‘Go on,’ said Stort.
‘All we do is choose,’ said Katherine. ‘Like we choose to go through the portals between the hydden and human worlds. Or like we choose whether to stand here and talk or continue along this green road?’
Stort shook his head as they all started walking.
‘No,’ he said, ‘not a choice as simple as sitting still or walking. More the choices we continually make about where our lives are going.’
‘. . . and maybe,’ said Jack quietly, concluding the thought he had begun, ‘we have far more choices in place and time than we think. Including going back, if not in time, then on our route. So now, Abbey Mortaine? Agreed?’
He did not wait for an answer but strode on ahead, sturdy and strong, his stave alive again and magnificent in the morning light.
8
FOR HIS PROTECTION
What Arthur found out so quickly on the internet was that there had been several sudden catastrophic Earth incidents spread across the continents in the few hours before Bohr’s calls.
A township in Cape Town had been swallowed whole in the space of a few minutes and ten thousand lives lost when a fault opened suddenly and then closed as quickly again. A village in the foothills of the Himalayas of north India slid uphill into a reservoir, leaving two hundred and fifty-eight people dead. In central Germany, the town of Rinteln had been inundated by the River Weser on whose banks it stood, for no reason that had any climatological or other explanation. Two thousand lives lost.
There were many other smaller such incidents in the hours following.
Bohr had stopped calling as suddenly as he had begun because, Arthur guessed, he had been swamped with duties arising from what was happening worldwide.
In many of the newspapers, and in graphic television footage too, the incidents were initially referred to as ‘seismic’ despite the fact that many of them were not. Or at least, they did not have the characteristics of earthquakes or other Earth movements: they were very sudden, came without warning and in some cases, as in the Cape Town incident, the Earth’s surface was only briefly displaced before its parts moved together again.
No wonder that very soon reference was being made to the Angry Earth and notions that the Earth was ‘fighting back’.
Of more interest to Arthur was the relationship between what was happening in the Cosmos and these incidents, and he had no doubt at all that that was the focus of Bohr’s and NASA’s interest too. In particular, Arthur suspected, any recorded fractures or displacements of time, such as happened when anyone, hydden or human, moved between the two worlds.
For that reason it was a strange and unwelcome overnight news story following Bohr’s unanswered calls, concerning an otherwise relatively minor ‘seismic’ incident in Moss, a suburb of Oslo, Norway, that put into Arthur a deep sense of foreboding.
Again, the Earth had shifted. Again, lives were lost. But this time the reports included reference to the bodies of three oddly dressed dwarfs being found, along with ‘unusual medieval-style artefacts’, as the International Herald Tribune website put it. Arthur had little doubt these were hydden and he was only glad that the rest of world news was still so shocking that the incident was soon forgotten.
Although communications had been disrupted worldwide – another reason Bohr might not have called again – Arthur was able to get through to another ex-student of his and ask him to make discreet enquiries about what had happened in Moss.
The answer was unexpected.
What had begun as a normal exercise for the rescue services, though a tragic one, had been taken over by Norway’s NORDSS, its military security service.
The whole of Moss and what had been found there was off-limits.
Worse, for Arthur, was a brief additional message later that afternoon: ‘Don’t know if there’s a link! Guess who flew in to Oslo this morning according to an unofficial blog I read? Our friend Bohr! Be warned!’
An hour later Arthur’s phone rang in that especially insistent and accusatory way he imagined it adopted when he was expecting to find someone unpleasant at the other end of the line.
He decided not to pick it up that time but trawl through various specialist sites on the web so that, when he let Bohr catch up with him, he would be as up to speed on what was going on in the astral-archaeological and cosmological worlds as it was possible to be without access to official sources, except discreetly.
He took a break at three and sat in the garden. His mind had drifted back to Margaret, then to Jack and Katherine and finally their daughter Judith. He was surprised to realize he missed her more than anyone.
‘Judith,’ he said, sitting up, her name a million memories: her coming three months before, like her going at the start of August, and everything between, a wondrous, alarming mystery.
Margaret had loved her.
He loved her.
And her parents, Jack and Katherine, they loved her too, so far as it was possible to love a child of the skies, of prophecy, of the elements and of the Universe, who grew from infant to adulthood in three months and whose life moved between the hydden and the human worlds and warped itself through the vales of time as well.
Now she, he was certain, would come back.
They had bonded as a real grandfather and granddaughter might have done: deeply, eternally, with a love and trust and good humour that is free of the responsibilities of closer family ties like those of parents and siblings, yet sharing something of both. A natural, familial love, pure and simple, made all the more wonderful to him because the others had understood and applauded it.
In her last days with them, when they holidayed in the Borderland of England and Scotland, Judith had taken him on a personal tour of the desolate Kielder country to show him how mortals ruined the Earth. By mortals she meant humans. It was done on her timescale, not his. A two-year journey passed in a few hours. He had flown through skies and dwelt for a time in water at the bottom of a reservoir. He had not expected anyone else to have believed what had happened, not even Margaret.
