging up the mountains and all that dreadful burning and poisoning.’

   ‘It’s only a bit of mathematics. Can’t do any harm. And he’s a very nice young man, you’ll like him.’

   Angela looked at Jarvis and realised he was quite upset. ‘Mr Jarvis, I’m sorry. Really I am. It’s not for me to criticise when we’ve decided to give it a try. I expect it will be very exciting, and we’ll all learn a lot of useful things.’

   When they reached the top of the final rise of the hills they saw the great plain, and the nearest intos loop swooping high above the ground on its molar-like roots. It was one of the oldest parts of the system and erosion had shifted the soil it had originally rested upon. The surrounding hills sheltered that part of the intos from the storms, and so it had never been damaged badly enough to have to regrow nearer to the present soil level.

   They carried on walking until they stood looking up at the massive green tube. The sun was at its highest; it should not be long before the mathematics teacher arrived. As yet there was no obvious break in the scaly surface, or in the rippling spiral patterns as the wind curled through the fins. Then, as they watched, they discerned a slight bulge some distance away, travelling along the tube. It stopped almost above them, where the nearest root joined, then bulged out further and formed into a fish-like mouth. The mouth opened briefly, discharging a whitish package which slid to the top of a groove in the root. As the package drew nearer, the groove travelled down, allowing the package to fall and then smoothing itself out above. The package wriggled and rocked for a bit and then broke open to reveal a blinking and slightly stunned young man.

   ‘Jeremy Vetch, I presume,’ said Jarvis, holding out his hand to help the young man rise, and to shake hands when he was safely on his feet. ‘I am Denis Jarvis, this is Miss Astbury.’

   ‘How do you do, Jeremy, I’m Angela,’ she smiled, holding out her hand. Not bad! she thought. He was a little taller than her, slim built and nicely proportioned. He had thick light brown hair, blue eyes, good cheek bones, firm chin, rather full lips and a shy smile. He was dressed in a white tunic which reached his knees, and nothing else. Jarvis was relieved that he had something on, in view of the young woman being present. Recovering from his abrupt descent, he was now shivering in the biting wind. Jarvis threw around him the warm woollen cloak he had brought along, and helped him put on knitted socks and strong leather boots. He was rather proud to be able to provide some things made in the village, and had not requested the intos to culture a suitable outfit for Jeremy’s exit to the outside world.

   ‘Where’s the village,’ Jeremy asked, looking over Jarvis’s shoulder at the expanse of green desert, bare apart from a few giant ropes snaking into the distance.

   ‘It’s over the hill back that way,’ said Angela, pointing behind him to where the land began to rise towards a steep scree slope; an area which, presumably, the early phase of the intos had found unsuitable for putting down its roots. She wondered then where their own newer and narrower supply line joined the main system. There was so much she did not know; perhaps the new arrival was going to help her learn more.

   ‘We have to walk up there?’ he asked, looking a little daunted at the prospect.

   ‘Not just up there, I’m afraid,’ she replied. ‘There are more hills beyond, up and down, up and down. It will take us the rest of the day. I’m sorry, we’ll have to get going. Are you going to be okay? I suppose you didn’t do much walking in there.’ The cloak covered his body, but when she had looked him over before she had thought he looked quite normally built, and fit and strong enough.

   ‘I used to exercise,’ he said. ‘Simulated walks mostly – around ancient Oxford was my favourite.’

   ‘Oxford?’ she queried. ‘Oh never mind. We really must go. Where’s Mr Jarvis? She looked around, and saw a glimpse of him behind an the intos root, urinating as discreetly as he could. He finished and turned and walked up to them.

   ‘Er, good idea, I think I’ll … Please excuse me.’ She ran over to another root, squatted with her legs spread and wee-ed. She rejoined them – they had turned their backs. She giggled, ‘Jeremy, do you need to …?’

   He smirked and shook his head. ‘No, I’m fine. I suppose this is what real reality is like. No one wees in stories, do they?’ They set off in single file, with Jeremy between them, and he kept up perfectly well. But they did not talk, to save their breath and strength. As each hill dropped behind them, the wind lessened, and the air felt warmer. Then they threw their cloaks back to cool down. Jeremy noticed they both wore knee-length tunics, similar to his own, but of somewhat courser cloth.

   At last, near the close of day, they reached the top of the last hill. It was a bright dusk and they could see the village. They paused together looking down and Angela pointed out the main features. Clusters of pretty cottages, irregular in shape and thatched, were scattered over the hillsides above a tributary of a river called the Hie, whose broad expanse could just be seen further down the valley. Each group of cottages was surrounded by gardens and orchards. On the lowest slopes were the village fields which provided grains for their staple food. Above the cottages where the hills rose steeply, young trees of a thigh’s girth were beginning to touch branches and make a forest.

   ‘Look down by our stretch of the river, Jeremy. There’s the upper bridge and the lower bridge, and between them is the jetty for boats. I don’t know if you can see – it’s getting dark now – but behind the jetty is our market square. Along there are the display stalls. See the thatched roofs to shelter the traders from rain. On market days, everyone comes down the paths from their homes with loads of fruits and veggies from their gardens, and meats and cheeses. And they bring what they’ve made: cloaks like yours, and knitted things. Some of us make pots and shoes and furniture. And over there, we have tables set, and you can have baked foods and beer and wine and herbal tea – it’s like a party – and people play instruments, and dance and sing, and tell stories.’

   Jarvis joined in at this point. ‘There’s the school on the opposite bank from the jetty – the long oval building. Its gardens go down to the river, but we have a strong fence and hedge to stop the youngest children going into the boggy bit by the water, and maybe falling in.’

   Angela was going on to tell him where everyone lived; a stream of names and relationships, skills and interests, characters and attitudes. As she burbled away, Jeremy was counting the houses. He counted fifty, and then estimated how many more fifties there were over the valley.

   ‘I make it three hundred, is that right?’ He turned to Jarvis.

   ‘Er, yes, that’s about it I should think.’

   Angela stopped and looked at Jeremy. ‘What do you mean “three hundred”?’ she said.

   ‘I was counting the houses.’

   ‘What’s “counting”?’

   Jeremy glanced at Jarvis, who made a gesture for him to answer her. ‘One there,’ he said, pointing to the nearest cottage and holding up his left thumb. ‘Two there,’ and he held up his first finger. ‘Three there,’ and he went on.

