David eventually managed to interrupt her tirade by pointing out that he was doing his best and that--
`Down!' yelled Ellen.
`I feel safe up here, m'dear.'
`You won't be if I come up there and throw you off!' Ellen retorted and took a threatening step forward.
David knew Ellen well enough to know that it was no idle threat. Their affair, which varied between the tempestuous and desultory depending on Ellen's uncertain mood swings, had started the previous year when Ellen had discovered a palaeolithic flint mine on land adjoining a field that David rented from her. Since then their interest in palaeontology, each other, and arguments had developed.
But their biggest find had been the day before the Wall appeared when Ellen had urged David to use his Kubuta miniature digger to burrow into the side of hill on her land near the Temple of the Winds. They had broken through into a cave whose walls were decorated with vivid hunting scenes from, as near as they could date from the techniques used, 40,000 years ago. Without the resources to maintain a 24 hour guard over the priceless find, they had filled-in the cave's tiny entrance and decided to keep the amazing find a secret until the Wall was no more.
David jumped down hurriedly when Ellen made a move to climb onto the traction engine. `Let's discuss it in the office,' he suggested.
Ellen pushed him away when he tried to put his arm around her waist. `Good idea,' she said tartly, moving off. `There won't be anyone to witness the unspeakable things I shall do to you.'
In the farm office she resumed her forcible opinions of David and his parentage while the object of her affections poured nettle tea from a thermos flask. One sip stopped her in mid-insult. `This is disgusting, David.'
`I bought it in your shop, m'dear. You think I ought to sue?'
`I'm the one who should be suing you for breach of promise.'
`But I've never proposed to you,' David protested although he had often entertained the idea, hazardous though it was.
`For failing to plough my field! If the inspectors jump on me there'll be hell to pay. I can just see Asquith bloody Prescott gloating at the next council meeting -- telling us that, as councillors, we should be setting an example.'
`It'll be done tomorrow afternoon.'
`Is that a farmer's promise or a David Weir promise?'
`A David Weir promise. It'll be done, Ellen.'
Ellen calmed down. `You're seriously dead if it isn't.'
`I believe you, m'dear.'
She regarded David thoughtfully. `There's something else on my mind. We ought to take a look at the cave. I worry about those paintings -- wondering if we've changed the humidity or something when we broke through.'
It was a lame excuse. David knew that Ellen was aching to see those wonderful hunting scenes again. `It's risky in the daytime. It's not too good at night, either. Morris patrols everywhere.'
`If you refuse, I shall do something of a gruesomely violent nature to you. If you agree, it'll be something of a sexually depraved nature.'
`Looks like I'd better check the torches.'
Ellen kissed him. `Thanks, David. You're wonderful. Sometimes.'
`Weak is the word, m'dear. But on one condition.'
`Which is?'
`That you tell me how you knew the cave was there.'
`I didn't know for sure.'
`You knew exactly where I was to dig into the side of the hill with the Kubuta.'
`I told you -- soil discolouration in those aerial photographs that Harvey Evans took last year.'
David tilted her chin towards him. `I'm going to take a tape measure to your nose.'
Ellen stared at him and gave a sudden smile. `If I told you, you wouldn't believe me.'
`In our present crazy situation, I'm prepared to believe anything but not, to put it crudely, a load of bollocks about aerial photographs. So tell me.'
Ellen sat at David's desk and fiddled with a pen. `If you remember, that day I'd been down to the lake to see Inspector Harvey Evans about those two radio interference blokes who'd been drowned the day before.'
`Their bodies never have come to light,' David observed. `And?'
`I'd climbed about halfway up the hill and sat down to rest. I'd hardly slept that night. I must've dozed off for a few minutes.' Ellen paused and looked up at David. `This is where it gets weird. I woke up suddenly and everything had changed. The countryside was like Farside. Bleak. Terribly cold. No trees. There was a huge waterfall cascading into the lake -- but it was more like a crater, tremendously deep.' Her voice trailed into silence as she recalled her confusion during those strange moments. David waited, not prompting. `And there was smoke coming from nearby.' `From where the cave is?' David guessed.
