Part 25 (1/2)

More than once, Zeus' testily, sent back word. 'Know you that people barely manage the reality of life on Earth when it's directly in front of them. Remember my brother, I am Chief of the G.o.ds. The last word is mine! I decide how things are organised. You know full well that you cannot ask mortals to think beyond the Now. They cannot think round the corners of time and have to make up things to explain what they cannot see beyond the end of their noses. The problem of these last centuries is mine to manage. I don't need to be told by you that these ghastly mortals have lately unfavourably judged our Greek notions of Elysium and the Underworld, with their airy and ungrounded ideas of Yahweh's Heaven and h.e.l.l. They have conveniently forgotten that the wonder of Elysium is as much part of your dominion as is the doom-laden darkness of Tartarus where their uncivilised monsters are banished. We all know this was one of the details that Yhawhe fiddled with and which compromised my main reason for keeping your world quite separate from mine. They have made the serious mistake of separating Elysium and Tartarus into Heaven and h.e.l.l and they've got it badly wrong. They've enough to handle with their day-to-day reality without coping with the dimness of the past let alone getting to grips with the indefinable future.'

He had said this often, and at that time Yahweh was not even a glimmer in the eye of Judea. Hades had something of his own back by wresting Persephone from Olympus and had the added satisfaction of Zeus admitting the wisdom of it in the end. So the separation was not complete, cross-over between the realms had its uses in the present.

Hades, admonished, got on with supervising his world of time-past in its different realms until he saw that in the numbers game he was winning hands down. In addition the people in his realm were much more controllable, being known quant.i.ties. All he had to do was to put them to work to perfect what was already known and he would have the answer to all Gaia's problems. His dilemma now, was how to switch Zeus' failing creation with the successful one of his own. He hadn't given the subject a lot of thought until recently. From the time of his unasked-for position as head of the underworld, an occasional fit of pique had prodded him into helpless rage. On these occasions he thought how pleasant it might be to redress ancient injuries. Now he had the numbers, Gaia gave him the excuse and Zeus' last will and testament presented the opportunity. At such times Hades thought of Chronos. Now dwelling in a pleasant corner of Elysium, removed by him from the pitch darkness of his invisible dungeon where in a fit of post war revenge Zeus had banished him to keep enduring company with his base monsters. Hades thought it fitting that such a King should reside in comfort rather than continue wretchedly for ever in Tartarus. Zeus nevertheless continued to reminded him that Chronos was the defeated party.

'Hades', he said, 'Though you may now be the custodian of the past, never forget Chronos, created Time itself. None of us can forget that covetous of his creation he horrendously consumed us, his own children, to devour the future. We had to stop him, or he and his monsters would even now have their hold on the world. For the sake of civilisation he had to be vanquished, despite the incredible lengths he followed to ensure the impossibility of defeat by me, his youngest son. I, the one prophesied to bring about his doom, crushed and succeeded him. We brought intelligence and creative life to the world'.

In vengeance, even from the depths of Tartarus, Chronos worked on the conscience of Hades his eldest son. Zeus who used time creatively, was unable to stop Hades from softening towards his father, who would have time be still. Chronos enjoyed this latest paradox. Zeus, thief of his time, would be the unwitting agent who would set him free. Chronos at Hades' back worked on his dissatisfaction with his lot. Hades began to consider rebellion only when his exigent father from the comfort of Elysium prodded him, at first subtly, but latterly more overtly. The moment Gaia complained to Zeus of this last race of people, was the justification for which Chronos had been waiting for such an ache of time. He risked all on one final shove in Hades' direction. Without the vengeful Chronos, it would be interesting to speculate how far Hades would have gone on his own in defiance of the Law of Zeus. Without Chronos' implicit challenge would a New Trinity be possible? Would Zeus and Yahweh meet in one colossally sensational mind-meld? Would Alexander have been conceived? Would JNO have been invented and would...?

Such however is the joy of the timelines that jerks, twinges and tw.a.n.gles on one, resonate on all the others to make things change. Such speculation is useless and the only true story is the one to be read in the endless outward fan of the timelines; their origins locked tightly forever in Chronos' clenched fist. He would not ever let them go. No. Never. Certainly not into the hands Zeus, nor even those of Hades.

Gaia as has been said elsewhere, is the least fussy of the G.o.ds. She just wants everything to go well. She is built for comfort, for endless regeneration, she is expansive, fecund and inventive. If Europa's race and their way of life were to go, then for Her, Hades' people would do as well as Europa's. Better to usher in the end of their history and minimise the harm to Her than Her oblivion and early death. If people were to continue to inhabit Gaia, let it be a people for whom time was a used and known ent.i.ty. Its bankers rather than its speculators.