   ‘But that’s Jay, Morven, Hattie and Archie’s place – I was telling you about them just now – they teach in the school, and do spinning and knitting for market. That’s Andy, Hannah, Ossie and Dilly – they do potting mostly, and they have baby George now. That’s where Linda and Orville live in lambing time. That place is empty now; it was Annie and Old George’s before he died. What has that to do with your fingers?’ She frowned. ‘No, I don’t think I want to know. You tell Jamie about counting and fingers, then we’ll see.’ She ran off down the slope and Jarvis led Jeremy down to his house where he was to stay.

   Jamie was the boy who had volunteered to begin having mathematics lessons with the new teacher. Mr Jarvis told all the children at assembly one morning that a new teacher, Mr Vetch, was coming who was going to teach them a very special subject called ‘mathematics’. Because the teacher was new and the subject was new, Mr Jarvis and the other teachers thought it might be a good idea if Mr Vetch worked with a single pupil to start with, to see what was the best way to introduce the subject to the others. ‘Anyone who is interested, please come to my room after school this afternoon,’ he had told them.

   After school, Jarvis waited in his room to see if any of the children would turn up. James Sweeting was the only child who did. Probably the others had not liked to put themselves forward and be conspicuous. Maybe the adults had put doubts into their minds.

   ‘Hello, James. Have you come to offer to be our mathematics pupil?’

   The boy nodded and smiled, ‘Yes Mr Jarvis.’

   ‘Well we don’t know for sure if Mr Vetch will think this a good idea. It’s the teachers’ idea so far. We’ll talk to Mr Vetch when he comes. And you can talk to your people at home. Then if everyone is happy, that’s what we’ll do. Is there anything you want to ask me?’

   The question Jarvis feared would come duly did. ‘What is mathematics, Mr Jarvis?’

   He had prepared an answer. It was the best he could do from his own knowledge. ‘It’s a way of studying the patterns of things. It’s looking at what things are similar to each other and grouping them together and saying how they are similar. A long long time ago, people realised they had copied patterns of similarity into their minds – because that’s what minds are for – matching the past from the mind with the present in the world, to help decide what to do – and they decided the patterns in their minds were more important than the patterns in the world, because the patterns in their minds could be exact, and the patterns in the world were only rough. They worked out some rules for the patterns in their minds, and when they made things like buildings they made them with exact patterns. So what was in their minds came out into the world, and made cities and civilisation.’

   That was not quite what Jarvis had intended to say, although it had started off all right. Then he got carried away, and was speaking to himself rather than to the boy. When he realised, he looked at him and said, ‘Did you understand what I was saying, James?’

   ‘What is understand, Mr Jarvis?’

   Jarvis thought for a moment. ‘It’s when you see what I was telling,’ he replied.

   ‘No, I didn’t really do that,’ said the boy.

   ‘Never mind, Mr Vetch will tell it better than I can. That’s why he’s coming,’ Jarvis smiled. ‘Do you still want to be our mathematics pupil, James?’

   ‘I think so, Mr Jarvis. I like different things.’

   ‘Yes, good, so do I! Good lad. Thank you for coming forward. Well, off you go now.’

   Jarvis explained the idea of a trial pupil on the evening of Jeremy’s arrival. ‘Sounds fine, whatever you think best,’ was his response. He was tired, and somewhat overwhelmed by the sudden change in his life. He went to bed straight after supper, and lay in the dark – even that was a new experience – and tried to collect himself together.

   The view from the top of the hill had been Jeremy’s first sight of Overfleet. After Jarvis had approached him through the intos, he had found out all he could about the village, and he had expected there to be simulations he could walk through. But there were none. The nearest thing was a storyframe made by Overfleet’s founder years before the project was started. It had been a shock to Jeremy to discover that the intos was not omniscient: that all its records were from bionecrotech or necrotech; everything else was story material. There was no record of the world outside the intos, and that included Overfleet, which was the only place where people were living in the outside world. Of course, they were still dependent on the inside, being supplied with many of their necessities from biotech processes, which transformed carbohydrates produced by photosynthesis into cultured materials.

   From his initial view of Overfleet with Angela and Jarvis, Jeremy might have thought the village had been nestling in the Hie Valley for centuries. But from his researches he knew that it had been completed only fifty years earlier – or, as the inhabitants would have said, in their fathers’ fathers’ time.

   Overfleet’s founder had been a master story writer, Denver Hardcastle, famous for creating some of the most popular scenarios available to the world’s players. Hardcastle became dissatisfied with the realities he was creating, and was overwhelmed by the ambition to create real reality in the outside world.

   He managed to interest enough people in the venture to be able to organise a physical meeting. They worked out a suitable location for the village, and a route through the intos supply channels for each of the participants. It took several years to order the materials for the construction and to have them grown in culture, and transported outside the intos system near the place Hardcastle had identified. After that, the Overfleet villagers took over and built the village themselves.

   As well as timber, bricks and glass, plaster and paints and so on, the villagers had ordered a suitable collection of seeds and cuttings, and small livestock from the stocks of frozen embryos. When they had all the materials assembled they began to build. By the time their youngest children had reached maturity, they had filled the valley with clusters of cottages with extensive communal gardens.

   When the main phase of building and planting was complete, Hardcastle himself formally opened the village, and the people who had come out settled down, as if they had been there for generations. Interestingly, Hardcastle went back into the intos and continued to create some of the best stories on offer, and never saw Overfleet again. The intos information about the project went no further than this, apart from vocal records of the villagers’ orders for batches of cultured materials. Jeremy had gone through these, studying the faces and the glimpses of rooms in the background.

   Jarvis had told him about the history of the school.

   The people of Overfleet were a complete mixture of stages in life. A few of the founders had died before the opening, babies had been born, and by the opening there were many children. Hardcastle’s initial conception had included a school, and a pleasant oval building intended for the school had been constructed. Since the intos was available in all the homes as a source of information and stories, and all domestic and craft skills could be passed on by those who had them, it was not at all clear what the school would provide.

   Nevertheless, Douglas Jarvis, Denis Jarvis’s grandfather, had volunteered to be the headmaster, and several villagers offered themselves as teachers.

