The Tower A Novel (Sanctus)

70





Dawn rose fast in the desert, rapidly warming the land and the buildings of the compound.

The soldiers were the first to appear, rising with the sun, their bodies conditioned to early starts by military life. They

stretched and scratched as they emerged from the main building, their eyes screwed almost shut against the brightening sky then

abruptly stopped as they saw the swathed figures hunkered down by the water and filling their canteens.

Williamson instinctively held his hand up to halt his men and a crackle of adrenalin passed through each of them as they saw what

had prompted it. They were nomadic goat herders, their faces whitened by desert dust and still partly wrapped in keffiyeh.

Williamson glanced over to the guard tower where their weapons were stashed and noticed the gate next to it, rolled all the way

back, a team of goats drinking from one of the streams in the desert beyond it.

‘Who the hell are these guys?’ he muttered.

‘They arrived about an hour ago.’ Liv and Tariq appeared behind him, dragging a crate out of the transport hanger. ‘They are

welcome here,’ Liv said, ‘just as you are.’

‘How do we know they can be trusted?’

‘I don’t, not fully, any more than I knew you could be trusted. What I do know is they are here because they felt the same pull

as you, which means others will undoubtedly be coming here too. We can either choose to meet them with closed gates, suspicion and

loaded guns, or welcome them, as we did you.’

Williamson continued to stare at the newcomers. ‘The way I remember it, the gate was closed when we arrived. Seems pretty

sensible to me.’

Liv shot Tariq a look. ‘That was not my idea. But letting you in was.’

Williamson tipped his head. ‘Much obliged.’

Others had started to drift out of the compound buildings, roused by the heat and raised voices. Liv had intended to talk to

everyone individually, quietly sowing the seeds of her plan rather than risking a public debate that she might well end up losing.

Now she had no choice.

‘Tell me, what would you have done if we hadn’t let you in? What if we had kept the gate shut, turned the big guns in the guard

tower on you and told you to leave, would you have just turned around and gone away, after travelling so far to find this place?’

Williamson said nothing. ‘Or would you have camped out in the desert, sticking close to one of the rivers so you had plenty of

water, maybe far enough to be out of range of the cannons but still close enough to watch us and assess our strengths and

weaknesses? Perhaps you would have decided eventually that you could take us. You might even have managed it, stormed this

fortress in the middle of the night and taken control. Then what? What would you have done with us – killed us, kept us prisoner,

banished us to the desert? And what about all the other people who are on their way here now, answering the same call you did, the

same one they did?’ She pointed to the goat herders who had stopped drinking and were now listening too. ‘Would you try and keep

them out, keep the gate locked and defend this scrap of desert with your last bullet, or until a stronger force arrived and took

it from you so the whole thing could start all over again? Would you do that – for a bunch of buildings and a pool of water?’

Williamson continued to stare at her, though she sensed the challenge in his eyes had slipped a little. She shook her head. ‘This

has been the pattern throughout human history: men possessing things, others seeking to take those things away by force. And what

good has any of it done? Few things can truly be possessed.’ She pointed to one of the holding pits where the water had broken

the banks and flowed freely through the links of the perimeter fence. ‘And some things cannot be contained. And whatever this

place is, whatever it represents to the people drawn here, it is not something to be owned or fought over. It is simply something

to be shared. A place where people can come together and not be divided or driven apart. A place of safety. A kind of home.’

She moved over to the crate and levered the lid off with her foot to reveal its contents. Williamson and his men gathered round.

The nomads by the waterline moved closer too. It was full of tools: crowbars, wire-cutters, shovels still coated in dust from the

graves they had recently dug. ‘We should take down the fences,’ Liv said. ‘They have no place here.’

Silence surged back in on the heels of her words but nobody moved. Liv surveyed the line of faces. They were looking at the tools,

the fence, each other – but not at her. She was done talking and didn’t know what else she could say.

‘Dust cloud!’

The shout snagged everyone’s attention. All heads turned to the horizon. A new column of dust was rising up in the east, backlit

by the sun now clawing its way up into the white sky. The timing could not have been worse. Liv felt sure that no one would want

to start dismantling the perimeter fence with more strangers on the way. They would wait and see who it was first, and then the

moment would be lost and she would have to try and persuade them all over again.

A movement to her right caught her eye. Williamson had stepped forward and reached down to pick up the lid of the crate. He fitted

it back on top, sealing the tools inside in a wordless, symbolic full stop on the whole argument. Then he did a curious thing, he

turned towards the nomads and waved them over. They hesitated at first then slowly responded, walking over to join the main group.

