Read Online Sleep and His Brother by Peter Dickinson - Free Book Online Page A

Hasn’t he told you?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œIt’s just he hates talking to laymen about what he does. But he admires you an awful lot. He brought me to that pub specially to meet you, you know.”
    â€œI’m glad I didn’t at the time.”
    â€œI think what he’s doing must be pretty important. I mean you’re right—he wouldn’t have stuck it here if it wasn’t. And before Ram came, when he thought he was going to have to associate a professor at Saint Ursula’s with his work, he …”
    They had begun to whisper outside the door like schoolgirls agreeing on a lie before facing a teacher with their unfinished project. When the ornate leaf swung open they jerked into aloofness—if Rue didn’t like talking about his research, still less would he fancy his girl and his bar crony guessing about it out of earshot. But now he was smiling as he followed Dr. Silver out into the passage, the cheerful smile of the angler home with a full creel. He flung a long arm round Doll’s shoulder.
    â€œIt’s forgivin’ ye I am, darlint,” he said.
    â€œBegorra,” she answered dully.
    â€œBegorra indade!” he cried. “And me being the doctor, it’s a cure I have found for your craving to be quoting always. When you go this night to your lone and narrow bed, take with ye a book­een of the poets that are bad, and never snuff your candle till you have in your heart a hundred lines of balderdash, such as you’d be shamed to let fly from your darling lips.”
    â€œGreat!” cried Dr. Silver. “The Abbey Theatre! I have bestrode those boards.”
    â€œBestridden,” corrected Kelly in a sour tone. Even in the Black Boot he didn’t like other people elaborating on his jokes. Dr. Silver seemed to feel the rebuke, enough to lose his fizz and turn to his secretary.
    â€œNow, Doll,” he said. “Let’s have that tape transcribed before Mr. T.’s car comes for Mr. Pibble.”
    â€œChrist, Jimmy,” said Kelly. “What have you done to earn yourself the red carpet treatment?”
    â€œMr. Pibble represents a breakthrough in biological knowledge unparalleled in this century. Mr. T. is decidedly impressed.”
    Pibble was surprised to hear how much more respectable his adventure had become, statistically speaking, since the magic phone call. Kelly stopped watching the plump rump of his girl as she walked away.
    â€œAll I ask,” he said, “is don’t persuade the old monkey he’s immortal until I’ve got my scintillation counter and had time to do a couple of biopsies. See you in the pub, mister.”
    He still sounded as sour as raw rhubarb. Pibble watched with regret as Kelly spun away and shut himself back into his kingdom. It had been a disappointing meeting, curiously strained, but that often happens when two people who know each other well but only in a leisure context meet in what is for one of them a work context. In fact, for a moment when Rue had come out of the ward, he had suddenly reverted to the easygoing Black Boot Kelly, teasing his girl about Eng. lit. And then Dr. Silver had spoiled it, and both doctors had overreacted in a curious way. Never mind. It was unlikely to have any bearing on the Problems of Posey.
    â€œThat’s a very sound young man,” said Silver in his statesman’s voice. “Very brilliant and very sound. We are lucky to have him. Now let us walk in the garden and I will try to give you an inkling of what Mr. T. is like and why he is important to us. If we go down the back stairs we may get out unseen and be able to converse in peace. The car will not be here for forty minutes.”
    He opened a door in the big convex around which the stairs curved, and Pibble found they were on another landing, with a wooden spiral staircase leading down. For the first time he really felt the true nature of the house, the aspirations and