‘Well done, Private,’ Douglas said.
‘Not good for nothing after all, see,’ Evans said, grinning like a madman.
Lethbridge-Stewart could see the gorge ahead of them, and remembered Ray’s tale. He was at the place his brother had died. Even now he could not recall the event, even the memory of the dream was fading no matter how hard he tried to hold on to it. It seemed he was forever destined to never remember James.
The question remained; why? He suspected the answer lay in the Manor with the Great Intelligence.
‘What the hell is that?’
Lethbridge-Stewart looked at where George was pointing, and pulled out his gun. Whatever the thing was, it was covered in web. A strange look crossed George’s face and he scrambled forward, jumping over a small fallen trunk and skidding to a stop beside the stream. Lethbridge-Stewart looked around, checking for Yeti. If there was web then the Yeti couldn’t be too far away.
By the time he’d joined George, the other man was on his knees, his body shaking. Lethbridge-Stewart wished he could blame the cold air for the convulsions, but it was the shape that George held in his arms that was responsible. The web hid the contours of the body within, but George had managed to pull away some of the substance to reveal a lifeless face inside. At first Lethbridge-Stewart thought it was Owain, but then he noticed the much shorter hair.
It was George’s other son, Lewis.
‘I knew it,’ George said, his voice so calm it unnerved Lethbridge-Stewart. ‘Last night, I woke up and I just knew it. It was like a part of me was just cut off.’
Lethbridge-Stewart didn’t know what to say. He had dealt with death so much since joining the army, buried people he had known well, people close to him. But he had never faced the death of a loved one before. Except…
He looked away, his eyes roaming to the top of the gorge a short distance away.
He didn’t remember it, but he had witnessed his own brother’s death. A boy even younger than Lewis. Two lives cut short by the presence of the Great Intelligence. How many more needed to die before it was stopped?
Bishop had guided them directly to the pub, the command centre of the siege. There Douglas found an older man in glasses looking over a map on a table. He introduced himself as Raymond Phillips, and quickly filled Douglas in on the current state of play in Bledoe.
Once briefed, Douglas turned to Doctor Travers. ‘Remind me, you said your machine cuts off the transmission from the… what did you call it? The astro plane?’
‘Astral plane. The aether, if you like. Why, what do you…?’ Doctor Travers stopped and a broad smile covered her face. ‘Oh, I like the way your mind works, Major. You think it can cut off the link between Owain and the Intelligence?’
‘Well, wouldn’t it? If I read the report correctly, isn’t that how the Intelligence possesses people? Like it did with your father.’
‘The same way it controls the spheres.’ Doctor Travers nodded. ‘That would make sense, yes.’
‘Excellent. Can you show Private Bishop how to operate it?’
‘I could,’ Doctor Travers said slowly, suspicion in her tone.
Douglas looked down at the map. ‘Very well. This is what we’re going to do. We shall split into teams, each one taking the fight to the Yeti. Keep them distracted, while a smaller team heads to this Manor and assists the colonel. Bishop,’ he said, looking over at the younger soldier, who was in the corner chatting to Mr Phillips. ‘I want you to lead the team. You will use Doctor Travers’ machine to free the young man who’s currently under the Intelligence’s influence, and then render whatever support Lethbridge-Stewart needs.’
Bishop saluted, but before he could say anything Doctor Travers stepped forward.
‘Now, excuse me, Major Douglas, but I’m not staying here. I’m going to the Manor, and I will work my machine myself.’
Douglas shook his head. ‘Out of the question. Your expertise is of vital importance to the British army, and General Hamilton expressed, quite strongly, that I am to ensure we keep…’
‘I survived London, I can survive this. Besides,’ she added with a grin, looking over at Bishop, ‘I will have my little soldier hero over there to protect me.’
‘It’ll be my pleasure, ma’am,’ Bishop said, trying his best to keep from grinning. He was not doing so very well.
Major Douglas looked from one to the other, then at Mr Phillips. ‘Never get involved with strong women, Mr Phillips.’
‘Confirmed bachelor,’ Phillips said.