Ellen nodded. `David -- I swear I'm not making this up but the entrance was much bigger than the little hole we made, and there was a man standing there, nearly naked, covered in red ochre -- all over his hands and arms. He was engulfed in the smoke. It was pouring out of the cave.'
`What sort of build was he?'
She looked carefully to see if he was mocking her but his expression was impassive. `A bit shorter than you. Thin. Long, straggly hair and beard. But his face... His eyes, large, intelligent. He was like us and yet not like us...' Then a hint of pleading in her voice. `David... I know he was a Cro-Magnon man and that he was one of the artists that painted those hunting scenes. He had hunted mammoth and therefore what I was seeing was someone who had lived at least 40,000 years ago.'
`Then what?'
Ellen managed a crooked smile. `I think I scared him. I said something stupid -- hallo or something -- and he took off into the cave. I tried to go after him but was choked by the smoke. When I managed to stop coughing and could open my eyes, everything had gone. I was back in the present. Where the cave had been was just a grassy slope.'
They looked at each other in silence. For several moments the only sound in the office was the harsh crackle of an oxyacetylene torch as Charlie Crittenden used some of his precious gas on repairs to the showman's engine.
`If I recall, you saw the spyder that day.'
`A glimpse,' said Ellen. Intrigued by his thoughtful frown, she added, `Why?'
`Cathy Price also saw it. Your burning ambition has always been to discover Palaeolithic cave paintings to equal the finds in France. And you did so. Cathy Price's dream has been to walk again -- and now she can. And you both saw the visitors' spyder thing.'
`One crackpot make-a-wish theory from Professor David Weir coming up.'
`Why so crackpot? Perhaps the visitors are trying to compensate us for the misery they've inflicted?'
Ellen sighed. `Mike Malone also saw it, and so did Vikki Taylor. Mike Malone's wish would be to see his children. No prizes for guessing what Vikki's wish would be.'
David nodded. `You have a point,' he conceded.
From outside came a yell of pain caused by something soft and animate being hit with something hard and inanimate. A string of curses followed.
`So why are you messing about with Brenda?' Ellen demanded. `The resources committee have given it a low priority because you said yourself that the dynamo will have to be completely rewound.'
`We're concentrating on getting it mobile,' said David. `We're only putting in an hour or so a day.' His move to the door was thwarted by Ellen putting her arms around his neck.
`That doesn't answer my question.'
David smiled and kissed her on the cheek -- an adventurous foreplay move for him. `A favour for Bob Harding.'
`I've told you the truth about the cave, David. Only a low life swede-basher would make me have to resort to sexually depraved ploys to win similar treatment in return.'
David grinned. `Ah, but I'm a particularly disgusting form of low life swede-basher, m'dear. Ploy away.'
Chapter 7.
ASQUITH PRESCOTT, CHAIRMAN of Pentworth Council, switched off the camcorder and placed it on his desk. The camera had an effective zoom lens; the scene with Harding and Malone struggling
with the hydraulic jack had been captured in detail. The seeming invincibility of the Wall pleased him. Without it he was chairman on the Buggins turn principle of the council of a small town with hardly any powers. With the Wall he had almost total control over an area of 30 square miles and over 6000 inhabitants, and a satisfyingly large office on the top floor of the recently-requisitioned old courthouse, now renamed Government House. 30 square miles didn't add up to much but there had been smaller city-states in history. The Wall was his source of power. Long may it remain so.
His smile saturated his visitor with bonhomie radiation. He picked a fleck of dust from his immaculate white safari suit. The government-run laundry took particular care of his safari suits. The gesture enabled him to avoid his visitor's disturbing blue eyes.
`A most interesting, tape, Adrian. It would seem that Councillor Harding is wasting his time.'
