Miss Smith put an arm round her and Eileen clutched at her, sobbing now. 'Call myself a nurse! But oh, Angie – it's awful '
'There now, love.'
Eileen sat determinedly upright and managed to regain control of herself. 'But then, I'm not a nurse. I'm a bloody jailer. We all are… No, listen – I'll try to tell you. It starts off like acute bronchitis, but after a day that clears and they're breathing normally. For another couple of days they're just weak, like fever cases recovering. Then it starts. Out of the blue, fits of violence, lasting only a minute or two and then passing. The first patients smashed furniture and windows and one broke a nurse's arm – after that we were prepared for it. They get steadily worse till the fits are continuous. By about the fifth day, they're wild animals. They don't seem to be in pain – just stark, staring mad -and violent. In strait-jackets, round the clock. It takes two of us to feed one patient – a male nurse to hold him and a female nurse to spoon it into him. Or her. Otherwise the feeder may get bitten. One girl was; it fractured two of her fingers.' Eileen laughed, harshly. 'They gave her an anti-rabies course, to be on the safe side. But it doesn't seem to be infectious, or contagious. And that's about all we do know.… We've got experts with strings of letters after their names as long as your arm, up there at the Unit. They've been running tests and Christ knows what, and they haven't a clue. It's a week now since the first ones went mad and all we've learned so far is how not to get ourselves hurt… Angie, I wouldn't confess this to anyone else, but… Look, I'm a nurse. I've got my reasonable share of compassion; you must have in my job or it gets impossible. But these… They're so awful, so far away from being human, I can't even feel sorry for them. I'm afraid of them and I hate them. I hate them for not being human and for keeping me away from being a nurse… I said I was a jailer but I'm not even that. I'm a keeper of wild beasts which haven't even got the nobility of real beasts… I know some of the others feel the same. One day soon, one of us is going to kill one of them. And what that would trigger off, I daren't think… Angie, it's like the end of my world.'
'Oh, my God,' Miss Smith said.
'I might just be able to ride it out,' Eileen went on, 'if I thought that it… Angie, I discovered something two days ago, by accident. One of the doctors let it drop without realizing what he'd said. He'd only just joined us, and he was discussing a symptom with another doctor – and he said "We found at Corwen it only occurs in the women". He'd forgotten I was in the room and I slipped out… You see what it means? Corwen's in North Wales, isn't it?
– and that was on the tremor line. So this isn't the only place… Angie, what the hell are we sitting on top of? And what happens if that little earthquake was only a starter?'
Miss Smith thought for a moment, and then asked: 'Eileen, are you being useful there? In any way, as a nurse?'
'In no way. My job could be done far better by an all-in wrestler.'
'Are you prepared to desert, then?'
'What?'
'Drive away with me. Now.' 'Angie, I'm a nurse’
'Precisely. And in normal times that means taking orders – though even then, you can give notice. I'm just asking you to leave without notice, because the way things are developing, I think your knowledge is going to be valuable to real people not wild animals beyond help. And I think you may find yourself having to use it on your own initiative without a nation-wide organization to work in and take orders from… I was a public servant, too. But I smelt the way the wind was blowing and prepared accordingly. This caravan's a carefully planned survival base, if that doesn't sound too melodramatic… I'm not on holiday,
Eileen. I walked out last week, without telling anybody. That's why I came looking for you; I'm all the family you've got, for what I'm worth, so I thought you'd a right to know what I was up to… I made my decision but since I started out I've wondered sometimes if I was over-dramatizing. Not any more, I don't. Not since I heard your story… There's room for you.' She waved at the two bunks behind them.
'But, Angie – we'd never get away with it. Did you say you were my cousin, at the hospital?'
'Yes.'
'Then if I disappear, the same day, from a top-secret place… By this time tomorrow all the police in Britain would be on the look-out for this caravan.'
'I said the caravan was planned. I have back there the number plates, registration book, and tax disc to next March of a bashed-in van of the same make which I bought for £50 in notes from a scrap dealer. I didn't give my name and he didn't ask for it. It would just go, and I drove it on to the Corporation dump of a borough which I happen to know doesn't bother to check up on dumped wrecks. There are some advantages to being a well-informed Council employee… We'll change the plates and disc today, and we'll be OK for anything short of a chassis number examination. And by this time tomorrow we could be in the Lake District or somewhere.'
