The Pattern Maker

by Nicholas Lim

  Better informed than sorry. He had to be certain to raise the alarm. Otherwise he wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t. Not again.

  ***

  The footpath down from the headland was stony and narrow. It cut through spiky gorse and wind-bent pine in sharp switchbacks. Kirtananda knew it the way a child knows fence runs in his back garden. Sweat trickled down his back; adrenaline excited his heart; with the pill, it gave his feet a jumpy energy and let him ski the stones of the path without a stumble.

  On some of the lower turns there was a sight of the beach and the car. Kirtananda crossed these open spaces fast. He grinned as he ran. Two misses. He wouldn’t miss a third time. Not on home ground.

  He thought ahead. The cleanup was almost complete. And the plague was spreading just as Osei had predicted. A new life was about to begin.

  When he’d told Arshu that they were nearly done he’d heard the pause. Who knew what calculations had gone on in that vast old soul, in those slow breaths? But then the answer came back, calm and affirming: yes, it was time. He must finish up. Then prepare for the future and his new command, in a healed world.

  Kirtananda loved Arshu, loved the man’s slow smile and clever words, his wise black eyes and curious way with people.

  He sprinted round the last turn down to the beach and stopped at an opening in crouching conifers, where the path ended in a door of sunshine. He breathed in short pants over his tongue, like one of his dogs, a half-opened eye raised against the light. The car was less than fifty yards away. There was someone inside.

  ***

  “Sir, did you get my email on the Kepalua report?” Hanratty stayed at the door.

  “No.” White scanned his inbox.

  “Just sent it you. Thought you should see. I found the story on the newsfeeds.”

  “What about?”

  “An unusual malaria outbreak.”

  “Where?”

  “Kepalua – a group of islands off the south coast of Java. There’s a follow-up report yesterday from Jakarta, suggesting a spread to the larger island.”

  He found the email and read as Hanratty spoke. The information was poor but the similarities – he looked at the date timestamp on the newsfeed. Damn it. Why hadn’t the boy been doing his homework? A light began flashing on an extension.

  “Why don’t I forward you the full reports?” Hanratty eyed the flashing light as he backed out of the door.

  White took a deep drag on his cigarette and picked up the phone. “White speaking.”

  “Er, yes, hello. Is that Surgeon Commander Charles White?”

  “Simon Kirkpatrick,” White exhaled with his words, “Thank you for calling me back.”

  “I hadn't realised earlier–”

  White sucked on his cigarette. He watched the tip glow orange listening to the man hunt for the end of his sentence. Kirkpatrick’s hesitant calculations – of how much pride he could afford – were almost audible.

  “The other call was important–”

  “That's all right. You may feel you need further proof of my credentials.”

  “No, I’ve already checked.”

  White contemplated the greying end of his cigarette, interested. Offence had turned to caution very quickly. Perhaps the man was a worrier. He tapped ash into a tray. “Good. Now forgive me for being brief but I’m after information, as quickly as possible. I need a status update on this malaria outbreak you have been overseeing. Background detail on the first cases would be good, and on your lab team, and the recent new alerts. I have your reports. I must say they leave a lot to–”

  “You won't have the latest information,” Kirkpatrick interrupted. “I have just been speaking to one o the researchers. New facts have emerged.”

  Interrupted, White spat out smoke. “I'm listening.”

  After a moment he pulled out a pad of paper and began making notes. He covered the sheet and started another. Eventually he stopped writing. He sat still. There was silence on the line.

  “Hello?”

  White continued to stare at his notes without speaking.

  “Hello? Did you understand what I was saying?”

  “Please stay on this number. I’ll be calling you back.”

  White hung up. He took a fresh sheet of paper and wrote six points. When he underlined words he pressed too hard and his pen nib caught, splattering ink.

  Ongoing outbreak, accelerating.

  Brighton. South coast.

  On the UK mainland.

  Lethal strain.

  Possible related Indonesian outbreak.

