Part 8 (1/2)

'Wow! you ain't 'arf stirred 'em up!' remarked Pannie, from his front seat position on the railway line. 'You can't just make it work like that, boychik, you gotta be clearer'n that, less aggressive like. See, when yer sends an open message wivout no 'andle, any ole'b.u.g.g.e.r can reply, 'n 'cos they ain't got much else to do, lots of 'em just cruises around lookin' fer a bit of a giggle. Well you just give 'em an easy question what they've all got their own opinions on like an' they all came back at yer all at once and blasted yer 'ead. It can drive yer daft if yer does that too much. Some of you mortals what got on it by accident 'cos they was susceptible an' that, well, they was stark, starin' whatsit, they was, in no time 'Who was it you was after? Pr'aps I can 'elp yer technique a bit eh?'

'Well I was aiming my thoughts at you and Laki here, I thought you could give me some answers.'

'I'm sorry', said Laki. 'I don't keep answers to that sort of question, they're for the Names really, we just do our jobs, eh Pannie? Like they're management, that's why you couldn't aim your questions at us.'

'Yeah, boychik, she's right, mind you, it don't stop some of them other silly b.u.g.g.e.rs from 'avin' a go, and nearly deafenin' yer, but they don't know nuffin' really.

'Look, Sonny, I'll have to go soon - really I do, do you want to see your Life-strip or not? I can't stay here all day waiting for you to decide.' Laki stood arms akimbo.

'I don't know!' exclaimed Alexander grossly perturbed. 'I want to know what's going on, I mean properly, I don't just want to know things, I want to know what it's about. Will your Life-strip highlights tell me that or does it just show events without explanations?'

'It's not my Life-strip, Sonny Boy, it's yours!' with which retort she disengaged the strip from the machine on her knee, stood, s.n.a.t.c.hed up her rod and set off the way her sisters had gone.

'Hey!' exclaimed Alexander. 'What about my Life-strip!'

'You're not ready!' she shouted over her shoulder without turning back. 'I don't ever give previews to people who can't make decisions - too risky!' She concluded with something else which Alexander could not hear for she was turning into the exit tunnel as she spoke.

'You made a right hash of that, boychik' Pannie had leaped alongside him 'You should of seen the pi'tcher, then you'd've knowed. Save a lotta muckin' about later,' he sighed knowingly.

'Knowed what!' Alexander yelled in utter exasperation into the grin dancing about in front of him.

'What wus in the pi'tcher! Blimey O'Reilly - thick as short planks or what!'

'Don't...don't...you dare start that again, I've had enough!.

'Well yer don't listen does yer? There was them Fates gonna do yer a favour what most people 'ud give their eye-teeth for and you 'don't know'. But yer do know boychik, yer jus' don't want ter do nuffin' about it. An' that's why you wouldn't look. Yer not a scaredy cat, like I thought at first, you're a lazy 'ound, that's what. I've been watchin' yer. Yer like all this G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses stuff, you ain't scared on 'em like most mortals I seen 'oo goes bananas when they sees 'em, you likes 'em an' appreciates 'em. An' they likes you, they does, an' they wants yer to 'elp 'em save Gaia from you mortals an' you're too blinkin' idle t' gerr'off yer b.u.m 'n do sumfink'. You ain't got long yer knows that don'cha! It ain't no joke, 2012, old Zeus he don't mess about when he's made up 'is mind he don't.'

'That's just the point,' Alexander paced up and down the platform, agitated. 'What can I do? Me! I can't decide if this G.o.ds stuff is real or in my head. If it's real, everyone'll think I'm a nut case and they'll put me away. If it's not real I really do deserve to be put away. I don't have too strong a reputation for sanity at the moment anyway. I'm a n.o.body in JNO and I've only got the good will of my mum to thank for that. How can I do anything?'

At this the little man started running all over the platform, up the walls and down the other side over the tracks and back onto the platform. He was throwing his arms about and shrieking.

'By all the bleedin' G.o.ds, Zeus an' all on yer, is this bloke fer real? Stupid or what? 'Ow come yer chose this idle t.w.a.t?'

He grabbed Alexander by the arms and using considerable force, sat him down on the edge of the platform so that his legs dangled over the tracks. Jumping down so his head was on a level with Alexander's knees, he gritted his misshapen goat-like teeth and forced his brain onto level two all the while holding for dear life onto Alexander's wrists with a painful vice-like grip. Together their minds soared, Alexander felt Pannie absorb his thoughts entirely into his own and wrap them as if for safekeeping while he probed the Chronosphere with his own. He was searching for other thought patterns on the 'sphere which gave way to the urgency of his thrust until he met another mind bank with which he engaged. Alexander's mind felt Pannie release it into the safekeeping of the new, while maintaining a hold on one corner so it would maintain contact. The new mind bank had a familiar sensation. It had to belong to Hera.

