It seemed like a few minutes, but was probably very much more, before the distant sound of voices broke across the glen.

Shadows had already stolen over the valley-bottom, though the sun was still golden on the mountain summits, the air warm and sultry in the early evening.

Away from the bothy, Gordon was quietly shaving in a slow-flowing burn. The children were fetching water in pots, without urgency, between games of frisby with an old lid.

Wiggy had gone down to the loch, some distance from the others, to wash a few pans. Then he sat on a rock, where the low murmuring waters of Morar crept up, lap lapping in the slow deep rhythm of dusk, the glen almost held in a stillness; just ripples on the surface of water, like a hushed whisper from another realm, another place.

Looking west, along the serenity of the loch, the evening seemed so still and settled, the slightest drop and plash would echo out, then fall away deep into a greater rest. At the far end of the silent waters, he could see the misty presence of distant Hebridean mountains, crouched in grey otherness beneath a soft glow : timeless, apart, just a presence... In the deepest callings of his own being, he had already decided to go there, to fly to the islands, to find the Inaccessible Pinnacle and reach it with that girl.

Into this timelessness broke the voices, faint, trickling, clear, approaching. And at length, an address -

'Arseholes!' The valley rang out.

'Arseholes! Arseholes!' Echoing in the woods opposite and across the tumbling hillside. Some kind of slogan, some calling-cry.

'A-ah-a-ah-s-o-oh-o-ls...'

Three men approached, and Wiggy could see the children edging out, tentative, curious, to meet them.

The first one - Hughie Sinclair, they soon discovered - was tall and quite slim : a lithe man in his thirties with sharp, thoughtful eyes, straight brown hair and an enquiring nose. Roberta eyed him from a distance, his olive-green shirt and brown cord trousers hardly emergent from the hillside : and the pack - an enormous pack on his back with hanging appendages, hooks, an unseasonal ice-axe, guitar, containers for water. He seemed to be casual and rough, yet intelligent too.

'Who the fuck are you?' he asked, as Harry approached.

The boy cocked his head on one side and answered suspiciously, 'What's that to you? Are you redcoats?'

'Are we fuck!' he laughed.

'You want to wash your mouth out!'

Hughie Sinclair looked at these ragtag kids and called to his friend.

'Hey Archie! Look what we've got here!'

Archie Cameron pulled up, mopping his brow : a huge man, with a laugh like a giant's roar.

'Hoo-hoo!' he bellowed, and smiled at the children with a pursed smirk across his granite-face. He seemed fearsome yet affable, his face almost feminine inside its stock masculine frame. Roberta studied his short dark hair and his surprised eyes, that felt youthful, innocent, though he appeared in his thirties as well. His body was huge, a barrel in a brown leather jerkin, and thick-set legs protruding from a dark green kilt. Yet what the girl noticed most was the hidden feminine air in the great man's enormous strength, with its forester's hands wiping at his face once again.

Alasdair looked up at his rucksack, sceptically. An antler jutted out from the top, and it was draped with netting, and a pair of crossbows.

'Are you poachers?' the boy asked in some awe.

'Aye,' he replied, his eyes glinting, and mouth smiling, pursing.

'Oh, ho!' said Hughie Sinclair out aloud, as the girl arrived. 'What's this?'

'This is Piglet,' said Alasdair. She shot him a murderous bolt.

Roberta was making quick observations, and a rapid assessment of the strangers. Friends, she decided. Prodding and smiling, she accosted the tall, slim man.

'How dare you call us arseholes!' she complained.

The two men laughed and looked at each other.

'Ooh! By Christ!' chuckled Archie Cameron. 'She's some lassie. Watch yoursel', Hughie.' And he wheezed, breathless. The girl continued.

'I'd like to know what brings you here, out in these wilds, so far in the mountains?'

'More to the point, what are you doing here?' Hughie enquired.

Alasdair spoke.

'We're on the trail of Prince Charlie. We've found some treasure and we're looking for more.'

'Charlie!' said Sinclair to his friend. They looked at each other with laughing eyes. Further west down the track, where they had come over from Meoble, the third man was winding a route through the heather.

'Who's that?' said Roberta.

'Davy Macdonald. We jist call him The Dog. Jock the Dog. Hey Jockie!' the forester shouted. 'Arse-holes!'

The straggler looked up.

'A-ah-a-soles!' he replied, and waved his arm.

'It's just a form of greeting, ye mind' Hughie explained to the kids.

Jock the Dog came shambling behind, unbalanced, stumbling : and as he approached, Roberta studied his long curly locks, falling in a tangled mass from his balding head. He had a simple, cheerful face, with vacant eyes : somehow not quite there, or anywhere. He wore breeches and a T-shirt, with a deerstalker knocked aside, at the back of his head. He seemed a shambles indeed, somehow disorientated, yet friendly and happy - oblivious. He arrived, with his socks round his ankles; traipsing up with his laces undone, obese and ungainly, tripping on the unseen stones.

'He ought to get those done up,' whispered Harry, 'if he doesn't want to break his neck.'

Jock the Dog set down his pack, which clattered with huge saucepans, and rocked with paraphernalia - paraffin, ladles, hooks, flies, and a couple of fish. It was clear that this was an organised party or, at least, a disorganised party; but one which had its own purposes, its own rationale and values.

