Omega

by Stewart Farrar

  If Dan had known more about Beehive than the vague rumours that were circulating, he could have answered Moira's question; and answered it precisely if he could have eavesdropped on the excellent lunch to which Harley was at that very moment entertaining the editor of the Daily Mirror in Beehive's Ministerial Mess. The Mirror had not, in Harley's view, been quite as understanding of the Government's attitude lately as he might have wished. Over the truite Jurassienne Harley was making it clear that for the editor ('and your charming wife, of course, my dear fellow') a safe berth underground once Beehive Red was ordered would be dependent upon such understanding.

  The editor was a very experienced journalist but physically unheroic, and he loved his wife; and after all (he told himself) only a minor shift of emphasis was being asked for… The Mirror toed the line.

  Of all this, Dan and Moira knew nothing. But they were in fact better informed than most of the public of the situation up and down the country because they were coming to be, informally and unexpectedly, a link in a growing Wiccan telephone network. They really owed this, indirectly, to Moira's parents who were now over twelve thousand kilometres away. Although Dan and Moira had not yet been publicly prominent in the witchcraft movement and had only been running their own small coven for three years, her parents had been very active and well-known; and so, since she was a child, everyone had also known Moira. Her father and mother had retired to New Zealand the year before to live with Moira's only brother (for which Moira, in the last weeks, had come to.be

  grateful), and she seemed to have inherited their wide circle of contacts. Now, as these realized that she and Dan were still unmolested and contactable, they were coming more and more to use them as an information-exchange centre.

  'I shall miss it when we take off,' Moira said. 'It's comforting to get some news at least – even if the news itself isn't very comforting. If you see what I mean.'

  Dan did, and told her: 'We mustn't make any notes but let's try to remember as much as we can about all these people – where they were when we last heard and so on. If things break down, it might be very useful to have all that tucked inside our heads.'

  Moira agreed, and from then on whichever of them took a call repeated all the details to the other while it was still fresh.

  But Moira's was not the only network. Karen Morley, too, had her friends and she was a capable organizer.

  Dr Stanley Friell, of the Banwell Emergency Unit, was a chemist not a physician. He had been attached to the Unit very early, as soon as its importance was realized, for although he was not yet thirty he was one of the most ingenious brains in his field. It was he who achieved the only success the Unit had been able to record so far – the discovery that the Dust, a complex and baffling assembly of organic molecules at least two of which were hitherto unknown, owed their disastrous interaction once they were absorbed into the human bloodstream to an alkaline catalyst which always accompanied them. Without this catalyst, they were harmless and the bloodstream broke them down almost at once. A simple gauze filter soaked in a mild acid – vinegar being ideal – neutralized the catalyst; so a breathing mask which anyone could make at home gave complete protection against the Dust. This information – and, indeed, the very existence of the Dust – had not yet been revealed to the public.

  Dr Friell was indifferent to the public, for he was an elitist to the marrow of his bones. His passion, on which he had written one or two brilliant if esoteric monographs, was the history of occult chemistry up to and including the Middle Ages. He had.made up, and tried out on himself, every known recipe for the hallucinogenic 'flying ointment' of the old witches; had experimented with the 'sacred mushroom' amanita muscaria and others less well documented; and had clarified several uncertainties about the drugs and poisons believed to have been used by sorcery's blacker brethren. He had an iron constitution and a will to match, so he emerged unscathed and unaddicted from his carefully controlled trials of the drugs and hallucinogens, and the poisons he tested only on laboratory rats.

  At first, his interest had been purely pharmaceutical but his researches into the strange world of the men and women who had once used these substances had brought him into contact with some of their modern counterparts, both reputable and disreputable, and he had been fascinated. He had toyed (though with him even 'toying' was an energetic and methodical process) with ritual magic of the Golden Dawn variety, rapidly attaining the grade of (3) = [8] Practicus in an easily overawed lodge. But although he was impressed by the system he found the ritual practice somewhat anaemic and transferred to one of the wholeheartedly sexual splinter groups of the Ordo Templi Orientis, where he had progressed to 70 Mystic Templar by the time he was summoned to Banwell. At the same time, out of curiosity, he had got himself initiated into an ex-Gardnerian coven of witches who had 'gone black'; privately he considered them ignorant dabblers but he maintained friendly contact with them as potentially useful. At least two of them he knew to be psychotic and he was very interested in the psychic power of insanity. He was a natural sensitive and had worked to develop the gift, and he could hardly help being aware of the psychic dynamite which lurked in the Banwell incurables.

