by H. R. Moore
Austin was fuming. He was used to a wholly different reception, where the farmer would come out and meet him as he was walking up the drive. He, or in some cases, she, would then plead with him to let them keep their farm for just a little longer, coming up with some hare-brained reason as to how, with just a little more time, they would be able to pay Austin what they owed him. In the beginning, Austin had often agreed, taking livestock or other produce as immediate payment and agreeing more stringent terms for when they would inevitably default again later. However they had now reached the point where there was no benefit to be gained from a delay in payment, so Austin rarely granted one, instead opting to take control of the farms. In his view, he was more than reasonable during these takeovers, usually allowing the farmer and their family to stay on, often even living in the main farmhouse, so long as they agreed to work for whoever Austin chose to put in charge from then on. Typically Austin ensconced a Mind Councillor to manage proceedings, leaving a number of his soldiers behind to both work the farm and ensure there was no delayed resistance from the farmer.
Today however it was plain he would not be on the receiving end of gifts, promises and pleas, indeed, it would seem as though this particular farmer was keen on causing as much offense as possible, presumably as a last, meagre rebellion before accepting the inevitable.
Austin, Marcus and Amber waited in the yard, Austin and Amber’s tempers rising as the minutes ticked by, snapping at soldiers whenever they saw a chance, ordering them to bring more tea, or telling them off for doing some small thing wrong. Marcus found the situation rather amusing. He’d never seen anyone defy his father, and they all knew an act of defiance was exactly what this was. The soldiers had after all arrived before sunrise, before the farmer had left for the day, so it wasn’t like an imminent visit from Austin would have been a surprise.
Eventually one o’clock rolled around and exactly on time a beaten up old four by four pulled into the yard, a medium height, medium built, middle aged man, with a kind, lined face and greying hair stepping out of one side, whilst a tall, gangly man who couldn’t have been older than about seventeen climbed out of the other. They looked at Austin, then at each other, before walking towards where Marcus, Amber and Austin were sitting, just outside one of the larger barns. Austin shooed away the soldiers near them and stood up.
‘Nice of you to finally join us Matthew,’ said Austin, his tone terse.
‘Didn’t realize you’d be dropping in,’ Matthew lied, his tone even, giving nothing away.
‘I take it you’re ready to pay what you owe me then, seeing as you weren’t expecting us?’
‘You already know the answer is that I’m not. The same answer Dean, Elizabeth, Oliver, Alan, Sophie, and all the others gave you.’
‘Then you won’t be surprised that in line with action taken in their cases, we will be taking over the running of this farm.’
‘And in line with what happened in their cases, I’m assuming there is nothing I can do to persuade you to do otherwise?’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Well I can’t say that surprises me, seeing as your men have already started wreaking havoc; it would be a shame to stop them now.’ He hid the sarcasm from his voice, but that didn’t prevent its presence being felt and Austin’s hackles raised further.
‘You would be wise to view this as an opportunity to accept help. You should embrace it, not fight against us.’
‘Is that what you would do?’ Matthew asked, feigning inquisitiveness and pushing Austin further.
‘I don’t see that how I would act is of any concern here. You’re a mere shadow of the man I am, a shadow with very different tools at your disposal, living in a very different world.’
‘Oh, I see. How foolish I am,’ Matthew replied, Austin’s eyes flaring dangerously.
‘Careful Matthew, or I’ll have no option but to see your behaviour as a sign of disobedience. You may even force me to have to reconsider you and your family continuing to live here.’
‘I thought that was one of the terms of the agreement,’ he emphasized the word, seeing no reason to pretend it was any such thing, ‘that we should continue to live here, in order to go some way towards paying off our debt to you.’
‘My my,’ replied Austin, in his most patronizing voice, ‘how you people must talk. You’re right though, I do expect you to continue to work on the farm, only you’ll be working under the direction of Francis, one of my trusted Mind Councillors, who will, I’m sure, do a better job of running the place than you managed, not that that would be difficult.’
‘What is his experience in farming?’
‘He learns quickly,’ said Austin, smiling a punishing smile. ‘Make sure you don’t go anywhere, I’ll want to have a progress report from you in a week.’
‘Not from Francis?’ Matthew replied doggedly.
‘You heard what I said, unless you’re stupid as well as inept, you’ll do as I say.’ Austin turned to leave, Marcus, eyes down, unable to look at Matthew or his son, turning to follow.
‘What’s the matter,’ said Amber, coming up beside him, ‘don’t have the stomach for it?’ she mocked before moving up next to Austin to share some private joke.
*****
The table outside at the farm was full of Institution members, old and new. Although the weather was turning and there was a chill in the air, Helena refused to eat indoors quite yet, so instead heaters had been brought out and blankets were piled around the place for later in the evening. Bas and Anderson sat near Helena at one end of the table, Milly presiding over the other, everyone talking animatedly with those around them.
