“Bless their hearts,” Gladys chuckled, when the last major Order made it known it had decreed a Grand Rite for that night. “They do know their job, those Outer Nine.”
The real disappointment was that there had not been time to organize witchcraft in the rest of the world. Only where some of the great Orders were international was there any hope of cooperation. The witches of the continent had already planned a propitiation of their own. Australia and New Zealand were working on the rising sea. Asia gave vague answers which were not easily understood. The witches in America replied regretfully that they were having hell’s own job holding down a major earthquake, but assured the Ring of their goodwill. Africa did not reply at all.
“Damn!” said Maureen. “I wish we dared explain what we’re really trying to do.”
“Most of them are using power that night anyway,” Gladys said, “and that should help. Goodwill is a power on its own. Don’t fuss, Maureen, and have you got down the exact minute we want each of those Names said? Well, don’t look like that! I only asked.”
“I’m sorry!” Maureen said irritably. “I’ve a lot on my mind, what with Flan leaving to go on the capsule. Joe’s behaving strangely too. I’m under a lot of pressure. I—”
She was interrupted by Amanda telephoning to say that there was a hitch in the capsule’s directional jets, and could someone get hold of that strange girl who had worked on the French space programme, quickly please!
Zillah felt the mounting excitement, although she knew nothing of the details. It’s going to take off at full Moon, she thought, quite calmly, and then I shan’t have this misery anymore. On the rare occasions when she let herself think of those two hairs she had planted in the capsule, it seemed to her that they were designed to carry her unhappiness out of this world with them. In fact, it was as if her misery were already there, installed in those two hairs. She cooked, cleaned Marcus and the house, washed clothes for Amanda and her children, shopped for socks for David, and talked cheerfully with everyone, all without the dark background of misery she had been used to for so long. A sort of death, she thought, by substitute. She felt rather empty.
The night before the launch, those who had built the capsule tested everything carefully and packed up their tools for the last time. Each in his or her way gave it a blessing. Some simply patted the stained metal skin. Some said things like, “You’re awful, but I love you!” or “Hope you make it, bus!” Others were more serious. One prayed. Another poured champagne from a mini bottle. Then they departed, to journey to the various sites of power where they had to be tomorrow.
Amanda kept vigil there, just in case.
In the morning the finally selected team arrived, eighteen of them, very cheerful and healthy, with their bags, lunch packs, woolly hats, and knapsacks. None of them knew quite what to expect. The rumor most of them believed was that they were to storm a monastery in Greece. Most of them were very surprised to see who the others were.
“Well, fancy you as a shock trooper!” Roz Collasso said to Tam Fairbrother.
They were even more surprised when Amanda locked the warehouse door and told them why they were there, adding that none of them were to leave the building from then on. They saw the point of that. It would be fatal if the pirates were to learn of the plan now. Besides, they were all dedicated. Each of them had, at Gladys’s special request, made their wills before they set out. But they still did not quite believe it, and they spent a lot of time laughing. Tam doing his gay walk made them fall about.
Sobriety set in during the early evening when someone suggested that the capsule ought to have a name. Somehow, discussing what name made the whole thing seem more real.
“It used to be a bus.”
“What does that make it? The Magical Mystery Tour Coach? Hold very tight, please, for your tour of the multiverse!”
“Call it Omnibus.”
“Try again!”
“Well, omnibus does mean everything.”
“Sky-High Bus?”
“What about the Flying Coach?”
“I know!” said someone. “The Celestial Omnibus!”
That name pleased them all, so they christened it with coffee, unaware that it had already been done with champagne, and ran through yet again the routine for using the virus-magic when they got to Laputa-Blish.
A little before moonrise a motorcyclist roared up to the warehouse door and, when Amanda opened it, carefully handed her four packages, two blue and two red. Gladys had insisted on there being four. “The two halves have to stay apart until the last minute,” she had said. “It’s too potent to handle any other way. And just two packets is daft. I’m going to send a backup pair.”