   The staff looked into the history of schools back in necrotech, and found that the reading and writing of symbolic languages had been a major focus. They all agreed that it was pointless teaching such antique means of communication, which the youngsters would have no further use for. They were also very wary of teaching science, because of what it had led to. So they decided to concentrate on arts and crafts and story creation; partly using the intos facilities, but also using real materials – in accordance with Hardcastle’s dream. School would be optional, and it would carry on as long as it seemed children liked it and found it useful. So far they had liked it, at least, enough of them had to make it worthwhile.

   Jeremy first saw James Sweeting in school assembly, two mornings after his arrival in Overfleet and his first day at the school. He was invited up on the platform beside Mr Jarvis. ‘Good Morning, everyone,’ Jarvis said. ‘Today we welcome Mr Vetch, who has just joined us to teach mathematics.’ Jeremy stepped forward and bowed. The children all clapped. Jarvis went on, ‘We have a special treat today in honour of Mr Vetch. The music group has prepared a special performance of the Myth of the Dragons.’

   At a nod from Jarvis, the doors at the back of the hall opened, and a crocodile of children marched down the gangway, playing a loud and powerful tune on pipes and drums. They wore head-dresses representing blackened trees surrounded by tongues of flame. When they had almost reached the platform, their music changed to an eerie harmony which soared up and down like stormy wind. The children swayed and staggered with the music until they reached the platform, when they all took off their head-dresses and mounted the steps. A drummer and a piper continued the storm tune while the other children disappeared with their instruments into a huge tube of green cloth laid at the side of the platform. From inside the green tube they began to play a variety of lively tunes one after the other. Then the tunes became soft and doleful. The sound dwindled and then, suddenly, the children came out of the tube and looked around them as if in wonder. They played a melody of lightness and pleasure as they skipped around. Then, over the top of the tune came another, sung by a boy soloist with a voice of sweet perfection. The high thread of sound was poignant and sad. The words he sang were: ‘Long ago the black dragon burned the forest, the storms came and we hid in the green dragon, we came forth in hope, but there is no forest.’ The children stopped playing and sang in chorus, ‘There is no forest – no forest.’

   There was enthusiastic applause. Jeremy and Jarvis beamed across at the performers and clapped. Then Jarvis waved his hand in dismissal and everyone filed out.

   ‘Come and be introduced to your pupil,’ Jarvis said, walking across the platform and putting his arm over the shoulders of the boy soloist.

   ‘James Sweeting and Jeremy Vetch, here you are now, let me introduce you to each other.’

   ‘That was you singing, James. It was wonderful!’ The boy nodded, and looked up at him with a steady gaze. His eyes were deepest blue, with long curled lashes. His finely drawn straight dark eyebrows were almost hidden by a fringe of honey-coloured hair. He held out his hand and Jeremy took it with both of his, still thinking of the song, and wondering how long the boy’s treble voice would last as he saw the mature shape of his face just emerging from the rounded cheeks of childhood.

   ‘Well, what happens now, Mr Jarvis?’ he asked, letting go the boy’s hand at last.

   ‘It’s up to you. I thought young James might show you round the school – round the village too, if you like. If you want to get down to work, there’s a little room out the back – the Small Quiet Room, James. It’s got a screen if you need it, though we don’t generally use the one in there. There’s a table and chairs and a sofa. James knows where to get drinks and snacks. Lunch is up to you – James knows about that too. So that’s it really. See you this evening – not expecting a report or anything.’ He guided them off the platform and out of the hall, nodded and smiled, and veered off round the corner, leaving them together.

   ‘What shall we do then, James?’ Jeremy was feeling overwhelmed by … he knew not what. It was hardly surprising that he felt strange. Until a few days ago, he had spent all his life in a cell, most of the time deep in his studies of ancient thought, albeit with access to simulation systems capable of taking him into any environment, into crowds and parties if he liked. Now he had been thrust into the company of this boy, who had been the star of his first experience of the power of living music, and he was expected to share his life’s work with him.

   ‘Whatever you want to do, Mr Vetch.’

   ‘Oh, do call me Jeremy,’ he said, then wondered if he should keep their relationship formal. He looked at James, at the garden, the door of the school building, the sky, and back to the boy, and felt quite at a loss.

   At this point a rattling noise reached them, followed by a trolley full of small pots, wheeled by someone he knew: Angela Astbury, his other escort to this new life.

   ‘Hello, Jeremy! Hello, Jamie! You look a bit lost. How about helping me put these things in the sun to harden.’

   The relief from having to decide what to do was wonderful. Jeremy took the trolley from her and pushed it to the place she indicated, where a long picnic table stood away from the shadows of the school and the trees.

   As they unloaded the pots, carefully so as not to smear the intricate designs etched onto them, Jeremy stopped himself counting them, as Angela explained the patterns.

   ‘These are celebration goblets. This one is Anna’s, for her sister’s menarche party when it comes, soon I should think, she’s a well-grown girl. It has goddess images all around, see, each with a tiny sun in the belly and a moon as a crown. Lovely, don’t you think? These ones, by the Underwood boys, are for their grandad’s burying, not that he’s dead yet mind. See the ancient trees and the saplings between, same theme but each quite different, they’ve put their own characters into the patterns. And see what Gwen has done, a naming goblet for her brother. He has chosen to be called Ray after his father’s father, and to have his mother’s family name, Reed, and you see those images on the goblet. I think he may decide to change it again, it is a bit odd when you say it, isn’t it – too short, I think. Gwen will have to make him another goblet then.’

   The account poured on. Jamie was clearly very interested, knowing the people involved, and made comments and asked questions. Jeremy watched them, enclosed as they were in their world. He felt a stranger. He counted the pots after all: fifteen there were, each of them different he could see that, but they were all pots, much too heavy to be called goblets. He thought about his researches into necrotech, when drinking cups were churned out by machinery, many of them intended to be used once and thrown away. At least biotech ones were recycled. What they looked like was imaginary anyway, you fitted them into the story you were in at the time: porcelain cups, pewter tankards, crystal goblets with long delicate stems, not stubby ones like these.

   ‘What happens to these in the sun?’ he asked, hardly realising he was interrupting her account which was still going on. ‘In the old days clay like this had to be fired in a kiln.’

