7.

They were going from house to house in the town. Elsie had heard reports of them from the postman that morning, and from the shopkeepers when she had walked down to buy food. They wore dark suits and had dark hair, and although in a way they looked just like any other inhabitants of this country, there was still something odd about them. People thought they were preachers or foreigners come looking for work. Some were so unnerved by them that they just shut the door on them without asking what they wanted, but the men and women ended up coming in anyway, somehow. They always got in somehow.

Grayson had heard all of this on Elsie's return from town. Obviously they thought he had gone for shelter there where there were more people, perhaps the prospect of jobs or begging or a doctor's help. They had been seen at the station and staring at carts and carriages and the few motor cars that roared about up here. They were checking everything. It would only take so long for them to start coming to the outlying houses and farms and knocking on the doors there, and how would Elsie and Jim resist them if they turned up here?

'I will need to take everything I arrived here with,' he said, holding the newly mended black trousers in his hands and inspecting the repair work. 'This is excellent, Elsie. I thank you for your work.'

Elsie smiled. 'Well, I couldn't do anything near as good with the shirt,' she said, handing it to him. 'But the trousers were much easier to patch.'

Grayson looked at the top with its patches of mis-matched fabric. Still, it was clean and it was whole, and it would serve if he needed it. He wondered briefly if he would ever need it again, or whether it would be nothing but a symbol of what he had lost. He touched his finger to the silver badge on the blue fabric and it jolted memory in him again. Sciences. Those intertwined circles were for sciences. The repeated badge on his other items of clothing spoke of the whole, of the organisation he was in. But those intertwined circles meant sciences.

A scent came to him from memory that held him for a moment. The feeling of sitting in a high-backed chair, his hands on a console. The memory came and went so quickly that he could hardly quantify it. It would come, though, he was certain. He would not have blocked off his memory so catastrophically that he could never get it back. To do so would be illogical.

He folded the shirt carefully and put it into the suitcase that Elsie had pulled out of one of the cupboards for him. She had brought back a pair of second-hand boots from the cobbler's in town that fitted well enough, and sought out some clothes of Jim's that were about the right size, and now, with his dark slacks, as Elsie had called them, and his white shirt with neat cuffs and collar, he looked enough like any other man in this place.

'Except for those ears,' Elsie mused, shaking her head. 'And I'll need to give you a hair cut, mind. You stick out like anything with that fringe.'

'There will be time before we leave?' Grayson asked.

Elsie glanced sideways at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was almost ten o'clock in the evening and would be some time before it was truly dark. Dinner had been eaten and almost everything was packed and sorted except for Grayson's newly mended clothes.

'There'll be time,' she nodded. She looked sideways at her husband. 'Jim, you're sure you don't mind?'

'Aye, I'm sure I don't mind,' he said gruffly. 'I'd take him myself, but – '

'Don't be daft – you know you need to take care of the farm,' Elsie dismissed him. 'In a few weeks you can arrange for Alf to watch things for a couple of days and you can come down and fetch me, but you can't leave now. The hay'll be ready soon, and besides, they'll suspect.'

Grayson nodded at that. It was almost definite that any strangeness like a farmer abandoning his farm would be suspect. A wife going to visit relatives in the south was an entirely different matter. Jim only needed to tell concerned questioners that her aunt was ill and her leaving would be understood completely.

''''''

By the time dark fell Grayson was dressed very neatly in a suit and tie, his hair carefully styled to resemble any man in the town, and a hat on his head that came down just low enough to disguise his pointed ears and slanted eyebrows. He stood looking at himself in the mirror, analysing his appearance. He didn't think that at first glance anyone would notice his differences. If he was compelled to remove his hat – well, he would just have to think of a plausible excuse, if someone commented. The last conclusion people were liable to draw was that he was an alien from the future.

He closed his eyes briefly, shutting out the reflection and everything around him. He badly felt the need to meditate, to try to pull back more of his ravaged memory, but he would not have that chance for a good few hours, at the very least. Perhaps if he did remember more – perhaps if he could remember the purpose of the device that he carried – then maybe, maybe, he could work out some way of returning home.

'It's almost time,' Elsie said in a low voice from behind him, and his eyes snapped open.

He turned to see Jim watching him closely.

'I will take care of her,' he promised, and Jim nodded, making a grunt of acknowledgement.

'Aye, you better,' he said.

'Come on,' Elsie urged him, catching hold of his elbow. She already had her case in her hand. 'We'd better hurry. It's not going to be quick going in the dark.'

Grayson nodded, picking up his own case. He averted his gaze tactfully as Elsie hugged her husband and kissed him goodbye, and then followed her out of the door.

She moved with surprising agility across the dark farmyard. Grayson found it easier to see in the dim light than she did, but she knew the ground and she was not walking with a sprained ankle that was still healing. One of Jim's walking sticks helped with that.

'I can suppress the pain,' he had told Elsie.

'But you don't want to do that,' she replied firmly. 'That pain's telling you something. You try to walk on that as normal and you'll make it worse – cripple yourself maybe. Just take the stick and listen to your body.'

