Omega

by Stewart Farrar

  Warmed by the encounter, Dan and Moira allowed themselves the relaxation of a drive round the shore road of Lake Vyrnwy which Greg and Rosemary had told them was beautiful. An artificially-created reservoir almost eight kilometres long, the lake ran from north-west to south-east between steep mountains, the dam at its lower end lying about three kilometres north of New Dyfnant. Another village, Llanwddyn, was in the river valley just downstream of the dam, and they knew from Peter that the people there had been in a very nervous state since the earth tremor. If another worse shock were to breach the dam, Llanwddyn would inevitably be badly hit, possibly destroyed. New Dyfnant was spared that fear at least, being well into the edge of the Forest and a good fifty metres higher than the lake surface. Dan and Moira took the minor road on the New Dyfnant side of the river, avoiding Llanwddyn.

  They drove past the dam and followed the south-western shore which lay in the shadow of the mountains while the opposite bank, seven or eight hundred metres across the water, was bathed in sunlight, its reflection cats-pawed by little breezes and punctuated here and there by rings expanding and fading where a fish had jumped. 'Brown trout and rainbow trout,' said Dan, who as usual had done his homework.

  'Greg's right,' Moira said. 'This is a beautiful part of the country. If we have to be gypsies, I'm glad we chose here.’

  'Yes.'

  They drove in silence for a few minutes and then stopped to admire a waterfall feathering and bouncing down the mountain. They were not the only visitors; an elderly cyclist squatted by the roadside gazing up at it, his cycle and rucksack on the ground beside him. They called a cheerful 'Good afternoon' to him, and would have passed on to walk up to the fall but something about the man's laboured gesture of acknowledgement made Moira turn back. The man smiled up at her almost apologetically. Moira noticed his collar.

  'Are you all right, father?' she asked.

  'Just a bit tired, my dear, that's all. I've cycled rather longer than I should have done today, I think. When the sun shines like this, it's all too easy to forget one is not a young man any more… I'll be fine again when I've rested.'

  'I don't think you will,' Moira told him, and turned to call 'Dan I Isn't there a thermometer in the first-aid kit?'

  The old priest protested feebly but accepted the thermometer which Dan put under his tongue and stayed obediently silent till it was taken out again.

  'Thirty-eight point six,' Dan read. 'Father, we're putting that bike of yours in the car and driving you to the doctor in New Dyfnant.'

  'But I'm sure I'll…'

  'No argument, now. You're ill.'

  The priest sighed and said half to himself: 'Back to the habitations of men. God help me, that's what I was running from.'

  Moira sat down beside him. 'What do you mean, father?'

  'Take no notice of me, my dear, I'm a foolish old man. And a cowardly one, I think… At the moment – and may God forgive me for saying it – I am weary of towns and villages and the stupidity and cruelty of men.' He craned his neck back and looked wistfully up at the mountain. ' "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help"… Perhaps you're right and I am ill. I must certainly sound a bit delirious. I'm very grateful for your help and if it's not taking you out of your way, it would be very good of you to drop me off at a doctor's.'

  They put his machine on the roof-rack and him and his pack in the car and turned around to go back to New Dyfnant. But Moira, who had taken the driving seat, paused with her hand on the ignition key, her intuition nagging at her. She took her hand away again and asked: 'What did you mean, exactly, father? Were you planning to be a hermit?'

  'For a while, my dear, yes – I was planning to do just that. To escape to these forests, as I used to do thirty or forty years ago for my holidays when I was a young curate, away from the clamour of men. I've always found it easier to hear God's voice when man isn't trying to interrupt… But it looks as though God has other plans for me.'

  'Perhaps not, after all… Look, father – we're camping up in Dyfnant Forest, eight of us altogether. One of us is a trained nurse. We could take you back with us and she could look at you. If she says you must see a doctor, well, that'll be it, I'm afraid; we'll have to take you to the village. But if she says you'll be all right, why don't you be our guest for a while? We have a little spare tent and you could sleep warm and dry.' She smiled back at him. 'Be a hermit in the forest but with square meals and a fire to sit by in the evenings.'

