9th May
Helen walked along the road away from Adrian Holland’s former vicarage and towards the sea. Beside her walked Christian Leadbetter.
‘Does anything around here look familiar?’ she asked Leadbetter.
‘No,’ he replied. ‘This is really odd,’ he continued. ‘I have no idea at all about who I am or what I’m doing here. It’s jolly kind of you to try to help me remember.’
After Leadbetter’s sudden awakening, two days previously, he had very rapidly made a full physical recovery. His memory, however, had been oddly affected: although he could speak, read and recognise the world around him, he had no recall of who he was nor of anything that had happened to him prior to being shot.
Tests showed his short term memory to be unaffected, however, and Etienne had concluded that the memory loss was the result of psychological trauma and not brain damage.
Etienne had suggested that Leadbetter be escorted on a walk around the area in which he must have been prior to being struck by Holland’s bullet. Etienne hoped that something might trigger a memory.
Helen had been thought to be the least threatening person to accompany Leadbetter on such a walk, so Swan and Etienne had remained at the vicarage.
‘You say my name is Christian Leadbetter and I used to be a local vicar in Waterford, Hampshire,’ said Leadbetter. ‘What else can you tell me about my life?’
‘I could tell you about some of the things that have happened to you,’ Helen replied, ‘but Etienne, the psychologist you spoke to, thought it was better, for now, to just look around the area that you were in just before you were taken to hospital. He said that you need an emotional experience to clear the emotional block to your memory and that simply recounting events in your life would be unlikely to achieve that.’
Leadbetter looked around him as they strolled down the road. ‘I’m terribly sorry, Helen,’ he said, ‘nothing is coming back to mind.’
Helen reflected on what a kind and courteous person Christian seemed to be. She recalled such behaviour from pre-meteorite days.
All the things Leadbetter had since done could perhaps be attributed to experiences with which his mind was not fully able to cope.
She wasn’t sure why he had shot Adrian Holland, but she felt sure that there had been the best of intentions behind it.
Helen and Leadbetter reached the beach and walked a few metres down the pebble incline towards the sea. The area was deserted – with the exception of two young men who were walking along the seafront in their direction.
‘I think we should walk back to the vicarage,’ said Helen. ‘Don’t worry that you’ve not remembered. You did your best, and this is the first attempt to jog your memory.’
They both turned and began to walk back up the pebbles towards the road.
Suddenly, the two men who had walking towards them were standing in front of them. Both were in their early twenties.
One took a kitchen knife from his pocket and waved it at Helen and Leadbetter. ‘Give us all yer money,’ he said aggressively.
During the first second after that demand, Leadbetter raised his arms into the air in a gesture of surrender – as if having being told to ‘stick ‘em up’ in an old western movie.
During the next second after that demand, a computer, located underwater about five hundred metres offshore, registered the movement of Leadbetter’s arms on the beach and powered up the engine of the starcruiser.
During the third second after that demand, Helen noted her own reaction to the situation: just as when she had been escaping from the church at Meadowcote, she was not frightened. She felt calm, but excited. In Helen’s mind, a quarter of that third second was bizarrely devoted to thoughts of Mr. Ford, the careers teacher at her secondary school. He had advised her to take a secretarial course. No consideration had been given to the possibility of her being a racing driver or a fighter pilot or an astronaut or any of the exciting things that she had sometimes dreamed of becoming. She was a girl, so a secretarial course was the thing. Fuck him, she thought.
During the fourth second after the demand, Helen assessed the man with the knife and considered the best approach to disarming him.
During the fifth and sixth seconds after the demand, there was a deafening sound of cascading and crashing water coming from the direction of the sea – like the breaking of a great wave.
During the seventh and eighth seconds after the demand, a look of horror filled the eyes of the would-be muggers as they stared at the sky above the heads of Helen and Leadbetter.
During the ninth second after the demand, Helen looked behind her and saw a black, winged craft hovering twenty metres above the pebbles and blocking her view of sun.
A blue, laser-like beam suddenly emanated from each side of the craft and passed over the heads of Helen and Leadbetter.
Helen quickly turned her head to follow the direction of the beams. One had struck each of their assailants.
During the tenth second after the demand, both young men vaporised. No trace of either remained on the beach.
‘Well, Christian,’ said Helen, catching her breath, ‘you sure know how to impress a girl. Until now, I thought that Peter Dobson’s Porsche, back in Waterford, was cool.’
Helen turned to locate Leadbetter and saw that he was running towards the craft, which now hovered about three metres above the ground. A hatch had opened in the bottom of the ship, and steps led from the beach into it.
‘Stop, Christian!’ Helen called urgently. ‘Don’t get into it!’
