9781629270050-Text-for-ePub-rev

by Unknown

  While the drones multiplied, the people’s numbers diminished. Less than half of the original party of ten thousand remained. The people watched what was happening in the world, dismayed at the violence and casual destruction of rainforests, but powerless to intervene. However, they laid plans for the day that they received the message from their home planet. Though they despaired about whether there would be anything left worthy of calling their homeland, they never gave up hope. And, at last, around three weeks ago, the message came.

  The people swung into action.

  * * * * *

  Peter stopped talking and, for a few moments, there was silence. Tom broke it.

  “These drones . . . They’re us, humans, right?”

  “Yes,” said Peter.

  “And you’re one of the ‘people’, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you came here five thousand years ago. You’re thousands of years old.” Tom’s voice was flat, without inflection.

  “That’s right,” said Peter. “I know it’s difficult to believe. . . .”

  “I believe you,” said Ceri from the back seat.

  Tom turned round to look at her.

  “How on earth can you believe him?” Tom realised that his voice was a little strident, but he could do nothing for now to moderate it. Dusty was looking at him, ears cocked. “He’s obviously crazy.”

  “Then how do you explain what happened at my house?” said Ceri. “Dusty howling, that sense of something inside our heads, taking over our minds. Peter grabbed us and the sensation went away. He saved us from whatever it was.”

  “I can’t explain that,” Tom admitted. “But that doesn’t prove he’s from another planet or that he’s ancient. How can that be possible?”

  Ceri shrugged. “I don’t know, but I still think he’s telling the truth.”

  Tom made a dismissive noise, a ‘pfft’ sound, and faced the front again. He was just about to open his mouth to say something else when a movement the other side of the road caught his attention. Peter had obviously seen it, too. He was already slowing down.

  Peter brought the Range Rover to a halt and got out. Tom and Ceri followed.

  “Stay, Dusty,” Tom called to the dog, who seemed happy to oblige.

  On the other side of the carriageway, a man was walking, stumbling, through the snow. Blood poured from a large gash in his forehead, turning his face into a red mask and staining the front of his shirt. He wasn’t wearing a coat. He seemed unaware of the three people approaching him until they were right up to him. He stopped and stared at them blankly. He was shivering.

  “Hey,” said Tom. “Where are you going?”

  “Hnggh,” said the man and Tom wondered for a moment whether he had broken his jaw or bitten off his tongue. Then: “London.”

  “London?” said Tom. “That’s a long way to walk. Especially in this weather.” Tom glanced down at the man’s feet. They were shod in navy blue plimsolls that were already sodden. His feet must be frozen, Tom thought.

  Tom glanced at his companions, waiting for them to say something. But Ceri was looking at the man with a twisted, horrified expression on her face. She didn’t seem inclined to join in the conversation. Peter was regarding the man intently.

  “No,” said the man, though nobody had spoken. “Got to.”

  He wafted his hands in front of his bloody face as though swatting away a bothersome fly, then stumbled forward. Tom went to put his arms across him, afraid he was going to fall.

  “NO!” the man screamed in his face and Tom took a step back. “London!”

  The man continued stumbling forward, brushing Tom’s shoulder as he passed.

  “Let him go,” said Peter. “There’s nothing we can do to stop him.”

  Ceri had started to cry, clutching her hands to her mouth and staring after the man as he shambled away.

  “Look at the state of him,” said Tom. “He’s not going to last an hour out here dressed like that.”

  “Maybe that will be better,” said Peter.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I tried to persuade him,” said Peter. “But I can’t overcome the power of the Commune. He’s been called. He has to go to London and there’s nothing any of us can do to interfere. Come on, we need to carry on.”

  Peter turned and started walking back to the Range Rover. Ceri followed him.

  Tom looked at the man. He was now twenty yards away.

  “Hey!” Tom called after him. “Everyone’s dead in London. Why don’t you come with us? You’ll be warm. We’ve got food.”

