Omega

by Stewart Farrar

  As it was, he had confidence in their ability to carry out the practical side of the plan; there were by now about thirty witches in their group, most of them young and determined and fit-looking. One of them, a little older, was an ex-Sergeant of the Royal Marines and he had been organizing and training the others from the moment they arrived in the Forest. It was clear that John and Karen did not intend their group to survive on magical weapons only.

  Yet as far as the Banwell raid was concerned, it was the magical operation that mattered; the military operation was merely to make it possible. And about the magical success Friell had no doubts whatever. He was satisfied, from his studies and his own experience, that psychic attack worked given sufficient emotional force and a capable directing will. He knew what a psychic volcano smouldered at Banwell and he knew that Karen and John had the nerve and the knowledge to harness and direct it. It could not fail… and he, Stanley Friell, was both instigator and observer in an experiment few psychic researchers would ever have the possibility – let alone the courage and freedom from scruple – to conduct or even contemplate.

  He was tense with anticipation and his tension was aggravated by the impossibility of knowing when the action would be launched. Being a sensitive, he felt the tension as an increasing static charge, a potential which must be released – and he released it in a very practical manner, by responding at last to the silent invitation which his assistant, Nurse Parker, had been directing at him ever since she was allocated to him and which he had so far been too preoccupied to bother with. Jenny Parker had an average figure and a rather plain, unsmiling little face, so the temptation had not been great. But when he did take her to bed, with the minimum of preparatory gallantry and nothing more in mind than the release of tension, he found to his surprise and pleasure that she was a dedicated sensualist of considerable ingenuity and stamina, as impersonally hungry as he himself. They suited each other very well and in Friell's bedroom they took advantage of the fact in periodic fierce encounters whose intensity no one could have inferred from their professional relationship.

  They were, in fact, about to be so engaged when the raid came, just after 8 pm four days after the pirate broadcast. Jenny had begun to undress, stripping to the waist first because she knew he liked that, to see her topless and loose-haired above her uniform skirt. Friell had come behind her while her arms were raised to unpin her hair and had squeezed her breasts in his two hands almost to the point of pain – which he knew she liked. It was at that instant that they heard a commotion in the corridor outside and momentarily froze. Then the door burst open, the lock splintering, and one of the Angels of Lucifer was covering them with a Luger. Friell recognized him even through his stocking-mask and he knew the boy knew him, too; though as planned neither gave it away, and Friell shouted 'What the hell?' at him in suitably convincing anger. At the same time he could not help noticing Jenny's reaction; she clasped her hands to her breasts as most women would when intruded upon, but over his hands which she squeezed even more fiercely to herself – while her face, which Friell could see in the minor, stared in fascinated excitement at the gun.

  The man-said 'Outside!' and the brief tableau dissolved.

  Jenny reached for her blouse which she had thrown on the bed, but the man stepped forward and pointed the gun at her face. 'I said outside. There's no time for that. Move!'

  The next moment they were herded along the corridor to the landing, where the man handed them over to a woman with-a shotgun, who stood guard over the half-dozen staff who had already been driven from their rooms. It was obvious that none of them had been allowed any time, though only one – a middle-aged woman doctor in a wet bathrobe, with bare feet – was in anything like Jenny's state of deshabille. The Angels were ignoring the babble of protests and clearing the corridor with speed and efficiency. Jenny had not uttered a word since the door burst open but the glint of excitement was still there in her eyes and she seemed indifferent to the fact that she was naked to the waist. The detached scientist in Friell observed her reactions curiously.

  He was still wondering about it when the entire roll-call of the Unit – twenty-nine staff and twenty-six strait-jacketed patients – had been herded into the staff dining-room. Of the Angels of Lucifer, ten men and four women were in evidence, all armed. Friell could not see John and Karen. Again, the same swift efficiency; the Unit had once been a school and this room the gymnasium – and all fourteen patients had been tied to the wall-bars which lined one end of the room. The male nurses had been ordered, at gun-point, to tie them there as they were brought in, and in fact had obeyed quickly, since all twenty-six were never taken out of their rooms at once and would have been too much for the staff to control, even in strait-jackets.

