The Last Of The First (Halfhero Book 3)

by Ian W. Sainsbury

  There was no sound of rain outside. Had a water pipe burst, perhaps?

  Outside the church, she was more perplexed than ever. Looking back towards the hotel, she could see the hills bathed in sunlight, just as they had been when she entered St Finbarr's.

  Dolores walked a little way along the causeway, then broke into a trot as the water rose even higher, threatening to cut off the small island. She didn't stop until she had followed the path a few yards up the hill. Then she turned to look back at the church. When she saw the cause of the rising water, she sat down on the muddy hillside.

  On the paths around the lake, walkers had stopped dead and were staring, some of them pulling out phones to film what was happening. Every guest in the hotel, and every member of staff, was standing in the front garden, mouths open in disbelief.

  The church of St Finbarr's was in shadow because, lowering slowly into Gougane Barra Lake, the US aircraft carrier Smithwatson was blocking the light. Inch by inch, the massive vessel descended, displacing the water of the lake as its keel disappeared into the depths. Three tiny figures were flying at the aircraft carrier's side.

  "The titans?" Dolores had seen the news coverage about the president's team of superheroes. Even though she preferred reading romantic fiction to watching TV, everyone had been talking about nothing else for months. And here they were, three of them at least. In Ireland. With a flying aircraft carrier. Which they were dropping into a lake.

  The whole event lasted six minutes. When the titans were done, the Smithwatson filled the side of the lake north of the church, its prow yards away from the ancient holy building. The flooding of the church from the wake of the ship was temporary, and the water receded from the island as the surface of the lake rose two inches.

  The titans flew away without a backward glance. Dolores looked up and saw tiny uniformed figures gathering at the rail of the aircraft carrier, pointing and shouting. She remembered her final prayer in the church.

  Sailors.

  God moves in mysterious ways.

  25

  The Old Man, now a tall, bearded respectable-looking figure in a suit, was one of the first in line to enter the British Library that morning. He was wearing sunglasses to hide his golden eyes.

  He stood in the centre of the main room, scanning the vast array of shelves under the enormous domed ceiling.

  The Old Man examined his feelings. They were mixed. Not for the first time in his long existence, he experienced an intense wave of frustration at the gaps in his memory. He had lived too long, seen too much. His Purpose, once a goal towards which he could make progress, had been lost. The accretion of centuries had blurred his determination, his clear-sightedness and his sense of self. In occasional moments of clarity, he wondered if he had lost touch with reality.

  He looked at the countless shelves of books. The Old Man remembered when human language was rudimentary, a mixture of grunting and gesticulating. He remembered his excitement the first time he had handled paper, in a Bavarian monastery.

  As strongly as the excitement at what he might find, the Old Man felt distrust and anger. The anger was always present, the one constant in his life. And his anger was growing. Ever since he'd stepped out of the cave, everything he'd seen had fuelled that inner flame of rage. The cities, the smoke-belching vehicles, the subjugation of the natural world. Humans behaved as if they were the planet's overlords. They were upsetting the balance, destroying the harmony. Left unchecked, they would destroy themselves.

  The Old Man experienced a stirring so unfamiliar he hardly recognised it as his own. But he did not doubt its truth. Anger flared and sputtered inside him. Yes. His Purpose was bound to his anger, and humanity's abuse of nature caused his anger to grow. Worse still was what he had witnessed on the magic box in New Delhi. Others like him. But they were helping the humans. They must join him instead. Together, they would identify, and fulfil, his Purpose. Then, at last, he might rest.

  "Can I help you? Sir?"

  A small woman peered up at him. She had been trying to attract his attention for a while.

  "Oh, I'm sorry," he said, smiling. "I'm just overcome by the number of books. What a wonderful place."

  "Thank you, we all think so. We hold over a hundred and seventy million items here. Is there anything in particular you're looking for?"

  Yes," said the Old Man, "yes there is. The... titans." The word came to him from his host body's vocabulary, but when he spoke it, the shape and sound were wrong on his lips.

  "Oh, gosh. You mean the flying ones that went missing, I assume, rather than the ones from Greek mythology?"

  "Yes," he said. "The titans on the..." more new words, "on the television. They flew next to a... plane."

  The librarian smiled. Perhaps the tall man was a foreign pop star. English obviously wasn't his first language, and he wore sunglasses indoors.

  "We have all the books about The Deterrent," she said. "The Bowthorpe book, naturally, although much of that has since been discredited. Lots of speculative stuff about their origins, but I can't recommend any of them. They contradict each other and try to debunk everyone else's theories. Half of them think the titans are aliens and the other half think they're genetically modified. Experimental soldiers or suchlike."

  The Deterrent. The Old Man stared at her for a moment. A memory shook itself loose from the previous user of his brain. Another of his kind, appearing nearly forty years ago. Interesting.

  "Yes," he said. "That would be a good place to start, would it not?"

  The woman led him to a series of shelves on an upper level. As she turned to leave, she put a hand on his arm.

  "If you want all the latest info, it's on the internet."

  Before searching for the word in his newer memories, the Old Man blurted out, "the what?"

