The Hounds of Avalon (Gollancz S.F.) (42 page)

In the reverent depths of the Bodleian Library, Hal pored over a mountain of dusty volumes, but his mind was elsewhere. While reading the same page over and over again, he was back in the helicopter on the return journey from Shugborough Hall, adrenalin racing through his system, his heart pounding fit to burst, and the snowy countryside sweeping past beneath in a magical procession. And Samantha was pressed tight against him, her head on his shoulder, her arm entwined around his, and she was whispering the words he would never forget.

‘You saved my life, Hal. I don’t know what I’d ever do without you.’

And then there had been the kiss. On his cheek, admittedly, but it had not been chaste, he was sure; certainly not overtly sexual, either, but filled with a deep affection.

The scene played over and over in his mind. The seeds were so small, he didn’t dare give them too much credence, but a tiny part of him refused to let go: there was hope; she wasn’t completely devoted to Hunter; when the crunch came, she’d prefer Hal’s decency over Hunter’s louche amorality.

He was so lost to his ever-entwining mind games that he almost missed the item for which he had been searching. Just as he was
about to turn the page of the two-hundred-year-old book he had been sifting through, his subconscious flagged up a tiny reproduction of
The Shepherds of Arcadia
. Hal read the accompanying information once, then again, this time taking it in, and finally a third time with avid concentration.

‘Samantha!’ he called out. ‘I’ve found something!’

Samantha ran over from another table where she had been hidden from his view behind a wall of books.

She hung over his left shoulder and peered at the text. Hal could feel the warmth of her skin, smell her perfume, but he forced himself to concentrate.

‘Listen to this,’ he said, and began to read from the book. ‘“The phrase
Et in Arcadia Ego
cannot be traced to any classical source. When asked of its origins, Nicolas Poussin maintained a puzzling silence. Yet on several occasions he told of a strange meeting. It occurred in sixteen thirty-seven, shortly before Poussin began work on his famous painting
Les Bergers d’Arcadie
, when, according to the artist, a young man with blue skin mysteriously appeared in his studio and entreated him to paint his first work on the subject. The angelic messenger’s details were specific, and included the curious phrase, but Poussin was induced to take the secret of his painting to his grave. Poussin always grew pale when questioned about this night-time visitor. But whatever was said to him in the privacy of his studio on that occasion encouraged him to begin work on his painting the next morning, in a feverish state according to his closest friends.”’

Hal stared at the page for a moment, then looked into Samantha’s face, so close to his own. ‘I don’t know about “angelic messenger” or “blue skin”, but that certainly sounds like a visitor from the Otherworld.’

‘But why would someone from the Otherworld visit Nicolas Poussin in Rome and force him to paint
The Shepherds of Arcadia?
’

‘Because,’ Hal said, ‘they wanted to preserve a clue that could be discovered hundreds of years later. Maybe they knew Poussin was going to be a great artist and that all his works would be well known down the years.’

‘But why all those centuries back?’

Hal thought about that for a moment. ‘Perhaps the strange visitor didn’t set off all that time ago.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘All the legends say that time is odd in T’ir n’a n’Og. It doesn’t move in straight lines. Maybe there’s no such thing as time there at all.’

‘You’re making my head hurt.’

‘Maybe the gods can access any point in time they want from the Otherworld. And maybe they picked Poussin because …’ He paused, reordered his thoughts. ‘OK, how about this? What if Thomas Anson had a similar meeting with, say, a blue-skinned man who encouraged him to commission
The Shepherds of Arcadia
in reverse for the Shepherds’ Monument at Shugborough?’

‘We don’t know that.’

Hal shrugged and pressed on. ‘And what if these gods were influencing our world all the time, but they passed into legend as angels?’ he said excitedly. ‘Or demons. Didn’t William Blake supposedly see some hideous figure before he painted
Ghost of a Flea?
’

‘I have no idea,’ Samantha said with some amusement.

‘Yes, yes, you’re right, I’m off on a tangent. But don’t you see? We’re getting somewhere. Poussin painted
The Shepherds of Arcadia
because of divine intervention. It’s important enough that the Tuatha Dé Danann or some other Higher Power wanted it preserved. It’s got something to do with T’ir n’a n’Og. A tomb … a death … a secret in death … ? If it was painted over here, it was a clue we were meant to find.’ His train of thoughts was rushing wildly on.

‘“We” as in you and me?’

‘We humans. We …’ He paused. ‘Maybe it was left for the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons.’ His heart started to pound. Was it some supernatural connection meant for him alone?

‘Couldn’t they have left the message in a more obvious way?’ Samantha asked. ‘If it was meant for the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons, why would it be in a Poussin painting and a monument at Shugborough, not whatever it is the Dragon Brothers do on their day off?’

‘Because …’ Another shiver. ‘Perhaps they knew that one of the Brothers of Dragons would come across this.’

‘But they haven’t, have they? We have. I mean, I know one of them found the original stone, but he didn’t crack the clues.’

Hal disappeared in a mist of intense concentration before he said, ‘They buried it deeply because it’s such an important – perhaps powerful – thing that’s been hidden that they couldn’t risk anyone else finding it.’

‘So it is something that could help us in the war.’

‘Yes,’ said Hal, dazed. ‘I really think it is.’

The War Room was dominated by a large electronic map of the UK. Vast swathes of the North Country were coloured red, ending at a line bisecting the country from west to east and centring on Birmingham. Along one wall, three female operatives were in constant radio contact with numerous field agents supplying intelligence back from as close to the front line as they could get. The General, who had not slept for nearly forty-eight hours, regularly checked the updates, but spent most of the time inspecting maps and making calculations.

‘You’re in a bad mood.’

The General looked up to find Reid standing next to him. ‘How do you slip in and out like that? It’s bloody unnerving.’