  The old priest gazed at her, speechless, and she went on: 'There's just one thing you ought to know, though. We've run away from the cruelty of man, too. Six of the eight of us – including us two – are witches. I hope you don't mind.'

  To her surprise, he almost laughed. 'Witches. How very appropriate! In two ways, actually.'

  ‘Oh?'

  'The first way: do you know the parable of the Good Samaritan?' 'Of course.'

  'But do you realize the point of it? Very few people do, I find… Our Lord always spoke directly to his hearers in language they would understand; he spoke as a fisherman to fishermen, as a peasant to peasants, as a priest to priests… And to his audience the striking thing about that particular parable would be that the Samaritan was a heretic – a religious untouchable. It would be almost shocking to them – that the one who rescued the afflicted wayfarer and showed his compassion and love was a heretic… You see what I mean by "appropriate"?'

  Dan smiled. 'A bit greener than the road from Jerusalem to Jericho – but I take your point… Come on, darling, let's get him home. The poor man's shivering.'

  Moira started up and asked as she drove: 'What was your other reason for saying it was appropriate, father?'

  The priest sighed. 'That is a longer and sadder story, I'm afraid. May I save it for that fireside you spoke of?'

  Eileen's ruling was that Father Byrne need not see a doctor unless he failed to improve in the next day or two; but she vetoed the tent because the site was subject to morning ground-mist. She and Angie would have moved out of their caravan and bedded down with the others, to give the patient a more suitable bunk; but Peter, arriving as the matter was being discussed, vetoed that in turn. Father Byrne would sleep in his trailer and he would borrow the little tent for himself. The old priest tried to argue with all of them that he was being a nuisance but was firmly overruled.

  'There's nothing in the parable about the man arguing with the Samaritan,' Moira told him, 'so stick to the text.' Father Byrne was overcome with laughter till he had to be patted on the back and the matter was settled.

  An hour or two later, full of hot dinner and cocooned in blankets on a camp-chair by the fire, he told them his story. He had been for many years a parish priest in Liverpool, and although he spoke modestly of it, they could imagine that he had been a devout and hard-working one. He had had no more than the usual problems and crises of urban priesthood until the last few weeks because until then his ' views had not clashed with those of his parishioners. But with the explosion of the witch-hunt, everything had changed.

  'Don't misunderstand md,' he said. 'I believe that witchcraft is a mistaken creed. Many good people follow it -and I have no doubt at all that that includes you, my new friends. I believe that in spite of your goodness, you have strayed from the truth. But that is for you to decide – and I believe, equally profoundly, that it is against God's law to try to impose a decision on you by legislation, persecution, mob violence or the burning of homes. Such methods have been tried again and again over the centuries and they have achieved nothing but the corruption of the persecutors. When this new persecution began, I stood up in my pulpit and condemned it.' He gave a diffident half-smile. 'I can be very vehement when I believe that I am right – perhaps too vehement for wisdom.

  'At any rate, I am afraid that a majority of my flock disagreed with me. The Crusade stormtroopers – and I used that word in my sermon – are very active in our parish, and I made it clear that Christian or not, they were far worse than the witches becaus
e they were motivated by intolerance and hatred; and in my experience the witches are not so motivated.' He half-smiled again. 'Maybe that was overstating it; there are wicked witches just as there are wicked Christians. But in our parish, certainly at the time, it was the Crusaders who were guilty of intolerance and hatred -and quite a number of them were members of my congregation. As their priest, I had no choice but to say so.'

  The smile had disappeared now. He said, wearily: 'I was mobbed outside my own church.'

  There was silence around the camp-fire for a while. Then Rosemary asked: "Did they hurt you?'

