Omega

by Stewart Farrar

  'I said one of Arklow's reports. To know what's building up, one has to study them in sequence. A single day's report is frightening enough, but it could represent a peak in activity – perhaps the worst day since Midsummer. We shall see to it that it is so interpreted on the media, by well-briefed experts. Tonight, the Government will refuse to comment on the leak. Tomorrow, it will reluctantly admit that the report was genuine. What will not be revealed is that it is typical of the whole period since Midsummer – merely a single point on a steadily rising graph.' Harley smiled. 'The leaked report is the one for the twenty-four hours ending 0600 hours this morning. In other words, for the period during which thousands of witches, legally or illegally, were celebrating the Lughnasadh Sabbat. And to underline the message, tomorrow's papers will carry extensive coverage of the charges against the 137 who were arrested for celebrating it illegally. Most of the sentences, too – over half of them have been in front of magistrates' courts today. With the point made that hundreds more must have broken the law and not been caught – not to mention the thousands who just kept within it, with the legal maximum gathering of six. Do you begin to get the picture?'

  Jennings whistled. 'A gift on a golden platter for the Wrath of God school.'

  'And a subliminal injection of uncase for the rest… Are you happier now about your association link?'

  Tonia Lynd looked up from the morning papers spread on her desk and said: 'Gene, there's something phoney about this whole business.' ‘You mean the leak?'

  'Yes. I can smell a deliberate "leak" when it's under my nose and so can you. And this one's tou damn convenient.'

  'Oh, God, Tonia – are you on to that witch-hunt thing again?… Look, if by sheer coincidence a bad night on the seismographs happens to coincide with the broomstick jamboree, it's a bonus for the Government's propaganda. Do you blame them for cashing in?'

  'Short answer – yes, but let's not go into that. I just don't believe it's coincidence… Gene, what do you and I know about these seismo reports?'

  'Damn all and quite right too. All we can guess is that something pretty nasty's on its way, which is why Beehive Amber was ordered. Come Beehive Red; and we'll know it's any day now. Of course the public don't know the score or all hell'd break loose.'

  'Then why was that one day's report leaked?'

  'I've already agreed with you – because it was convenient. An extra nasty rumble down under, happening to coincide with the witches' shindig. Jackpot.'

  'But was it extra nasty – or just average on the curve of increasing nastiness?'

  'For God's sake, what's the difference? We should worry, down here!'

  'Oh, no difference, I guess. I just wish to hell I weren't down here.'

  'What are you – suicidal? Be your age, Tonia.'

  Tonia shrugged and said no more. A minute or two later she was aware of Gene watching her, assessing her. She shuddered inwardly; his eyes seemed cold, alien, almost reptilian. They were no longer the eyes of the Gene Macallister she had worked with – and for all his limitations liked – for two years. Tonia decided she must be very, very careful.

  At first, Betty Summers had found it hard to adjust to the total blackness of their Beehive cell when they went to bed and switched the light off. At home there had always been the friendly neon glow of London's night sky filtering through the curtains, with now and then a moon fighting splendidly to outshine it. True, she had liked even better the velvet nights of their occasional deep-country holidays – star-dusted, moon-etched, or merely making a subtle difference between the grey square of window and the greyer walls. But always something, however faintly discernible, to give reality to the world around her. Here there was nothing; darkness made even more absolute by the multicoloured scintillae, the writhing tapestry, of her own optic nerves. Reality was Philip beside her, their two bodies, the bedding where it touched their skin; only her mind, not her senses, could put out tendrils to what lay beyond. The solitary tiny message still reaching her from that outer world – the whisper of the air-conditioning -even that was strangely personal because it was the one thing in Beehive that was Philip's responsibility. Their isolation was complete.

