Broken Wing: A million deaths were not enough for Cassandra! Read online

  “Right, Roger; scuttle them along to the hall as soon as they’re down, will you? Gentlemen, this way, please.” He stood up, his lithe grace and strangely magnetic presence drawing us all onto our feet after him.

  “Cassandra, I’ll go now; ‘phone me if you need anything, right?” Edward looked earnestly at me. I nodded and squeezed his hand. He took his leave of the Doctor and left the house.

  June fell to the back to walk beside me. I had neither the nerve or the intention to keep pace with all those men as they left the room, though I suppose they would have given way to me had I required it of them. We passed back into the hall of the old farmhouse then through the back door. A low, barn-like structure occupied the back yard; it was obviously to where we were headed.

  It had the appearance of great age but it was well-kept. The windows were barred, the solid door equipped with good locks. Behind me I heard the whine and thunder of choppers settling on the macadam; I turned to watch the three craft settle.

  “I don’t know how anybody can keep those monsters obedient; an empty feeling gets me every time I see one land.” June told me as she stopped beside me. Bernhart, who was walking with us and who had obviously decided to attach himself to us, answered for me, “Oh, it’s quite simple. If you can tap-dance and juggle five crystal glasses at once, flying a chopper is straightforward.”

  “Oh, right, it can’t be all that difficult, then.” June told him in a slightly patronising tone. He grinned happily at us as we hastened after the rest of the group. The sound of the turbines behind me faded for a moment before the more familiar sound rose in pitch; I turned once again as the three-bladed chopper rose smoothly and swiftly. It circled once before heading away to the southwest where the cleft in the dark cliffs waited. I felt suddenly, frightfully alone as I watched the machine fade into the distance.

  “Come on.” June told me firmly but her voice was gentle, “Let’s grab some seats before they are all taken.” There was the faintest undertone of irony in her voice. She was twelve inches shorter than me, twelve years older, mature and self-possessed, a solid character and a thorough researcher, and I felt safe with her. I was a schoolgirl, a brilliant pilot, a child prodigy but I had not settled down and developed my own character. I felt the peril of praise, the almost threatening pressure of admiration. I resolved to keep to myself; to speak when spoken to, to keep out of the trouble I felt was already brewing around me. I slipped into the cool darkness of the doorway behind June.

  Bernhart was just at my shoulder, an annoying presence lurking in my personal space. The room opened out in front of me, the fluorescent tubes flickering into life. The seats were arranged in tiers in a semicircle around the lecturer’s desk; this room was tucked into the middle of the building and I could see no signs of any windows. The slight incline of the passage to the room led me to believe the lecture hall was partially underground; there were steps down to the podium and the passage already slightly below ground level had debouched itself onto the highest tier at the back of the hall. I looked about me to locate June, slightly overwhelmed by the crowd of men in the hall. More were leaking down the passage behind me, drifting past. Some of the men I knew; most were new to me and I felt awkward. I brushed my long platinum hair back, finally spotting June. She was the only other woman in the hall.

  I slipped into the pew beside her, glad that she had settled into the back row. Bernhart, probably taking the hint, had found himself a seat towards the front. Or maybe he was actually interested in what the Doctor had to say. I watched as the last few people drifted to their places. Jim came last, shutting the door and plonking himself down beside me.

  “Glad that lot is over.” He told me obscurely, “Now we should get on.” We watched as the Doctor took his post at the podium. He had a remote-mouse in his hand and his other hand rested gently on the desk-top.

  I noticed maybe ten people in the jeans and jersey ‘uniform’ of the base; I confirmed with June that ten was about the right number. The rest of us had not that conformity; everything from business suits to air-force flight suits was present. There were about twenty-eight pilots in that hall. Already I felt as if I was one of the base members and these men were all strangers. The clean, cold air of the hall seemed heavier than it had been before, the powerful mix of deodorants under-lain by musk and tension; the air-conditioning in the hall purred but did not clean the air. I felt that confusing array of signals battering at my mind, from the casual equanimity of Jim sitting beside me to the towering personality who stood facing us. The mood of the hall was receptive but sceptical. The Doctor would have to do some convincing talking to capture this audience.