Marina resolutely drove her strong body over the rough ground towards the city. Apart from the procession moving slowly in her rear, the only other movement she noted was three crows in impossibly close formation gliding high on invisible thermals in the airlessness and she felt a cold frisson in the small of her back. She knew she must be watched. Knew she was alien here. She chuckled softly to herself at the thought. The ultimate alien. Product of complex racial strains, daughter of abuse, abused in her turn; she knew alien. Ate alien. Breathed alien. Immersed alien into herself and re-worked the fear, the differences, the falsity and ultimately became herself. The aliens' alien. Acceptable to herself, unconquerable - in charge. If being alien in this Firm's territory was supposed to get her down, then the people in this city would get a surprise. Still, no need to take silly risks. Rule number one in a strange place, is to make yourself as anonymous and as inconspicuous as possible. She knew from her experience of Barboncito the people here were likely to be strange, not necessarily unpleasant but different in the important respect of being unable to see ahead. She was beginning to get some insight into this rival land where a new sudden expectancy was now superimposed on a timelessness that stilled the air, all was hushed and waiting. Her mind was full of Alexander and an increasingly urgent feeling of the need to get him out before he did something irrevocable to keep him here on the wrong side of the Sipapu. How she knew this was not clear to her. She supposed it was something Pannie had said. She would find a vantage spot in the city and watch for the procession's entrance.

The first sign of humanity she encountered was a circle of thatched huts below the low ridge by which she descended to one of the main roads. It could have been a village anywhere, Africa, South America, a ring of Mongolian yurts, a Neolithic farmstead. Were in not for the fact she was approaching a sizeable city, she would have said she was entering a simple, basic human settlement. Entering the main area between two huts, she smelled food cooking and saw naked children playing with small black piglets in a little copse on the far side of the enclosure. The village was on a small rise and she was able to see the city sprawling into the bluish distance. The life of the village seemed to go on in total oblivion to the closeness of the city proper. To her left, through the gap between two huts, she saw village after village stretching to the horizon. She was entirely unable to explain how this vastness of village life had been invisible from her earlier vantage point of the canyon head. Clearing the village she entered a small town, followed by an orderly suburb through which she found herself walking uphill, along a wide boulevard, flanked by grand buildings and which led to a vast circular area much larger than Tianamen Square she had seen in Beijing. Posed in the centre, in the bull's eye, as it were, was a huge golden-pulpit accessed by a spiral-stair. The huge square was quite empty and eerily quiet.

She kept to the outside of the circle, and felt pairs of eyes watching her every move. Three crows, strangely flying wing-tip to wing-tip, circled overhead and were noticeable as the only movement. The square was built on the flattened top of a sizeable hill and from this vantage-point she could see that each different part of the city was separated from one another and seemed to confirm that village, town, suburb and central area, lived as if the other did not exist. The city was built in concentric circles, each band unaware of the others. There were hundreds of bands, like the rings of Saturn divided by the four roads like a giant dart-board. Each segment was built to contain vast numbers of self-contained people. To her simple eye, it was as though the circles grew from the inside, as if the centre of the inner circle, where the pulpit stood, pushed outward to create more and more circles which grew more city, more suburb and more village ad-infinitum. The imposing, pulpit glittered in the hazy light, expectant like those extravagant lecterns in the cathedrals of the world with their dominating but dormant air, waiting for the mult.i.tudes to arrive. The stillness of the place seemed to quiver with latent antic.i.p.ation.

Within the huge central circle, nothing moved but herself and the three crows. But now suddenly, she was aware that people of all kinds busied about in the quadrants and sectors of the city, as if in different time zones, unable or unwilling to communicate across an invisible barrier or enter the innermost circle. She had crossed the zones of the city without meeting anyone directly. She accepted the illogicality of this in the same way she accepted the illogicality of her situation. Having no objective grip on where she was, she ceased to search for one. Present reality was enough. She would reflect later if she was to come successfully through this to her other reality. Her objective was clear.

Alexander and his motley horde of followers was approaching. The circle at the summit of a long, low cone of land on which the city stood; offered just enough elevation to see over the roof-tops and she easily made out the dust of his slow advance. He would be there in some little while. About fifteen minutes, she reckoned, although she had positively no sense of time pa.s.sing in this place. It was as if time had no value and so went unmeasured. Time unclocked, was not time at all, she thought. Things can repeat as if they continually happened for the first time. Her immediate problem, however, was more direct than these involuntary thoughts. Where to put herself to observe Alexander without herself being observed and to think out a plan?

'Psst!'

The voice seemed to be more in her inner ear than an external sound.

'Oi Lady! 'You hearin' me?' Pannie's voice registered in Marina's mind like chalk grating on a blackboard.

'I hear you!'she did not attempt to hide the antipathy in her voice at this disturbing intrusion. Pan for his part sn.i.g.g.e.red quietly at her irritation.

