Portent (25 page)

    'A long drink would be more appreciated.'

    'Both then. A whisky and a chaser. How's that?'

    'It's a fine idea.'

    The geophysicist harrumphed with satisfaction. 'Tell you what-you go through to the sitting room and pour us both a drop of the hard stuff and I'll fetch you a cold beer from the kitchen. Oh, and an ice-pack. I expect you're hungry too, but Bibby will arrange something shortly.'

    He gave a wave towards the sitting room door and disappeared into the kitchen. Rivers walked through taking a pack of cigarettes from his overnight bag as he did so. He paused to light up, then tucked the pack back into the side pocket of the leather bag. He found two tumblers and poured whisky into each, making Poggs' more generous than his own, then took his to the large window, whose glass was still smeared with fresh putty, overlooking the courtyard. He stared out while he drank.

    The first sip and first few inhalations of nicotine soothed him a little, although the throbbing in his leg was not so easily pacified. 'Good health,' he toasted himself quietly, and took a longer drink.

    Hugo Poggs soon appeared again, a glass of beer in one hand, a tea-towel wrapped around ice-cubes in the other. 'Here you are, m'boy. If you don't feel a lot better in five minutes, then there's not much hope for you.'

    Rivers placed the tumbler on a side table and accepted the beer and ice-pack gratefully. He took a long swallow of beer, put the glass beside the tumbler, and sank down into the sofa, lifting the ice to his swollen nose as he did so. He winced, then let out a sigh.

    'Feel good?' Poggs enquired.

    'Feels cold,' Rivers replied.

    Poggs brought his own whisky over to the armchair and sat, catching his breath before taking a drink.

    'Bliss,' he said as he settled back. His tone, and his expression, became serious. 'How bad was the tremor? We had reports on TV last night, but today's reception is so bad with both television and radio we're not at all up to date.'

    Rivers, his legs stretched out before him, shoulders sunk deep into the sofa's cushions, raised the ice-pack momentarily to look at the other man.

    'You've had bad reception too?'

    'Almost nil. Lots of static in the air.'

    'We had the same problem in London. Later, too, on the way here.'

    'Ah.' It was a non-statement from Poggs. He took another swallow of Macallan, his attention fixed on the carpet at his feet. 'Do you suppose this means something? Heavy atmospherics, and all that?'

    'It's unusual.' Rivers let his head fall back and returned the damp towel to his face. 'Disturbances to the airwaves over an earthquake area aren't rare, but this is different. I doubt that the two are related.'

    'Another enigma, then,' mused Poggs. 'Something else our planet has decided to mystify us with.'

    'It'll clear soon enough. I don't think it's anything dramatic at all.'

    'Perhaps you're right.' Poggs let out a huff of impatience. 'We're in danger of blowing every slight deviation from the norm totally out of proportion. God knows, nature is constantly breaking its own rules.'

    'Not quite. It breaks the rules we try to impose on it to create some kind of order for ourselves.'

    'You're absolutely right, of course. Still, we have to work to some kind of pattern, otherwise everything is chaos.'

    'Weather men work with the chaos theory: we've come to understand weather changes with our computer models, but we'll never be able to predict it with absolute certainty; there are just too many variables.' Rivers changed the subject, not in the mood for a lengthy debate on the nonlinear equations of turbulence and how they complicated, if not completely frustrated, the laws of physics. 'What was the problem with the twins?' he asked. 'Mack said they'd been upset by a dream.'

    'What? Oh no, not a dream as such. That's just the way we refer to it. They were down by the pond feeding the ducks this morning when it seems they were lost to one of their trances. It's become a regular thing with those two little imps, too regular for my liking.'

    'What happened?'

    'Bibby was with them, thank goodness, although I don't believe anything terrible would have happened to them physically. But she was there to comfort them when they became upset.'

    There were voices on the stairs.

    'If that's my wife on her way down she can tell you for herself.' Poggs drained his glass and slipped it out of sight by the side of his chair. He grinned at Rivers. 'She doesn't like me drinking this early in the day unless it's a weekend. Says it's bad for my liver. Lot of nonsense, of course. Nothing finer to keep the blood flowing if taken in moderation. Ah, my two wood nymphs. Come along in.'

