Omega

by Stewart Farrar

  All the accounts and the retailers' receipts, Miss Smith would then address (personally sealing the envelope) to the Home Office, Department LB7. Payment always arrived by return of post and Miss Smith's final duty would be to reimburse the London Electricity Board and the others.

  Miss Smith, as has been remarked, was not a fool. Nine ratepayers of the borough had so far disappeared into File LB 0806, over the past year, and so far none of them had returned home. But these homes, she had soon become aware, were also on a Metropolitan Police list for periodic checking to make sure no harm came to them, and the police had their own keys. She guessed that the Post Office had their instructions, too.

  It was all so neat, so quiet. All the same, there had been whispers; and Miss Smith, who kept her ear to the ground, knew of worried relatives who had been visited by anonymous soothing officials, and who now wore a 'We could an if we would' air. It had also not escaped her attention that the names accumulating in File LB 0806 included a high proportion of technicians, as well as one nurse and one pest control officer.

  And now eighteen of them in one day – immediately after a nation-wide chain of local disasters which some said were a portent of worse to come. Eighteen people, with their immediate families if any, from a single London borough.

  Miss Smith had a strong instinct of survival and she had been thinking ahead for some time. She had converted all her savings into small valuables and rarities which she estimated had a good chance of retaining at-least a barter price in any circumstances. She also kept £800 in notes stitched into the lining of an anorak. It was a pity about her pension, but…

  She finished her day's work meticulously, and a busy day it was; none of the eighteen names was missed, though it cost the Council a lot in taxi fares, for which (and for the milk and newsagents' payments) she took care to reimburse herself from Petty Cash immediately. She said good night to her colleagues in exactly her usual manner.

  Then she caught a bus home, to her terraced house in Vicarage Road. She was as unobtrusive as possible about the final packing of her motor caravan which stood outside the front gate, but in fact there was little to do because she kept it always ready.

  She rolled up a note to the milkman and put it in an empty bottle; the pound note pinned inside it would pay for this week's milk so far. No problems with the newsagent because she always bought her papers over the counter on her way to work. She checked again that the electricity and gas were turned off at the mains.

  Everything ready. She picked up Ginger Lad under one arm, which started him purring. Thank God he hadn't been out courting, or she'd have had to wait for him. She'd never had the heart to have him doctored.

  With her free hand, she put the milk bottle on the step and double-locked the front door. Then she climbed aboard.

  She sat behind the wheel in a last moment of doubt, while Ginger Lad, quite undoubting, curled up on the seat beside her. Was she being too precipitate? It might be days, or it might be months

  She braced herself. Days or months, she had no intention of being caught in a great city when it happened.

  Miss Smith started the engine and drove off.

  Suddenly she chuckled, remembering her secret parting joke. She had added her own name to File LB 0806. After all, the LEB might as well get its money.

  'Your little "incident" rather missed the limelight, didn't it?' Jennings grinned.

  There were times when Harley found his ironical manner exasperating but he was too aware of Jennings' quality, and of his importance to his own private plans, to react to it outwardly.

  ‘We'll see,' he smiled back. 'Its coincidence with the earth tremors may turn out to be to our advantage in the end.'

  The four of them were meeting in very different surroundings from those of their last conference. This, too, was Harley's office; but here were no tall Whitehall windows, only grey concrete walls hung with maps and charts; no Adam fireplace, only an extractor grille through which the conditioned air whispered steadily. One feature alone echoed the Whitehall room, an Aubusson carpet. A little out of place two hundred metres below Primrose Hill, Harley realized, but he was, after all, the Permanent Secretary.