Gordon had arrived as well, drying his face, and replacing his glasses.

'It's a fine place!'

'Some fuckin' weather, eh?' Hughie replied. And they were soon talking, man-to-man. The poachers had come over from Moidart and Mallaig way. They had been at school together, and they often came out here, though there was usually no-one around.

'So this is yer teacher?' Hughie was saying.

'Does he give ye the belt?' Archie growled.

'An' where dae ye kids go tae school? Eh?'

They laughed when they heard.

'Ooh ah say!' said Archie. 'A posh school - ye'll end up like yon Professor - fuckin' unemployable!' He roared.

Hughie Sinclair, it emerged, was a lecturer in theoretical physics at Strathclyde University.

Wiggy, at length, sauntered up from the loch : reluctant, worried. Sinclair, making for the bothy, was first to meet him. He stopped in his tracks.

'Oh fuck!' he said simply.

Wiggy put out his hand, and they shook.

'Christ! Ye've stirred up a fuckin' hornet's nest, if ye don't mind me saying?'

'Do you mind?' Wiggy asked carefully.

Sinclair breathed in and shrugged.

'I don't give a fuck,' he answered. 'But you're in the shit.' Then smiling warmly, 'It's a helluva place,' he said, 'is it no?'

They looked round together at their shared inheritance, the mountains serene and motionless, ancient and lovely.

The children ran up and introduced their friend.

'This is Wiggy!' they said.

'Oh aye?' answered Hughie.

They all gathered round. Jock was the last and by then Hughie Sinclair had managed to regain his composure.

'Allow me to introduce,' he said.

'Dog, this is Wiggy.'

'Wiggy, this is Dog.'

And aside to the Dog, 'Noo ah ken hwat ye're thinkin' but this yin is Wiggy, see?' he said with a nudge.

Jock the Dog shook his head gaily. 'By, ye're one helluva boy, an' thassa farct...' And he giggled.

'By Christ, what an evening!' Archie declared, looking round at the glen. They all felt its great beauty.

Children, poachers, teacher, friend got settled in, soon calm again... all on the trail of Charlie... all on the loose. Around them, the sweep of the hills, within them a stillness. The light had begun to fail in the warm evening, sun just glancing the tip of the mountains now in an orange glow.

A lone bird called out.

In a while, the three poachers had made themselves comfortable, emptying their packs in a shambles of gear across the bothy floor, usurping Gordon's meticulous organisation. A release from control instead of artificial order : wasn't that what they were all out there for?

'Ye dinnae want tae use that,' said Archie, as Gordon primed his cooking stove. 'Use the fire, ye'll get gie much power!'

'I'll just make the drinks then,' Gordon conceded.

'Where ye sleepin?' Dog asked freshly, looking around at the darkening room.

'On the floor,' said Roberta.

'The floor?' he laughed in disgust. 'Ye want tae fill this place wi' heather, lassie!' The men explained that they tore up heather, and slept on top of it, in perfumed beds.

'Come on, kids!' Jock called with a wave. 'Come an' help me tug it oot! Hoo-hoo! Wheep, wheep!'

'Afore ye gae oot,' Archie shouted, 'fling me yer wet socks an ah'll string 'em up across the fire.' The children complied.

All life seemed a boyish dream to these men, as Jock led the children out to the glen, laughing, giggling, tripping, calling.

Hughie was standing, round at the side, chopping bogwood with his rusty ice-axe : the lovely country, darkening, sultry.

Gordon passed around drinks when they had returned, the room now dark, and scented by the thick carpet of scrub on the floor. Archie had layed a great fire, with logs and panels and pages from 'Playboy' he had found in a corner. He lay back in heather and laced his coffee with whisky.

Jockie took a swig, and started splashing paraffin over the damp firewood. Hughie came in with an armful of sticks, and lit a couple of candles along the mantlepiece. He nonchalantly tossed his match in the fire.

'WOOOMPH!' It exploded in a roar up the chimney.

'The fuck!' he shouted, jumping backwards.

Jockie squealed with laughter, and so did they all, except Harry, seeing his sock catching fire, who protested strongly. The chaotic arsonist snatched it away and stamped on the flames.

'Och! Dog! What ye doin'?' Hughie complained.

'Hoo! Man! There's naethin' like a drap o' petrol tae get a guid fire cracking!' The laughter was riotous.

He was right. The sparks spat up the back of the chimney, wood catching light, flames dancing and leaping in the gloom, crawling up the flue, the smoke rising out and into the evening air. It lit up their faces and gave them a glow.

Now Archie set to work on the supper. He poured water into an enormous pot, a cauldron, which straddled the fire : then ransacked the shelves - there was usually something there.

'Aaah!' His eyes aflame. 'Curry powder! The very thing!' He poured it all in. 'Dae ye kids like curry? Well ye've no tasted any like mine!' Into the smoking pot went bacon, a tube of tomato purée, six potatoes, four chopped onions, some salt, bananas, a packet of sausages, lentils, peas, some Sugar Puffs and a handful of flour, mayonnaise, the juice of a lemon - crushed in his hand - sweetcorn and margarine, bread, dried milk powder, biscuits, sultanas, and rice, green peppers, a Birds Eye chicken pie and macaroni, a flurry of porridge, one or two Oxo cubes, also a handful of herbs, a light shower of hundreds and thousands, and half a Christmas Pudding they'd steamed in a cowshed the previous night.