  She smiled at him. "Don't pull my leg. You saw the news about them yesterday, right? The titans, I mean? Is that why you're here?"

  "The news?"

  "You didn't see..? Oh! Follow me."

  She showed him to a desk where a dark window sat on a stand. A computer. His mind filled in some details while the woman moved a plastic tool on the desk. A... mouse. The window brightened. A few taps on the mouse, and a woman appeared on the screen. She had something in her right hand. A... microphone. She was standing in front of a metal building.

  "Just click play when you're ready. The headphones are on the hook there. You have thirty minutes free access, but we're always busy in the morning, so you must let someone else on afterwards."

  He thanked her, and she left. Sitting in front of the screen, he put the headphones on, his body remembering that sound would come out of the discs on either side. A tiny arrow on the screen could be moved by the mouse. He positioned it on the triangle beneath the picture, allowing residual muscle memory to guide him. When he tapped, the picture moved, and the woman spoke directly into his ears.

  "The incident took place earlier this afternoon at Gougan Barra in County Cork," said the woman on the screen. Then she disappeared, replaced by a picture of the biggest ship the Old Man had ever seen, sitting in an inland body of water which could barely contain it.

  "Amateur footage shows the moment three titans flew over the lake, carrying the Nimitz-class American aircraft carrier Smithwatson between them."

  On the screen, three flying figures hovered as the enormous ship descended from the air into the lake. Another, shakier moving image showed the three titans turning and leaving, at great speed.

  The woman was back then, and now the Old Man saw that the metal building behind her was not a building at all, but the ship.

  "America's Secretary of State is on his way, but there has been no official comment about what happened here. The titans may have taken aggressive action against the American navy today, but there was no loss of life. The worst injury onboard was a cook who burned his arm after a pan fell off the stove.

  "The Irish prime minister initially expressed outrage at the appearance of an aircra
ft carrier in one of our country's most beautiful locations. However, since the Smithwatson's arrival three hours ago, flights into Ireland have seen unprecedented booking figures, with many airline websites crashing under the increased traffic. A tourist boom is predicted to hit the area, and one local paper has already branded the Smithwatson the Eighth Wonder of the World. So, for now, the future of the aircraft carrier looks uncertain. Experts suggest that, unless the titans help, the only way the Smithwatson can leave Gougane Barra lake is if it's dismantled and removed piece by piece. We'll follow the story as it develops. Back to you in the studio, Rory."

  The Old Man removed the headphones. He had so much to learn. He wanted to know as much as he could about these titans before he tracked them down. The number in the corner of the screen told him there were twenty-two minutes remaining. He would need longer.

  At the main desk, the woman who had helped him smiled as he approached.

  "I want to buy an internet screen," he said.

  26

  Dinner that night was a muted affair. Afterwards, the fire pit closest to the Stiperstones was surrounded by a large group of silent teenagers.

  They had all felt it, but Tom, Shannon, and Kate along with about one in three of the others, had felt it first, and much more strongly. Only then did it spread among the others in a secondary, less powerful wave. Tom and his friends had found their minds full of a terrible sense of constriction, of asphyxiation. After a few seconds, the sensation had lifted as abruptly as it had descended, but its cessation brought no relief. Rather, it left behind an absence, a terrible, raw grief, a gaping hole. It was more painful because of the knowledge that moment had brought.

  The absence they felt was that of their father. He was dead.

  Some of them, Tom included, knew their parents had required treatment to have children, that they had used IVF to get pregnant. The sperm donor, the father, had only been an occasional subject of speculation until that moment.

  Maybe he's a billionaire.

  I wonder if he's famous?

  A genius, or an athlete.

  When the grief hit them, they knew the truth. The IVF children hadn't been speculating about their fathers, they had been speculating about their father. One man.

  And now he was dead. Or, for a few terrible minutes, he was. Then, with a rush of baffled joy, which rolled across everyone in the field in a fraction of a second, he was alive. His presence filled the hole they had never even known was there, and they wept with relief.

  Nearly two hundred people now occupied the large field. Latrines had been dug along one side, food was freshly prepared three times a day. There was no rota. If something needed doing, whoever was closest did it.

  No one would have guessed that Craxton's field was occupied by teenagers, many of whom had never spent more than a weekend away from home before. The camp operated with an efficient precision rarely seen outside the military. As well as having enough food, someone was always taking wheelbarrows piled with clothes down to the stream to wash, before they hung them to dry between the massive oaks along the southern edge of the field. A shower block had been rigged up. The water was cold, but it was summer, and they knew they wouldn't be there when the weather turned bitter. Showers were communal, and nudity wasn't an uncommon sight. They were healthy adolescents, with, mostly, strong sex drives, but they felt no urges towards each other. The revelation that over a hundred of them shared the same father only confirmed what they already knew - that they were related. That they were family.

  The field had taken six days to fill. The first night had been the only one Tom and the girls had spent alone. From early the next morning, the others arrived in a steady trickle. Most walked, some came in vans, cars or on motorbikes.

  Craxton's field lay between two villages, and within twenty-four hours of the first tent going up, the locals knew something was going on. The first visitors came to gawp, or to complain. The disapproval that drove them there evaporated as they arrived, and they promised to drop by later with food, toiletries, towels, or sleeping bags - whatever the young people needed.