    The two children were in the doorway staring at Rivers. Diane and Poggs' wife arrived behind them and ushered them forward. Curiously the twins walked straight across the room to Rivers.

    Once again he removed the ice-pack and returned their gaze, uncomfortable under their scrutiny. Unconsciously he rubbed at the ache in his knee.

    'Hello.' His greeting sounded awkward even to him.

    'Does your leg still hurt?' Josh asked.

    'Uh, yes. I had an accident once…'

    'There?' Josh placed a finger on his knee.

    'Kinda… All around there, actually. It's okay though, nothing to…'

    Josh clasped both hands around Rivers' leg, his small fingers reaching behind the knee. He slowly pulled his hands away, as though wiping them against the denim. He repeated the motion. 'Your leg was hurting last time you were here, wasn't it?' the boy said. 'I saw you limping. The pain's really bad, isn't it?'

    Taken aback, Rivers replied, 'Sometimes it is.'

    'Let me do it, Josh.' Eva moved in eagerly.

    Rivers looked around at the adults as if for help. Bibby smiled back at him while Diane merely offered him an ashtray for his cigarette. When he took it her look asked him to be patient with the children.

    Eva was giggling as she touched his knee. Astonishingly, as the twins repeatedly brushed their hands against his trouser leg, taking it in turns, the throbbing began to ease, the pain began to subside. Rivers opened his mouth to speak, but no words came to mind.

    'They're good with headaches too,' Bibby said proudly. 'They've given me the treatment more than once. They can't take away all the pain, not yet, but who knows what they'll be capable of when they're older? Now, how's it feeling?'

    He was almost afraid to speak in case it broke the charm of what they were doing. He dogged his cigarette in the ashtray. 'It feels… it feels… What is this?'

    'Psychic healing, I guess you'd call it,' said Diane. 'Sorry, Jim, Bibby persuaded me to let the children attempt it when we were upstairs and I mentioned you weren't feeling too good. We didn't mean to surprise you so.'

    'I still don't understand-how could they stop the pain?' There was only a dull ache in his leg by now, an ache where before tiny demons had tormented him with red-hot needles.

    'They're not. They're merely opening your energy channels so that your own body can help itself. There's no medical way of explaining this, Jim, you just have to go along with what's happening. Don't question it.'

    'My apologies for springing this on you too,' said Poggs' wife as she sat on the arm of her husband's chair. 'I wanted you to experience a part of Josh and Eva's uniqueness for yourself, so I asked them to come down and show you. As a matter of fact, they were very anxious to help you; for some reason you're important to them.'

    The children stepped away, pleased with themselves, and Rivers gingerly touched his leg. 'That's unbelievable,' he said, and flexed his knee, expecting the pain to come shooting back. When it didn't, he shook his head in wonder. 'Unbelievable,' he said again.

    Diane sat next to him, her pleasure at his incredulity evidenced by her smile. 'It must be hard to take for someone so practical. You haven't been drugged or hypnotized, yet your pain has been eased by two kids who don't even know the nature of your injury. How does someone like you cope with that?'

    His attention was still on his leg. 'With difficulty, I suppose. And with gratitude. How long will it last?'

    Diane shrugged. 'No way of knowing. Maybe for an hour or so, maybe for the rest of the day. Like medicine, more than one dose is needed if the cure is to be effective.'

    'These two could make a fortune.'

    Hugo Poggs and his wife laughed. 'There are plenty of other healers in the world without putting pressure on Josh and Eva,' said Bibby. 'Besides, their talent hasn't been developed yet.' Rivers gave his attention to the children. 'Thank you for stopping the pain,' he said. 'Do you know how you do it?'

    Both shyly shook their heads.

    'Do you feel anything when you do it?'

    Josh spoke up. 'It sort of tingles a bit.'

    Eva nodded agreement. 'We pull the hurting out. It comes very easily if we think hard enough.'

    'Doesn't it hurt you?'

    They giggled at one another. 'Of course not,' replied Josh scornfully. 'We just throw it away.' Eva giggled again.

    'Your mother said you wanted to see me. Is that right?'

    They nodded as one.

    'Will you tell me why?'

