‘You always do,’ she wept.
The mist flew over the slag heaps of the Ruhr, the wind rose, and the rain fled as together they crossed the night sky. While Lord Sinistral turned and tossed in his chair in the darkness and finally slept.
23
IN THE BUNKER
Arthur Foale was now in a bubble of Imperial comfort and safety, cut off entirely from the world he knew. He was finding it very hard to hang on to the idea that a hydden so civilized, welcoming and polite as Blut was, in fact, the enemy, for Brum had always been against the Empire. Yet nor could he pretend that the unexpected situation of being at the very centre of things, permitting him to see nearly all of what was going on, was anything less than fascinating.
But he knew that each moment that passed in the alluring presence of the Emperor, his clerks and orderlies sapped the resolve he needed if he was to escape.
Naturally, the threat of death which Blut had so blandly warned him of if he tried to do so, hung heavily on him. Arthur Foale was a portly seventy-year-old academic who felt aches and pains in the morning and sometimes forgot what he was meant to be doing, hardly a serious threat.
He could take comfort from the fact that he had got away unscathed from RAF Croughton but he could see that escaping the Imperial quarters, guarded as they were by Fyrd, was going to be a lot harder and that death, probably an unpleasant one, was a distinct possibility. He sighed and faced the truth that all those who find themselves in the hands of an accommodating enemy with every freedom but that of actual liberty must face: that it is morally wrong not to try to escape, especially when one’s friends’ and allies’ lives are endangered by the very people holding you, but there is little incentive.
It was sometime in the evening of another day with Blut, at the end of another very pleasant supper discussing the Theory of Gaia and the issue of the Earth as a possibly vindictive organism, that he realized his position was untenable.
The Emperor, with his usual perspicacity, eyed Arthur quizzically and said matter-of-factly, ‘Something is on your mind.’
‘It is, but I cannot say what it is.’
The Emperor gave leave for the guard who was normally with them at that time of the evening to retire to his quarters, leaving them alone.
When he was gone Blut said confidentially, ‘Because you don’t know exactly what it is, or that I might disapprove?’
‘The latter.’
‘But I explained before that you are no use as a companion if you do not tell me the truth.’
‘I do not wish to be your companion,’ Arthur replied testily. ‘I wish to be free!’
With his usual equanimity Blut considered this without apparent offence. Then he said: ‘Well, we all wish to be free. So what do you propose doing about it?’
‘I . . .’
Blut was a master of using few words to say a lot. Suddenly there was something in his face that suggested conspiracy. Arthur’s heart raced. If he suggested escape, might the Emperor wish to join him? Or might it be a trap?
He said a curt goodnight, went to his room, and paced about, restless with thoughts of escape, of punishment, of an absurd plot to escape with Blut and much more.
Perhaps he might have concocted such a plan in the following days had not his door opened in the middle of the night and a hand grasped his shoulder and shaken him awake. It was an orderly.
‘We’re moving, sir, right away.’
‘Who’s moving?’
‘The Emperor’s Court is being moved to a place of greater safety.’
‘From what?’
‘Danger,’ said the orderly vaguely, who Arthur noticed was armed with a crossbow, which he was not before.
‘Where are we moving to?’ grumbled Arthur, rubbing his eyes and straightening his hair and beard.
‘Not at liberty to say, sir.’
A short while later Arthur found himself being herded with others onto a narrow-gauge train which started underground but eventually emerged into the night outside. Of the journey that followed Arthur afterwards remembered little: he was tired, it was night and he was disorientated.
When they finally stopped and were told to get out he saw they were in a deep cutting with trees looming above. They were led away down a wide concourse towards a massive concrete wall lit by a single bulb. A small steel door was set into it, with a wheel for a handle, which made it look like the entrance to a safe. Inscribed in faded black lettering to one side was an alphanumeric descriptor of some kind: M.O.D. A/W/263.
Arthur just had time to register that this was a Ministry of Defence building before they were taken inside and the door clanged shut behind them.
The outside had looked neat and clean enough but the interior, which was a foyer area with three corridors leading from it, was a mess of fallen plaster from the ceilings above.
This had been brushed to one side to give easier access to the main corridor, the only one, it seemed, with working lights, but its ceiling had also collapsed. Hanging from a barred broken window were fronds of ivy and other vegetation, beyond that the shift and squeak of branches and the sound of wind.
No wonder the air smelt damp and woody. Wherever it was they had come to, they were buried beneath a wood and, more than likely, well hidden from human eyes.
But it was late and they were all tired, the Fyrd as well, and Arthur was glad to be shown to new quarters to turn in for what remained of the night. He slept deeply and well.
In the morning any hope that he had of freedom and escape evaporated. He was directed to an old-fashioned canteen of stainless steel and plastic and saw at once that he was back to square one, but in a more depressing place.
‘Ah! Arthur!’ cried Blut cheerfully, ‘Good morning! You slept well? Help yourself to breakfast.’
The Court was depleted: fewer orderlies, fewer clerks, fewer Fyrd to keep an eye on them. No special treatment any more.
‘Things don’t look good,’ said Arthur.
