The Hour of Camelot

by Alan Fenton

  ‘Exactly what I thought at first,’ said Mordred, ‘but then he started hinting he was going to do something really major. I kept asking him what, but every time I asked, he clammed up. Obviously he didn’t trust me, so I decided the only way to win his confidence was to pretend to agree with him. If I hadn’t, he would never have given himself away. And believe me, it’s major. He wasn’t kidding.’

  George was becoming entangled in Mordred’s web of deceit.

  ‘Out with it. What is he going to do?’ ‘Destroy Excalibur,’ said Mordred.

  Whatever George was expecting, it was not that. ‘My God!’ A few moments reflection, and the full horror dawned. ‘If he destroys Excalibur, he destroys Camelot with it. Does he know that?’

  ‘I reminded him, and he seemed quite relaxed about it,’ said Mordred. ‘Says we’ll have plenty of time to evacuate the island.’ The steel vice tightened further. George winced with pain.

  ‘You are certain he is serious?’

  ‘I was never more certain of anything in my life,’ said Mordred.

  ‘Then he must be mad,’ said George.

  ‘I fear he is,’ said Mordred, as apologetically as if he were personally responsible for Galahad’s mental condition. ‘Arthur made a grave error of judgement when he gave him the access codes.’

  ‘He has to be stopped. Perhaps I should arrest him on suspicion of plotting espionage,’ mused George.

  ‘If you think that’s the way to go,’ said Mordred. ‘He would deny everything, of course. Besides, we can’t be a hundred per cent certain he’ll make good his threats.’

  ‘That’s true.’ Under extreme pressure, George was doing his best to think clearly. ‘I could talk to Arthur.’

  Mordred appeared to give the idea serious consideration. ‘Supposing Galahad is right, though. About Arthur, I mean.’

  George nodded. Mordred had a point. This was a tricky one. On the one hand, Camelot could be in mortal danger. On the other, Galahad might just be ranting – about Arthur, and about his own intentions. ‘I can’t move without proof,’ he concluded. ‘When I have that, I’ll do what has to be done.’

  ‘I’ll get you proof,’ said Mordred. ‘How?’

  ‘When he decides to act, he’ll tell me. And don’t worry, I’ll be there to stop him.’

  George Bedivere had been in many life-threatening situations, but none as traumatic as this. One wrong decision could bring down Camelot. ‘Too risky,’ he said, ‘he might give you the slip.’ ‘He won’t do that,’ said Mordred confidently. ‘Remember, he thinks I’m on his side. I’ll alert you the instant he makes his move.’

  George considered consulting the Round Table, and decided against it. If he warned them about Galahad, Arthur would be severely criticised for giving him the codes. The effect on morale would be disastrous. ‘I’m relying on you, Mordred,’ he said, worry lines creasing his forehead. ‘The future of Camelot may depend on us.’

  ‘Trust me,’ said Mordred.

  Several floors below Galaxy, the Energy Control Centre regulated the energy source of all Camelot’s communications and weaponry. In each of four rooms a dozen screens on a dozen computer terminals displayed current data measuring Excalibur’s energy levels; energy consumed, and estimated energy required for the island, for air, land and sea craft, for weapons and communications, and for current and projected operations.

  From the rim of an imaginary wheel, four corridors led from these rooms to the wheel’s hub, Excalibur Control, a sparsely furnished, dimly lit room, with a single terminal in the centre, about the same size as the table monitor in Galaxy. The approaches to Excalibur Control were protected by four steel doors armed with surveillance panels, and at each door a destroyer robot programmed with the same instructions; no one, not even Arthur himself, was permitted to enter unless they knew the password of the day. Anyone trying to force an entry would be killed.

  On the terminal’s screen there was no data, only an image of a blue sky and reeds growing in a lake. Uninformative as this simple scene appeared to be, it nevertheless confirmed to those who knew, that Camelot’s power source was operating smoothly. The scene never changed, the one small exception being that now and then the reeds swayed gently, and the surface of the water was ruffled by the lightest of breezes.

  Galahad and Mordred sat at the command terminal for several minutes.

  ‘Let’s wait until Arthur gets back,’ said Galahad, who was having second thoughts.