Amanda gave a telephone number to the motorcyclist, and he roared away, first to phone through a code word and then to join his own coven. The packages Amanda gave to Helen, Judy, Francine, and Laura, all of whom were stable, proficient adepts who were unlikely to panic. After that, she had to leave herself, locking the door behind her, to fling herself into her car and to drive in a manner not so unlike Zillah’s to a secret site of great power about forty miles away.
Her going was the signal for the storm troopers to climb into the Celestial Omnibus and sit there, tense and ready. Judy and Lynn settled at the controls, and Roz stood by the door to seal it. Tam and Solly tested the oxygen supply yet again and found to their relief that it still worked. After which they only had to wait.
By this time, not only were innumerable apparently unconnected small groups gathering in rooms all over Britain, but dark-clothed persons were assembling in stone circles, woods, and other places of power from Land’s End to John o’ Groat’s, whispering and occasionally flashing a flashlight to make sure that things were where they should be. Lights were not supposed to be shown at this stage.
The Moon rose as Amanda arrived at the secret site. It gave her enough light to see Mark in the pale majesty of his robes, preparing to begin. Paulie was with him. She had chosen glittering black robes. Well, she would, Amanda thought. Maureen was there, in white and green, looking very lovely. And there stood Gladys, bulging out of a disgraceful maroon Burbery, with Jimbo scratching himself in the grass at her feet. Nothing would ever persuade Gladys to dress up, but Amanda sometimes suspected her of dressing down. There, too, were the nine of the Outer Ring, who had arrived commendably promptly, considering they knew nothing of how tight the schedule really was.
“I do think we should tell them what it’s all about,” Amanda had objected when they were discussing the schedule.
“Afterwards,” Gladys said with great firmness. “The traitor’s in there with them. We don’t want to give her or him a chance to ruin everything.”
The four of the Ring drew together to begin. “Christ! I’m nervous!” Mark whispered. “Suppose the capsule just vanishes into the void!”
“Or blows up,” said Maureen.
“Hush. It’ll get there,” said Gladys.
Amanda said nothing, but her private fear was that the Celestial Omnibus would still be there in the warehouse when she unlocked the door in a few hours time. But the ritual had started. Almost at the same instant, other groups joined in all over the country. Amanda felt the building of power as she carefully cleared her mind.
Zillah, at home in Amanda’s house, felt the build of power as a great void, waiting to be filled. In some strange way, she was the void, and ached with it. Then, as the first Name was spoken, nearly in chorus, from the lands all around her, it brought her a sudden vision of Mark. He was not as she usually remembered him, but dressed in robes with the Moon shining pale on his hair. Idiotically, this hieratic image carried with it an acute sensory memory. Mark’s body hair. Mark had a surprising amount of hair on his body for such a pale, slender man, and it was not fair, like his hair, but dark like his eyebrows, and all of it kitten-soft. Remembering the feel of it gave Zillah a scathing wrench. The misery was back, thundering in her head, worse than ever.
“Cut it out!” she
said aloud, because it made her furious not to be able to forget. And her furious exclamation made her see what she had to do. She had to cut it out properly, make it a sort of death, the biggest and cleanest break possible. Only that would lance the boil. Call it what you like, only stop it.
She wrote as much on the back of an envelope for Amanda. Then she went upstairs and picked Marcus up out of his crib, he mumbling sleepily and slobbering a little against her neck. She stood with him in her arms, facing the direction she sensed the capsule to be in. The rituals were building now, and she could feel the power. It was as if she stood in a large, faintly glowing space, where, twining toward her, she could see two misty filaments of her own hair and of Marcus’s. She waited. Power grew. It grew in Zillah, too, rising to surround and fill her, as it always seemed to do when she had real need. She had so much, in seconds, that she knew she could do whatever there was need for. She could choose not to do this. But she chose. She hooked the two filaments to her with a little finger, which was all she could spare from holding Marcus, and made them draw her in.
