Ladies From Hell (20 page)

Boulter said, “I think there’s a bit more to it than theory. For instance, listen to this.” He opened the book and read.

“The revelation took place when Watkins was sixty-five years old. Riding across the hills near Bredwardine in his native county, he pulled up his horse to look out over the landscape below. At that moment he became aware of a network of lines, standing out like glowing wires all over the surface of the country, intersecting at the sites of churches, old stones and other spots of traditional sanctity.”

I said, “Good Lord,” and Boulter nodded. He said, “Interesting, ain’t it? And that’s not the only time it’s happened, it’s been reported by various people since. And there’s something else. At odd times certain of these features—standing stones are beggars for it—seem to acquire the funniest damn characteristics. There’s a whole sheaf of reports of people, usually Sensitives, psychometrists, dowsers sometimes, being physically blown back by touching prehistoric stones. The
Ley Hunter’s
full of it, I’ve got a stack of copies over there.”

I lit up myself. I said, “Come on Alec, that’s going it a bit strong.”

He nodded. He said, “That’s what I thought myself.
Until I saw it happen to Sarah.”

I hadn’t noticed, before, how quiet the little valley was. No cars now, or sounds of voices; you could hear the crickets singing, a shrill susurrus of sound. I said, “Alec, you’d best start at the beginning.”

He grinned. He said, “That’s easy. It started with Sammy Farnham.”

I nodded. That figured. A lot of bizarre things did.

Boulter blew smoke. “He did a guest lecture at the University a couple of years back,” he said. “One of his fund-drumming tours. Some of our people went along. As a result the Department was swept by a wave of archaeological enthusiasm. A dozen or so of us—some staff, mostly students—decided on a working holiday in the long vacation. A dig Sammy was organizing, in Cornwall. He was trying to convince everybody he’d found a Roman villa down there. In fact, he hadn’t. Not even Sammy can win them all.”

He looked reflective. “Sarah, as she said, is a Department secretary,” he said. “And a damn good one too. She came down for the experience. Quite an experience it was too. Sammy with the bit between his teeth can be a holy terror. I told him more than once all he really needed was a stockwhip and a few sets of leg irons.”

He sipped his brandy again. “One day a few of us took off to see some standing stones Sammy wanted a look at. I took a camera along to get some record shots. There was one really big monolith out on its own, away from the rest. Yet another of the ubiquitous Devil’s Arrows. Sarah was intrigued by it. I was setting the camera up, I wasn’t paying all that much attention. I remember somebody shouted across to her, pulled her leg. Something about phallic symbolism being out of date. Then she touched it.”

He set the glass down. He said, “It was like a condenser discharging, Glyn. It must have knocked her six or eight feet.”

I said, “Nasty.”

Boulter pursed his lip. “Yes,” he said, “it was nasty. I thought it had killed her for a
minute. So did Sammy”

He stubbed the cigarette. “By the time we got to her she was sitting up,” he said. “Nobody quite knew what to do for the best. She couldn’t remember a thing, reckoned afterwards she must have passed out for some reason. Anyway she didn’t seem to be hurt, just shaken up. We got her in the car and took her back to the hostel. And I spent the rest of the week working on that bloody stone.”

I said, “What did you do?”

Boulter snorted. “Easier to say what I didn’t,” he said. “I had an idea for a time it had actually formed an electrode, strata underneath creating some sort of wet cell effect So we started testing for soil ph. But there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. We tried it for hot spots, we tried the lot. Sammy even got a pal over with some infra red gear. Nothing”

I said, “And Sarah?”

Boulter shrugged. He said, “Silliest part of the whole damn thing. She came over again a few days later. Just before we packed up. Walked up and clapped her hand on it. Wanted to know what we were all mucking about at.”

He reached to the shelves beside him, pulled out a thickish folder. He said, “You might like to have a look through these as well, some of them are interesting. These are the record shots of the monolith. Nothing much there. These are better. This is one of the famous alignments, from Old Sarum through Salisbury Cathedral spire to Clearbury Rings the other side of the town. You can see the ley just touches the side of the earthwork, that’s typical. If you project the line northwards it goes through Stonehenge. There’s the Ordnance sheet there, see, with it marked out. I took the shot myself just to check it.”