It was clear, however, that Leadbetter was running towards the machine with every intention of boarding.
‘Shit,’ said Helen as she decided on the only course of action that she felt she could follow – they could not lose Leadbetter again.
She ran towards the craft and reached the bottom of the steps just as Leadbetter had disappeared inside the craft at the top. She followed him.
As she stepped inside the craft, the stairs folded to form a door which sealed the hatch. Helen felt the acceleration of the craft rising into the air.
Leadbetter moved to sit in one of the four seats, and Helen quickly moved to sit beside him.
‘Sorry,’ said Leadbetter, ‘I don’t know why I did that.’ He looked around him. ‘How do you fly this thing?’ he asked.
Helen glanced quizzically at him. ‘I was rather hoping you would know,’ she replied.
Helen felt the craft continue to rise as if she was in a lift. Thirty seconds later, that sensation ceased.
‘What’s it doing?’ asked Helen.
‘We are ascending to the edge of space,’ replied a pleasant, American, female voice. ‘We will be undetectable to all surveillance at that location.’
‘What happens then?’ asked Helen.
‘That depends on the commands of our pilot.’
‘Do you mean Christian?’ said Helen, pointing to Leadbetter.
‘Our pilot did not give his name during the calibration flight, but yes, that’s him.’
‘So this machine accepts verbal commands from me,’ Leadbetter surmised.
‘Can you ask her to accept commands from me too?’ Helen turned to Leadbetter.
‘Of course, Helen,’ Leadbetter politely replied, looking around the craft. ‘Whatever I was doing before I lost my memory was pretty weird, wasn’t it?’
‘You could say that,’ Helen answered.
‘Please accept Helen’s commands,’ he said to the air.
‘I will now accept commands from both of you,’ the computer responded.’ Who is the senior pilot?’
‘I am,’ said Helen decisively, before Leadbetter had a chance to discuss matters. ‘Is there something we can call you?’ Helen asked the computer.
Helen was unfamiliar with such a sophisticated computer interface. There were voice commands for the satnav in her car, but the conversational range of that device was very limited. All it appeared to take an interest in were route directions and traffic conditions. Nevertheless, having retained the calm, female voice that had been set on the machine when she had bought it, Helen had given her satnav a name. She had called it Amy.
‘Christian did not designate a name for me during the calibration flight, Commander,’ said the computer. ‘Would you like to choose a name now?’
‘He didn’t give you his name, and he didn’t ask yours,’ Helen summarised, glancing at Leadbetter and smiling. ‘Typical bloody man. Can I call you Amy?’
‘My name is set to Amy,’ Amy replied.
Helen thought back to when she and Leadbetter were on the beach. ‘Why did you kill those men?’ she asked.
‘In the absence of other instructions, lethal force is the default mode when lives of our personnel are at risk. The men to which you refer each had knives – one in the open and one in a pocket. They were not innocent civilians.’
Helen reflected that knives were as deadly as whatever weapon had been used against the muggers. She glanced around the cabin. ‘Why aren’t there any windows, Amy?’ she asked.
‘Would you like an exterior view, Commander?’ Amy replied.
‘That would be nice,’ said Helen.
Suddenly, as on Leadbetter’s previous flight, it was as if the walls of the craft had ceased to exist. It was daytime, but they were so close to the edge of the atmosphere that Helen could see a clear view of the stars above. Below, ahead and behind was the blue globe of the Earth with the shimmering, iridescent glow of its atmosphere.
‘Whoa,’ said Helen, feeling a slight touch of vertigo. ‘That’s pretty impressive.’ She looked between her feet to the outline of England below her, appearing like a spectacular relief map. ‘This is definitely cooler than Peter Dobson’s Porsche.’
As she looked at the spectacle, however, she reflected that it might be rather disorientating and distracting while moving around the cabin if she appeared to be standing unsupported in space. ‘Can you do a solid floor and some walls with windows?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ replied Amy. ‘It’s all done by projection, so it can look as you like.’
The original metallic appearance of the craft’s interior reappeared, but with circular portholes in the sides.
‘Oh, I don’t like those windows,’ said Helen, rising from her seat and walking to one side the cabin. ‘Can you do a long, oblong window with curved corners from, say, here to here.’ She indicated the dimensions with her finger.
Immediately the window appeared.
‘Perhaps we’ll have one like that on the other side too,’ she said.
In less than a second, the additional window was also in place.
‘Would you like curtains?’ Amy enquired.
Helen wondered for a moment if the subtleties of irony, even sarcasm, had been programed into the computer. Amy repeated, however, that any decor could be reproduced and that this was a deliberate design feature – important to reduce stress for pilots.
