FOUR: WATER MUSIC

      The shutters clattered back against the orange brick wall, letting in the merciless midmorning sun.
      'How're you feeling?' Alan turned towards the bed. 'I've brought you some of Braman's coffee, we thought it might help your head.'
      'Guess it might take my mind off it.' Virgil covered his eyes. 'What happened, Alan? I can hardly remember anything, and trying just makes the headache worse.'
      'Don't worry.' Alan put down the coffee and perched himself on the end of the bed. 'The doctor diagnosed mild concussion, but apart from that you're AOK. If you leave your memory alone it'll probably come back by itself, but if it doesn't it won't matter; we know what happened. You fell into a ditch.'
      'No, you're wrong. It was a cave.'
      Alan nodded. 'That's what you kept telling us last night. Seems there was a lake in there too, and the skeleton you and Scott found at Reno, rowing a boat. And a six-foot-high dog with three heads. Antioni told us you did a bit of wine tasting yesterday afternoon; must've been pretty rough stuff.'
      'The boat, that's right.' Virgil fingered the sticking-plaster on his forehead tentatively. 'It's coming back now. There was a lake down there, I put my hand in it. And I'm sure it wasn't a natural cavern, it was man-made.'
      'Okay, if you found yourself in a place like that why didn't you investigate any further? What happened to your sense of adventure?'
      'I think it got home before me. But after that knock on the head I guess I just wasn't thinking straight. I was convinced I was.. well, never mind. I thought I was somewhere you don't come back from. And that groan I heard coming from the ground. I'm going to keep hearing that in my dreams.'
      Alan raised his eyebrows. 'You didn't tell us about that.'
      'Well, I think I heard it. It's all pretty hazy. Last thing I remember clearly is walking past a big stone; must've been part of that Roman villa.' Virgil propped himself up on one elbow. 'It was a real beautiful night, Alan. Seemed like the old Roman gods and goddesses might've been out taking the air on a night like that. Sounds crazy, but I really felt they were somewhere near. Then I walked into the dark and after that it's all like some kind of confused dream.'
      'Because that's exactly what it was,' Alan said with the air of an analyst triumphantly nailing a particularly recalcitrant neurosis. 'You've just explained the whole thing yourself. After your activity-tour of Antioni's cellars you must've been in a pretty impressionable frame of mind. While you were busy thinking about Roman gods and not watching where you were going you tripped, hit your head on a rock or something, then you toppled into the ditch. That's where your subconscious mind cooked all this up. You know Roman mythology as well as I do: their hell was underground, with a ferryman to row the ghosts over the river that made them forget about their lives on earth. And it was guarded by Cerberus; he was a three-headed monster. It all fits.'
      'But the skeleton in the boat, why should I dream that up?'
      'That's easy. Must've been pretty nasty, finding that body at Lake Reno, and you never know what's stuck in your mind until it pops out again. Right now you believe it all happened, but dreams sure can seem real sometimes.'
      'Maybe you're right.' Virgil lay back. 'I don't know what to believe. Guess I really put you and Tin-Tin through it last night; I'm sorry.'
      'That's okay.' Alan got up. 'Better drink your coffee and get dressed, we're driving to the village for breakfast. You remember yesterday Tin-Tin told Braman to put all the frozen food through the microcooker? What she forgot to explain was that she only meant what he was serving at the time. She's cleaning up now, but there'll be nothing to eat until we've restocked the deepfreeze, and we'll have to look around for a new microcooker as well. Oh, and Dad wants a word with you. Don't know what it's about.'
      When Alan had gone Virgil sat up, found his telecom on the bedside table and pressed the button. For a moment the screen was blank, then Scott's face appeared through a multicoloured snow.
      'That you, Virgil?' Scott's voice asked faintly. 'You've got a transmitter problem, I can hardly see you.'
      'It's a power problem,' Virgil replied. 'Batteries must've got drained. Looks like they haven't recharged yet.'
      'I see.' Through the snow Scott's face was unreadable. 'I heard you had some trouble last night.'
      'You heard?'
      'Yeah, you fell down a hole, wasn't that it?' Scott's eyebrows lifted a few millimetres but his face remained deadpan. 'Well, could happen to anybody. I also heard you found something down there. That sounds interesting, Virg. What was it, a big white rabbit with a pocket-watch?'
      'Now just a minute, Scott..'
