“The tank disappears, the people inside do not, unless they have metal inserts in their joints or something. Mind you, they would be completely blind.”
“Ah,” said the Prime Minister, pouring himself a glass of sparkling water. “Would you…?” he said to Onyx, offering to pour her a glass.
“No thank you, Prime Minister. You’re a busy man and we have to let you get on with running the nation.” In fact Onyx had a meeting she considered equally important as this one, in another part of London.
The Prime Minister sat down near the ceramic dish, and watched Graham disassemble the beam projector. He tapped his fingers on the table as though playing chopsticks at a piano. He looked up at Onyx.
“So we will have to build our tanks out of ceramics.”
Onyx nodded slowly. “Something like that, Prime Minister. But you may find hemp is a more viable way forward. Henry Ford used hemp on early prototypes of his car. It’s immune to this beam technology.”
Onyx checked her red nails for blemishes as the Mercedes purred its way past Buckingham Palace. Her driver, one of the stalwarts of CEC, or Cavendish Executive Cars, knew not to engage her in idle chitchat. Drivers only made that mistake once. He wore the company shade of blue-grey suit. His hat rested on the front seat.
“After you’ve dropped me at The Athenaeum that will be it for the day, Peter.”
“Thank you, miss,” came the reply. “Will you be needing me tomorrow?”
“Not sure,” she responded. “I’ll call your office if I do.”
“Right-oh,” said Peter.
The meeting with the PM had gone as planned. Actually it had worked out better than planned. She knew even now phones would be ringing off the hook, if they still had hooks these days, in the offices of the Ministry of Defence and the Treasury. The technology developed by ADR could – and probably would – change the balance of power in the world. And the British PM knew the company would sell to the highest bidder, or at least to the bidder who offered their company the most advantages.
Onyx popped a small peppermint into her mouth. They were passing the Ritz and the railings of Green Park. In a few moments she would see Sardius. And she hadn’t seen him since that dreadful boy from Hammerford had wrecked their plans and played havoc with work on a time scale so vast few people could begin to comprehend it. She straightened her skirt in anticipation of alighting at the hotel.
And to think I nearly destroyed him last week. That would have been so, so sweet, she thought to herself. But the girl in the next room had had a fit and that had literally and comprehensively broken the spell. So much time and thought had gone into planning to get Rhory to that party, along with Magda and the useful but slightly vapid Lucian. Her self-absorbed nephews had come in useful. Stroke of total luck they lived in a big house in Hammerford’s famous Causeway. But it all came to naught and now the boy was warned. Onyx was now sure the Hammerford Brat, as she had named him, had helpers too although she doubted he knew entirely who they were.
“Game on,” she murmured.
“Sorry, Miss? We’re here, Miss.” The car came to a gentle halt outside one of London’s most exclusive hotels.
The Athenaeum
Sardius, impeccably dressed as always, adjusted the knife-sharp creases of his grey flannel trousers, and crossed his legs. The gold buttons on his dark-blue blazer gleamed softly in the muted light of the hotel lounge. He smiled slightly at Onyx and sipped his filter coffee, which he took without milk.
“So what exactly happened?” he asked, setting down his cup with precision on the saucer. “I thought you had the boy by the short and curlies?”
“So did I,” said Onyx. “So did I. One of those odd coincidences that sometimes occurs, occurred that night. As you know we had set up the party entirely to entice the Bruce boy into a psychic space where he could be neutralised. Both Magda and Emerald worked with me. And, my friend, we had him.” Onyx crossed her legs and leaned closer to her silver-haired friend.
“When I danced on the inner plane, I could see him approaching. We had set up what we call the Vortex of Hecate. Once he’d entered that we would have had a lock-down on his mind. It would be more effective than one of those military implants. It utilises ancient Egyptian science – what the uninformed would miscall ‘magic’. We could have tracked him across time should he ever venture forth again.”
She took a sip of the sparkling water the waiter had set in front of her. When he left she leaned across once more.
