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different ways a personality could split and still remain viable. Was it possible? Was any of it possible? All thoughts of the non-existent Framlingham ghosts had been firmly put aside. This was something new. Something with potential. And it was his for the solving.

    He looked at Louise. Suddenly aware of her existence. Wanting to hug her for opening such an unexpected door. Rescuing him from boredom and frustrated inactivity. Feeling like Sherlock Holmes on one of his bad days, with Moriarty dead and not the hint of an interesting crime on any horizon.

    But how could he explain it to her? This dark-haired woman waiting nervously for an answer while all he could do was witter and play the fool. And he was getting worse. He knew that. What had started out as playful affectation had all but taken him over. Sometimes he'd find himself saying things that even he couldn't believe, making impossible connections, playing the wayward genius like a ham actor in a bad amateur production.

    And that was another thing—tangential leaps in his thinking processes. He'd start thinking about one thing and end up God knows where, with no idea how he got there. A brain stuffed full of butterflies, all of them flapping at once.

    And then Louise came back into focus; still looking at him, still waiting for an answer. How could he explain things to her without first taking her through an introduction to Higher Dimensional Theory?

    "You see you've got to know the context."

    And then he was away. Switching into lecture mode, recalling facts and personalities, reeling off the talk he'd given so many times before.

    He told her about the search for a unified theory. How the laws of gravitation, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, relativity and possibly a few others besides had all been brought together under the umbrella of Higher Dimensional Theory.

    "You see, the universe is not just the three physical dimensions that we see around us but ten—can you believe that—ten physical dimensions. Eleven if you count time. Isn't that just amazing? Here we are—barely coping with length, breadth and depth—and suddenly we've got another seven to worry about.

    He was in his element now, pacing and expounding, arms windmilling. Like a child let loose in a toy factory, flitting from one subject to the next. But with a structure this time. A practised discipline that held the speech together. Taking Louise through the labyrinthine twists and turns of a complex subject. Passing on his excitement as only a true enthusiast can.

    He talked of acupuncture, he talked of dowsing. He explained how they accessed the hidden—the higher—dimensional component that all matter was composed of. How so much material was hidden from the five physical senses. How telepathy, near death experiences—maybe even ghosts someday—could be explained by reference to HDT. Senses and skills that exploited the hidden universe.

    "And just think of the implications for space travel. How for years we've only considered the three axes of movement—up, down, left, right, forward and back. But in eleven dimensions we've got another seven. Astounding, isn't it. Unfathomable! How can we, trapped inside our three dimensional thought, conceive of what these other seven axes look like?"

    But Nick Stubbs could. Tracing pictures inside Louise's imagination, he drew her deeper and deeper into his strange world.

    "Imagine a two dimensional universe. Like a picture on a piece of paper, it has no depth. Imagine this world as a blank piece of paper inhabited by little stick men—just like a cartoon. The stick men can move left and right and up and down across the page but they can't move forward and back—that's the third dimension that doesn't exist for them. They would have no concept whatsoever of this third dimension, the same as we have no concept of our extra seven."

    He hoped she could see it. The imaginary paper world he held fluttering before her. And then, with a