Ancient Echoes (17 page)

‘Then don’t pull away from me. Angie? Please don’t pull away from me.’

After a moment she turned over, meeting his gaze briefly. Her smile was very thin. ‘Let’s have a look,’ she said tiredly. She tugged the notebook from his hands and turned the pages. For a minute or so she scanned the content.

‘You can read it? Despite my coded scrawl?’

‘Just about. This is more or less a summary of Jandrok’s structure for the pre-conscious. Swamp, Savima, Windom, Maelstrom and the Deep.’

The full horror of Brightmore’s seminar came back to him, but he liked Angela’s closeness. She was – of all things – very reassuring, and he needed reassuring. ‘You’re so sexy when you use strange words. Those strange, incomprehensible words. Those strange,
dirty,
incomprehensible words.’

‘Shut up and read.’

‘Talk dirty some more,’ he teased.

‘Not funny.’

‘Go on. Say “Savima”.’

‘It’s a fusion of Savannah and Anima, and relates to archetypal landscape. Shut up and read.’

‘I don’t want to read. I want to
Rawhead.’

‘I haven’t the energy.’

‘Your body is a field of potential. Weren’t you aware of that Angela? A field of potential. A veritable
meadow
of potential.’

She was amused at last. ‘Oh God. And now you and your
dog, and a bottle of pop, and Old Mother Riley,
and
her cow, all want to
mow
that meadow?’

‘I love that song. God knows why. As English folksongs go, it’s a bit obvious.’

‘It’s the adolescent in you. Weren’t you aware of that Jack?’ She tossed the notebook to the floor.

‘I love you,’ he said. ‘Let’s Rawhead.’

She looked up at him, and for a second he thought she seemed confused. But she whispered, ‘No. I don’t want to
Rawhead.
I want to make love. Let’s keep Jandrok and all the other
rawheads
for the cerebral side of things.’

‘I obey.’

‘I’m glad you obey.’

‘I’m glad you’re glad I obey …’

‘From the earlier tests, you’ll have seen how the level we call the Hinterland is confused, malleable, certainly dreamlike. Although you have
some
control, there are other factors at work in the shaping of the zone. Mainly, though, the Hinterland will be constructed out of your own idea of crossing-over places, thresholds, if you like: gateways, forest edges, churches, walls and so on.
However
you visualize the abstract notion of the barrier between conscious and unconscious.

‘We’ll send clothing, supplies and survival equipment through with you, but check it carefully; it may not hold its integrity during the transmission. Once at this first level, you’ll have to look for the ways deeper, if that’s where the woman – Greenface – has gone. But it’s likely she’ll have left signs, traces of her presence. Again, from your earlier description, she was watching you from there, from the main Hinterland … or at least, from somewhere similar.’

There were so many questions to be asked, so much to be explained, so much reassurance needed …

‘Will I always arrive in the same Hinterland?’

‘Short answer: Yes. Qualification? Hope so. So far, our research suggests that once you’ve hardened the passage inwards, paved the way, if you like, then that will be your base camp whenever you enter the Hinterland. At any time in your life. But remember: it’s confused. It’s malleable. It’s dreamlike.

‘From this surface skin of the pre-conscious, there will be hundreds of portals to the deeper zones–’

‘And I’ll recognize them … how?’

‘I was coming to that. Probably simple paths, or caves, the space between trees; arches of carved stone, doorways, small
pools of water, beckoning figures. Think
fantasy.
There’s nothing new; everything in your head is programmed by the familiarity of mythology, and has been for more than a million years. You might even look for the edge of an overhang or cliff. Abrupt breaks in physical space are often linked with the tunnels. Also, keep watching for shifts in time; and for any broken integrity in the space around you, or the event that’s occurring. One thing we’re beginning to find is that some of the leakage from the conscious mind surfaces in the pre-conscious in discreet form: it might be someone you know, a grove or glade, a cave, maybe an oracle! We might be able to talk to you if you find such an inlet into the Deep.’

Brightmore was almost on a high as he talked, his fingers flying across the keyboard as he typed notes, thoughts, speaking aloud to Jack, who sat nervously on the couch inside the Midax frame, which would soon be his home for a day or more.

