Hearing the profanity from a man he had only ever previously seen on the television being prim and proper somehow brought the situation into focus for Noble.
And if the government is this rattled, then I guess we are in trouble.
“No one knows where it came from,” the Minister finished. “And there’s just too much of the damned stuff for us to handle. Every time we burn it out in one place it turns up in another. It’s almost as if it’s anticipating our moves.”
That was Suzie’s cue and she took it.
“You might not be far wrong in that assessment. And I can’t tell you, yet, how to kill it. But I can tell you where it came from. You made it… or rather, the MOD did.”
The Minister went white.
“That’s the kind of statement that brings down governments,” he said softly. “I do hope you have evidence.”
Noble listened as she laid it all out for him—the story of wartime experiments gone wrong, conjecture about a breakage somewhere in a shipwreck and their trials and tribulations on the research vessel and Weymouth. The Minister took it all in—a man well used to absorbing information like a sponge.
“The stupid bastard built it to be intelligent?” he whispered.
Suzie nodded.
“But I think the intelligence was there from the start, in the source material from the Pabodie Expedition. The Inquisition thought so too.”
She shuffled her papers, then started reading. Noble realised it was some of the Spanish journal, a part he hadn’t yet read.
We will make port on the morrow. It matters little, for the dream is with us now in every waking hour and no distance from the beast will make any difference. It has passed on to us so completely that we will never be free from it. Nor would we wish anything other. Indeed, I am not the only one who has found himself standing over the lead casket just to be closer to the blessed, drifting peace it offers.
There is no pain in the dream, no fear, no hunger, just the sweet forever of the dead god beneath.
I have talked to the crew. We will do our duty and take our captive to the castle. But we will no longer work for the church after this task is done. I intend to set sail again as soon as night falls. There is a spot in the South Seas where a dead god lies dreaming.
We will find him and join him there.
I wish now that I had read Santoro’s journal a mere hour sooner, for then I might have been able to prevent the Santa Angelo slipping out of port under cover of night and I might have been able to question the crew as to the nature of the malady that so sore afflicted them.
For I too have been dreaming.
But it is of no matter. The beast is now in my thrall and its secrets shall be mine before the day is out. They will have to be, for I fear I have been lax in my inquisitions. Even as I have been burning my will into the beast’s flesh, so it has been leaving its mark on me. This morning, at my ablutions, I discovered a fleck of blackness betwixt thumb and finger that no amount of scraping will shift. It has now covered most of my left hand, forcing me to wear a glove lest, it is discovered. For if the Inquisitor General were to find out I am tainted, my questioning would be brought to an abrupt end and that, I cannot allow.
The beast will reveal its secrets.
I will begin again as soon as the irons are hot.
It is our command that on this day of our Lord, the twenty and eighth of August, that such parts of Father Juan Fernando that can be safely transported ,shall be taken to the place of the auto-de-fe and burned at the stake alongside the blasphemy which has afflicted him with its heresy.
It is further commanded that if the Santa Angelo is found in Spanish waters, it should be set aflame and sunk with all hands and that no man is to touch any part of it under pain of himself being subjected to ordeal by fire.
Any persons found spreading the sedition of the dreaming god shall be subjected to the full force of the Inquisition.
Let this be the end of the matter.
The Lord wills it.
The Minister had looked increasingly confused during Suzie’s reading.
“Is this some kind of joke? If it is, it is in very poor taste.”
“No joke,” Suzie said. “I double checked. The journal is authentic and exists in the Vatican’s library. I believe what we’re dealing with is some kind of intelligent protoplasm, one with a rudimentary degree of telepathy. And it may be contagious.”
The Minister sat back and ran his hands through his hair. He stared into the distance for so long that Noble thought there was to be no reply to Suzie’s readings. When an answer did come, it was a political rather than a practical one.
“Contagious, mind-reading slime? That’ll go down well with the PM,” the Minister said, and Noble saw a look in his eyes he recognised.
We’ve blown it.
Suzie hadn’t seen it and kept trying to press her case.
“If I can get back to my lab and just study it further, I may be able to come up with a preventative measure…”
The Minister stood and put out a hand for Suzie to shake.
“That sounds like a good course of action,” he said, but his eyes betrayed him.
He just wants rid of us as fast as possible.
He had one parting shot for them.
“I don’t believe you should tell anyone else your theory of MOD collusion in this thing’s creation,” he said, and suddenly Noble saw the shark behind the smile. “Official Secrets and all that, you know? We wouldn’t like to have to lock you up.”
His eyes said differently. Noble half-dragged Suzie away before the man changed his mind. They were escorted out of the building by the armed troops again and left in a cool, early morning in an empty Horse Guard Parade. There was no sign of any chopper.
“We need to get back to the lab,” Suzie said. “We need to give them something to work with.”
Noble took her hand.
“They’re not looking to us for help. We blew it Suzie. We just got the brush off.”
She shook her head.
“No. He said…”
“He’s a politician, Suzie. Lying is second nature to him. He just wanted rid of us. Look around. Do you see a chopper waiting to rush us back?”
He saw the anger rise up inside her and had to hold her back as she turned away towards the office buildings.
“The stupid bastard. Sticking your head in the sand is only going to get you your arse bitten.”
“I know,” Noble said. “But you have to admit that theory you started to push is pretty far out there.”
She laughed bitterly.
“Killer seaweed is choking the English Channel. I think we’ve already entered the Twilight Zone.”
She looked around again.
“So how are we expected to get back?”
“I doubt anyone cares. It’ll have to be the train, I think.”
“But that’ll take hours… hours we don’t have.”
“Then we’d best get moving.”
Still hand in hand, he walked her out towards Trafalgar Square.
July 23rd - Tower Bridge
John Spalding pulled his cab over at the South Side of the bridge and let the three Japanese out. He left the meter running. There was already nearly two hundred pounds clocked up there and he expected at least two hundred more before this jaunt was over. He sat and made plans for the evening—his wife deserved a night out. A few beers, a nice Italian meal, and maybe he’d even get lucky later. All thanks to the Japanese tourists’ unquenchable thirst for pictures of London landmarks.