  Possible oral human-to-human transmission.

  Possibly due to genetic anomalies indicative of artificial modifications.

  White was perfectly still for some minutes.

  Not again. Please not again. Not on my watch. He felt physically sick.

  But the words he had written on the sheet of paper in front of him would not go away. He had once again underlined a set of linked facts pointing to a terrible threat. Once again, he was responsible for the discovery of a possible outbreak menacing many lives. Only this one was happening faster. And it looked worse, much much worse.

  Should he call for a Five committee? Was there time? The infection figures tolled in his head. If his fears about this outbreak were real, every hour, every minute counted now.

  It was very quiet in his office. The hands of the mantel clock appeared to be still. He glanced at the picture of the Queen hanging on the wall. Once, on naval duty in the Caribbean during the rainy season, his ship had passed through the eye of a force nine. It was true. It was calm in the dead centre. He had looked up and seen the moon in a clear black sky.

  His drifting mind caught at facts, circled the gaps. Missing information always dismayed him. White reached for the phone.

  “Jennie, any luck?” His voice shook slightly. He noticed he wanted to clench his teeth. “Okay. Send me through what you've got on the lab team now. Quick as you can, love.”

  White stared at his screen. He clicked a refresh button a few times. CVs finally arrived in his inbox. They solved nothing.

  There were always unknowns. White pinned his notes to the desk with the tip of his pen. He looked at the circled phrases. He added two more.

  Possible link to secondary intel on an incident

  involving breach of GM protocols

  Potential WMD.

  He underlined his conclusions again, and again, and again, then caught himself and stood up.

  That night in the Caribbean, in the eye of the storm, all directions out were through storm walls. It had been calm and quiet in the centre. But you couldn't stay there forever.

  He crossed to the picture of the Queen. With each step he felt closer to some edge, but forced to go on, controlled by events, old and new. A curious feeling overtook him, as though he were looking down on himself.

  The reproduction was surprisingly light in its fake gilt frame. He placed it on the floor. Behind where it had hung on the wall was a small metal door with a dial in the centre. He spun the combination, opened the safe and took out a pocket book. Back at his desk he looked up a number and dialled it. He listened to the recording he had heard once before, five years ago. The small of his back felt very cold. He unclenched his teeth. When the recording finished he began to speak.

  “Identification: Surgeon Commander Charles White, service MI5, serial number 2340934. Authorization code,” White consulted the pocket book again, “849-R43E-2606-XE1234T.” White hesitated then continued speaking. “I am raising a COBRA alert. Context: potential weaponized malaria strain active on UK mainland. Risk threat estimate: JTAC Severe Defined. Potential mass destruction capability. Recommendation: convene COBRA immediately.”

  White hung up. The dread of impending shame hollowed his stomach. But the terrible pressure of hesitation had gone. He had made his decision. He discovered a tiny revival of self-respect. It would not survive a second humiliation but he nurtured it while he could. He would need it in the coming hour
s.

  He took a steadying drag on his cigarette, discovered it had gone out and lit another.

  He picked up his pen. Right or wrong, he had work to do. He scratched out a plan. Priority One: start a staff recall; and call Hanratty, he needed him immediately. Two: prep other biosafety labs; liaise with the team at Porton and arrange to share results; maybe go down there. Three: initiate a nation-wide survey of related incidents. Make that Priority Two. He needed that briefing material fast. In his temples, he could feel his pulse against bone.

  As he wrote, his thoughts tracked the protocol he had just initiated. His message would have been listened to as he spoke. He didn't know the location but the number he had called was manned round-the-clock by military personnel from JTAC, the Joint Terrorism and Analysis Centre. Calls were being made now. The Chief Medical Officer would be being contacted, along with senior ministers in the Home Office and Health Ministry. Probably the services too, given his threat estimate. He would be called back – or visited in person. White's eyes drifted to the door and the shadow of the bells on the wall. A decision would be taken on the convening of a Cabinet Office Briefing Room meeting.