‘No, they don’t,’ agreed Blut. ‘We need to get out of here . . . The escape to freedom you hinted at last night is now an imperative. If you had stayed long enough I would have said so.’
‘I thought it dangerous to mention it more directly.’
‘It is dangerous. Quatremayne will keep me alive only as long as I am less useful dead.’
‘And I?’
‘He is keeping you as companion to me, to keep me amused, I suppose. Now we need a strategy.’
‘Ah! Yes. A strategy.’
Arthur had never had one of those in his life. He had jogged along and things had happened and then he had jogged along some more and more things had happened. Then Margaret had died and now he was in this mess.
Blut studied him and understood.
‘Let me worry about strategy, it’s what I do. You find the means of escape – that’s what you do. There are fewer Fyrd guards than before and they’ll focus on me. You can probably slip away unnoticed. It’s a warren of a place. They’ll think you’re in your quarters.’
‘It would be a good start if we knew where we are.’
‘That I can answer,’ said Blut. He half closed his eyes, consulting the dossier he had been able to read and memorize.
‘We are in the Ministry of Defence building A/W/263. It is what humans call a Cold War Bunker, whatever that means. You know, I expect.’
Arthur did and he explained.
‘There are dozens dotted about all over the place in Englalond and many across the Channel too. All but a few have long-since been decommissioned. Some destroyed, some put to other uses, and some, built in secret, now all but forgotten. This may be one of those.’
His eye was caught by a tatty old map half-taped, half-pinned, to a noticeboard. It had been left behind by the former human occupants of the bunker and he needed to stand on a chair to look closely at it. It was an old inch-to-a-mile Ordnance Survey map with all the symbols, gridlines and many different typefaces he knew so well. Someone had used a red crayon to put
a circle around their location on the map.
Arthur studied it for a long time, breathing easier to know where he was and to read names so familiar to him: Northampton, Rugby, Market Harborough and Kettering, where he and Margaret once spent a night in a horrible hotel. How far off that time, that human life, now seemed.
He soon discovered that Blut was right, it was not difficult to disappear for a few hours. Whoever had done the original reconnaissance of the bunker had not done it thoroughly. The wide concourse down which they had come when they first arrived was well lit by electric lights. The many side-corridors off it less so. The main nexus of activity was a crossroad of corridors not far from the Emperor’s quarters. In that area the corridors were covered in grey linoleum which had once been stuck fast to the concrete beneath. Time had caused it to become brittle, chronic damp had lifted off the substrate. But there was enough left to give an illusion of smartness, helped by the fact that the walls thereabout were white, the doors grey. They were numbered twice – once by humans, with letters and numbers, and more recently by the Fyrd, with numbers from 1, the Emperor’s Quarters, to 20, which were latrines.
The command centre was Number 5, a big room with a table on which maps of South Englalond had been laid and a viewing platform on two sides from which they could be studied. Off this operations room there was an old radio station at which two young Fyrd worked with earphones and Morse keys, transmitting messages.
Good old Morse code, thought Arthur.
Radio hamming and its associated activities had been a hobby when he was a boy, and the operators were happy enough to show him how the system worked in the bunker.
‘The condition of the wiring is nearly perfect, Professor,’ one of them explained, ‘and all we had to do was establish a frequency with Bochum, reset our codes to match theirs and avoid unwanted contact with humans and we were away.’
‘Unwanted contact?’
‘Who knows who would tap into the old settings? Probably all defunct now and it would probably be impossible to trace us. But our own settings in Bochum are definitely secure. The new Emperor made sure of that when he was a Commandant. It interested him.’
It was a point that interested Arthur too and a new topic for conversation and reminiscing with Blut.
‘Morse? Yes, any communication method interested me as Commandant of the Emperor’s Office. It was illegal for non-Fyrd to communicate that way, or most ways involving equipment of that kind. But . . . people did.’
‘So you executed them?’ said Arthur heavily.
‘We warned them. Only one was sentenced but the sentence was never carried out.’
Arthur looked surprised, then remembered that Blut himself lived because of an Imperial pardon.
‘No, he was not pardoned. We couldn’t find him even when we got to the little place he lived on the Dutch coast. But no one, not even his family, knew where he was. After that he became an irritant but harmless. The Emperor finally decided to let him be.’
‘Not even a name?’
‘We worked that out but when the Fyrd got there . . . His name was Arald. Of course, Brum had some Morse coders too, but then it would have, Arthur. They were untouchable. I think you know one of them rather well.’
Arthur thought for a moment and laughed.
‘Mister Bedwyn Stort! Sort of thing he would do. I visited his laboratory once but I cannot say I remember a Morse key or a wireless but, well . . . it was untidy.’
‘Tell me about this Stort.’
Arthur did so.
While these conversations continued Arthur took an occasional break from them by exploring the largest of the unlit tunnels he noticed when he arrived. Lacking any map of the bunker he began making one of his own, realizing very quickly that the system was far bigger than he had imagined and its layout more complex.
The secondary tunnel had lights with no working bulbs, until Arthur found hundreds of them in a storeroom. Most of the light fittings were corroded but not all. He soon fixed up enough lights to make exploration possible, though he left dark places to discourage anyone from following him.