'Angie, you're an old crook.' Miss Smith could see that her cousin was brightening already.
'A survivor has to be, within reason. And I blush to admit to one more James Bond touch; I've got a couple of wigs in one of those drawers, and your head's about the same size as mine. How d'you fancy yourself as a blonde?… I'd better find it for you right away. And a sweater and slacks, though you'll have to pull the waist in a few inches. Have to get you out of that uniform now.'
"You've made up your mind about it, haven't you?'
‘Yes.'
Eileen said: 'I can change on the floor while you drive. Let's get moving.'
They found a wood a few miles away towards Chew Magna where they changed the plates, and Eileen made a slightly more satisfactory job of re-clothing herself by moving the buttons on a wrap-around skirt of Miss Smiths. By mid-afternoon they were in Cheltenham, where Miss Smith insisted that Eileen bought herself some clothes in her own size ('Get a bikini and some shorts and a couple of sun-tops too, love – we ought to look and behave like holidaymakers'), and by taking it in turns to drive, before sunset they reached a quiet river-bank in Northamptonshire where they settled to cook a meal and spend the night.
Over a tin of pineapple (and how long would they be available?) Miss Smith casually switched to BBC 1on the little television. The chronically surprised face of Paul Grant was asking: 'But are you seriously suggesting, Mr Stoddart, that the earth tremors were an expression of the wrath of God against resurgent paganism?'
Ben Stoddart's voice was as charming and reasonable as his smile. 'I wouldn't dream of suggesting any such thing. God works in mysterious ways and it's not for me to attempt to oversimplify them.'
'Isn't your slogan "Goddess worship is Satan worship" an oversimplification?'
'Essentially, no; it puts truth in a nutshell – and it concerns human activity, not Divine. One may – indeed one should – be categorical about human error. But one must bow to the mystery of God's intervention and accept that it is a mystery.'
'A mystery which may, or may not, include earth tremors to punish witches – and to punish the rest of us for tolerating them?'
'Let us put it this way, Paul. Andrea Sutton's last words, before she was martyred on Bell Beacon – or worse than martyred, if the blood sacrifice account by two independent witnesses is substantiated…'
'That is sub judice, so we can't discuss it,' Grant interrupted.
'Of course, of course. Please ignore my remark about blood sacrifice. But our dear friend Andrea's last words were: "It's the wrath of God, smiting the witches!" Now whatever the geologists may say (and heaven knows they say little that is comprehensible), it may be that millions of people will feel that, in extremis, Andrea expressed a profound spiritual truth. And millions may wonder if those words should go unheeded…'
Miss Smith reached out and turned him off. 'I can't stand that man,' she told Eileen. ‘Unctuous, dangerous bastard. They're the worst rabble-rousers, the smooth and reasonable ones.'
'Are you a witch, Angie?'
'Me? I'm nothing in particular. Agnostic, I suppose. I just loath heresy-hunters.
And at a time like this, they're dynamite.'
'Or a damp squib. He'll be forgotten in a week.' 'Maybe… Are you a witch?'
'I went to one of their festivals once, at Glastonbury -a friend invited me.' She laughed. 'I took off my clothes and danced round the bonfire with the rest. Tell you the truth, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Not just the dancing – the ritual too. I think they've got something.… I've been
meaning to look into it a bit more but I've been too busy yet.'
They took their cups of tea and sat on the river-bank as the stars came out. Eileen leaned back against a tree-trunk and sighed happily.
'Thank you for bringing me with you, Angie. I couldn't have taken that much longer.'
'Quite right too… Glad to have you along, love. So's Ginger Lad – look.'
Ginger Lad had strolled across from the van to butt his head against Eileen's hand, demanding to be stroked. She laughed and rubbed behind his ears while he snaked his neck ecstatically.
‘Where shall we find ourselves tomorrow, Ginger Lad?'