  'Physically? Oh, nothing much; it was not that… My curate – and it is not for me to judge him, he is young and fiery, as I was myself once – he disagreed with me, root and branch. To him, the witches were Antichrist, to be stamped out… He went to the bishop. And I am afraid the bishop supported him. He told me, in so many words, to watch my tongue.' Father Byrne sighed. 'And so I did, though with difficulty; I believe in obedience though not to the exclusion of all else… I even kept quiet after this latest Order in Council when witchcraft was made illegal. As if you can make conscience illegal!… But I could not evade my own conscience indefinitely. A man came to me for confession… I could not tell you, of course, in the ordinary way – but he made it public himself. I knew he was a Crusader and had been out at night smashing windows, and worse, and I knew he had every intention of doing so again. I had to refuse him absolution because he was frankly, even blatantly, unrepentant… My curate took him to the bishop who gave him absolution himself and suspended me from my parochial duties. He put my curate in temporary charge of the parish.'

  ‘I don't know the rules of your Church,' Dan said. 'But couldn't you have gone to the archbishop?'

  Father Byrne shook his head. 'Whether I could or not hardly matters. The man I'd refused to absolve told the whole story, in public, from a Crusader platform. The audience went straight to the presbytery and smashed up all my belongings. They left the curate's alone… I was out at the time, fortunately, perhaps. When I came home and saw what had happened, I went into my church and prayed for guidance. And the mountains called me – by God's will,

  I humbly believe… That was two nights ago. And here I am, my Samaritan friends.' 'Le cuidiu De,' Peter said quietly. 'Failte romhat’ The old man's eyes lit up. 'An bhfuil tu o Eireann

  freisin?'

  'taim’

  ‘Holy Mother, it seems a thousand years since I heard my native language!… Kerry, I'd say?'

  'Right, father. I was born in Kenmare. And I recognized your Galway accent as soon as I met you.'

  'And if that's not a fitting-exit-line,' Eileen laughed, 'I don't know what is. Take him off to bed, Peter. Nurse's orders.'

  Moira and Dan sat in their tent-mouth in the moonlight, long after everyone else was asleep. Neither of them had spoken for quite a while when Dan asked: 'What on earth are we gathering together here, darling missus?'

  'The Goddess alone knows,' Moira answered him. 'And that's not being pious. I mean it.'

  13

  ‘For God's sake, Harley,' Jennings said, 'Beehive Red will be any day now. Which means your experts believe the big quake is any day after that. And the big quake means the Dust…'

  ‘We don't know that, Sir Walter,' Harley told him. 'The Dust may have been an isolated phenomenon. Several of those same experts believe it was.'

  'Isolated? In twenty or thirty places all over Europe, rather more in the States and Canada and however many in Russian and China?'

  'So it is suggested. That the Dust was released by the first, untypical, disturbances of the Earth's crust, under pressures which were thus dissipated. Further disturbances will not release more, because although they are expected to be more violent, the pockets of Dust have already been breached.'

  'Bullshit. A more violent quake might breach deeper and bigger pockets.'

  'Are you a geologist, Sir Walter?'

  'No, I'm bloody not. But I know bluff and floundering when I see it. And your experts are guessing-. God knows what the next quake may let loose – because I'm sure they don't. Nor you.'

  'I will admit that we are having to work on probabilities. And that involves taking calculated risks.'

  ‘With other people's lives? Millions of my members -or had you forgotten I'm General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress, in this cosy little power-drunk cabal we've got down here?'

  Harley paled with anger. Jennings was notoriously blunt, but 'power-drunk' was overstepping the mark. ‘I have not forgotten,' he said icily. 'The Beehive administration -the effective Government of United Kingdom – is the guardian of the long-term interests of the people. And they include your members.'

  'When men like you start talking about "the people",' Sir Walter snorted, 'I don't know whether to laugh or throw up. I'm cynical enough, God knows, or I wouldn't be in your bloody cabal. But you, Harley – you take the cake… I wouldn't have reached General Secretary and a flipping knighthood if I hadn't known from way back that people have to be manipulated. But manipulation's one thing – and gambling on their lives is another.'

