21st July
‘That’s checkmate,’ Gamma announced, looking up at me.
‘Well done,’ I replied. ‘You’re a better chess player than I am.’
‘I wish I knew what else I was,’ he responded sadly.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘I remember being a vicar in Waterford,’ Gamma replied, ‘but I’ve only disjointed recollections of events since. Of course, Etienne has told me about other things that have happened to me in recent months – obviously I’ve experienced extreme trauma.’
‘In that case, you know most of the story,’ I ventured.
‘I know most of the story,’ Gamma replied, ‘and I know about Alpha and Beta, but it all sounds as if it’s a storyline from some brilliant novel – possibly the greatest novel ever written. I don’t feel, however, as if it’s part of my own life.’
‘I don’t really understand these things,’ I admitted to Gamma, ‘but Etienne seems to think that the person you were, back in Waterford, expressed just a fraction of the real potential you had within you. He thinks that your beliefs made it impossible for you to grow as a person – they made it impossible for you to even admit to yourself that your personality had depths you had never even begun to explore.’
‘I guess that means that my fundamentalist Christian beliefs were to blame,’ he said.
We sat in silence for a long time. Gamma appeared to be deep in thought.
He finally spoke: ‘Do you believe in God, Swan? You never went to church in Waterford.’
‘If by God you mean Ultimate Reality,’ I replied, ‘then God must exist. The really interesting question is: “What is God like?”’
‘That’s revealed in the Bible, Swan,’ Gamma replied in the habitual manner that you might expect from a person of faith.
This was usually the point at which I would politely end such a discussion. I had always found it not only pointless to expand a broader view to people of faith, but in addition, it had always seemed rather impolite even to try.
Gamma, however, was genuinely seeking meaning in his experiences, so I continued: ‘Some people talk about the Bible as the “Word of God”,’ I said. ‘It has always appeared to me that the Bible contains such a diverse collection of texts that there isn’t a thread running through it that could be attributed to one source. I prefer to think of it as the honest response of very many people to their personal experiences of God.’
‘So what’s the God like that you believe in?’ asked Gamma.
I thought that this question vindicated my decision to expand on these matters. A person of faith, in my experience, would not usually be listening to what I was saying – nor have any real interest in what I thought – his or her sole aim would be to align me towards his or her particular set of personal delusions.
‘I don’t know,’ I finally replied to Gamma’s question. ‘I sometimes think I get a fleeting glimpse of something greater than ourselves. I’m leaving God to be God, however – letting him or her, or whatever, show me that part of Ultimate Reality that I can comprehend or that part that I need to see.
‘I haven’t followed the example of your Church, and many other religions, by inventing my own, more or less pathological, version of God.’
At that moment my mobile showed a new message. ‘I’ve got to go,’ I said. ‘Joan’s called a meeting. Frankly, I don’t know why you can’t join us.’
‘Etienne thinks I’m better kept here for my own safety,’ Gamma replied. ‘He may be right. I mean, if I don’t know who I am, even I don’t know what I might do.’
~*~*~*~*~
I was the last to arrive in Joan’s cabin. Joan, Etienne, Vladimir, Colin, Angela and Helen were already seated around the table.
I sat down beside Helen.
‘There have been some developments,’ Joan began. ‘Hemmingway has vanished. He left as soon as his role was redefined to not include the generation of presidential passwords.’
‘Is there still no indication of the identity of the WAR operative in the Pentagon?’ asked Vladimir.
‘No,’ Joan replied.
‘As Hemmingway no longer has access to the presidential passwords, doesn’t that make him, and the Pentagon operative, less of a risk?’ asked Helen.
‘Far from it,’ Joan replied. ‘They’ve often been one jump ahead of us, and it would be unlikely that they did not have a contingency plan in the event of being discovered. It’s possible that Hemmingway has access to a control centre from which he and the other operative can bypass all official channels in disrupting, or even controlling, American weapons.’
‘What can be done to find them?’ asked Helen.
‘Those in the States are working on it but have drawn a blank so far. There was CCTV footage from the area around the house where Rodriguez died, but noting useful was found on that.’
‘Can’t the Americans alter their systems to ensure the right people maintain control?’ asked Helen.
‘Not really,’ Joan explained. ‘As we have no idea what access WAR have to data, or what their capabilities are in terms of controlling systems, they might easily be able to identify and circumvent any changes. No, they have to be found.’
‘How can the other A51H people in America help?’ asked Angela.
‘We don’t know the identity of the A51H operative in the Pentagon,’ Joan replied, ‘but as that person has already sent the PAL to Groom – from where it was passed to Angela and then to Vladimir – we don’t need him or her.
‘Now that we’re working directly with Elliot Parker, he’s no need to send the real presidential password via Groom on the thirteenth of September. That means that Hawker and White no longer have a role.’