'Ha! - Another one on 'er 'igh 'orse. They all gets ter like me in the end yer knows, Lady. Look Baby, does yer want my 'elp or don't yer? It's all the same ter me sweetie- pie. But I knows my way around 'ere an' you don't. Pick the bones outa' that!'

He had a point. This odious and disagreeable little man was part of 'Them.' The big question was on which side was he a player. She also wondered if it mattered to her. She was clear about her task. If Ljeschi helped well and good, if he hindered she would have to deal with him as best she could. So far he seemed to be behaving as if he was on her side. Go with the flow, she thought, until there is discernible dissonance. At present it all hangs together, so stick with it my girl - but be prepared for it to all unglue in a hurry.

'You're a bright spark,' Ljeschi continued. 'Can't think why Alexander let you go for that NightChant bird, 'cept I knows why really. Listen Lady, all you're thinking is dead right. Foller me an' you'll be okay. An' if you meets a real regal lady who seems ter know yer, do as she says. Don't ask no questions or it'll be too late, explanations require too much time, see? Oh yea, and watch out for three black crows, there's a good chance they'll be on your side too. Don't take no notice of what they looks like, 'cos they're changeable-like. The important thing is not to be scared of anything in here. Nothing can seriously hurt you, you'll get bad collywobbles from time to time, that's only natural, it's a funny place this Hades, that is for the livin', but a lot of it's in yer own 'ead like. It's hard to explain, if yer gets my meanin' so if it gets real confusin' the best thing's ter stop and take-five like, an' probably you'll find it's not so bad after all.'

'Okay me ole' c.o.c.k-sparrer!' mimicked Marina. 'Are you calling the shots? Or do I have to work it all out for myself? I'm going to trust you for the time being since you seem to know what I'm thinking so I can't have any secrets from you. That doesn't mean I have to trust you, which I don't! If you turn out to be a good 'un fine and dandy, if not, you can sling yer hook, ole' mate! You geddit! Ole' son!'

'You're a caution you are, no wonder the 'ole man's had an eye on you. P'raps if he'd waited a bit fer you instead of that other English bint things would've bin different.'

'What do you mean?' Marina asked.

'Nothin', sweetheart. Nothin'. Look 'ere, now we've got some understandin' of each other, let's stop the chat and get down ter business.'

'Sure,'grinned Marina without humour. 'Let's.'

'Right, Darlin'. You see that buildin' on the other side of the Ring of Time, to the right of the podium thingy. Well, if yer gets yerself up onner roof, you'll get a good view of what's gonner' appen down 'ere soon as your mate arrives with NightChant and his 'ordes as he likes to call 'em. They'll be 'ere soon.'

Marina calculated that if there was any verisimilitude to time as she knew it in this place, then Ljeschi was right and she'd better get herself into a better position to follow events. She followed his advice and entered the imposing hallway of the building he indicated. She searched ed for a lift to the top floor but found only a stairway. She put her foot on the first step and without knowing how it happened, found herself on the parapet of the flat roof, some ten stories above the 'Ring of Time'. She had no opportunity to consider this phenomenon, though somewhere in her mind she recalled what Ljeschi had said about this place being in her mind despite how real it felt, for her attention was fully caught by three different occurrences at the same time.

The first was the arrival of Alexander on his piebald pony, his woman at his back, followed by the vast mult.i.tude. Seen pouring into the vast s.p.a.ce, the throng came in waves, like water from a breached dam, only in slow motion and in utter silence. There was no roar of moving feet. No high chatter of excited voices. The crowd moved, layer by layer into the mighty circle, as if, being without end, it would as silently, but inexorably burst the buildings at its boundary, or be soundlessly crushed by them.

The second occurrence had begun without her knowledge about half-a-mile up in the blue to unexpectedly interfere with her amazement at the developing spectacle a hundred feet below. It took the form of an abrupt descent of three crows. Larger then life, they landed in a flurry of black feathers, and big yellowish, feet. One became entangled in her hair, a second firmly gripped her left shoulder, while a third nearly shoved her off her own perch as it landed squarely on her forearm.

The third event was the appearance on the spiral stair of the pulpit of two beings. She had seen enough of 'Them' by now to recognise their kind at once. Both were equally imposing, as strongly impressive in their different ways as Lucina herself, or Thea and Alexander. The tall, dark, masculine figure who precedeed the rest, as if it were the most natural thing, was complemented by the fair, regal creature who walked like a moving statue, two steps behind.

Enc.u.mbered by the three struggling giant crows Marina was unable to take in much of the proceedings. No sooner had they landed than they started arguing among themselves as if she was simply some kind of natural perch and not there in the flesh.

'Whose b.l.o.o.d.y silly idea was it to gallivant about in these crow outfits!' Marina was sure she heard the one on her left shoulder speak.

'Mine - ' said the one on her forearm. 'Want to make something of it!'