  'I don't see…'

  'Come off it, of course you see. If your experts are wrong and the Dust gets loose on a big scale – tens of millions of your "people" could go incurably mad, and all because you wouldn't make an announcement about the vinegar masks Long-term interests, eh?'

  'Really, my dear chap – you're talking wildly. "Tens of millions!" The total of incurable inmates of the Emergency Units, since the Midsummer tremors, has been one hundred and three.'

  'The total of inmates. They're all incurable.'

  'Still only a hundred and three. All located, rounded up and isolated, with remarkable efficiency. And next time, even if there should be another Dust outbreak – which, as I said, is regarded as unlikely – our people will be prepared and will isolate the victims with even greater speed… In the present crisis, Sir Walter, we must face the hard fact that the possibility of two or three hundred Dust casualties is less important than the panic and disruption that could be caused by the announcement you ask for.'

  'If it is only two or three hundred.'

  'The considered opinion of my experts – who are not so stupid as you appear to think – is that there will be fewer than that and probably none at all.'

  'A moment ago,' Sir Walter pointed out, 'you said "several" of your experts held that view. Are you now saying it's all of them?'

  'The ones I find most convincing.'

  'But they could be wrong.'

  'I repeat – we are having to work on probabilities.'

  The TUC man was on his feet now, pacing about Harley's office. 'And you have the final decision on those probabilities?… Two or three months ago, you seemed to regard the four of us – you, me, Stayne, and General Milliard – as the power behind the throne, the real deciders. 'The key minds in the key positions", I think your phrase was. Is it now reduced to you’

  'By no means. But somebody has to make the on-the-spot judgements.'

  Involving millions of people?… All right, I'm on the spot too, right now. Where are Stayne and the General? What do they think about it?'

  'Lord Stayne is at the Glasgow Beehive, conferring with his shipyard people. The General is fully occupied with the Army's preparations for Beehive Red.'

  ‘I repeat – what do they think about delaying the announcement on vinegar masks?'

  'In a day or two, they should both be available for a meeting. You can ask them then.'

  'Unless Beehive Red intervenes, when they'll be too busy.'

  Harley shrugged without speaking. Sir Walter leaned his knuckles on the front of Harley's desk and stared at him with the eyes that had quelled more than one rebellious Congress.

  'Do you know what, Reggie boy? I think you regard us as useful yes-men – just like our precious Prime Minister. Well, watch it. I'll work with you, because I think your original idea about "key minds" was a sound one. But minds, not bloody string-pupp
ets. You're not God, you know. And I can still pull a few strings myself.'

  With that, he left the office. Harley sat for several minutes, his lips pursed. 'Reggie boy', indeed!… He had a prudent respect for ability and a shrewd gift for recruiting and exploiting it, but buried deeper within him was an ancestral contempt for the common herd – and Jennings was of that herd, for all his brilliance, his success, his knighthood. It only took one phrase of calculated disrespect to trigger off Harley's atavistic hatred in full flood. He allowed himself to wallow in it for a while and then took himself in hand. This would not do, he could not afford emotional reactions. He would have to watch himself.

  And watch Sir Walter Jennings, even more carefully.

  If Philip had not noticed the bruises, he doubted whether Betty would have told him. Last night she had (he now realized) deliberately dimmed the light before they went to bed and had undressed and climbed in beside him without turning her back. He had been very tired after a long and physically active day's work and must have fallen asleep at once, but he had wakened briefly once or twice during the night to find her restless, wriggling and rearranging herself as she sometimes did when she had indigestion. He had asked her if she was all right but she had only murmured wordlessly as though she were still asleep.

  This morning, when the alarm clock buzzed, she was still heavily unconscious. Philip got up and made tea, dressing while the kettle boiled and then took a cup to her; she liked to be wakened for her tea if she had outslept him. He put the cup beside the bed and, as his habit was, pulled back the covers to wake her by kissing her between the shoulder-blades.