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That is the case, the word processor agreed, but we have established a corridor of communication.

Who is ‘we’? Martin asked.

My friend Ben Stromstein late of Monterey, California, a lady researcher from Girton, Cambridge and myself. Who are you?

Martin keyed in his name and added the word ‘Author’.

A literary man: excellent, Snow replied.

Martin re-read the exchanges in amazement. What had been in the coffee? Was Miranda at this moment dodging blissfully between cars on the ring road, high as a kite? The radio continued to hiss. Martin switched it off.

There was no addition to Snow’s last remark. Martin typed in several questions but there was no response. He printed out the adulterated first page of his story, cleared the file and opened a new one then sat for a long time mulling over the phenomenon. The paper in his hand bore witness to it.

“A corridor of communication,” he muttered.

The radio must have been the means. He switched it on and turned up the volume. The hiss was unmodulated.

Ben asks what frequency you have.

Drugs were responsible. There were precedents: Kubla Khan had been conceived by Coleridge under the influence of opium so why should there not be a short story by the imaginary Lewis Eliot? Martin decided to play this fantastic arcade game as if it were real life.

First, he must answer the question. He checked the frequency display of his radio, typed in ‘21405KHz’ and queried why Ben couldn’t ask for himself. The response filled the screen.

Do not change the setting on your radio, Snow warned, we might lose you forever. I hope you are technically capable of conducting this experiment.

No problem, Martin replied flippantly. My radio is a Sony ICF 7600D. I can key in any frequency precisely. What is Ben on? — meaning a drug. Martin smiled cockily to himself.

A nearby frequency, otherwise he and I would not be in contact, Snow replied drily. Retune your set if you are sure you can get back to me.

Several minutes passed before the name Benjamin J. Stromstein was repeated across the screen. Martin punched the air. This was fun.

Sorry about the delay, he typed, you’re very close to Snow.

There was no delay, Ben replied. Is he higher or lower?

Higher.

That figures, Ben wrote. I died three hours before Chuck on July First 1980 so I figure that less than a day’s worth of us can communicate. There’s a whole lot of noise here — all languages. Must have been a disaster that day — earthquake maybe. If Chuck wasn’t so tough we’d never have hacked it. He says it takes him back to his student days. Did you know he was a spectroscopist?

Were you a scientist too? Martin keyed in.

Sure. I was a software geek at Digital Research Monterey. Gotten hit by a truck. I reckon the software you’re using must be mine. I lived that stuff — thought in machine code. It was a neat idea of Chuck’s to try sending in code. He knows about rapid data transmission from his radar days. And there’s some chick he can hear who’s into radio propagation. She’ll need the exact frequency I’m on. We’ve no hardware this end. Can you hack it?

Sorry. This Sony works in 5KHz steps. I used fine tune.

Take a guestimate.

Around a twentieth of a step.

Not accurate enough.

The front door banged; the fun was over. Miranda called up to ask if he wanted soup for lunch.

It was quite usual for her to calm rapidly and even to say sorry after a row — but he never did. He resented the interruption to his stream of consciousness: the effect of the drug would soon fade. With a sigh, he switched off the radio and printed out the exchanges. Miranda called again.

They brooded in the kitchen until Martin complained that she’d interrupted his contact with the late C.P.Snow. She ignored his hint that there’d been something in his coffee, seeming to think he’d referred to a scene from his novel. She humoured him.

“Ah yes, C.P. — that is Lord — Snow. He was Minister of Technology in Harold Wilson’s government,” she told him in her teacher-voice. “He was neither fish nor fowl: a scientist but successful as a novelist. God knows why he was, there’s no accounting for taste. He was a Civil Service Commissioner too — responsible in the Second World War for putting together the teams which developed radar. Afterwards he got involved with nuclear weapons. He’s not my idea of a literary figure.”

“What does my new pen-name Lewis Eliot mean to you?”

“Did university teach you nothing? He’s Snow’s chief character in the novel cycle Strangers and Brothers. Eliot is based on Snow himself. Bad writers tend to use autobiography in place of creativity. You oughtn’t use Eliot as a pen name. Publishers will think you’re making a role model of Snow — a sure way to rejection. Or, worse: they might think you want people to believe that your book is by Snow himself.”

“There’s an idea,” Martin interrupted. “What if a new book by him turned up?”