   He saw her hurt look, but she replied, ‘They go hard and shiny; really beautiful they are, and strong. The clay is biotech, of course. Look, have you two got things to do, or do you want to come with me to get fish for lunch?’

   ‘Oh please, we’d love to come,’ Jeremy replied without consulting the boy, who shrugged when Angela looked at him.

   ‘Fine. We’ll go over the upper bridge and see if there’s a boat free. Jamie, go and get me a basket, would you.’ He trotted off. She looked at Jeremy quizzically. ‘You look bothered, Mr Mathematics Teacher. What’s the matter?’

   He was fiddling with a little bit of spare clay he had picked off the trolley. He formed it into a neat cube. ‘It’s like you said just now, I feel lost. Everything’s so strange.’

   ‘It must be,’ she said sympathetically.

   ‘And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with Jamie.’

   ‘Nothing much at first, I don’t suppose. You’ve only just arrived. Give yourself time,’ she smiled.

   ‘When Jarvis contacted me it seemed very clear. I had some knowledge you didn’t have in your village – knowledge of mathematics.’

   ‘That’s true. I don’t think we even know what it is!’

   ‘Yes, but listening to you talking, the day I got here, and you and Jamie just now, made me think that perhaps it was the other way around: that you’ve got knowledge that I haven’t.’

   ‘That sounds fine; we learn from each other.’

   ‘But suppose it isn’t like that.’ He sat down on the bench. ‘Look, let me try to explain. I might get it clearer in my own mind.’ She sat down beside him.

   ‘When Mr Jarvis contacted me I thought about it a lot. What he said seemed to make sense. There must be science and technology which you could make good use of, but people are wary, because of the dreadful things that happened in necrotech. But you know about that. You teach the children about it.’ He looked at her.

   ‘Yes, we do. I suppose we should do more.’

   ‘Some of you are very wary, Mr Jarvis told me. But that means you’re forewarned; you can be selective. But you need mathematics as a basis, which is good because mathematics is just ideas, it’s only in the mind, so it can’t do any harm, right?’ She nodded. ‘So Mr Jarvis asked the intos to find someone to teach you mathematics. That seemed okay to me.’

   He paused, and fiddled with the piece of clay. ‘It was different for people in historic times. Mathematics and science and technology just grew, and were taken on board.’ He made a disk with the clay. ‘Like the wheel.’ She smiled. He made a rectangular block. ‘And stone buildings. There’s geometry in those.’ He rolled the clay into a spike. ‘Then smelting, and all the other inventions: they came out of science, and its rules were based on mathematics.’

   He made the clay into a disk again and turned it over and over. ‘All the technology that came in, it brought about some good and some bad; you can’t have good without bad. I’m not sure about the other way. It was good for some people and bad for others, and always bad for the ecology and natural processes.

   ‘The way people thought was based on science and technology, even if they didn’t think they knew any. They thought of themselves as small parts in a machine, which had to be kept going, on and on. They accepted and knew the machine, but they didn’t even try to control it. And the machine ran on death and burning. Imagine what that did to people’s spirits!

   ‘So by the end of necrotech, even the good was dubious. And finally everything went crazy.’ He tore the clay into bits. ‘There was famine and sickness, and the ethnic wars, then the economy collapsed.’

   Jeremy solemnly gathered up the fragments of clay and remade his disc, saying, ‘Then bionecrotech sorted out many of the problems – it put the world back together.’ He saw Angela start to protest. ‘I know what you’re going to say: bionecrotech was even worse for the planet. I agree. But it led to biotech, and biotech is wonderful for people. They are secure and provided for; and they are free to live whatever lives they choose. Their lives may be in artificial reality, but people have always lived in dream worlds; and they love it, it’s paradise for them. Outside, of course, there’s just deserts: green, brown or white deserts, and crazy winds howling around – that’s the bad, there’s always bad.’ He turned the disk over.

   ‘As biotech went on everyone forgot the old ways of thinking: all the mathematics and science – apart from a few oddballs like me. No one needed to know any of it because the intos took care of everything, and anyway the intos’s basis was intelligent organic, not machine. Then you people come out, and you have your own way of thinking, and it’s lovely to hear you talk. It reminds me of the old ecology: so diverse and detailed and all tangled up.’ Then he looked up at Angela. She smiled, but he shook his head and frowned. ‘I’m worried for you, you know. I’m afraid that if you start thinking like me, you’ll lose those ways; you’ll be corrupted.’ He fell silent for a moment, looking at her. ‘Well that’s it.’

   She put her hand on his arm. ‘We won’t be corrupted. Maybe we’ll corrupt you!’ she smiled.

   He opened his mouth to say more.

   ‘No, sorry. I think I understand your concern. We feel it too, some more than others. That’s why we suggested you work with a trial pupil just at first. It was our idea, not Mr Jarvis’s. We’re more involved with the village than he is. He’s just absorbed in the school, and he’s into the intos a lot. But he’s accepted our suggestion. So I think you should give it a try. Share some of your knowledge with Jamie. Then we’ll see.’ She looked over to the school building. ‘There he is with our basket.’ She waved and he came over.

   ‘You’ve been a long time,’ she said.

   ‘You were talking. I didn’t want to interrupt,’ he replied. Jeremy felt the implied reprimand.

   They went to the jetty for a boat. Jeremy rowed, awkwardly at first until he got the hang of it. As he pulled back on the oars, he looked at Angela, leaning back on the slatted seat with her fingers dipped in the water. He imagined how she would look in a fine straw bonnet with satin roses and lace, and a sprigged muslin gown; an image from one of his favourite stories. Her face fitted the picture: oval and delicately formed, with soft grey eyes, small straight nose and pink, neatly bowed mouth. He imagined her straight fair hair looped up into coils under the bonnet. He smiled at her. She smiled back. He glanced at the boy sitting in the bottom of the boat with the basket, who nodded cheekily in the direction of Jeremy’s naked crotch where his tunic had ridden right up his thighs. Hastily he pulled his knees together, thinking he would have to watch himself in this real reality; things could happen he did not intend.

   They reached the fish ponds, and held the boat against the railings while they watched the bright orange carp darting about just below the surface.

   ‘Who feeds them?’ Jeremy asked.

   ‘They’re biotech fed and cleaned,’ she replied. ‘I suppose there are channels and filters down on the bottom. All that’s a mystery to me; I was hoping you’d know something about it.’