Corporal Williamson smiled a greeting then turned to his fellow soldiers. ‘Why don’t y’all go find what other tools they got in

the transport bay, maybe see if they got a winch back there, or some kind of a towline we can hook up to the truck.’ He turned to

the nomads, smiled again and ambled to one end of the crate. ‘Williamson.’ He patted his chest with the flat of his hand then

pointed back at the man. ‘What’s your name? Asmuk?’

‘Yasin,’ the man replied.

Williamson squatted down and grabbed the side handle of the crate. ‘Wanna help me with this, Yasin?’

Tariq translated the request and the goat herder’s face exploded into a smile. He squatted down, grabbed the other handle and

heaved the crate up so enthusiastically Williamson was nearly knocked over. ‘Whoah there, tiger,’ he said, lifting his end and

steadying himself until they were carrying the burden equally. ‘Why don’t we start at the gate,’ he said, leading the way.

‘See if we can’t get that sucker down before the new guys arrive.’





71





The unaccustomed sound of plastic on plastic buzzed through the Abbot’s private chambers as the phone shivered and shimmied

across the keyboard of the open laptop, drawing all eyes to it. Thomas walked across from the huge fireplace, picked it up and

opened the message.

‘Well?’ Athanasius appeared too, crowding over the phone to try and see what message it had brought. Gabriel lay on the bed,

still strapped down. Thomas angled the phone so they could both see the screen as a photograph of the dark stone appeared on it.

Another downloaded, this time showing the reverse side.

‘The Starmap,’ Athanasius whispered, a smile curling the edges of his mouth. The smile faltered. ‘It’s too small,’ he said,

moving his head back and forth to try and focus on it.

‘Give me a second,’ Thomas said, ‘I thought this might be a problem.’

He opened an application on the laptop then selected a different stripped wire from the doctored USB cable and touched it to a

contact point at the base of the phone. After a few seconds the mouse arrow on the laptop screen turned into a spinning wheel and

a command box opened asking if he wanted to IMPORT ALL IMAGES?

‘Could you hit Enter please,’ Thomas said, looking up at Athanasius. ‘My hands are somewhat occupied.’

Athanasius did as he was asked and a progress bar tracked the slow transfer of data from the phone to the laptop. No one breathed

or moved, least of all Thomas who was literally holding it all together. The progress bar vanished and two new icons appeared on

the desktop. Thomas let go of the phone, clicked them open and two images of the Starmap appeared on the screen. He enlarged them

and arranged them so both were visible next to each other.

‘That’s Malan,’ Athanasius said, pointing at the image with the block of text forming the inverted shape of the Tau. He

translated as he read:

The Key unlocks the Sacrament

The Sacrament becomes the Key

And all the Earth shalt tremble

The Key must follow the Starmap Home

There to quench the fire of the dragon within the full phase of a moon

Lest the Earth shalt splinter and a blight shalt prosper

marking the end of all days

‘That’s the second prophecy, the one that led us out into the desert – where the prophecy was fulfilled. Only the last line

doesn’t make sense in the light of what actually happened.’

‘What did happen?’ Athanasius asked, leaning forward and studying the screen.

A jumble of images flashed through Gabriel’s mind. Liv falling to the ground, the flame pouring from the drill tower and turning

to steam as the oil turned to water. ‘We did return the Sacrament within the full phase of the moon. And the fire was quenched.

So I can’t understand why the blight still prospers. We need to know what else it says on the stone.’

Athanasius studied the second image, tracing the constellations of Draco, Taurus, and the Plough.

‘There’s more than one language here,’ he said, ‘and they’re not Malan. This little block of text next to Taurus is some kind

of proto-cuneiform. Perhaps it relates directly to this extra star drawn in the constellation of Taurus, just there, between the

bull’s horns. It says something like “The Sacrament reaches home, a new star is created and a new king or ruler reigns or rules

over the end of days”.’

He scanned the rest of the symbols and ran his hand over his head. ‘There are pictograms or possibly ideograms here that could be

from different sources. They represent concepts and ideas rather than individual words and must be interpreted rather than read.

But to understand them properly one would need to know the context and time in which they were written. There is a bird here for

example that could be an eagle. In Egyptian hieroglyphs the eagle represents the letter “A”, but in Aztec it means the sun. So

you see how easy it would be to misinterpret this message.’

