Omega (16 page)

'Mr Speaker,' the Prime Minister said, 'I must apologize to the honourable member, and to the House, for what must appear to be a quite unprecedented breach of courtesy. But I am sure the whole House, including the honourable and eloquent gentleman I was obliged to interrupt - with your permission, sir - will wish to be informed immediately of the news item which has just been handed to me. . . . The whole of North America, and the northern part of South America, has in the past half-hour suffered widespread earth tremors of uneven distribution and varying intensity. Information is still incomplete, of course, but the Associated Press describe the disaster as being similar to, and at least as destructive as, that which recently affected Europe and parts of Asia.'

As the Premier sat down again, Quentin White made no attempt to continue his speech; he knew he had no need.

Under cover of the general commotion, the Premier whispered to the Chancellor of the Exchequer: 'Bertie, we're home and dry.'

An hour later, the Commons passed the Emergency Powers Bill by 652 votes to eleven.

8

The American media being less compact and amenable to control than the British, the cables that flowed into AP's Beehive office in the first hour or two after the Western Hemisphere tremors were uninhibited. Eugene and Tonia's job was purely newsgathering for the New York office; the AP tape service to British customers was still put out by the Fleet Street bureau, but all that bureau's inflow and outflow was duplicated by teleprinters in the Beehive office, to keep it fully in the picture. Fortunately, some humane colleague in New York had found time to check with the London staff's next-of-kin, and to cable reassurance as replies came in; so within half an hour of the news breaking, Eugene and Tonia received a service message MAC-ALLISTER AND LYND FAMILIES OKAY HOMES UNDAMAGED, which at least made the trauma of national disaster slightly less personal. Only slightly; homes might be undamaged but
home
had been shaken to its foundations; families might be safe, but friends? -
hundreds of them, from coast to coast? . . . Even Gene, normally a model of lofty composure, was pale and trembling, and Tonia doubted if she looked any better. Having
nothing to do but read made it worse for them; what British news there was seemed, for the moment, confined to Surface.

The pattern of the incoming reports increased their frustration. The uninhibited phase did not last and unfortunately it coincided with the period when the information was provisional, confused and incomplete. As soon as hard facts and figures began to emerge, Tonia's professional instincts told her that the security blanket was beginning to operate. The trend towards clarity was suddenly reversed and imposed vagueness replaced mere unavoidable uncertainty.

Nevertheless, some kind of overall picture had materialized. As in Europe, the tremors seemed partly related to natural features and partly and mysteriously unrelated. A major quake had hit the Colorado River all the way from the Gulf of California through the Grand Canyon and up into Utah; early cables quoted unconfirmed reports of serious damage to the great dams but these were not referred to again. Another tremor line, apparently less serious, ran up the Snake River valley from about Pocatcllo right into the Blue Mountains. The Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas reported a confusing pattern of minor tremors with only localized damage. Chicago, Detroit and the Great Lakes seemed unaffected, but from the Adirondacks to Maine and across the Canadian border to the St Lawrence, damage was heavier but still localized. Quebec was hit and hard news continued to arrive direct from Canada for some time after the States security clamp-down; initial estimates spoke of thirty dead in Quebec and twelve in Montreal, though northwards and westwards of that, Canada - and Alaska - were apparently unaffected.

Down the Atlantic seaboard from Boston to Georgia, everywhere east of the Appalachians seemed to have escaped entirely; but from Florida all the way round the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean the emphasis was on freak tides and flooding. One AP cable, about earth tremor reports from Nicaragua and Costa Rica, stopped in the middle of a folio; the teleprinter was silent for fifteen seconds, then suddenly clattered out: CANCEL FOREGOING PARA, without explanation. Later, on the Lloyds' teleprinter, Tonia spotted PANAMA CANAL CLOSED ALL TRAFFIC FURTHER NOTICE - also without explanation, and no reference to the Canal appeared on the AP tape. Nor were the Mohowatt stations mentioned at any time.

Early reports which included northern South America in the outbreak of tremors were said to have been premature and based on nervous misreading of local seismographs when the scale of the North American phenomenon was first realized. Beyond Venezuela, the coastal flooding rapidly died out, and although Colombia and Ecuador reported a few mountain landslides, only faint echoes of the disaster seemed to have been felt south of the equator.

Gene and Tonia kept an eye on the Reutcr and UP tapes but they added nothing of significance. There was some British official reaction on the PA printer, but it was mostly formal sympathy, unoriginal and unmemorable.

'It'll be tomorrow morning the fun starts,' Gene predicted sombrely. 'When the Stock Exchange opens.'

Tonia, who for all her extraversion always had difficulty in articulating the deep love she felt for her own country, realized with a spasm of anger that she could not care less about the Stock Exchange or even Wall Street. What about 'Frisco and LA? - neither of them had been mentioned. What about the little farm in Maine where . . .

Tonia Lynd said nothing but went on ripping off folios and adding them to the clip-boards.

In the closed garage, Rosemary and Sally were going through kitchen equipment choosing a basic set from the three households' stock. Gregory and Dan had already done the same with the tools and were arguing whether precious space should be taken up with power-tools when the availability of power would be highly doubtful. Dan was against it but Greg was reasoning that the country was full of mobile generators and in the event of complete breakdown they might be able to commandeer one.

'And if we did, think of the hours a few power tools would save.'

'What'd be the use of a generator if there wasn't any fuel for it?' 'We might be able to hitch it to a waterfall.' 'Oh, for Christ's sake...'

