He walked the familiar route up Grantchester Street to the old mill, now home to ethnic restaurants, where he had the choice to continue up the roadway or divert across the paths crossing the streams and River Cam on Sheep’s Green. The chill over the water and marshy land had formed a low film of mist that cut off abruptly at knee height. The mystery of it intrigued Doctor McGregor so he turned right and waded into the cool mist on the path leading diagonally across to the bridge over the river to the Mill public house and the mooring platforms for the public punt hire companies. A sharp left turn took him up the alley Laundress Lane to Silver Street with the high wall opposite forming the southern boundary of Queens’ College. Crossing Silver Street Bridge, with the famous Mathematical Bridge parallel to his right, he passed through the Porters’ Lodge with a cheery wave and a loud “Good Morning!” before heading left to the staircase with his office where he had interviewed Joe a year earlier.
The Zarnha Ghola that had been following him from his home flitted through the black-painted railings at the side of the Porters’ Lodge not wanting to be enclosed in the confined space of the lodge with the Guide of Dawn. The hissing episode with Tabitha back at the house had been a mistake; the Ghola had been outside the front of the house then when the cat had detected his presence. The Ghola had held back as Doctor McGregor walked on the streets towards his work, but had closed up through the mists of Sheep’s Green. The mist afforded the Ghola more cover and any dawning of his detection could be attributed to the chill of the morning and the atmosphere of the swampy land.
Joe, Christopher and Charlotte were each completing packing for their first term at University. Mothers were fussing over their offspring to ensure they had absolutely everything they would need and fearing the quiet time coming when they would be separated from their children for the first time in their lives. Fathers were making preparations for the journey, checking tyre pressures and oil levels of their cars and waiting impatiently to be getting on with it. Soon they were all packed and on their way. Fathers had each decided independently to take the shorter road to Newark that crossed from the M1 to the A1 motorways from where they could spur left across the flat agricultural land towards Cambridge. The further they travelled the more open the landscape became. Growing up in the Peak District meant seeing only as far as the next high hill. East Anglia meant looking out over long vistas of productive fields if the scarce hedgerows were trimmed low enough. Joe and Charlotte could play the red thread game of finding their position relative to each other and judging the distance by the strength of the psychic thread. It had to be a private game. There was earthly knowledge and there was Gayan, and crossing between the two had to be a closely guarded secret.
Doctor McGregor could feel them approaching by playing the same red thread game. Joe was first to arrive, his father pulling in to the small loading area by the Porters’ Lodge where he collected his room key and welcome package before offloading. Doctor McGregor had arranged for Joe to have a room above his office on the same staircase of Fisher Building. He was waiting so that he could ‘accidentally’ bump into Joe and his parents as they walked into the building. Joe’s parents were impressed a distinguished member of staff recalled their son from interviews the previous autumn. At another level, soul-to-soul level, the Gayans Keeran and Duncan were meeting again as on so many other occasions down the generations.
“Did you have a good journey?” enquired Doctor McGregor with a wide smile, mostly gums and the odd bobbing tooth. “Welcome to Queens’ College, I am sure you will be very happy here.”
“Thank you,” said Joe’s father assuming responsibility for the reply. “Very good journey, lovely day for the drive. We have high hopes for Joe and hope he does well.” Charles slightly raised his arm towards Joe and for a moment Joe was fearful he was going to ruffle his hair but thankfully the moment passed and the family bustled on up the stairs to Joe’s room carrying his few things. The family were impressed by Joe’s rooms. A solid outer door led into a sitting room with comfy chair, small table and desk. An inner door opened into the bedroom with wardrobe and washstand.
“I think you will be very comfortable here, Joe. I rather like the look of it myself,” Charles remarked.
“Don’t you be getting any ideas, Charles. Joe may be staying but you are taking me home soon,” Margaret replied. Charles shrugged his shoulders in mock sheepish dismay.
A couple more trips to the car and they had deposited Joe’s belongings on the floor of the lounge. Charles and Joe were keen to get the parting over with. Joe needed to settle in. Charles needed to get back on the return journey. The porters required the car parking space for other freshers arriving with their stuff. Margaret wanted to pfaff with a multitude of domestic minutiae and was reluctant to leave, but was soon overruled by her menfolk who wanted to get on with proceedings. They hugged farewell in Joe’s room rather than be seen being emotional in the very public thoroughfare of the small parking lot by the Porters’ Lodge then they trudged back down echoing wooden stairs and out to the car. Charles and Margaret installed themselves in the car and then reversed back out on to Silver Street with lots of waving to Joe. Margaret craned her head right to catch the view of the brick-built Fisher Building enfolding the modern white and bronze of Cripps Court through the large elms of Queens’ Green. The sun was in their eyes now sloping low over the big trees at the Queen’s Road junction. The afternoon autumn light sifted golden through the boughs of the lofty trees still populated with a full canopy of leaves in withering green to bumblebee shades of brown and yellow.