There was so much power there that it was easy. Quickly, coolly, without stress, like sliding around a half-open door, she found herself, still holding Marcus, standing in the aisle of the capsule, quite near the back. Behind her, the metal that held the machinery was now a complete silvery wall, with a sound like an electric fan coming from it. The space in front of her was full of people, many of whom she did not know. They all looked very tense. Marcus felt something had happened and sleepily uttered a small inquiring noise. Several heads turned. Zillah slipped into an empty seat quickly and apologetically, like someone arriving late in church, and drew the sense of her own insignificance tightly around herself and Marcus. She was nothing, nothing to bother about at all. It was something she had often found useful, this sense of not being worth anyone’s trouble. It worked again here. The heads turned away. Nothing there after all.
Outside, the gale of power being raised was translating into a physical wind, beating around the warehouse, causing hair and robes to stream, all over the country. The Names had mostly been spoken. The time was coming when something should happen—if it was going to.
The Celestial Omnibus jerked.
“I think we’re away!” whispered someone.
Nothing else.
It isn’t going to work! Zillah thought. What a fool I shall look! Oh, go, go, go, go! She pushed, urgently and wildly in her mind, at the solid lump of the bus. Again some wild part inside her rose to her need. She felt it flare around her as she pushed. But this tin box full of people was so heavy! Oh, go, go, go, go! she told it.
Then came the heart of the ritual. Lights blazed in many hundred circles, and fire streamed in high places. Inside the capsule, there was a sudden definite sense of floating, almost of weightlessness.
“This is it!” someone said.
As the last great effort went out, Gladys, wearing her Aspect of the Old Woman, turned to Amanda in her Aspect of the Mother and gave a slight nod. The effort was double-phased. The first was intended to send the capsule off—and there was not a soul participating who did not feel that something had moved, been sent, gone—and the second phase was to raise the Great Wards around the British Isles and—if possible—around the world. Mark felt the Wards of Pridain rise. He, too, nodded at Amanda. Now nothing of evil intent could penetrate the country; but no one could tell if the world was warded. It had never needed to be done before.
* * *
3
« ^ »
It was an exhausting night. Maureen was tottering with weariness by the time she climbed the stairs to her London flat. Dawn had come already. Unnatural-seeming sunshine filled the street. A few hours sleep, Maureen thought, setting her keys into the locks with unsteady hands, and she might be all right for dance practice this evening. It ought to be all right. Her weariness was mostly the weariness of elation. That great gale of power that had lifted the capsule and the wards together kept blowing through her mind, exultingly. What a feeling! It was the feeling that she dwelt on, though it had been good, too, arriving at the warehouse to find the capsule gone. Maureen was rather pleased that she had had the forethought to visit the place when the capsule was still there. She at least knew that there had been something there to vanish. It was not so with the nine of the Outer Ring.
They had gone there in a procession of cars. The nine had been very annoyed. And hurt. And incredulous. Koppa’s strident voice still rang in Maureen’s ears. Why had they not been told? What traitor? They were welcome to take her to any sphere of truth they pleased, and they would see she was At One with the Ring. Etcetera. And to be shown an empty warehouse convinced nobody of anything. Maureen kept remembering Paulie standing beside Mark in a white fury. Luckily Amanda had had the sense to take some photographs of the capsule, but what with Amanda’s total incompetence with a camera and the emanations of power in the warehouse, the prints she handed around were both blurred and crooked, and they mollified no one. Amanda had further irritated Maureen by the way her head went up and an expression of woe and worry kept crossing her face whenever she thought no one was looking. Amanda thought something had gone wrong. Did she now? Amanda would claim this special sensitivity—and most of the time when Maureen checked up on her worries, she found Amanda was just making a great fuss about nothing.
In the end Maureen left Mark and Amanda to deal with the Outer Ring and drove home. She absolutely had to sleep. Not even a cup of cocoa first. Just fall into bed.