   ‘Not me! I’m even more of a pampered citizen that you are; I don’t know anything about the plumbing. My knowledge is all in the mind.’

   Jamie chipped in, ‘Mr Jarvis said civilisation was about building the patterns of the mind in the outside world; at least, I think that’s what he said.’

   Jeremy looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Yes, I think that’s right. That’s what technology does.’ Then he looked at Angela, ‘But I haven’t got further than looking at the patterns in the mind, the ancient minds, that is.’

   ‘That’s what you were saying you’re concerned about: putting out some of those patterns here, and what that would do to us.’

   Jamie chipped in again, ‘Mr Jarvis said that the patterns of the mind are exact and more the same, instead of messy like in the world. So we’d get to be more the same and more tidy.’

   ‘Oh, I shouldn’t like that,’ said Angela. ‘But some of the patterns in the world are tidy. Look at those fish, so neat and just so.’

   ‘They are all different though, if you look carefully,’ Jeremy said, surprising himself by the thought. Perhaps Angela was right: he was the one who was going to be changed. He reached for the net. ‘How many do you want for lunch?’

   ‘What do you mean “How many?”?’ she asked.

   ‘You do it,’ he said, handing her the net.

   That afternoon, Angela suggested that Jamie might not want to miss music lessons; a new composition was going to be begun. She sent her own class home – none of the children seemed to mind – so that she could show Jeremy around the village.

   She showed him one of the communal gardens. It was like a small forest with fruit and nut trees underplanted with bushes and various vegetables. Part was fenced off for chickens and ducks, and there were some sheep, goats and pigs in other enclosures. They met several villagers, out gathering, or working at their crafts. Jeremy sensed a contrast between those who were coolly polite and others who were warm and welcoming.

   Later, Angela led him up the hill into the trees. Jeremy felt that there was something artificial about the forest, in spite of the variety of tree species, whose names he did not know, and the irregular spacing. She knew a few of the species: oak, ash, elm and beech. She explained the artificial feel, and it should have been obvious to him: there was a solid carpet of the bionecrotech plant they called ‘bigweed’, a hybrid chickweed or stellaria, growing strongly in spite of the shade. She told him it soon sprang though the autumn leaf fall, and stayed green all winter. They used to try to clear it away, as they had to do in the gardens, but it was hopeless, and now they left it alone.

   She pulled some out and peered at the earth beneath. ‘Some people believe that the spirit of the wild will return some day. And mosses and ferns will grow, and grasses and mushrooms.’

   ‘Watch out for the poisonous ones,’ he laughed.

   They walked on through the dim silence of the trees. She reached for his hand. The feeling that had struck him in the boat, that he was in a reality he was not in control of, had grown as Angela had taken charge of him. He decided he liked it. He moved his fingers to lie between each of hers and felt her squeeze acceptance of the implied intimacy.

   ‘Let’s stop for a while,’ he said softly. She turned to face him, reached for his other hand and, crouching slowly back, she pulled him down on top of her spread legs. He kissed her soft and firm little mouth, pushing his tongue between her lips and probing for her tongue which darted teasingly at his. Wriggling sideways, he pulled the tassel of her girdle, and carefully lifted her tunic above her breasts. She wriggled out of it and bundled it under her head, pulled his girdle, and he pulled his tunic off.

   ‘Now what, Mr Mathematics Teacher?’ she laughed, pointing her finger to stroke the soft hard knob of his penis. He moved over her so he could use it to touch and circle her nipples, first one and then the other, slowly and carefully. She bent forward to lick it with the crimson point of her tongue.

   Then he sat back, leaving a silvery thread of juice down her body. He reached out with his fingers and ruffled the soft curls of her pubes, and lightly touched the swollen pink petals which led to her vagina.

   She pulled him into her. In only a few eager thrusts they reached a shrill climax. They lay close and still, each suddenly embarrassed to look the other in the face. She wriggled away and slipped into her tunic. He turned his back and put on his.

   She darted a half smile up at him. He put an arm over her shoulder and led her back down the hill.

   That evening Jeremy was uncertain what to say to Jarvis. But it seemed that the headmaster had a good idea how the day had gone.

   ‘I’m glad you’ve made friends with our Angela,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking since this morning that you need to get to know us a bit, not spend all your time with your pupil.’

   Jeremy told Jarvis what Jamie had said about civilisation.

   ‘Bright boy that. Bit of a loner though, not really part of the bunch. Not surprised he came forward.’

   Jeremy had also been doing some thinking about the lessons he was supposed to give. The clay pots had made him think that perhaps he would need some materials, paper and pencils at least. He mentioned this to Jarvis, not thinking it could be a problem.

   ‘You can’t get paper,’ was Jarvis’s surprising reply. ‘They tried when the school was first started, but we can’t make it and the intos won’t supply it. Seems to be a rule from back in bionecrotech. No paper, none at all, not for any purpose.’

   Jeremy said, ‘Back in necrotech they churned out masses of the stuff; more and more as time went on, even after they’d invented computers.’

   Jarvis nodded, ‘I know; they even used to wipe themselves with it after opening their bowels! Biotech sorted that out. Better diet, less obsessive washing and looser clothing, and bacteria do all the cleaning that’s necessary. Nasty idea anyway, I wouldn’t want to do it. I don’t suppose that sort of paper would suit your purposes anyway,’ he laughed. ‘What I use for writing on is clay tablets. I believe they did the same when writing was first thought of. I’ll show you.’

   He went to a cupboard and brought out a wooden tray and handed it to Jeremy. It had a narrow rim around it, and inside a layer of clay, of the sort Angela’s class had been using.

   ‘It stays soft you see, as long as you don’t leave it in the sun. I write on it with this stylus, and when I want to start again I roll it flat with this little roller. Neat, eh! Bill Fratter made them for me. I’ve got a stack of them in here.’

   ‘You know how to write then – symbolic language?’ Jeremy was impressed.

   ‘Can you write? Come to that, can you read?’ It sounded like a challenge.

   Jeremy was puzzled and a little put out. ‘Of course I can,’ he said.

   ‘I’m sure you think you can. Look, let’s see. There’s my screen. Call up The Mill on the Floss by George Eliott. You’ll see why in a minute. Ask for text, or you’ll get a story version. Ask for the bit where Tom goes away to school.’ Jeremy did as he was told and a passage of text appeared on the screen. ‘Now read it.’

