by Jodi Taylor
‘Why are you here?’
A good question. I needed to tread carefully. ‘May I see Ed . . . Giles, please?’
‘He has been injured. Can it wait?’
‘I’m afraid not. His life, my life, other members of St Mary’s – many lives depend on me seeing him today.’
‘Why?’
I looked him straight in the eye and said clearly, ‘I’m here to close the circle,’ and crossed my fingers that he would understand.
He looked around his hangar. He had more important things on his mind than me.
He gestured with his head. ‘You will find him in Sick Bay.’
I remembered not to take off at the speed of light. Not with all those guns pointing at me.
The Director barked something. Two people – a man and a woman – shouldered their guns and gestured for me to follow them.
I was just about to depart when he touched my arm and nodded at Annie’s now blanket-covered body. ‘He doesn’t know.’
No, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t yet know that Annie was dead. That this was the darkest day of his life. I nodded my understanding.
The three of us – my two guards and me – trotted down the hangar and waited for the blast doors to release us. We took the lift because I’d done more than enough running uphill that day and now that I had time to think about it, my arm was killing me.
Their Sick Bay layout was completely different. The place had certainly been modernised many times over the years and I had no idea which way to go. They nudged me towards a plain white door on my left. Where the old isolation ward of happy memory used to be.
They waited outside, which was good of them, and I found myself in a four-bed room, blinds drawn, quiet and gently lit. Only one bed was occupied and that was the one nearest the door.
He wasn’t young. It was tempting to wonder if he ever had been, but he was about the same age as I was now. And he had hair. Not a huge amount but more than I was accustomed to seeing. It was disconcerting, somehow.
I stood at the foot of the bed and said urgently, ‘Wake up.’
He blinked himself awake. His face was grey with pain. His heavily bandaged leg was raised in a complicated cat’s cradle of pulleys and wires. The sort of thing that in the hands of Professor Rapson could have sent half of St Mary’s into another dimension. He really didn’t look at all well.
He frowned and looked at me, saying weakly, ‘Annie? What’s happening?’
I said carefully, ‘Who’s Annie?’
He blinked. ‘Who are you? What do you want?’
I needed to tread very, very carefully – the wrong word at the wrong time . . .
‘You don’t know me. My name is Maxwell. I will be the bane of your life but you have a little while yet. There is something I must give you.’
‘What must you give me?’
‘The most important piece of paper of your life.’
He squinted. ‘What is it?’
‘It doesn’t matter right now.’
‘Why are you giving me this?’
‘One day you’ll need it.’
‘When?’
‘You’ll know when.’
And he would. I had no doubt he’d check them out, discover they were the coordinates for a certain Cretan hillside on a certain date and wait for the right moment. Just because effect comes before cause doesn’t mean you mustn’t close the circle. You must always close the circle.
He squinted again. ‘What does this say? Bring teapot?’ A little of the old – or should I say ‘later’ – Dr Bairstow emerged. ‘Am I expected to bring refreshments?’
‘You could bring that bloody great cannon you’ll keep in your top drawer,’ I said, ‘and at the appropriate moment, tell me for God’s sake to get off my arse and sort things out.’
I turned to go. With everything sorted here, my mind was turning back to Crete and all my people there.
At the door, I looked back. He was watching me and despite the pain, the drugs, the anxiety, his eyes held that familiar gleam of cold intelligence.
Somewhere out there is a T-rex who evolved into Dr Bairstow.
39
Ten minutes later I was back down in Hawking. The bodies had been removed and I was desperately but respectfully trying to persuade them to let me take the teapot back to Crete.
‘I don’t think you quite understand the seriousness of the situation,’ I said, attempting to be polite. ‘Thera has erupted. My people are injured, buried or missing. I don’t even know if they’re alive or dead. I have to get back.’
No reaction.
I took a deep breath and said, ‘And Clive Ronan is there.’
They looked at me but no one said, ‘Of course, you must depart immediately. How can we help?’
I tried very hard to hang on to the ragged remains of my temper.
‘That’s the same Clive Ronan you unleashed on the universe because you, Director, weren’t paying attention to employee dynamics. That man upstairs nearly died. Annie Bessant did die.’
I gestured at the spot where she fell, now just a bloodstain, and tried hard not to shout. People don’t listen if you shout.
‘Scores of people have died because you people here didn’t keep your eye on the ball. It wasn’t your unit he blew up. It wasn’t your child he stole. It wasn’t your best friend he gunned down in her own Sick Bay. One day, when you’re not sitting comfortably here at St Mary’s, you should compile a list of all the death and destruction for which you bear not a little responsibility. Now, if you’re not coming with me, then get out of my way and let me get on with saving my people.’
I tried to push past them and they weren’t having any of it, giving me all sorts of crap about how it was too dangerous because the safety protocols wouldn’t allow the teapot to get close enough to my departure time to save them, as I tried not to scream with impatience. I argued this was exactly why I had to take the teapot because it didn’t waste its time on unnecessary frivolities like safety protocols.
They said it was damaged and could blow up at any moment and they couldn’t possibly allow me to do anything so foolish.