  The man didn’t give any indication that he had even heard. Tom watched him for a few moments longer. Feeling sick, Tom returned to the Range Rover.

  * * * * *

  The engine of the Sea King sounded incredibly loud in the silence that had fallen on London. Birds in trees around the airbase took to the air in alarm.

  Wallace spoke to them before they boarded the helicopter.

  “They tell me this thing has a range of almost seven hundred miles,” he said. “That should be enough to find them and get back here in it. Good luck.”

  “Thanks,” said Bishop. “But luck won’t come into it.” He looked at Diane. “Still coming?”

  She nodded. In one hand, she tightly clutched the bag containing the submachine gun and the pistol.

  In a crouch that comes automatically when running towards a stationary helicopter with blades awhirl, Diane and Bishop reached the machine and climbed aboard. Bishop took the pilot’s seat and Diane strapped herself into the seat next to him, though she would be no use as a co-pilot—she didn’t know the first thing about flying a helicopter.

  Bishop donned a pair of earphones with a microphone attached and motioned to her to do the same with the set that lay on the dashboard in front of her. When Bishop spoke, she could hear him clearly above the drone of the engine and clatter of the rotors.

  The helicopter lurched and jerked into the air. For a sickening moment, Diane was staring through the glass windscreen of the chopper directly at the runway.

  “Oops,” said Bishop. “I’m a little out of practice. But don’t worry, I’ll soon get the hang of it.”

  Diane was glad to hear it. She had only been in a helicopter once before, one that had flown over the Grand Canyon. That had been a completely different-looking machine, with a windscreen like a glass bubble. This one had a flatter windscreen, more like a car’s, divided into five sections. She had been acutely aware that the helicopter in the States flew on just one engine. Although she’d been informed that this one possessed two engines, and they wouldn’t be flying over a mile-deep gash in the ground during this flight, she nevertheless felt small and vulnerable.

  The chopper smoothed out as it gained height and they began to fly north-west. Diane relaxed a little. The yellow Sea King seemed more dependable to her than the black, smaller, but quicker, nippier machine she’d been in before; more cumbersome, maybe, but steady and reliable: a bumble bee to a dragon fly.

  “It’s equipped with radar,” said Bishop, pointing at a circular screen. “But I don’t think we’ll need it.”

  “Why?” said Diane, her voice sounding tinny to her ears.

  “Look where we’re headed.”

  Diane looked. Ahead of them a low bank of cloud was approaching that seemed to stretch away before her eyes, covering the whole country to the north. She lowered her gaze and could see green fields beyond the edge of the city. The green did not extend far. It soon gave way to whiteness.

  “The snow’s melted in London,” said Bishop. “But not further up by the look of it. That should slow them down. If we keep below the cloud, just high enough to avoid trees and pylons, we should even be able to make out tyre tracks.”

  “That doesn’t explain why we won’t need to use the radar,” said Diane. “There’ll be thousands of survivors on the move. How will we know which is Ronstadt?”

  “For a start, darling, the radar won’t tell
us which one is Ronstadt either. But we’ll know it’s him the moment we spot him.”

  Diane bit her tongue to keep back the retort she wanted to shoot back at his term of address. Instead, she said, “How will we know it’s him?”

  “Easy. He’ll be the only one going north.”

  * * * * *

  The only sound that intruded above the purr of the Range Rover’s engine was Ceri’s gentle sobbing. A little under a mile further on, they passed a car on the opposite carriageway that appeared to have skidded off the road and struck a tree. Wisps of steam still drifted into the air from the crumpled bonnet.

  “He must have been driving that,” said Tom.

  “He wasn’t the first, you know,” said Peter quietly.

  “Not the first what?”

  “Not the first survivor we’ve passed who’s been heading south to London.”

  “I haven’t seen any others.”

