We have a suspicion that there are more original ideas tossed into this one novelette than one is likely to encounterin entire issues of some sf magazines. Bayley does not write as much as he ought to, but when he does he comes upwith some surprising premises. This tale, for instance, besides carrying original inventive concepts, accepts noborders for humanity—even when it is, as Bayley depicts, still very provincial in taste and outlook. If that seemscontradictory, read the story yourself.
Nayland’s world was a world of falling rain, dancing on streaming tarmac, drumming on the roofs of big black cars, soaking the grey and buff masonry of the dignified buildings that lined the streets of the town. Behind the faded gold lettering of office windows, constantly awash, tense laconic conversations took place, accompanied by the pouring, pattering sound of rain, and the rushing of water from the gutterings.
Beneath the pressing grey sky, all was humid. Nayland, his feet up on his desk, looked down through the window to where the slow-moving traffic drove through the deluge and splashed the kerbs. Nay-land Investigations Inc., read the window’s bowed gold lettering. The rain fell, too, on the black and white screen of the TV set flickering away in the corner of the office. It fell steadily, unremit-164 The Cabinet of Oliver Naylor
