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balls off would solve nothing. Colin, has no one spotted the truly weird part of you?’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘Your tail feathers. They’re grotesque.’
    He looked behind him. ‘There aren’t any.’
    ‘Oh, come on. That doesn’t wash with me. Concentrate, will you? MA, M.Sc. Clever boy. D.Phil. Fine. D.Sc. Right. FRS, FRAS. Congratulations. M.Theol. A bit
de trop
for an astrophysicist? Then, perhaps not.’
    ‘It takes two lines to get your qualifications on an envelope,’ said Colin.
    ‘My inferiority complex,’ said Meg. ‘Nothing to write home about. But you, matey, you’re something else. What’s this truckload of Masters’? Archaeology and Anthropology? Geography? Geology? What’s going on? It’s barmy. How’s your sex life?’
    ‘That’s not important.’
    ‘Does the thought make you puke?’
    ‘No. I’ve got colleagues. They’re good colleagues.’
    ‘Have you talked to any of them about this?’ said Meg.
    ‘They wouldn’t understand what’s wrong. They don’t think anything is. They don’t know what it’s like. Inside. For them it’s only fun, even though I tell them it isn’t. You see, I don’t delete. Anything. Ever.’
    ‘Are you saying you’ve got an eidetic memory?’ said Meg.
    ‘My colleagues think I have,’ said Colin. ‘But it’s not that I don’t delete. I can’t delete. I can’t delete. Not even dreams.’
    ‘Oh, heck,’ said Meg. ‘What were you doing at half past eleven on the evening of November 7th two years ago?’
    ‘Arthur’s tracking an anomaly near 24 Tauri for me, and I’m supervising some postgrad researchers with the Mark II on the Taurids maximum at Right Ascension 53° Declination +24°.’
    ‘Who’s Arthur?’
    ‘The main computer for the telescope.’
    ‘And what about noon on January 14th thirteen years ago?’
    ‘I’m splitting logs. A Scots pine blew down in the night of January 11th.’
    ‘Who was President of the United States then?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘What won the Grand National two years ago?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Where were the last Olympic Games held?’
    ‘Sorry.’
    ‘What did you do in the afternoon three days after your sixteenth birthday?’
    ‘Double Latin. Double. I ask you! It’s a set text.
The Aeneid
, Book Six, lines 703 to 751. It’s too much to expect anyone of our age to take in all of that at the one go. I want to hide. I’m frightened. I’m no good at it, and I don’t understand. Then Maths. Calculus. Infinite Series Convergence. Then we go for a cross-country run. I come fifth. Tea’s Welsh rarebit and cake with chocolate buttons on. I have two pieces.’
    ‘OK. You’re not a savant,’ said Meg. ‘Your recall seems to be totally autobiographical, and we must assume totally accurate.’
    ‘That’s right,’ said Colin. ‘It is.’
    ‘Press on,’ said Meg. ‘What was the weather when you were twelve years nine months three weeks and six days old?’
    Colin thrust his face against a cushion and gagged. ‘No! No! Sky gone! Eyes! Old! Old eyes! Strong! Blue light! Silver! No! Gone!’
    Meg waited. Colin flexed and slumped. He lifted his face from the cushion. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘You see. That’s it. You see. I can’t access anything, anything, before I was thirteen.’
    ‘Oh, twice and double heck,’ said Meg. ‘You don’t present this way in the file. Haven’t you told anyone?’
    ‘I’ve tried,’ said Colin. ‘But no one listens. Or I’m not clear. I suppose I’m too scared.’
    ‘So you should be.’
    ‘Of going mad.’
    ‘You are not going mad. Yet. Let’s work arsy-varsy. You can’t remember anything before you were thirteen, right? Is that what you’re saying?’
    ‘I get flashbacks,’ said Colin. ‘But they don’t connect. They don’t add up to being me. It’s as if they’re teasing on purpose. They’re cruel. Him! His eyes!’
    ‘So you’ve no autonoetic awareness of yourself as a continuous entity across time.’
    ‘I