Free Kolymsky Heights by Lionel Davidson Page B

away somewhere in England. The question was, where? Oxford was a likely place to start finding out.
    He had been in the town three months when the letter arrived from Canada. His old professor of biology there wrote to say that he was coming to Oxford for a conference on 29 June, and looked forward to seeing Porter. Which on 30 June he did.
    The event was a reception for the visiting scientists, and his professor had taken him along as a guest. ‘After all,’ as he told him, ‘you were one of us yourself, before you fell into error.’ And he had introduced him to other biologists.
    Porter, at the time, was an aloof disdainful figure of twenty-three. His head seemed over-large, and his hair over-long. He wore it cut in a fringe over his eyes with the rest hanging straight and black like a helmet all around. At any gathering he would have been distinctive, and even at this international one he stood out. Yet it was not one of the welcoming hosts but one of the receptive guests who identified him first.
    ‘A Canadian Indian?’ said the twinkling Russian.
    ‘Right.’
    ‘And from the north-west, I think. The Nass river?’

    ‘Skeena river.’
    ‘Ah. Tsimshean.’
    ‘Gitksan.’
    ‘Gitksan – I don’t know of. But all you north-westerners were late arrivals in that continent. You still look like our Siberians. You know of them, perhaps?’
    Unsmiling, Porter replied with a burst of Evenk, at which, the Russian held up his hands. ‘Bravo! But it’s the people I know, my friend, not the language. You are ahead of me.’
    Porter was ahead of him in English, too. Although the Russian’s vocabulary was good, he was once or twice at a loss for a word; and Porter supplied the word. He could even supply it in Russian, and this was the language they were speaking – his professor having left them to get on with it – when a third man, an Englishman, was hauled in to join them.
    The name of the Englishman was Lazenby and the most prominent thing about him was his own extraordinary head. The vast and gleaming cranium, knobbly and extending in various directions, was devoid of a single hair. It contrasted weirdly with Porter’s own powerful array and was the reason the ebullient Russian had called Lazenby over. But they were soon discussing a variety of topics – the Russian’s animation very infectious. Asiatic migrations, pigmentation, natural defects, blindness … In some way they were on to Siberia, and discussing it in a mixture of English and Russian by the time that Rogachev (Porter had at last got the Russian’s name) had located the whisky. Food had been amply available on the buffet tables but not much to drink. And Rogachev had found the drink.
    This was one of the things that Porter remembered next day: that the Russian had found the drink, and could hold it. While the Englishman, reluctantly matching them glass for glass, could not; he was unsteady on his feet when they left, Rogachev jovially proposing that they stagger home together.
    In fact the Russian was being accommodated in college and Porter’s own college was in another direction. All the same they had walked Lazenby home, and on the way Rogachevhad arranged another meeting with the young Indian; whom by then he was calling Raven, having learned his clan and deciding the name was apter for him. In the same spirit he had allotted other names to himself and to Lazenby. But it was Lazenby who had suddenly discovered an urgent need to urinate. And Rogachev who had discovered the wall. And there the three of them had stood, companionably watering it, one set of chances having brought them there and another set, later on, to recall the scene.

11
    Lazenby flew to Canada on a Tuesday, but it was not a Tuesday in April but in July; and not to Montreal but to Vancouver, several numbing hours farther. And so many changes of plan had occurred in between that he was half out of his mind before he started.
    The fellow Raven seemed to be wholly out of his