  The Doctor started speaking; the fluorescent lights were replaced by stage-lights that dimmed until the hall was in a gloam. The focus of the lights was the tall screen behind the Doctor; he was in shadow. He started his talk with the jet-ranger he had modified to first test the feasibility of a supersonic chopper. His words were easy, casual, stating facts new alongside old and accepted laws. The flow of images on the screen kept pace with his discourse; the super-stage ramjets being ground-tested, the somewhat clumsy intake vents gaping, the tiny exhausts belching blue-white, searing flames for many feet behind the craft. The craft in the air, hovering; the sudden jerk as the ramjets kicked in, a view inside the cabin showing the dials and the horizon shrinking through the windscreen.

  Then we saw the airspeed indicator, its digital display showing the fantastic final top speed. The Doctor’s voice calm and steady as he went onto the second stage of his lecture; the inertial-unifying force he had discovered when he was working at the Institute of Nuclear Research, knowledge he had brought, in its entirety, when he had left.

  “Technically I’m in the wrong, keeping that information to myself. The full implications were not credited at the Institute and I feel duty-bound to keep the exact details out of the hands of idiots.” He told us dryly, eliciting a chuckle from the men, who, being specialists in a quite different field, would not take the core of the new knowledge with them if they chose to leave; but pilots, more than anybody else, could appreciate the value of something that reduced the drag that high velocities had on everything in the craft, including the pilot.

  Something that would cause everything in the craft to accelerate more-or-less as one unit would revolutionise flying. I appreciated the thought that the Doctor had given to convincing the pilots.

  The screen once again showed the modified jet-ranger, this time after it had been modified by the addition of the obscure device for generating the unifying field, seen only as a box with a radiation warning on it, sporting a couple of huge and heavy power cables.

  Once more the craft was taken up to hover at an altitude of less than half a mile. The video cut to the interior of the cabin, the three operations were deftly put through; disengaging the rotors, activating the box and engaging the afterburners with their ramjet stage. The readout on the airspeed indicator leapt right up; the horizon seemed to go grey. The film cut back to the view from the field; the scream of the ramjets suddenly augmented by the splintering thunder of almost an immediate rupturing of the sound barrier. The flash of fire hurling the jet-ranger almost out of sight before twelve long seconds had elapsed.

  The tension in the hall was electric; the Doctor’s calm and matter of fact voice cut smoothly through the buzz of conversation. “The ranger lasted for an hour and a half on the fuel she had on board, showing that the field had cut her consumption in that respect by close to seventy percent. However the top speed she achieved was Mach two-point-four-eight, almost four times her speed without the unifying field, meaning ultimately that she did twelve times better on the fuel she had on board with that field active.” There was no stopping the buzz of conversation that time; incredulous voices were raised in a welter of questions and comment, louder and sharper the tones of the voices than they had been before.

  The men were obviously impressed; the Doctor’s dry and matter-of-fact discourse was convincing an
d such ideas as the doctoring of the films were not even raised. Nonetheless what he had revealed was staggering, its implications far-reaching and vital, terrible in depth and scope. It was more than a person could absorb at once; but enough of the implications sunk in to disturb every man in the hall. The Doctor stood there in his personal patch of shadow, watching the pilots with a serene but careful depth as they shouted themselves out. Through the bedlam a single comment came shockingly sharply to my ears; I could see that Doctor Tregont had heard it as well; “I know human technology is getting on; but be serious now!”

  Even now as I stand in the cold and dark of the windswept balcony, I remember the jolt, the massive shock the emphasis on ‘human’ had on me; it was as if there was a spy in our midst; one who had travelled very far to attend this meeting.

  3. Black Crag

  That shock still disturbs me, opening my mind as it did at the time to the first part of the answer I was looking for. There were no spies of any real significance in that lecture hall; of which I know; but the enemy were on their way at that very moment. They had a long way still to go but their speed was terrifying. It was at that time that my fear first crystallised, that the object of my fear was brought home to me. This hint allowed me to see the nature of the black wave which was about to swamp my world.