There was more of the material, much more. He’d evidently had a busy few months. I leafed through the folder; eventually I laid it down. I said, “Well, it’s certainly interesting. And the story about the stone is the oddest thing I’ve heard. But I don’t see where it gets us. The day I get funny feelings
standing on a ley I’ll maybe change my mind.”

He grinned at me again. He said, “Are you trying to tell me you haven’t?”

I stared at him. I don’t know why, till that moment, the glaringly obvious hadn’t registered. I’m not normally quite that dim. I said, “You mean …”

He nodded. He said, “Exactly. Ley House. It’s built right across one, we’re sitting almost at the focus.”

He got up and walked to the glass wall, stood staring out and down He said, “St. Nicholas’ is dead in line. From the top of the tower you can see Barrington Clumps. It’s an Iron Age hill fort but you can bet the site’s a lot older. There’s another little earthwork, only a few feet high, about a mile farther on. Then a standing stone, a big one, just outside Worthingham. Then a couple more churches, and a hill called Five Barrow Down. That speaks for itself. The alignment finishes on the coast, little stone circle in a wood. Like a model of Avebury, same lingam-yoni pairs. North there’s nothing much till you get to Cerne. This was a bit of a dead patch. Until Sammy got going.”

I looked up to where, in darkness, lay the great hill figure. I said, “
That’s
why he went helicopter riding.”

Boulter nodded. He said, “He’s as big a ley buff as anybody. And there were clues. Giant’s Copse, for one. We couldn’t trace the name back farther than the late middle ages but Sammy reckoned there was no smoke without fire. He found the Great God Mai. It was there all right, Glyn, I saw the survey pictures. The originals, before he started cutting.”

I said, “Alec, what the hell are the leys? Why did people build on them, to mark them?”

He said, “We’re really back to your original Question Two. I don’t know what they are. As for building to mark them … nobody can tell, I certainly can’t. But I’ve got a feeling—nothing I can prove, just something in my water—that it’s the other way about. People are drawn to build on them, God alone knows why.”

I thought of the huge turbine up on the hill. Coombe
Hasset One, and her sisters. I said, “Then you think—”

He was ahead of me. He said, “The Big Fans? The Lord knows. Again, I saw the original survey work for them. I talked enough about them, to everybody I could get hold of. The village was throbbing with site people of course, while construction was going on. They put up anemometers by the dozen, computer-processed the data, there’s cast iron technical reasons for the siting of each one. But … three are on the ley, smack on it, one about a hundred yards off. One’s a bit farther away again, about a quarter of a mile. But I reckon it’s close enough.” Close enough for what, he didn’t say.

I said, “Alec, something you mentioned a few minutes ago. About a focus.
Have
you found something out about these things?”

He said, “Yes and no. Found something aggravating, at any rate.” He walked to the shelves again. He said, “Remember these?”

I said, “Good God, yes. Gold leaf electroscope. Thought they’d gone out of fashion.”

He nodded. He said, “Once the pride of every Grammar School lab. You don’t see them about so much now. This is rather a nice one. Dick Campbell—the guy who owns this pad—picked it up in a second hand shop somewhere. He also noticed something about it. Observant man, is Dick. Watch this.” He walked toward me slowly, holding the glass-fronted case in his hands.

I said, “Do that again.”

He cancelled the charge by stroking the electrode with his finger, and obliged. At the same point, near the centre of the room, the tiny metal leaf once more trembled and stood out rigidly from its support. I said, “This a party trick, Alec?”

He shook his head. He said, “I keep those for parties Try it yourself.”

I did. The same result. I said, “Does it happen every time?”

He nodded. He said, “Eight out of ten.”

I returned the thing to the shelf, sat down more than thoughtfully. Boulter rejoined me. I said, “Anyway one thing’s certain. Whatever you’re measuring
is mighty small.”

He said, “I don’t think that’s really a conclusion we can draw. After all we’re not dealing with a so-called ‘normal’ electromagnetic effect. If we were, I could pick it up other ways. I think somehow we’re using the wrong instrument. Like trying to measure sunspot activity with a seismograph.” He frowned. He said, “If you work carefully, you can plot a dead straight line. It comes in through the end wall there, just by the Nash repro. Passes across just … here; and goes out eighteen inches from the frame of the glass wall. By the arm of that far armchair.”

It was a queerish thought. I said, “And you reckon whatever it is, you can’t detect it any other way?”