'He's some boy!' laughed Jock the Dog, as Archie added some whisky for flavour.

'Whisky! Och aye!' said Harry, who had stripped off his shirt again, in the heat of the fire. He was always guarded with strangers at first, but these men were wild, an adventure, and boyishly safe.

'Have ye kids no got anything else?' asked Archie. He whirled round the bothy, like a man possessed, his kilt swinging; as the children gladly passed him their food for the week. Gordon looked on wryly, resigned, as the primeval call of Cameron's stomach put paid to all his careful planning.

'There's a half dozen beefburgers,' Alasdair said.

'They're gaein' off anyway,' Archie sniffed. 'Fling 'em all in.' And the children passed across baked beans, soup powder, frankfurters, cheese, dried apricots...

'And a Mars Bar...?'

'Toss it over here!' He threw it into the pot, not even stopping to take off the wrapper. Archie and Dog opened tins, stirred the pot, stomped and crashed about in their joyful purposes. What matter, if the odd tea-bag or spoon fell in, unnoticed, in the shadowy darkness?

And it smelt good.

Alasdair inadvertently farted.

Archie looked round. 'By Christ! Can ye no dae better 'un that?' he laughed, and farted resoundingly, with excitement and pleasure. 'Oh the fuck! Ah'll set the hoose on fire!' The children suppressed giggles, and he turned round to them, good-humoured, his kind eyes smiling. The Dog passed Gordon the bottle of whisky, and their teacher raised his eyebrows, and slowly reclined, smelling the heather, the whisky, the smoke.

Wiggy, outside, caught the sweet smell of wood on the air, as the smoke rose from the broken chimney and drifted across the first stars and the empty glen. Alasdair came outside for a pee.

'It's so still out here,' he said to his friend, leaving the riotous laughter behind.

'Sounds like you're having lots of fun,' said the man.

'They're really funny,' the boy replied, shaking his penis. 'Supper's nearly ready, Wiggy. Are you coming inside?'

'In a moment,' he said. 'It's such a beautiful evening. Aren't you glad that you're here?' They looked straight in each other's eyes.

'It's really good, Wiggy,' the young boy said softly. 'But I keep thinking about mum and dad...'

'Of course you do,' he answered sadly.

Inside the mayhem increased as the meal was dropped, passed, and balanced : the night growing darker, the amorphous feast being served from the maws of the great cauldron.

Then they sat and ate, by the flickering fire, and were quiet a while.

'Good!' said Gordon. 'It tastes good!'

'It's better than school dinners,' Roberta declared.

Dog's rolling stomach expressed its own approval in a silent eloquence, as he lapped up the food, and yapped to himself merrily in humour and a vague content.

'Is there any more?' asked Wiggy at length.

'Any more?' Archie replied. 'There's enough tae feed a fuckin' army...'

'It's got quite a flavour - what did you put in it?' Wiggy enquired.

'Och, this and that...' and the room rang out with laughter, as Roberta picked out a comb and blinked through her glasses.

Alasdair found the Bothy Book, where visitors left their comments or routes. He passed it to Hughie, while the others were eating.

'January 14th,' he read. 'Sleeping bags soaked, food ran out, fire won't start, pishin it down.'

'January 27th. Lochaber Lesbian Ladies Club. Arrived at five in the dark through six-foot snow drifts. This winter is freezing the arse off us all. Three walkers missing. Loch frozen solid. Wind getting up.'

Archie let out another loud fart.

'It's a different world in the winter,' said Wiggy.

'Aye,' answered Hughie. 'Two of them died. Could I borrow a pen?'

Wiggy passed him his silver pen, as he ate up the meal.

'Enjoying a summer heatwave,' the poacher wrote. 'Had dinner with Bonnie Prince Charlie and friends. He was looking remarkably good for his age.'

The room was cosy and close : enclosed with a feeling of warmth and easy friendship; and as the children retreated to the heathery back of the room, the whisky started to flow more freely.

'Tomorrow?' said Hughie. 'Have ye got any plans?'

Gordon explained that they'd run out of food. 'Had it requisitioned, to be more precise!'

'Nae problem,' said Jock. 'Ye can live off the land!'

'I would like to skulk,' Wiggy declared. 'Do you know what I mean? I would very much like to go off by myself for a day, if you think you could cope... I just feel I'd like to try losing myself in the deeps of this country, and skulk for a while...'

'Of course,' said Gordon. 'Then I think we might go up the hill in the morning, and then' - he looked at the others - 'try poaching for food?'

'Then we'll come along too?' Hughie Sinclair proposed. 'And help ye stock up wi' supplies...'

The three children settled down in the shadows, and the men passed the bottle around and relaxed. Jock and Archie lit up, and Archie picked up the remnants of 'Playboy' and flicked through its pages. Hughie started to play softly on his guitar - the old songs of parting and dark beauty - 'Wild Mountain Thyme', 'The Dark Island', 'Will ye no Come Back Again'... all life a parting, departing.

'The thing about music,' said Wiggy, 'is the way it can speak direct to the heart, unlock our true feelings, and bypass the merely cerebral mind.'

They talked on about climbing and whisky, housing and hunting, music, religion and everything else.

'Did ye ever read Marcus Aurelius?' asked Hughie.

