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turned their tight little world upside down? I think
not. It emerges very clearly that humanity can also be
stirred up at any time, just like ants under a stone.
Two years have passed since these events. I have
learned the new language. I no longer
speak any English. For the most part this causes no
distress. Yet occasionally a pang sears through me,
an overriding desire to hear the old sounds again. I
began this present narrative while in such a mood,
feeling that if I couldn't speak my native
language with any purpose I might at least
write it.
In these two years I have composed a great deal of
music. I do not compose nowadays for plaudits, for
box office, or to please critics. I compose
simply to please myself and my friends. I have returned
to Europe, to England and even to @u Glencoe. I
have climbed Bidean nam Bian again, followed the
same ridge and come down into the same hidden
valley. There is no village of Glencoe, no
Macdonalds and Campbells to feud with each
other, no motorists touring the glen. The country is
entirely wild and still more beautiful.
More and more the old life has become vague and
remote, like the memories of distant childhood.
This gradual evaporation of a life which at one time
wis so intensely vibrant has come upon me with
profound sadness. In these pages I have been able in
some measure to give a sense of reality
to what are now mere outlines in a gathering mist.
"Yet one detail stands out harsh and stark.
The day John Sinclair was missing from the
caravan on the moors below Mickle Fell, I
myself had the impression of a time gap of about two
hours, between six and nine in the evening. I bitterly
regret that I did not mention this impression
to John. Of course I couldn't he at all sure
I hadn't simply nodded off to sleep. I
didn't want to appear to be dramatizing myself.
Then subsequent events soon-swept the incident
out of my mind. 'allyet I suspect this small
detail -- reconsidered in the light of all that
followed -- assumes a deep significance.
Accepting a bifurcation of worlds, accepting the copying
process which John himself believed in so strongly,
accepting his view that it was an apparition, a copy of
himself, who returned to the caravan after the gap of nine
hours, could it have been a copy of myself who was waiting
there to receive him, another apparition who cooked the meal
when he said he was so devilishly hungry?
After the bifurcation there were two worlds, the
straightforward world of 1966 in which nothing particularly
unusual happened, and this strange new world belonging
to the people of the future. Which of these worlds got
our copies, which got the 'originals"? We both
took it for granted that the copies went to the new
world, copies of everything, of the Prime Minister, of
our Australian pilot. This presumption may
well have been correct except for the two of us. For
us it may well have been the world of 1966 which had the
apparitions.
Why the two of us? Why should just the two of us be
different? Because we were just the two who managed
to penetrate into the territory of the people of the future.
John always thought of this penetration as accidental.
He laughed about my getting through to Greece, about my
encounter with
Melea in the temple on the hill. But was it
really an accident? Hardly I think, for it fits
too smoothly into a pattern, a pattern that would have
been completed if John had elected to stay here, a
pattern in which "copies" vanished and
"originals" remained.
After the bifurcation in Hawaii, I was in the
company of John Sinclair for a mere ten days.
If at any time during those ten days I had looked
for it I strongly suspect I would have found
John's old birthmark. The birthmark was
a tell-tale clue giving away the whole story.
An opportunity did indeed fall our way, perhaps
was even deliberately put in our way, the day of
our trip to Popocatepetl, the day when we all
got so very wet on the return journey. But for the
sexual distraction of the two girls being there as we
dried off, the mark would very probably have been
noticed. I have no doubt now it was the real John
Sinclair who was sent out from here -- into oblivion.
The irony and tragedy is that to the two of us it was the
world of 1966 that was the real cul-de-sac.
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