Part 10 (1/2)

Alexander understood. The meld in the barn made clear the distinction between his two worlds. He was readied for his work, and trusted Hep. The feelings for his mother mirrored those he had for the whole of humankind. Hera and Gaia had shown him the size of the task before them.

'Then know, mother of Alexander,' said Hep. 'That he faces his destiny. You can do nothing for him directly. Continue with your work. Is the most important thing. Use GAIANET to re-invigorate the planet, provide the relief it needs and change the way of things. We work together so you will have the means. But there is other, related business, which does not concern you directly. Alexander, he work for us now. Know there is another branch of the 'Firm' not known to you. He alone can have access to it. He is the one instrument we both need for success. For this you gave him life and.....'

She was gripped by a strong desire not to know any more. 'If you tell me things about the 'Firm' I don't know..,' Penny interrupted, '....will it help me? Will I feel less alone? Especially now you have taken Alexander from me. Will I Hep?'

'No, Penelope, it will not help you. It will confuse and distract you. I already help you all I can, you know this. I have no control for what concerns your son. He may tell you all when himself he knows it.'

Alexander held his mother's hand and was about to speak. Penny's head too buzzed with questions but before either could gather their thoughts, the door burst open and Ric rushed in.

At the same time Hep fleetingly melded with Pan - What kept you? Thought Hep with relief on Level 2. Come on you little goat....get on with it!

'Quick!' shouted Ric. 'The monitor....check the monitor!' In his rush he thrust Penny and Hep to one side and began hitting the keyboard frenziedly.

'See! There's definitely something. I've given him some commodities data to chew on , but he's not interested. The boy is right, whoever it is doesn't want our information! I don't know what to do now. Our usual methods won't work 'cos I can't get at it from this side. I've tried all the diversion tricks in the book and he's not interested. It's like he's sitting on the outside and just observing us. The only thing I can think of is it's like another kind of parallel network to our own and that's impossible!' Ric was almost shouting, he stared helplessly at Hep.

Hep gazed at Alexander, who had said nothing since their return and had observed Hep's interchange with his mother not knowing how to react. Hep gave a nod of a.s.sent and he was pleased to do something practical now the tension between Hep and his mother had been diverted by Ric's sudden entry.

'May I?' said Alexander to Ric.

'What? May you what?'

'May I look?' Ric turned his head towards Penny.

'It's okay, Ric let him do it,' she said. Alexander exchanged places at the keyboard with Ric.

On Hep's instructions he had kept Zeus' gift round his shoulders. On Level 2 he heard Pannie swearing to himself as he wrestled with the timelines re-linking Markham to the 'sphere. Alexander felt movement in the timelines with the re-integration of Hep's gap, Markham was now open to the 'sphere. The intruding presence, like thief in the dark caught by the snapping on of a light, fled to avoid detection.

The screen Alexander faced changed from its usual configuration to a ma.s.s of colour and speeding patterns. His mind slid into the developing vortex, whirling at ever increasing speeds. Aided by the power of the golden net he seemed to enter the screen. All sense of real time left him and he was truly travelling the 'sphere. Unlike his previous experience of it, this was not a sudden transplantation of s.p.a.ce like in Psathi. This time he had a definite sensation of movement. While his body remained in his seat, his mind was absorbed by the whirling screen. All around were other minds, synapses flas.h.i.+ng, like fireflies in a dark summer night. One was brighter than the others for being nearest, just ahead of him and accelerating away from him. Escaping! He felt its anxiety as if fearful of being sensed by him. It was moving fast, too fast for him to be able to communicate with it. His mind sent out feelers and he encountered Hep's slow vibrations and Pannie's more jerky pulses. He slowed, or rather became less frantic, feeling for their company and support. His lack of experience of the 'sphere was made up by Hep and Pannie taking over control of his direction and he knew wherever he went, on whatever timeline, they would be close by. So he maintained his pursuit of the bright light which he understood as the retreating thought pattern of the intruder.