Although this time doubt was present, it was less strong. Pannie was right. Doubt was giving way to curiosity, idleness to a strong interest in possibility. As the communication deepened, layer upon layer of possibilities built up strongly, supple yet forceful. In the bowels of London directly under the green turf of Lords Cricket Ground where a bright dawn washed gold over the perfect sward, a small, hairy goat-like little man in a scruffy morning coat and spats, lay with his feet dangling in the dust and sweet wrappers, out to the world, his head resting in the lap of a youth. Alexander had to act fast to yank the inert body up onto the platform, before the first train of the day rocked its noisy way into the station.

Chapter 11.

Alexander, rose the next morning as if coming home from far away. He woke in a fog of impressions which gradually cleared into a growing awareness that today's world into which he was entering had irrecoverably changed since yesterday morning when he had got up to go to work at JNO It was a little while before he realised the voice in his head came from outside himself and was that of his mother, Penny.

'We're off in half an hour!' she was shouting up the stairs which let to his flat. 'If you want to come to Markham with me and Hep, you'll have to get a move on!'

Around him were the familiar objects of his bedroom. The poster of the chromium plated Harley on the wall, his skis propped up in the corner. His ice-pick hanging on the wall. As his mind falteringly grasped the real world, his mind struggled with what had happened to him in the last twelve hours. He had seemed to have existed in an equally tangible world, but on a different plane. He wondered if he'd been dreaming. But the experience was too real, too vividly remembered for that to be an adequate explanation. The structure of the world he lived in had expanded to include the world of Lucina which now ran alongside his old world. His connection with that had split at the point when he met Lucina at the lift at JNO and was now aware his life was separated into parallel lines. At this thought he half expected Pannie to appear and confirm this as reality. But he didn't.

He wondered how it was possible that Penny could treat the new day as if nothing had happened. Penny's matter of factness about getting up and going out, he realised with a jolt, confirmed her absence from this other reality. He wanted to tell her what had happened, but he knew already he couldn't begin to explain so as to make any sense of it. And if he could, he'd only raise unanswerable questions to add to the perplexities that already existed between them. Wow! In Lucina's world he was on his own with 'Them'.

Penny had no insight into the 'sphere. He also amazed himself at his use of the term as if it was quite normal. It was with a sense of uncertainty and disbelief he recalled bundling himself and a dishevelled Pannie Ljeschi first into the Tube and eventually getting into a taxi. Pannie had nipped out at a set of lights muttering something about feeling better now and Alexander got home and to bed like the wrecked partygoer the driver had thought he was.

He threw on his clothes, wearing the same jacket he wore the evening before, and noticed the neatly folded mesh of the mantle of Zeus still in his pocket. He did a double take, as the crowding reality of the coming day and the voice of his mother, urging him to get up again, made it increasingly difficult to believe in this object from this other, parallel world.

Unfolding the garment, he threw it across his shoulders and observed himself in the full length mirror of the wardrobe door. It was so fine as to be virtually invisible. It seemed to change into the colour and texture of his clothes. The moment he had it on, he sensed the vibrations of the Chronosphere, and felt he could easily thrust a thought feeler into it if he was so minded. What stopped him was a need to get downstairs and join his mother's day.

'Alexander, hurry up, get a move on, coffee's made, we haven't got all day!' The insistent tone drew him downstairs.

'There's time for coffee and there are bagel's warm in the oven,'said Penny as he blundered sleepily into the kitchen. 'Hep'll be here soon, we want to get off before the traffic builds up.'

Thank the G.o.ds, he thought, for warm bagels and cream cheese at least. He grinned at Penny and set onto his breakfast ravenously. Suddenly he felt better than he had for years, cosy and warm in his family kitchen with his mother rus.h.i.+ng about with papers and brief-case as she had all through his childhood, ready for the big world, into which he now had a place of his own. He was acutely aware of the invisible mantle giving him access to the 'sphere, and found to his surprise that he missed the presence of Pannie, but sensed a comforting presence at the back of his mind along with other intangible thought-feelings that might be from Thea. His mood was bright and high, as when he had woken from sleeping on Nemmi's lap as a child. He slit the bagels and piled cream cheese high. Every time Penny came into his field of vision he grinned cheesily at her and at the brilliant day streaming through the picture-window of the kitchen.

'You're pretty cheerful considering the time you got in this morning. I didn't think you'd be coming. Thea was home ages before you when I got back...said you wouldn't be long, said something about you wanting to think some things out. I was... thought...you might have...you know, got in with some of your old colleagues, especially when you weren't home after I'd gone to bed.'

'I'm fine,' he muttered through a mouthful of bagel and cheese. Was.h.i.+ng it down with a great gulp of coffee he continued breathless with excitement.

'Great day, eh? Ma, I'm really looking forward to Markham and meeting Hep. I feel I really want to get into JNO and do something. I feel like I've wasted loads of time worrying about things that don't matter.' He was quite boyish.