‘I can do holographic pot plants too, if you like, Commander,’ said Amy.
‘That’s good,’ Helen replied. ‘Let’s have an Areca Palm in that corner and … er … a Butterfly Orchid over there – I like those.’
Helen concluded that ten minutes could be spared from thinking about what to do next in order to agree colours and patterns for wallpaper, carpets and curtains – and to add a few tasteful items of furniture and some paintings.
‘On reflection, I don’t like the Mona Lisa on that wall,’ concluded Helen. That hologram faded away.
Throughout Helen and Amy’s session of interior design, Leadbetter had remained silent, as if deep in thought. ‘Holland,’ he suddenly said with feeling.
‘Do you wish to fly to Holland?’ Amy asked.
‘No,’ Leadbetter answered, ‘I’m starting to remember some things. … Rycroft,’ he said with a similar decisiveness in his voice, as his mind provided him with a brief glance of his time with Rycroft at Ash Springs.
‘Do you wish to fly to Rycroft, Alberta?’ Amy enquired.
Helen spoke to Amy: ‘Just ignore anything we say, Amy, until I ask you personally to do something specific.’
‘OK, Commander,’ Amy replied.
Helen returned to sit beside Leadbetter in what now bore the appearance of a comfortable, old, leather upholstered armchair. ‘What can you remember about your conversation with Rycroft?’ she asked.
‘He went to Area 51 to meet with Colonel John Hawker, the base commander, and Major Dwight White who is in charge of base security,’ Leadbetter recalled. ‘They are part of an ultra-secret organization within the American government and military called A51H. It stands for “Area 51 and a half”. A51H are providing data to ARK that will allow them to take control of American nuclear missiles if ARK has the correct facilities to use it.’
‘What about Arkangel?’ asked Helen. ‘Your main objective in kidnapping Rycroft was to discover more about Arkangel.’
‘I’d forgotten about the kidnap,’ said Leadbetter. ‘Remembering that conversation with Rycroft is like recalling a dream. It’s like an island of recognition surrounded by a foggy sea. There are a lot of other things I can’t remember. Waterford is still a blank to me.’
‘Sorry, Christian, I realise this is difficult for you. Can you recall anything that Rycroft said about Arkangel?’
Leadbetter further explored his small island of recollection from Ash Springs. ‘Does the name Rikard mean anything to you?’ he asked.
‘Is Rikard, Arkangel?’ asked Helen.
‘I think so,’ said Leadbetter.
‘I remember now,’ said Leadbetter. ‘Rycroft had been the only Master of ARK who had personally met Rikard at the time I spoke to him.’ A look of revelation crossed Leadbetter’s face. ‘That’s why I had to find Holland so urgently,’ he said.
‘Why?’ asked Helen.
‘Rikard was going to visit Holland on the fifth of May for some reason – the first time she had met him. That was an ideal opportunity for me to discover the full identity of Arkangel. Apparently she had planned to do the same thing with Forrester on the day before, but I was still trapped in Area 51 on that day.’
‘Did you just say she?’
‘Yes, I recall that bit now. Arkangel is a woman.’
Helen was taken aback. Not only was this revelation a shock, but Arkangel could easily have been somewhere in the vicinity when she and Swan had met with Holland. She thought back to the events of that morning, five days previously. ‘Why did you shoot Holland?’ she asked Leadbetter.
Leadbetter thought for a moment as another memory came back into focus. ‘Oh shit, I remember now. I didn’t shoot him. There was a figure with a rifle in the bushes. I was watching him when Holland and a couple, who I didn’t recognise, came down the drive.
‘I was trying to warn Holland, but I had a gun in my hand. Holland must have thought that I was trying to kill him for some reason, and he fired his gun at me. I pulled the trigger of my gun as I was hit, but I just fired into the air.’
Helen wondered for a moment why Christian had not recognised her and Swan. Then she recalled their disguises as Mr. and Mrs. Cobb.
She thought back to the story that Mr. and Mrs. Cobb had told to Holland. Even if he hadn’t recognised Leadbetter, he had been primed for an assassination attempt. To shoot at a man with a gun was not a surprising response.
‘Why did someone want to kill Holland?’ asked Helen.
‘I don’t know,’ said Leadbetter, putting his hand to his brow, ‘or rather, I don’t know whether I know or not.’
‘If Holland was killed because of his link with ARK, then Summerland and Forrester may be targets,’ Helen reasoned. ‘Summerland is out of the country, so Forrester may be next, and if Arkangel met him on the fourth of May, he’s our only known concrete link with Arkangel.’
Helen thought for a few moments. ‘Amy’ Helen spoke to the computer. ‘Take us to the home of Bishop Anthony Forrester, near Leicester.’