From then on he 'knew' he was to be stretched to the limit of his intellectual and emotional abilities. If he was on trial he was truly tested. He entered a mind-world containing images from his own separate mind. As he journeyed deeply within the Chronosphere he was aware of thought feelers from what he thought were other travellers. Hep and Pannie he recognised as friendly and he sensed Thea and Hera from afar. With an effort, he felt a resonance which must have been Zeus keeping a faint seminal hum, like a spider's web vibrating in the air. There were other sounds and movements, bat-like flittings, all too fast to comprehend. Through all of this noise on the 'sphere, he kept his attention glued to the bright flash he was following. He tried to get onto a L2 communication with Hep or Pannie, but the whirl of speed set up by his chase prevented him from making deliberate connections. His quarry spun off in different directions and following absorbed every ounce of his concentration.

He was aware somewhere behind him his body had lost consciousness, shut down to allow the sheer density of concentration needed to stay in contact. He knew too, that to prolong this energy level would leave his body short of the essential reflex actions needed for life and that his physical self would eventually die. He had no idea how long he had. Not too long, like a snorkler, he could only hold his psychic breath for so long. His mind was in free-fall without any sense of a floor of any kind beneath him. He was in full flight, plunging at immense speeds through s.p.a.ce and time. His prey knew how to journey on the 'sphere and he gave everything he had to keep it in view.

Swathes of existence flashed by him, taking him back to the beginnings of the world and then through a hundred and eighty degrees to far futures as unrecognisable as the far past. Suddenly the flash disappeared at the cusp of a tight turn near what he acknowledged to be an edge, the meeting place of time past and time present. He followed his quarry until they came to a place coloured by a s.h.i.+mmering purple light leading to a blue-black whirlpool which seemed to beckon him into limitless oblivion beyond which he felt once entered he would never again leave. His quarry shot directly and at speed into this spiralling black-hole which he knew he must avoid at all costs. However his task was to follow and he gathered the last remnants of his mind, determined to follow into the vortex. Around him he was suddenly aware of many other travellers entering at lesser speeds into the deep purple of the core. He felt a resistance against which he had to exert all the straining sinews of his tiring mind to overcome. The nearer he came to the edge of the darkness at the centre of the vortex the force repelling him redoubled. Through the black beyond, he glimpsed dimly cheerless grey-green fields, thronged with drab, ashen wraiths. White cypresses shaded a lifeless, flat pool. Three white, wide, paths tapered off into the distance. Utter will-power alone kept him at the dread farthest rim of the purple light. Everything that was in him demanded immediate flight. He felt Pannie's mind tugging at his to get him away. But he had to see where the intruder had gone. Feeling his brain would fuse with the effort, he watched with the last remnant of his will, the dimming flash he had been chasing, dipped along the central road and vanish over a horizon where it was now impossible for him to follow. As Pannie's tugging and his own tired mind drew him back from the brink, he was surprised to see the slower lights, now gathering in quant.i.ty around him, enter without difficulty and slip in among the wraiths at the water's edge. His initial sense of disappointment at losing his quarry was overtaken by the relief from the tension of fighting his own need to escape, he gratefully allowed the repelling force and Pannie's frantic tugging to take him where it would. He left the dreadful purple light behind and once more in the darkness of the 'sphere, the chase over, he felt a strong sense of relief and felt he was falling back into himself.

He was rudely brought back to reality by Hep taking his mind and almost forcibly re-uniting it with his body. He knew he had achieved something important. He had identified the source of the intruder and now his work could begin. He rested, unconscious, in the office chair before the burned out computer screen. Acrid black smoke wreathed the ceiling from the smouldering plastic. Penny and Ric, highly alarmed, lifted the inert body onto a sofa.

'Hep! What Happened!' Penny lifted her eyes from the pale, strained face of her son. 'What's going on? What the h.e.l.l......?'

'He will be well, have no fear.' While he thought to himself, the boy did well to go to the brink and know it for what it is. 'It is what I said ....our business. Not yours'. He was silent for a while, as if communicating privately with someone. We are safe from snoopers for a while, this place is no longer of interest to them, but your son is. I need to find somewhere for him to rest and recover.