    'Oh yes,' said the boy.

    Rivers waited, but was forced to prompt them when they offered nothing more. 'So tell me why.'

    This time it was Eva who spoke up. 'You've got to find the Dream Man,' she said.

    

    

    The children stood on chairs before the large map of the world on Hugo Poggs' study wall, while Poggs himself, with Diane, Bibby and Rivers crowded behind them.

    It had been Diane's idea to bring them in there and confront them with the map, for persistent but patient questioning of the twins had failed to reveal the identity of their Dream Man, or where he came from. He was just there in the dreams, they insisted, and he was kind, not like the other person. They refused point blank to talk about this 'other person'. The kind one was old, they said, although they had never actually seen him. They had only felt him being there, but they knew he was very old and wise, and that he wanted to help them. Rivers had asked why they felt he, of all people, could find this very old and wise man. Because you're part of the light, had come the baffling reply.

    Rivers had let the others continue with the questions after that, for the children's simple statement had left him full of unease. What the hell did that mean? How could he be part of the Light?

    He had witnessed it, but it had nothing to do with him. Noticing his discomfort, Poggs had poured him another drink.

    Eventually Josh and Eva had grown tired of the interrogation and that was when Diane had suggested the game with the map. It would be similar to a game they had played a few times before, she explained to them, when something had gone missing around the house and she or Bibby drew a rough room sketch of Hazelrod so that they could point out a particular place where the lost article could be found. Seven times out of ten when they went to the room Josh and Eva homed in on the missing item, she assured Rivers.

    He had followed them through, taking the whisky with him and lighting another cigarette on the way. This was ridiculous, he reminded himself as if afraid of falling under the spell of Hazelrod's residents. They were good people, sincere people, of that he had no doubt; but they had to be misguided, surely? What they were doing-what they were dragging him into-had nothing to do with reality. Yet the children had stopped the pain in his leg. At least temporarily. And they had been aware of the world disasters as they happened. According to Diane. It was with mixed feelings that he gazed at the map with the others.

    'Look at all the countries,' Diane was instructing the twins, 'and clear your minds of everything else.'

    Josh and Eva stared at the map, looking from left to right, up and down.

    'Ignore the coloured pins,' she told them. 'They're just where bad things have happened in the world.' Her voice became low and soothing. 'Now, take your time and think of the Dream Man, not what he looks like, but the kind of feeling you get when you know he's there. Can you do that?'

    They indicated that they could.

    'Okay. When you're ready, point at the map where you think the Dream Man is.'

    They hesitated only a second or two; Josh pointed at Africa and Eva pointed at India. Then Josh pointed at Brazil and Eva pointed at Russia. Then they pointed at Bulgaria together.

    Rivers watched Diane's concerned expression turn into one of triumph.

    Then Josh pointed to Sri Lanka and Eva pointed to Japan. Josh changed position and Eva's finger went to China. They laughed when their separate fingers sought out Mexico and Portugal.

    Diane looked round at Rivers in dismay.

    'He's all over the world, Mama,' Eva exclaimed delightedly as she singled out Pakistan and Josh indicated Cuba.

    

    

    Young Salim Prabhu reached for another battery from the pile before him and brought the short-handled hammer smashing down on the casing. His body and shorts were covered in carbon dust; even his face was smeared with the red powder. His back ached and his head throbbed with the incessant hammering-not just his hammering, but that of the other seven boys who shared the work in this cheerless lock-up set between a rickshaw mechanic's shop and a butcher's. He had arrived even earlier than his workmates-just before dawn-so that he could take up a position close to the open doors where he could at least enjoy the daylight and breathe air that was slightly less clogged with the dust of their labours. Those boys at the back had to work by the light cast by a single clay lamp and their eyes were white and ghostly in the cavernous gloom. For every battery broken for its carbon they received one paisa, and each of them hoped to have earned at least nine rupees by the end of the day or, as Salim knew it, by cow-dust hour (he lived outside the city where the farmers herded their cattle home from grazing at dusk). Not that any dust would be raised in this third month of the monsoon season, he reflected as he hammered, for the rains had arrived early and the pandas, the Hindu priests, predicted they would leave late. As they had the year before, and the year before that.