Now, out on the road in the cold light of day, I started to wonder whether I had imagined the whole thing. . . whether it was merely a spot of Delirium Tremens brought on by my relative abstinence of the past week.
I knew one thing for sure though.
I needed a drink.
*
It was a longish walk into Thurso, and my bad knee flared in pain with each step towards the end of it, but it was well worth it, as I immediately stumbled upon an open pub, and made myself comfortable on a tall stool at the bar.
For the first hour or so I managed to stick to some of their strong, malty beer, but the siren call of the Scotch was not long escaped. By mid afternoon I felt comfortably numb and finally started to forget the events of the night before.
That was all to change again when the singing started.
I hadn't been aware that the place had filled up around me, being too preoccupied with my own thoughts and the booze. I was therefore rather surprised to turn around and find a busy bar, with a band setting up in the corner. Surprise turned to cold fear when they launched without preamble into their first song.
She sleeps in the spaces to be found in between,
She sleeps, and she dreams, of the sights she has seen.
I felt the cold chill seize my spine, and the entity was there again, looking out of my eyes, listening to what I was hearing. It wasn't in control of me, for I was able to lift my glass and drain a stiff measure of Scotch. But this was no case of the DTs. It watched through me as the band continued, and the whole audience in the bar sang along.
She dreams of the lands she has ruled as a queen,
And the sleeping god is dreaming where she lies.
I felt a surge of emotion well up in me, something I might have described as joy if I'd had any experience of it. As the song reached its climax it became almost overwhelming in intensity.
She dreams of her lord in the space in between,
And the sleeping god is dreaming where she lies.
The bar fell silent, and I remembered to breathe. An old man turned and spoke to me.
"You've seen her, haven't you?"
"Who?" I managed to say.
"The Cailleach, the old queen. Whatever it is you lot are doing up there, don't stop. You're bringing her back to us."
He turned back in rapt attention as the band started up again.
In the fire, the queen will come.
The chill threatened to grip me again. I downed what was left of my Scotch in one hasty gulp and staggered out into the growing dusk.
*
I woke lying face up at the side of the road, staring at a star-filled sky overhead, with no memory of anything after leaving the bar. I will admit that, in itself, it wasn't an unusual occurrence for me to have a blackout after drinking. But what was unusual was the sense of doubling I still felt in my mind, as if something squatted in there, watching my every move.
I got up, checked my bearings, and started a long trudge back to the installation. I knew I was in trouble. I had obviously passed the extent of the time covered by my pass, and I suspected that the Colonel was not a man given to leniency. It was with some surprise that I passed through the barricade at the gate with no further fuss, although I saw by a clock on the gatehouse wall that it was already past nine.
"Away in you go, sir," the Scottish squaddie said. "There's a big fuss on up at the block. I dinna think they'll notice you're a wee bit late."
I fully intended to creep quietly into my billet and sleep the rest of the night away, but as I got closer I heard that there was indeed a fuss up at the block. An alarm sounded loud and clear in the seaside air. Soldiers stood, guns raised, in a jagged line near the front of the building. I checked myself for sobriety, decided I was just about okay, and headed for the lab.
Inside, the place was in turmoil. The Colonel and Rankin stood over three soldiers who lay on the floor, staring sightlessly upward; obviously alive, yet obviously somewhere else. I started to have an inkling of what might have happened. It quickly turned to understanding as the thing inside me surged again. It left me in a wave of cold and sudden sadness that felt like mourning. At the same time a white smoke rose from the three men on the ground and rose upward to join whatever it was that had been inside me. The men started to move, as if coming out of a dream, but my gaze was taken with what was going on overhead.
Rankin went white, and the Colonel let out a yelp that he managed to quell just before it turned into a scream. A gray-white mist, almost solid now, hung in the air above us. Once again it drifted over the instrument panel.
"Get away from there," the Colonel shouted. He un-holstered his pistol, and fired three shots into the thickest part of the entity. The bullets had no effect, passing straight through and pinging off the corrugated iron roof above. The officer went to fire again, but Rankin put a hand on his arm.
"Wait," he said.
As it happened, there was nothing to wait for. The thick mist rose up and away, drifted towards the concrete wall of the reactor chamber, and again sank through it.
"After it," the Colonel shouted, but once again Rankin stayed his hand.
"You know as well as I do that we can't get in there without suiting up. Proper procedure must be followed."
"But that takes at least an hour," the Colonel said. "Who knows what it might be up to in there?"
"Indeed," Rankin replied. "And who knows what we might learn from it, given the chance?"
"Learn? There'll be no more learning here. I think we've had quite enough of that."
For once, I was in agreement with the Colonel, but that scarcely mattered, for several minutes later I found myself placed in handcuffs.
"Put him in a cell," the Colonel said. "I'll speak to him when he's sober."
"No sense in arguing," Rankin said softly as they led me away. "We all saw where that thing came from. Now he'll need to know where it has been."