‘We can safely assume the tablet originated in ancient Mesopotamia,’ Gabriel suggested. ‘That’s where we found Eden and that’

s where all the other references to the Sacrament point.’

‘Indeed, but without knowing exactly what era and in what region it was written I would only be guessing at its meaning. However

there is one person in the Citadel who has spent his life studying pictograms like these. I feel sure he would not only be able to

tell us exactly where and when this was made just by looking at it, he would also be able to translate it.’ He glanced at Father

Thomas and they exchanged a troubled look. ‘Unfortunately he is not a man who is likely to want to help us. He’s the chief

Librarian – Father Malachi.’





72





Dragging the branches away from the track proved much harder than Shepherd had anticipated. The drop in temperature had frozen

them to the ground and he had to tug hard to get them free before he could haul them away. On top of this his shoes were made for

city streets, not trudging through thick snow and they gave him little grip or insulation as he slipped and stumbled through the

snow, until he was sweating despite the cold.

It took him nearly twenty minutes to create a gap in the tangle of branches wide enough for the Durango to pass through, stopping

only once when he heard a knocking sound coming from somewhere above, like someone hammering nails into wood. After a pause it

came again, three distant bangs that echoed in the woods before the silence flooded back. By the time he had finished, night had

bled into the forest and it had mercifully stopped snowing. The moon had risen too, shining bright behind thinning clouds and

casting a silver light over the forest. Shepherd could no longer feel his feet or the ends of his fingers and could almost hear

the tinkle of ice forming in the air he breathed out then falling to the ground.

He made it back to the car and whacked the heater on full, stamping his feet and holding his hands in front of the vent, not

caring about the pain as his veins opened up and the blood flowed through his flesh again. The read-out on the dash said the

temperature was now minus eight and he could well believe it. He had intended to defrost himself a little then hike up to the

cabin but the job of clearing the branches had proved how ill-equipped he was to spend much time out in the cold. He also

remembered that Douglas’s cabin had been a fair trek up the track, much too far to attempt in his city shoes. He could leave it

until tomorrow, maybe get some better boots from somewhere in Cherokee, but who knew what the weather was going to do in the night

and whether he’d even be able to get here again. It would also mean going out and dragging the branches back into position so no

one would know he had been there. There was a third option but the ghost of Franklin rose up in his head to repeat the last words

he’d said to him:

Just check it out – he’d said – don’t make a move on your own.

But he was here now and had seen the footprints in the snow. What was the harm in a student looking up his old professor?

He waited until he had some feeling back in his feet then slipped the car back in gear and slowly reversed back up the road. The

tyres crunched through a crust of ice as he eased the car off the road and onto the track. Dry branches reached out and raked the

side of the vehicle like witches’ fingers as he squeezed through the gap that wasn’t quite as wide as he’d hoped.

Whoever was up in the cabin would be able to hear his engine rumbling its way up the track but there was little he could do about

it. To compromise, he cut the lights, plunging himself into a bluish darkness that was still bright enough to drive by and would

preserve his night vision, just in case he needed it when he got there.

The tyres found better grip on the broken and frozen ground than they had on the flat, icy road and he bounced and lurched his way

up the track and between the trees. After a while he could see a light, high above him, warm and orange like a lantern winking

through gaps in the thick woods. As he got higher the trees started to thin out a little until he could see the outline of the log

cabin, lights on inside and smoke leaking from the chimney and drifting away in the cold, clear night. He let the car crunch to a

stop just short of the end of the track where there was still a little tree cover, then killed the engine. He slipped out of the

driver’s seat and closed the door quietly, keeping the car between him and the cabin while he listened to the night and studied

the cabin.

It had changed a lot since he’d last been here. There was a woodshed that hadn’t been there before and the basic hunter’s hide

on the rocky ledge above the cabin had been extensively modified so it now looked like a second home. A wide pathway had been cut

through the trees leading up to it and there was now a proper roof on top with solar panels fixed either side of a large open

hatch, suggesting it was still being used as an observatory. The rope they’d used to scramble up the side of the rock had now

been replaced by a solid set of wooden stairs.

He scanned the periphery of trees, trying to work out the best way to approach the cabin. He reached into his jacket. This was the

third time he’d held a gun in his hand in less than twenty-four hours. He stepped round the back of the car, his pulse pounding

in his ears and sweat prickling beneath his shirt despite the cold. He made his way carefully through the trees, working his way

round to the side of the cabin, trying not to make any sound as he headed for the woodshed. It would provide cover between him and

the cabin when he stepped out of the trees. There was no reason to believe Douglas would be hostile, but he had blown up several

hundred million dollars’ worth of government facility earlier that day, so there was always a chance.