  On the third night, ten young men with stomachs full of ale, and heads full of rumours about naked women on Craxton's field, showed up hoping for a fuck or a fight, preferably both. They arrived twenty minutes after the pub closed and walked onto the field, singing rugby songs and laughing. As they reached the first fire, the nearest girl stood up. Dressed only in a man's shirt, her red hair tousled and her dark eyes gleaming, she might as well have stepped straight out of their fantasies. But when she asked them to sit down, they did so, as meekly as if they had been primary school children.

  Two hours later, they walked back to the village in silence, smiling. Next morning, they returned and helped rig up the showers and dig the latrines.

  Mrs Minton from Social Services turned up at the end of the first week. At nearly eighteen, Tom was the oldest there. The youngest, Cat, was twelve. Mrs Minton drank tea and talked to Tom and Cat. She left after an hour, satisfied everything was in order. When Mrs Minton returned to her office to write her report, she had no idea what to say. Legally, the position was clear. There were minors on Craxton field who should either be returned to their parents, or sheltered by the state until that was possible. The problem was, no parents had reported their children missing. Tom had told her they would only be there for a few more weeks, and all the children were in touch with their parents. The word of a seventeen-year-old was not good enough for Social Services, but Mrs Minton had changed during the hour she spent with them. The report she filed was designed to move around the system without requiring any action long enough to ensure the occupants of Craxton's field were left alone.

  On day seven, a news crew arrived.

  The van pulled up by the south gate as Tom was in the shower. He turned the water off and grabbed a towel, dressing and getting to the gate just as the reporter, camera operator, and sound guy were coming in.

  "Hi," said Tom, smiling. "Are we going to be on telly?"

  Ten minutes later, Anna, the reporter, was standing in the southeast corner of the field so the camera could capture the massed tents behind her, and the teenagers walking between them, talking, laughing, or preparing lunch.

  "It's now six days since the first tent went up on Craxton's field and, as you can see, practically a whole village has now sprung up at the base of the Stiperstones. And they're all teenagers - I feel positively ancient! I'm here with Tom Evans, one of the first to arrive. So, tell us, Tom: why are you here?"

  "Hi, Anna. It's nothing very exciting, I'm afraid. We're all keen writers, actors, or musicians, and we're here to put on a performance piece."

  "Well, that sounds exciting to me. When's it going to happen?"

  "We haven't decided yet. And, to be honest with you, we sort of want to keep it a secret."

  "Ah, so there is some big conspiracy?”

  Tom laughed. "Not really. We want to film it, so we don't want an audience. It'll go online once it's edited. You'll be the first person I send the link to, I promise."

  "What a charmer! And how did you all meet? I understand you're all from different parts of the country, right?"

  "That's right. We met online, in a globchat group. We talked about doing something together, one of the group said they knew somewhere we could camp for a couple of weeks, and here we are."

  "Thank you, Tom. This is Anna Markham at the Stiperstones."

  The item was shown at the end of the local news that evening. Afterwards, the news editor called the crew into his office. He had expected a harder-hitting story. These teenagers had left home, many for the first time, to meet a few hundred strangers, but none of their parents had made a fuss.

  "Performance piece?" he said. "Really?"

  Anna nodded. "There's nothing more there, Jack. It's boring, I know, but if there was dirt to dig up, I would have found it."

  The editor scowled. Anna was a good reporter, and her crew backed her up. It was a non-story. So why
did his gut tell him otherwise? He shook his head and turned back to tomorrow's schedule.

  "Yeah, all right, whatever," he said.

  Anna and the crew didn't speak about the piece they'd delivered. They put it out of their mind and resolved to leave the kids on Craxton's field alone.

  In a large apartment in East London, a soft alarm sounded on a computer screen as the name 'Tom Evans,' filed in a local news report in Shropshire, was automatically flagged up. His image was run through a database and a match identified.

  The computer sat at the end of a long desk which ran the entire length of the wall. The rest of the desk was taken up with other computers, laptops, and Globlets.

  When the owner of the apartment checked the screen, she tapped a few keys and brought up the footage from the Shropshire report. Using a digital enhancement programme, she captured every face that appeared on-screen behind Tom Evans, ran them against hacked school databases and came up with more matches.

  "Shit. No way."

  The hacker picked up the phone, bringing up a database she'd assembled months ago. She dialled the first number.

  "Hello? Is that Mrs Kern? May I speak to Gabby, please? It's Amy Whitlock, from St Steven's. I need to talk to her about her A level choices. She isn't? Oh, okay. When do you expect her back? On holiday? Perhaps you could ask her to call the school when she gets home. Lovely, thank you. Bye."

  Making a note against the first name, the hacker called the next number.

  "Hello, is that Mr Grayling? May I speak to Aaron, please? Oh, really, when would be a good time for me to call? You're not sure? Oh..."

  "May I speak to Cerys, please? Oh. When might she be back?"

  "Hi, is Garth there? I see. Any idea when..."

  "On holiday? How lovely?"

  "A hiking trip? Gosh."