He had bowed to her medical wisdom, and taken the stick.

Elsie took him out of the yard and silently up into the closest field. The air was still warm from the summer sun and the scent of dried earth and grass rose around them. Sheep startled and scattered and she paused, touching a hand to Grayson's arm to still him too.

'Don't want them to start bleating,' she murmured.

They waited for the movement to calm, then walked on. It took half an hour to get through the dark fields and up onto the more open, moor-like land, but finally Elsie stopped by some kind of pole and set her suitcase down.

'You see the rails?' she asked.

Grayson nodded. The thin moonlight was just enough to show the two rails stretching into the distance.

'It always stops at this signal to let the night mail come past,' she said in a low voice. 'There's only one line through the tunnel. Jack's expecting us. He'll let us onto the guard van and we can take our seats proper at the next station. He's a good man. He won't let on.'

Grayson nodded again, silent. The silence up here was so great it was enveloping. It was something of a shame that he would not see this place in daylight. But his ears could catch small sounds from further away. There was something growing louder, a rhythmic sound of power, the clattering of metal on metal.

'It's coming,' Elsie said after a while, and he knew her human ears had caught the sound too. 'Best stand back a bit from the rails, just in case. That night mail'll thunder through, and I'm not sure which side ours stops on.'

Obediently he took a few steps backwards, looking along the tracks to see if he could catch a glimpse of the coming train. There was little to see at first but light glimmering far along the rails, but then the sound grew and the sense of power grew, and he began to feel as if the sound of the engine was inside him, filling his chest. He listened to the huffing of the steam as it pulled its train of carriages closer, and finally slowed and came to a halt in a screeching and clattering cacophony of sound. The scent of smoke and sulphur filled the air.

'Here, come on,' Elsie said, grabbing at his elbow and pulling him forward. 'Need to get down to the guard van. It won't be stopped longer than it has to be. And watch out for that night mail! We've got to cross the rails!'

He picked up his suitcase and half-ran after her, the giving heather and moss of the moorland threatening to take his balance away from him. For now he was glad of the walking stick. They passed carriage after lit-up carriage, until they came to a car that seemed entirely dark.

'Let me have that stick,' Elsie said. Taking it, she beat on the wooden side of the car with a stentorian series of blows. After a moment the door was rolled open and a hand was thrust out.

'Come on up, Elsie lass,' a man's voice said, and she passed up her case before catching hold of that hand. Grayson helped to lift her up and then passed up her own case and hauled himself into the van.

'Only got a moment before we're off,' the man said. There was a shrill whistle and the sound of another engine building, coming closer, and then pushing past over the rails where they had just been standing with a power that made the guard's van rattle and shake.

'Here, come over here,' Elsie said, tugging at Grayson's sleeve to bring him closer to a lit lamp, where he could sit on any number of trunks on the van's floor. He put his case neatly aside and laid the walking stick down and exhaled, stretching out his sore leg before him. He was aware of the guard shouting something and blowing his whistle, and then the door rumbled closed again, and the train lurched, and moved on.

'You and Jim are going to owe me for this, you know,' the man said in a good humoured voice, coming back over toward the light. 'It'll be my job if I'm found out. What's it all about anyway?'

'Jack, this is Grayson,' Elsie said with a smile. 'Grayson, Jack is a very good friend.'

'I am very grateful for your assistance,' Grayson said, and he meant it. This was a very curious way to travel, with the rocking and shaking and what seemed like tremendous noise, but it was getting him away from his enemies, and no one had seen him leave. 'Is your job really in danger?'

Jack grinned, taking off his cap and seating himself beside Grayson and Elsie. He laboriously pulled a pipe out of his pocked and filled it and set himself to lighting the friable tobacco in the bowl.

'I reckon I'll be fine,' he said. 'Besides, you can slip out at the signal at Grantholme and over onto the road and walk back into the station and join the train like any other passenger. No one'll know. You'll only be in this here van for – ' He pulled out a watch and studied it. 'Thirteen minutes, at most,' he said. 'It's just through the tunnel and on to the next station. That's all.'

'I am grateful,' Grayson said again.

'You know you mustn't tell anyone about this, Jack,' Elsie said in a low voice, as if she thought they might be overheard. 'You know those people that've been going around town? Don't breathe a word to those people.'

'On my honour,' Jack said. 'Not a word. But what's this about, Elsie. I mean – ' He lowered his voice to a point where perhaps a human would not be able to catch his words, but to Grayson they were acutely clear. 'What is he? A spy or summat?'

Elsie laughed. 'Nowt like that,' she promised. 'It's best you don't know, Jack. What you don't know, you can't tell. It's nothing below the law. Nothing like that. He just needs to get away from here without those strangers knowing.'

Jack looked sideways at Grayson, and he could see the suspicion in his eyes. No matter what he did to disguise himself, he would never look quite like a person from this place. But the suspicion softened and faded away, and then Jack nodded, pulling in a drag on his pipe and exhaling a slow cloud of smoke.