“More importantly, we could have cut his psychic strings at any point that suited us, turning him into a bumbling moron. At least for some hours. He would have just found himself feeling very confused.”
“So what went wrong?” asked Sardius, looking down his nose.
“We were interrupted. A girl had a fit in the next room and everyone’s attention became diverted.”
“So you failed.”
This wasn’t a question. As Sardius made his statement Onyx sensed the ice behind his normally charming eyes. She took her time with her glass of sparkling water, depressing the wedge of lemon with a teaspoon. Her hand held entirely steady. Good.
“Hmm … not completely.” She put down her glass, faced the steel in Sardius’s glance and slowly smiled. “You might say we marked him. Although we cannot disrupt his mind as intended, a skilled psychic like Magda will, if the conditions are right, be able to work out where he is. And if he bends TS then we will know.”
“TS?”
“Time-Space or, more specifically, the time-space continuum. He is one of those who can – in effect – move bodily through time, at least for short periods. He is actually there … or possibly there –” she made ‘air-quotes’ with her hands – “constitutes itself around him. You know this stuff is complicated, Norman.” She corrected herself. “Sardius.”
He nodded slowly, without smiling.
“You didn’t anticipate this unfortunate occurrence? I thought Magda could move forward in time, at least see forward in time, to find probable outcomes. The Irish girl…” He moved his hands in a slow circular motion.
“Kelly Prendergast,” said Onyx.
“Yes her. Shelley Prendergast.”
“You’re right. Shelley. My God, she caused us headaches.”
“Yes she did,” said Sardius. “But before she turned traitor, she provided amazing information. Her early work has borne remarkable fruit.”
Onyx felt something shift inside her. She sensed Sardius knew something that he was choosing not to share. She waited.
Her companion stood up with graceful agility, impressive for a man probably the wrong side of seventy.
“I must go to the little boys’ room, excuse me. Too much coffee.”
Onyx sighed and relaxed back into the plush opulence of the armchair. The slim, silver-haired man disappeared in the direction of the foyer.
When her private taxi had driven off from dropping her, she’d entered The Athenaeum Hotel to find three geishas standing in the reception area, in full kimonos, with their hair held beautifully in place with what could have been lacquer ware chopsticks. It had taken Onyx several seconds to realise they were mannequins, and she might not have guessed except for their preternatural stillness. Two held fans to just cover their mouths. One clasped both her hands just in front of her heart.
Onyx moved closer to admire the real silk kimonos. They appeared hand-painted, as far as she could tell. She knew kimonos like this could be worth thousands. The banner behind the three static women announced the Japan-London Festival.
“Impressive, aren’t they?”
Sardius had greeted her. He kissed her hand. Something only an old rascal like him could get away with. He now sported a little grey goatee beard. She didn’t remember that from the past. Surely he couldn’t have grown that in the six or so weeks since they last met?
“Let’s sit in the lounge. I know we could have taken a conference room, but the best ones are full of Japanese produce apparently and the
lounge is quiet at the moment, and free.”
They’d made small talk while they awaited the arrival of the drinks they’d ordered. Sardius made some disparaging remark about the British Prime Minister. Onyx didn’t let on that she’d just been meeting with him at Number Ten. Information like that she kept from Sardius and the other ‘Stones’. This was one of the main reasons they used these pseudonyms. They cooperated on their really important work to do with controlling the direction of time. Their other interests were only shared to the extent they were relevant to their desire to gather greater and greater power and influence into their hands.
“You’ve seen Emerald?” asked Sardius on his return.
“No. No, I haven’t. I have spoken to her on the phone several times. And we used her particular abilities when we were trying to ensnare the Bruce brat. But I understand she’s been on extended sick-leave after … after what occurred.”
A waiter arrived and placed a silver tray on the table between them. Onyx paused while he opened a second small bottle of sparkling water. She noted the hotel biscuits were inferior to those served to the Prime Minister.