  Whatever the implications of that unveiling, one thing was quite clear then; the Doctor was aware of the problem, had taken it into account, was compensating for it as well as his limited knowledge would allow. It dawns on me now that he had found himself working to a timetable which was too demanding; that is the only reason of which I can think for the situation turning out as it eventually did. Nevertheless with the time he had at his disposal, he did an incredible amount of work; considering that he had only ten assistants to begin with. Here at Black Crag, for example, he managed to set up a very complete base, converting the enigmatic castle into a high-tech laboratory and air base, neither purpose to which it is in any way suited. I have spent some of my time delving into the Crag’s history, both from the Doctor’s notes and the atlases and reference works in the library. From those sources I have compiled a rough sketch of the periods of occupation stretching back into a murky and peculiar antiquity.

  I turn my back on the wide and cold expanse of the northern Pacific, running my eyes once more over the night-gloomed lines of the castle above my head. The ledge whereon I stand is a narrow extension of the castle courtyard at the level of the upper cellars. Such domestic chores as we found ourselves compelled to do were executed here; the water for washing, the sturdy washing lines constructed from heavy-gauge fence wire, the basins and sluices, so terribly domestic, unromantic, so out of the castle’s character. The angular lines of the towers and keep above my head are hard-edged; the castle is a tall and narrow affair with three towers set roughly in a triangle around a tall and gloomy keep. The keep itself is not visible from where I stand on the balcony, only the sheer wall between the south and north-western towers. The castle of Black Crag occupies the entire summit of that needle-like sea mountain, broken into ledges and black gullies. The base of the crag rests in a wide lagoon; the northern and western side of the base is the only wide and level field on the entire island.

  There are any number of smaller ledges on the cliffs leading up to the summit; each ledge, being of differing aspect and shielded to a different extent by the cliffs from sun or wind, offers a different character to any other ledge. Mangoes grow on the southern, lower ledges, tucked into the cliffs above the furious sea, which on the eastern side approaches the base of the cliffs. The spread of flat ground and calm water to the north-west is deceptive; beyond the savage fangs of rock that shield the wide lagoon the sea is rough. A solitary islet pokes up out of the sea in the centre of the lagoon; a pleasant park with tall trees gives the little island an almost Arcadian character.

  The castle appears to be the only building on the island, the only place where the winds cannot touch a person’s soul. But that appearance is deceptive. The Crag beneath the level of the castle is fairly warrened out with caves of almost endless description; it was in one such cavern complex that the Doctor installed the fleet of Wrens. Some of the lower ledges show signs of having being occupied in the murky past; the tattered remains of thatched huts, the occasional bit of stonework, dry-stone for the most part and in a state of disrepair.

  The differing climates offered by the various ledges had been put to good use over the years; a goodly array of fruit-bearing trees and plants are still to be found and expeditions were often arranged to harvest the fruit in our off-duty periods. The good Doctor arranged hikes, swimming in the chill waters, contests on a field marked out on the wide northern plain; he took a lot of trouble to ensure we were happy, fit and in the best condition we could expect. I believe there are a couple of mangoes left from the last trip I made down to that warm ledge; I haven’t had the heart to leave the castle grounds for a few days, now. I have spent my time, yes; my time is my own now; I have spent my time on this ledge, thinking, or in the library, trying to confirm what my thoughts have led me to understand about this place.

  Black Crag’s history is long and somewhat uncertain. It is not sure, for example, when Europeans first set foot on its somewhat unwelcome shores and what they thought of this new addition to whatever Empire they represented. Nonetheless the Crag was occupied in the mid-eighteenth century, when the first records logged its position. There was no obvious flurry of excitement at the crag’s discovery and the place was not visited often.

  It was too small for serious exploitation; it was off the beaten track, sufficiently far north of Hawaii to be unpleasantly cold and unforgiving. Those who wished to indulge in the climate it offered did much better in Sweden or Scotland. The folk who were there when the Europeans came did little to encourage their interest; they were a dour and unfriendly lot, speaking a variation of the Melanesian dialect that even the experts found confusing. They were in the habit of lurking out of sight whenever a boat landed and ambushing the party a good way from the shore, where there was little chance of escape.