'Well I was worried, 'Penny observed. 'After our talk yesterday, and the way Lucina seemed to get to you, and...well...the way you seemed when I left you, and what Thea said about you getting out of the taxi and well...I supposed I was a bit edgy too, Lucina meeting you like that and everything.'

She seemed ready to say more, but his bright cheerfulness made her stop, there was no point going into those things now, no doubt they would crop up again. Hep was due any minute and she needed to get all her things together. They both heard the front door open and Alexander felt the mesh round his shoulders quiver with minute but tangible vibrations. It was as if the material itself became excited. It transmitted itself to his own mounting sense of high expectations, made even more stimulating by the s.h.i.+ning day outside.

When Hep Mulciber entered the room, he filled the s.p.a.ce in which he stood as if it were made to measure by some divine tailoring of cosmic materials. The very molecules of the air recognised his presence and rearranged themselves to accommodate him. Other people took up s.p.a.ce, shouldered it away to make room. Hep Mulciber commanded the s.p.a.ce around him. It seemed to accommodate itself to his presence and mould to his person, as if he had ultimate power over all material things. He a.s.similated the molecular arrangement of everything and imposed his will upon it. All this came to Alexander through the net around his shoulders which seemed to greet Hep with quivering delight. Alexander knew through the connection that Hep recognised the mantle of Zeus and was surprised at the reverence he received as the wearer.

'Hi Hep,' said Penny. 'Bang on time. I don't think you've met Alexander, Thea's twin. I thought we would bring him with us, show him a thing or two about what's going on in our bit of JNO I was going to do it later when he'd got to know more about the basics of the Firm, but Lucina seems to think he's ready now, and in any case we can use all the help we can get. I hope that's okay with you, I know how touchy you can be about revealing what we're up to at Markham but this is different so I didn't.........'

'Is your boy!' Hep boomed, casting a friendly glance at Alexander. Almost as square as he was tall, Alexander's first impression of him, chest up, was of an international prop-forward, ma.s.sively shouldered with forearms powerful enough to squeeze the life from an above average bear. He must weigh twenty-five stone, he thought, but without an ounce of superfluous flesh. His large head was topped by black scrubby hair cropped short making his large ears prominent. His face was a craggy mountain weathered by centuries of winter tempests, overtopped by the thickets of his eyebrows. The eyes bright and searching, wanted to know everything going on around him, their glint checked everything in the room. The hand he proffered was as large as a garden spade hard, calloused and scarred, the finger ends splayed as from much toil. From the waist down it was another story altogether. He was made in two halves. The top part powerful enough to put a bull to shame, the lower, weak and feeble, the legs supported by a strange gold coloured contraption of irons which gave him his only support. He was thus only half as tall as you might expect.

Despite his physical disabilities, he had come into the kitchen from the front door as silently as a cat. With unexpected agility he approached Alexander to envelop his hand in his great, powerful paw. The expression on Alexander's face made him laugh to a brazen echo which made the Venetian blinds rattle. His voice on Level One matched his physique, large and enveloping. He was not given much to talking and seemed slightly uncomfortable communicating.

'Don't be surprised by me, son of Penelope, I was there when you were displayed by Zeus. There is much to learn about things you do not know. Watch, learn, keep control of your surprises. We go forward, with much to do, always making new from what is already.'

Through the web covering his shoulders he felt the big presence communicate itself to him. 'I see you wear my net as his symbol, so I will be your friend. But I would like to know how he got it, since it has been lost these many aeons. But we will talk again other times - now we go.'

Penny, who was not privy to this thought-meeting, gathered her things and walked out to the waiting car. Hep gave Alexander an unmistakable wink, and was out to the car fast enough to open the door open for his mother, whose hands were too full to do it for herself. She smiled her thanks, Hep was nothing if not the perfect gentleman. She was a little in love with him, as many women were. There was something irresistibly fascinating about him. Alexander followed and was about to get in the back of the Firm's grey-liveried Mercedes, when Hep motioned him into the front seat. 'Your mother works and spreads herself out. You will be comfortable here.'

Hep put the limousine into drive and they set off into the London traffic. It was some eighty miles to Markham. Alexander calculated it would take about two and a half hours, given the heavy traffic. No sooner were they out on to the North Circular than they were straight into a log jam made worse by the all too evident road-widening scheme that had had North West London snarled up for the last three months. Hep snorted to himself as they ground to what promised to be a long halt.

Then he did something which set Alexander's mind boggling. Penny was absorbed in the back tapping an email into her lap-top. Hep turned to him.

'Regard, son of Penelope.'

He grinned and touched a b.u.t.ton on the steering wheel, which Alexander had thought was the cruise control. For a while nothing happened, Alexander watched Hep who continued grinning. For all his size and craggy visage his eyes held all the delight of a small boy with a new toy.