6
Philip Summers had always loved his wife, but in the first week or two after Beehive Amber he found himself falling in love with-her. The experience took him completely by surprise – or rather, Betty's changed persona did, illuminating the busy bewilderment of their new existence. He was almost afraid to tell her, lest the spell be broken.
Most people would have described Betty Summers at thirty-one as a typical middle-class suburban housewife. Philip's mother, who was a self-conscious aesthete, did in fact call her that, though only to her husband ('I ask you, Charles – ducks on the wall!') and to chosen intimates, for she had given up Philip as lost when he insisted on studying engineering instead of the sculpture for which he had some limited talent. To be fair to Philip's mother, Betty had looked the part. Neat but unexciting figure, neat but unexciting clothes, soft mouse-coloured hair and regular features in an unmcmorable face. Still, Philip had seemed contented in their neat but unexciting home, and at least Betty had the saving grace that she was studying with the televised Open University – though a geography degree was hardly an 'in* ambition. Philip's mother had shrugged and left them to it.
Philip had indeed been contented, until the shadow of Beehive had entered their lives – a secret which he had kept from her, as instructed, for he was a meticulous man. He enjoyed his work as a ventilation engineer; he made good money; Betty was a good cook and a welcoming if quiet bedmate. Their life together was pleasant, unturbulent and planned. When Betty had her degree, they would try for two children; her interest in the degree was purely amateur. And so on, milestone by modest milestone – had it not been for Beehive.
Beehive, as a secret, had been a worm in their bud. As a realized fact, it had a surprising effect on Betty Summers.
During their hasty packing, she had been stunned, querulous and tearful, lapsing into silence as the two men drove them to the designated Beehive entrance off Essex Road. Philip, watching her anxiously, believed that she was hardly aware of the three-kilometre subterranean journey by electric shuttle-car to the Centre. It was not until the door closed behind them on their four-metre-square cubicle in Centre Married Quarters that her eyes came to life.
Philip held a privileged position by accident. He had been enlisted for the London Beehive as one of five Area Ventilation Officers, under his own chief, who had been recruited earlier as Senior VO for the central governmental hub under Primrose Hill. Then, a month before Beehive Amber, his chief had been seriously injured in a car smash – and from his hospital bed (to Philip's surprise, for he was not the oldest in service) had nominated Philip as his replacement. So Philip, though a mere engineer, was to work cheek-by-jowl with Cabinet ministers, senior civil servants, generals and other elevated figures; to sit as a suitably respectful adviser on various key committees; and even (which amused Philip inexplicably) to undertake personally in the Royal Apartments the routine ventilation maintenance which in other places was left to his thoroughly competent Area staff of three technicians. He had, in addition, to supervise his colleagues in the other four Areas; so he expected to be fully occupied.
There were personal fringe benefits from being SVO. He and his wife would use the Senior Central Mess, only one degree less exalted than the Ministerial Mess (already nicknamed 'the Athenaeum'). Theoretically, all Beehive rations were identical, but one could not escape the fact that the Senior Central Mess kitchen was run by the head chef of Claridges. Again, the SVO's cubicle in Centre Married Quarters was forty centimetres wider and longer than those of his Area colleagues.
Suddenly alone with Betty in their air-conditioned concrete cell, Philip had it on the tip of his tongue to make a joke about those extra forty centimetres to coax her out of her silence. But he saw the look on her face and kept silent himself.
It was a strange, bright-eyed, secret look.
Still unspeaking, Betty gazed around: at the recessed bed with the storage cupboards over and under it, the fold-back table between bench scats, the tiny snacks-only kitchenette corner (communal feeding had to be the rule), the built-in wardrobe, the handbasin unit (showers and toilets communal, too), the two compact armchairs, the wall-mounted television screen and radio with their channel-selector switches, the telephone whose closeness to the bed seemed to emphasize that privacy was strictly provisional, the ever-whispering extractor grill… More like a ship's cabin than a room.
Betty turned to her husband and kissed him, suddenly and briefly, without smiling. 'Well, darling, this is it. Put those suitcases on the bed, and let's get cracking.'
He asked, tentatively: 'Arc you all right, love?'