`He is raising his hand against God.' Roscoe answered. His gaunt appearance, compelling blue eyes that rarely blinked, and a rich, resonate voice, made him an accomplished orator and a formidable enemy. No one crossed Adrian Roscoe.
`Oh -- I hardly think so,' said Prescott, who had heard all this before. He had to tread carefully with the self-styled Father Adrian Roscoe, leader of the Bodian Brethren. The cult leader had a long lease on Pentworth House and the estate's farmland. His band of followers plus a number of party guests and security men hired for the party, who had been trapped within the Wall, meant that he had a useful labour force at his command. Although Prescott had recently done a deal with Roscoe that placed the security men under his control, guarding Government House. Roscoe's ace was that he controlled Pentworth House's methane-fired bakery ovens -- now a vital part of the community's economy. Pentworth had large stocks of European Union grain that had to be used before it was spoiled by the high humidity.
Roscoe's gown fell away from his bony arms as he leaned forward, resting his elbows on Prescott's desk. `The Wall was put in place by God as a punishment for our sins! To isolate the evil we're harbouring in our midst from the rest of the world. It was either that or the total destruction of this planet, just as He destroyed the fourth planet, and just as He will destroy the earth if we don't heed His warning!'
The belief was the foundation of the Bodian Brethren's philosophy -- that the asteroid belt beyond Mars was the remains of planet that had defied God, and that continual prayer was the only way to prevent similar punishment being meted out to earth.
It took courage to meet Roscoe's cobalt blue stare. Prescott was vain and self-opinionated, but he didn't lack courage. He met the stare head on. `As you know, Councillor Harding thinks the Wall is the work of an advanced intelligence. He's theorized that the visitors and their damaged UFO or Silent Vulcan, or whatever, is in Pentworth Lake. That the dome is a defence mechanism while they're awaiting help from some sort of interstellar AA service.’
`Councillor Harding is a fool, as you saw from that video tape!' Roscoe snapped.
Prescott shrugged and said nothing. For a few moments the only sound in the 4th floor office was the clatter of cartwheels and horses hooves from Market Square.
`Also he's a friend of that infernal wicca woman!'
Here we go, thought Prescott. `You mean Ellen Duncan, Adrian?'
`She is an acolyte of Satan! And that Taylor girl is her apprentice!'
`There is no proof--' Prescott began.
`The proof's in that camcorder! Rewind the tape to the start! It's the shots showing the Taylor girl playing table tennis in her garden using a perfectly normal left hand! What more proof do you want?'
Roscoe had shown Prescott the secretly-taped video recording of Vikki Taylor on an earlier occasion -- after a private dinner at Pentworth House when the real reason for Roscoe's hatred of Ellen Duncan had emerged.
`Then there's the Catherine Price woman,' said Roscoe, calming down. `She is unable to walk since a riding accident as a child, and now she can walk. A friend of the Duncan woman. Ellen Duncan is wicca through and through, Asquith -- an affront to God, and someone who opposes you in council at every turn.' He rose and picked up the camcorder. `We must apply ourselves of getting rid of her so that God will remove His Wall. That's what you want, isn't it?'
Prescott beamed. He certainly wanted Ellen Duncan off the council and saw no harm in shaking hands with Roscoe before the cult leader swept out of his office. He was lost in thought for several minutes when there was a tap on his door and Diana Sheldon entered from her outer office.
The Town Clerk was a graying, self-effacing woman of 55 who had never had a lover in her life before Prescott, seeing many advantages in her subservience, had made her his mistress. She had been flattered by his attentions at first and had proved an easy victim, even dressing to please him, and had been eager to use her legal training to find ways of helping Prescott tighten his grip on power, but now her innate good sense was making room for doubts.
`How was he?' she asked.
`Difficult, as usual. Will no one rid me of this tiresome priest? Has Nelson Faraday arrived?'
`He's outside. Chatting up Vanessa Grossman. I doubt if he'll get very far with her.'
`Vanessa Grossman? Rings a bell.'
