'/a,' the other nodded, 'Klaus Gutmann.'

  'Herr Gutmann, when was this? When did you know -my father? How well did you know him?'

  'Oh, I did not know him well -' Gutmann shrugged. 'It was maybe, oh, thirty years ago, when I was just a little older than you.'

  Lynn was back with Suzy. The Dobermann went to Stone and sat at his feet, put her muzzle in his hands. Lynn had caught the latter part of their conversation; she kept silent, listening. She could tell from Richard's expression that there was something new, something out of the ordinary here.

  'Please go on,' he urged.

  'Well,' Gutmann continued, 'my father had a business in Eisleben - that's not far from here. He supplied many of the local hotels with foodstuffs. With their . . . GemuseT

  'Their vegetables, yes.'

  'Vegetables, of course. And he had the contract to supply Herr Schroeder with all - of - ' Gutmann paused, gaped at Stone. 'Mein Gott! 1st etwas los?'

  Beneath the table, Suzy whined deep in her throat.

  Lynn had taken a third chair from a nearby table. Now she shuffled it closer, clutched at Richard's arm. 'Richard, what's wrong?'

  All the colour had gone out of Stone's face in a single instant of time. His eyes were yellow, huge, staring. He was like . . . like what? A ghost who has seen a man!

  'Richard.'' Lynn said again, and now he heard her, recognized her tone. She had read something into his actions which was not there, not this time.

  'It's okay,' he said at last. 'I'm all right.' The colour began to creep back into his face. He tightened his grip on Gutmann's hand until the German drew back, then re-leased him. 'I'm sorry, Herr Gutmann - but you don't know how important this is to me,' he said. "That name, Schroeder. Who is he?'

  Gutmann had thought for a moment that Stone was going to be terribly ill. Now, relieved to see that he was well, he relaxed a little and took a deep breath. This had become much more than a simple conversation, and he knew it. His voice was shaky as he continued: 'Oh, everyone in the Harz knew Thomas Schroeder - or knew of him. He was a rich man, very rich! He had a place not far from here, maybe ten kilometres. A big place. When he died it became your father's place, but he came to the Harz only rarely.'

  Stone was absorbing all of this as fast as it hit him. 'You mean Richard Garrison - my father - actually owned a place up here?'

  'Property, yes,' Gutmann nodded. 'It's strange but I haven't given a thought to those old days for such a long time. But when I saw you - and of course the silver car -and your lady with her dark spectacles. And the Hiindin . . .' he paused, his smile nervous. 'Why, then everything came back to me!'

  Stone was pale again, Lynn too by now.

  'Listen, Herr Gutmann/ Stone spoke very slowly. 'This is not only important to me but to a great many people. Do you believe me?'

  'Why, yes!' the Wirt answered, his eyes widening, 'if you say so.'

  'I do,' Stone's eyes bored into him. 'How did you connect the car, the dog, myself and the lady here with Schroeder, my father and all?'

  Suddenly it was very thirsty work. 'Wait,' said Gutmann. 'A moment, please.' He called over a serving girl. 'Weinbrand, bitte - dreimal.' When she had hurried off he turned back to the pair.

  "Thomas Schroeder had a Mercedes like yours,' he said. 'His man, Koenig, used to drive it for him. After Schroeder died, Koenig became companion to your father. At least he left these parts, and afterwards was only ever seen with Richard Garrison . . .' Suddenly it was Gutmann's turn to frown. 'But . . . you don't know any of this?'

  'I never knew my father.'

  'Ah! I am sorry. Very well, let me go on:

  'Soon after Herr Schroeder died, your father came for a while to the Harz. From that time I remember the dog. So now, you see, when all of these things are coming together again, I -'

  'And the lady? You mentioned a lady with dark spectacles?' Stone's voice almost shook with its tension.

  'Oh, yes, but that was while Herr Schroeder lived. I remember seeing them together at his place, laughing and splashing in a swimming pool, and sitting with their feet in the water. I can see them now. Young people: they looked so good together, like you and the lady. And I was sorry for them.'

  'Sorry for them?'

  The Kellnerin had brought a tray with three large brandies. Stone gulped his down without apology, Gut-mann more slowly. Lynn merely held hers tightly in both hands.

  'Of course,' said Gutmann. 'And your lady too wears the dark spectacles, you see? Naturally I was sorry - that they should be so young, Garrison and his lady friend -and both of them blind!'