  Some of the patients were quiet for the moment, glancing around with bright ferrety eyes; several rolled and swayed as far as the ropes allowed, making a high keening noise. Two, just out of reach of each other's teeth, were straining and snapping – and at any moment at least three or four of them would be uttering a stream of words, at anything from a croak to a shout, without coherence but somehow conjuring up wild and terrible images.

  At either end of the line, the staff were bunched under guard, some still protesting, some pale and terrified. With everyone in place, four of the guards cleared the room in front of the patients, sliding chairs and tables quickly out of the way. In the middle, about three metres apart, they stood two squat butane cylinders with open-ended burners on them, which they lit. Two roaring tongues of flame, each a metre or more high, shot up from the burners and illumined the room with an infernal brightness, made more eerie when the Angels turned the electric lights off.

  Almost quicker than the bewildered prisoners could take it in, the stage was set; a two-metre-high head-and- shoulders caricature of Ben Stoddart hung from the bars on the opposite wall; a table slid below it as an altar on which a skull grinned beside a live and terrified hare in a wire-fronted cat-basket; one of the Angels squatting over a bongo drum and building up an insistent, inescapable rhythm Then Karen and John dancing.

  They seemed to appear from nowhere, weaving in and out around the roaring flames and each other, their glistening skin naked except for barbaric ornaments – slowly at first, but rapidly building their tempo in time with the drum. Also in time with the drum, the rest of the Angels had begun to chant: 'Kill Ben Stoddart! Kill Ben Stoddart! Kill Ben Stoddart!', directing their chanting at the patients who, entranced by the flames and the drum and the erotic dance, were already beginning to pick it up, to join in. 'Kill Ben Stoddart! Kill Ben Stoddart!' – twenty-six people, incurably insane, suddenly becoming a choir of united purpose, simple and terrible: 'Kill Ben Stoddart! Kill Ben Stoddart!'

  Most of the staff stood appalled and speechless but one or two of the nurses were weeping uncontrollably. Stanley Friell observed, feeling the avalanche of psychic power building and building. Suddenly, beside him, her bare arms and shoulders and breasts dripping with sweat, Nurse Jenny Parker began to shake like a dervish; then she, too, was crying out 'Kill Ben Stoddart! Kill Ben Stoddart!'

  Even Stanley Friell gasped.

  For a moment, such was the intensity of the shouting and the dance, Friell thought John and Karen would couple in wild ritual orgasm before their eyes. But at the moment when no other outcome seemed possible they leaped together at the altar and John dragged the struggling hare out of its basket and Karen seized a knife. They both screamed in unison: 'Kill Ben Stoddart!' as Karen slashed the hare's throat and John flung the blood direct from the pulsing, severed neck across Ben Stoddart's picture.

  The screaming seemed to reach an unbearable pitch; Friell could no longer tell if his own voice was a part of it. The detached observer was swept away and he saw in a flame-lit dream the picture of Stoddart being ripped to pieces by the talons of two demonic figures, a dancing man and a dancing woman whom he barely knew.

  A blow came down on the back of his skull, and the split second of awareness that remaine
d to him was filled with the thought, 'Oblivion will be a relief!'