  “I haven’t seen them either,” said Peter. “But I’ve sensed them. Since they were called, their minds have been open to me. Two or three passed nearby when we were in the pub. That man was the second we’ve passed today. The first was a mile or two to the east. That seems to be the limit at which I’m aware of them.”

  The sound of Ceri’s sobbing had stopped. Tom turned round to look at her. She had fallen asleep, half lying across the back seat, her head next to Dusty’s basket. The dog was asleep, too.

  Tom kept his voice low.

  “What did you mean earlier when we were by that man? You said words to the effect that he’d be better off dropping dead than getting to London.”

  Peter thought for a moment. He, too, kept his voice low.

  “Remember the part of the story where we—the ones who’d survived the journey from the craft to land—held a Commune and called the inhabitants of Britain to Salisbury Plain?”

  “Ye-es.”

  “Well, the same thing’s happening now. The remaining people of my kind, almost five thousand of them, have held a Commune. That’s when everyone’s minds join together and can reach out to influence dro . . . er, humans. We haven’t been able to do that for a long time. Too many humans, not enough of us. And the human mind has grown too powerful. The only reasons that the Commune has worked now is that the survivors are weak and bewildered and alone. Even so, forcing them to go to London is about the limit of what the Commune could achieve. As the survivors arrive and start congregating, they will become stronger and the ability to influence will lessen further. And so the reason for my comment about that man—I suspect that they are doing something to the survivors as they arrive. Something that will give them complete control over them. Something like. . . .”

  “A lobotomy?” Tom’s hands clenched in his lap.

  “I fear so. They will need to destroy or disable a good portion of the frontal lobes, the areas of your brain that have most developed and that give you the ability to keep us out.”

  “Nice,” said Tom, struggling now to keep his voice down. He could feel the earlier stridency trying to return.

  “No,” said Peter. “It’s barbaric. I’d clench my fists too if I were you. But most of my kind won’t see it that way. They still regard you as drones.”

  “And you don’t?” Tom forced his hands to relax.

  “No,” said Peter. “I married a human.”

  “Megan was human?”

  “Yes. She died in my arms of old age. I still looked the same as the day we’d first met.”

  “Did . . . did you have children?”

  Peter uttered a low laugh. “I couldn’t have given Megan children even if I’d wanted to. She knew that and accepted it.”

  “You mean, you can’t. . . . ?”

  “Not in the same way. My kind seldom reproduces.” Peter’s tone suggested that he wasn’t keen on talking any more about that.

  Tom didn’t want to push him and make him clam up. He still had other questions.

  “So, you can’t influence us except during this communion thing?”

  “Commune. No, not really. We can give a little nudge now and again. Force someone who’s wavering down a particular path without them noticing. But that’s about all.”

  “Have you given me a little nudge?”

  “Maybe just a little. To get you to agree to coming north with me.” Peter shifted a little in his seat.

  “What about Ceri?”

  Peter glanced over his shoulder to check she was still asleep. When he replied, it was in such a low voice that Tom had to strain to hear.

  “Once or twice.”

  “That’s why she so readily agreed to come with us. And earlier when she said she believed you. . . .”

  “Shh. Keep your voice down. Look, there’s a reason I want Ceri to stick with us that has nothing to do with keeping us company.” He glanced back at her again. “When I protected you from the calling at her house, I saw some things in your minds. I didn’t look deliberately, you understand, but I couldn’t help but see them.”

  “What sort of things?” Tom felt his hands clenching again and forced his fingers open.

  “When we found Ceri, she was preparing to kill herself. She’d have done it that evening.”

  Tom felt his jaw drop and closed it. “Are you serious?” was all he could think of to say.

  “Yes. And when you allowed me into your minds yesterday when we stopped for lunch, I took another peek. That time was on purpose, but I wanted to see if she had pulled back from despair.”

  “And?”

  “The blackness has receded a little, but is still very much present. We need to keep a careful watch on her.”