‘Don’t blame you.’ Douglas cleared his throat. ‘Very well then, Doctor Travers. You will go with Bishop’s team. Private, make sure you keep her safe or Hamilton will have my head. And then I will have yours.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘If I may,’ Mr Phillips said. ‘I’d like to go, too.’
‘Appreciate the offer, Mr Phillips, but I can’t risk civilians, too.’ Douglas pointed at the map. ‘Besides, the route to the Manor seems straight forward enough.’
Phillips joined him at the table and considered the map carefully. ‘Yes, it does, but there are almost certainly Yeti along that road. Whereas I can show them a path that isn’t on this map, and one less likely to be guarded by Yeti. Just web.’
Douglas wasn’t sure how he felt about this, but Phillips had a point. He knew the area better than any of them. ‘Okay then, seems I’m out-voted again. The plan now is that you will lead a team to the Manor, Private Bishop, which will include Doctor Travers and Mr Phillips. In the meantime we will keep the Yeti occupied and as far from the village itself as possible.’
The colonel led the way and George followed, his mind a maelstrom of thoughts. He felt sure the death of Lewis should have knocked him for six, but he only felt calm, acceptance. He was angry at the Intelligence, angry that it had killed one of his boys and was even now influencing the other, but he also felt a sense of defeat. Like he had lost already.
He had been too late in realising how bad things had got in his house. It took the death of the broken Billy Moynihan to make him realise. And now it was too late. Now he had lost one of his boys and maybe the other, too, and it was too late to fix anything.
He wasn’t even sure why he was following Lethbridge-Stewart any more. The man seemed to know where he was going, he didn’t need George’s help.
‘Another one,’ Lethbridge-Stewart said.
George dragged himself out of his slump and caught up with the colonel. They were now at the edge of the woods, the Manor some yards before them. Lethbridge-Stewart knelt down and rolled the body over. It was Charles Watts. George felt a coldness fill him. He didn’t care for the Watts family in general, especially not the influence Charles had on Lewis, but now both boys were dead…
‘This has to end,’ he said.
Lethbridge-Stewart nodded. ‘It will. Today. Come on.’
The two men set off towards the Manor.
— CHAPTER FIFTEEN —
The Last Shot
LETHBRIDGE-STEWART WAS MINDFUL THAT he was walking into a trap, but nonetheless he entered by the main entrance. There were no Yeti in the grounds of the Manor, which meant they were almost certainly inside the house. George had picked up the rake they’d found at the edge of the woods, but Lethbridge-Stewart knew that such a weapon was of little use. His own pistol would likely do no good. The Intelligence had no form, and he couldn’t believe he’d shoot Owain, not with George beside him at any rate. The man had lost one son, and Lethbridge-Stewart intended to save the other one.
The doors creaked open and the two men entered the dank and dusty hall. A large staircase stood before them, doors either side, but they held no interest for either man. What mattered most was the scene before them.
To one side lay several silver spheres. Two Yeti stood by the main door, but they didn’t make a move towards the men. Near the staircase sat a pyramid – Lethbridge-Stewart was certain it was the same one he’d seen in Piccadilly Circus Station, although it had been enhanced somew
hat since then. At least that explained where the Yeti had come from – like the pyramid, they had been brought from wherever it was they had been stored after being cleared from London. He wondered how that had happened, but when his eyes alighted on Staff Sergeant Arnold he had a good idea. The sergeant stood next to the pyramid, wearing a metal cap similar to that which he had worn in Piccadilly when he had been controlled by the Intelligence. Wires connected him to the pyramid, in which sat another person Lethbridge-Stewart knew. His mother, also wearing a metal cap wired up to the pyramid. Both she and Arnold were looking into nothing, their eyes staring and vacant. A trance-like, meditative state.
He raised his gun and pointed it at the pyramid.
‘I wouldn’t advise that. Remember what happened to Arnold the last time someone interfered with the transfer?’