'What happened?' asked Ric. 'I thought he'd died the way he just slumped in front of the screen like that. And just see what happened to the monitor, what could do that?'

'It a parallel network. You are right Ricardo my friend,' he replied. 'There is parallel network; what you might call the spirit of the nature of things and by definition not accessible to natural science'. Hep searched for a plausible explanation and struggled to find one. 'It's more...more ....metaphysical.'

'I don't understand.' Ric was puzzled and Hep realised he had made a mistake. His concern for these mortals was drawing him into impossible explanations and with regret he used the Olympian last resort and put his own explanation directly into their minds. What he placed there simply, was the idea that another 'Firm' had discovered what was done at Markham and Alexander had electronically diverted its messenger and left them free to continue their work without more interference. The fire was due to a simple malfunction of the machine and Alexander's faint was simply a matter of his mind being overwhelmed by all the new information he had taken in, in such a short time. As with all such imposed information, it sat awkwardly in their minds as insufficient, but they had no other explanations. The incident left its mark like a written-over erasure. Penny and Ric now had something else in common.

'Your work,' Hep said as if nothing had happened. 'Is safe from this other Firm for now. But you need to redouble your efforts, time is no longer on our side. (The present is at risk of being swallowed by the past, he thought, Chronos awakes). I will take care of Alexander, he needs training which I can give with Thea. I need place to hide where I instruct him, discrete and reliable.'

'Use Marina for your security,' said Penny, past asking questions for which there were no answers. 'No one better. She would welcome the chance to know my children better, she finds them quite unusual. Are you sure he will be alright? He looks so dreadful.'

'Yes, he's okay, tired and needs rest, I will take him from here. Here is where they might search for him and cause unnecessary problems...too distracting, you need all the time you can get to concentrate on work with GAIANET. I ask Marina to find safe-house. How long when you will have all GAIANET systems in place and ready?'

'They're basically there now, Ric has some more work do with HIGO, it still has some minor problems...another week or two at this rate and we'll have it working right.'

'Marina, she good at her job? She won't crack if things get hard?' asked Hep. He was concerned about too many mortals being involved in the next round of events while knowing Alexander might well need a mortal around to keep his bearings in an unreal world. Although he trusted Penny's judgement, he had himself no part in the appointment of her mortal staff and did not know them.

'You can rely on her to do her job. She will defend what's mine against all comers - to the death if need be, I wouldn't be at all surprised. She's a tigress and let's say she owes me, and will do anything I ask.'

'Good, tell her to meet us at the car. I'll email and keep you informed.'

Hep effortlessly slung the still lifeless body of her son over his ma.s.sive shoulder, Penny considered Alexander with new eyes. What had he experienced for her sake? What was it he was going into for all their sakes in the shadowy world of the inner reaches of the Firm, where she knew she would never enter. But he would go - is going - and it was precisely because he was going that she would reach her own goals. How she knew this she did not know exactly but it was so. Her own fears had gone, transferred to him and she experienced the fact that fear for a loved one is worse than fear for oneself. Your own fear can be a positive thing. It makes you search for change, helps you tackle things, the control of suffering can give you strength. Fear for another whom you love, when you cannot follow, means watching, helplessly standing by.

Penny was ultimately self-sufficient. She worked from within herself from her strengths. When unsure she bided her time waiting for certainty or the best level of risk. She never made serious mistakes for she never did anything outside the parameters of the broadly predictable. If things started to become unstuck she changed tack and so far had been able to head-off and re-frame problems. She never had actual disasters. Her most successful approach was to always to do her best to be ahead of the game. She had no illusions about what she was up against. The death of her father showed how far things had gone and demonstrated how difficult was the way through, unable to go back, there had to be a way forward.