He said, “Nope. Tried, of course. With modern galvanometers. No joy. It seems it, whatever ‘it’ might be, just has a hankering for precious metals.” He nodded at the shelf. He said, “Neither will our friend repeat the performance anywhere else. I’ve walked across leys—known leys—with it till I’m giddy. Even took it on the Sarum trip. It didn’t want to know.”

I said, “That’s crazy.”

He brooded. He said, “Maybe so. But to me it does rather suggest another possibility. Something that happened here to … activate whatever we’re measuring, whatever the gold leaf can feel”

I said, “The only new thing’s the Big Fans.”

He nodded. He said, “That’s the way my mind was running too But I doubt somehow if it’s the fans themselves. You heard what Mike was saying, about burying all their gear. There’s more miles of cable running through this ley now than I care to think about. And very shortly they’re going to slap thirty kilovolts through it.”

Suddenly it wasn’t a cheering thought. I said, “But that’s not for weeks yet,” and he turned to eye me oddly. He said, “Wrong again, Glyn. They’re running a full power test tomorrow night. In just under twenty-four hours’ time.”

When I finally got to bed I found, perhaps unsurprisingly,
that I couldn’t sleep. The odd tension I had already felt seemed to throb, fed undoubtedly by what I had heard, through the very fabric of the house. I turned and tossed, thinking of the strange girl Sarah, lying sleeping somewhere close or maybe as watchful as I. And going over too what Boulter had told me of tomorrow’s test. No,
today’s
test of course. How he had come by the information he had not divulged; but it seemed the Government, alarmed by the steadily-growing threat posed by Hebden and his minions, had ordered a full scale runup of the system in complete secrecy. Coombe Hasset One would be the first station to come on line, at twenty-three hundred hours; the others would follow at one or two minute intervals till the whole system was alight. The test would run for an hour; then the Big Fans would shut down in reverse order, hopefully just after midnight. The army would obviously have been alerted; we could expect a discreet but tight cordon round each one of the units till the test was over. Boulter’s only worry was in fact that we might be herded out ourselves. As far as I was concerned, that might not be a bad thing. I couldn’t see what could possibly happen, still less what could go wrong; but Alec had had hunches before, and I’d learned to trust them. If he was expecting some startling development, that was good enough for me.

The air seemed sultry and thick. I lay sweating, hearing a clock somewhere in the house that chimed the quarters and halves; and sleep seemed as far away as ever. When I did finally doze I was troubled by a recurring dream. It was as if some great dim army was passing along the coombe. I couldn’t see it; but I could hear the rustle and sigh of voices, the tramp and weary shuffle of feet, the heavier rumbling of wheels. The rumbling grew louder by degrees; till a crash directly overhead jerked me awake. I sat up and the noise came again, accompanied by a violet glare from the window. A full scale storm was raging; I could hear now, mixed with the peals of thunder, the roar of rain on the roof. I padded across to close the casement, stood awhile peering out at the hill; but the lightning, though intense, gave no more than glimpses of the machine that straddled its crest, and those vague
and illusory. The storm moved away finally, grumbling into distance; and I dozed again, opening my eyes once more some time after dawn.

Something impelled me to swing out of bed again. I leaned on the sill and stared out at the swell of down, vague and grey in the early light, Farnham’s Folly glimmering on its flank. The great bulk of chalk hid the rising sun; but some effect of refraction outlined the great cone that topped it with the thinnest imaginable rim of fire. I pushed at the window, leaned to catch the scent of wet leaves and grass; and my attention was taken by some movement in the denser shadows near the house. I peered again, but I had not been mistaken. Sarah stood there quietly, barefoot on the grass. Her arms were at her sides; she was motionless, and seemed to be staring up. Her pale night-things moved a little, in the dawn breeze.

I must have watched, uncertainly, for some minutes. Then I lay back on the bed, in two minds whether or not to go down. If she cared to walk in the garden on an early summer morning it was strictly her own affair; on the other hand there was the possibility she might be unwell. Though why I should feel such sharp concern for an acquaintance of hours I couldn’t understand. Altogether the problem seemed insoluble; I closed my eyes to think about it more clearly, and alas for good intentions. The next thing I remembered was Boulter hammering cheerfully on the door, announcing that tea was on and that the bath water was hot. I groped for my watch, swearing; and it was five to nine.