   ‘Tom Tulliver’s sufferings during the first quarter he was at King’s Lorton, under the distinguished care of the Reverend Walter Stelling, were rather severe. At Mister Jacob’s academy, life …’

   ‘That’ll do,’ Jarvis interrupted. ‘Now, the other day I copied that passage down on this tablet here. See if you can read it.’

   Jeremy took the tablet. It was covered with symbols which looked familiar. He tried to do what he thought was reading, but no sense came into his mind. He shook his head, and looked at Jarvis.

   ‘The intos reads it to you, you see. You hear the sense. People were already reading less and less at the end of necrotech; they had a lot of visual and vocal information even then. In bionecrotech, after the paper purge I was just talking about, even the academics stopped reading physical books. It was easier to call them up, and have them read. In biotech, when people came to inhabit individual cells, they had no way of knowing if they were reading and saying it in their minds, or listening to a voice the intos produced. You’re no different. I could tell just now, you see, because I could hear the voice too. We don’t have cells here; we prefer flat screens, everyone in the village does.’

   Jeremy sat there, utterly bemused by this revelation. Did he know anything at all? he wondered. Yes, of course he did. There was information in his head. Obviously he had got it from the intos, but he could carry it around and impart it to others. He took the blank tablet and the stylus, and drew a triangle, then a circle. The shapes were wobbly, but recognisable. He tried writing ‘1 2 3 4’, but found he could not do it. He turned to the screen and said, ‘Show me the numbers one, two, three and four.’ The symbols appeared, and Jeremy carefully copied them onto the clay.

   ‘Yes, that’s what I’ve had to do. I don’t think anyone else in the village has tried it. There’s no need for them to. It’s just a hobby of mine. I go in for useless hobbies.’ And he pouted in self-mockery.

   ‘I can see I’m going to have to do quite a bit of preparation.’

   ‘Well, that’s what we thought, the other teachers and I. So that’s partly why we suggested you work on it with just James.’

   Jeremy was silent for a while. He sat fiddling with the tassel of his girdle. As he did so, he came across the lump of clay he had been playing with earlier, which he had slipped into his pocket. He fished it out and absently formed a cube, and this gave him an idea.

   ‘Mr Jarvis, do you think that carpenter you mentioned would make me some children’s building blocks? I think they’d be very useful.’

   ‘Bill Fratter? I should think so. Go and ask him. I’ll show you where he is in the morning. There are other people besides him who do woodwork if he’s too busy.’

   After his visit to Bill Fratter, which confirmed the impressions he had gathered from Angela, Jeremy began to understand what he called ‘the village philosophy’, undefined and unstated though it was. The inhabitants’ inability to count was due to their way of life. Everything was done by a form of collective sensing. There was no recording of time; no clock or calendar. Market day, for example, just happened. If it was a pleasant morning and there had not been one for a while, people just turned up, with their produce. There were no anniversaries. Birth dates were not recorded. But when someone made a significant transition in their lives, there was a ceremony or a celebration.

   Jeremy decided that Angela was right. He should just go along with Jarvis’s project, and not worry about whether or not it would prove useful to the villagers, or, indeed, whether it would disturb them.

   A routine developed in Jeremy’s life. If Jamie turned up for a lesson, they worked together; if not, he worked alone; or went along to one of the other teachers’ classes. Some evenings he spent with Angela, some with Jarvis. Quite often there were parties which someone would take him along to.

   To Jeremy’s great joy, Jamie was fascinated by what he had to show him on the intos screen. The boy took to mathematics like a duck to water. He romped through arithmetic, algebra and trigonometry, then Euclidean, non-Euclidean and projective geometry. He loved shapes – ‘patterns’, as he insisted on calling them: simple polygons, conic sections, polyhedra; and he was thrilled when he discovered how to extend geometry into multiple dimensions using the evolutionary progressions the intos provided.

   Jamie’s progress was astonishing. He worked through sets and functions, group theory, matrices and vectors, linear transformations, calculus, analysis, flows and fractals: it was all fine, as long as it could be presented or illustrated by patterns, and with Jeremy’s instructions, the intos provided.

   It was as if all the mathematical thought of past ages was pouring into the child’s receptive mind. No, Jeremy thought, more as if Jamie’s brain was a channel which led him into humanity’s mathematical genius, connected and enhanced by the intos artificial intelligence.

   Jeremy was tremendously proud of his pupil. ‘He’s a natural mathematician; more than I am,’ he told everyone.

   But the difference between Jamie’s aptitude and Jeremy’s was more a matter of pace than natural ability. Jeremy showed the way, and Jamie followed with an eagerness which fed on his gifted teacher’s more methodical years of study. Their love of the subject grew as the leading and showing merged into a shared exploration. The intimacy was enhanced for Jeremy because it was his first, after a lifetime in a solitary cell. Sometimes he wished for a cell to enclose them both, but their imagination and absorption enabled them to disappear into the intos wonderland, without being physically surrounded by it.

   One day, after a morning which culminated in a heady ride around powers of complex numbers, they emerged giddy and elated, and staggered into one of Angela’s pottery classes. They worked separately, but part way through the session Angela examined their pots and laughingly exclaimed, ‘Just look at this, children; these two are twin souls, their designs are exactly the same!’ She held up the pots, both incised by a network of intertwining spirals.

   The pot-making episode was exceptional, and nothing like it ever happened again. It highlighted a curious difficulty with the mathematics lessons. Apart from that single occasion, Jamie would not bring any of his understanding into the outside world; into the real world of the classroom. He was totally inept with Jarvis’s stylus and the clay tablet, and would not – insisted that he could not – even copy down numbers displayed on the screen. He showed no understanding of the simple arithmetic or algebra Jeremy scored on the tablet.

   One evening the building blocks Jeremy had ordered from Bill Fratter arrived. Bill brought them himself, in a large box obviously specially made to contain them. He handed the box over without a word. Jeremy thanked him warmly, inviting him in, but he shook his head and turned to go. Feeling a return of his earlier strangeness, Jeremy watched Bill’s back disappear into the night.