He kept his eyes on the cabin and the observatory, looking and listening for any movement inside. The storm shutters were open on

the cabin and the curtains pulled back so he caught glimpses inside, the warm orange glow making him feel even colder. His feet

were numb inside the wet thin leather of his shoes. As he picked his way through the tree trunks and low branches, the crunch of

snow far too loud in the still of the night, a parked car came into view behind the woodshed, a newer model of the same sort of

jeep Douglas had driven all those years ago. Footprints in the snow spread out from it, heading to the woodshed and the cabin.

More footsteps went back into the forest. They looked pretty fresh. Whoever was inside had been out here fairly recently, maybe

just to get fuel for the fire, or maybe for another reason. He glanced back into the dark of the woods, wondering he should maybe

check things out in that direction first, make sure it was clear and cover his back, seeing as there was no one else out here to

cover it for him.

Carrie watched him through the night-sight, her eye pressed against the rubber cup to stop the green phosphorescent light leaking

out and giving away her position. Even on the lowest magnification he filled her vision, his outline solid and dark against the

bright glow coming from the buildings behind him. She could see his face, right in the centre of the cross-hairs, his eyes

scanning the dark, looking straight at her from time to time but always moving on. If he chose to follow the tracks into the woods

he would find them easily enough.

Her finger tightened a little on the trigger, ready to squeeze if he took so much as one step forward. A knife would be quieter

but he was a trained federal agent and it wasn’t worth the risk letting him get close enough to use his weapon.

The cross-hairs remained steady on the centre of his head.

Just one step.

Shepherd scanned the woods, listening out through the muffled silence to the crack of ice and the sound of his own breathing. He

felt sure he was being watched, but then he always did when he stared into woods at night. There was bound to be all sorts of

wildlife checking him out, ready to bolt or take flight the moment he got too close. He shivered at the thought of all the

potential eyes upon him. He needed to get out of the cold and into the warm before he got frostbite and his toes started falling

off.

Franklin would tell him to head back to the car right now and warm up on his way back to Cherokee – come back again in the

morning with some backup. But Franklin wasn’t here. Shepherd turned back towards the cabin. It looked warm in there. He took a

deep breath to steady his shivers, then stepped out of the trees towards it.

The sound changed the moment he moved forward, opening out as the baffling effect of the trees was left behind, making him feel

very exposed. He made it to the jeep and felt the side panel by the engine with his free hand. Stone cold. He moved round,

stopping a foot short of the woodshed wall, his gun held in front of him, always pointing where he was looking. He had to make a

choice now, head to the cabin and risk being spotted from the observatory, or check out the observatory first. He studied the

tracks in the snow, but there were too many to give him any clues. He made a choice and headed for the porch of the cabin,

figuring that walking up the wooden steps to the observatory before he’d checked the cabin would be too dangerous.

The deck creaked as he stepped onto it and made his way over to a window. He wondered, standing here now, if he should knock and

give whoever was inside the chance to reveal themselves before he burst in with a gun in his hand. But silence and surprise were

just about the only things he had on his side and he wasn’t about to give them up lightly.

He eased his head round the edge of the window frame and took in the room. The stove was lit and loaded with logs, the fire

throwing enough shifting orange light into the room to show him that no one was there. He moved over to the door and tried the

handle, it creaked, not much but loud enough in the tense silence, then opened.

The trapped warmth of the room was like stepping into a bath. Blood rushed to his face and feeling began to return painfully to

his fingers and feet. He moved quickly across the room, keeping low and away from the windows. The bedroom was behind a partition

at one end of the cabin, a thin wooden wall defining a space just big enough for a bed.

There was no one here.

He moved over to the back door and looked up at the observatory, the glow from the open roof hatch making it stand out against the

night. He should have known Douglas would be stargazing on a clear night like this. He twisted the handle and slowly opened the

door then stepped out into the frozen night again.

He moved across the snow between the cabin and the wooden steps leading up to the observatory, feeling both excited and nervous

about the imminent reunion with his former mentor. He suddenly felt vaguely ridiculous and ashamed that he had his gun in his

hand. Professor Douglas wouldn’t know that his old student was an FBI agent now. His best approach would surely be as a friend

and colleague. He reached the foot of the steps and slid the gun back into its holster.

