The Peacock Cloak

yet indigenes are able to reach right through the species-specific particularities of the human brain, to find and stimulate the places where we keep our troubles. How can this happen unless pain and distress has some kind of universal form that transcends the particular nervous system which expresses it? And that being so, perhaps we need to radically rethink the place that mind has in the scheme of things. Perhaps we need to stop speaking about space-time, and starting talking about space-time-mind.”
    “But that’s mystical nonsense, David,” laughed Ernesto, angry and friendly all at once. “With great respect, it’s just lazy mystical nonsense. Just because we’ve failed so far to find an explanation in terms of the parameters of physical science, it doesn’t mean we have to give up and rewrite the entire rulebook.”
    “Why not, Ernesto? Why not at least consider that possibility? Space, time and mind.”
    David’s eyes were bright. He was in a playground where he felt at home, and he was full of energy, with the cowering, haunted look, so often there, quite absent from his face. But he was careful to avoid looking back at his wife, whose eyes were shining in quite another way.
    “Because it’s twaddle David,” Ernesto laughed. “It’s mystical twaddle!”
    Paula rose to collect the plates.
    “Are we ready for dessert?” she asked in a loud bright voice that Cassie recognised at once as dangerous.
    David glanced at her. There was a brief flash of fear in his eyes, but he still turned back stubbornly to his friends.
    “One other point, Ernesto. One other point that people sometimes forget. We’ve been assuming this evolved as a defence against predators, but what predators exactly do we have in mind? It’s not as if…”
    “That was delicious, Paula,” cut in Sheema, glancing with sudden anxiety at her hostess. “I’ll come and help you.”
    “What was it you were saying about goblins?” Cassie asked the two men as the women left the room. “What were you saying about their minds?”
    “ Indigenes , darling,” said her father, barely concealing his irritation at being distracted. “Yes, we were just talking about how they somehow make people have uncomfortable thoughts when they get up close.”
    “They don’t make me have uncomfortable thoughts,” Cassie said.
    “Ah, well maybe you haven’t been near enough to one,” suggested Ernesto, with a friendly wink.
    “I have so, loads of times. Here and at school. One came right up to the school fence a couple of weeks ago. I liked the thoughts it gave me.”
    “Did you indeed, sweetheart?”
    Her father glanced at Ernesto, smiling and raising one eyebrow in a superior and theatrical way that Cassie knew was only made possible by the presence of visitors.
    She shrugged.
    “It happened, Dad,” she said coldly. “Whether you choose to believe it or not. I liked being near it. But the other kids threw stones at it.”
    David laughed uneasily, glancing again at his friend.
    “Nearly time for bed,” he announced.
    “I haven’t had my pudding yet.”
    There was a loud wail from the kitchen.

    “They’re out there again !”
    David rushed to his wife. Cassie hurried after him.
    They could see the goblins through the kitchen window: two of them, one squatting, one standing.
    “Make them go!” sobbed Paula. “For God’s sake make the horrible things go away!”
    They were thin grey creatures, about the same height as Cassie, picked out by the bluish electric lights around the fence. Neither one of them was looking at the house. Both seemed engrossed in some object that the squatting one was holding up for the other’s inspection: a shell, perhaps, or a piece of stone.
    “Get a grip now, Paula,” muttered David. “You know quite well they’re completely harmless.”
    Sheema put her arm round Paula’s shoulders.
    “Easy now, love,” she said in a warm and gentle voice.
    But the look she gave her husband wasn’t warm at all, and seemed to Cassie to refer to some prior exchange between the two of them. Sheema hadn’t wanted to come here, was Cassie’s guess: Sheema had warned Ernesto that Paula would be difficult and make some sort of scene.
    David and Ernesto went out through the kitchen door and starting running across the unnatural green of the grass towards the fence, shouting and waving their arms, each one of them with his own set of multiple shadows thrown out by the floodlights.
    “There there,” Sheema