  As one of the top researchers at the Unit, Dr Friell belonged to the handful of staff who were necessarily permitted to come and go while the ordinary doctors, nurses, and domestics were confined to the premises (a restriction which had been even more rigorously enforced since the disappearance of Nurse Eileen Roberts). Early in August he had to drive to London for consultation with a particular specialist, and having an evening to spare after his meeting he spent it, discreetly covering his tracks, with the High Priestess and High Priest of the 'black' coven. It was from them that he learned a very interesting piece of information and was armed with a map reference and a password.

  He lay awake in his hotel that night thinking carefully, re-examining and developing the seed of an idea which had been with him for the past two or three weeks. Next morning he started back to Banwell – by way of Savernake Forest. In the end he reached the Unit a day later than he had originally intended, tingling with well-concealed excitement. He was too senior for anyone to ask him why he was late.

  Ben Stoddart was, yet again, a guest on BBC's 'Paul Grant Hour'. The producer, high in his gallery, flicked his eye morosely back and forth across the bank of monitor-screens which faced him, remembering the morning's conference where he had suggested that Stoddart was being overexposed. His chief had answered smoothly: "We all know you have the interests of your programme at heart but don't rock the boat, there's a good chap,' – and the matter had been closed.

  The producer disliked everything Stoddart stood for, and hated the man himself even more because he could not deny he made for very gripping television.

  'Jack – a bit tighter on that profile,' he ordered into his microphone and saw Stoddart's head grow larger in No 2 camera's monitor. Fascinated, he watched the handsome lips moving.

  When the unthinkable happened it took the producer no more than a couple of seconds to realize that although Stoddart was still speaking, the sound had gone silent. He.turned his head quickly to the soundproof window on his right beyond which the sound booth lay and saw that Bernie had already reacted, so he issued no order, knowing that Bemie would trace and correct the fault all the quicker without interruption. Then, suddenly, over the visual of Stoddart still mouthing unaware,' a strange voice broke out: 'The Angels of Lucifer have condemned Ben Stoddart to death! The Angels of Lucifer…'

  The producer and Bcrnie had pounced on their buttons in the same instant and that was as far as the voice got, but it Was done, it was said, the pirate voice had already given its message to God knew how many millions from Land's End to John o'Groats. On the floor, of course, Ben Stoddart and Paul Grant still talked and smiled, having heard nothing; and the cameramen, though they must have picked it up on their gallery-fed earphones, did not waver. The producer handed over to his assistant, phoned the security men, and ran through to Bernie
's booth.

  They soon found the loop of tape, still running on a machine in an empty sound-editing cubicle, and the ingenious re-wiring which had made the interruption possible. They also found the time-switch which had triggered the device and which could have been set minutes or hours earlier. None of this highly professional sabotage bore any fingerprints, and although everybody who could possibly have committed it was grilled for hours, the culprit was never identified.

  Although the pirate broadcast was made in the middle of a BBC programme – at 9.43 pm, to be exact – ITN had a beat on its news coverage, to the BBC's chagrin. Seventeen minutes were quite enough for ITN to be able to lead 'News at Ten' with the story, whereas BBC I'S main news had already gone out at 9.00, and BBC 2's was not due till 10.40. BBC, of course, was able to hold on to Ben Stoddart for interview, but ITN smartly grabbed Quentin White and had him in their House of Commons interviewing studio by 10.03.

  'How seriously do you think this threat should be taken, Mr White?' the ITN man asked.

  'Very seriously indeed. The so-called Angels of Lucifer…'

  Had you ever heard of them before?'

  'Nobody has, to my knowledge. But the very name proclaims their allegiance – and who else but witches would threaten the life of Ben Stoddart, their staunchest opponent?

  The rats are at bay and they are showing their true colours. Rats always do when they are cornered. They have been cornered by the vigilance and courage of the Anti-Pagan Crusade, by the aroused conscience of the British public and by the prompt measures of the Government.'