'b.l.o.o.d.y right mate!'said the one on her head, its feet raking her scalp in a panful effort to keep in place. After a couple of goes it roosted uncomfortably for her, but adequately for it, squarely on the top of her head.

'Stop it now!' yelled the one on her arm. 'You'll upset the lady!' The dishevelled bird stared directly at Marina who was not the least amused, although highly surprised by the speaking bird.

'Allow us to be introduced,' it said. 'On second thoughts, there's no time! Things are about to happen fast! Listen girlie, whatever happens next, think of one thing only! You think of that l.u.s.ty young man on the horse. You got that? Your job is to get hold of him tightly by any bit of him you can manage, and run for all you're worth - but keep hold! Don't you ever let go! Follow the woman on the back of the horse and do whatever she says however daft it seems. See the broad behind the fine got-up gent? Well she's going to make s.p.a.ce for the three of you. Ljeschi is likely to help if he can get near. Whatever happens don't let go of the lad, as long as you're connected to him it'll be alright. Like don't take any notice of anything else but keeping hold of him and run like the wind whatever happens!'

Marina was about to question the overgrown bird as if it were a person. But the tone it used was unmistakably commanding, and even as she considered the stupidity of the situation things began to happen. The other two crows took off, throwing her to the edge of the parapet. She was sure she felt the third shove her forward with its huge wing. Her ten story fall this time was no dream-like floating on a convenient current of air. This was the real thing - sudden loss of balance without being able to work out what happened, followed by a rush of wind and the absolute knowledge of total loss of control. Her training told her there was always time to work out at least part of what was happening, so she used the interval before hitting the ground to try and grasp if she had any possibility of getting out alive. In the enhanced, seconds of her descent she decided to give up all thought of survival and left it to the chance of the place. If most of what happened was in her head, maybe she wasn't falling at all? There was nothing she could do and anyhow that Ljeschi man had said she could come to no harm here. Well; she was about to find out if he was right. Just feet from the heads of the silently milling crowd, she felt herself lifted aloft again by two vast birds. The two crows, bigger now, had caught her by the shoulders and were flying her fast and straight at Alexander as he wheeled his horse to speak to the crowd. All she could think of was the crow's voice ringing in her head.

'Grab him and hold on! Run for the life of all the world!'

The giant birds flung her at Alexander's horse knocking him and NightChant violently to the ground. A roar rose from the hitherto silent crowd. The sound was terrifying. All her being, told her to cower in abject fear. Were her head not filled with the cry of the bird, she would have curled into a ball and tried to hide from its awfulness.

The uproar was like no other she had ever heard or would ever want to hear again. It was the world tearing itself apart. It was the full voiced cry of a million mothers seeing their children ma.s.sacred. It was the mult.i.tudes of the dying who knew for certain all hope of present or after-life having first been promised was now refused. Later she realised they knew. It was the ultimate betrayal. Alexander's promise was in pieces. He would not lead them to join with Barboncito, not pilot them up into the living world and re-populate it with the best of the past. Nor was Hades longer to be their Lord.

She put the awful sound as far from her as she could, but all the while it sapped at her strength. She never knew how she survived those few, swift, moments as she concentrated all her force on grasping Alexander's wrist. As soon as she had firm hold, indescribable things began to happen.

In the mad career that followed she was never quite able to piece all the events together. The sensations she felt remained with her always, a reminder of the untutored facets of her soul - aspects of which she suddenly knew with an absolute clarity she would have to know better. That all people would have to know better if the whole of her species was to be remade not destroyed.

What followed affected Hades the most, and Persephone and Hecate as NightChant more immediately, and since they knew exactly what was afoot, it would have been better had Marina been capable of considering events from a Hadean perspective. Nevertheless, Alexander, to his undying confusion and embarra.s.sment, never followed the chain of events half as well as Marina. Not that it affected his future standing in the world. Being part of it, it seems to have been enough.

Chapter 7.

Ric and Hep were the last to leave Markham for Ios. They did not go until GAIANET was hopelessly compromised. Their intuition, all their electronics, Hep's magical touch on the chips and digits; all useless in the end. Ric now easily recognised Barboncito's Fourthworld system as its virus, now grown into a full-blown disease, sucked GAIANET dry. Hep put it succinctly.

'This Barboncito, he steal our information from under our eye as we look Then he change what he do and that change our information before we can act. Like this we go always backwards.'

The group on Ios did its best with what it had, and the brilliance of its members was often enough to make initiatives take root or bring existing schemes forward despite Fourthworld. But overall, gradually, Penny and JNO lost ground. UNPEX once at least fifty two percent JNO controlled, was now only forty one by GAIANET's measure and slipping inexorably. At this rate by 2012 the balance of global influence would be pa.s.sed to Fourthworld leaving JNO at practically zero.