  As yet they were still on Beehive Amber so he spent about half his time here and half in Whitehall. In the unpublicized hierarchy which had been set up for Beehive, Harley was Chief Administrator of the London hive, responsible to the Prime Minister alone and senior to all the regional Chief Administrators. With Beehive Amber, only certain key personnel of the Beehive establishment – just over twenty per cent – were already in full-time residence; another five per cent, either because they were top officials like himself or because of the nature of their work, still commuted with Surface. The remaining three-quarters were on standby, awaiting Beehive Red. When Red was ordered, all would come below; only law enforcement units, intelligence agents and certain specialists need come and go from Beehive by one of the thirty-seven airlocked exits which were concealed all over London, or their equivalents around the regional hives. In the case of real surface chaos (the situation defined by various criteria in the Beehive directives as 'Category Five Disorganization') even these would be withdrawn; the airlocks would be steel-shuttered and Beehive would settle down, secure, fed, immune and disciplined, till Surface life was so weakened and demoralized that Beehive could send out its forces and take control. (Half a dozen secret exits would remain available whatever the situation, but these – which emerged in such places as a grocer's shabby garage in Camden Town and the up platform of Brixton underground station – were known only to Harley and to a handful of others, most of them in Intelligence Section.)

  Beehive, sealed off, could survive on normal rations and full establishment for two years and seven months. Power supplies would never run out, coming as they did from fourteen well-dispersed and interchangeable submarine-type nuclear reactors.

  When the time came for Beehive Red (it could be days, it could be months) individual orders would be impracticable. So would watertight security. 'Beehive Red' would be announced without explanation on television and radio; whereupon the remaining three-quarters would make for their designated entrances without further notice. According to plan, twenty-four hours should see virtually all of them underground, out of reach of alerted popular interference or sabotage. Martial law would then be declared. But that part of the plan had to remain elastic; there were too many imponderable factors.

  Harley was allergic to imponderable factors and worked round the clock to minimize them.

  One thing worried him constantly. Three-quarters of eighteen thousand people meant altogether too many possible leaks, even allowing for the fact that half of them were Servicemen who needed to know very little till their officers told them to move. And one or two of the more sensational continental newspapers had carried stories… Most of Britain must have heard hints of Beehive, however distorted; and Beehive Amber must have spawned more hints which would fall on much more attentive ears in the aftermath of the earth tremors.

  It was just as well, Harley thought, that the seismologists' reports were top secret (the real ones, of course, not the statements they were allowed to give to the media). These experts could not hide the inadequacy of their time-factor data but the secret reports showed their unanimous alarm. Harley had not only read the reports – he had cultivated the authors, with everything from flattery to alcohol. And with every day his conviction grew that Beehive Red was approaching rapidly.

  With these thoughts, as ever, hovering about the threshold of his mind, Harley said: 'I'm sure I don't have to tell you that a scapegoat may at any moment become an urgent necessity.'

  'You lost one of your men on Bell Beacon, didn't you?' General Mullard asked.

  'Yes, that was unfortunate. One doesn't like identifiable bodies getting into the hands of unbriefed authorities. So was the death of the Hassell woman. We don't want to provide the witches with any martyrs, especially young and beautiful ones. But I think something can be made
of Andrea Sutton, by way of compensation.'

  'The leader of the banner lot?'

  'Yes. I've seen the autopsy report. Multiple injuries -the burning motor-cycle ran over her and so did another that went out of control. But those injuries would be compatible with her already having been dead, considering how quickly it all happened.'

  'I don't follow you.'

  'Quite simple. There will be two witnesses at the inquest who will insist they saw a group of witches stab her in the heart, catch some of the blood in a bowl and run with it to their Great Altar.'

  'Duty outweighing perjury,' Jennings murmured. Harley chose not to hear him.

  'But the autopsy showed no stab wound?' the General asked.

  'The rib-cage was crushed by the motor-cycle.'

  'Any competent pathologist would still know.'

