How do they connect? How?
His new companion was smiling at some private joke. ‘You do planets. What exactly?’ Petrie asked.
‘At the moment? I’m part of ESA’s Darwin team.’
‘Darwin?’
‘A space-based interferometer. The European Space Agency are due to launch it next year. They’re big mirrors with a long baseline which should be able to make out gross features like continents on Earth-sized planets round the nearest stars.’
‘That’s still not quite exact.’
‘They want me to predict biological signatures for Darwin to search for.’ They were into a village and running a gauntlet of neat, small houses, each one managing to be different from the others.
‘Like what?’
‘Like spectrum lines belonging to ozone or oxygen. Best seen in the ultraviolet. Oxygen is so reactive that if we see any at all on a planet there has to be biology at work producing it. Another…’
Suddenly, heavy metal blasted their ears from eight speakers. Startled, Freya shook her head and shrugged, and by mutual consent they attempted no further conversation. The driver switched off the big car’s halogen beams.
Presently the road, now covered with compacted snow, began to climb steeply through a forest. The driver switched the heavy rock off and concentrated on a series of hairpin bends. Petrie found that his ears were ringing. He was now shaking slightly, whether due to nervous anticipation, or the driving, or the aftermath of the ACDC explosion, he couldn’t say. On the next bend, the driver turned to the couple and said, ‘Malé Karpaty,’ in a cigarette-hoarse voice.
The Little Carpathians. Dracula country. Petrie had a brief, movie-driven fantasy about isolated villages, Frankenstein monsters and grim, isolated castles.
The road levelled, there was a little lodge house and cables stretching up into the mist, and then the mountain pass was plunging steeply and Petrie’s ears were popping with the swift change in altitude. At the foot of the pass the driver turned left on to a narrow lane.
Petrie sensed that they were reaching journey’s end, realised that his fists were clenched with tension. By contrast, the young woman at his side seemed relaxed.
Past a tiny ochre church with a thin green spire. Something massive, dimly glimpsed through the mist and then lost behind trees. Another climb, and then a long, gently curving road through open parkland. A final turn, and through the mist there emerged a castle with conical turrets and low battlements. To Petrie’s distraught imagination it looked like something out of a Bela Lugosi movie. The Dracula fantasies began to harden up.
Petrie and Freya stood with their baggage while the driver did a swift U-turn and took his car back down the hill. They watched it until it had disappeared through the trees, and then turned their attention to the castle.
Petrie knew nothing about castles or history but this one looked like some of the Austrian ones he had glimpsed in the distance on his drive from Vienna. He had a vague memory about the Hapsburg Dynasty and assumed that this had once been Austrian territory and that the castle dated from the eighteenth century. Two warriors, resting their hands on shields, sat on either side of a dark archway. To the right a circular tower was topped by a conical roof looking like a witch’s black hat. Narrow, vertical windows were spaced around the tower giving, Petrie supposed, a clear field of fire in the event of rioting peasantry.
They walked through the archway, which was about twenty feet long, and emerged into an acre of snow-covered garden lightly sprinkled with shrubs and conifer trees. To the left was a parapet looking over open, wooded countryside. To the right, and facing them, were tall grey walls surmounted by steeply sloping roofs, showing red where the snow hadn’t covered them. Between the right and facing walls was a massive rectangular tower, jutting slightly out from the surrounding buildings and half as high again as them. Widely spaced pillars supported a steep roof atop the tower. The roof itself was covered with green diamond-shaped tiles and had tall thin chimneys and a lightning conductor. This tower, Petrie assumed, was intended as a look-out, and a small face was looking down between the pillars. It vanished quickly when Petrie looked up.
Someone had shovelled snow off the pathway and they walked along it, conscious of being overlooked by arched windows which, he noted, were double-glazed. Petrie inferred from this that the interior probably contained modern plumbing and central heating. Just past the tower, and hidden by it from the path, was a massive wooden door, covered with an iron grid and studs, and guarded by nothing more threatening than shrubs in huge stone pots. The door was in three parts and the centre one was an inch ajar. Petrie pushed this door open for Freya and followed her inside. By this simple act, he left behind his old world and entered a new one, more bizarre than anything his imagination could have devised.
His first impression was that of spaciousness. There was a high vaulted ceiling and a gleaming marble floor. A half-circle of velvet-covered sofa faced them. Potted palms and plants occupied odd corners. Broad corridors led off to left and right. There was nobody to be seen.
‘What now?’ Freya wondered.
They took to the right at random, and walked into another spacious area with another high vaulted ceiling, this one supported by tall pillars and with gold-coloured chandeliers suspended from it. Here their footsteps were softened by carpets and long strips of rug scattered around the marble floor. At the far end of this enormous space was a curved stone stairway, and trotting briskly down this stairway was a small, moon-faced man with large round spectacles and a grin.
Charlie Gibson. Last seen, half-drunk and upside down in Uppsala Botanic Gardens, trying to scale the tall gates after closing time with his fly caught on a spike and half a dozen equally merry colleagues offering ribald advice about his future sex life.
Gibson’s handshake was firm and warm. ‘Very glad to see you both. Very glad indeed. First let me take you to your rooms, and then I’ll tell you what exactly is going on.’
Gibson led the way up the stairway, continuing past the first floor to an upper floor, ending up on a long broad corridor with a curved ceiling. Along the left of this corridor were recesses with potted plants and glass cabinets displaying stuffed animals and fossils.
He stopped at the fifth door on the right. ‘This is yours, Tom. Freya, yours is the next one on. There are three of us, five now you’re here, and we have the run of the castle for a week.’
The room was large, well-furnished with a double bed and a bright, substantial adjoining bathroom. Petrie dumped his holdall and jacket on the bed and crossed over to the window. Below him was a terrace with metal tables and chairs, all swept clear of snow. The terrace was bordered by a low parapet and more potted shrubs. The fog was lifting and he could see a village a couple of miles away. Then he went back out to the corridor where Gibson was waiting impatiently. Freya had replaced her boots with light loafers and was wearing gypsy earrings.
Gibson took them back down to the entrance area and they spread themselves around the semi-circular settee. He clasped his hands together and forced a brief smile. ‘First things first. I apologise for the clandestine stuff.’
‘I rather enjoyed it,’ Freya said.
Petrie said, ‘Especially the warning.’
Gibson looked blank. ‘The warning?’
Petrie said, ‘It told me to watch my back. Didn’t you send it?’
Gibson stood up, and paced up and down, looking at the marble floor. Finally he turned to them, a worried look on his face. ‘Christ.’
‘I suggest that you start at the beginning,’ Petrie said gently.