Why had he, of all physicists, been so privileged to travel through time and relativity as he had? For that was what it had been.
He did not know.
Had it really happened?
Arthur was sure it had and it meant that he could relate to Judith’s between-world experiences and understand a little of how it was that time to her was not the same as it was to ordinary mortals.
The last time she spoke to him was by the henge, when she whispered, ‘Arthur, I think the Chimes may be everything.’
It was a thought which, now Margaret had passed on and he felt free of the promise he had made, he dared to begin to examine.
The Chimes are everything.
‘What does that mean?’ he asked himself again and again.
The phone, so blessedly silent for an hour, rang suddenly, worse than before.
‘Bloody thing,’ said Arthur.
As he did there was a beep-beep from the kitchen. A text on the mobile he almost never used, which he had left charging for days, last used to check the time, when he discovered its battery had run out.
He had heard other texts come in, though none today. He looked towards the house furtively.
He went on up to it, hoping the ringing would die, which it did. He stood staring at the phone in his study, willing it not to ring again, which wish it ignored.
It rang again, horribly loud and he finally went to pick it up.
But even as his hand was on it he heard – incredulously, because he never had visitors – a car on the gravel at the front of the house and the clunk, clunk of a car door opening. No, doors plural, meaning at least two people had come to visit him.
Who the hell can they be? He shook his head, sighed, let go of the phone and went to answer the door.
Before he reached it, a dark shape loomed at the frosted glass, reached out and thumped the knocker, bang-bang-bang.
‘Yes?’ said Arthur as he opened the
door.
He stood amazed and alarmed.
It was a man in a military uniform with a briefcase.
Another, of lesser rank, stood by the solid and expensive-looking vehicle on his drive. It had a discreet RAF logo on the front bumper.
Neither man was smiling, but nor did they look unpleasant.
Just neat, shining, solid and very purposeful.
Well, Arthur told himself, ducking to check that the car had no passengers, at least they are not Erich Bohr.
The one at the door was holding a mobile in his hand and Arthur was not sure if he had just spoken into it or was offering it to him.
‘Professor Foale?’
‘Er . . . yes?’
‘You are not picking up, sir.’
‘Er, no, I suppose I’m not.’
‘Just a moment, sir.’
The officer pressed buttons on his phone. The soldier by the car, Arthur noticed for the first time, was armed.
The shiny car showed up the general dilapidation of the driveway and house and the two neat military men made Arthur look like a retired professor who, more or less, had just got out of bed.
Which, more or less, he was.
The officer spoke into the mobile, which looked sleek and slippery in his big square hand, ‘I have him here, sir,’ he said and proffered the phone to Arthur.
He shook his head, and said, ‘I do not speak on mobiles. They hurt my ears. Who is it?’
‘Dr Erich Bohr, sir.’
Arthur looked weary and muttered, ‘I suppose . . . well . . . Oh God, give it to me, then.’
Bohr was not a man to put on hold, not without some sort of explanation.
He took the mobile, held it with difficulty, and shoved it near but not onto his ear.
‘Bohr?’
‘Arthur?’
‘Yes.’
‘Cells hurt my ears too,’ he said. ‘Pick up that damn antique phone of yours. We need to talk.’
‘Er, yes. I will.’
‘Now!’
‘With two military personnel looming over me, one of whom is armed, that does seem to be the most sensible course of action, Erich.’
His house phones began ringing almost at once.
He handed back the mobile, trying to switch it off and failing.
‘Leave that to me, Professor. Just take the call, please.’
Arthur retreated to his study, his heart thumping, and picked up his phone.
‘I’m here,’ he said reluctantly.
Dr Erich Bohr, Chair of NASA’s Earth Enterprise, replied in his quick, clipped way, ‘I’ve been expecting you to call me. You’ve seen the news, I take it?’
It was a statement not a question.
‘Which particular bit of it?’
There was a pause.
‘The events.’
‘Yes . . . but I have not been very active of late . . . and I’m afraid Margaret died.’
There was a pause as Bohr slowly registered that Margaret’s death deserved a few words of regret before he got down to business. He uttered them, though without much conviction.
Arthur acknowledged that he had, but without any gratitude.
What was now clear to Bohr was that Arthur Foale, who was possibly the most informed person in the world on the history of Earth’s seismic events, was not going to yield easily to Bohr’s usual hectoring approach.
He changed tack, trying to sound charming, and talked a little of the events of the past twenty-four hours and how mystified everyone was. He did not mention the incident in Moss, Norway, and nor did Arthur.
Bohr now told him of incidents not covered by news in the public media.
In Austria a mountainside had collapsed without warning, killing over a hundred people working on a tracking station. In the Tasman Sea three large container ships had been swallowed in calm seas, all hands lost. In Tunisia an oasis around which hundreds of market traders and their customers were doing business sank into the sands, taking people, livestock, everything down with it.
‘Anything in England?’ asked Arthur finally.