I’m afraid, in the end, I really lost my temper. As Markham would have said, ‘There’s another century I can never go back to.’
Another ten minutes later, when things had calmed down a little, a security team of six – four men and two women – all that could be spared, apparently – piled into a medium-sized pod I didn’t recognise, although there was no reason why I should. I limped my way towards the teapot. Some courteous soul had left the shiny aluminium ladder against it. Somehow it didn’t look right.
I scrambled inside and picked my way through the detritus. I threw a singed blanket over Clive Ronan, stepped over him, sat at the console and crossed my fingers. There was an anxious moment, then a click and a hum; some of the lights flickered wildly and worryingly, and then everything settled down. I don’t know why I was worried, actually. This was Mikey and Adrian’s pod and I couldn’t imagine for one moment they’d ever been careful drivers. I suspected today was not the worst their pod had ever encountered.
I wasn’t a careful driver, either, forcing in coordinates just this side of safe. The teapot touched down lightly enough, but we must have been on a steeper slope than even the teapot could cope with because, after a moment’s wobbly indecision, the bloody thing slowly toppled over on to its side. As did I. I fell on top of Ronan and then every loose object in the pod fell on top of me.
Well – that was embarrassing. The big, brave rescuer crawled out of the hatch feeling a complete berk.
A lot had happened since I’d left. Great clouds of thick black and yellow smoke were drifting southwards from Thera, lit up by the same blood-red sky. In the other direction, far to the south, I could just make out a tiny sliver of blue sky. It was strange to think that elsewher
e the sun still shone and it was a lovely day. Although, for this part of the world, not for much longer. The equivalent of a nuclear winter was about to fall.
Lesser clouds of smoke rose from the fires around me and up in Knossos as well. Today was a public holiday. There would have been cooking fires everywhere. I could imagine braziers being overturned, oil spilled, dry foliage exploding into flames. I craned my neck to see if I could actually see flames licking the palace walls. Not a problem – if they couldn’t put it out by themselves then a giant tsunami would soon do it for them.
Northwards, the volcano was really getting going. Every now and then, brilliant, glowing orange specks that were probably massive pieces of molten rock were being hurled heavenwards, cartwheeling slowly across the sky to land God knows where. At seventy miles away, the people on Crete must have thought themselves safe enough. And they were right. It wasn’t the eruption itself that would finish them, but the explosion as the volcano collapsed, initiating the mega tsunami that would devastate the whole island.
The rescue team from St Mary’s had arrived slightly ahead of me and Dr Bairstow was already receiving treatment. Two of their medics bent over him, ripping open field dressings and trying to get him to lie still. Their leader looked down at him then across to me and raised his eyebrows. I shrugged. ‘This is Dr Bairstow – Director of St Mary’s.’
Dr Bairstow looked up at me. ‘Report.’ It was more of a whisper than a bark.
‘Dead.’
He’s a big fan of brevity.
He nodded. I could see the news came as no surprise to him. It was the confirmation of Ronan’s death he’d been seeking.
‘Peterson? Markham?’
‘Searching for them now,’ I said, turning away.
‘Wait.’
I turned back.
‘Should I not survive, I nominate Dr Peterson as my successor.’
I nodded.
He grasped my sleeve. ‘And look after Markham.’
He let his head fall back and closed his eyes, which I think was a relief to everyone. Two minutes later they had him in their pod.
Awkward and obstructive this particular version of St Mary’s might be, but they were very well organised. And their equivalent of tag readers and proximity meters were considerably more effective than ours. They organised themselves into a line and began to move uphill, consulting their instruments as they went and methodically covering every inch which, yes, I know, was so much more efficient than me just ripping at the rocks with my bare hands, but I kept imagining Peterson lying beneath my feet, crushed, suffocating, dying as I stood around doing nothing.
Some of my impatience must have conveyed itself to them. ‘We’ll find him,’ said the team leader to me, watching his team. Whether Peterson would be alive or not he hadn’t gone on to say.
And find him they did. Up near the top of the slope. I was convinced this would be good. It meant he hadn’t fallen very far. He wouldn’t be seriously injured. I struggled up the hill. It wasn’t steep but the surface was perilous and for every two steps forward I slipped back one, eventually arriving breathless, hot, dusty and nearly frantic.
He was scrunched in a heap between two boulders. Battered but conscious. The rocks had protected him to some extent.
‘What ho,’ he said weakly as we carefully lifted half of Crete off him. ‘Everything OK, Max?’
‘Absolutely fine,’ I said, brushing off the earth, small stones and God knows what under which he was buried.
He caught my wrist and whispered, ‘Ronan?’
I nodded my head.
He raised an eyebrow.
I nodded confirmation.
‘Best served cold,’ he said quietly.
‘What is?’
‘Revenge.’
His voice was as cold as revenge itself and his eyes empty and I hated Ronan all over again. Not just for the people he’d killed over the years, but the damage he’d done to those of us who were still living.
He looked around. Ronan was dismissed to the past. ‘Where’s buggerlugs?’
‘Heaven only knows,’ I said, trying not to sound anxious. ‘Somehow he’s managed to get himself lost between there and here. I’m just off to look for him now.’