The success of JNO stemmed largely from her ac.u.men and foresight. She chose her people well, subtly counselled-out those who did not fit. She tried to see no rancour was left behind to catch up with her when she was not paying attention. Her trust of those she appointed was calculated to pay her back tenfold. She gave in to them in all the small things which did not affect the large strategy, about which she would not budge an inch. She gained the affection of the majority for whom small things mattered more than the large and the serious respect from the discerning few who saw the courage in her larger purposes and who trusted her instincts if not always her every action. She had the affection of most of her people, the love of some and the respect of all. They followed her lead, it was their gift to her - unforced. JNO's ultimate success would come from such mutually supported work. JNO would free the world from ultimate despoliation. Each individual made free from their own exploitation and thus freed to end the exploitation of the world. The best of the human spirit would be the touchstone for collective activity, each individual freely weaving him or herself into the whole as it felt right for each one.

It was only now she was forced to recognise what she had really always known - it was not in the end, up to her, and despite her central role in the JNO empire, it never had been. Till now she had pushed the shadowy doings of the senior members of the Firm from her. Unable to grasp their full purpose, she had ignored them - Lucina, Nemmi, Zarian, Hep. When the time came she had wanted Alexander for herself. She wanted him with her, in her part of the Firm, unconnected to 'Them.' This explained her fury when Lucina in her imperiousness descended from the lift in her ostentatious way and grasped him to her bosom. She who was so retiring in the popular eye, publicly giving such a show of favouritism. G.o.d alone knows what the word around the office would be. Nepotism was not her way. Her plan was for him to work his pa.s.sage so the rest of the workforce would have no reproach. Now he was publicly the tool of Lucina. To cap it all she had no form of redress. He was as lost to her as Thea. And, as always, before 'Them', she was helpless.

She watched Haephestos bear away the unconscious body of her son. Despite her busy life and the influence of Nemmi as his special mentor, he was the only living person to whom she felt close, with whom she could share herself. An unexpected wave of deep disappointment washed through her, and she let forth a long wail of grief which came from her torn and suppressed feelings without warning and was out into the air without her knowledge or control. For a long second she wondered where the sound came from. She had frightened herself and wondered about her sanity. She quickly fought to regain control, surprised to find she had allowed the startled Ric to hold her closely as he would a child, scared to the depths.

'Oh Ric....I....haven't....I can't....I've never....Ric what's happening? I feel....robbed of....of my....life somehow...I suppose....'

Her voice choked against his shoulder and tailed off as she fell into uncontrolled sobbing. Ric saw his chief was deeply wounded, more so than the mere events he had observed. Having no explanation he simply responded by holding her firmly, caring for someone in need. They stood thus for some time until she was quiet and he felt her strength returning. It came as a surprise, until this moment, as he held her warm in his arms, that he loved her more than he knew. With infinite gentleness, coming strangely from such an angular man, he disengaged and said, 'I think you need a rest Penny, go home, I'll hang on here in case anything happens. I'll run checks to see if the....thing has finally stopped snooping. Go home. Take my car, I'll get a lift.'

Penny, sheepish and tearful, feeling wholly vulnerable, gathered up her belongings, took the proffered keys from Ric, kissed him on the cheek with grat.i.tude, smiled wanly and left in Hep's wake. Being a few minutes only behind him and Alexander, she lingered in the reception area to give them a head start. She had no wish to get further involved in what she could not control. She could not bear to drive with the thought she might overtake them on the road.

On the way back to London, she did something she had set her face against years ago, and allowed the full rein of her feelings to well forth. They reached up in her like the slow movement of a symphony, unbidden from unknown depths. Perhaps it was Lucina and those eyes which had made her bury her feelings so deeply in order to concentrate so utterly on her work. The importance of the work for the future of the world had been so exciting that her own life had been totally sublimated in it. So utterly had her emotion for physical love been taken by Alexis that she realised with a long slow moan, that her current ability to feel had been totally cut off. She stopped the car in a lay-by, too overcome to drive. Alexander's life, the gift from Alexis came at a high price. She could only observe alone, and worry. For the first time since Alexis she thought of loving another and she thought of Ric. Far off, and unknown to her, her pain was sensed and noted with relief.

Chapter 14.

For some weeks, Penny's only communication with Hep was through GAIANET. He reported that Alexander was none the worse for his extraordinary experience. He was in a safe place and Hep would tell her if there was anything she needed to know and she was above all to trust him. Marina was watching their backs, and had found a well equipped safe-house for Alexander's R & R and his training. Penny still balked at the idea of him being trained by one of 'Them', but her sense of loss had reduced as the weeks drew on. After all, he was not dead or missing like Alexis, he was with Hep, watched over by Marina, and all the security paraphernalia of JNO at her command.