'No,' answered Gordon.

'Yes,' replied Wiggy.

And Hughie recollected a UFO sighting...

'Prior to that time, mind, I'd been a complete sceptic. Lots of people seemed gullible but I was not one of them. Eventually, sightings on the same day were reported in the local press. It took me aback, for I'd told nobody about it. All I recall was something glass-like and large, transparent and dome-ish. Don't laugh,' he continued, a little embarrassed, 'but what got me most, was this vague but vivid impression of being communicated with : that a vastly superior intelligence was aware of me, and making contact. Even now I remember the feeling of it. So striking, it has always stayed with me...'

'Beam me up, Scotty,' Archie refrained.

The discussion wandered to the right to roam.

'I mean, who can own all this?' Hughie asked Wiggy. 'Not you, not me. This is our earth and freedom is the birthright of us all to walk upon it.'

'Aye!' choked Archie, as he pulled back the bottle. 'We are the people!'

The Dog just gazed.

'And the hunting?' asked Wiggy. 'The right to poach?'

'If we're honest,' Hughie explained, 'it's not really food or the money at all, but the excuse to get out here, the chance to be free, beyond the bounds of organised life. It brings you up close, close to nature, to untamed nature - hunting and being hunted - it's something basic.'

'It must be a deep primal instinct,' Gordon supposed. 'It was always a great delight to the Celts.'

'Mind you,' said Wiggy, 'it's easy to blast the landowners. But at least they often share a conviction that our last wild retreats should remain truly wild. What troubles me is the easy leisure ethos of our soft civilisation... exploitation by theme park, Disney...' He spoke with disdain. 'In many ways poacher and landowner should be on the same side.'

Gordon reflected:

'One thing's for sure - a little subversion never did any harm.' Wiggy smiled.

'Aye, aye' said Hughie. 'This is a wild, free country, and all people are equal when they enter in. See you! At the moment ye've a million poond on yer heid. But what the fuck does it mean out here? To me, sunshine on heather is gold, and worth more than anything money can buy.'

'Ye're alright!' said Archie.

He pulled out a twenty-five-year Macallan. Try this, he said, and they did in full measure together. The children grew sleepy and the music stole soft on the air with the woodsmoke and heather.

"Come away, come away, sings the sandpiper's song

Come back to the island where you belong

And the island that's home, wherever you stray

Will blossom its flowers in welcome one day..."

Later the talking came round towards physics. Wiggy admired the way Sinclair was able to dart from one subject to another so freely : a broad mind at large in a narrow society; in an age of ephemeral experts and gurus.

'I suppose,' he said, taking a draught from the bottle, 'I suppose you can do incredibly difficult sums in your head. I was never much good at that sort of thing.'

Sinclair looked back at the man with appreciation. He liked his self-deprecation and the gentle humour aimed at himself.

'Ye'd be fine. You see, the essence of physics is concepts : sorting out principles which make the world work.'

'But I thought that Einstein had got it sewn up.'

'That's the thing : nothing's sewn up at all. He proved that any three-dimensional theory was too small to describe all the forces that govern our world.'

'Three dimensions will dae for me,' said Archie. 'Any more, and ah'll burst ma breeks.'

'Ye couldnae get nae bigger, as fer sure!' retorted Jock, whimpering gaily.

'See now, we take it for granted that our world has three dimensions, but why?'

'Well things look pretty solid,' answered Wiggy, tapping the wall for reassurance.

Hughie shook his head.

'Things are not as solid as they seem. Modern physics nudges us all the time towards the recognition of higher dimensions from which our universe is derived.'

'It seems fantastic,' said Gordon from a dark corner.

'I know, because we can't visualise them. We don't like to admit that other worlds or dimensions exist.' He filled his glass. 'But I believe this world we see just masquerades as the final reality. When we think we know everything; when we think we've found everything : it just turns out to be an illusion - the reality lies hidden elsewhere.'

'That's what I've always felt,' said Roberta from the shadows, but made no further comment for a while.

The Dog stirred, and went to see to the fire, trampling over unwashed plates and spilling some water. He poked the logs with Archie's antler, then picked up tiny pieces of plank, that vandals had ripped off the tattered walls, and threw them carelessly on the waning embers. They caught fire at once and the flames roared up the chimney. He danced and giggled as the sparks jumped out at his feet.

Hughie continued. 'Just cause we can't picture things in our minds, that disnae mean that they cannae exist.'

'But do people really go along with all this?' Wiggy enquired.

'Aye, a lot : to account for all the forces of science, we need to resort to the mathematics of higher dimensions. And the amazing thing -' his eyes sparkled, almost tearful under the influence of the whisky - 'is the mathematics of higher dimensions is one of breathtaking beauty!'

He looked straight to Wiggy, edging forward, eager.

'What you discover is a purer form of symmetry. A simplicity that makes sense of vast amounts of data. The laws of nature become simpler when you express them in higher dimensions, which I believe are their natural home. And they possess an elegance, a beauty.'

'Beauty?' Gordon checked. 'Is that a scientific term?'

'It's a universal term. The concept of beauty in physics is crucial. Believe me, when ye see the true brilliance and power of these higher dimensions : it becomes almost like a love affair, a longing, a fascination.'

'This land is beautiful,' said Gordon. 'That's what I know by beauty.'