The air was cold and draughty, which implied some kind of exit to the world above. The floors were wet, in some cases sludgy. The walls were mildewed, the plaster ceilings all gone, exposing a network of pipes, many rusted. There were chairs, desks, rotten bedding, unopened supplies of everything needed for human survival underground, from towels to bandages, tins of food to unused brooms and hardware such as sinks, pipework and what looked like a rusted industrial heater.
Here, too, he found rooms for administration and planning and some empty ammunition boxes. Several times the lights flickered; once they went out.
Arthur proceeded cautiously, aware of the dangers of methane gas, tunnel collapse or rusting and jagged obstacles. Once some pipework he brushed against collapsed a little while later; another time a door swung to, sheered a hinge and nearly fell on him. At such times the torch he had brought with him, which no one had thought to confiscate, was crucial. But mostly he used it very sparingly.
Desolate and cold though the bunker was, it forcibly reminded him of the strange and extreme nature of the journey he had made. Humans seemed a long way away, their paraphernalia odd, eccentric even, and the business of secrecy and war an unpleasant and alien one.
Soon after, in another corridor, he found a secondary communications room. There was a Morse key and typewriter pad on a half-collapsed table and a fuse board on the wall, all corroded. But underneath a counter, inside a drawer, in boxes, he found supplies wrapped in brown, greaseproof paper. There was cable, fuse wire of various thicknesses, clips and crimpers, screwdrivers, pliers, all kinds of things that offered communication potential: radio parts, valves . . . and three Morse keys. These were oiled, wrapped and sealed. They were in perfect condition, laid ready against the day, surely long gone, when they might be needed. Arthur decided to try to get them working.
Blut was fascinated.
‘If you succeed, you could communicate and send for help. But that carries risks. I will think about it.’
It took Arthur another day to find a transmitter and receiver, again in near-perfect condition. He got them working easily and by moving them about was able to pick up high-frequency signals.
He felt a moment of connection with the world and his youth. The feel of them, the touch, the smell of the coils, brought back Arthur’s boyhood when his father showed him such things, first how to care for them, then how to make them.
How long he sat there he did not know, working by the light of a single bulb, sometimes just his torch only, his stiff fingers trying to do what once he did so swiftly and well.
The Fyrd operators had said the cables were good and they were right. He eventually traced a live supply, activated no doubt by the Fyrd elsewhere in the bunker. He cut out the corroded Morse key attached to it and hooked up one of the good ones.
With the box came a cheat sheet for the Morse letters and abbreviations, which was just as well since his memory of Morse was limited.
Later, Blut, being Blut, said he remembered his Morse instantly.
He shrugged and said, ‘I cannot help it. I remember the most useless of things. Sometimes . . .’
He frowned and scratched his chin.
He cleaned his spectacles.
Then he scrivened a short string of letters and numbers on a piece of paper. ‘For example,’ he said, thrusting the paper towards Arthur, ‘I remember this as the call sign of our elusive friend Arald in Holland.’
Later still, back in the communications room he had discovered, Arthur pulled out his notebook, in which he had secreted the piece of paper.
He was ready to begin and he did. He knew the Fyrd operators were deliberately avoiding the frequencies humans used, which suited him perfectly. He did not want them picking up on what he was going to transmit, which was a call for help, giving some very precise information about their location to anyone who knew how to read it. It was an S.O.
S. and incorporated the call sign Blut had given him as well.
Someone, somewhere, might respond. Maybe Arald himself. That particular hydden would have good reason: simple curiosity.
If and when anyone does respond, thought Arthur, I might dare to think we have some hope of getting out of here.
24
LEETHA
‘She’s not here,’ cried Judith the Shield Maiden angrily, her voice the rattling of pine cones across the forested slopes of the Harzgebirge in Germany, in whose eastern lee the giant-born Jack was made.
‘Nor here,’ she rasped, twisting on the back of the White Horse to survey the bleak fissure of the Sonnenberg, where no sun shone that day.
The Horse turned and galloped on.
Judith was looking for the Modor, or Wise Woman, who had lived from time immemorial with her consort, the Wita, in those parts. She wanted advice, comfort, help. She needed something to assuage her loneliness.
‘Not even here,’ she snarled, whipping the wind to make a frenzy of patterns over the blue surface of the Oderteich before she dived in, stayed under for a time in the cold below and emerged to remount and gallop on.
‘Let alone there!’ she snapped, pointing at the disfigurement of the place that was the Brocken, covered now in human towers and antennae, its musica all but gone.
‘The truth is, you don’t know where she is!’ she said.
She was speaking to the White Horse which picked its way among the great rocks of the high passes, silently looking here and looking there, seeing everything but what Judith wanted.
‘Where is she, the Modor? I have a question for her.’
The Horse reared, its hind legs all muscle, its flanks all shine, its neighing the beginning of torrential rain.
How desperately Judith wanted to meet her, talk with her, the Wise Woman, the elusive one.
She wanted to say, ‘I am the Shield Maiden and I need guidance for my angry ride across the Earth. The Earth? She doesn’t talk to me and you’re nowhere to be found so you’re no use either. There’s no one. No one.’