  'Blind!' Stone's mouth formed the word, but it emerged as a whisper. The glass clutched in his bandaged hand shattered. To himself he said: And her name was Vicki Maler - my mother!

  No one moved. The three sat as if moulded there. Then Suzy whined worriedly and Gutmann gave a nervous laugh.

  'Blind!' Stone said it again, audibly now, his voice a croak. 'My father, too!'

  Yes, blind - but he had seen more than any other man might ever have hoped to see. And out of the blue a thought, a revelation, struck at Stone like a bolt of illuminating lightning:

  Great merciful God -I believe I've inherited something from my father! His memories! Those, yes . . . and maybe something more. . .

  The mountain road was a good one; its lanes were comfortably wide for all that there were only two, and its surface had plenty of grip. It was the major service road for most of the Harz district, linking lesser tracks and roads to all the towns and villages and offering a first-class route to the mighty ten-laner where it crossed the mountains between Nordhausen and Stasfurt to the south-east. But because of the mountain contours, the road wound tortuously and contained numerous hairpins, which made the going fairly slow.

  Just before 11:00 a.m. , coming round a bend on a steep, pine-clad slope and along the edge of a high, wide saddle between twin peaks, Stone sensed that they were almost there. Several things alerted him to the fact: memories which could not possibly be his - Suzy's sudden attitude of alert awareness where she sat behind him, her great paws on the back of his seat - the way his pulse picked up for no apparent reason. And where Herr Gutmann's directions had been only vague, Stone's instinct was sure.

  'Easy,' he told Lynn, who was driving. 'Slow right down.'

  The road skirted the saddle gently. On the right, beyond the width of the oncoming lane, the mountainside fell away for many hundreds of feet down to toy towns and villages whose chimney smoke was blue where it hazed the still, sheltered air. On the left the saddle had a front all of a half-mile wide; it reached back through a belt of pines to a gradually narrowing, gently rising slope between the peaks. Sheltered despite its elevation, the place was like a valley of the sky - a pocket in the mountain's highest folds - which trapped the sunlight, avoided the winds, looked down on the world with a sort of remote disinterest.

  But behind the pines the sun struck glinting fire from many bright facets. There were buildings, windows and gleaming domes back there. And now Stone knew for certain that this was the place, for he remembered it...

  Take the slip road,' he said.

  'What slip -' Lynn began - a moment before she saw it. Just beyond a kink in the road, a turning into the pines was guarded by a sign which warned:

  PRIVAT!

  Eintritt Verboten!

  Suzy gave a single sharp bark and licked Stone's ear. She whined curiously - knowingly? - as the car turned off the road, past the sign and slipped like a silvered shadow into the belt of pines. Beneath the canopy of the trees, unseen from the road, a high perimeter fence of wire defined the forward facing boundary of the place. Stone pillars draped with a small-leaved variety of ivy loomed up, between which iron gates stood open. The shape of the pillars at their tops, plus low mounds of long tumbled masonry half-buried in pine-needles, leaf-mould and vines, told their own story of a fallen archway.

  'Stop!' Stone heard himself say; and he was half-way out of his door before Lynn could bring the car properly to a halt. Then she and Suzy joined in helping him clear away dirt and leaf-mould, and to turn over several of the heavier chunks of masonry which had fallen face down,

  until the original legend could be reconstructed. Then -It was not difficult to decipher, neither did it shock

  Stone - not after all the other revelations of the morning.

  indeed it was nothing more or less than he had expected, Noding, he finally stood up, stood back from the uncovered evidence. Indisputable evidence that indeed his dreams had strange meaning.

  '"Garrison's Retreat",' he repeated the legend out loud, then looked beyond the gates, where the drive disappeared into the pines. 'And up there, maybe the answers to all this.' He took Lynn's arm and gave it a squeeze. 'We might be that close!'

  They got back in the car, drove on.

  In less than fifty yards they came out of the pines into a large cleared area of many acres that sloped gently upward into gardens and lawns, beyond which stood those buildings glimpsed from the road. There were six of them, one central with the others ringed about it, so that all stood fairly equidistant. They were symmetrically similar - all had two storeys with the exception of the central one, which had three - and all were domed, their domes carrying clusters of solar cells of an outmoded design and manufacture. The domes also bore large, concave mirrors, which faced more or less into the sun, though they had obviously stopped tracking it some years ago. Their angles were slightly askew and at least one was completely off-target. Between the buildings were paths, gardens, fountains - even swimming pools - but the pools were empty now and the fountains no longer spouted.