The voice was strong, cultured. And icy cold. A boy emerged from behind the staircase, followed by Owain. Although he had no memory of the boy, Lethbridge-Stewart recognised him from the photograph Ray had shown him. It was his brother, Gordon James. Despite this child-like appearance, though, the voice that spoke was a man’s.
Lethbridge-Stewart didn’t change his aim. ‘Sometimes dead is better,’ he said firmly. He wasn’t sure he would be able to sacrifice his mother should it come down to it, but he couldn’t let the Intelligence know that.
‘How very philosophical of you, Brigadier.’
‘I’m sorry?’
The boy shook his head with a smile. ‘My mistake. You’re still only a colonel, of course. Sometimes being me is confusing.’
‘Owain, come away from him,’ George said.
The younger Vine didn’t move. Instead he continued to watch the apparition of James. ‘He’s promised to bring peace to all of us,’ Owain said. ‘Make us all part of the pure consciousness.’
‘What are you talking about?’ George asked. ‘You can’t listen to this thing. It’s not a boy.’
‘I know. It’s the Great Intelligence, the ultimate evolution of the enlightened soul.’
‘Is that what it’s told you?’ Lethbridge-Stewart asked. ‘It’s no enlightened soul. It’s an alien parasite, responsible for the deaths of hundreds.’ He narrowed his eyes and looked directly at the Intelligence. ‘And it is not my brother, just a poor copy of him.’ Without warning he twisted his body around and shot one of the Yeti directly between the eyes. It dropped like a lead weight. The other Yeti reacted instantly, grabbing George by the throat. ‘You see? Is this the reaction of an enlightened being?’
Owain frowned. ‘But it told me… It’s changed since you last met.’
‘It killed Lewis,’ George growled, his voice raw from emotion and pain.
Owain reacted like he had been slapped. He staggered backwards, collapsing into the banister of the staircase. He looked around, shaking his head. ‘What? But you…’ He pulled himself to his feet. ‘I knew. Somehow I knew. You lied to me.’
The Intelligence shook his head. ‘Not entirely. Everything I have told you is true. I just haven’t told you everything.’
‘But you showed me. I saw into your mind.’
‘You saw only what I wished to share. I am the Great Intelligence, how can a mind such as yours hope to understand me?’ The boy that had been James Lethbridge-Stewart fell apart, like burning embers in a fire, and was replaced by the figure of a man. He was tall, a few inches shorter than Lethbridge-Stewart, his face stern and cold, lank black hair under a top hat, his clothes a hundred years out of time. He must have noticed the look on Lethbridge-Stewart’s face, because he laughed. ‘Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re seeing the real me. I haven’t had form for centuries, but this body… I have used it many times and have something of an affinity with it.’
‘What do you want?’ Lethbridge-Stewart asked, walking towards the spheres, drawing the Intelligence’s attention away from the pyramid, to which Owain was edging closer. ‘Last time we met you wanted to add another mind to yours.’
‘Did I? Oh, that was so long ago. My goals have changed since then. Right now I want only what every living thing wants. To survive.’
‘So you brought my mother here? Reanimated Arnold. To help you survive.’
The Intelligence smiled. ‘Yes, although I do not expect you to…’
Understand!
It is alone, lost. For centuries it has lived without form, seeking to add more minds to its own. But now it is lost, falling through time, weak. It cannot even remember its name. If it ever had one. It falls to Earth, like snow in winter. On Earth the year is 1842 and there it meets a boy.
For fifty years it survives on Earth, connected to the boy as the boy becomes a man. It grows stronger, but not strong enough. Its memory, covering centuries, is full of gaps, but it remembers a name given to it in Tibet – Great Intelligence. Although still weak it survives, outlives the man, but retains his form. For over a hundred years it lingers on Earth, searching to find other minds to bring into its own. Technology advances on Earth and soon humans discover new ways to store information, in a cloud of knowledge, contained in something they call the World Wide Web. Hiding in this repository of information amuses the Intelligence, using this web. It doesn’t understand why, until it learns to break through firewalls and access secret information hidden by governments and military organisations. It learns and remembers.