His lightweight rucksack was open before him, half packed, the clothing in, the pistol and knives wrapped carefully. He looked almost forlornly at the camping supplies, dried high protein foods, sugars, packet soups. He had always enjoyed camping and trekking through Europe’s mountains, but somehow … it didn’t feel right to be eating packet soups in a dream.

He watched Brightmore at work. He’d had this briefing before, but he was encouraged and reassured by the psychologist’s repeated description of the realm to which his subject would soon be dispatched.

‘Won’t I be able to catch fish? Eat the fruit of the Hinterland’s lush orchards?’

‘Of course. If they’re there. If you’re successful. I meant to ask you … Have you ever hunted game?’

‘No. I don’t like the idea of it.’

Brightmore laughed. ‘Then pray for a foodstore!’

‘How do I get back?’

‘We bring you back, or you return on your own. From the Hinterland you can call us easily enough, so just make your way back to the white-stone plaza – the church. I want to
suggest to you that you don’t stay in the Midax Deep more than a week as you perceive it. OK?’

‘OK.’

Brightmore swivelled round from the AppleMac then came over to the Midax frame, checking the glucose drip, the leads, the contacts. ‘You’d better finish packing. You need to memorize everything that’s in the bag. Then say your goodbyes.’

He was matter of fact, almost curt, more interested in the project than in the subject, or at least, that’s how it appeared to Jack as he slowly filled the Gore-tex rucksack, pressing spare boots and rainproof trousers onto the top, then drawing the strings tight.

He went to the children’s room and sat with Angela for a few minutes, watching Natalie as she played with Owein, Brightmore’s slightly younger son. The girl was totally in charge as they fitted together the parts of a model magic castle.

‘I think I’d have been happier being told I would simply be dreaming. I’m so full of the idea of a long journey it feels like I’m leaving for ever. And for the rest of you it’s only a day.’

‘It might be longer for us. We’ll be with you all the time, and let you explore as long as it seems to us that you’re safe. Maybe as much as four, five days.’

‘I don’t want to get stuck there for years.’

‘You won’t. Nobody yet has entered the Midax state for more than a day; and they all said their subjective experience had lasted less than a week. So it’s goodbye for a month maximum.’

‘A month … I’ve only got packet soup for a week!’

‘You’ve got survival rations for a month. Assuming they come through. All you need to find is water.’

‘Water? Water on the brain! Plenty of that! Ah well, time to go, I suppose.’

‘I’ll try and be with you,’ Angela said. ‘This is a first for me too.’

He hugged Natalie, and kissed her. He tried to look into her
eyes, but she was earnestly trying to return to the magic castle, an ordinary child, with an ordinary child’s self-centredness.

Angela took him back to the Midax frame, then kissed him.

‘Bon voyage. Behave yourself!’

I have emerged safely in the Hinterland again, the evening world of red sun and broad shadows, and I have found clear evidence that someone has been here recently, living in the cathedral. It is not exactly the same church: the statues around the great doors are no longer saints and bishops, but hunched human figures with grotesque faces. The doors are the same, but there is now a second entrance to the left, a vast, vertical wooden gateway between the upright forms of animals: lions, chimaeras, horses, and two great bulls, all on their hindlegs, all curiously distorted, with their inner limbs and the bulls’ horns forming the arch above the doors. Across the piazza, other buildings crowd together, white-façaded, marble-pillared.

Shortly after surfacing, I ran down the steps, away from the church and the Bull Temple, and looked back, my eyes finding difficulty in focusing against the crimson glare of the sun. The red cliffs still rise behind the cathedral, a great curved wall enclosing the ruins and the piazza in a tight embrace. This massive curtain wall of rust-red rock opens towards tall woods, formed of broad-trunked, twisted trees.

Everywhere I look there are gaps and tunnels, passages and even a valley stretching away from this place of my imagination. This is a more complex Hinterland than before, more enclosed yet more defined. The cliffs above me are not hard-edged rocks but flowing, organic curves, as if the limbs of human giants and the trunks of massive trees have all been petrified and pressed together, slowly rusting.

