Downtime - Marc Platt [81]
Professor Travers, if indeed it was Travers, sat in her chair, behind her desk. It was what she had wanted, but far from what she expected. Her long-awaited tutor was ancient and unkempt. He was slumped like a puppet tied up with spider strings. This Travers had promised the Light of Truth, but his gift revealed things she did not want to see. She no longer knew light from shade, truth from fantasy. She dreamed horrors – but suppose she was lying to herself?
Was this light also the cold light of day, or the lux aeterna of heavenly compassion? Might it not be the ignis fatuus that leads travellers from the path?
Which one? she thought. Which light is true?
She had grown up instructed in the virtues of faith and hope and charity. The three tiers on her mother’s grave. Such values were antique in this new age of self-aggrandisement. Virtue was a sign written in neon that said, Use Me.
No matter now. She was stranded on the sidelines. A watcher, as events she had instigated hurtled past uncontrolled and out of her reach.
In her mind, she stood at the top of a stairway. From below, a lurid green glow seeped like a festering nest of hatred feeding in the dark recesses of her thoughts. A hatred just as real as wisdom or enlightenment.
Hatred is strength.
Now Travers was enthroned. She flanked him on one side, Christopher on the other, eager to grab at something she doubted was there for him to snatch.
Sliding out of her thoughts, she noticed that another person had joined them. A uniformed army officer whom she did not recognize was standing beside Christopher. A handsome, dark-haired man with ice-cold eyes and an arrogant demeanour. Under his arm he carried a battered file embossed with the initials ‘MoD’. She wondered what he had been told or what he assumed but had never asked. And what was he doing in her office? She had run out of words. She had never felt so achingly, wearisomely alone.
Her nightmare resumed.
She heard the high metronomic pulse of a silver sphere control unit. The door swung open and a massive bearlike creature strode into her office.
‘ Dzu-teh, dzu-teh’, she heard the street vendor calling. She could no longer ignore what she already knew.
The Yeti gave a roar of greeting. Its shaggy coat was red-brown and its haunches were caked with mud. It was slightly more compact than the robots she had seen in the London Underground during the London Event; and it was less bulky than the robots she had seen sixty years ago in the Himalayas.
Its movements were more instinctive, less mechanical, and its eyes burned like torched rubies. Something flapped around its rear leg above the clawed foot. It was the upper half of a trainer, still tied with blue lace, as if the foot had exploded out tearing the shoe apart.
Travers rose jerkily from the chair and his trembling hand stretched out. The Yeti dropped a little ivory figure into his palm. Victoria recognized the tiny carving as Travers’s bony fingers tested its cracks and contours. She had spent years searching for this icon. This was the Locus that she had failed to recover. He had said it contained the power to unlock the future of all mankind.
She knew it could destroy them all.
He wasn’t who he said he was.
She, so full of compassion, so blind to evil, had been so easy to take in.
She knew now. She was close to despair. She had opened the way to events, but could only watch helplessly as they unfolded.
‘At last,’ he growled.
She could see the muscles in his tortured throat contract and expand as if the usurper in his body was still learning how to use them.
‘I created this tiny object. I invested it with my power and in turn it bound me in darkness.’ He raised the pawn to the level of his cracked spectacles. ‘Which of you shall release me?’
Victoria felt a frisson of excitement and fear. She reached instinctively for the object, but Travers’s hand moved away out of her reach towards Christopher.
She watched him take the carving with a smile for her benefit. He dropped it onto the carpet and brought down his