'What you see are the symmetries hidden in higher realms, being expressed in a lower-dimensional form...'

Gordon seemed unsure, reluctant.

'It sounds too complicated' he complained.

'If it is fact, then the extra dimension is complex to us, but we are not complex to it.'

He looked at Gordon.

'You told me you were hunting for Charlie's missing treasure? Well I'm on a search mysel' you see : for the field equations of the forces of nature. But what I'm really seeking for is beauty. Ye ken, the poetry of nature. You thread your way through a maze, and something draws you on. Some lilt and splendour.' He frowned, as if troubled by elusive dreams. 'For fuck's sake don't write charm and romance off as childish imaginings - they deserve to be taken seriously at the highest level. Keep chasing them, keep chasing.'

He seemed to speak with a translucent mind, like a light shining in the darkness.

'And how do I find the treasure I'm looking for?' Gordon blinked, wanting to believe.

'You can recognise truth by its beauty and by its simplicity. You search and search for something : but when you get it right, it is obvious that it's right.'

Wiggy re-engaged.

'So you're saying, there are other worlds lurking behind our own?'

'Physics is pointing that way, suggesting that the universe may exist even more, in higher-dimensional space. May be so much more substantial in its reality, that it makes our world seem shadow-like by comparison.'

'Where's the proof?' Gordon cut in.

'The problem we have is a promising theory, that produces too many premisses - millions of them.'

'Perturbing - like places that could hide our treasure.'

'It's a bit like knowing the answer to a sum, but not its component parts. Like a maths test where you're given the answer, but you don't know the question that was set.

Alasdair stirred, sleepily.

'I wish Mr Macleod would give us the answers to our maths exams.'

'So do I. Mathematicians simply cannot keep up with theoretical physics. Our maths just isn't good enough.'

Jock smiled kindly.

'Dinnae fret ye sel', Hughie. Ah wisnae any guid at all they sums neither, mo bhaloch.'

'Aye, thank you, Dog.' Jock stoked the fire, trying to lay hold of deep thought, and then went to the door.

'Ah'm jist gae'in oot ferra piss. Fuck!' He struck his head on the bothy door, and staggered out, laughing.

'Oates!' joked Archie. 'Ah'm jist gae'in oot ferra while, an' ah may be some time.'

'Do ye think he can find his way back? He's had that much whisky.' Hughie Sinclair passed round the bottle. 'Are you fuckin' kids still awake? Are ye no goin' tae sleep?'

Alasdair muttered dreamily. Roberta just said, 'I'm interested.' Of Harry there was nothing to be seen or heard. He inhabited the further darkness of the room.

One thing was certain. The whisky in the bottle had gone down.

'Are ye guid fer anither?' Archie asked.

'I think we could manage,' Wiggy declared, his body glowing and feeling contented. Not standing on protocol, he argued the case. 'Have you got any more?'

'Hoo-hoo!' chuckled Archie, and rattled his pack. He pulled out a bottle of Glencoe Malt. 'This'll raise the hairs on yer chest!'

'Fire water,' Hughie exclaimed. 'Pure fuckin' fire water!'

Wiggy turned the cap, and filled up the glasses, mugs, and a plastic cup. The poachers watched in anticipation as he drank. His eyes watered, as the hundred per cent proof grazed the back of his throat.

'Heee-yah!' the Wigster shouted, rising to his feet, and raising his mug, before buckling at the knees and returning to the log where he sat.

'Slainte Mhath!' the poachers recited.

'Slainte Mhath!' Wiggy whispered and swallowed. 'So this bloody theory? How does it work?'

'Do you want the equations?' Sinclair enquired.

'No! Not the bloody sums. I mean - in layman's terms...'

Hughie Sinclair looked in the fire and reflected.

At length, he said, 'I believe our world may live along a kind of wave effect : vibrations and waves, rippling on the surface of other dimensions.'

'That's what his wife tells him!' Archie declared. 'Ah've got a wee vibration rippling along the surface o' another dimension...'

'Fuck off! You see the resonance of these vibrations in the symmetries that you get in subatomic physics. But as for us, we are just like a rippling reflection, flickering on the surface of water...'

'Then we must all be quivering wrecks!' said Gordon.

'Things don't look very wavy,' said Wiggy. 'They look pretty solid.'

'That's because it's a big wave. You're not standing on your side, but the world's still round...'

He rocked the whisky in his glass, and saw the reflection of amber light knocking against the sides.

'Likewise, I believe time is only the expression of different variables along a single wave pattern.'

'You've lost me now,' said Wiggy.

'See, you look at the movement of a ball on the surface of the sea, and the water around it appears to be surging forward. But it's not. Time is merely a disturbance on the surface of reality, and, in the end, not even a disturbance at all, not even there...'

'The sea is still the sea, the ball is still far out,' Wiggy gesticulated, mug in his hand. He looked comical. Hughie nodded and passed the bottle.

'The Big Bang, Charlie, You and I, even the death of the universe in the years to come - all are taking place in the present, you know. All are present. The present is a continual state of being, and a mere wave effect disperses our shared activity. As we sit here speaking, the future already exists; and the past; it is all one fabric.'

Wiggy was captivated, enthralled. And across the room, Gordon felt faintly unnerved at this opening up of his rationality. The whisky. It must be the whisky playing on their minds.

He tried to confirm what he'd heard.