*
I spent the remainder of that night in a cold, draughty, cell that sat perched on the cliff by the shore. Waves crashed on rocks, gulls cried. . . but no one came to talk to me. I ran out of tobacco sometime around midnight, and managed two hours of fitful sleep between then and dawn. My head hurt, I felt sick to my stomach, and my theory as to what happened the night before was threatening to throw me into the depths of despair. When the Colonel finally called on me the next morning, I was not in the best of moods.
And things did not improve when they led me to the interrogation room. At least they fed and watered me before the questioning started, but after that it was a long day of answering the same things, over and over as they attempted to pry a lie from me. I tried to tell them that I didn't remember anything, but they were having none of it.
It was late afternoon before they relented. Over my first, most welcome, smoke of the day I tried to explain the theory I was forming to the Colonel, but he was too angry to even listen.
"The ravings of a drunk do not concern me," he said. "You, sir, are a threat to National Security, and will be off this base as soon as we get to the bottom of whatever is going on."
"Let me speak to Rankin," I said finally. "I'll tell him what I know."
The Colonel was suspicious at that, but he had seen that his own tactics were getting him nowhere. Finally, just as dusk was settling in again, Rankin was allowed in to see me.
*
The Professor seemed almost embarrassed as he sat opposite me. He took out a hip flask and handed it across the table. Despite the fact that I wanted a drink more than I ever had before, I let it sit there. My first statement confused him further.
"Tell me about atomic theory," I said. "Is it true that we're mostly made up of empty space?"
"That's a bit of a gross simplification of a lot of very complex science. . . " he started.
"But, in essence, I'm right?"
"In essence," he agreed, grudgingly.
"And this reactor you have built here. . . it manipulates basic atomic structure at
the lowest levels to get its results."
"Again, that's. . . "
"I know," I said, and managed a smile, although I felt far from any sense of good humour. "A gross simplification. But still, essentially true?"
"Where is all this leading?" Rankin said. "The Colonel wants you on the next train out of Thurso, and I'm afraid I can't help you unless you tell me what you know."
So I told him everything, from the time the entity started rifling through my brain until I woke, face up in the ditch.
"I think it has to do with the line in the song," I said softly. ‘She sleeps in the spaces to be found in between.' I think that's where this thing is from. . . the spaces between atoms; the part of the Universe we cannot see. Somehow, your experiments here have released it, woken it up from its long sleep."
To his credit, Rankin took me seriously, at least partially.
"I can understand that we might be releasing some form of energy we haven't seen before," he said. "But I cannot countenance anything resembling intelligence arising from that source. As for all this guff about the folk song and a myth of a dreaming god? Really, Ballantine, I expected better of you."
"And I expect the culture from where that folk song originally spread was rather more technically advanced than we have ever given them credit for," I said. "I will stand by my hypothesis until it is proved false. It fits the facts as we currently understand them."
"Let us say you are right," Rankin replied. "What does this entity want?"
"I doubt it wants anything, not in the way we think in any case. It lives, it feeds, it grows, and it doesn't give a damn about us. That's what I believe."
Rankin had a far away look in his eye.
"And if you are right, and it is indeed a form of intelligent life," he said. "Think what we might learn from it. We could unlock the secrets of the Universe itself."
I laughed, and I'm afraid I might have allowed some sarcasm to show through.
"As I said already. . . I don't think it gives a damn."
Rankin got no chance to answer.
Shots rang out across the installation, followed quickly by screams.
"Come on, Ballantine," Rankin said. "If you're right, you might be of some use."
I paused only long enough to lift the hip flask from the table.
We left the room at a run. Nobody tried to stop me.
*
Once again the area around the reactor block was a scene of chaos. A dozen men lay on their backs, staring at the sky. The remainder of the guard seemed unsure where to aim their weapons, and the younger ones looked almost as pale as those stricken on the ground. The Colonel's bellow could be heard at some distance as he shouted into a radio handset.
"I don't care if he's in bed with the Archbishop of bloody Canterbury. Get him up. I need a bomber, and I need it now."
Rankin strode up and reached for the handset, but the Colonel swung to one side away from his grasp.
"You can't stop me, Rankin. I have jurisdiction here. I'm leveling this place to the ground from the sky. It's the only way to be sure."
Rankin looked as if he might punch the officer, but instead he turned back to me.
"I'm going in. We need to try to reason with it. Are you with me?"
Every fibre of my being told me to run. But Rankin was adamant, and I could not in all conscience allow him to face this thing alone. I drained the contents of the hip flask in one gulp, much to the Colonel's disgust, and followed Rankin on the path towards the reactor.
"You've got ten minutes," the Colonel shouted. "Then this place will be nothing but rubble."
"Won't that just spread radiation across the countryside?" I asked.
This time it was Rankin's turn to laugh sarcastically, and echo my own words back to me.
"I don't think he gives a damn."
*
As we approached the door to the lab I heard singing waft in the air. I looked over to my right to see a crowd of townspeople gathered at the main gate. Three squaddies had stopped them entering. But they couldn't stop them from singing. The song rang around us, echoing and seeming to amplify as it bounced off the concrete wall of the reactor building.