  'Hey, love – what's the matter?' The man put his beer down on the wall, the better to attend to the dishevelled and breathless young nurse who had cannoned into him. 'Take it easy, now…'

  The girl gasped 'Police, police', clinging to him for support. One of the half dozen people who had been drinking outside the pub called urgently through the saloon-bar door: (Mike, ring the cops, quick' – which of course brought everybody out to see what was happening. The nurse, exhausted anyway by her two-kilometre run from the Unit, was pouring out her story in near-hysteria to a growing crowd. If she had not been so obviously and genuinely terrified, it would have been an incredible tale; the commando raid, the cut telephone lines, the staff herded at gunpoint, the roped mad patients, the wild flame-lit dance, the crescendo of murderous chanting, the blood sacrifice… 'They said they were the Angels of Lucifer,' she sobbed, 'and they've gone, you'll never catch them now, half an hour ago – they kidnapped Dr Friell and Nurse Parker, took them with 'em – and the mess they left, and getting the patients back, it was awful – couldn't get help, no phone, and they'd done something to all the cars – I ran…

  She broke down at last into wordless tears, just as a police car arrived and whisked her away. But by then the bare bones of the story, and the loaded words 'Angels of Lucifer', had been heard not only by thirty or forty villagers but also by eight London-bound and five Bristol-bound motorists.

  Moira had been on edge since early evening; that something was brewing – something evil and specific – she was certain. She had a feeling that it had to do with John and Karen, but she could not be sure whether this feeling was clairvoyance or guesswork. Putting Diana to bed kept her attention off it for a while because the child was particularly lively and talkative tonight, but as soon as she had settled down Moira found herself brooding again. Dan was not there to talk to about it; he had an evening appointment with one of the few clients who had become more, not less, friendly towards him since the discrimination against witches had begun to be felt, and he would not be back till about nine. She knew Rosemary and Greg were eating, and that Sally probably was, so she did not like to disturb them.

  She turned on the television for company. BBC i offered a Western, and BBC 2 a discussion on schizophrenia, neither of which tempted her at the moment. ITV had a series comedy, undemanding and cheerful; she left it on, giving it half her attention while she prepared a meal for Dan.

  At about half past eight, without warning, she felt a brief wave of vertigo and gasped to herself, automatically throwing up her psychic defences. She knew she had picked up something which had the flavour of malignancy, of black magic – not directed at her, but sensed by her be-' cause of its intensity and because she had some personal link with its source. It's got to be John and Karen, she told herself, sombrely. She sat down, closed her eyes, and cast deliberate mental circles around Diana and Dan. She relaxed a little – the peak of whatever-it-was seemed to have passed – but she was still uneasy.

  At ten to nine Dan came home; she ran to greet him, smiling with relief. They returned to the living-room together just as the continuity announcer broke into the comedy with a news flash:

  'The headquarters of the Anti-Pagan Crusade announced a few minutes ago that their president, Mr Ben Stoddart, died suddenly at about 8.30 this evening. The cause of death is still uncertain but he had been protected by a bodyguard of Crusaders ever since the recent threat by the so-called Angels of Lucifer and they insist that physical attack can be ruled out. That is the end of the news flash.'

  Stanley Friell drifted back into consciousness, his head throbbing. He was lying on a narrow mattress on the floor of a closed van, and to judge by its high and steady speed the van was on a motorway. One of the Angel women was squatting beside him, watching him, and as soon as he opened his eyes she called 'Karen!' and clambered forward.

  A few seconds later Karen was looking down at him. ‘How do you feel?'

  'Not too bad, in the circumstances. Did you have to slug me?'

  'Sorry about that but we couldn't leave you there, you know. We're ninety-nine per cent certain you're reliable but we couldn't afford the one per cent. You knew too much. And at the speed we had to get out, there was no time to argue. Slugging was quicker.'

  Friell nodded, carefully. 'Don't blame you. I'd have done the same… Anyhow, the Unit's become a dead end for me. I think I'd rather join you.' He rolled sideways to ease his limbs and caught sight of Jenny Parker, still unconscious and wrapped in a blanket on the other side of the van. 'Good God! You brought her, too?'

  Karen smiled. '(A), as a consolation prize for you since we'd kidnapped you! and (B), because her reaction to the ritual suggests she's promising material for the Angels of Lucifer.'

  'Fair enough… I wonder how Ben Stoddart's feeling now?'