  Their other habits were no more pleasant. They made bone ornaments from various parts of their victims’ anatomy; they collected heads that they stored on poles or on vine ropes hung from trees to mark the scene of each victory. They had little use for fire although they were aware of its existence and had fire-pits; this meant they did not have a wide culinary appeal for those visitors who managed to elicit a decent welcome as they saw no point in cooking their meat. They didn’t do too terribly well in winter though the lower southern ledges where they spent their time never became snowbound. Yet on the northern high ledges, at the foot of the north wall, there are drifts of snow and ice that have not melted in eons.

  Why, when and how the castle came into being is not clearly documented; the natives alluded to the existence of a ‘Master’ who had been responsible for creating the crag from huge spears of obsidian, accounting for its angularity and the proliferation of small ledges. This fellow had apparently created the castle while he was at it; it was obvious to the early explorers that it was beyond the skill of the ledge-dwellers to create such a monumental work in stone. As well as that, the ledge dwellers were in a state of superstitious fear about the castle; none of them in recorded times set foot within its precincts, nor did they frequent the caves beneath the castle. There were numerous cave mouths on the ledges; but the ledge-dwellers were simply not interested. They avoided the ledges with caves on them, avoided anything to do with the massive stonework of the castle that formed such a huge part of their environment.

  The Master was apparently unlike the ledge-dwellers, being a fellow of a solitary turn of mind; he actively discouraged involvement in his affairs, he disliked curiosity in others as much as he disliked his own curiosity being unsatisfied. He was said to produce curious lights and loud noises in the castle, making clouds of rather unpleasant smoke. He indulged his curiosity in many fields; making stars fall, making wild s
torms, creating lapses in time and memory, even flying on the back of a fire-belching creature of formidable aspect. His hopes and ambitions were not well documented in the folklore of the ledge-dwellers but one at least was the desire to live forever; something they were convinced that he had achieved.

  From the Doctor’s initial interpretation of the legends he deduced that the Master was a medieval scientist of no mean ability; the fire-breathing dragon was no less than a rocket of some sort; and most of his other nebulous qualities had a definite basis in fact. As to the legend about the creation of the crag the good Doctor was not inclined to commit himself, but such a exploit as building the castle was fairly easily accounted for, even though the feat must have been a prodigious industry, with many men labouring and sweating for anything like twenty years to raise the forbidding edifice. The most peculiar aspect of the castle; and the factor that aroused most of the Doctor’s interest in the place; was its apparent ability to make itself obscure; even invisible.

  The castle itself, with its walls and towers, occupied a little less than three acres of ground, but it was a tall and angular feature, the keep being four storeys high, and the towers twenty or so yards higher. The top of the walls are level with the slate roof of the keep. There is no courtyard to speak of within the three walls, only the wide ledge below the walls on the outside, where now I stand. The castle when the Doctor had originally found it, was fitted with an efficient but somewhat antiquated hydroelectric getup operating from a stream within the caves of the crag at the castle’s foundations. This and the antique plumbing that watered the plants on the windowsills and sanitised the castle, were artefacts from the beginning of the nineteenth century. The Doctor had made his own improvements; but he had not managed to reduce the sense of pervasive gloom within the castle walls.

  Looking down from my perch on the balcony, it is not easy to discern anything but the silver of the rolling breakers, even though the plunge from where I stand is not sheer. There are many ledges below where I stand; none of them very wide but all of them teeming with the most abundant array of plant and bird life. Morning and sunset are times of raucous, incessant noise, the sea birds competing with forest and jungle birds to see whose chorus will dominate. During the course of the day one became inured to the sound and ceased to notice it. The trees, creepers and vines, the heavy scent of jungle loam seemed to lead naturally into the shock of seeing cherries above oranges on their warm ledges. There were numerous mangoes on the warmer ledges right at the base of the cliff to my left as I stand, looking back over the wide ocean.