  But as the days and nights passed she had first come to terms with it and then found herself welcoming it. She had, instinctively, little trust in their concrete fortress, no affinity with the dimly apprehended thinking of those who ruled it and no certainty of what lay ahead. All she had was a fierce, new-found determination to survive if survival were even slenderly possible – and her love for Philip around which that determination orbited. And so she learned to draw strength from their nightly cocoon of blackness; it fed in her an almost mystic sense of invulnerability. She was intelligent enough to realize it might be illusory – but wise enough, too, to cherish it as a spiritual armour which equipped them better to achieve survival.

  Intuitively, their pillow-talk was always whispered. Betty had wondered, in this security-ridden complex, whether the living quarters were bugged; but Philip, whose work entitled him to detailed plans of the structure and was giving him a daily more intimate practical knowledge of it, assured her that they were not. All the same, she felt driven to reinforce her cocoon-image by whispering and Philip, without remarking on it, followed her lead.

  Tonight, her arm across him and her chin in his shoulder, she murmured: 'What's wrong, Phil? You're fretting about something.'

  'Not really.'

  'Come on, darling.'

  He paused, then: 'Oh, just this seismological report thing. It's a con trick, Betty. I'm one of the people who has to see them every day, remember. That one yesterday – I'm damn sure it was deliberately leaked out of context to stir things up against the witches.'

  'That figures. The whole witch-hunt's been a con trick, darling.'

  Philip was surprised. 'How do you know?'

  'Of course it has. And it's working down here, too.'

  T haven't heard people talking about it, all that much.'

  'Probably not. The people you meet all day are as busy as you are. None of you has much time for anything but shop.'

  'We have some social life – in the Mess and that, with the wives around.'

  'Wives are different when you're not around. The rules of the game change.'

  'I didn't think you mixed with them much on your own. In fact, I've been worrying about your being lonely.'

  'Open University keeps me quite busy. I'm catching up on my studies with no house to look after.'

  'All the same, don't leave yourself without any friends.'

  It was Betty's turn to pause before she said: 'It's my own choice, darling. I don't exactly get on with them.'

  'Why not? You got on with all sorts of neighbours at home.'

  'That was before.'

  'Before what?'

  'What we were talking about. When I said it was working down here.'

  'The witch-hunt? Oh, but surely that's not all they talk about. And you're not a witch!'

  'No, darling, I'm not a witch. But neither will I sip scotch with the girls while we howl for the witches' scalps.

  I won't even pay lip-service to intolerance – and in the past few days it's reached the stage where even saying nothing won't get you by. You join in or you're ostracized. In words of one syllable, my darling – I won't, so I am.'

  'Oh, God, love -I didn't realize!'

  'I didn't tell you because you had plenty on your plate -and I'm happy when you're here and busy studying when you're not. But since you're worrying about the same thing from a different angle, we might as well compare notes.'

  'The bitches,' Philip muttered.

  'Oh, don't blame them too much – they're just swimming with the tide and worrying about their place in the pecking order. If you want to get angry, think about the people who started the tide and are keeping it going.'

  'I work for them, unfortunately.'

  'Now don't you start feeling guilty. All you do is feed 'em clean air.'

  'Which is m
ore than they deserve.'

  'Probably,' she laughed.

  It struck Philip that Betty laughing in a whisper was irresistibly sexy, and he began kissing her. She responded and they were swept away by a sudden mutual passion, neither having to woo the other, both plunging simultaneously into a little tornado of longing and gratification that left them exhausted and silent, clinging to each other in the blackness.

  As they were drifting into sleep, Betty said unexpectedly: 'We'll make out, darling. We'll get through this thing.'

  'But how?'

  'I don't know,' Betty told him. 'Yet.'