Sharp lights glint and gleam among the folds of the cliffs, and in places I can detect traces of carving around the narrow fissures and crevices that suggest portals into the deeper world.
But the façade of the rose-red city of Petra has gone, eroded, perhaps, made older, or perhaps obscured by new growth.

Although I have spoken the contact code aloud, there is no response, no sense of the presence of the outside world, of Angela, keeping her eye on me! For a few minutes in this strange land I’ve felt very lonely, more than a little afraid. But I know there is a routine to be followed. It just doesn’t seem to be–

Nothing is quite as I–

It’s so
twilight –
end of the world. Cold wind from the woods, though. I guess that’s my way out, my way deeper …

There was a routine to be followed, and despite my confusion, I held on to that mental list as if it were a talisman. Or do I mean touchstone? The routine included entering the church and trying to re-engage with the talking statues, but the sight of those monstrous creatures guarding a second sanctuary – the Bull Temple – has made me apprehensive. It took a while to understand why – the connection with the bull-runners – and I suspect that this is because of some slight ‘jet-lag’ in my memory.

Despite the ranks of fabled, fabulous and monstrous beasts that guard the gates, the main figures are the bulls, their heads extending out across the steps, curved horns casting long shadows across the piazza. They frighten the spirit in me, and I am avoiding wandering too close to them.

I began the routine by inspecting what had been brought into existence with me.

The clothes I’m wearing are intact, corduroys and leather jacket, and the compass and my watch are through as well. But the pistol is now a flare gun and the knives have mutated to vegetable knives, short-bladed and ideal for paring but not, I suspect, for defence. The rainproof pack has mutated from a carefully prepared bag, designed to support a long hunting trip, to the sort of back-pack I might take on holiday to the
Mediterranean, full of summer clothes and sandals; there are three pairs of bright blue paisley swimming briefs in place of my rain-proof over-trousers! The packet soups have changed to packs of toffees, and I feel a certain comfort in that. I’m not unduly concerned about most of the items that have changed, since the only items of any true worth are the photographs of Angela and Natalie, taken on that holiday in the Perigord. I’ve brought two, just to be on the safe side. Earlier, I sat for a long time on the stone steps staring at the pictures, trying to imagine Natalie standing by me, holding my hand, touching my face, so physically close to me while here I’m preparing for a journey beyond the cliffs, to a territory that has never been mapped, and only ever glimpsed a few times, images that suggest great danger, great hardship.

It didn’t take long to establish that this is no lucid dream. Try as I might I cannot manipulate or control the illusion around me. I’m beginning to think of myself as Mr Eighty Percent. Too much of my central self has been condensed, re-defined and set loose for it to have the full control of dream imagery and the seepage from the unconscious that exists in the lucid dreamstate.

Whatever was within me has formed, defined, hardened and is waiting, and I will be no Merlin, able to summon change at will.

There is the very real experience of being in very real space, and time itself runs quite normally, according to my watch and to my own innate
sense
of time. The sun stays low, and the shadows defy the passage of the seconds on my wrist, but I can report that this is no timeless dream, but a defined reality in which it takes me nearly five minutes to walk to the edge of the woodland, and the same nearly five minutes back again.

The tunnels through the trees bring a fresh smell and the sound of a waterfall. For a moment, earlier, standing in the breeze from beyond the forest, peering into the sylvan gloom, I thought I heard human voices, but it may have been nothing more than animals, birds perhaps. From that position I could
see back to where the red cliffs curved into the distance, obscuring the land beyond, and I am certain that I saw furtive movement against the red sky, a small shape ducking down, then moving quickly to its right before crouching again and peering into the valley.

Was it Greenface? I still don’t know. At this time I can see no signs that it is she who has been living in this particular borderland.

Time to explore, now.

Later …

Having walked the area of the piazza, peering into some of the buildings with their scatter of fallen statues and floors littered with broken pottery, I returned to the cathedral, to the ‘Christian’ gate, avoiding the Bull-Gate with its two grotesque, ebony bulls’ heads. Inside the church was a clear echo of my previous visit: the dust, the light, the signs of this place having been long abandoned, the running, noisy chickens, pecking at the crumbling plaster, the stone floor and the weedy plants that were springing up through the cracked flagstones.