Emerald had been very ill in the aftermath of the great debacle, when the Bruce boy and two others from different corners of history had turned up in Ancient Egypt, completely disrupting a crucial ritual. If successful, the outcome would have cemented the direction of time for millennia, to the great and lasting advantage of the Society of Secrets. As it was it had ended in disaster, possibly leaving their leader, Diamond, trapped back in the dim and distant past.
“She’s staying in her house in Devon. She told me a car comes down daily from London bringing papers and things, so she’s kept up to speed.”
“Yes, I heard the same,” said Sardius. “She remains a key player at MI5 despite her set-back.”
“Well, her set-back nearly killed her. Her consciousness could have been left halfway between Ancient Egypt and now. She would’ve been a complete vegetable.”
Sardius gave a slight shrug as though suggesting stuff happens.
“We’ve seen it in the past and it’s not a pretty sight.”
“Yes. Indeed we have,” said Sardius. “One of the reasons I keep my consciousness firmly anchored in the here and now.” He pointed with deliberation at the floor in front of him. He leaned forward and poured himself some more coffee from the second glass flask that the waiter had just delivered.
“You need to go and see her, Victoria. Rhory Bruce is a threat to all our plans. But we know he cannot just be taken out. The Irish girl totally established that we may, just may, need him. We cannot take the risk of destroying such a potent link with the crucial past eras, the ones where time is bent and focused. He seems to be able to reach at least some of those nodal points. That’s what Prendergast’s research showed.”
“Yes. And Magda agrees. One positive outcome of the party was her glimpse into his personal future. Or rather his personal past. He’s going to find himself in Alexandria.”
“Really. Really?” Sardius looked intensely at her. Onyx felt his gaze like that of a deadly reptile, something out of Jurassic Park. “Now that is interesting. Perhaps we can use that to put things back on track.”
“How do you mean?”
Sardius leaned back into his settee. He moved his copy of The Telegraph over to the far arm, and reached into his pocket. He drew out a long coloured object and, with a flourish, revealed a highly decorated fan. The missing fan from the third geisha?
“I borrowed this from the lady by the door. She won’t miss it,” said Sardius. “It illustrates what has happened rather well.”
He propped the fan against the back of the settee. It displayed the motif of various birds sitting on the branches of a cherry blossom tree in full bloom. He pointed at the base of the fan from which all its various folds emerged.
“We had found this nodal point. The Egyptian girl, the one with time-penetrating gifts, was to be sacrificed here.” He tapped the little metal ring at the bottom of the fan. “That act so early in our aeon, that blow, would have controlled the flow of time in the direction advantageous to us now. Of itself it would have been sufficient. But it went awry.”
“Because of the Hammerford brat.”
“Exactly. And I think we now find ourselves on a different part of the fan, a different path in time.”
Onyx frowned and waved her finger at Sardius. “What do you mean?”
“Time shifted, within narrow parameters, but it shifted, and not in a good way for us.”
“How?” Onyx knew a lot about the military experiments with time. There were many, many more than the public realised, but that they had shifted onto a different time-line? Surely not.
“I don’t know how,” said Sardius. “And as you understand, such a shift changes everything – personal memories, records, even archaeology. Ironically, the one person who will definitely spot the shift is young master Bruce. He was elsewhere when it happened. His consciousness will be on the old time line. He may find anomalies that we wouldn’t notice because now they are no longer anomalies.”
“When we did that ritual in the Wiltshire house, when Kelly … sorry Shelley, turned on us, we would have been a little outside of time ourselves.”
“Yes, we would.”
‘That explains your sudden goatee that I don’t remember.’ Onyx didn’t voice her thoughts. She experienced a chilly grip of tension in her legs. Things were getting out of control. Being out of control was something she hated.
She agreed to go down and see Emerald, as soon as possible, to decide how to proceed.
Knuckle Bones
Alexandria – about 380 CE
The sheep bones pattered onto the top of the cask.