Moira, with Diana's enthusiastic but unhelpful help, was packing clothes. The boys had installed a zip-up plastic wardrobe in the van with a tallboy beside it; as they had good tents, they had abandoned all ideas of leaving sleeping-space in the vehicles in favour of maximum storage. One side of the van was wardrobe, drawers and built-in wooden shelves; the other, kitchen, with water-tank, sink, cooker and food storage. Bedding, tools and more clothing and footwear were in the station wagon. Greg had fitted both vehicles with roof racks for tents, petrol cans and a second spare wheel each. The van's roof rack created a problem; loaded, it would not clear the garage door. So they had its load stacked ready at the back of the garage, where it could be stowed quickly in the van's central gangway when the move seemed imminent; they had practised the loading drill and got it down to one minute and forty seconds. Once clear of danger, they could stop and transfer the load to the roof, leaving the gangway free.

Sally and Rosemary had been stocking with milk and perishable foods daily, removing them for consumption next day and re-stocking, so that they would always at least start off with something fresh.

The problem of weapons had led to their first deliberate theft. They had one legal gun already, because Dan was a member of a pistol club and owned a licensed .22 target pistol; scarcely lethal except at short range, but accurate, and Dan was a good shot. But they were determined that each vehicle should be armed somehow and Greg came up with an answer, though he said nothing to the others till he had achieved it. One of his regular customers at the service station was a big-mouthed character who boasted too much of his prowess as a poacher, and of what he would like to do to the witches - not knowing, fortunately, that Greg was one. The man was a bachelor living alone in a cottage out beyond Addlestone, and Greg had no difficulty in discovering his drinking habits.

Next time he started his usual Friday-night session at the Swan by Staines Bridge, Greg quickly and expertly immobilized the man's car, drove to the cottage, broke in without a qualm, and soon discovered the double-barrelled folding 410 shotgun he kept under the bed, of all obvious places. Boxes of cartridges were beside it and Greg removed the lot.

When he got home and showed the others his loot, Rosemary was only briefly shocked, and the rest not at all. 'I'd put our safety before that bastard's pot,' declared Sally, who knew the man from her days as a barmaid; Sally h
ad been many things in her long
life. Shotgun and ammunition were hidden in the van within reach of the driver's seat and nothing more was said, but all of them knew that with this uncharacteristic act and its acceptance they had crossed a kind of Rubicon. War had not yet been declared, but mobilization was in full swing. Would-be survivors could no longer afford illusions.

'Have we got a knife-sharpener?' Rosemary was now asking. 'These things are going to have to last.'

'The boys have an oilstone with the tools,' Sally said. 'I saw it. .
..
Can-openers. . . bottle-openers
...
Where's Moira's garlic press? She'd be lost without it.'

'We might not be able to get garlic'

'Easy to grow. Plant it on the shortest day and lift it on the longest. Remind me to save some outside cloves of it
to plant Oh, here's the press ' Sally raised her voice
suddenly. 'Hey, everybody - we never thought of vegetable seeds!'

'None in the shops this time of the year,' Dan called back.

'Yes, there are. Little place up by the station - whole rack of 'em, covered with dust from the spring. You know, sort of shop that never clears out anything. I
’
ll get a few quids' worth tomorrow. Won't take up any room.'

So it had gone on for days - selecting, remembering, reassuring. Diana had been told they were getting ready for a camping holiday and Moira couldn't help feeling that it had something of that atmosphere; which seemed an almost frivolous reaction to a two-pronged threat, natural and human, whose scale and degree of horror none of them could as yet foresee. To be actually enjoying the fun of equipping their little survival convoy of two vehicles and six people was surely unrealistic, irresponsible. . . . And yet she knew it was
n't like that at all. The 'fun'
was relief at having something practical to do and do together, in the face of the faceless; and the horror was never far below the surface. Dan had a new briskness, a new light in his eye, as their preparations went ahead; even an extra (and Moira had to admit, exciting) verve about his love-making; it was as though the prospect of a bedouin existence had sharpened his mas
culinity - and perhaps her own
femalencss, too? She found it hard to judge. . . . And yet there were times when he cried out in his sleep, grinding his teeth and tensing his muscles, and Moira would cradle him in her arms, crooning to him as she would to Diana, till he relaxed again. He had no conscious memory of these experiences when he awoke, because Moira would have known if he was deliberately hiding them - quite apart from her ever-alert sensitivity to his moods. Like most witches they took a keen interest in their own dreams and had the habit of exchanging them as soon as they were both awake. They still did so, as unreservedly as ever, and she knew Dan was not censoring his; he was simply unaware that the intensity behind them had surfaced as muscular and vocal reactions which they had never done before except when he was ill.

She did not tell him because he would have worried, but she spoke of it to Rosemary. Rosemary smiled and said 'Greg, too'.

The five of them were all together when the Prime Minister made his television statement of 29 July. They had taken to reading and watching the news with close attention because if they did have to 'take to the woods', speed of reaction to events might well make the difference between success and failure, and the last few days, with the American tremors and the passing of the Emergency Powers Bill, had made them even more watchful. For such things they had been prepared, but what had shocked them was the Commons' almost panic reaction to the Wolverhampton affair and the ease with which the Emergency Powers debate inside and outside Parliament - originally and reasonably concerned with the possibility of further earth tremors - had become confused with the anti-witch hysteria. The Bill had received the Royal Assent that morning, and the day after tomorrow was August Eve, the witch festival of Lughnasadh; s
o they listened to the Premier
with foreboding.

He began with the predictable platitudes about the grave t
imes through which this nation
and, indeed, the world' was passing, the British tradition of standing together in the face of (unspecified) danger, and the need for calm. After a few confused a
nd homespun references to Agin
court, the Armada and our grandparents' defiance of the Blitz, he suddenly came to the point.