Declare

were prominent like granite outcroppings on a cliff face. After a moment his chilly gray eyes narrowed in a smile, and he held out his free right hand. “Andrew, I think,” he said.
    “Yes, sir,” said the boy, crossing the old Oriental carpet to shake the man’s callused hand.
    “Splendid.” The old man returned his attention to the spiderweb then, and Andrew watched him expectantly, soon noticing that the loose left thigh of the old man’s uniform trousers, though clean and pressed, was riddled with little half-inch cuts; but after half a minute had passed Andrew let his eyes dart around the dim room. Six black Bakelite hook-and-candlestick telephones hung on extendable scissors-supports against the wall, and several glass flagons half-filled with colored liquids stood on a table beside them; one wall was all shelves, and models of submarines and airplanes served as haphazard bookends and dividers for the vast collection of leather-bound volumes and sheaves of paper that were crowded together and stacked every-which-way on the shelves. On the walls were hung rubber gas masks, tacked-up maps, diagrams of radio vacuum valves, and a photograph of a group of European villagers lined up against a wall facing a Prussian firing squad.
    “There’s a fly here,” said the Chief, without looking up from his work.
    Not sure who was being addressed, Andrew glanced back at his mother, who just widened her eyes in helpless puzzlement. Even the man who had led them here was simply blank-faced.
    “Andrew, lad,” the Chief went on impatiently, “look here. Do you see this fly, in the web? Waving his legs like a madman.”
    Andrew stepped up beside the burly old man and pushed back a lock of his long blond hair to peer at the windowsill. A bluebottle fly was struggling in the spiderweb. “Yes, sir.”
    “Can you kill it?”
    Bewildered, assuming this was some token sort of test of ruthlessness, the boy swallowed against his nausea and then nodded and held out his hand for the letter opener.
    “No,” said the Chief impatiently, “with your will alone. Can you kill the fly just by looking at it?”
    Andrew really didn’t know whether he wanted to laugh or start crying. He heard his mother shift and mutter behind him. “No, sir,” he said hoarsely.
    The old Chief sighed, and turned to stare for several seconds straight into the boy’s eyes. “No,” he said at last, gent ly. Then he hugely startled Andrew by stabbing the letter opener into his own left thigh, which gave out a knock that let the boy know it was a wooden leg. Through ringing ears Andrew heard the Chief go on, “No, I see you could not—and good for you. Are you interested in radio, lad?” He rocked the letter opener out of his leg and tested the point with his thumb.
    Chipping Campden had only got electricity the year before. “We don’t own one,” Andrew answered. He had fainted in church once, and the remembered rainbow glitter of unconsciousness was crowding in now from the edges of his vision—so he abruptly sat down cross-legged on the carpet and took several deep breaths. “Excuse me,” he said. “I’ll be all right—”
    Andrew’s mother was crouching beside him, her hand on his forehead. “The boy hasn’t eaten since midnight,” she said in an accusing or pleading voice.
    “Good Lord,” came the Chief’s voice from over Andrew’s head. “Where did they drive from, Scotland? I thought you said they live in Oxfordshire.”
    “That’s right, sir,” the black-haired man said, “in the Cotswolds. This is some Catholic fast, I believe.”
    “Of course. Polarized, you see? Like Merlin in the old stories, christened. Nevertheless—Andrew.”
    Andrew looked up into the old man’s stern face, and he felt clear-headed enough now to get back up onto his feet. “Yes, sir,” he said when he was standing again. His mother had stood up too, and he could feel that she was right behind him.
    “Remember your dreams.” The Chief scowled. “Dreams, right? Things you see when you’re asleep, things you hear? Don’t write them down , but remember them. One day Theodora will ask you about them.”
    “Yes, sir. I will, sir.” Andrew was simply postponing the effort of trying to imagine some no doubt frightening-looking woman named Theodora interrogating him about his dreams at some future date.
    “Good lad. When is your birthday?”
    “January the sixth, sir.”
    “And why the hell shouldn’t it be, eh? Sorry. Good. Your