Alexander and Anita entered the garden, doing their best to hide their discomfort at coming back to both help and seek help from these people who had so recently not only kidnapped them, but also revealed secrets that could never be forgiven. As they came into view of the others, a hushed silence fell over the table and they made their way to Helena’s end where two chairs had been left empty for them. To Anita’s surprise, Cleo was also present, sitting next to her father, Andraeus (known to his friends as Draeus), a merchant who spent the vast majority of his time in the Wild Lands, rarely venturing back to Empire. The others were all people Anita recognized from the barn dance, however since she’d never spoken to any of them, she had no idea of their names, what they did, or why they were here.
‘Hi,’ said Helena, easily, as Anita and Alexander sat down. ‘I’m glad you could make it.’
‘Hi,’ said Anita and Alexander together, a little defensively; they were not so glad to have made it.
‘Now everyone is here, let’s eat.’ Helena gestured to the enormous and colourful platters of delicious looking food that covered every inch of the table in front of them. There were salads of beetroot and orange, fennel, feta and apple, asparagus and sugar snap peas, cuts of rare roast beef, duck and herb crusted lamb cutlets, couscous laden with coriander, parsley and dill, sliced aubergine with yoghurt and pomegranate seeds, baked potatoes, celeriac and apple soup, a range of cheeses and chutneys, and a number of different types of warm, inviting bread; sun dried tomato bloomers, olive rolls, wholegrain seeded cobs, herb plaits, and white, crusty farmhouse loaves just waiting to be smothered in the mounds of butter that were dotted around the table.
They all tucked in greedily and somehow the conversation flowed as easily as it had before. Alexander and Anita joined in, being careful to direct their attention towards Bas, Anderson and Cleo, rather than the other Institution members, and certainly away from Helena.
After the main course had been cleared, three enormous apple and blackberry crumbles were placed down the length of the table, along with clotted and double cream, ice cream and custard. Anita was just pondering a second helping when Helena cut across her deliberation. ‘Anderson, Bas,’ she carefully looked at each of them in turn and the rest of the table quietened down to listen, ‘I think I speak for us all when I say we’re dying to hear your recent findings.’ She stoppe
d, looking expectantly at them, waiting for one of them to start the explanation.
Bas looked at Anderson meaningfully and took a deep breath, considering where to start. He was just about to open his mouth to speak, when Anderson cut across the silence, ‘well, as you know, I’ve been researching the relic for quite some time, and one of my areas of special interest is energy transfer. Since coming to Empire, Bas and I have been working on the theory that there may be a way to use energy transfer to send the relic back to the Gods.’
‘But how would that work?’ asked a blond haired, chubby girl sitting half way down the table.
Anderson looked disdainfully at her before answering. Somebody didn’t like to be interrupted, thought Anita. ‘We think the only viable way of doing it is to create what is in effect an energy slingshot. You would need to use some energy to essentially pull the relic towards the ground, whilst other energy was directed at sending the relic skyward. The energy pulling downwards would then be cut off and the relic would be flung upwards, towards the sky.’
Anderson looked up to be greeted by a sea of confused faces, idiots, he thought, to not even be able to understand the basic concept of a slingshot.
‘You see the reason we think it might work,’ interjected Bas, ‘is that energy behaves almost as though it’s elastic. If you imagine an energy wave travelling through the air,’ to illustrate his point, he waved his finger up and down, tracing the distinctive shape, ‘you can pinch a bit of the wave and pull it towards you. When you do that, what happens is that on one side, the wave keeps travelling in the direction it was going before, stretching the pinched wave out so it becomes flatter, resulting in an increasing force that tries to pull the wave back to its original course. On the other side of the pinch, the wave bunches up behind where you’ve pinched it, the force here trying to push through the blockage, building as more and more waves pile up. As you can imagine, the longer you pinch for, the greater the force of the wave pinging back to its original course when you let go. Also, the more powerful the energy you pinch, the greater the potential force that can build up, and the smaller the wave length, the faster the force builds up.’
‘So,’ said the chubby blond, ‘what was Anderson saying about the other energy that would be directed at sending the relic skyward?’
‘We’re hypothesizing it may work better if there’s additional energy added to pull against the pinch that doesn’t belong to the energy wave itself. We also have another theory that it may be better to pinch several energy waves rather than only one. We need to test them all.’
‘And if I understand correctly,’ the blond continued, ‘the relic would be in the way of the energy wave when it was released and this would force the relic skyward?’
‘Exactly,’ said Anderson, sounding exasperated, even though this wasn’t quite what he had outlined, nor was it entirely in line with his pervious understanding of how the slingshot would work.
‘But surely that’s going to be dangerous?’ she asked tentatively. ‘What if someone got in the way of the energy release?’
‘They’d die,’ said Anderson, matter of factly, Bas shooting him a disapproving look.
‘There are many calculations we need to do to work out the feasibility of this,’ said Bas firmly. ‘We need to be extremely precise with our measurements around locations, lengths, types and origins of wave, what we’ll use to pinch the energy, what we need to do to ensure the energy wave won’t oscillate as it returns to its rightful path, etcetera etcetera. We need more time to look into all of this, but it’s the best theory we have so far.’
‘And how do you know that returning the relic to the Gods means sending it into the sky?’ asked Anita sceptically.