  Miss Smith and Eileen had managed for a while, in spite of everything, to make the most of their holiday. Petrol could still be bought, the weather was fine, and although the news did nothing to calm their forebodings, there seemed to be no reason for them as yet to go to ground or even to take up their prudently planned position near the geographical centre of the island. So they had continued to wander, visiting favourite places, swimming, sunbathing, and (Miss Smith's unspoken aim) restoring the shocked Eileen to something resembling normality. Eileen was certainly much better; she smiled more, her dark curls were springy again and the contrast between her browning body and her white bikini-protected triangles was almost Mediterranean. To only one thing was she neurotically vulnerable – any mention of man-inflicted violent death; about that she had none of a nurse's stoicism but betrayed immediate distress, however academic the discussion or however distant the news. It was as though, Miss Smith thought, she was still haunted by the chasm which had opened at her feet during her time at the Banwell Emergency Unit – the dread that 'One day soon, one of us is going to kill one of them'. She had never repeated that confession, though she did not avoid discussion of the Unit and its significance. Miss Smith sensed that buried inside her, thrust impulsively below the threshold of awareness, was the unfaceable knowledge that 'us' had included herself, Eileen. One day, Miss Smith knew, that guilt would have to be exorcised; but not yet – and meanwhile anything that approached its defences produced the telltale distress. Even the one occasion when Miss Smith got out her.22 and shot a rabbit for dinner had plunged Eileen into a trembling silence and for all her operating-theatre experience she had had to go for a walk while Miss Smith skinned it, though she had regained control of herself sufficiently to eat it once it was cooked and thus less recognizable. Miss Smith decided hunting could wait till it became really necessary.

  But today there had been no cloud on Eileen's cheerfulness. They had spent the morning on a hot beach near Aldeburgh in Suffolk, had lazed over a midday Guinness on the lawn of a pub near Wickham Market, and were now heading further inland in the direction of Stowmarkct by little winding back lanes.

  They did not see the young woman till they were almost on her; she had been hidden by a corner, and as they rounded it Miss Smith jammed on her brakes. The woman jerked her head round defensively and for a moment they simply stared at her, not believing what they saw.

  She was about twenty-five, stark naked and riding a broomstick. She had no choice; it was jammed high between her legs and roped tightly to her thighs, and her wrists were tied securely to the front end of the handle; the twigs of the besom projected behind her rump. Across the back of her shoulders had been scrawled the one word 'WITCH' in black paint. She had a swelling black eye, dried tear-marks in the dust on her cheeks, blistered and bleeding feet and her fair skin showed angry red patches of developing sunburn.

  Miss Smith and Eileen came to their senses simultaneously and jumped into the road, running towards her. She gave a little cry of fright, nearly stumbling as she backed into the grass verge, but then hesitated as she realized they were women alone.

  Incoherent noises of reassurance tumbled from Miss Smith's lips as she struggled vainly to untie the girl's wrists. Eileen cried, 'I'll get a knife,' and ran back to the caravan. The girl, once she realized she was safe with them, seemed in spite of her pain to be trying to hold herself erect, and there was a look of stubborn pride on her bruised face which brought a lump into Miss Smith's throat.

  Take it easy, now, love,' Miss Smith said gruffly. "We'll see to you.'

  'I'm glad you came,' the girl told her. 'It was…'

  'Don't try to tell us yet. Wait till you're in the caravan.'

  Eileen was back and cutting at the cords, the girl gritting her teeth as the strands came away from the raw weals they had bitten into her flesh. With the rope binding her thighs to the broomstick Eileen had to be very gentle, for it was obvious the girl had walked – or hobbled – for some distance in that state; nor, Eileen diagnosed sickly, was that all that had been done to her.

  The broomstick removed and thrown into the hedge, they supported her to the caravan. Eileen spread a blanket and sheet on one of the bunks, and the girl had to lie on it face downwards because her back was too painful.

  'I'm a nurse,' Eileen told her, 'and before we do anything you're getting a bit of first aid… I'm Eileen and this is Angela. What's your name?'

  'May Groombridge. I live in Coddenham, a couple of kilometres ahead. I was trying to get there.'

  'How far had you come already?'

  'About the same. Bit more, perhaps.'

  'Good God! Want to tell us what happened?'

  'Oh, I'll tell you – but…' For the first time she seemed embarrassed. 'Before that, just in case it's not too late -I mean, you're a nurse… Have you got anything – well, contraceptive?'

  Miss Smith had to admire her cousin's professional calm. 'How long ago was it?'