  The drive passed between two of the outer buildings and ended in a gravelled area in front of the taller structure. Weeds were coming through the gravel in places, in others it had been blackened by oil drips. No one had turned or changed it in a long time. The place was clearly untended. An upstairs window in the main building was cracked diagonally behind a hanging board; the paintwork was flaking; the doors were nailed shut. But the place as a whole was not quite deserted, not at the moment anyway. A second car stood in one corner of the parking area, and the glass doors of one of the outer buildings stood open. A male figure came walking towards them along a path from the open doors.

  The stranger was German, carried a bulky briefcase, looked official - but in an untidy, friendly sort of way. He was young, blond, casually dressed, and he looked mildly surprised. Lynn and Richard got out of the Mercedes, stood waiting for him.

  Stone tried to concentrate on what was happening but his mind would not let him. It was too busy elsewhere -elsewhen?

  The place was as he had known it would be (no, he had to face it, as he remembered it) or as someone else remembered it deep down in his mind. There was the pool where Garrison and Vicki had played together, and over there the copse where Schroeder had grown his exotic aphrodisiac mushrooms from the Tibetan Nan Shan. And behind him in the main building, apparently long boarded-up, the bar where he (no, not he, Garrison, Garrison) had got drunk more than once on cheap Ligurian and Cyprus brandy. And here - right here where he stood now, this very spot - this was where he, Garrison, had first met Suzy. He had been blind then, with only the vaguest hope of ever seeing again, but he had 'seen' Suzy . . .

  External interruptions would not go away.

  'What?' Stone looked up. 'Oh, I'm sorry! I was miles away.'

  The stranger smiled, 'That's all right,' and repeated: 'You are English, then?'

  'Yes,' Lynn thought she had better answer, 'we, er -'

  'My father used to own this place,' Richard cut in, glad of the opportunity to anchor himself and not go wandering in pseudo-memories again, at least not for the moment. 'We thought we'd just look in.'

  'Your father owned it?' the other's smile dimmed a little. 'I think perhaps you are mistaken. This is the

  property of Heir Heinrich Schroeder, who now lives in Berlin. Or rather it was his property, but recently he sold it to the State. I am Karl Schmidt of the Department for the Environment, Hessen area. I am - ' he looked suddenly embarrassed, a little uncertain of himself -'supposed to be here to make an assessment. . .'

  'Your English is very good,' said Lynn. 'You could pass for an Englishman.'

  'Thank you,' said Schmidt. 'I studied at Cambridge.' He turned back to Richard. 'No, I am sure you must have the wrong place.'

  'My father had it before Heinrich Schroeder,' Richard told him. 'He inherited it from Thomas Schroeder, later gave it back to Heinrich - I think. My name is Garrison. Richard Garrison.'

  Lynn looked at him. He sounded as if he really meant it, as if he believed indisputably that he was Richard Garrison, son of Richard Garrison. Or perhaps it was simply that she too had now come to believe.

  'Ah!' the other's smile came easier. 'Yes, I know the name, I have certain documents.' He patted his briefcase. "This place was once "Garrison's Retreat", yes?' He stuck out his hand and Richard took it, but gingerly. The other saw the bandages.

  'Accident,' said Richard.

  'Oh? I am sorry.'

  'So what, er,' Richard shrugged awkwardly, 'what are you assessing?'

  Schmidt laughed ruefully. 'To tell the truth, I'm not sure! But if you know this place, maybe you can tell me? It's just the contents of this one building that are causing the problem. How can I decide what they are worth, or what to do with them, until I know what they are?'

  "That building?' Richard nodded towards the one with the open doors. 'Instruments, machines, observation windows, strange rooms?'

  'Yes!' Schmidt was eager. 'You understand these things?'

  Richard half-nodded, half-shook his head. 'I don't know,' he said. 'Let's go and see.'

  Lynn went with them, but Suzy was off exploring the grounds. Or perhaps 'exploring' is the wrong word. Certainly she looked like she knew where she was going. Anyway, she could look after herself. . .

