Red Shift

Red Shift
Alan Garner

The much-loved classic, finally in ebook.A disturbing exploration of the inevitability of life.Under Orion’s stars, bluesilver visions torment Tom, Macey and Thomas as they struggle with age-old forces. Distanced from each other in time, and isolated from those they live among, they are yet inextricably bound together by the sacred power of the moon’s axe and each seek their own refuge at Mow Cop.Can those they love so intensely keep them clinging to reality? Or is the future evermore destined to reflect the past?

For Billy

Contents

Cover (#u8e795886-a511-5cbf-bf61-854095d6aeef)

Title Page (#u78ff0aff-ca69-58c0-b532-e9159e485e96)

Dedication (#udc40a696-1b0a-5264-9099-e1ce53757cd8)

Red Shift (#u97402cf4-b156-5ac7-a3c8-9336501160aa)

Praise (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

“Shall I tell you?”

“What?”

“Shall I?”

“Tell me what?” said Jan.

“What do you want to know?”

Jan picked up a fistful of earth and trickled it down the neck of his shirt.

“Hey!”

“Stop fooling, then.”

Tom shook his trouser legs. “That’s rotten. I’m all gritty.”

Jan hung her arms over the motorway fence. Cars went by like brush marks. “Where are they going? They look so serious.”

“Well,” said Tom. “Let’s work it out. That one there is travelling south at, say, one hundred and twenty kilometres per hour, on a continental shelf drifting east at about five centimetres per year—”

“I might’ve guessed—!”

“—on a planet rotating at about nine hundred and ninety kilometres per hour at this degree of latitude, at a mean orbital velocity of thirty kilometres per second—”

“Really?”

“—in a solar system travelling at a mean galactic velocity of twenty-five kilometres per second, in a galaxy that probably has a random motion—”

“Knickers.”

“—random knickers of about one hundred kilometres per second, in a universe that appears to be expanding at about one hundred and sixteen kilometres per second per megaparsec.”

Jan scooped up more earth.

“The short answer’s Birmingham,” he said, and ducked.

Jan looked across the flooded sand quarry behind them towards the Rudheath caravan site among the birch trees. “Come on.” The earth was still in her hand.

“Where?”

“What were you going to tell me?”

“Oh, that.” He took his shoe off and turned it upside down. “It really is grotty being gritty. I was going to tell you when I first saw you.”

“When was it?”

“When you came back from Germany.”

“Germany?” The earth ran through her fingers. “Germany? We’ve known each other longer than that.”

“But I didn’t see you until you got out of the car: and then I – saw you.”

“I wasn’t away more than a fortnight.”

“What was it like?”

“Anywhere.”

“The people you stayed with?”

“Ordinary.”

“So why go?”

“To see what it was like.”

“And she found that the ground was as hard, that a yard was as long—No. She found that a metre was neater—”

“Tom—”

“Yes?”

“Lay off.”