He knew there had been, but nothing serious, not even the various Earth movements that had happened in the Summer, in Birmingham, among other places.
‘I’ll send you a list by email. I presume you are on email?’
‘I am, though . . . er, just a moment . . .’
He detected movement in the room above his head, which was his bedroom; and in the conservatory.
He put down the phone and went to inspect.
The officer who had knocked on the front door was in the hall; a different man he had not seen before was in the conservatory and someone else entirely in the garden.
‘Dammit,’ growled Arthur, going upstairs.
His bedroom door was wide open, a man who was not the driver of the vehicle was poking about, making five visitors in all.
‘What are you doing?’ Arthur demanded.
‘It’s for your own protection, sir,’ said the man blandly.
Arthur guessed at once it was a lie, but played the game.
‘From whom, exactly?’
‘That will be explained, I expect,’ replied the man.
Arthur swore, went back down the stairs, glowered at the officer and picked up the phone again. But his mind was on something else entirely. If they were searching his house there was only one thing they could be looking for. True, some of his archaeological work had been on Ministry of Defence sites, which made his cartographic records subject to the Official Secrets Act. But that wasn’t it. Erich Bohr was one of the very few people in the world who knew that Arthur had researched something else entirely, something so odd that people would consider him half-mad for even thinking it a proper topic for research. Yet it was something which, if his theory proved correct, would need to be more secret still.
Arthur Foale had been trying to find out if certain evidence concerning the hydden and the Hyddenworld was true. He had once made the mistake of telling Bohr that the only way to prove it was to find a way into the Hyddenworld and he foolishly hinted that he nearly had.
Ever since then Bohr had asked about it, and when Arthur did finally work out what the portals to the Hyddenworld were, and how they worked, he knew that Bohr would hear the lie in his replies.
Arthur was sure he had.
Now he wanted the full story because somehow or other Bohr, who was nobody’s fool, believed that the present global crisis might have a solution in, of all places, the Hyddenworld. In which, Arthur feared, he might well be right.
On these matters Arthur had hidden his records in a ruined outhouse where he was confident they would not be found.
‘What’s going on, Bohr?’ he asked.
‘There’ll be a full explanation. Have you had any messages from . . . anyone else?’
‘No.’
‘Emails?’
‘Don’t read ’em.’
‘Texts?’
‘I’ve had texts but . . .’ he hesitated because he was embarrassed. ‘Margaret did all that, not me. I’m not even sure I know how to access them.’
‘Do you mind if we . . . ?’
‘Just another moment,’ said Arthur.
He headed towards the kitchen where the mobile was and saw the officer already going that way himself. He picked up the mobile before Arthur could get to it.
‘This your mobile, sir?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you mind . . . ?’
‘Help yourself.’
The officer scrolled through his texts, found what he was looking for, opened it, shook his head slightly and spoke into the discreet wire speaker at his mouth.
‘They’ve been in touch, sir,’ he said.
He listened.
Then, ‘Yes, sir.’
Then, to Arthur, ‘Dr Bohr would be grateful if you could return to your study and pick up again . . .’
Bohr was brief and to the point.
‘I’m sorry, Arthur, but you’ll have to go with tho
se people. Well, they’re our people really. It’s for your own protection. I am going to have to convene a meeting.’
‘Where?’
‘You’re the lucky one. The rest will have to fly in. RAF Croughton. I think you know it.’
Arthur did.
One of his remits while at Cambridge had been to oversee digs on various archaeological sites that emerged from time to time on land controlled by the Ministry of Defence. Some settlement features and a henge outline had been found at Croughton, and since it was only twenty miles up the road he had run the dig himself.
‘Who else is coming?’
Bohr reeled off a list of names at rapid fire speed.
‘Anton Boucher of Météo-France; Ira Aldridge of the Pacific Northwest Seismographic Network; Dr Felix Nusbaum of the Israeli Astronomical Association . . .’
Arthur grunted. Nusbaum was a former pupil.
‘Aleman of the IASPE?’
‘Yes, Miguel is coming. So is Tom Gould of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, whom you worked with in Oregon and . . .’
A brief pause before Bohr started again.
It was no less than a roll-call of the world’s top researchers into global Earth events, seismic, meteorological and those that might be a function of, or influenced by, matters cosmological and temporal.
Arthur thought for a moment but said nothing. What was interesting was who was missing: the Chinese and the Russians. So this was political and the people Bohr feared might get to him first were, as he would have put it, on the other side. Not good.
‘What is the purpose of the meeting?’ he asked.
‘To review the pattern and progress of events so far. To consider alternatives to the more mainstream approaches my colleagues in other disciplines are taking which, I fear, have not produced anything useful yet. And . . .’
He hesitated and Arthur thought he knew why.
‘Tell me, Bohr, are you speaking from Norway?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘From Moss?’
The silence was vast and deep.
‘Yes. Arthur . . . we are going to have to talk about the Hyddenworld.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we have to examine all options open to us.’