Tibet, London… So many times humans have encountered it, and it seems one man is always there to defeat it. The same man who defeated it in the nineteenth century. The Intelligence grows hungry for revenge, and plots. It learns everything it can about the man, and while it learns it rediscovers the extent of its own influence on the corporeal plane.
The plan is simple. It will travel through the timeline of its greatest enemy, undo every victory, and kill his enemy hundreds of times over. But it doesn’t account for that irritating porcelain girl. She also travels down the timeline, stopping it at every turn. With each defeat it becomes weaker, until it finds itself in London again. Only now it is the past. But even here the girl has prepared and time runs as it is intended. The Scottish boy blunders in and uses a Yeti to smash the pyramid, causing feedback that cuts off its younger self from the corporeal plane. The Intelligence watches, unable to do anything. Whatever it does, wherever it goes the girl will be there.
So it goes somewhere the girl cannot go. It jumps timelines. No longer following that of its greatest enemy. Instead it travels down the timeline of the man who is destined to become the greatest ally of its enemy, Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart.
It emerges in 1937. At first it is disorientated, much weaker than it expects to be. But it has arrived in the right place, for there before it is the boy that will become the soldier. It will kill him, defeat its enemy vicariously. But wait, there is another presence there. Another boy, and there inside the boy…
It is a soul that the Intelligence knows so well. Its own soul at the beginning. Young, new, and still contained in human form. Unable to resist the pull of itself, the Intelligence merges with its young soul, ready to rebuild itself from the beginning. Prepare for the arrival of its greatest enemy in Tibet, and to end the battle before it really begins. But something goes wrong. Disastrously wrong.
The two souls are not supposed to exist together – one impossibly young, the other ancient. It is too much for the young soul. Both are dying. But the Intelligence cannot remove itself. It is trapped!
It tries to communicate, explain things to the young soul. Calls itself Maha, a name plucked from its ancient memory. Mahasamatman; the name of its last human form before it transcended to pure consciousness. The young soul, Gordon, cannot understand. It only sees things in human terms, its mind is too underdeveloped.
The Intelligence needs to escape, but it also needs revenge. It knows that Gordon should die in 1949 so that the soul can be reborn in 1951, the first of thousands of rebirths as it evolves to the point where it no longer needs form. But still vengeance can be had. It will kill Gordon, rob him of ten years.
This will cause Alistair much pain. It is not much of a defeat, but it is something. And so it forces Gordon to kill himself, his death freeing the Intelligence once more. But it is now weaker than ever, and it retreats into the walls of the nearest building. There, in Remington Manor, it becomes the house, but is unable to reach any of the inhabitants. At best it can whisper in their ears, taunt them, drive them mad. Eventually the family can take no more and flee the house.
It tries to reach Mary, the mother of Gordon. If it can drive her mad too, that will be another defeat. But it is not strong enough. Mary leaves, takes Alistair with her. But as she moves out of its reach, the Intelligence yanks at her memory, tears out everything that was Gordon. It affects Alistair, too. The Intelligence is content for a while. It is a kind of victory – stealing from them their son and brother.
It doesn’t know how many years pass, but it remains trapped. An echo. A whisper.
And then it feels its young soul once more. But this time it will not merge with the soul, this time neither extremes of the immortal soul will be damaged. It will guide the soul, influence it, and draw strength from it.
From the mind of Owain it learns of the year, of the events in London. It reaches out to Albert Arnold, the mind that still contains a trace of itself, the younger version that was defeated in London. It has to pass through the minds of so many – animals and humans – to reach Albert. Causes much confusion, and the humans and animals try to call for help, but the only way they can do so is to create the symbols of the ancients. No one can understand, no one can help. But it doesn’t matter, it has reached Arnold, and Arnold is on the way.
Just one more trace is needed, the echo it left in Mary when it wrenched from her the memory of her son. It calls to her, using the voice of Gordon…
Understand!
Lethbridge-Stewart blinked. Barely a moment passed, and he knew everything about the Intelligence. He understood its plan. He smiled.
‘Defeat comes in all shapes,’ he said, and turned to aim his gun at Staff Sergeant Arnold.
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