  'An hour – I don't know, exactly. Hard to judge time -like when you're drunk, sort of.'

  'I know."

  Eileen did the best she could in the circumstances, and then treated and bandaged her patient's other injuries.

  May bore it all very well and managed to sit up and be clothed in a towelling robe. By then Miss Smith had made some hot tea.

  'Do you feel ready to go home now? Will there be anybody there?'

  'My husband – Jimmy – he won't be back till six. No one else. But there's neighbours. Good friends – I can bring one of them in. Witches, like me.' Again the note of pride. 'Most of Coddenham is, now. I guess that's why they picked on us.'

  'They?'

  'I don't know who they were. Six of them – they came in a van, rather like yours. Had a drink in the pub and then wandered round the village for an hour or so. Didn't speak to anybody or smile or anything, just watched; it was creepy… I had to go out of the village a way, I had a message for one of the farms, so I got on my bike – and soon as I was out of sight of the houses, they caught up with me. Must've been waiting for one of us to be alone. Clever, they were. Strong, too, else I might've got away -but six of 'em… Anyway, they chucked my bike in a field and took me up to an old empty barn back there.' She broke off for a moment, her control wavering.

  'Don't push yourself,' Eileen warned her. 'You've been marvellous – but you'd better know, the shock will probably hit you later. So take it easy.'

  'I know it will – I ain't no fool… Anyway, they gagged me and tied me up, and four of them had me. The fellow who seemed in charge, he just seemed to get a kick out of watching, and the other one, he looked a queer to me… It sounds silly but do you know the awful thing? None of 'em hardly spoke, except every now and then one of 'em would say "Witch!", horribly, like spitting it… Then when they'd done, they tied me to the broomstick, like you – saw, and put me in their van, and dropped me in this road where there's no farms or anything near and said to enjoy my walk home.'

  Miss Smith let out her breath which she realized she had been holding. 'Right, love. First stop, the police. Then home.'

  May Groombridge snorted. 'Police? You're joking. They took Sergeant Wells away from the village just after Midsummer and put a new man in who's got no time for witches an' says that's why he was sent here, 'cos we're a hotbed. Very fond of that word, hotbed, he is.'

  'Oh, surely – over this…'

  This time the
snort was a bitter laugh. 'You weren't the first car that came by me, you know. There was one other – him, in his lovel y clean panda. He looked me straight in the eye – and then up and down, nice and slow. Then he drove on.'

  Miss Smith turned to her cousin. 'Eileen – I think the holiday's over.'

  Eileen was right about the shock. May maintained her unnatural poise until after they had taken her to her cottage and fetched the neighbour she asked for, a motherly woman who seemed reassuringly capable. Then, clinging to her, May screamed and screamed and went on screaming. It was a heavily sedated wife they handed over to Jimmy Groombridge, hastily summoned by phone from his work in Ipswich.

  Jimmy, though white with rage, was collected enough to be grateful for Eileen's professional presence, especially as the village doctor was still out on his rounds. Eileen guessed that the very fact of May's collapse helped him to keep his head for both of them.

  Eileen offered to stay till the doctor came and they were glad to have her; Jimmy was probably as frightened as he was angry, because he pressed Eileen for full details of May's condition. Eileen gave them, adding the warning that the contraceptive douche she had administered would have been too late to be more than a hope. Fortunately Jimmy was able to reinforce the hope with a precise knowledge of May's menstrual cycle and Eileen confirmed that the time was 'safe' in theory at least.

  With Jimmy back, May rallied, and drugged though she was she would not rest till she had told him the whole story. Eileen was puzzled by the purposefulness of the telling; it seemed more than the natural urge many wives would have felt in the circumstances – more as though May knew her husband needed the facts for action. It troubled Eileen, especially when May described the policeman's deliberate callousness amounting to complicity. She wondered if Jimmy – who was a big man – would rush up to the policeman's house and exact revenge, which would be understandable but would only land him in prison when his wife needed him most. But Jimmy merely went on listening and holding May's hand, though his other fist clenched till the knuckles cracked.