  'Oh, it's been on the radio already. You're not joining amateurs, Stanley. Ben Stoddart is dead.'

  Stoddart's death gave Harley his first opportunity to test the 'sensitive news' system which he had devised in consultation with the experts of BBC News and ITN. Each of the latter had a small news-studio in Beehive, with a hand-picked staff, in close touch with Harley's own office. The moment a news story was classified as 'sensitive', its handling was transferred to the Beehive studios – whose output could be integrated with those of the Surface studios during news bulletins in the same way as that of OB vans or of the Parliamentary interview studios.

  A hunch made Harley rule that Stoddart's death was 'sensitive', and he was glad later. At first, the death itself; the almost immediate official confirmation by doctors and police that neither violence nor poisoning had killed him; the 'spontaneous' demonstrations in Parliament Square by crowds chanting 'Ban the witches!' and worse (illegally, since Parliament was sitting but with little police interference); Quentin White's impassioned speech in the House demanding 'in the name of our martyred friend' that, pending legislation, a more stringent Order in Council be made declaring the professing or practising of witchcraft illegal – all these could have been suitably handled by BBC and ITN on Surface without Harley's guidance. But when the first hint of the Banwell Emergency Unit raid came in, Harley knew he had been right.

  He told BBC and ITN to hold the Banwell story till the news was harder and a suitably guarded version of it could be released. Within half an hour, he had received a concise police report, and spoken to the Unit chief (a personal appointee of his own) on the telephone. Ten minutes later, he let the BBC and ITN loose on the story in all its lurid detail – with the only provisos that the Unit was to be described as 'a small isolation hospital for the specialized treatment of violent mental patients', no mention was to be made of the Dust or of any connection between the Unit and the earth tremors, and no one was to be interviewed on camera except the Unit chief and the local police superintendent.

  For apart from the Dust, there was no need to censor the story. The Angels of Lucifer had carried out their threat in a way bizarre enough to turn the witch-hunt into a stampede. Harley had merely to sit back and watch.

  The Order in' Council which Quentin White was demanding had in fact already been prepared, and tonight was psychologically the ideal moment to impose it. So at 10.30, half an hour after the Banwell story had hit a public already stunned by the death of Ben Stoddart, the Prime Minister announced that as from midnight, the new Order in Council made the practice, profession or promotion of witchcraft illegal. Penalties ranged from a minimum fine of £10 to a maximum prison sentence of two years. Certain periodicals were prohibited by name and the Home Secretary was empowered to add to the list.

  As soon as Ben Stoddart's death was announced, Moira and Dan knew the time had come. Rosemary, Greg, and Sally agreed with them at once. Dan and Greg stowed the roof-rack load in the van's central gangway, while the women made hot soup for the thermos flasks and other last-minute comforts; there seemed no minute-by-minute urgency. But the report of the Banwell raid chan
ged their minds about that; Moira hurried upstairs to dress Diana, if possible without waking her too much. The child was a little querulous and confused at first, but fortunately soon decided it was a surprise game and cooperated, happily if sleepily.

  Moira nearly had her ready when Rosemary ran upstairs. 'Got to go now, love. There's a small crowd gathering on the corner of the road – can't sec much from this end but they could be after us.'

  They hurried down together, Moira carrying Diana. Both vehicles were still in their garages; Sally was already in the car back seat and Dan behind the steering wheel. 'Keep Di on your lap,' he told her as she climbed in. 'No time to tuck her in behind… Greg's going first, because the van's bigger and heavier in case we have to scatter the crowd. The moment we see him go, I follow. Right? You can start the engine while I open the door.'

  He got out and stood with his hand on the already-unlatched garage door, which was of the up-and-over type, while he watched through the window towards Greg's garage. In the waiting silence, Moira suddenly heard the noise of the crowd. The corner was over a hundred metres away but they must be beginning to move nearer…