'Great!' cries the man. He isn't looking at the torch.
     He is looking away, seared by the glitter of anxiety in his little boy's eyes.
     The horse comes up to the car. She nudges up, puts her nose over the edge of the door. The man bats her away.
     It's OK, the boy decides, that his dad hasn't looked at the torch, hasn't studied or handled it like Jim. It's better: the torch is not for looking at now. It's better to have for it a proper purpose, to put it away, to carry it carelessly but with meaning, as a warrior might carry his sword. A torch is for lighting when the time comes, for lighting up the expedition of father and son. "You mean physical objects, then. But concepts exist just as much as physical objects exist. In some ways they're more real, because we create them ourselves, or at least we seem to be able to hold them in our minds, while we can only know about the physical world through our senses. And we know that our senses are sometimes wrong, like when we get drunk or smoke dope or something."
     Helen got into bed but didn't reply. Sam threw Alfred Ayer to the floor and gave Helen's physical presence his undivided attention for several minutes. When he eventually moved on top of her he made a joke. "Perhaps we can disprove Zeno's paradox now," he said.
     "Hm?"
     "I can move half the distance from one point to another..."
     "Mm..."
     "Then half the remaining distance... then half again... and half again... and... oops. How about that? I can't go any further."
     Sam thought that this was quite funny, but Helen just looked at him and said, "Sometimes you're strange."
     'Come on!' says the man, all briskness now, and holds the door back for the boy to get out of the car.
     Neither man nor boy take much notice of the horse. The man steps back, and she swings her head out of the way. They go to the boot, and after a moment she slowly follows.
     The boy is chattering:
     'Have you brought one too, have you brought a torch?'
     'Oh, yes!'
     Is this a problem? the boy suddenly wonders. Does this make one of the torches redundant? There is a brief moment of uncertainty.