   Next morning, Jeremy turned out the blocks onto the floor between himself and Jamie. He found that, like everything else in Overfleet, no two were alike. They were regular in shape, but they were not all cubes, which was what he thought he had asked for. There were rectangular blocks of various proportions, cylindrical ones, triangular ones, some cones, and a few were rectangular but with semi-circular sections cut out to leave arches. Those of the same shape were stained in different colours.

   He watched as Jamie immediately set to and made a castle. Was there a memory of children making castles going way back into history? he wondered. The castle was basically rectangular, Jeremy noted, looking for opportunities for a lesson. It had a gatehouse in one of the longer walls, and towers at each corner. As Jamie worked on it, it became more and more elaborate. A few blocks remained when he had completed the castle to his satisfaction, and knelt back for it to be admired. And Jeremy, of course, duly admired it enthusiastically.

   Then Jeremy gathered up the remainder of the blocks. He made the outline of a square with the straight ones. He traced the shape and looked up at the boy. ‘See I’ve made a square,’ he said, encouragingly. ‘One, two, three, four corners. One, two, three, four sides. Two at the top here, and two at the bottom. Two and two makes four.’ He felt ridiculous speaking to this brilliant boy in such a way.

   Jamie’s response was to crawl over and mess up Jeremy’s square. Then he used the blocks to make some little houses outside his castle.

   The message was clear: patterns should be inside the castle of the mind, not outside in the village. The village philosophy should not be interfered with. He thought back to his conversation with Angela over the goblets. If his teaching got stuck at this point, the village certainly would not be ‘corrupted’ by mathematics; but nor would Jarvis’s ambition to introduce more sophisticated technology be realised. He would have failed in what he had been brought out to do. This was a bitter blow after his apparent triumph with Jamie using the intos.

   Jeremy’s relationship with Angela had a touch of village philosophy to it as well. He had assumed, after their love-making in the forest, that something of the kind would become a regular thing. But, although he spent many evenings in her tiny cottage, where she lived alone, she would not allow any love-making there, and he was not allowed to sleep with her, ‘Because we are not betrothed,’ she said.

   ‘We can be betrothed, if you like, can’t we?’ he said.

   ‘Not until we know you are going to stay,’ she replied.

   ‘I’m going to stay,’ he said firmly, putting aside his doubts about his success as a teacher. He would work something out. He would have to if he wanted to stay. ‘This is home,’ he said.

   ‘When you have really decided to stay, we shall have a party for you, a surprise party perhaps. After that we shall be betrothed, and have another party for that. Until then, we cannot set up house together.’

   Not being betrothed did not seem to rule out occasional walks in the forest, during which, if the ground was dry, and the weather was warm, they would make love, much as before, teasing and quick.

   On one occasion, they were putting their tunics back on when Jeremy saw something move near a tree. He darted sideways to see what, or who, it was. It was Jamie and he ran off. Angela just laughed. ‘He’s interested in you. He wants to know what we’re up to together. I don’t mind, do you?’

   ‘I suppose not,’ he said.

   Jeremy told Angela about his problem with persuading Jamie to work outside the intos. He did not share with her his theory about why the boy was so resistant.

   ‘Oh, you can easily sort that out. You don’t understand children. You said he likes shapes; well then, give him shapes outside the intos. I’ll think about it.’

   The next day she came to his room. ‘I’ve had an idea about how to make shapes for Jamie. Come to my place this evening, I’ll show you.’

   Her idea involved willow wands and thatching straws. She had bundles of them on the floor, and some clay, a ball of string, and a wooden block and a small knife. ‘There you are,’ she said. ‘Show me what you can do with that.’ She sat back to watch him.

   He cut lengths of willow and laid them end to end to make polygons. He bent one around to make a circle. Overlapped on itself it made quite a good shape, and he bound it with string. Then he tried the straw. He made various shapes by bending the straw, and fixing the ends with clay. Then he made a tetrahedron. ‘That’s good,’ she approved. He made an octahedron. ‘Even better,’ she said.

   Then he had a thought. ‘Do you make corn dollies in the village,’ he asked. She looked puzzled. ‘Look, I’ll show you.’ He went to her screen and called up some pictures of corn dollies, with diagrammed and vocalised instructions. ‘You try.’ He handed her some straws.

   By the time Jeremy had made a stellated dodecahedron, Angela had made a passable corn dolly: a curved rod of twisted plaiting. ‘It looks very phallic,’ he smiled, reaching over to squeeze her encouragingly.

   ‘That was the idea, wasn’t it – fertility and all that.’ But she pushed him away. ‘Not until we’re betrothed,’ she said.

   ‘No one would know,’ he replied.

   ‘We would,’ she said firmly. ‘You must go now.’

   The next morning Jeremy showed Jamie the willow and straw shapes. He examined Angela’s straw dolly with interest, and asked to see and listen to the instructions for making them. But the geometric shapes he would have nothing to do with.

   At last, reluctant to admit his failure, Jeremy related his problem to Jarvis.

   ‘Sounds as if that was my fault. Remember what I said to him about putting the patterns of the mind out into the world and bringing about civilisation, and, by implication, necrotech, and all its destruction. The boy has taken it to heart. Look, I’ve an idea. Why don’t you move on to a bigger class? Try out your teaching on some other children.’

   Jeremy began to prepare some lessons for the larger class, not using the intos. He tried to interest Jamie in what he was doing, and was dismayed when the boy burst into tears, and rushed out of the room. He followed him, but he ran away. Jeremy went into Angela’s room and told her what had happened. ‘Just leave him be for a while. I expect he’ll come back.’

   In a few days, the first larger class took place. Jeremy tried out the lessons he had prepared and all the children accepted what he told them without any resistance. In very little time, they were counting, reading and writing numbers, doing simple arithmetic and basic geometry. They were much slower than Jamie had been, but perfectly willing.

   The lessons continued, but Jamie did not come back. He did not come into school at all. And, of course, since all school was optional, no one would force him.

   Although Jeremy was pleased with his success, he recalled Jamie’s ruling about keeping the patterns of the mind inside, and he could not help feeling anxious. This was all very well in the classroom, but what would these children take of it into their world; what effect would it have on the village?

   One morning a sandy-haired boy came up to him. ‘Mr Vetch,’ he said, ‘my father says he can make something more true by eye than you can with measuring. He says the human spirit is more true than any ruler.’