Anderson smiled patronizingly. ‘We don’t think that sending the relic into the sky is the same thing as sending it back to the Gods. What we think will happen is that the relic will go up and then come back down again. The key is to ensure where it lands is a location devoid of non-partisan eyes, and more importantly, a place from whence it can be recovered. Once we’ve created the impression in front of the people that we’ve returned the relic, we can then work on how to actually return it to the Gods in slow time, if this is even still possible given the state of the Body bloodline.’
‘And you’re banking on the fact that if everyone thinks the relic has been returned, then the energy will return to normal anyway?’ asked Anita.
‘Yes,’ said Bas. ‘In the same way that it was only after Austin announced Christiana’s death the energy started to drop rapidly, and not when she actually died, we think that if people think the relic has been sent back, the energy will start to respond, despite the fact the relic is still here with us.’
‘So you’re saying the energy levels are totally subjective?’ said a skinny, dark haired man of about thirty, sitting next to Milly.
‘We think so,’ said Bas, ‘and even if not totally subjective, then at least partially.’
‘And entirely dependent on people and not other natural forces?’ he replied.
‘People do seem to be the biggest driver from what we know to date,’ said Bas, ‘although truthfully we don’t know the extent to which other factors affect the levels. Our logic is that people are subjective and respond to news emotionally, whereas other natural forces don’t do this; they can only respond to actual stimuli, like, for example, less energy being available as a result of the general low mood of our population. As a result, we’re in control of our own destiny in a way that the rest of nature is not.’
‘But how does our general mood translate into crops dying, for example?’ asked the chubby blond.
‘We don’t know exactly,’ said Bas, ‘all we know is that everything takes energy from the planet to survive, and if there isn’t as much energy going around, there isn’t as much for the plants to absorb.’
‘Sounds a bit tenuous to me,’ said the dark haired guy.
Bas laughed. ‘That’s because it is tenuous. In the same way that we don’t understand fully how our brains and bodies work, or what goes on in the depths of the oceans, or why we’re all here anyway, we don’t fully understand how energy moves around and affects everything it touches. All we know as a fact is that it just does.’
‘But we don’t even know that for a fact,’ countered the dark haired guy. ‘What if Austin’s right and this crisis is all to do with the weather and things beyond our control? If we don’t really understand how energy affects everything, how can you know that it does in fact affect everything?’
‘Evidence,’ said Bas, a little edgily. ‘The same way that we know all the other stuff we think we know.’
‘So,’ said Helena, cutting in before the edge in the air turned into something else, ‘you’re next steps are to go away and start to test your hypotheses?’
‘Exactly,’ said Anderson, trying to regain the attention of the table. ‘We’re not sure how long it will take, but of course we’ll work as quickly as we can. The tricky bit though will be after we have a technical solution, when we have to get the Descendants to play along and act as though they’re sending the relic back. Good luck getting Austin to agree to that.’
‘You leave Austin to me,’ said Helena, coolly, ‘once you’ve got something reliable, we’ll find a way to make the Descendants help us.’
Anita smiled inwardly, Helena still thought force was the best tactic in any circumstance; how on earth did she think she was going to ‘make’ Austin and Peter help the Institution? Diplomacy would surely be a better tack.
*****
After dinner, Helena gave everyone apart from Milly, Draeus, Cleo, Bas and Anderson a very obvious signal that it was time to leave. Whatever Anita and Alexander wanted to talk about was not for the ears of their more junior members.
They sipped coffee and made small talk for a while, until Anita decided to put aside the niceties and jump straight in with the reason they were there. ‘We found the cylinder,’ she said abruptly, cutting across some mundane comme
nt Milly was making.
Helena turned her head sharply, boring into Anita’s eyes, ‘and?’ she asked, almost impatiently, ‘what was in it?’
‘We don’t yet know,’ Anita said, a warning edge in her tone. ‘We tried to open it, but for some reason we can’t. Also, it kicks Alexander out of the meditation whenever we try to. We came because we wanted to see if any of you have any ideas we haven’t tried yet.’
They discussed all the things Alexander and Anita had tried to date and then quickly drew a blank. ‘I’m not exactly an expert,’ said Helena, ‘but I’ve never heard of a cylinder resisting when someone tried to open it.’
‘Me neither,’ said Milly, intrigued.
‘Nor have I, I’m afraid,’ Draeus chipped in. ‘It’s the kind of thing that wouldn’t be publically researched either; bit sensitive I’d say. Maybe the kind of thing they would investigate on Cloud Mountain though.’
‘True,’ said Helena slowly, pushing aside a flashback to her last, objectionable, visit to the Spirit Leader’s mountain, ‘and Clarissa was at the Cloud Mountain when the cylinder was planted, so it would make sense that someone there may be able to help us.’ Milly nodded in agreement.
‘So what exactly goes on at this Cloud Mountain?’ asked Cleo, keenly. Now she came to think about it, she had no idea who lived there or what they did.
‘The Cloud Mountain is home to the Spirit Leader and his or her followers,’ said Milly, matter of factly. ‘Before the relic and prophecy were discovered, the Temples still existed, however they were run slightly differently. Each Temple had a leader and each leader had followers, much like the Descendants and their Councillors today, however, the focus then was more on learning about the disciplines associated with each Temple, rather than the political focus that now dominates.’