  'If they are, as you say,' cornered – may they not be bluffing?'

  'It would be most dangerous to assume that. These people are ruthless, and they have secret supporters in key positions. The very way they issued their threat proves that. You're a television man; am I not right in saying the interruption must have been an inside job – and a technically difficult one at that?'

  'Yes to both questions,' the ITN man said, resisting the temptation to rub salt in the BBC's wounds, and went on: 'If the threat is serious, what is its nature? A physical one or a black magic one?' He felt a little foolish asking it, but White had asked him to during their brief preparation and he had to admit it was attention-grabbing.

  White, who had had no television experience before his election campaign but had quickly absorbed Stoddart's coaching, turned from facing the interviewer to gaze dramatically into the camera lens which had the red light over it.

  'Let no one be in any doubt about the nature of the threat,' he declared, separating the syllables as though he were handing out gold coin by coin. 'No physical assassin can reach Ben Stoddart – he is too well protected by his friends who know that since Midsummer he has incurred the vicious enmity of evil men and women. But these men and women have their own chosen weapons. For two or three centuries now, it has been fashionable to dismiss as a fairy-tale the old belief that one could sell one's soul to the devil in exchange for power in this world. I am not so sure that it can any longer be so dismissed. In the last decades, science itself has come to realize that the human mind has unsuspected latent abilities, to which it has attached modern-sounding labels such as telekinesis, ESP, the psi-factor and so on. I believe that the witches have been laughing behind the scientists' backs – for these new labels merely hide timeless facts, which the witches have known about, and used, since before written history. They have trained and developed these abilities in themselves as an athlete trains his muscles – and just like the athlete, because of that deliberate training they can, in their chosen field, achieve results which ordinary people cannot. And as for selling their souls to the devil – the phrase may be outdated, but the thing which it expresses is not. By deliberately abandoning all restraints of morality, humanity and compassion, these men and women avail themselves of the incalculable powers of darkness – the evil powers which those God-given restraints, in all decent humans, keep in check. And if that is not selling your soul to the devil in exchange for power – what is? I ask you, my friends – what is?… The Angels of Lucifer – and what a revealing name they have chosen 1 – the Angels of Lucifer are not threatening Ben Stoddart with the bullet or the knife. They are threatening him with those very powers for which they have sold their souls to Satan… Whether each of you, listening to me in the security of your own homes, can believe they are capable of carrying out that threat, is up to you to decide. But I believe that Ben Stoddart is in grave danger because here on earth he stands in the front rank of the hosts of God, and he is the declared target of God's enemies. So I ask you – all of you, whatever your beliefs – to fortify this great and saintly man with your prayers.'

  The Angels of Lucifer were the splash in every single morning paper (and a few hours later were big news in America, too, for Gene Macallister and Tonia Lynd had been busy all night). The pirate broadcast was news that could not be censored, because millions had heard it, so almost in relief the media went to town on the story. Quentin White's statement was quoted in full and set up the tone of editorial debate; he had shifted the emphasis, within minutes of the pirate broadcast, away from the threat of physical assassination to that of 'the powers of darkness' and there it stayed. It made much more dramatic reading and listening anyway, and the big question – 'Can they do it?' – could be expanded to fill as many column inches, or minutes of air time, as any editor or producer could wish. Everybody from the Archbishops of Canterbury ('yes'), Westminster ('yes' qualified) and York ('no') to the Professor of Parapsychological Studies at King's College, London ('five decades of clinical experiment have established beyond reasonable doubt…') and the Astronomer Royal ('telekinesis does not exist') was willing and eager to be quoted at length. Jungian psychologists clashed with Freudian, vicars with their own curates, and Mods with Rockers (the 1960s idiom was enjoying a mushroom revival among the trendier young this summer; it had begun to peter out, but Mods' 'no' and Rockers' 'yes’ gave it a new lease of life). Fleet Street astrologers contradicted each other as usual.

