Omega (56 page)

,
'the friendship of her loins.' Did he not at least deserve that, in a partnership where death might be round any corner - or would it be an insult to his love, when she was not in love with him? And yet she
loved
him, as she had loved her dead brother or her longer-dead father. . . . Her debate with herself had become more tortuous and amorphous as the sleep of physical weariness overtook her. Next morning she had tried to recapitulate it with a clearer mind and had realized with some surprise that consideration of her affair with Reggie had not even entered into it. The following night, unpacking their things in the room which the village commune had offered them, while Gareth put their bicycles away, she had with sudden decision zipped up their two single sleeping-bags as one double one and laid it out on the bare mattress of the big bed. He had not seen it till later, for she had gone down to join him and they had been immediately drawn into their hosts' company. When they had finally said good night and gone upstairs and he had seen what she had done, he had stopped short, unable to find words. She had smiled at him, hiding her own doubts, and had prepared for bed with deliberate unconcern. Once they were lying together, his respectful tenderness had brought a lump into her throat, and she had forgotten her trepidation in her determination to make him relax, even laugh. She had succeeded; and now, after three nights of increasingly natural lovemaking, she no longer tried to analyse the difference between loving . and being in love. She only knew that in spite of her uncertain future and the muscular weariness of their journey, she had never been so content in all her life. Certainly not with Reggie.

They arrived at Camp Ce
rridwen on the evening of the sixth day. Gareth received almost a hero's welcome, because the camp knew they owed the survival of the radio cabin (and probably of Geraint and Tonia) to his warning message; Brenda was swept up in it too but not merely by way of reflected glory. She felt an immediate rapport with Moira in particular, and since she was a librarian, schoolteacher Geraint and journalist Tonia adopted her at once as their personal property and virtually shanghaied her into the news network team before she could draw breath. They were eager to pump Gareth for information, too; he had to curb their enthusiasm a little, or they would have rushed on to the air to their British and foreign ham contacts with facts that could only have come from within Beehive -which, so soon after Gareth and Brenda's 'deaths', might have caused someone in Beehive to put two and two together. The two-man raid on the radio cabin, Gareth told them, had been made on the Army's initiative in consultation with Intelligence Section. It had not been repeated because, with the advantage of surprise lost, it would have required a larger force, which the Army could not spare during the preparations for Operation Skylight. But if they drew attention to themselves by being not merely a nuisance exchanging what news the hams could gather, but a real danger by transmitting Beehive secrets, Harley might order the Army to attack at once, regardless.

An Army attack was coming anyway; that was the central grim fact in the news which Gareth brought. But at least he could tell them the date and the time.

As soon
as the welcoming was over, Gare
th, with Brenda beside him, spoke to Dan, Moira and the camp committee.

'Operation Skylight - the surfacing of Beehive to take control - is fixed for
21
June. Zero hour is 0600 hours but some units will be setting out before that and others after. It'll all be carried out in waves, by shuttle-service from the secret helicopter bases around the various Beehives - the main forces coming from London. On the first day, they'll establish headquarters in about thirty places spread out over the whole mainland but thicker where the population's thickest. The places have been carefully chosen - mostly relatively undamaged small towns or large villages. The nearest one to here is Corwen, about thirty kilometres away. They won't be doing it with kid gloves. They'll requisition whatever they need and anyone who resists eviction or disobeys the Army's orders will be shot. On the second day they'll start imposing control over the surrounding communities, starting with the largest - and at the same time they'll begin announcing regulations and provisional tithe laws and so on.'

'Tithe
laws?' Dan asked, incredulously.

'That's what they're calling them. How d'you think the administration and the Army are going to be maintained? The Beehive stores won't last for ever. . . . And get this straight. It's going to be a military dictatorship, with no holds barred and Harley's administrative machine as the ruling caste. Big Chief Harley himself is the absolute dictator of Beehive and he has every intention of being absolute dictator of Britain. The Prime Minister's a puppet. My own guess is that after Operation Skylight, Harley won't even bother to use him as a figurehead. The Premier will either be framed as a traitor or simply meet with an accident.'

'Where does the King fit in?' Sam Warner wanted to know. 'The BBC broadcasts are still in t
he name of "His
Majesty's Government", even though we never hear his voice.'

Gareth smiled wrily. 'Apart from Brenda and myself, the most distinguished defectors from Beehive have been the Royal Family. A few weeks ago the King, the Queen, the Prince of Wales and his wife and baby, and the two Princesses took a helicopter from one of the secret bases and disappeared. Being the King
and
a helicopter pilot, he was able to get away with it - though Harley still had the officer of the base guard reduced to the ranks. Intelligence Section did their nut trying to get wind of them. It wasn't till just before we left that an agent located them. Windsor Castle, of all places - the sheer cheek of it fooled Beehive, the Section never dreamed they'd go there. Holed up in it with a witch community, too . . . It's one of the priority targets for D-Day. Special task force to seize the Castle and take the Royal Family alive. Just like Camp Cerridwen. Dan and Moira
are
to be taken alive, too. I've a feeling that's a special request from the Black Mamba. I don't think Harley would have bothered with the "taking alive" bit as far as Dan and Moira were concerned.'

'Yes, that would be Karen,' Dan said.

'Never mind, they needn't catch any of you. Listen: the task force aimed at Camp Cerridwen is two platoons in four helicopters, taking off at Z minus one, which means, they'll be here about 0630. They have orders to kill everybody except Moira and Dan, but
not
to fire the camp - it'd start a forest fire and even Harley knows that every hectare of Forestry Commission plantation is going to be precious. The radio equipment is to be wrecked. So all you have to do is to move out on the twentieth - every man, woman and child of you - and hide in the forest, somewhere kilometres away, there's plenty of it. If you can do that, without leaving clues or even hinting at it in the village, you can save yourselves
and
the camp.
...
If you ever have a chance to come back to it, that is,' he added sombrely.