   Jeremy looked at the boy solemnly. ‘Your father is right, Peter. You must respect the village ways. Mathematics is just something extra which might come in handy sometimes.’

   In a lesson a few days later, two of the children started quarrelling over the building blocks.

   ‘You’ve got five times as many as I have,’ said one, exaggerating. He grabbed at the other boy’s pile, who surrounded it with his arms.

   A third boy joined in. ‘Ernie, I’ll give you three of my plain ones for one of your cones, okay?’ The deal was done. Jeremy found himself comparing the boys’ swapping with the ‘trading’ that happened on market days; where goods were exchanged and exchanged again, with no evaluation. It was a kind of progressive dance, which ended when everyone was satisfied. What had he started? He longed to be back with Jamie, safely exploring the esoteric wonders of human thought.

   Then one afternoon Jamie came back. It was a music practice afternoon, and Jeremy was in The Small Quiet Room idly browsing through old mathematics texts on the system. There was a soft knock on the door. Jeremy said, ‘Come in,’ and there he was: a smiling angel, ready, it seemed, to play mathematics.

   He beamed at him with a ‘Hello, Jeremy,’ shut the door behind him, and went over to fetch the box of blocks.

   ‘Hello, Jamie, it’s lovely to see you.’

   ‘Yes,’ he said.

   ‘I’ve missed you.’

   ‘Yes, me too.’

   He tipped out the blocks, and sorted them into two piles: one with the cones and cylinders, triangles and arches; the other with all the rectangular blocks. With those he made a precise square. He sat back and looked at Jeremy. Jeremy smiled encouragingly, not sure what the message was, though clearly the boy was telling him something.

   Then he fetched the clay board and the stylus. Sitting on the floor he carefully wrote, ‘1 2 3 4’. Then he pointed at the sides of the square in turn and said, ‘One, two, three, four – sides,’ and looked at Jeremy.

   Jeremy smiled with the approval the boy must be expecting, ‘Yes, that’s right, good.’

   Jamie got up and stood in front of him. Very lightly he touched Jeremy’s right cheek and then his left cheek and said, ‘One, two,’ and touched his own cheeks and said, ‘Three, four – cheeks. Two and two makes four,’ and smiled his beatific smile.

   Jeremy praised him again, ‘Yes, Jamie, well done!’ But his heart ached with uncertainty, and he reached out and hugged him. ‘Dear Jamie, I really have missed you.’ He held him close.

   Jamie wriggled himself onto Jeremy’s lap. He pointed to Jeremy’s chest and then his own and said, ‘One, two – boys.’

   Jeremy frowned, puzzled. ‘Boys?’ he said.

   Jamie lifted his tunic and pointed at his fat pink little penis, which poked up, Jeremy thought, like a small poisonous mushroom. ‘Boys,’ Jamie said firmly. And he took hold of Jeremy’s hand and put it on the poisonous mushroom, and wriggled himself into the bend of Jeremy’s lap, where his penis had sprung erect.

   Jeremy drew in his breath, ‘No!’ he whispered, putting his other hand under the boy to push him off, and found himself touching Jamie’s bare bottom. Jeremy felt that old feeling of not being in control, and the sense of relief it brought.

   ‘Five, six – cheeks,’ Jamie giggled. He peeled off his tunic, and Jeremy ran his hands over the boy’s smooth skin and supple young body. Jamie offered his mouth. Jeremy kissed it, so soft, warm and sweet.

   He felt his penis hard and thin – yes, thin enough to … He felt for Jamie’s hole and pushed a finger in slightly. It squeezed him encouragingly. He guided himself there and pushed. A few pushes and he was inside – where? – he no longer cared. The feeling was indescribably delightful. He pushed rhythmically and the boy rocked back. He buried his face in Jamie’s neck, his soft hair.

   ‘Do you like me?’ Jamie whispered.

   ‘Yes, of course I like you, you delicious little creature.’ He wiggled Jamie’s firm little mushroom. The boy arched his back, displaying it, pink and proud.

   He said, ‘We need another boy to stick on mine – one, two, three – boys.’ He giggled, ‘Four, five, six little boys.’

   Then he said, ‘Do you like me more than Angela?’

   ‘More than anyone in the whole world.’

   Jeremy fought off his climax, prolonging sensation such as he’d never imagined. His whole body and mind vibrated with ecstasy. He screwed up his face with the effort, and saw sparkling lights, and music sounded, triumphant, dramatic. And he came, in a last thrust, and a gasp, crushing the boy’s body to him.

   The music died. He opened his eyes. The door was open. There was Angela, her drum sticks suspended; and Jarvis with a set of bells; behind them faces filled the doorway. She screamed.

   Suddenly Jamie was screaming too. ‘Help! He hurt me.’

   Jarvis rushed forward and tried to lift the boy away, but they were stuck together, until the shrivelled knob emerged, besmeared and foul. Jamie was carried off, sobbing loudly.

   Jeremy cried, ‘It’s not like it looked. He wanted it. He … corrupted me. Please, listen!’

   Hands dragged him outside onto the path. Heavy boots kicked him, there was shouting.

   Jeremy glimpsed Bill Fratter run to the lawn, and heave on a sign which said ‘Out of bounds.’ He yanked out a long barbed spike. The others rolled Jeremy over. He heard Bill’s voice, ‘This’ll teach you to corrupt our children, Mr Mathematics Teacher.’ And he thrust the spike into his anus. Pain filled the universe.

The next shift is to another

                             late biotech subject. Before she gets into her story, there is a part of the shift that excited me tremendously when I returned from experiencing it. She is having the sort of random thoughts that come to someone waking up in the morning, which are quite unlike part of a biotech storyframe. What was happening to the subject was that she actually experienced a shift – a transfer of consciousness like the ones I have – all the way back to necrotech. No storyframer had taken her there; her own nascent powers of what we call ‘eversight’ had come into play. This power was fundamental to the new kind of human being who would live during the pattern age. What appears to have happened is that free and random access to the huge store of knowledge of the past held by the intos dragon released in some people the power to know the past without technological assistance. After the little ‘shift within a shift’ comes a fairly typical late biotech woman’s story. In the story, the subject calls herself Bibbie. After Bibbie we’ll really get out of biotech into the early pattern age.

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