  Ben Stoddart, after a quick consultation with Quentin White before he had to appear on the BBC 2 news, had agreed that gallant defiance was the appropriate image for him especially after White's remark about 'the front rank of the hosts of God'; so Stoddart, while being careful not to contradict his colleague on the question of the reality of the powers of darkness, told his BBC viewers that he doubted whether 'these people could raise enough magical power to fry an egg' and challenged them to do their worst. His statement was printed next morning alongside White's, and most of the picture editors reinforced them with White looking like Savonarola and Stoddart looking like St George.

  In Beehive, Harley needed to do nothing except sit back and smile. 'How about your associative links now, Sir Walter?' he asked Jennings triumphantly. 'These Angels of Lucifer have played right into our hands. They've branded every witch in Britain as a potential black-magic murderer.'

  'Poor sods,' Sir Walter said. 'If you could take a referendum among witches today, ninety-eight per cent of them would condemn the Angels of Lucifer by every rule in their book. You do know that, don't you?'

  'Of course I do – but the public doesn't.' He chuckled. 'And all achieved by one five-second pirate broadcast. Marvellous, isn't it?'

  Sir Walter looked at him.thoughtfully. 'You didn't set it up yourself by any chance, did you?'

  'No, I didn't. But if I'd thought of it, I might have done.'

  Sir Walter said nothing; he still wasn't altogether sure.

  Five people, at least, were sure. Moira and Dan's coven had not heard the original pirate broadcast, but the BBC, having the tape in their possession, had naturally re-run it as part of their 10.40 news report. The coven, listening, had gasped simultaneously. They all recognized the voice as that of Bill Lazenby, a member of John Hassell's coven. He had never been publicly active so his voice was unlikely to be on file anywhere; but to the few who knew him, it was unmistakable. 'Oh, God,' Rosemary had cried. 'So they really mean
t it! It's that bitch Karen. What's she done to John – to all of them?'

  'John was a ripe plum after Joy was murdered,' Sally said. 'Someone a lot less clever than Karen could have made him go black. And Karen is clever. She won him over and swept the rest along with them.'

  'All the same, I never expected this – an all-out public attack, so soon’

  ‘Have they the power?'

  They all looked at Moira, who said: 'Frankly, I don't know. She is powerful – and harnessing John's bitterness – plus all the others…They might do it.'

  'I know it sounds crazy,' Rosemary said, 'but since we know where the attack's coming from – shouldn't we work to protect Stoddart?'

  'Him?' Dan snorted.

  'I know what Rosemary means,' Greg put in more calmly. 'Ben Stoddart's a bastard, of course – but if they managed to kill him, think of the repercussions. The Crusaders would go berserk.'

  They thought, they discussed, but as usual it was Moira who had the final say. 'Greg's got a good point but I'm afraid we'll have to stay clear of it. One of these days -I'm sorry, dreadfully sorry, but it's true – one of these days we're going to have to fight John and Karen head on. They've put themselves beyond the pale and Gods knows what they'll let loose. But when we do, we've got to win -and that means all the allies we can get. This isn't the time. We must wait for it – and meantime, no skirmishes with them. At the moment, we're too vulnerable. Karen's highly clairvoyant and she'd pick us up at once and turn on us. Right now we've got other things to concentrate on. Ben Stoddart must look after himself.'

  Dr Friell knew the outlines of the plan and many of the details – after all, he had suggested it in the first place and had provided all the inside information the Angels would need. The only thing he did not know was the timing of the raid; it had not been possible to finalize the date or the hour during their discussions in Savernake Forest, and they had agreed that any more communication between the Angels and Friell, once he had returned to Banwell, would be unwise. They had not even been certain, then, how the public threat to Stoddart's life would be made. John Hassell had merely said he had 'an idea about that' -an idea which had apparently borne fruit as the pirate broadcast. The threat had been made and all Stanley Friel could do was wait for the raid which might come any day, any hour… It was always possible, he realized, that the Angels of Lucifer did not entirely trust him; he doubted if that slant-eyed vixen Karen, who was clearly the driving force of the group, trusted anyone. Friell didn't resent it. Mistrust was sound procedure in guerilla operations. Outside the Savernake Forest group, Friel was the only one who knew the part the Banwell Emergency Unit was to play or even that it entered into the picture at all. They were right to be wary of him; if they had not been, he would have thought them naive and feared for the success of the plan.