"We'll worry about that afterwards,' Moira told him. 'We can hide ourselves
and
take Geraint's radio stuff with us. But there's something else you'd better know about. Eighteen of us, including Dan and me, will almost certainly be busy somewhere else on D-Day ...' and she told about the Psychic Assault Group and the stone circle.

‘
Do you find that
...
shall we say, a little bizarre?' Dan asked when she had finished.

'Setting fire to a hut by psychic effort? Three or four months ago I'd have thought you were either lying or suffering from group hallucination. But since then . . . Not only have Brenda and I personally experienced what the Black Mamba can do - which
might
be put down to hypnotism, just - but there's something else you
don't
know. You heard about the recent earth tremor, down south?'

'Yes. Two of Geraint's ham pals reported it.' There was a sudden gleam of extra interest in all the witches' faces and Gareth wondered why.

'The epicentre was Salisbury Plain. And just at that time, the Angels of Lucifer conducted a human sacrifice at Stonehenge. If that was coincidence...'

'It wasn't,' Moira and Dan said together, and Moira went on: 'We picked up the ritual - in fact, it woke several of us up. And our best clairvoyant insisted it was a human sacrifice. She saw the big megaliths, too. That's what gave us the idea of experimenting with a stone circle. . . . Then when we heard about the tremors we thought it must have had something to do with it.'

They launched into a discussion of earth currents, ley lines and foci of power which left Brenda bewildered, though Gareth seemed to be taking an unsurprised interest in it. She was not disbelieving because the evidence was plain enough but she was soon out of her depth in the technicalities. But when they started talking about positive action against the Angels of Lucifer, she ventured to intervene.

'Did the Angels
intend
the earth tremors, do you think?'

'We don't know,' Dan told her, 'but we think it's unlikely. They were probably testing their own strength, seeing what power they could raise by human sacrifice at the Henge and not worrying too much about what the power actually did once they'd raised it. And they
are
powerful, even without ritual human sacrifice or a stone circle as an amplifier. So I'm not surprised at what did happen.'

'If I know Karen,' Jean Thomas said, 'she'll have been delighted at what happened.'

'But if you try to do the same thing - without the sacrifice, of course - couldn't it be dangerous?' Brenda asked. 'Couldn't
you
trigger off an earthquake or something equally disastrous?'

Moira shook her head. 'We'll be defending Mother Earth, not outraging her like the Angels of Lucifer. She looks after her own.'

'Do you really see her that way? As a conscious entity, able to decide who's on her side and who isn't?'

'Experience points that way,' Moira smiled. 'But yes -the short answer is, we do. We see the whole universe as conscious, at various levels of complexity and on various time-scales - various wavelengths, if you like. Witchcraft is largely a method of learning how to tune in to the right frequencies. All religion is, really
...
The Earth-Mother is one aspect of the Goddess, of what we conceive as the female polarity of the Ultimate - the side that gives birth and nourishes and re-absorbs and re-shapes, while the other side - the male polarity, the God - impregnates and energizes. We see all creation and activity as the outcome of polarity, even at Divine level. . . . Again, all religions do, however they obscure it.
..
The Earth-Mother is how the Goddess expresses herself on and in our planet, our particular corner of the universe. For the past two or three thousand years, mankind has over-emphasized the God-aspect and tried to push the Goddess into the background or deny her altogether. In the end, that's as much an offence against the God as against the Goddess; deny him his complement, and you deny
him
...
Do you know what Camp Cerridwen is? Not just a survival community trying to feed and house and organize ourselves. We're trying to get ourselves back on the Earth-Mother's frequency, to talk to her and listen
to her. Not only the witches, e
ither - all of us, in our own way. Father Byrne, for instance; if ever a man talked to her face-to-face, he does, whatever he calls her
...
Am I answering your question - about our running into danger, I mean?'

Brenda hesitated. ‘
Yes, I
think
you are - though it's a bit much to take in all at once. Can we discuss it some more, when you've time?'

'Of course we can. But right now the point is - we've
got
to fight the Angels of Lucifer on the Earth-Mother's behalf, if you see what I mean. And when we do, it's by putting ourselves on
her
frequency and calling on
her
power, so it can't be destructive except to her enemies. Does that sound naive?'

Brenda laughed, suddenly. 'I like you people. You make the most extraordinary statements without batting an eyelid and then ask solicitously if we think you're being "bizarre" or "naive". Tell you the truth, I don't know. But you're on the right side and you're
doing
something. So just tell me how I can help and we'll philosophize about it afterwards, win or lose.'

'Fair enough,' Dan grinned at her. 'Now, Gareth - down to business. Do you know how the Angels of Lucifer fit into Operation Skylight? From what you say, Harley and Karen must have planned something for them to do.'

'I'm only piecing hints together,' Gareth said, 'but I'm damn certain they've planned something. I was st
ill courier between th
em and escort for her when she commuted with Beehive, up to a fortnight ago, and I kept my eyes and ears open. Karen has some kind of operation arranged for D-Day. And it's silly the way you pick things up - but their kitchen at her headquarters has a big calendar on the wall, where the cook notes things. I got a look at it last time I took her back and the cook had scribbled "Breakfast
3
am" opposite 21 June. That's two hours before sunrise and three before zero hour. My guess is that at sunrise, they'll be at Stonehenge, raising all the power they can to back up Operation Skylight. What else was their last experiment at the Henge
for?
It must have been a rehearsal for the time when Harley will need their support. And that means D-Day.'