She sleeps in the spaces to be found in between,
She sleeps, and she dreams, of the sights she has seen.
The white mist seeped out of the wall; the first time I had seen it emerge anywhere other than the laboratory. It was larger now, and much denser. Discrete structures could be seen in its form, a slug-shaped body with long tentacle-like appendages that hung below the bulk, wafting in time with the singing, trailing almost to the ground.
She dreams of the lands she has ruled as a queen,
And the sleeping god is dreaming where she lies.
Rankin strode forward until he was close enough to the tentacles to touch them if he wished. I was more circumspect, standing further back and ready to flee at the slightest provocation.
"We mean you no harm," Rankin shouted.
I don't think it gives a damn.
The entity moved forward again.
Rankin shouted.
"I want to know you, to help you. Believe that." The tentacles moved closer, wafting across Rankin's shoulder, almost in a caress. "I'm not your enemy. I'm a scientist who's trying..."
The tentacles folded around him. He screamed, just once, and began to fade, becoming thin, like the creature that had him in its grasp. Outside the guardhouse the song rose to a climax.
She dreams of her lord in the space in between,
And the sleeping god is dreaming where she lies.
The creature started to drift towards me. I stepped back out of reach of the tentacles then stopped as a chill ran down my spine and it rifled through my mind again. This time it knew what it was looking for.
I descend through deep turquoise, feeling the cold water around me, at the same time hearing the song in my head; the song that now seems more like the forlorn call of a lost love. And, from somewhere far, far, below, the call is answered. A wash of pure joy runs through me.
My link to the entity was cut off by the rat-a-tat of automatic rifle fire. Six squaddies had come to my assistance, and although their shots did not appear to damage the entity at all, it at least paused in any attack, either physical or mental.
"Fall back," the Colonel shouted. "The bomber's on its approach."
That gave me impetus to move. I turned and fled, beating the retreating squaddies to the line of Nissen huts. I stood beside the Colonel, guessing that he would know what was a safe distance if anyone did.
The singing rose again from outside the gate, until the noise of the approaching bomber drowned it out. It was another song; the one I had heard the first line of on my exit from the bar.
In the fire, the queen will come.
"No!" I shouted. "Call it off."
But I was far too late. The reactor building exploded in a roaring flame. The blast wave knocked off my feet and down into a deep darkness.
It felt welcoming. I let it take me.
*
I woke in hospital in Inverness two days later, and was home in Glasgow within the week. Of course the Army chaps declared the matter over. The site was secured and no further Russian infiltration would be allowed.
But I have strange sores on my body, wounds that refuse to heal. The booze helps dull the pain of course, but I cannot quash the memories, of descending into deep turquoise waters, and hearing the call. . . and its reply. Two things prey on my mind.
The first is the line from the song sang by the townspeople.
She dreams of her lord in the space in between,
And the sleeping god is dreaming where she lies.
And the second is in today's newspaper. The Yanks are testing nuclear weapons in the Pacific Ocean. The water is deep and turquoise there. And that makes me wonder.
Who is the Lord mentioned in the song?
And what else may be sleeping, down in those depths, waiting to be woken, in fire?
Inquisitor
From the journal of Father Fernando. 16th August 1535
The time has come. It arrived yesterday from the New World in the hold of the Santa Angelo and it has been brought to the castle. The Inquisitor General has tasked me with discovering the true nature of the abomination, to make a full and careful examination and ascertain what manner of Inquisition might be made. It is a great honour, and one which I will fulfill with all the diligence the good Lord hands to me.
There is a certain doubt in my mind, a cloud that has hung over the proceedings since I read Juan Santoro's journal last night. A dark evil is detailed in those pages, and although the Inquisitor General teaches us that all things are powerless before the truth of our Lord, I have grave misgivings about the thing I am about to see for the first time.
I have prayed for strength, but still my knees feel like water and there is a cold pit in my belly that nothing can assuage.
However my duty is clear.
It is time for the questioning to begin.
From the journal of Juan Santoro, Captain of the Santa Angelo, 3rd April 1535
If there is a hell on Earth then surely it is in this place here. No god fearing man should have to face the horrors I have led my crew through on this day. I give thanks that I have brought us all back safely to the ship, and I am much afeared with the thought of the return voyage, for the cargo is most foul and ungodly. But I would be remiss in my duty to the church if I did not report on the things that plague this new land. If the Crown wishes, as I have been told, to colonize this place, then we must know what manner of things lay claim on it at present.
In truth, I know not what we have found. The natives died bravely defending it, and for most of the day we thought that we had stumbled on a great treasure. We fought through their defenses, hacking and slashing our way through the savages to the centre of that dark temple.
As I have said, we expected treasure. What we found was beyond our ken. I have had it sealed in a lead casket, and will take it back to Seville.
But the journey will be long, for already it whispers in my mind, and I fear my dreams will be dark indeed during the long months at sea ahead.
Home From the Sea Page 4