'So people at different points in time are co-existing : Prince Charlie and us. It's all going on. We get the impression of movement in time, but it's all happening now along a single surface?'

'Aye - and behind it all is a constant. Here, today, and always, beauty is in her inviolable sanctuary...'

'Where our being more truly exists, somewhere beyond, below the surface of it all? A co-existence out of time?'

It seemed fantastic.

Roberta was listening in the darkness, open-minded and interested, her understanding leaping here and there intuitively. She smelt the woodsmoke and the heather. She felt the soft skin of her body. It all felt one and complete.

'I think you're right' her bright voice emerged, unseen, as if out of nothingness. 'If it all seems in pieces without your theory; if it all seems ugly - it probably means we're cutting across a truth, slicing across something which is whole in your higher dimensions...'

'What do you mean?' asked Wiggy.

'Like a meat-slicer! I mean, you can't understand a sensitive animal, just from a slice of her meat. Well then : that's what I mean - science cutting across a truth so it only sees bits...'

Hughie Sinclair sat, frozen in astonishment. There was scarcely a sound.

'Ooh! Hup!' said Archie. 'She's silenced the Professor!'

Hughie beckoned her out of the dark.

'Come over here!' he said with regard.

'No thanks.' Then he turned to the men and laughed.

'She's just summarised a few billion pounds of research in a couple of seconds! Modern physics uses these enormous atom-smashers to study sub-atomic particles. It tries to break everything down into minute pieces. And I'm not saying quantum mechanics is wrong. But it's just so very partial and incomplete. We collect different sets of particles, and label the bits, as she called it. But really it's little more than stamp-collecting.'

'My dad used to collect stamps,' said Roberta, 'when he was a child.'

'And so did I,' said Hughie. 'I loved their beauty and charm. But it must be better to visit the country they've come from, and see it in an extra dimension : see the reality, the whole.'

'That's the bloody problem,' said Wiggy. 'The experts are constantly narrowing their sights, specialising in bits, and losing their sense of the whole!'

'Then that's what I'm saying about physics,' said Sinclair. 'Fuck! I think we've got there at last!'

He stood up by the fire and looked at the circle of friends.

'Linear thought can only take you so far. It draws people down the path of specialisation. But what does it really achieve? Specialist physics ends up with incredible paradoxes.

'You asked me what proof I had, Philip, and it's a fair question. But not everything can be tested by linear thought. Maybe we need to live more with paradox : separate lines of logic that clash may meet beyond the horizon of our consciousness and understanding. Just as what look like straight parallel lines on the earth's equator meet at the pole.'

'It's our Western philosophy,' said Wiggy. 'To break things down into specialist pieces. But it's too simplistic : you risk losing the bigger picture, the vital clues.'

Gordon concurred.

'You see it all around you. Our Western culture driving headlong to its own tense logical conclusions, in its own tense, driven world : to fragments, shards, disorientation. Alienation from the heart. I think we have lost a more feminine way of thinking and being and feeling.'

'Just look at Scottish History,' said Hughie. 'The attempt, again and again, to impose a self-consistent structure, borne out of a desire for control and dominance, regardless of whether it springs from the real heart of the people it governs.'

'Some would say that it works,' answered Wiggy.

'It works, but it works like a neurosis - it creates only an adequate happiness, blocking out the true heart and pulse of the race.'

'And when they brave boys tried tae rise up fer their own, hwat then?' said Archie. 'Culloden! They ended up oot here in the heather, like us, by Christ!'

'Against patriarchy,' said Hughie, 'anyone who holds a different angle on things may find themselves marginalised. Look at the margin-dwellers at society's edge, and you define the harsh limits of its brittle systems...'

'I know,' murmured Wiggy.

'It seems to me,' said Gordon, now drinking recklessly, 'that only a certain level of feeling is acceptable to the powers that be. They demand a socialised split between head and heart. In the end so much is left repressed. The centre has to retain control... It seems to me,' he said, 'that the Jacobites were like an eruption of feeling from an older society in the land of a dangerous goddess - and they had to be broken and crushed.'

'But where does it leave us?' asked Wiggy. 'All this fragment and tension and provisional truth?'

'I have a provisional scheme of my own,' Hughie answered, sitting down once again, 'to respond to the fragmented nature of things. I call it the Shambles theory of the universe. Shambles theory gladly embraces the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which states we can never know for sure what will happen next. Take yon Jockie - have ye any idea what he'll do? Fuck! Ye may as well pin down a particle. Uncertainty and chance are everywhere.

'So I say - Fuck! Fuck, let's overlook quantum then! Shambles theory defies the artificial semblance of order. Shambles theory hands over control to subconscious impulse instead. Shambles theory allows for reception, for release, stops trying tae fuckin' dominate everything.

'See Jockie,' said Sinclair. 'I just love the loon. He's a fucking shambles, maybe the best kind of man. He seems to exude chaos, but it's only a carefree oblivion, ye ken? Of society's fractured demands he makes nae sense at all. So he just gets on - relaxed in his private consciousness. Perhaps he's more ordered than the lot of us!' He paused and looked through the broken window. 'An' where the fuck is he, anyway?'

'Hoo-hoo!' laughed Archie. 'Send oot the rescue! Ach! He's away with the small folk half o' the time. Ye knock on the door, an' he's no in the hoose...'