      'Okay, okay.' Scott raised a hand. 'Whoever you want to speak to better make it fast, before you loose contact. If it's Dad he's not around at the moment.'
      'Can you put me through to Brains?' Virgil requested. 'I want to ask him something anyway. I'll give Dad a telecall later. Something tells me I've got a lot of apologising to do.'

      All round Monte Thesauri's little piazza, a square clearing in the huddle of red roofs, narrow alleyways led in, their walls blank at street level except for a few shadowed doorways, but with brightly painted shutters and geranium-hung balconies above. On the buildings of greater importance in the square faded stucco flaked like sunburn to show the rendering beneath, but on the common houses the unprotected pinkish-orange brick was crumbling and patched with irregular daubs of gritty cement. At one side of the square a fountain with four imaginatively carved stone dolphins balancing a conch on their tails dribbled fitfully into a low stone basin, and near it a striped awning under the gilded legend RISTORANTE gave some other late breakfasters relief from the unrelenting overhead sun.
      'I'm starved,' Alan said as he stopped the yellow car in the informal park at the centre of the square. 'Let's eat before we shop. That place was okay last time we tried it.'
      Outside the restaurant, tables stood in two distinct groups separated by a pathway to the door. Most in the left hand group were occupied, mainly by villagers, but those in the group nearer the fountain were empty except for a few obvious tourists. Picking a sunshaded table close to the fountain's basin they sat down, and an aproned man with a monk's tonsure of greying hair ringing his head shuffled up to greet them, both hands extended in welcome.
      'Eh, Americani! You come back, you like papa Luigi's food.' He frowned, suddenly concerned. 'But where you yesterday? You no eat at Giovanni's across the square? Very bad place.' He patted his stomach and made a cut-throat gesture. 'Two die already this year.'
      Alan shook his head. 'We didn't go there. We've got enough culinary problems at home; that's why we're hungry now. I'll have the tagliatelle Luigi - the biggest helping you've got.'
      'What's all that money in there?' As the restaurant owner scribbled their orders Tin-Tin pointed to a trail of drowned coins that lay scattered around the fountain's shallow pool like the spillage from a stricken Spanish galleon. 'Do people just throw it in?'
      'Sure, throw coin you get wish, just like the Trevi. But you get better wish here; she no used so much. You try, you have the pretty face: fortune she smile on you already.'
      'Antioni told me about that,' Virgil said when Luigi had shambled off. 'The villagers call it their lucky fountain. They rake the coins out at the end of the tourist season, to put towards the repair work that needs done around here.'
      'Looks like it hasn't been too lucky for them so far,' Alan replied, gazing around. 'Still, guess they'd have to save for some time to put this mess to rights.' He looked at the desultory trickle of water dripping from the dolphins' beards. 'Sure isn't very impressive, either. But maybe that's all part of the water shortage you were telling us about in the car.'
      'If only there was some way we could help with that,' Tin-Tin said. 'You know, it isn't just the big disasters, is it? It's the little tragedies too, the little quiet tragedies that happen to people like the people here, all the time, all over the world, and no-one to help them. It's very sad.'
      Virgil nodded. 'That's just what Giuseppe said. It's depressing: the more missions International Rescue carries out the more you realise what we can't do. Like the guy we found at Reno; we couldn't do anything to help bring his murderers to justice, and we can't do anything here. Guess I could use Thunderbird Two to drop them an emergency field tank and fill it with water, but with all those thirsty plants around how long would that last?'
      'I don't suppose even your father would have the money to provide the irrigation they need,' Tin-Tin replied. 'But let's not be miserable on such a lovely day. After all, if the people here can stay cheerful what's the point in our getting depressed?'
      'You're right,' Virgil admitted. 'Anyway, how'd you two make out in San Giuliano yesterday? Guess I didn't get the chance to ask.'
      Alan said nothing, but Tin-Tin gave a little smile. 'It was all rather funny, really. We tried to follow the map on the locket, but the town's built round a mineral spring and they're developing it for tourism; there's to be a big new spa. I suppose with more people taking the waters they had to improve their facilities. Poor Alan's X is under their new sewage farm.'
      'We don't know that,' Alan said, a touch sharply. 'With all that re-building going on, and now they've re-routed the local highways, I couldn't even be sure we were in the right spot.'
      And it wasn't much better in Pisa,' Tin-Tin went on. 'We had dinner, then we went into a jeweller's to ask about the locket. Alan thought it might help if we knew roughly when it was made.'