‘Professor Douglas?’ he called up, his voice a little high and much too loud in the muted silence. ‘It’s Joseph Shepherd.

Remember me? You brought me here once when I was a grad student.’ His words echoed back from the surrounding trees then faded

away. He listened for a response, a movement.

Nothing.

‘I’m going to come up now, OK?’ He took a step, making it a heavy one so it could be heard. ‘I just want to talk.’ He

continued upwards, stamping the snow from his shoes as he went, his eyes fixed on the closed door at the top of the stairway. He

could hear something now, low music from inside the shack and Shepherd smiled as he recognized it. It was from the Planet Suite by

Holst. The professor had played it that long ago summer, switching tracks depending on which planet they were observing. The track

playing now was the final piece: ‘Neptune, the mystic’ – slow and mysterious, the tinkling harp and shivering violins a perfect

soundtrack to the frigid night.

He reached the top of the stairs and stepped onto solid stone that was slick with ice. A breeze was blowing the snow from it and

singing in the steel cables that anchored the corners of the cabin to the rock. It was on odd place to build a cabin, high and

exposed like this, but the rock provided the perfect, solid platform for stargazing. Even ground vibration was hugely magnified by

a telescope so with the windbreak of the cabin and the high elevation and solid base of the rock, Douglas had created the perfect

backyard observatory.

Shepherd moved carefully across the stone, the music getting louder with each step and building towards the climax, the eerie

voices mixing with the instruments like a spectral choir. It was loud enough to explain why the Professor might not have heard him

approach.

‘Professor.’ He rapped a knuckle on the door. ‘It’s Joseph Shepherd, remember me?’

The ethereal voices were his only response, chilling him along with the cold then melting away as the track ended, leaving him

alone with the whisper of the wind and his pounding heart. He leaned in close to the door, listening through it, willing it to

open or a familiar voice to invite him in from the other side. He jumped as the music started again, loud and urgent, the ominous

stabbing strings of ‘Mars’ the Bringer of War suggesting that whatever the music was playing on was set to repeat.

Shepherd reached out, twisted the handle and opened the door.

A large telescope dominated the space inside. It was sat on a heavy-duty tripod with electric motors hooked to a laptop on a table

beside it, the screen displaying the piece of sky it was currently pointing at. A cell phone was plugged into it as well as some

small speakers from which the Planet Suite was booming out. He took a step inside and the door started swinging shut behind him.

Then he saw the figure from the corner of his eye.

He spun round. Douglas was in the shadows, his arms stretching out, his head hanging forward. Shepherd gasped and stumbled

backwards, reaching for his gun as his eyes adjusted and the shadows took form. Professor Douglas didn’t move. He couldn’t. His

hands were pinned to the wooden walls, blood running thick from spikes in his hands and a deep gash in his neck, mouth bound, eyes

open and staring at the floor. Shepherd hit the back wall with a sound that recalled the one he had heard from the road – like

someone hammering nails into wood. Then he saw the writing scrawled in blood on the wall.

HERETIC





73





Shepherd fumbled for his phone, gun pointing at Douglas, ‘Mars’ the Bringer of War still booming from the speakers. Eyes wide,

his adrenaline-sharpened senses sucked everything in: the curtains of blood from the hands and throat – so much blood – the

slash and spatter of the writing on the wall, the slump of Douglas’s body, the way the weight of it pulled grotesquely at the

flesh where the spikes had been driven in … steam rising up from the dark pool on the stone floor.

His numbed fingers closed around the phone in his pocket and he raised it to his face, not wanting to risk dropping his sight or

the gun. His eyes flicked to the screen, found Franklin’s cell phone number and dialled. He held the phone to his ear, his

breathing rapid, eyes scoping the rest of the cabin from over the top of his gun.

Nothing was disturbed, there had been no struggle. The kill must have been fast and deliberate, efficient even.

He stared at the body, almost disbelieving the violence it spoke of.

The phone connected.

‘It’s Shepherd.’

‘You find him?’

‘He’s dead. Throat cut. Nailed to the wall.’

‘Jesus. What’s your situation?’

‘Scared shitless.’

‘Good. You in cover?’

‘Yes. I think it only just happened.’

‘Why?’

‘The blood. There’s steam coming off it. I saw tracks in the snow. Thought they were his. Tracks leading into the forest. There

was a car too. Parked on the road.’

‘Did you get the plate?’

‘No. I didn’t think it was anything. Just someone broken down.’