  “What about me, Peter? What did you see in my mind?”

  “I think you already know the answer to that one. She would have died anyway, you do know that?”

  “Lisa, you mean. . . . ?”

  “Your mother.”

  This time Tom allowed his hands to ball into fists. “That’s none of your fucking business.”

  “Tom, I’m sorry, but—”

  “Drop it!”

  Tom stared out of the window, at the white fields and glowering sky.

  Peter cleared his throat. “There’s a village signposted just ahead and it’s way past lunchtime. Let’s go and find somewhere warm and dry to eat.”

  Tom realised that his stomach agreed with Peter.

  “Okay,” he said.

  * * * * *

  When Wallace returned from the airbase, he went to see Milandra in her hotel suite as she’d requested.

  “Bishop’s on his way,” he told her, “in a bright yellow helicopter.”

  “Alone?”

  “Nope. A woman named Diane something is with him.”

  “Diane Heidler?”

  “Yep, that’s it,” said Wallace.

  “Interesting,” said Milandra. “I spoke with her at JFK. That woman is conflicted.”

  “Unless there’s something else. . . . ?”

  “No, George, that’s all. Thank you.”

  She watched him leave and close the door behind him.

  Diane Heidler, she mused. Very interesting indeed.

  When she had spoken to the woman in New York and probed, Milandra had caught a glimpse of something before Diane had slammed the door closed on her. She couldn’t be sure what she’d seen, it had been too brief a glimpse, but something told her that there were far worse companions Bishop could have chosen. All depending on your point of view, of course. But from Milandra’s point of view, there were far worse companions, of that much she was certain.

  Chapter Twenty

  The cloud had lifted and the temperature had dropped. The snow had begun to form a frozen crust, making driving trickier, even for the Range Rover. It was also a little deeper as they progressed northwards and had drifted in places, making hedgerows resemble green-crusted meringue. Peter switched to four-wheel drive and found the going easier, though he remained cautious.

  The village was only a mile or two off the main road. Peter
pulled up in front of the first row of cottages they saw and turned off the engine.

  “Where are we?” came a sleepy voice from the back.

  Peter turned and smiled at Ceri. “We’re stopping for lunch, sleepy head. You hungry?”

  “Mm, could eat a horse.”

  “Might be able to rustle up a tin of ham. Maybe beans.”

  “Cold?” asked Tom.

  Peter considered for a moment. “Well, the roads are getting quite treacherous and it’ll be dark in a couple of hours. If they’re already after us, the weather conditions will slow them down, too. Maybe we can safely stay here for the night. In which case, there’s no rush so, hell, why not, let’s have hot food for a change.”

  “Now you’re talking,” said Tom.

  They broke into the first cottage that didn’t emit the sweet odour of spoiled pork. The interior smelled dank and unlived-in, but was free of the stench of death. There were no Christmas decorations, suggesting that the occupants had left before the Millennium Bug hit.

  Peter brought the camping stove and paraffin lamps in. When Dusty had finished relieving himself in the icy snow, he followed them inside and spent the next thirty minutes exploring every nook and cranny of the cottage.

  They found sufficient tinned food in the kitchen to avoid dipping into their own rations. There were even a couple of tins of dog food. In a tiny cupboard beneath the stairs, Ceri discovered a portable gas fire with enough gas in its bottle to keep them warm until morning. With that lit and the flickering glow of the paraffin lamps, the dampness was driven away and the cottage took on a homely, comfortable feel.

  As they finished the last of their tinned, but hot, meal, Peter readied himself for further interrogation. Tom had been shooting him glances as they ate and Peter did not need to read his mind to know that Tom was keen to learn more. He couldn’t blame him; Peter would have wanted to know more if he had been in Tom’s shoes. He probably would have been as sceptical as Tom, too.

  Tom cleared his throat. Here it comes thought Peter.

  “If you don’t mind me asking, how old were you when you came to Earth, Peter?”