Reid smiled without humour. ‘I have to say, things aren’t looking good.’

‘And you ask why I’m in a bad mood?’

‘The question was really just a way into finding out how the meeting went with the PM.’ Surreptitiously, Reid began to shuffle through the maps on the table until the General dragged them away from him and pulled Reid away to one side where they couldn’t be overheard.

‘I think he’s bloody losing it,’ the General growled quietly.

‘Oh?’

‘Look at the map. We’ve got five days before the enemy reaches us, maybe less. They’ve stopped annihilating the general population and are marching straight for us here. Their army now stands at somewhere around two million. They don’t eat, sleep, rest. The only way to stop them is to blow them into tiny little pieces, and even then they’re not dead. What’s left twitches and crawls under its own steam. I’ve seen the footage. It’s sickening.’

‘Ah. So the PM didn’t go for your nuclear option.’

‘No, he didn’t.’

‘A series of nukes secretly buried in their path, to be detonated
when the army is over them. Might take out, what, even a million of them? And irradiate half of England. I wonder why the PM wasn’t interested?’

The General glared; Reid would not have been so disrespectful a few weeks earlier. His bleeper went off, and when he checked the message he flung the device across the room in a fury.

‘Temper, temper,’ Reid cooed.

‘How can you be such a cold fish? Everything’s falling apart here because nobody has the backbone to make the tough decisions. Barring Kirkham coming up with something, the hidden nukes are the only chance we have. Yes, there would be some collateral damage, and I wouldn’t fancy taking a holiday in the Midlands for a while, but we have no other option.’

Reid turned towards the map, tracing an imaginary blast zone in the air in his line of vision. ‘What did the PM say?’

‘He vacillated. “Yes, it may be our only option.” But this, maybe that … “Let me think about it.” Blah, blah, bloody blah. Somebody’s put another plan to him.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘He dropped a few clues. Is it you?’ the General asked bluntly.

‘Not me.’

‘I bet it’s that bitch Manning. I have no idea what it could possibly be. We have no other weapons—’

‘Well …’ Reid interjected with a sly smile. ‘Things are always darkest before the dawn, General. Remember that.’

‘You can be a slimy little shit, Reid, but if you’ve got something going on that you can pull out of the hat, I’ll kiss you.’

‘Steady on, old chap.’ Reid tapped his nose. ‘We’re working on something.’

‘Well, work quicker. We’ve hardly got any time left.’ The General cracked his knuckles. ‘There’s something no one’s grasping. This power we’re all supposed to be so afraid of isn’t anywhere to be seen.’

Reid nodded; old news.

‘Why isn’t the Void here yet? Missed the train? Where is it going to turn up? At what point? Its army is winning the fight. Its generals are marching on the field. But still no sign of the real enemy. You’ve not sighted anything?’

‘We’ve got agents all over the damn place looking for the first
sign of arrival. Nothing so far. Maybe it won’t turn up until long after we’re all gone.’

‘We need to find it the minute it gets here, stop it instantly in its tracks.’

‘You think that’s possible?’

It was the General’s turn to smile slyly. ‘If it’s as powerful as it’s supposed to be, why does it need an army to prepare the way? Perhaps because it’s not so powerful after all. So, if we take out the army, it might not appear. Or maybe we can take it out the moment it arrives. Get your intelligence working on that, Reid.’

Reid considered the General’s words thoughtfully. ‘Good point. Why isn’t it here? Yes, thank you, General. I think I’ll do that.’

The General looked around furtively, then whispered, ‘I don’t know if the PM is the right person to be leading our defence. We need strong decisions, not weak-kneed umming and ahhing.’

‘What are you suggesting?’

‘Nothing just yet. But if we needed to replace him, would you be prepared to tell him to step down?’

Reid shook his head. ‘There’s nobody else in the Cabinet I’d like to see in the top job. Unless you’re putting yourself forward as a candidate?’

‘If I did, it would just be as an interim measure to see this crisis through. We need to get a grip, Reid. Five days tops and it’s all over. I’m going to need to issue the order on the nukes within twenty-four hours.’

‘Don’t do anything hasty, General. You might regret it.’

‘None of us is going to live to regret anything, Reid, if we don’t stop this. Don’t forget that.’ The General’s cold stare condemned Reid in an instant and then he walked away with the air of a man who had reached his limit.

In the depths of the Ashmolean Museum where the most powerful Government computers were housed, Kirkham watched the screen as the modelling wound towards its conclusion. Manning tapped her red nails on the desk top with irritation.

‘I find it very hard to concentrate while you’re doing that,’ Kirkham said with controlled exasperation.

‘And I find it very hard to wait while you continually come up with nothing.’

‘You know it’s not that simple,’ Kirkham protested. ‘This would have been nigh-on impossible even before the Fall when we had endless resources and unlimited time—’

‘No more excuses!’ she snapped. ‘Before the Fall, you wouldn’t have had a whole range of supernatural artefacts, energy sources and a whole new way of thinking to draw on. So stop whining.’

‘What you’re asking for is an understanding of the underpinning of reality, but even to begin to explain the concepts in layman’s language is—’ he began, but Manning cut him dead again.

‘I don’t want the mechanics, Kirkham.’ She prowled around the desk like a big cat, claws barely sheathed. ‘We know now that there are different levels of reality. Different dimensions. This is not theory any more. We know that there is a certain fluidity to these other dimensions—’

‘Dimensions isn’t really the right word—’

‘Shut up. We know that so-called magic – or the “new science” as you like to call it – can affect reality, too. So, is what I am suggesting possible?’

‘We’re talking about non-limited consciousness causing an effect at the quantum level. If reality is phase-locked like the light in a laser, then consciousness can—’