“I think he is going to like it here,” Charles said softly. “End of an era, though.”
“Don’t talk to me about it just now, Charles,” Margaret replied, not trusting herself to speak in the piquancy of the moment.
Joe unpacked to divert his own thoughts from the melancholia of leaving his parents. Soon Christopher and Charlotte arrived. Charlotte had been allocated a room in the Cripps Building and Christopher across the river in the Erasmus Building. As Joe was first to finish unpacking he waited for their parents to leave and then popped round to Charlotte, and they both went across to see Christopher.
“Much more peaceful over here than Cripps,” said Charlotte. She had a smallish room looking inward onto Cripps Court opposite the restaurant.
“I like the view,” replied Christopher perched on the window ledge looking across a willow-fringed lawn to the riverbank. “I think it’s going to be a lot busier when everybody else arrives.” Only the freshers, post-grads and certain authorised second and third years were there now, the rest would be arriving the following week. It gave the freshers a chance to settle in ahead of the full rush of student humanity.
“I know what! Let’s go check out the bar and celebrate!” Joe said, and nobody argued so off they trooped back through Cloister Court alongside the wonky old Master’s Lodge and over the wooden skeleton pedestrianised Mathematical Bridge, thankfully not wonky at all, back to Cripps Building and the bar on the far side of the ground floor.
TEN
Joe’s first football game for Queens’ College was playing away at Jesus College. Jesus College’s sports fields were located on Jesus Green close by the river. It was Saturday morning with steely skies and cold breezes. Winter was approaching fast.
Queens’ were playing in college colours of dark green shirts, white shorts and green socks. Jesus wore kit in black and red vertical stripes. Queens’ were looking forward to the new season after being promoted to Division One the year before. Jesus were a strong team too so the game was tight and physical, still goalless halfway through the second half. Joe was playing centre back, the lead role in controlling the defence to break up the main opposition attack routes through the middle then distributing the ball into attack. Joe had been playing football all his life in and out of school in tough areas where everybody played football at every quiet moment. Several months’ labouring work at the metal rec
lamation site near Sheffield that summer had added bulk muscle to his torso. Allied to his taller-than-average frame, Joe was a tower of strength in central defence, particularly good at intercepting long balls coming down the middle that he could clear with his head.
The opposing centre forward from Jesus College was at least as tall and muscular as Joe; a striking black athlete born and raised in the southern suburbs of London. He had been using his strength without caution to compete for the ball right through the match and showed no sign of waning. Hardly a challenge went by without him using elbows and pushes to gain an edge when the referee was blindsided. The clash between Joe and this centre forward was becoming the defining tussle for control of the game. There had been some sporting banter between the two, northern England versus cockney accents sparring outside the physical tussles. Then a long ball came in from their winger towards Joe and his opponent. Both players leapt into the air and the opponent’s elbow flew high again and this time swiped Joe across the mouth. Joe felt the sting and then the iron taste of blood from a split lip. The ball ran free and both players were left in a heap on the ground jostling. The referee came over and showed his yellow card to Joe having missed the flying elbow that started the melee. The opponent applauded the referee and slipped Joe a sly look for his minor triumph.
A few minutes later one of the other Queens’ players poured extra oil on the building rivalry between the two by passing comment that his mate, Joe, hated the opposing centre forward. This was just prior to the centre forward getting a clear run in on goal. Joe was chasing but clearly behind and despairingly flung a leg forward in a sliding tackle that missed the ball but took out the man. The centre forward was clearly furious and this time failed to conceal a punch thrown in Joe’s direction. The referee came running over and had to give both players a red card, sending off Joe for a second yellow card offence and the centre forward for violent conduct in retaliation.
Both players had no argument with the decision that at least depleted both teams equally and they trudged off together to the dressing rooms, indulging in some barging and pushing at each other on the way off the pitch. The door was not wide enough to allow them both through together and neither was giving way so the last sight the rest of the players saw of them was a scramble of elbows and sliding feet as the studs of their boots scrabbled on the wooden flooring as they pressed together to squeeze through the entry before the door closed behind them. Both teams paused to watch them go and speculated whether the altercation would escalate in the dressing room.
Alone, the two protagonists squared up to each other in silence and then burst into huge gales of laughter.
“Well met again, Alron,” Joe beamed at his long-time Gayan colleague, last seen on their sabbatical at Snowscape after their previous mission together in California.
“And well met to you too, Keeran. Looking good in your new earthly body, my man! Been working out?”
The two old friends embraced and slapped each other hard on the back. They had known each other had arrived long ago on Earth due to the connections of their red threads from birth and through jejeune. That knowledge had been activated as they passed through soulmorphosis at adolescence. They had not been far apart, opposite ends of the same country but separated by geography and their upbringing until now, when they had come together again as planned and there was sheer delight in being in each other’s company again. They had the temporary luxury, which they had contrived, of being alone for the last fifteen minutes before full time when their teammates would expect them to be enemies again after their antics on the football pitch. They stood in turn and checked each other out, both pleased with the athleticism of their latest bodies and agreeing that made a most powerful combination with their Gayan knowledge and skills. Just what was required for their task ahead.
