‘It doesn’t look like much,’ Pilgrim said. ‘Just another fanciful monster. Except that it closely resembles several descriptions of the visitors.’

He showed her sketches made by witnesses, said that if she and her colleagues shared their ideas with him, they might be able to prove what the visitors really were.

‘I suppose it might also help you to complete your master’s work,’ Teal said.

‘The contribution of your colleagues would be properly acknowledged,’ Pilgrim said. ‘And if the visitors aren’t some kind of collective fiction, but are a lost tribe of bears, or people like us, or some other kind of people entirely, it would be world-changing. Too important for any one person to claim.’

‘I suppose that I can put that to my colleagues,’ Teal said. ‘But you’ll have to wait until the thaw – one of the storms brought down the tapcode line.’

She was reticent about how many women belonged to the college inside the Invisible College, and what their interests were, but told Pilgrim that it was relatively new, and as much a support network as a venue for sharing ideas. Women were chafing at the traditional roles of their sex, especially in the cities, and some were now independently wealthy, and willing to fund the work of those less fortunate.

‘We are not obsessed about ownership of ideas, or their priority, or all the other things that men consider important – status, seniority – and will happily accept critical improvements rather than think them challenges to our self-esteem. If women were in charge of the Library of All People, it would be a place of conversation and co-operation. As it is, scholars jealously guard their work from the scrutiny of their rivals, and all is competition and compartmentalisation, and rigid hierarchies organised by seniority rather than ability.’

‘That’s not entirely true,’ Pilgrim said. ‘Scholars often share their ideas with like-minded colleagues. And when their work is published, the Library makes it available to everyone else.’

‘To every male scholar, but not to us. We call ourselves the Invisible College not because we choose to work in secret, but because men refuse to believe that we are capable of discovering anything useful. We have to publish our work privately, and male scholars pay little or no attention to it. We cannot debate with them, or visit the Library, or even lodge copies of our monographs and books in its stacks.’

‘I hope that I understand a little about exclusion,’ Pilgrim said.

‘You may be a pure, but you still enjoy male status. You are not invisible. You do not lack a voice. I don’t know much about this business of sightings and visitors, but my colleagues deserve more than credit for their work. They deserve to be seen. Remember that, if they agree to share their findings with you.’