‘Elliot could liaise directly with me about the password,’ said Vladimir.
‘That’s true,’ Joan responded, ‘but I think it would be wise if Angela went to Washington to be alongside Elliot. His cooperation with Theta and the president, at the moment, is more of a political alliance born of necessity. He trusts ARK, however, due to shared religious beliefs.’ Joan paused. ‘Is that OK with you, Angela?’
‘I think that makes a lot of sense,’ Angela replied. ‘I can then contact you on the thirteenth of September with the correct presidential password. You can then relay it to the location from which Vladimir is launching the missiles.’
‘In addition,’ said Joan to Angela, ‘I’d like you to take something else to Washington.’
‘What’s that?’ Angela asked.
‘Some packets of a much diluted form of the powder that you, Vladimir and Swan discovered in the Key,’ Joan replied.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Angela.
‘I’ve reviewed all we know about that powder,’ Joan explained. ‘The crew who decontaminated the area in which you opened the Key nearly all had experiences of what Vladimir called “prescient vision” – they accurately dreamed of the future on the following night. As we suspected, they kept it to themselves. Each thought that he or she was alone in having such a dream and didn’t want to risk being considered as mentally unstable by revealing it.’
‘Are we absolutely sure about all this?’ queried Etienne.
‘Yes,’ Joan replied emphatically. ‘To quote our favourite UFO hunter, Rod Dowsing, when he was faced with something that his previous worldview couldn’t accommodate: “I think we have to be scientific about this”: eight people, including Vladimir and Swan, have been exposed to low dosages of this material. Vladimir and Swan have given us cast iron, verified testimonies that they correctly dreamed of future events. Nearly all of the others, without leading questions, eventually admitted to the same thing.
‘As none of the others told anyone about it before the event – in the way Vladimir and Swan did – then it would be possible to argue that their memories included some level of confabulation. However, their stories support the sort of experiences reported by Swan and Vladimir.
‘Anyway,’ Joan concluded, ‘unless Helen, Swan, Vladimir and Etienne are all lying about this, any one of their accounts is conclusive: “Magic Dust”, as the lab boys have called it, causes those who take it to see the future in a dream.’
We all sat in silence, trying to take this in.
I thought back to my recent conversation with Gamma Leadbetter, and I experienced a glimpse of what it felt like to have long cherished assumptions destroyed – assumptions on which a personal view of reality had been based. I finally grasped the question with which Christian had been grappling: Was a challenge to my worldview too terrifying to contemplate or was it a wonderful window onto a whole new reality?
For a moment I felt an unease.
I then glanced at Helen.
We had been so close for so long that I sometimes felt I could read her thoughts – without, of course, any supernatural or psychic intervention. From the expression on her face and her body language I could tell that prescient vision was the most wonderful and exciting thing that she had heard about all day. There was no anxiety. It was just another fantastic door that had opened on her journey to somewhere – a journey that she was continuing with her characteristic enthusiasm and courage.
‘Further information,’ Joan’s words returned me to the moment, ‘has come from our lab boys. They’ve only had a month to work on the powder, but they’ve done some tests on monkey and it seems to enhance, one hundred fold, the neural responses in a part of the brain that psychics have long claimed to be associated with paranormal abilities. It seems to be short acting though.’ Joan continued, looking at Vladimir and me. ‘Have either of you had any further prescient dreams?’
I shook my head, as did Vladimir.
‘Tests seem to indicate that just one prescient dream occurs, if any occur at all, and that it occurs in the first period of sleep subsequent to taking the drug.’
‘Presumably they couldn’t test the monkeys for prescient vision,’ said Vladimir.
‘They’ve devised tests that might indicate that sort of result,’ replied Joan, ‘but there’s been insufficient time to follow them through.’
Angela focussed most quickly on the tasks in hand. ‘Why do you want me to take Magic Dust to America?’ she asked.
‘We need all the help we can get. It’s possible that access to Magic Dust might give those in the States an edge when hunting Hemmingway and the other WAR operative.’
‘I guess it’s worth a try,’ Angela replied.
‘A couple of final points,’ said Joan. ‘We have intelligence that there’s a German living in Paris who may know something about the Ark, the Key and the powder. It would help if we knew more about those. We’ve an analysis of the powder’s chemistry, but there’s not been time to do long term tests. We need to know as much as we can about its properties. It might also be enlightening to know where it came from, what it was made for and how it ended up in the Ethiopian Ark.
‘I’d like Helen and Swan to go to Paris to get some answers.’
Joan looked at Vladimir. ‘Your team are leaving this morning, aren’t they?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ Vladimir replied. ‘I needed their help to set up the launch base on the carrier, but their work is now done.’
‘I’d like to fly out with them,’ added Colin. ‘I’m not needed here, and I want to get back to my family in London. I want to spend as much time with them as I can in the next few weeks … just in case.’