Then she did smile. Her face seemed to him, in some indefinable way, both harder and warmer than he had ever seen it before.
‘Yes, Phil, I'm all right. Are you?'
'If you are. I've been… lonely, since I knew about this.'
'I know.'
They unpacked, Betty briskly dictating where things were to go. When the suitcases were empty, Philip took them away to Baggage Store. He returned a few minutes later to find Betty hanging a poster on the only available wall space, its string tied to the extractor grill. He realized that she had been carrying it in the car, rolled up, though he had been too preoccupied to ask what it was. Now he saw. It had hung on the landing at home; a reproduction of one of the Zodiac paintings by Johfra – the Virgo sign in which both their birthdays fell. Its central figure was a winged, half-naked woman, carrying a stem of barley in one hand and a flame-enclosing crystal egg in the other. Behind her were tilled fields and an open sky, which Philip did understand; the whole picture was framed with many symbols which he did not. On the woman's face was a secret smile that was somehow akin to the new look on Betty's.
He nodded and said 'Good'; he did not know what else to say, because the winged figure transformed the cubicle. He felt at once disturbed and comforted.
'The kettle's on,' Betty said. 'Will a sandwich do, or do you want to go to the Mess?'
'Not tonight. A sandwich'll be fine. I don't want to see anyone but you, right now.'
'Second thoughts, to hell with the kettle. Can you buy a bottle of wine from that Mess of yours?'
'Oh, I'm sure. Want me to try?'
'Yes, but don't be long.'
'Ten minutes.'
He came back with the bottle to find Betty in a negligee, with her hair brushed loose and shining and her make-up renewed. When he had poured the wine, she clinked glasses with him and then held hers towards the winged figure on the wall. 'Here's to us – and to Her. Whatever happens.'
'Whatever happens,' he echoed, and they drank.
Philip could never remember, afterwards, what they talked about during that strange supper; much of it was like the symbols around the winged Virgo, numinous but only half comprehended. What he did remember was that for the first time in their marriage, instead of him making love to her, she made love to him.
Philip, next morning, had no time for self-analysis
. He was more than fully occupied at once. He had to arrange a rota for his three maintenance men; organize his corner of the office which he shared with his power, water and sewage opposite numbers; make himself known (and agreeable) to the head of the Typing Pool (fed by Claridges' chef he might be but he still did not rate an individual secretary); make a fuss about indented stores which had still not arrived – and at the same time to try to get Area North organized, by telephone and a flying visit by shuttle-car, because its AVO' had been on holiday when Beehive Amber was ordered and had not yet reported in; so the Area was in charge of its senior maintenance man, who was brilliant with equipment but out of his depth with administration. Philip managed to cope reasonably well but he had to skip lunch and he reached 'home' just after six, exhausted.
Betty had been busy, too. She had found her way around ('After all, darling, geography's my subject'), investigated the Mess, the shop and the other services, bought various oddments to domesticate their cubicle ('No flowers, I'm afraid'), lunched with a couple of other wives and even found time to watch her Open University lecture on TV. She had also, thank God, stocked a little drinks cupboard and she had a whisky poured almost as soon as Philip came in the door.
They watched the BBC TV news together. There was, of course, no mention of Beehive Amber. Much of the news was taken up with the aftermath of the earth tremors. The tremors had never been far from Philip's mind all day – both because (although no official statement had been made to them) he and everyone he had spoken to took it for granted that the tremors had directly led to the Beehive Amber order, and because he was professionally anxious. If there were more tremors, ventilation, sewage and water would be among the most vulnerable aspects of Beehive and everyone in his shared office knew it. He had discovered that the reason why some of his stores had still not arrived was that they had been diverted to the Birmingham and Bristol hives – both of which were on the tremor lines. His sewage colleague had the same problem, and both of them had tried to phone their Bristol and Birmingham opposite numbers but had been told by the switchboard that 'until the Amber intake phase is complete' inter-hive communication was confined to Ministerial level. The sewage man had commented drily: 'Well, Phil – I guess down here lesson number one is to learn when to stop asking questions.' Philip had agreed, uneasily.
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