‘You might as well,’ he said. ‘I can’t see you being any use here.’
I left three of them arguing about the best way to get him down to their pod and set off with the other half of the team to look for Markham.
Actually, it’s a good job they came with me because I’d have gone off to look for him where we left him, which was in the heavily smoking woods still dotted with little pockets of fire, and he wasn’t there.
‘Not that way,’ said the one consulting his tag reader. He pointed. ‘Down there.’
He was pointing towards the shrine on the headland.
I went to call Markham’s name, remembered Ronan might be around, then remembered he was dead and that I didn’t have to worry about him ever again and yelled for Markham with enthusiasm.
They consulted their equipment. ‘There’s movement down there.’
We scrambled downhill. This lower area seemed almost untouched by the fire. Perhaps the wind was in the wrong direction. And probably the enclosing wall had protected the shrine from the flames.
‘He’s not alone,’ said someone as several proximity meters began to bleep at the same time.
‘Is he alive?’ I said, anxiously.
He consulted his instrument again. ‘It doesn’t say he isn’t.’ Which I recognised as something you say when you’re convinced someone is dead but don’t want to admit it.
We set off at a fast trot towards the shrine.
Well, this was weird. This was something we hadn’t yet come across during our time here. Typical, isn’t it? We’d discovered something of real interest about thirty seconds before we should evacuate.
There was no roof – which, since it had a socking great oak tree in the centre, was no surprise. The encircling wall was big enough to encompass the tree’s spread. Which was big.
Isn’t it interesting how often oaks are sacred? There were the druids, with their sickle knives and their mistletoe. And what about the Sacred Grove at Dodona, a branch from which had been incorporated into Jason’s ship, the Argo? And not just oak trees. All over the island I’d seen olive trees with small gifts laid out around them or hanging from the lower branches. Some of them were incredibly ancient. Even in modern times they reckon there are olive trees on Crete that are over three thousand years old. It’s strange to think there might even be one or two alive now, that as a tiny, tiny sapling, saw me trotting past on my way to watch the bull-leaping.
The encircling wall was made of good stone, some ten feet high and nicely built. Someone had put some effort into it. The finish was smooth and professional and there weren’t enough chinks to scramble up and over so I ran around, looking for the entrance.
There was no door – not even a wooden gate to keep the goats out. I kept running. I could hear the rescue team’s tag reader bleeping away for dear life. They were behind me but where the hell was Markham? He must have taken refuge behind the wall. Where the bloody hell was the way in?
I finally found the entrance, marked by two fat ochre pillars, each bearing the sign of the Labrys, and skidded inside.
And stopped dead.
Well – this wasn’t something you saw every day.
Inside the shrine, the air was very still. Stuffy, almost. The sounds of Thera were muffled. The heavy red sky turned everything the colour of blood. The oak tree dominated the space – which was the whole point, I suppose – and it was magnificent. In the prime of its life. Its lower branches were hung with ribbons and tiny bronze ornaments. These were the offerings. The priestesses would listen for the voice of the goddess in the rustling leaves and relay her words to the supplicants.
I could hear the ornaments tinkling even though there was no wind inside this shrine to give them movement. The tree was trembling. It wasn’t the only one.
Tumbled and shattered pillars lay everywhere. There must have been a sacred avenue leading to the altar under the tree. That was all gone now and the altar itself, a large, flat stone, lay in two pieces on the ground. My eyes were drawn to the shallow grooves running across it. To channel the blood away from the sacrifice.
Most eye-catching of all – and that included Thera vomiting all over the Eastern Med – a naked Markham was tied to the tree with three very nasty-looking women standing around him. One held the traditional double-headed axe and the other two stood by with wide, shallow bronze bowls all ready to collect his blood.
Markham didn’t look good at all. At some point he’d been badly knocked around. I wondered if he’d been unconscious when these three witches came across him. They might have regarded him as a slightly scruffy gift from the gods and now were making haste to return him to them in an effort to allay the wrath of Poseidon.
His ribs were black and blue and his hands bloodied around the knuckles. A long tear down his ribs was bleeding sluggishly and the whole left side of his face was badly bruised and his left eye swollen shut. Whether these injuries had been caused by Clive Ronan or he’d been beaten up by the three women was hard to say. Whichever it was, if we got out of this then I swore he’d never hear the last of being tied naked to a tree. If we ever got out of this.
Because this was human sacrifice. There’s always been speculation that in their last desperate moments, the priestesses of Crete had made the ultimate sacrifice. Not them personally, of course. Some hapless man would have been designated. Archaeologists have turned up bodies at several sites across the island. I couldn’t remember if this was one of them.
I’ve no idea where the rescue team were at that point. They must have been with me but I have no memory of them. I shouted, ‘Hey,’ and burst through the entrance.
The only reason they didn’t kill me straight away was probably because I was female, although I’d been through a lot that day and probably wasn’t looking my best. They might have thought I was one of the Furies, and with a backdrop of those huge black clouds clutching at the red sky like angry hands, they might have been right. I will admit I wasn’t in the sunniest mood.