  ‘Last minute nerves,’ said Mordred. ‘I’ll help you. We’ll do it together.’ With his back to Galahad, he tapped George’s wake- up alarm code into his mobcom.

  ‘I need to talk about it some more.’

  ‘Fine, let’s talk,’ said Mordred. ‘You have it with you?’

  Galahad produced a mini-computer from his pocket. As he accessed it, the computer’s light painted his face an eerie green. On the screen, in six rows of five digits each, were thirty numbers.

  ‘That’s it, Mordred,’ he said, his voice unsteady, ‘that’s the doomsday code.’ Suddenly he was overwhelmed by the enormity of what he was contemplating. ‘If I feed all those numbers in, Excalibur will self-destruct and Camelot will be torn apart.’

  ‘Right,’ said Mordred calmly, peering at the screen. ‘The moment you do, we’ll raise the alarm and evacuate the island.’

  Galahad shook his head. ‘I can’t do it.’ ‘Of course you can,’ said Mordred.

  Galahad’s head swam, his knees buckled. Grasping the desk, he steadied himself. ‘I can’t.’

  Last minute nerves, Mordred had said. Now he was nervous too. For his plan to work, George would have to catch Galahad in the act, but if Galahad backed off, there would be no act to catch him in. It was now or never. ‘Damn it,’ he said, making a grab for the computer, ‘if you won’t do it, I will.’

  Seconds later George Bedivere rushed into Excalibur Control to find Mordred and Galahad wrestling on the floor, each trying to seize the tiny computer.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ he demanded.

  The two men separated and jumped up. Mordred handed the mini-computer to George.

  ‘He was trying to feed in the doomsday code,’ he said, breathing heavily. ‘Thank God, I managed to stop him in time.’ ‘That’s not true!’ protested Galahad. ‘You told me to do it. I didn’t want to.’

  Mordred’s face was a mask of outrage. ‘I am shocked, profoundly shocked,’ he declared, ‘that someone who claims to be a man of God should be such a despicable liar.’ Galahad opened his mouth to speak. ‘But I never . . . ’

  ‘Don’t say another word,’ said Mordred, cutting him off, ‘you disgust me.’

  Bewildered and distraught, Galahad cried out, ‘Why are you doing this to me?’

  Mordred’s eyes were ice-cold. ‘I have done nothing,’ he said. ‘You have done it to yourself.’

  Sinking to his knees, Galahad raised his hands and eyes to heaven. ‘Forgive me, Lord,’ he whispered, ‘for I have sinned.’

  ‘There’s a confession if ever I heard one,’ said Mordred triumphantly.

  It was sufficient for George. ‘Galahad,’ he said, ‘consider yourself under arrest.’

  Galahad, shocked and bewildered, had nothing to say. Moments later a robot guard took him by the arm and led him away.

  It was agreed that George would be the one to break the news of Galahad’s arrest to Arthur who, it was expected, would return to Camelot immediately.

  Sixty Nine

  The scuttle piloted by Gawain and co-piloted by Arthur, landed in the middle of a deserted Yorkshire moor far from the nearest village. There they intended to wait until Techforce Ten got a fix on Lancelot. How long that would be, no one knew.

  Nearly twenty-four hours earlier his Scuttle had taken off unmantled from Camelot, heading due south for approximately a hundred kilometres before mantling and disappearing from Command Control’s screens. Techforce suspected a ruse. Lancelot had learned the arts of deception from Camelot’s masters – Tich and Mo
rdred. He could have mantled immediately after take-off, but had chosen not to. Why? Why would he fly unmantled for a hundred kilometres unless he were laying a false trail? And if he was, where was he heading now?

  Techforce Ten, Arthur and Gawain, debated whether Lancelot’s original course was a bluff or a double bluff. When he mantled his Scuttle, had he immediately changed course and headed north? (it was generally agreed that north was more likely than east or west). Or had he continued heading south?

  For three days they camped out, Gawain spending most of the day on board Scuttle talking to Command Control, whilst Arthur went for long solitary walks across the moor. When he returned, Gawain would invariably still be in Scuttle’s control room, becoming more and more frustrated as the hours and days passed with no clue to Lancelot’s whereabouts.