“Ha, only one,” said Devorah.
Resting on the back of Nysa’s hand lay the single polished bone; the other four had bounced off.
“Best of three then. I’ve not played for a long time.”
Nysa gathered up the bones, enjoying their smoothness against the palm of her hand. Cradling them with her curled fingers, she leant close and blew. With a flick of her wrist she tossed the five knuckles in the air and flipped her hand over, moving it in an arc.
“There. Four. I think Hephaestus was with me that time.” She dropped the bones back onto the barrel beside her.
Devorah stuck out her tongue, and then laughed. She scooped the sheep’s knuckles from the cask and adjusted her position on the pile of sacks where she sat. She shook the bones between her hands. Behind her, dust swirled and sparkled in the beam of sunlight from a high window near the eaves of the storage building; sacks were piled up far higher than the height of the girls, amidst row upon row of heavy clay jars. The bones soared in the air, one flashing as it passed into the sunlight. Devorah swept her hand around, her eyes gleaming with excitement.
“Best I could manage was three!” Devorah dropped the bones back on the top of the cask and pointed towards the harbour. “Look, Nysa, the men have dropped one of the jars.”
The girls stood up from the sacks of wool and moved to the edge of the shade near the entrance of the huge storage hall and surveyed the spreading pool of oil on the quay, near the gangplank of one of the boats.
Nysa glanced to her left, to where her father sat outside at a table under an awning, his papyrus ledgers in front of him. His face remained impassive but she knew he would be seething underneath. She’d no idea what an amphora of olive oil was worth, but it had been brought all the way across the sea from Crete and now the handsome profit drained into the sticky harbour dust. The two slaves that had been carrying the large flask, strapped between two wooden poles, hovered, unsure what to do. The foreman raised his flail.
“No!” shouted Nysa’s father, standing up and moving into the bright sunshine. His reddish-brown robe kept the winter chill at bay but he had to shade his eyes from the sunlight. He walked over to where the foreman tapped his switch against the palm of his brawny hand. The merchant inspected the twine holding
the amphora to the staves and said something to the foreman who promptly shouted to the slaves, who’d all stopped working, to get on with unloading.
The girls drifted over to the table, with its pens and inkpots. Devorah joined her father who stood near the wall of the storage hall, squinting at the quayside. Nysa’s father walked back and rested his hands on the table, watching the gangs of men continue with the unloading. He sighed, sat down, picked up one of his pens and dipped it in a small jar of ink.
“Will you whip them, Father?”
“No, Nysa, I won’t. I only use the whip when a slave deliberately does something wrong. They didn’t tie the amphora to the poles. That was done on board ship and those sailors are not my men. What I will do is reduce the captain’s commission by the price of all that oil and he will ensure better work in the future. See, he’s already shouting orders to his men.”
“A wise decision,” said the other man. He had a long, straight grey beard and a small black skullcap clipped to the silvery hair that fell as far as his shoulders. His woollen robes had vertical stripes of grey, black and off-white. He remained in the shade standing by the table. Although Nysa had been to Devorah’s house several times now, she’d only seen her Jewish friend’s father from a distance as he moved from his library to his work room. His face had many tiny creases and wrinkles, whereas her father’s face remained smooth.
“Ah, that is what I’ve been waiting to see,” said Maimonides, turning to his daughter. He crouched down slightly and pointed to a ship entering the harbour and approaching its great lighthouse. The front sail with vertical red and white stripes strained in the wind. The second, larger sail had already been furled and the rows of oars, like the legs of a mighty centipede, beat rhythmically into the water. The large eye, painted on the prow, stared unblinking at the Palace of Cleopatra passing by on the left of the craft.
“More wool from the north?” asked Nysa’s father.
“In part, my friend, in part. But the most valuable cargo is slaves from the Rome market.” He narrowed his eyes. “Including someone exceptional, someone important.”
Time Knot Page 9