`My new assistant.'
`Ah, yes. The tall brunette. Any good?'
`A brilliant organiser,' said Diana warmly, moving to the door. `She's got all the filing straightened out. A proper registry set up. I don't know how I managed without her.'
`Good. Good. Send Faraday in please, Diana.'
Vanessa Grossman showed Faraday in a few moments later. He sat before the huge desk without waiting for an invitation while Prescott stood at the window overlooking Market Square, waving to the knot of his supporters who always gathered outside when the presence of the Pentworth coat of arms flag on the rooftop flagstaff indicated that he was "at home".
Nelson Faraday would have been an imposing figure in any colour but he was particularly so in black leather. Everything about him was black, from his turntop cavalier boots to his lantern-jawed, sullen expression. The only relief was the crimson lining of his leather cloak. Nelson Faraday would have made an excellent Count Dracula. The difference being that Dracula had a certain charm; Faraday had none.
Prescott dropped his large frame into his swivel chair and smiled benignly at his visitor. `Government House is a large building, Nelson. When we took it over its size worried me, but you and your men are doing an excellent job looking after its security.'
`Thank you, sir.'
`What disappoints me is that you seem to be under the impression that you're still working for Father Roscoe.' Prescott cut off the beginning of Faraday's protest by raising a hand. He continued in a mild tone. `I asked you to keep tabs on Councillor Harding. Perhaps I didn't make it clear that eyewitness reports would've been adequate. I certainly didn't want you borrowing Father Roscoe's camcorder for the purpose. No doubt he asked you why you wanted it, and no doubt, as former employee of his, you told him.'
Faraday was astute enough to know that there was little point in lying; Adrian Roscoe's brief visit to Government House had been reported to him by his duty guard at the front desk. `I'm sorry, sir.'
Prescott gave a dismissive wave. `Oh, I'm not being critical, you understand. Divided loyalty and all that.'
`It won't happen again, sir.'
`I'm glad to hear it, Nelson. Glad to hear it. But, of course, you should still be of help to Father Roscoe in any way if he asks, within reason, of course. But do remember who is now paying you a proper salary with decent bonuses.'
`Understood, sir.'
`Excellent, Nelson. I look forward to our long and successful partnership. Well... I'm sure you have much to do. Don't let me keep you.' He had a rider when Faraday reached the door. `I see that Detective Sergeant Malone was with Councillor Harding during that nonsense with the hydraulic jack.'
Faraday was uncertain what was coming next. `He was, sir.'
`Malone is a shrewd operator, Nelson. I hope he didn
't see you?'
`He didn't, sir.' This time Faraday was lying. When Malone had left Harding and jogged past his hiding place, the police officer had called out: `Mind you don't tear that fine cloak on those brambles, Nelson.'
Chapter 8.
HARVEY EVANS LEVELLED HIS DURAND microlight biplane at 1000 feet above Pentworth Lake and flew in slow circle, gripping the simple yoke between his knees while sweeping the entire area enclosed by the dome with his binoculars. The moisture-laden thermals rising from the lake were meeting colder air at 3000 feet and condensing as clouds that would fall as rain at night when the temperature fell. The air currents caused the tiny aircraft buck slightly but he was a skilled pilot and had no difficulty retaining control. Unlike most microlights in which the pilot was suspended precariously beneath the wing, the French-built Durand was a miniature aircraft with a partially-enclosing cockpit in a fuselage.
He scoured the lake with his binoculars, paying particular attention to the sandy bathing area that was now Pentworth's favourite picnic spot. It was several months since the two radio interference investigators had drowned when the lake was in flood following a storm and had become a swamp. It been two days before the Wall had appeared. They had been weighed down with equipment used to trace the source of powerful radio emissions from the lake. It was unlikely that their bodies would appear now, although the banks were always checked at first light each day by a morris police patrol, but there was no harm in a double check.
He spotted a wisp of smoke above the town and altered course to investigate.
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