      'And the guy couldn't tell?' Virgil asked.
      'We never found out,' Alan said gloomily. 'He had some kind of attack while we were showing it to him, and we had to hunt about for his medication. He was okay, but we didn't like to bother him any more. Anyhow, it was getting late.'
      'Then on the way back Alan thought a little Fiat was following us,' Tin-Tin finished. 'But it passed us going the opposite way when we left the villa to look for you, so it couldn't have been.'
      'Oh, couldn't it?' Alan's brow creased ominously. 'Then I suppose I imagined it. And I suppose I imagined that Alfa Romeo was behind us all the way into the village this morning, as well.' He pointed to a black car parked next to a huge freight-hauler that had somehow managed to squeeze its way in through the toytown streets. 'A thing like that could've overtaken us any time, but if you say so I guess neither of them could've been following us. Maybe someone just superglued our back bumper.' The orders arrived, and he dug violently into his pasta.
      Tin-Tin and Virgil exchanged mystified glances.
      'I expect neither of them wanted to overtake on these narrow roads,' Tin-Tin suggested. 'There must be some careful drivers in Italy.' Her attention drifted to the freight-hauler. 'I wonder what he's doing here. What do you suppose a lorry that size could be delivering in a little town like this?'
      Virgil frowned suddenly and tilted his head. 'Say, do you hear something?'
      'No.' Alan looked up from his plate. 'Hey, wait, I do. A kind of whistling. Sounds like.. <>ow!'
      A rapidly rising high-pitched whistle that seemed to come from the flagstones beneath them exploded into a shriek then into a whoosh, and a deluge of water from a clear blue sky drummed down onto the table's giant parasol, running off the ribbing like the streams from a dozen teapot spouts to pour into the cups and plates. The drumming subsided as quickly as it had begun, to be replaced by a sound like gentle rain, and as its wet and astonished neighbours turned their heads the fountain settled down into a exuberant cascade within the limits of its basin, leaving the nearby tables dripping. At the dry group of tables on the safe side of the restaurant the villagers continued their conversations without a glance.
      'Very funny.' Alan glowered at his flooded tagliatelle as his dinner companions burst out laughing simultaneously. 'It's okay for you, you had antipasto. I won't be getting anything else.'
      'Sorry, Alan, it's just your face,' Virgil managed to apologise.
      'Oh yeah? Well your mug doesn't look too great from where I'm sitting, either.' Alan looked around, fuming. 'We'll see about this. They ought to stop that thing up, before it ruins anyone else's dinner.' Spotting Luigi at a distant table and ignoring Tin-Tin's protests, he gave a peremptory wave.
      'Fontana?' The Italian listened patiently, staring at the fountain as if just realising it was there. 'But she always same, come from deep spring, no-one know where. Sometimes plenty water, sometimes..' he shrugged. 'How you like my tagliatelle?'
      'It was very nice,' Tin-Tin put in hastily, 'in fact we'd like another one, and perhaps three more coffees as well. I'm afraid these have got a little bit cold.'
      'Never mind, Alan,' she soothed as Alan scowled at Luigi's departing back, 'let's try a wish while we're waiting, and give the fountain a chance to make up for getting us wet.' She rummaged in her bag and took out a couple of silver coins. 'I'm sure the villagers won't mind dollars; the exchange rate's quite good at the moment.'
      Alan got up and followed her unenthusiastically, and Virgil watched them as they stood by the lucky fountain, a curious presage of disaster beating at his brow together with a gradually returning headache. One coin glittered up in an arc to disappear with a plop into the pool, and Tin-Tin held out the second to Alan, who took it and flipped it in.
      'Is that it?' Alan asked. 'Can we sit down now?'
      'Well, I think so.' Tin-Tin looked into the water. 'I don't suppose you have to do anything else. Just wait and see if your wish comes true.'
      'Hogwash,' Alan said. 'If you want to believe that stuff it's up to you. Only reason I went along is because it's for charity, and if I didn't I know it'd be skinflint Alan for the rest of the day.' He kicked at the stone basin idly. 'What did you wish for, anyway?'
      'I wished something could happen to help the people here, if you must know,' Tin-Tin replied, a little coolly. 'I think they deserve some good luck.'
      'Oh, I see.' Alan's scowl returned. 'And I suppose I don't, is that it?'