  'Of course, but that doesn't matter. The suggestion will have been made and I can see to it that it is headlined. The pathologist's denial will be accepted by the coroner but ignored by the rumour-mongers. The blood-sacrifice theory will very quickly become "fact" – all the more effectively because it will be believed to have been officially suppressed. And fortunately, Andrea Sutton was President of the Anti-Pagan Crusade – a non-denominational group which has had little impact so far… She wasn't an agent of ours, by the way, though she was manoeuvred into this demonstration by – er – appropriate influences.' He gave his thin smile. 'And further appropriate influences have arranged that her Vice-President and successor will be the main attraction on BBC 1'S "Paul Grant Hour" the day after the inquest. He is Ben Stoddart, a quick-witted speaker of considerable personal magnetism. Grant himself has been briefed… I think, gentlemen, that a sacrificed Andrea Sutton will prove a much more effective martyr than a mere naked blonde.'

  It was not easy to return to normal but they did their best, for Diana's sake in particular. Mercifully, the child had not seen Joy's murdered body; her face had been buried in Dan's shoulder and he had managed to keep it there. But the uproar, the violence, the thunderous motor-cycles, inexplicably shattering a treat which she had been promised for weeks, had terrified her. She had been sick twice on the way home to Staines, and had whimpered herself to sleep in Moira's arms. Moira had knelt by the small bed, cradling and soothing her, till her knees ached.

  When Diana had finally dozed off through sheer exhaustion, Moira had joined the other three downstairs. They had talked for a while, disjointedly, and then had set up an altar in the living room and cast a Circle. The familiar ritual had calmed them a little, and when they were ready they had sat facing inwards, instinctively drawing closer to each other, linking hands, woman, man, woman, man, striving to harmonize and activate the group mind which they had spent the past three years building up. (They missed old Sally, but all her lights had been out when they reached home and they had decided against waking her up with their terrible news.) When Moira had felt the power rising in them, she had begun to speak quietly, invoking an image of peace, conquering and transcending all disaster; then projecting it outwards, to the child upstairs, to bereaved John whose torment they could fee! as though he were in the room with them, to Joy's astral consciousness brutally and prematurely torn from its lovely, and loved, physical vessel… They had all felt drained but at least, for an hour, enfolded by the peace which they had invoked.

  Moira had banished the Circle and they put on their clothes again, speaking little and softly. With the habitual exchange of kisses, Rosemary and Greg had bid them 'blessed be' and gone to their own home next door.

  Moira had pressed herself close against Dan in their bed, needing the contact, clasping his hand to her breasts with her own. They had lain like that for a while, drawing on each other's strength; then her need for him had pervaded all her levels and she had turned in his arms, fondling him and moaning. She had been ready for him and he for her, and foreplay was, for once, forgotten; they had merged compulsively, with a swift and urgent climax, and had flung their arms wide as though to push away the terror with their passion.

  As the tide ebbed, a half-remembered couplet had slipped unbidden into Moira's mind:

  And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

  Ancestral voices prophesying war.

  Dan had felt the tears suddenly on her checks and had held her close, murmuring to her wordlessly till they both slept.

  Next morning, breakfast had been dominated unexpectedly by the eight o'clock radio news. Moira and Dan had listened to the headlines, wide-eyed; almost at once Rosemary and Greg, their coffee-mugs still in their hands, had run through the gap in the fence between their gardens, calling to them to switch on if they hadn't already. The four of them had stood round the set, stunned by the list of large and small disasters that had spanned Europe during the night. When it was over, Dan had switched off and they had stared at each other.

  It had been Rosemary who finally broke the silence. 'For God's sake! Do you know – I'd forgotten that bloody earthquake! It was so much part of the whole thing that I'd forgotten it!'

  So, it seemed, had they all. Now reminded and abruptly aware of the scale of it, they had all talked at once, trying to take it in, till Dan had noticed the clock. He had hurried off to his estate agency partnership, Greg to his motor repair shop, Rosemary to'her till in the supermarket. Moira had been left suddenly alone; Diana was still asleep upstairs (let her sleep, poor mite) and Sally next door was not yet about.

