do that, mate,” I said. “You’re supposed to stay still until the ambulance gets here, so they can put one of those collars on your neck.”
He didn’t take any notice. First he tried to look at his wristwatch, and then he started fiddling with his belt.
“Honest, mate,” I said, “You really need to take it easy.” I was so caught up in the moment that I’d mentally shunted aside the fact that no ambulance was coming, because I hadn’t been able to call one, and the fact that the guy had jumped or been thrown out of a disappearing car.
There was a noise behind me then. I turned around, expecting to see some farmer or householder who’d heard the bang and come running. It was the deer. It had taken a few steps forward, as if to see what havoc it had wrought. Its eyes caught what little light there was, glowing in the eeriest way. I had the impression that it was staring at the chap on the ground, in fascination or in terror. Then it turned aside and bounded off the road, disappearing into a thicket.
The accident victim managed to sit up. His face was badly scratched, presumably where he’d hit the road. He wasn’t bleeding much, though. He was still trying to squint at his wristwatch, while his other hand was groping at his waist. He was staring at me in the much the same way the deer had stared at him, in what seemed to be fascination and terror.
“Well, okay,” I said. “If you can move you can move. I can’t get a signal on my mobile anyway—we must be in a freak blank spot. You’d better get into my car, so I can drive you to A-and-E in Ringwood. You’re going to need X-rays, probably some stitches.”
I put out a hand to help him up, but he wouldn’t take it. He got to his feet by himself and looked as if he was about to bolt, following the deer into the bushes. Then he changed his mind. He looked at me, and at the car behind me, and then he turned around to look at the place where his own car should have been but wasn’t. He cursed. I didn’t recognize the language, but it was definitely a curse.
“Odd, that,” I said, trying to inject a note of humor into the situation. “I didn’t know they’d started making four-by-fours that vanish into thin air when they hit trees.”
He cursed again, in that unknown language, and fiddled some more with his wristwatch and his belt. Now that he was standing up I could see that his suit really was identical to mine—not to mention his shirt and tie. I’d just begun to wonder exactly what his face had looked like before the road bashed it up so badly when he suddenly said: “What year is this?”
“2006, mate,” I said. “You got amnesia? Do you remember your name?”
If he did remember his name, he didn’t tell me what it was. His face was in no condition to go white, but I never saw a man look so scared. He looked at me in sheer panic, and then he looked at my car again. I never saw anyone look at a Volkswagen Polo like that.
“Okay,” I said, “it’s a couple of years old, and it doesn’t vanish on impact—but it goes, and the brakes still work. I’m not the one who came off worst in this little business. Get in, and I’ll take you to A-and-E.”
He started fiddling with his belt again. It looked like an ordinary belt, just like mine, but I’d begun to cotton on to the fact that appearances were deceptive, and that it might be something more like Batman’s utility belt. It didn’t have a holster attached to it, but all of a sudden there was something in his hand that looked uncomfortably like a gun, and he pointed it at me.
“Come on!” I said. “I could have just driven off. I stayed to help you. I’m trying to get you to hospital. Believe me, you’re not fit to drive. You don’t even know what year it is.”
He seemed to have second thoughts, and lowered the gun, which now looked like something you might see in a cowboy film. Then he brought it up again, and said: “You drive.”
It was my turn to curse, but I got back into the car, and didn’t even try to drive off while he was going round to the passenger side. He couldn’t get the door open. I had to do it for him. I got my first clear sight of him as he got in. He was my height and build, and his shoes were brown suede, just like mine. If his face hadn’t been so badly cut and bruised, he might well have looked exactly like me. The gun was, indeed, an antique Colt revolver.
“Well,” I said, all the more desperate to make light of things, “either you’re some alternative version of me displaced from a parallel world, or you’re some kind of alien chameleon who’s automatically taken on my appearance and is plundering my fondness for old movies in deciding what a gun ought to look like.”
He still looked terrified, but now he looked amazed too. “You know that?” he said. “You understand?”
“Sure,” I said, although I felt anything but sure. “I even know how to put a seat belt on—which apparently you don’t.”
If he really had been me he wouldn’t have been able to look any more frightened than he already did, but alien chameleons obviously have an advantage in that regard. He did put his seat-belt on, though.
“Drive,” he said.
“Where to?” I wanted to know.
“Turn around,” he said. “Go back the other way.”
I made a three-point turn, and headed back towards Nomansland.
“You really do need X-rays,” I told him. “It’s a miracle that you survived, and I’m really grateful that the cuts on your head aren’t bleeding nearly as much as I’d have expected, but you could have broken something. You really should have had your headlights on, you know, even if that thing you were driving was only pretending to be a car. It’s way too late for making crop circles, you know—the harvest came in three months ago.”
He didn’t say anything, but the hand that was pointing the gun at me was trembling. I should have been terrified myself, but I wasn’t. However absurd it might be, I thought that I was in control of the situation.
We should have reached Nomansland—the village called Nomansland, that is—within three minutes, or five at the most. We didn’t. The road just kept on, silent, dark and deserted. It didn’t take a genius to work out that we weren’t in Wiltshire or Dorset any more—and I don’t mean that we’d somehow skipped into Hampshire.
I was shaken up, I guess. At any rate, I wasn’t myself. In any normal frame of mind I’d never have done what I did, which was to slam on the brakes without warning and grab the gun out of his shaking hand when he lurched forward. I turned it on him. It felt strangely comfortable in my hand.
“Ordinarily,” I said, “I’d just tell you to get the hell out, and then drive off. Unfortunately, I realize that it might just be a bit too late for that, and that I might not be able to find my way back to any place my SatNav can recognize. So tell me—where are we?”
He cursed softly in his alien language. “Not 2006,” he said, eventually. “Too dangerous.”
“2006 is too dangerous for you?” I said. “What year do you come from, then?”
“Too dangerous for everyone,” the alien chameleon said, resentfully. “We no longer keep count with clocks and calendars. We know when it is, internally.” He was watching me very carefully as he said it. I’d already managed to give him the impression that I knew and understood far more than I did, and I wanted to hold on to the intellectual high ground