      'Whatever do you mean?'
      'I mean you could've wished me luck with finding the treasure. I'm going to need it after what happened yesterday. It's mighty fine: I'm in trouble and you go using up a wish on people you don't even know.'
      Tin-Tin's chin rose angrily. 'Alan Tracy, how can you be so selfish? Anyway it would be silly to waste a wish on something that doesn't even exist. With all that work going on at San Giuliano they'd have found something by now if anything was there, wouldn't they? You know that, but you won't admit it; that's why you've been in such a bad mood since yesterday.'
      'A bad mood?' Alan coloured. 'Let me tell you, if I'm in a bad mood it's only because I've been trying to carry out a proper investigation without any help from you. You've never taken this vacation seriously, all you want to do is drive around looking at things. Well, I can manage on my own. Permanently, if that's what you want.'
      'Hey, take it easy,' Virgil said in alarm, but Tin-Tin reached up with a trembling hand, unfastened the locket, and held it out on its chain.
      'You'd better take this, Alan. I don't want it any more. I thought we might have some time for each other on our vacation, but now I can see that all you're interested in is your silly treasure. I'm going home: if you just want someone to carry this about you can put it round Braman's neck.'
      Alan glared at the locket, then snatched it and hurled it into the fountain's basin, where it sank on a chain of minute bubbles to disappear among the clutter of coins. Tin-Tin made a futile grab for it then burst into tears; Alan turned his back and made off at high speed for the centre of the square, almost colliding with the owners of the Alfa Romeo, who also seemed in a hurry to return to their car, and a moment later the yellow convertible screeched out of its slot and roared away. The villagers turned from their tables to gaze.
      As Tin-Tin raked in the water for the locket Virgil got up quickly. 'Say, better not do that. There's about two dozen guys over there who'll think we're helping ourselves to their church roof fund.' He narrowed his eyes, trying to see through the sunflash on the surface, then took Tin-Tin's arm and looked back to meet the hostile stares. 'We won't find it this way, anyway. Come on, let's sit down. We'll think of something else.'
      At the table the replacement food had arrived, together with three undiluted coffees, and Virgil settled the bill, then waited while Tin-Tin sipped her drink. 'Feeling better?' he asked.
      'I think so.' She wiped her cheek. 'It was all my fault. I shouldn't have said that about the treasure, it's meant so much to Alan over the last few weeks. And I didn't really mean to give him back the locket.' She paused, and another tear started down. 'But driving off and leaving us like that, how could he? How are we going to get home?'
      'He'll be back,' Virgil reassured her, 'don't worry. When he's gone a few miles and had time to simmer down, he'll remember us. But he's bound to be pretty sensitive about his treasure now it's starting to look like it might all have been a pipe-dream. He's only twenty-one, Tin-Tin. He's still got some growing up to do.'
      'I suppose you're right.' Tin-Tin sniffed. 'But what are we going to do about the locket? I'll just have to come back here tonight when they're all asleep, and try to find it on my own.'
      Virgil frowned and shook his head. 'You can't do that, honey, it's too dangerous. Anything could happen.'
      'But if we leave it Alan will think I really don't want it, and he'll be even more upset.' Tin-Tin's unsteady voice heralded the approach of a fresh flush of tears. 'And I can't ask him to get it. I don't suppose we'll even be on speaking terms for the next few days.'
      Virgil looked up and saw the yellow car threading its way back down one of the narrow streets. 'Hey, here he is now,' he said hastily, 'better dry your eyes, and don't worry. Just as soon as he's in dreamland tonight I promise I'll come back and get the locket.'
      'Oh, Virgil, you can't.' Tin-Tin shook her head. 'All the way into the village and hunting around in the dark just because of a silly argument, you couldn't.' She dabbed at her eyes and looked up hopefully. 'Could you?'
      'Nothing to it,' Virgil said, trying to display a confidence he didn't feel. 'It's just a few minutes' drive, and one of our high-powered torches'll make the bottom of that basin as bright as day. I'll be back in no time, I'll slip you the locket in the morning, and no-one else'll ever know I was here. It'll be our secret.'
      In the centre of the square the dark mass of the freight-hauler made a brooding counterpoint to the sunlit scene. A spent match was flicked casually from the cab's black-shadowed interior, followed by a faint, blue haze of cigarette smoke that coiled lazily upward in the hot, still air.

On to FIVE: NOCTURNE.