  On an impulse, she had gone to her Tarot pack, shuffled and cut the major arcana and the four aces, and dealt them in a Tree of Life layout:

  The Hanged Man

  Ace of Pentacles reversed

  The Hermit reversed

  Death

  Justice reversed

  The Tower

  The Moon reversed

  The Devil

  The Wheel of Fortune reversed

  The Lovers

  She had stared sombrely at the layout for a full ten minutes. If that's how our world stands, she had told herself, last night was only a beginning.

  She had hardly dared to deal out the three qualifying cards, but knowing that she must not baulk at them, she had turned them face upwards firmly.

  The High Priestess – the Chariot – the Star.

  Moira had drawn a deep breath and then said out loud: 'So it's up to me, Lady, isn't it?'

  Since then, a week had passed; a week of unnatural and uneasy calm throughout Europe. There were riots in Brussels, Athens, and Turin but in each of these places there had already been some explosive local controversy which natural disaster had merely detonated.

  Where there had been damage, people were busy repairing it; where there had been none, they were busy discussing it. Opinions were bandied about and prophecies made, from ostrich-like to apocalyptic. But in fact there was nothing for the prophets to get their teeth into and everyone knew it. If there was real information available, the authorities were keeping it to themselves.

  The Prime Minister appeared on television and said nothing with artfully homely eloquence.

  In the Mackenzie household, Diana seemed to have forgotten Bell Beacon, though Moira and Dan watched her carefully for any recurrence of distress. Sally next door was splendid; she seemed to absorb the double shock of the earthquake news and the Bell Beacon shambles like a soldier to whom catastrophe was commonplace and concentrated on keeping Diana amused and on seeing that Moira was left alone as little as possible when Dan was at work.

  'Don't brood, pet,' she had told Moira firmly on the first day. 'Gets you nowhere. Joy's dead, may the Goddess rest her, and you can't bring her back. Out of our hands. Our job's the living. Damn it, I'm out of tea. Make me a pot, there's a good girl.'

  Moira had laughed, helplessly, for the first time in many hours. Sally had smiled, with a shrewd eye on her – for signs of hysteria, Moira knew; and the knowledge helped her to keep a grip on herself.

  As the days went by, their life appeared to regain its normal rhythms. But Moira had a strong sense of forebo
ding which she could not shake off; nor could she be certain in her own mind how much of that foreboding was personal, on behalf of her family and her coven, and how much of it was on a larger scale altogether.

  One anxiety was already personal; Dan's business became suddenly slack. Two years earlier, Dan and his friend Steve Gilchrist had bought up a near-moribund estate agency, with its few clients and tenuous goodwill, and had set about reviving it. Steve had put up two-thirds of the capital, but Dan had been the one with the drive and the ability to get on with clients. They had done well so far and the office on the High Street had become bright and busy. But after the tremors, day by day more of the country properties on their lists were withdrawn from the market. In most cases only vague reasons or none were given, but one client at least was frank.

  'If we get more quakes I'll feel a dam' sight safer out there in the woods,' he told Dan. 'And if things break down and there's violence, who the hell wants to be in London?' Dan, who for all his energy was perhaps too honest to be a tycoon-class salesman, admitted that he had a point.

  The partners knew that the trend was two-edged; prices of the country places which did remain on offer would rocket. But any benefit to them would be transient, because if the alarm continued the market would soon dry up altogether.

  Moira thought about asking for her old job back, to bring more money into the house if Dan's business met with prolonged difficulties. She had been a fashion buyer at Debenhams, the big department store in Staines, and only recently they had asked her if she would return, but she and Dan were agreed that she should stay at home till Diana started school. They might have to reconsider this attitude if things got worse. She kept the thought in reserve for the moment, however; only extreme pessimism would make Dan accept it and she did not want to disturb him until she felt it was absolutely necessary. Besides, her intuition nagged at her with another thought: if things really got worse, would their problems in fact be one of money?