  Crouched on his heels, his back propped against one of Scuttle’s giant rear wheels, Arthur would wait for his nephew, half hoping he would find Lancelot, half hoping he would not, fearing that nothing he could say or do would stop the two men trying to kill each other. On the third day a pale autumn sun rose in a cloudless sky. By mid-morning, a mass of black clouds had rolled in from the east. A hundred metres from the parked Scuttle the small tent in which the two men slept flapped and tugged at its guy ropes.

  Moving cautiously down the steps from the Scuttle’s belly, Gawain grabbed the handrail as a sudden gust of wind threw him off balance. ‘Arthur?’

  ‘Here.’

  Gawain joined him.

  ‘Any news?’ asked Arthur automatically, though he could read the answer on Gawain’s face.

  Huddled in the lee of the Scuttle against the chill wind, the two comrades stared unseeing into the distance.

  ‘Techforce think he’s somewhere up north,’ said Gawain, ‘though there’s precious little evidence of it.’

  Arthur plucked a handful of grass, tossed it in the air and watched it whirl away. The wind moaned round them, now and then gusting strongly enough to make even the big Scuttle shake. With a sudden pang of nostalgia he remembered how, when he was a boy fishing by Ponterlally bridge, he would throw handfuls of grass in the river and watch the green threads drift downstream in the current.

  ‘You think they’ll find him?’

  ‘They’ll find him,’ said Gawain. ‘They have four mini- satellites closing in. Techforce are certain he can’t hide much longer.’

  For good or ill, thought Arthur, it was probably true. Lancelot could twist and turn, but it was only a matter of time before Command Control located him. And when they did, Gawain would be after him like a hound let off the leash.

  Back in the tent, they lay down and dozed. Arthur’s earcom vibrated, waking him. He touched the metal disc implanted in his earlobe. George Bedivere spoke. For a long time he listened, saying nothing, then cut the link. Gawain, awake now, was concerned. There was a look on Arthur’s face he had never seen before. The wind dropped. It began to rain, the first drops rapping the canvas above their heads. Arthur looked defeated, as if the burden of living were suddenly too much for him. Something terrible must have happened. Flurries of rain assaulted the tent like avenging furies. The canvas slapped in the wind.

  ‘What is it, uncle?’ ‘They’ve arrested Galahad.’ ‘Why, for God’s sake!’

  ‘It seems he was trying to use the access codes to command Excalibur to self-destruct.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe,’ said Gawain, more because he knew it was what Arthur wanted to hear than because he discounted the possibility.

  Arthur told himself that Galahad was not capable of such treachery. Certainly he was against killing under any circumstances, had made no secret of it, but not against Camelot – never that. He believed in what Camelot was trying to achieve, even if, sometimes, he disapproved of its methods. It was inconceivable, therefore, that he would try to destroy Camelot’s most powerful weapon. Unless . . . Galahad was not a man to compromise. Had his pacifist convictions overcome reason? Had the zealot in him taken over?

  For Arthur, this was much more than a personal tragedy. The vision he had of a world peopled by men and women of goodwill was a noble one. Without that dream, man was no better than the animals. If Galahad had indeed turned traitor, if he were to be tried, found guilty and sentenced to a term of imprisonment, it would deal a severe blow, perhaps a mortal one, to Arthur’s dream of saving mankind. Not for the first time, he suffered the pain of grief, and the pain of guilt too.

  If he had stayed in Camelot instead of joining Gawain in the hunt for Lancelot, Galahad would not now be under arrest. He began to stuff his things in a backpack. ‘We must get back,’ he said. ‘Camelot needs us.’

  Gawain’s jaw jutted stubbornly. ‘Camelot needs you,’ he said, ‘not me.’

  The tent struggled in the wind, as if desperate to be free of the earth’s clutches.

  ‘Galahad’s arrest changes everything,’ said Arthur.

  ‘For me it changes nothing,’ replied Gawain. His head told him it was his duty to go with Arthur, his gut instinct told him to stay, and that was a stronger pull. If he had been closer to Galahad, he might have felt differently, but he had never really warmed to him – a certain grudging admiration, no more than that. Poor Galahad. A young man not over-endowed with brains, with unshakable, not to say fanatical convictions. How could he have been so stupid? Hopefully there was some misunderstanding. Dismissing Galahad from his thoughts, he focused his mind on Lancelot.

  Backpack slung over his shoulder, Arthur looked down at Gawain. ‘Give up this hunt. No good can come of it.’