  He had just rung the UK’s largest alarm bell. Again. Only this time even more loudly. A Severe Defined Risk was the second highest on a seven-step scale, just below Critical. It had only been reached once before to his knowledge, after the July 2005 London bombings.

  Had he panicked again? White blew a large, trembling smoke ring out over his desk. He stared at his notes, at the underlined intelligence. No. He had done his duty. And despite what it might mean, the best part of him, the part the sea had helped to train, that had nerved him to make the call, hoped he was wrong a second time.

  Chapter 30

  They moved through the pines along a footpath of hard earth. The wood offered quiet, the only noise the splash and mutter of water from an unseen stream. Neither spoke. Garrett watched Skyler fold his brown beads over and over his wrist as he walked.

  He led her out from under the trees into the open shelter of a wide, bowl-shaped valley. Steep grooved cliffs rose up hundreds of feet on either side, forming an encircling rampart broken only by the narrow gap leading to the sea. It was as though a giant hand had reached down into the earth and scooped out a deep hollow.

  A patchwork of small, variously-green meadows covered the valley bottom. At her feet, hundreds of four-petalled blue flowers, Veronica chamaedry, fluttered like turquoise butterflies along the edge of the footpath. The stream, noisy in the wood, snaked along the path beside them, silent and fast, covered with a skin of sunlit scales. Distrustful, Garrett had to admit the place was not what she had expected.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  Skyler looked pleased and proud.

  “Jas – Skyler, I’m worried about leaving my friend Cherry. If she wakes up–”

  He pointed to a rise fifty yards ahead. “Come on. I can call to Rayan from up there.”

  They followed the footpath across sunburned-pale grass. Where they walked, sorrel, thistles and hedge parsley crowded the ground. Garrett noticed darker lawns of moss, how they betrayed nutrient and moisture deposition the way stains discover proteins on a slide. Skyler pointed out livestock, orchards, arable crops. He spoke in boasting rushes, short at first, then more confidently. Garrett was suddenly happy.

  They passed five white tepees set on a wide shelf of grass in two straight rows like neatly-stored wizards’ hats. There was no-one in sight.

  “Skyler, it’s very quiet. Are there not many people here right now?”

  “Everyone has gone except for Rayan and a couple of others. I'll explain later.”

  Garrett noticed a muscle jump beside his right eye. When not playing with his prayer beads, his hands were constantly plaiting a nest of fingers. As if yesterday, she saw a boy sat on the edge of his bed lacing fingers together, with a brown smudge on his nose, suggesting Daddy – who likes chocolate a lot, doesn't he – may have emptied the box.

  Am I always infantilising you? Why have you asked me here? Is it the infection – are you asking for my help?

  When they reached the top of the rise Skyler put two fingers to his mouth. Coo-weee! The two-tone call of a tropical bird sounded across the valley. A faint answering cry echoed back from a distant field and Garrett saw the waving of a tiny arm.

  “He won’t be long,” Skyler said. He walked to the edge of a granite ledge that faced into the valley. With slow ceremony he unbuckled a roll mat from under the top flap of his pack and spread it flat on the warm rock. He began to pull out and unfold packages.

  “I brought us some lunch, in case you were hungry.”

  “Thank you!”

  Garrett felt the awkwardness of a table turned, a mother fed by her grown child. Skyler folded himself up into a half-lotus on the mat.

  Garrett sat down too, her legs straight out, crossed at the ankles. Beneath the rock overhang where they sat an enormous grey Shire with four white stockings grazed between tufts of thistle and willow herb. She saw how the tall magenta and brick-red flowers spread out to the integrated limits of the rock’s shade, a living memory of shadow.