'A commendable stance : so I say, loosen up and enjoy the Shambles version of the universe.'

'But is that surrender?' Gordon enquired, ever difficult.

'No' said Hughie. 'Because I keep seeking after the real field theory as well : what I call my Beauty Principle. Experimental physics seems naturally stuck in lower dimensions. So I think theoretical physics must 'go it alone', on a journey, a search. To keep chasing after the Beauty Principle, needs faith in the unseen, new ways of verification. Yet if it's true, then everything else must follow.'

'So you live on two levels?' said Wiggy. 'With Shambles and Beauty?'

'Slainte' said Hughie, and emptied his glass. 'Both are a rejection of the profane.'

'But how do you verify something, if you can't experiment?' Gordon kept prodding.

'You know the difference between a photo and a person. It's not just quantity. It's not just volume. The jump to a third dimension introduces qualitative differences : character, feeling.'

'Indeed.'

'So, to find the reality that lurks behind our world, we need to make a qualitative leap, not a quantitative one. From a scientific point of view, all we can hope is to find the ultimate mirror, out of which our world comes like a reflection. But the reality beyond the mirror... it can't be sought out by the mind alone.'

'Then what?'

'Thought and objectivity are not sufficient to interpret Beauty. For that, you need the extra dimension of feeling. The itch to know everything; to control - it won't do. Whereas 'not knowing' is a primary tool of scientific discovery; of any kind of discovery!

'Maybe we need less assertion, and more reception.' He stared at his empty glass. 'The ability to listen, not to speak : the ability to learn, not to know : the ability to feel, not to dissect... a much less macho approach altogether.'

They sat close in the darkening room, close and engaged, with the vast wilderness just outside their door.

'I think understanding often springs from immersion, intuition, nuance and mood. Then we start making leaps between concepts and finding the whole. It's probably the same with your treasure as well. Something imparted to us, like a frequency, only we must be attuned, aligned.'

He became melancholy.

'I figure these things are beyond our cerebral grasp... passively received, if received at all... pass the bottle.'

'I've never heard a scientist talk like this' said Gordon, reaching across the hearth.

'Rhythm and resonance : they hold our whole universe in their sway. You find it at every level. Rhythm permeates nature.

'That's why the Celtic world was cyclic : more aware of rhythm and cycles, seasons and tides, more in touch, more in tune... And then it was crushed, by expediency, by linear thought, though it was far advanced in many ways...'

'The clans were pretty bloody,' said Wiggy.

'Belsen, Dresden, Nagasaki?' he replied. 'Nature is savage.'

'Yes, I know.'

He seemed to know himself well, to know himself deep inside. And it was true, what the poacher said. Beauty, rhythm, love, joy : why did they seem squeezed out these days? Why did everything seem so far cut off from its natural roots? A society out of touch with something deep and ancient within itself.

'And do you think we can be attuned - to these higher dimensions?' he asked Sinclair.

'I believe that rips and tears may open up in the fabric of space and time; like thresholds, gateways to another place... I think that particular moments in life, echo down the years, like a strange encounter.'

'Certainly places have it,' said Wiggy.

'Aye, and maybe choices too. Choices at pivotal moments in life : decisions, leading either way, into parallel worlds. Whole lives determined by the outcome of a rash impulsive decision...' he looked at Wiggy... 'or else, our feelings and sensitivity are battened down by social conditioning, people's control, as year follows on from dreary year... and we are crushed as we reject ourselves.'

'We lose our souls,' said Wiggy with a saddened face.

Archie let out a resonant fart. 'By Christ, that curry!'

'Ach! Ya bas!' cried Hughie.

'Ah tell ye, there's mair hot air commin' oot yer lugs, than oot ma fuckin' erse!' he roared, exuberant, joyful, ever a boy.

'These parallel worlds,' asked Gordon. 'Are they very close?'

'Curled up within atoms perhaps,' said the man. 'Elusive, but maths suggests they are there : undetectable to either sight or sound, yet co-existing with all our lives, right next to us, and lurking near. Tantalizingly close and yet : just, only just, eluding our senses. Like a treasure, just narrowly eluding us.'

'It's long been suspected,' Gordon agreed. 'The Celts accepted such otherworlds.'

'Och aye,' said Archie. 'The land of the Shee!'

'So you're saying,' said Wiggy, 'we might experience these other realms? Like Alice going down a rabbit-hole?'

'Some people say you could pass through black-holes into parallel worlds, though that's not what I mean.'

'Ye jist gae doon the plug 'ole!' mused Archie, his face like granite in the ever-deeper shadows, from the waning fire.

'Personally I think that things come and they go, purely as a function of a wave pattern. Like particles that emerge out of nowhere in what's called the Casimir effect. At the very least, this goes on all the time, like a background mood.'

'So where are we?' said Gordon. 'Are we here? Are we there?'

'Nothing is certain except nothing is certain.'

'So we might jist gae thro' the Looking Glass?' Archie proposed.

'Aye,' said Hughie, losing his gravity. 'It's like yon Jockie, he's stalking in bonnie Glen Finglas, wi'oot a penny tae his name; next moment, same moment, he's in another Glen Finglas, same Jockie, but he's a millionaire.'

'Shite!' laughed Archie. 'He'd nae ken the difference.'

'Or yon Piglet over there'

'Shuttup!'

