O great computer! (Jupiter)

The impact of the front door on its frame shook the house; the noise made the panes of glass sing in the rickety window at the top of the stairs, and return to Rhys like the echo of a cry. Another day of wandering round, trying to be left alone, in vain. Every few steps Rhys would draw a bead from one stone to another, trying to lose himself in calculations, only to find either the line or his own body jostled by some gabbling pakamak. Rhys had been gloomily glad when the rain had started to fall on him, present as he was with no jacket of his own, as it gave him the excuse to quit, and not prolong his disappointment.

He made to go upstairs, then paused, as a thought began to form. He turned back and locked the door. The idea began to rush upon him that the day might not be wasted yet; that fired his muscles and raised the hairs on the back of his neck. Though he was still stood at the bottom of the stairs his mind was already up in his room, and his body had to catch up: quick. Hammering his feet on each step he could hear the blood pound just as hard in his ears, and felt his stomach drop away from him. He tilted forwards towards the top step and flapped his hands on the carpet to propel himself faster, flailing up in a four-limbed tangle; his mind was above, his lights down below, and his arms and legs all over the place.

At the top of the stairs, Rhys grabbed the handle, opened his bedroom door, left it to bang shut behind him, lifted up his duvet, pulled out the trunk, clicked its locks free, lifted the lid and grabbed the large scroll and purse within. He slowed then, arranging the objects with reverence, as if they were more than priceless: magical or masonic, full of invisible energy. He unfurled the scroll across his bed, weighing down each corner with four pebbles from the purse. He stuck his hand back into the bag to fetch more stones, and then stopped, weighing up the image that was before him.

The museums could afford their intricately carved models, but this paper map, wide as two arm-lengths and tall as one, was as useful to Rhys as any of them might have been. More so, for his purposes, for his design emphasized what theirs did not; indeed, could not, because the museum curators were uninterested to the point of blindness in what Rhys had discovered.

Although the plan of the stones themselves still existed in thin pencil lines, occasionally redrawn and darkened where they had become too faint, such a detail was no longer the main purpose of the diagram. These mere details of geography were covered with lines in several different colours: green, red and blue for astronomical directions; but also two shades of purple and three of orange-to-yellow, each of which denoted a different flavour to a survey that Rhys had taken across the site, with shades of meaning that Rhys understood but could not put into words. Sometimes they overlapped with ley lines, or the paths between the nearby villages, or both; sometimes they had been made on a particular day, at a particular time, and produced an effect pleasing to Rhys. The trilithons, the Heel Stone, and the Slaughter Stone were all marked with deep-blue crosses, whilst the Aubrey holes, a circle of 56 post holes some 80 metres in diameter, were coloured in a particularly vivid red.

Rhys had guessed some time ago that each successive rebuilding of the stones had been a refinement on some principle of the previous construction. And what he had seen a few weeks ago—or, more precisely, not been able to see—had finally confirmed to Rhys what that principle was. As he knelt down by the chart on his bed, he tried to picture where he had been that time, and where he had been looking; with that in mind, even the scant and incomplete observations he had been able to make today might have some value.

Deep in thought, he marked places from time to time on the map with flattened glass marbles. Often the juxtaposition of two or three or even four such markers led him to put another down in their centre, or on a particular axis of conjunction. Occasionally, with a triumphant flourish, he would take a ruler and pencil from his desk and affirm the arrangement with a permanent line.

In this way Rhys spent the next few hours playing what appeared to be some ancient boardgame against himself, thrilling at his own victories, excited even further by his failures. The day darkened and became evening; his parents came home and called up to him; the television went on, and once or twice the telephone rang; but nothing penetrated Rhys' concentration, as he wondered again and again about the next move he might make.