The women nod. The girls from the convent turn and walk away as one. The other women begin to follow them.
Half an hour later, when Rachel Latif is being examined in the hospital, the street outside the police station is entirely empty.
In the end, there’s no need for them to stay in the convent. It’s nice, it overlooks the sea and it’s got a certain homely feel to it, but by the time Roxy’s been there nine months Allie’s organization could have bought a hundred buildings like it and, anyway, they need somewhere bigger. There are six hundred women affiliated with the convent in this little town alone, and satellites springing up across the country, around the world. The more the authorities say she’s illegitimate, the more the old Church says she’s sent by the Devil, the more women are drawn to Mother Eve. If Allie had any doubt before this that she has been sent by God with a message for Her people, the things that have happened here have left her in no doubt. She is here to look after the women. God has appointed her to that role, and it is not for Allie to deny it.
It’s spring come round again when they’re talking about new buildings.
Roxy says, ‘You’ll save a room for me, won’t you, wherever you end up?’
Allie says, ‘Don’t go. Why would you go? Why back to England? What’s there for you?’
Roxy says, ‘My dad reckons it’s all blown over. No one cares what we do to each other, really, as long as we don’t get any honest citizens involved.’ She grins.
‘But really,’ Allie flattens her lips, ‘really, why would you go home? This is your home. Stay here. Please. Stay with us.’
Roxy squeezes Allie’s hand. ‘Mate,’ she says, ‘I miss my family. I miss my dad. And, like, Marmite. I miss all that stuff. I’m not going away for ever. We’ll see each other again.’
Allie breathes in through her nose. There is a murmuring at the back of her mind that has been quiet and far away for months now.
She shakes her head. She says, ‘You can’t trust them, though.’
Roxy laughs. ‘What, men? All men? Can’t trust any of them?’
Allie says, ‘Be careful. Find women you trust to work with you.’
Roxy says, ‘Yeah, we’ve talked about this, babe.’
‘You have to take it all,’ says Allie. ‘You can. You’ve got it. Don’t let Ricky take it, don’t let Darrell take it. It’s yours.’
Roxy says, ‘You know, I think you’re right. But I can’t take it all sitting here, can I?’ She swallows. ‘I’ve booked a ticket. I leave a week on Saturday. There’s stuff I wanted to talk about with you before that. Plans. Can we talk about plans? Without you going on about how I should just stay?’
‘We can.’
Allie says in her heart: I don’t want her to go. Can we stop that happening?
The voice says to Allie: Remember, sweetheart, the only way you’re safe is if you own the place.
Allie says: Can I own the whole world?
The voice says, very quietly, just as it used to speak many years ago: Oh, honey. Oh, baby girl, you can’t get there from here.
Roxy says, ‘The thing is, I’ve got an idea.’
Allie says, ‘So do I.’
And they look at each other and smile.
Approximately fifteen hundred years old, a device for training in the use of the electrostatic power. The handle at the base is iron and is connected, within the wooden frame, to a metal peg, marked A on the diagram. We conjecture that a piece of paper or dry leaf could be affixed to the spike, marked B on the diagram, with the aim being for the operator to set it aflame. This would require a degree of control, presumably the skill being practised. The size suggests that the device was meant for thirteen-to fifteen-year-old girls. Discovered in Thailand.
Archival documents relating to the electrostatic power, its origin, dispersal, and the possibility of a cure
1. Description of the short Second World War propaganda film Protection Against Gas. The film itself has been lost.
The film is two minutes and fifty-two seconds long. At the start, a brass band strikes up. The percussion joins in with the brass and the tune is jaunty as the title comes up on the screen. The title is: ‘Protection Against Gas’. The card is hand-inked, wavering slightly as the camera focuses on it, before a sharp cut to a group of men in white coats standing in front of a huge vat of liquid. They wave and smile at the camera.
‘At the Ministry of War laboratories,’ says the clipped male voiceover, ‘the back-room boys work double-shifts on their latest brain-wave.’
The men dip a ladle into the liquid and, using a pipette, drop some of it on to testing-papers. They smile. They add a single droplet to the water bottle of a white rat in a cage with a large, black, inked X on its back. The brass band ups the tempo as the rat drinks the water.
‘Staying one step ahead of the enemy is the only way to keep the population safe. This rat has been given a dose of the new nerve-strengthener developed to combat gas attack.’
Cut-away to another rat in a cage. No X on the back.
‘This rat has not.’
A canister of white gas is opened in the small room containing the two cages, and the scientists, wearing breathing apparatus, retreat behind a glass wall. The untreated rat succumbs quickly, waving its forepaws in the air distressingly before it begins to twitch. We do not follow its final throes. The rat with the X on its back continues to suck at the bottle, nibble at food pellets, and even run in its exercise wheel as the smoke drifts past the cameras.
‘As you can see,’ says the brisk voiceover, ‘it works.’
One of the scientists takes off his gas mask and walks, decisively, into the smoke-filled room. He waves from inside, and takes deep lungfuls.
‘And it’s safe for humans.’
The scene changes to a waterworks, where a pipe is being hooked up from a small tanker-lorry into an outlet valve in the floor.
‘They call it Guardian Angel. The miracle cure that has kept allied forces safe from enemy attack by gas is now being given to the general population.’
Two balding middle-aged men, one with a toothbrush moustache and wearing a dark suit, shake hands as a meter shows the liquid from the lorry slowly going down.
‘Just a tiny amount in the drinking water will be enough to protect an entire town. This single tank is sufficient to treat the drinking water for 500,000 people. Coventry, Hull and Cardiff will be the first to receive the water treatment. Working at this pace, the entire country will be covered within three months.’
A mother on the street of a northern town lifts her baby out of the pram, rests it on a cloth on her shoulder and looks up, concerned, to the clear sky.
‘So Mother can feel secure that her baby need no longer fear nerve-gas attack. Rest easy, Mother and child.’
The music reaches a crescendo. The screen darkens. The reel ends.
2. Notes distributed to journalists to accompany the BBC programme The Source of Power.