'Takes her pet cat'

'I haven't got a cat'

'Takes her fucking cat in a basket, tae a fucking railway station. Gets on the pissin' train. Next moment, same moment, she's on another wee railway line. Same girl, same cat, except in a single aspect.'

'Is it alive? Is it dead?' asked Gordon.

'Or was it just smiling?' Archie enquired. 'Did it huffae grin on its face?'

'Definitely not.'

'Sniffle, sniffle,' said Roberta, ironically. 'Poor wee thing!'

'So you mean,' said Gordon, 'Prince Charlie's about to be captured on the Island of Scalpay, and suddenly he finds himself on another Island of Scalpay, totally safe.'

'Perhaps that's what happened tae Charlie's treasure,' supposed Archie brightly. 'It was buried in one hole, and then it came oot 'ae anither.'

Gordon raised his eyebrows. Wiggy looked aside, and saw in a reflection off the cracked mirror, next to an empty bottle on the shelf, a faded picture of the Queen at her coronation.

At this moment, Jock the Dog stumbled in, cheery and heedless, in his shirt and pants.

'Where the fuck have you been?' Hughie said with a laugh.

'There's a braw starry nicht oot there!' he whinnied.

'By Christ!' said Archie. 'An' we thought ye'd gone doon the plug-hole fer sure!'

'Nae, nae, Archie!' laughed Jock in surprise. 'Ah didnae gae ferra bath! Hwit ye haverin' aboot?'

They all subsided in merriment at the Dog's expense, who, oblivious to what was going on, joined in the uproar with ingenuous good-will.

'Let's drink a toast tae good old Dog, safely returned from fuck knows where!' said Hughie, winking.

'No!' said Wiggy. 'He deserves a better name for himself, a worthier accolade.' He grabbed the antler from the side of the chimney. 'Kneel here my friend! Kneel here and I will dub thee!'

The others roared, as Jock complied, in gay abandon, to join the fun.

'Now friends,' said Wiggy, slurring, 'in reggoc... in recog-nition... of your service to science, I dub thee a knight of the bothy!'

And they all weighed in...

'Arise, Sir Dog!'

'Sir Dog!'

'By Christ!'

'Arise...'

'A toast then,' said Hughie, 'tae friendship!'

'Friendship,' they echoed, in more sober refrain. The eyes met together in a mutual respect.

'And in the context of one billion, billion stars,' Gordon vulnerably asked, 'What's friendship, I wonder. Can you offer me meaning, for I often lose hope?'

'Size isn't the main point. Twenty extra dimensions could curl up smaller than a particle, on the end of a pin. The stars may be huge, but I would say one tiny act of human kindness makes a thousand galaxies seem like a dusting of irrelevant atoms. Where unseen human love flares in the darkness, there alone in all those empty heavens is an eruption of deeper being, true reality.'

'The people who walked in darkness,' Wiggy recalled from a distant Christmas, 'saw a great light...' Hughie continued, softly now.

'Out of the vast, empty wastes of the galaxies, against all the odds, contrary to all probabilities, comes forth love and friendship, beauty and grace. Where from? Where from? The rare and precious gold-dust glistening in the dark seam of the universe.'

He seemed to hold the room in silence.

After a while, Gordon spoke.

'And does "love" rescue the nation?' he said, sharp as ever, though his voice quavered.

'Belief in the unseen, love of beauty in the face of horror... Give me just a dozen people, who have the courage to "believe" in an idea whose time has come : and they could change a nation, set it on fire, transform it. It is not resources that mould the destiny of nations, but faith in unseen beauty.'

'Yes! Yes! Bloody Hell! Yes!' Wiggy was whispering, shaking his fist, drunken and moved.

'Bonnie Prince Charlie thought that, and he was wrong...' Gordon again.

'Listen! The Prince!' Hughie replied. 'Came when the time was all fuckin' wrong. Naebody believes he was exactly a "hero". He was needed as a myth for a desperate people. But as a myth mo bhalach, as a myth, by fuck... he is lyrical...'

'Bloody Hell! Bloody Hell!' Wiggy intoned. 'Just Bloody Hell!'

'Aye, aye,' murmured Archie.

'Fire's getting low,' Hughie observed.

'I need a pee,' Wiggy replied. 'Is there any door? Is there any door?'

Sinclair, as unsure himself, slung his arms round the man, and they both staggered blindly outside and into the dark.

Overhead unimaginable distances arced and sprayed away in vast uncountable stars. Wiggy and Sinclair looked up, as they peed, shoulder to shoulder, and craning their necks.

'See that!' said Hughie. 'There's nae fuckin' answer to that. Nae fuckin' answer at all!'

'Then what's there to do? What's there to do?'

'All we can dae is try tae awaken tae the mind and pure thought o' the beauty at the back o' it all.'

Wiggy grabbed his sleeve. 'Sometimes things are too real, you know, and you're not real enough, not real enough. It's as if... you're just being held there... just being held... inside this greater thing... just held there... held.'

The soft rush of the stream by night. The scatter of stars, and bats flitting round their light in the lonely glen. A smell of good cool earth. The two men staggered and swayed their way back to the bothy. Wiggy crashed out in his bed of heather and the others were silent and settled, asleep in moments.

'Goodnight Wiggy' Roberta said, by his side. But he was unconscious.

* * *