  ‘My brothers will rest in peace,’ said Gawain. ‘And so will I.’ ‘If you kill Lancelot, you will never know a moment’s peace in this life.’

  ‘I’ll just have to take that risk,’ said Gawain.

  The wind howled round the tent like a hungry wolf. Arthur had no doubt where his duty lay. Yet if he returned to Camelot alone, he would be abandoning Lancelot and Gawain to their fate. One of them, perhaps both, would surely die. Whatever he did, he would be taking a huge risk. He debated with himself, weighed the options, and made his decision; he would stay one more day. That could make little difference in Camelot, and it might just save a man’s life. There was, of course, another reason to stay, one he scarcely dared admit to himself; the forlorn hope that he might persuade Guinevere to come back to Camelot with him. For despite everything, he still loved her. Nothing would ever change that.

  He dropped his backpack. ‘I leave tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Better check Scuttle’s data bank again. See if they have a fix on Lancelot.’

  Gawain tried not to show his disappointment. With Arthur out of the way, he would have had a free hand.

  In the afternoon the wind dropped, and through a thin cloud layer a ghostly autumn sun illuminated the bleak landscape with a wan light. Gawain took a brief nap in the tent and went back to the Scuttle. Seconds later he rushed down the steps. ‘They’ve found him!’

  It was the best and the worst of news. Arthur’s heart leaped and sank. ‘Where?’

  ‘He’s holed up with Guinevere and Lanky in a derelict farmhouse. His Scuttle is on the other side of a big sand dune a kilometre from Bamburgh castle.’ He was already back in the tent grabbing his gear. ‘This is it. Let’s go!’

  Gawain put down the Scuttle between two massive sand dunes about a kilometre from the farmhouse. They had to assume that Lancelot knew he had been followed. Heat and movement sensors on his Scuttle would almost certainly have given their Scuttle’s presence away as it unmantled. That night the sky cleared and the air was cold. Pitching their tent, they kept watch by turns. In the morning they would make their presence known.

  Gawain slept like a baby, Arthur hardly at all. An hour before dawn he roused himself, made some tea and woke Gawain. For a while the two men sipped the warm brew, each committed to his own thoughts.

  ‘I wonder what Lance is thinking now.’

  Gawain stared into his mug. ‘I don’t give a damn,’ he said. ‘All I know is he m
urdered my brothers.’

  ‘You should forgive him,’ said Arthur.

  Gawain’s lips compressed. ‘Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. I have to avenge them, for their sakes as well as mine. It’s my destiny, whether I like it or not.’

  ‘Our destiny is what we make it,’ said Arthur. ‘Merlin taught me that.’ For a few seconds he thought Gawain might be having second thoughts. But then he shook his head, indicating that the discussion was over.

  An hour later Gawain knocked on the cottage door. In seconds Lancelot opened it. ‘Won’t you come in?’ he said, showing no surprise. Gawain stood his ground. ‘I’ll stay out here.’

  Lancelot shut the door behind him. ‘Let’s walk, then. Get some sea air.’

  Leaning into the wind, they walked the shoreline. For a full minute neither man spoke.

  ‘Why have you followed me here?’ ‘You know why,’ said Gawain. ‘To kill me.’

  ‘To see justice done.’

  ‘I have thought about that,’ said Lancelot. ‘If it’s justice you want, let me be judged by the Round Table. I’ll come back to Camelot with you.’

  ‘I’ll get no justice there. Arthur will save your skin.’

  ‘Then it’s not justice you want,’ said Lancelot, ‘it’s revenge.’ Gawain did not answer. For a while the two men walked in silence, then Lancelot stopped and faced Gawain. ‘If I were to remind you how much I loved your brothers, if I swore on my mother’s life that I never meant to kill them, if I told you how bitterly I regret what happened, and that . . . not a day passes, no, nor a night either, when I do not pray for God’s forgiveness – as I beg for yours now – would that change your mind?’ ‘It would change nothing,’ said Gawain.

  They walked on.

  ‘How do you plan to kill me?’ asked Lancelot, breaking another long silence.

  ‘In a fair fight.’

  ‘With what weapons? Ports?’

  ‘That would not be a fight,’ said Gawain. ‘It would all be over in seconds.’