She opened her door into a blue cloud of cigarette smoke. The curtains of her living room were drawn and the lights on. Faugh. And there was bloody Joe sitting on her sofa leering at her with a can of beer in his hand and a loaded ashtray between his feet. He’s been drinking again, she thought. She hadn’t the energy to cope.
“Out,” she said, holding the door open with one hand and gesturing with the other. “Come on. You’re going. I need to sleep. How did you get in here anyway?”
He shook his head. “No. I’m not going. Neither are you. We’re staying here together.”
“Don’t give me—” Maureen was beginning, when the door moved heavily under her hand and shut itself with a dull boom. She whirled toward it. There were wards down on it, preventing her from touching it. Strong wards, weird ones, ones she did not know. She whirled back.
Joe continued to grin. There was something odd about his face. “You won’t find you can break those wards. They’re the wards of Arth. I’ve got them all around this flat. Nobody’s going in or out, and nobody’s going to hear any kind of call you make for help. So you might as well tell me all about this project of yours now. It’ll save us both a lot of trouble.”
I don’t believe this! she thought. She was so tired. “What the hell are you talking about?” As she spoke she realized he was right about the wards round the flat. She could feel them hemming the place in, thick and heavy and strange to her.
Joe stood up. He was thickset, black-haired and with black stubble on his chin, but he was not as drunk as she had assumed. Perhaps not drunk at all. She wondered how she had ever fancied him. “This project of yours,” he said. “I waited until you’d done whatever it was, because I knew you’d be easier to catch then. Now I want you to tell me exactly what you’ve been doing so that I can report to the High Head.”
“You’re raving,” said Maureen.
“No way,” he said. “And don’t try any tricks with witchcraft. I learnt my mageworking on Arth, and I know things you’ve never even dreamt of.”
“The same goes for me!” she snapped. “You’ve no idea of half the things I know!” And, as he took a heavy step toward her, she added, “And don’t think you can overpower me physically, either. I’m a professional dancer, remember. I’m much stronger than I look.”
Joe gave her a look of contempt that somehow deepened the strangeness she had seen in his face. “I know that. I came prepared to wait it out. Look. Take a look.” The sharp smell of his sweat mingle
d with the smoke-fug as he moved sideways away from her, always making sure not to turn his back, she noticed, and kicked open the doors to the kitchen and the bathroom.
Maureen moved, equally warily, to the center of the room. She was so tired that she seemed to be functioning on animal instincts alone. Her main feeling was exasperation and outrage. The kitchen was piled with boxes of groceries. She could see fruit, vegetables, potato crisps. The bath was full of packs of lager. How typical of Joe!
“See?” he said. “We’ll be quite comfortable while we wait for you to tell me. I got all this stuff mostly so that you’d see I’m in earnest. But it would be much easier if you’d tell me everything straightaway.” Still keeping himself facing her, he retreated sideways and settled himself back in the corner of the sofa. “Well?”
There were reserves of strength in everyone, Maureen told herself. She ought still to have a charge of power from the ritual too. She drew on both, or tried to, and told herself she felt better for it. “Piss off,” she said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes you do,” he said. “You’ve just performed a very big ritual of some kind. I want to know what it was supposed to do. The real world needs to know. They sent me over here to find out what you were doing, and find out is what I’m going to do. I don’t want to be stuck in your stinking world for any longer than I have to be.”
He’s a spy from the pirate universe, Maureen thought. She was beyond either surprise or alarm. The thought came to her simply as a sort of summing up of all the things she had seen since she first unlocked her front door. She thought of the capsule. It might be in Laputa-Blish by now, or it might not. No one knew how long a transition between universes should take, or even whether they had got the transition right. Even assuming the very best, that the capsule had got there almost instantly and the team had succeeded in entering that fortress, the virus-magic needed time in which to take effect. They had had six hours. They needed at least six more. I’ll just have to wait it out, she thought. “Damned if I tell you anything,” she said.