Alron’s new earthly name was Daniel and he had just arrived to study medicine at Jesus College. This tied in nicely with their mission as he was able to research details of the way the human body works. He wanted to work further on the mysteries concerning the translation of brain activity into bodily motion, memory and intellectual thought. Gayan soul transfer allowed fusion with newborns of humankind across broadly similar cultures in many Earth-class planets across the galaxy. Many Gayan-class planets allowed human emergence through evolution allied to interplanetary help from Gaya and other similar interbred human races. Of course the process of birth meant the vast majority of human newborns were fused with available earthly souls in that first dynamic pairing. Only a tiny number of pairings were of an earthly newborn and an extraterrestrial soul missionary.
Daniel’s medical studies meant that the two very old friends could now meet up at shared lectures in medicine and natural sciences at the physiology and biochemistry faculties at the Downing Site, located between Queens’ and Jesus Colleges. In addition to getting together at science lectures, Jesus College was only a mile or so downstream the River Cam from Queens’ college. As for the scrap at the football match? No one was surprised that the Queens’ centre back and the Jesus centre forward struck up a strong friendship in the aftermath of the physical altercation on the football pitch. Boys will be boys, after all!
ELEVEN
Evrisoft, largest enterprise software company in the world by profitability based in Santa Clara, California, had opened a research centre in Cambridge Science Park to be able to tap into the rich vein of technical skills coming out of the University. Haruka Aoki had persuaded the Evrisoft Chief Executive Officer, Harold Z Martens, of the importance of globalising their research and development and had moved to Cambridge on assignment to run the new facility until local management could be developed. Harold was persuadable as his three lady Senior Vice Presidents effectively ran the company now. Harold was in poor health. He had had so many bypasses that he croaked the joke that his bypasses now had bypasses all of their own. He had not attended to his weight problem and compounded it with smoking and recreational drugs. He spent so long alone it was a real problem finding someone not actually on his payroll to tell his stories to. He lived and worked in his palatial residence high on the hillside that faced north across the flat plain to downtown San Jose at the east end of San Francisco Bay. He sent his commands to his sprawling headquarters campus from his office suite at home and only rarely raised the motivation to move his entourage into town to visit in person. Few of the management valued his interventions believing more in their own expertise and teamwork. Each of them was far better qualified and more intelligent than Harold and at some level it rankled that he knew that to be the truth.
Haruka enjoyed the move from Silicon Valley, California to historic Cambridge, England. She could communicate very easily with her two Zarnha colleagues back in California Headquarters and the added freedom of being five thousand miles away from corporate headquarters made it much easier to concentrate on her mission for Zarnha of Spargan. She had performed a quick house search in the Cambridge area after Evrisoft human resources had generated a list of appropriate properties for her to view on starting her assignment. She had selected a Georgian manor house to rent on the outskirts of Grantchester village. The original interior had been totally renovated and the grounds were kept in good order. Crucially there was a high red-brick wall to the road and the house was accessed by wrought-iron electric gates. Servants’ quarters and the old coach house provided sufficient accommodation for her security and staff. She shared the main house rooms with a new iteration of Omeyn MuneMei that had been generated and transported to join her after she had been installed in the Grantchester residence. The Evrisoft office facility was located in the science park at the far side of Cambridge but her driver in the unremarkable black limousine could make the longer orbital motorway journey more quickly than the busy direct route through the centre of town.
Omeyn MuneMei had arrived by Zarnha earth transport after being generated aboard the station concealed amongst the rings of Saturn. She had deplaned at a
quiet rendezvous in Thetford Forest well visited by Zarnha craft since the time US nuclear missile bombers had been based nearby. Haruka’s driver had been despatched to collect Omeyn MuneMei. She was totally at ease with the journey; at any one time hundreds of iterations of Omeyn MuneMei were active in the planets of Spargar interest, controlled from The Spyre in Braganza on planet Spargan. Each iteration was a perfect clone of the original Omeyn MuneMei updated by the latest data from all the iterations as they managed to communicate back to The Spyre. Each iteration acted independently but with the same thought processes and knowledge of all the others, therefore distributing management and decision-making in an unsurprising and controlled manner. This iteration had brought a single Ghola to be despatched as invisible spy on Dawn of Gaya or important local targets. The Ghola was miserable in finding itself outside of accepted Spargan doctrine. It was eager as a puppy to please its master, the Omeyn, its only contact and possible way to pass on from its present dire condition. Its presence was unknown to the rest of the Zarnha personnel.
Omeyn MuneMei would not converse directly with the abject Ghola. Indeed, since the Omeyn refused to believe in the soul or allow soul communications she would only accept information after it had been processed by a Ghola port into the Mind, which could then present the intelligence back in computer output. This way the Omeyn did not need to actually acknowledge and take the tainted form of the Ghola into her direct presence.
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