  As soon as he entered the building Richard felt changed, made small, almost oppressed. It was not that he was afraid; it was fascination more than fear. The air seemed tangible on his shoulders, weighing there. As a child, exploring weedy seaside caves in rocky bays, he had known the same feeling. Like entering the lair of some unknown, unknowable beast.

  Except that this was a beast he did know . . . now. An esoteric beast. One of mystery and imagination, and of the mind.

  Behind hermetic seals, the place was clean as a hospital and had the same feel. Ceramic tiles, plastic paint, thick glass . . . antiseptic.

  'You see?' said Schmidt, waving his arms expansively. 'A man would have to be psychic to know what all of this is for!'

  'Exactly,' said Richard, nodding.

  'Pardon me?'

  'A laboratory,' Richard told him. 'Upstairs, too. One big laboratory.' He felt he knew what was coming, that this conversation had all happened before.

  'Laboratory?' Lynn repeated him, her voice echoing.

  'A test centre.'

  To test what?' Schmidt was lost.

  'ESP - Extra Sensory Perception. A place to measure the unknown, to sound the unfathomable.'

  Deja vu . . . paramnesia . . . I was here before. No, my father was here, Garrison . . .

  He wandered through the place and the others followed, their footsteps echoing.

  'ESP?' Schmidt repeated him. Even in this area his English was exceptional. 'Do you mean . . . parapsychology?'

  'Yes.'

  'And the machines? Are they machines?'

  'Oh, yes.'

  'But they have no motors!'

  'Of course not. They were designed to harness the hidden power of the human mind. If they had motors that would be cheating.'

  'This room, for instance. There is nothing in it. It is only -shaped. Oddly shaped.'

  'A Ganzfeld State room,' Richard explained. To induce maximum ESP receptivity. Empty? No, it's merely in a Ganzfeld state.'

  He opened a door, pointed: 'Zenner Cards machine. And those other devices, they're after Rhine. J. B. Rhine. He "invented" ESP.'

  And d6ja vu? Did he invent that, tool

  'And here,' said Schmidt. 'Look - an empty room, and yet it has electrical apparatus built into the walls. And no visible controls!'

  'De-magnetizers,' said Richard, 'to test teleportation and levitation.'

  'And these cabinets?'

  TET cubicles: Telepathic Exchange Tests.'

  'Hah!' Schmidt laughed. 'How may one assess?'

  'Easy,' Richard told him. 'Assess it as valueless!'

  'What?'

  'Rip it all out, destroy it. It has no value.'

  They left the building. 'I think I agree,' said Schmidt.

  'Good,' Richard answered, 'and thank you.'

  'But what for? It is I who should thank you.'

  Richard shrugged, laughed. "Thanks for the memory!'

  Of course, Schmidt failed to understand.

  'What will the place be?' Lynn asked. 'I mean, what will your government do with it?'

  'It will be a sanatorium,' Schmidt told her. 'For people with sick minds.'

  'Then it is eminently suitable,' Richard nodded, his tone suddenly sour. 'Oh, yes, for there'll be plenty of those

  Back at the car, Suzy was waiting for them.

  They did not drive straight back to St Andreasberg, for first Richard had something he wanted Lynn to see. He knew the place now as if it had been part of his life, and there was that which he 'remembered' so vividly that he wanted to check it out. Therefore, as they passed through the iron gates on their way out of the grounds, he said: 'Turn left but don't go on to the main road. Just follow the fence, dead slow, through the trees. It's a bit of a squeeze in a car this big, but. . . there!'

  They had emerged on to a grassy track running between the fence and the pines, which Lynn was obliged to follow at little more than walking pace until it widened. 'Where does this go?' she asked, picking up a little speed. Her question was totally innocent, as if^ Richard should legitimately know the answer - which of course he did.

  'It skirts the fence all the way along the front, parallel with the road, then turns back into and over the saddle,' he fold her. 'We actually climb above those buildings back there, and we'll be able to look down across the domes. Then we go across the hump of the saddle to the far side of the mountain. There, where the drop is sheer for about a thousand feet, stands a log cabin - a secret place, lost in the trees. It looks out over Halberstadt towards Berlin. In fact on a clear night you might even be able to see Berlin's lights, almost a hundred and twenty miles away! Certainly the ten-laner will look marvellous from up there: all those lights marching away to Berlin. Of course, there were no ten-laners when my father had the place built -' he turned his strange eyes on her,' - almost thirty years ago . . .'

 

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