The film came to its end in a shower of black and white flecks, and the lights were turned on. Members of the meeting got up to stretch their legs and to question Edrich about his fourteen points. A concealed fan was switched on and vibrated with a slow hum. The technician was running the film back onto its spool. Watching him, Flinders regretted that the course of events could not be similarly rewound. What of the women at the well, he wondered? What of the laughing child that somewhere on the machine spun back to his former deplorable condition—and the flock of chickens now laying their eggs in electrified coops all through the night? What improvements were being inflicted on those static industries that had for centuries repeated themselves in the graceful jars about the well?

“Coordination,” the voices were insisting, and “basic procedures.” Edrich was pulling out his chair and saying “issue-oriented.” Flinders resisted claustrophobia: the room was like an upholstered bomb-shelter.

“You have your films with you, Mr. Flinders?”

Rodriguez-O’Hearn was looking at him. Flinders brought up his brief case from beside his chair and produced an envelope of colored slides. “Only a few stills, sir.”

The meeting was settling down again. He was being listened to. He knew that he cut a poor figure with his nine or ten slides, after Edrich’s film. The Arabs had rather disliked being photographed, and in any case he had often forgotten to take a camera on field trips. He handed the envelope over to the technician with a sinking heart. “They’re not too clear,” he said.

Flinders had never made a speech before. He had been intimidated, too, by the eloquence of Edrich. His hands were shaking, and he placed them flat on the table before him. All the faces were turned, waiting for him to begin.

“In classical times,” he said, “the lands bordering the Mediterranean were much more thickly vegetated. We know this, for example, from Euripides’ description of the area around Thebes, or Homer’s account.…”

Here he paused to draw breath, and the Chief of Official Records asked if he had submitted his final report.

Mr. Addison confirmed that a short account of Flinders’s performance in the field was at that moment with his own typist.

“But your final report, Mr. Flinders,” the Records Chief persisted with thinly veiled patience. “Your evaluation of the success of your assignment, in six copies, your recommendations for future concrete measures.”

“Given the fluidity of the situation,” Edrich put in, with a sympathetic nod to Flinders.

Flinders said slowly that the success of a mission such as his must depend on the survival of trees which had only just been planted.

The Records Chief declared that such a condition could not be regarded as an obstacle to the submission of a final report.