She could trust Hep, he had been as frank with her as he could she was sure. Unlike Lucina he was not duplicitous or aloof. She knew with certainty she did not want to get mixed up with their affairs, she did not want Alexander to either, but that, like much else was out of her hands. Hep was right, she was better off not knowing.

She had spent most of the next three weeks or so working round the clock with Ric and his team at Markham. The work had been so exhilarating she had managed, most of the time to drive everything else from her mind. They concentrated on the culmination of twenty years work and then they celebrated. Nothing fancy, a private party of the secret cabal of Markham boffins. Their success made her spirits soar and at the same time gave her the biggest dose of collywobbles of her life.

They cracked a few bottles of champagne, ate a pot-luck meal and got mildly drunk. They had achieved the key to a transformation which could change the world, provided they used it satisfactorily. Ric and his team had provided JNO with the means, it was up to the rest of the JNO staff to deliver. The principle was simple, the technology prodigious and the operational consequences mind-blowing. There was not much room for error and total secrecy was the main ingredient. While the objective was clear and the machinery was under control; people, the most unpredictable element in any operation, would be the problem.

The staff selection programme in JNO was rigorous. But Penny was enough of a realist to know not everyone in such a large operation could be totally reliable all the time. The only way to limit leaks was to develop a cellular, cut-off system of communication with everyone knowing only as much as they needed. All tangible information that might be filched by unauthorised personnel was digitally coded and had randomised pa.s.swords to minimise access. The precautions meant that Ric's special team, including Penny herself, were the most vulnerable, since they would be the best target. So far, she was sure no one knew of their existence. Marina and her large staff, were employed to warn and protect them.

GAIANET - was complete. Tested and in operation. 'HIGO' had worked impeccably for three weeks continuously and seemed now to be bug-free. The Firm was now able to monitor the world's financial and trading activities on a moment to moment basis, to make out patterns, suggest interventions, carry them out, monitor the minutest effects and adjust their interventions accordingly. JNO was potentially in a position to fine tune the economy of the world in secret. Penny had nothing less than the levers of world economic activity at her fingertips. In so far as the activity of almost everyone on the planet was ultimately geared to economic ends, she had control of the effects on social relations, scientific enquiry, ecology, conservation, politics, even peace and war.

She had worked for this moment for as long as she could remember and the moment of achievement left her elated at the task completed and also terrified of the responsibility it implied. She knew with absolute clarity why most people seemed to prefer the uncertainty of events. Why they reacted to happenings rather than sought control. She knew why those that obsessively sought control were often mad, tyrannical, or both. Was she therefore a tyrant? Was she mad? The idea of GAIANET and HIGO had been the most exciting thing in the world. To achieve it she had sacrificed the love of men, the upbringing of her children, submitted to the enigma of Lucina and Zarian, given all her time and considerable energy to the Firm. Now at the pinnacle of her achievement she met head on, an unexpected fear of what they had done and a horror of herself.

At the beginning in Psathi with Lucina, when they had planned the relief of the planet, the goal was already decided and Penny was thrilled and flattered at being chosen to help. It was a necessary task. Unlike some 'Green movements', JNO never harked back to previously and doubtful 'simpler' times and technologies, but adopted a great going forward, fully embracing new technology through control and redirection with a continual forward movement into new possibilities in partners.h.i.+p with natural forces. Through the years she had used Lucina's strength as a guide. Even latterly when Lucina had given her head, while she saw it as her due for effort, she never really thought about the power success would give her personally. She was a cog in a wheel, okay a big cog, in a big wheel. The Firm knew what it was doing. It would take control, everyone else would be powerless, except they would not know it. At the start she got real pleasure from having the potential for hidden control. To be able to manipulate systems until enough of the change was made, until the critical point was reached. Eventually, the Firm would invite the laggards to become partners in the new deal and thereby change the very nature of production in the natural world.