  “Loosestrife. It’s good for our honey. The bees love it.” He rummaged in his pack. “Here we are. Try it with the bread. That’s fresh, I bake it every morning. And we’ve got tomatoes – I picked them today, they’re very sweet, Trwyn apples, Y Fenni cheese – a cow’s cheese–”

  Skyler picked up a small loaf of bread, tore it in two and passed half to Garrett with the honey. She could hear the tearing chews of the horse beneath them and discovered she was hungry. Skyler opened a wooden-handled pocket knife, sliced open a large deep-purple tomato and bent to smell.

  “So how do you like our Valley?”

  “It’s very beautiful.”

  Skyler looked pleased again.

  “And the honey?”

  “It’s delicious. The bread–”

  “It tastes of something, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s because wasn’t made by a supermarket in some outsourced factory. What you eat comes from the soil here, from the care we take, the faith we keep: it is made out of our lives.” He took a leather cord from around his neck and passed it to her. “This Asar was made from local stone.”

  Garrett looked at the carved image of a many-rayed Eye; the stone was rurbidite, the rust-coloured sandstone she had seen in the cliff. But what held her was a heavy signet ring threaded onto the same cord; it was David’s.

  “Shall I tell you something about our home?”

  “I’d like that.”

  He held his hand out for the leather cord.

  “We sit at the entry point. It is an important stage in every visitor’s journey. A sacred place. It is on this spot that most people first hear God.”

  Garrett blinked. “Did you say God?”

  “Yes.” Skyler looked amused. He inclined his head, halfway between a shake and a nod. “You think he only exists in the pages of a book? Or paint, reaching to touch a hand across a ceiling? No. He is with us, here, made flesh. And this place is where he likes to teach.”

  Garrett settled her left arm in her lap.

  “You’re talking about Arshu?”

  Skyler nodded. “Our Teacher. Arshu is the third incarnation of Asari – the resurrected God – Osiris in the Greek.”

  “Is he here now?” Garrett glanced around. When she heard the gentle mockery in her voice she glanced quickly over at Skyler, alarmed.

  Skyler laughed. “No! But he may be, in our next breath. He always arrives alone, unannounced and on foot; and he leaves the same way, without warning, walking with his stick over these fields out to the beach, out of sight and mind, and for all we know, the world.”

  Skyler tore off a chunk of bread. He began chewing slowly. “Of course many have tried to follow him. None succeed.”

  “Have you tried?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “I track
ed him as far as the beach. He rounded the headland and then just vanished. Trust me, I searched for hours. I studied the tracks in the sand. I explored the cliffs, the trees, the shoreline. I couldn’t explain it. Some time later, I saw a sail far out to sea. Perhaps it was him.” Skyler shrugged then quoted, “Don't follow in the footsteps of the masters; seek what they sought.”

  “He appears in our Centres all over the world the same way, a sudden brief blessing, then he is gone.”

  “We are fortunate. He comes here often because this place is sacred to him – it is where he first had his vision of Rebirth. He never stays long, but when he comes he teaches us his Rules of Living. He has shown us how to see and shape the land, to consecrate it so life and belief become one. May I explain?”

  Garrett nodded. Skyler straightened up. His words came with the practiced fluency of a teacher on firm ground. Occasionally, to emphasize a point, he tilted his head back and closed his eyes. The gesture discouraged questions.

  “Do you know the famous mantra, Om Mani Padme Hum?”

  Garrett shook her head.

  “A rough translation would be, ‘Between nadir and zenith lies the jewel in the lotus’. So: in the centre of existence there is male seed and female flower. What does that symbolize? It is a vision of creation in continual divine Coitus. Not a new truth, but one we honour.”

  Skyler swept his arm over the landscape. “This valley is that ideal made real. It is a Yoni: a sacred womb. Here we are protected and sheltered: the cliffs are high and unscalable, the only entrance through where we sit. Here we are nourished: the earth is fertile. Here we grow: a few hundred of us, individual cells of humanity transforming into a collective the like of which has never been seen.”

  For a moment Garrett wondered if Jason had a girlfriend. She hoped so. He had never been very good with girls. She would probably be an Asari. Surprised by unexpected jealousy – for a girl that might not even exist – she smiled.