‘What about make and model?’

‘It was a station wagon, nothing fancy, an old Volvo, I think. It had a baby seat in the back.’

‘Colour?’

‘Yellow, white. Hard to tell in the light.’

‘OK, that’s good. Don’t do anything. Stay in cover, do not try and be a hero. Hunker down, sit tight and I’ll send the local

cops to you. Keep your phone on so they can follow the locator, OK?’

It clicked in his ear and Franklin was gone before Shepherd could reply.

He felt alone and scared, the loud and ominous strains of Mars not helping at all. He was shivering from cold and adrenalin, the

open hatch in the roof letting the cold of the night pour in on top of him.

He stared at the body, forcing himself to breathe more steadily and see it through the eyes of a professional assessing a crime

scene.

There was something very deliberate about it all. The spikes in the hands were large, not the sort of thing you would find lying

around, the killer must have brought them with him.

Shepherd tried to picture him coming here through the snow, nails and a hammer jingling in a bag, knowing he was going to do this.

He was already building a profile. Had to be a man because of the strength required. Douglas wasn’t a big guy but he was big

enough. And it looked like his throat had been cut last, while he was already pinned to the wall, the arterial spray and blood

flow all centred on his current position. How much strength would you need to do that – nail a struggling guy to a wall? Too much

for one person. Two people then, maybe more.

Shepherd squatted low and moved closer, heading for the middle of the floor where the telescope stood. Anyone out there watching

would have seen his head pass by the window as he recoiled from his initial sight of Douglas. The thin wooden walls of the shack

wouldn’t stop a bullet if one came so he kept low and out of sight.

The music was frightening and oppressive now and he glanced at the laptop. He wanted to turn it off so he could listen for

exterior sounds but knew if it suddenly cut out then anyone out there would know exactly where he was. He should wait for the

track to end at least, then it wouldn’t be so obvious.

He searched the laptop screen, looking for the application controlling the music. Most of it was filled with the video feed from

the telescope. It was pointing towards the eastern sky, the computer-controlled motors adjusting it imperceptibly, keeping it

fixed on a single bright star. Shepherd looked up and followed the line of the telescope. The constellation of Taurus was

perfectly framed in the open hatch showing that the bright star was Aldebaran, right eye of the charging bull.

Thoughts tumbled through Shepherd’s head. The telescope was pointing at exactly the same part of the sky Hubble had been probing

before it was turned round and put out of action. He stared at the rectangle of night, half expecting to see something new there,

growing larger and brighter as it hurtled towards Earth. All he saw was a wisp of cloud and the usual stars twinkling in the

black.

He looked back at the screen, Aldebaran burning bright in the centre of the video feed. Below it was a small iTunes controller,

the scrub bar showing that the track currently playing had almost finished. Shepherd used the knuckle of his little finger on the

trackpad to drag the arrow over to the Play button so as not to leave fingerprints. The final stab of horns and strings bounced

off the thin walls then faded away. He clicked the pause button and let out a long breath that sounded loud in the sudden silence.

He quit the application to make sure the music wouldn’t come back on and studied the screen. There was an email inbox with some

recent messages, the video feed from the telescope, and another window filled with a sequence of changing numbers he assumed must

be something to do with the telescope, though it didn’t look like any control program he’d seen before. Normally they displayed

a sequence of co-ordinates, which changed by tiny degrees as the program tracked a designated object. This looked more like a

measurement, though one that was getting smaller all the time. The phone buzzed in his hand, and he stabbed the button to silence

it.

‘Yes?’

‘The local sheriff is on his way to you now, name of Brodie. He’s bringing everyone with a gun he can lay his hands on. They’re

also going to keep their eyes open for that vehicle. You got anything else?’

‘They’re looking for more than one person.’

‘OK good, you know this how?’

‘By the way he was killed. They nailed him to the wall and wrote “Heretic” next to him in his own blood, so I’m guessing the

religious angle just got a little more weight to it.’

‘Jesus. Listen, Shepherd, I’m sorry about this. You shouldn’t be there on your own. It was … I should have –’

‘It’s OK, really. There’s something else. You remember the countdown Merriweather told us about at Goddard. The one he saw on

Dr Kinderman’s computer just before the virus took Hubble out? It’s here too. It’s hooked up to a telescope pointing to the

same piece of sky Hubble was exploring. Only the huge number he talked about isn’t so huge any more. Whatever it is, whatever’s

coming – I don't think we don’t have long left.’