Emily spent several days travelling across the country, sleeping under bushes and in abandoned barns, hitching rides on haywains and turnip wagons, before she allowed herself to relax and find a new home for herself.
The place she chose for her base of operations was the Wookey Hole natural cave system in the Mendip Hills, a place she had visited once in her childhood and which she was pretty sure would not be associated with her in any criminal file the machines might have on her. The natural limestone would, she hoped, shield the electromagnetic radiations generated by the equipment she'd had the ship fabricate for her. She would be able to work here for months, years if necessary, and so long as she was careful not to carry any electrical devices out under the open sky, all the sophisticated scanning and detecting devices the machines (or Randall) possessed would be unable to find her. And when she started work in earnest, they would most definitely be looking for her.
She found a mound of rock the right size and shape to serve as a chair and sat on it, then swung the heavy backpack down off her shoulders. She had discarded the original woven metal one almost immediately. It was far too alien in appearance and would have attracted attention wherever she went. The one she was using now, made of cow leather, was stolen from a hardware store she'd visited the first day after leaving the spaceship. She sat it beside her, undid the buckles and opened the flap. Then she carefully lifted out the bulky, metal object hidden inside.
It was a mini-fabricator. A smaller version of the device aboard the spaceship that had created it. It could create anything, so long as it had a set of blueprints and a supply of raw materials. It could even create a full size fabricator, so long as it created one small piece at a time and its operator had the technical expertise to put it all together, which Emily had. The full size fabricator could then create even larger ones capable of creating anything she wanted. Even spaceships if she wanted. Everything a global civilisation could supply, the fabricator could supply. Every luxury, every utility...
Every weapon.
There was one other object in the backpack. A portable data storage device containing billions of fabricator blueprints. The complete set of instructions for creating every possible object and device from paperclips to medical robots. Even priests and orc chieftains if she wanted. She could create an entire robot army for herself, covered in human flesh and able to enter any city without attracting attention. An army of loyal slaves to do her bidding. Planting bombs, crushing the throats of key people. Maybe even killing Randall if the opportunity presented itself. Randall wanted to give technology back to mankind. Emily wanted to stop him.
The natural world had to be protected. It had always been her driving ambition, but back in her old life she'd always known that her cause was hopeless. The global industrial complex was too vast and powerful. The few victories she's managed to achieve had been more symbolic than anything else. Attempts to gain publicity for her cause. That had been all she could hope for back then but now, for the first time, she had a real chance to actually achieve something. She could become what she'd only pretended to be in her old life; the guardian of the natural world. She smiled to herself, feeling real peace and contentment for the first time she could remember.
She touched the contacts on the fabricator and the memory storage device, turning them on and allowing them to communicate with each other and with her head phone. Images appeared in her visual field. A menu of options. She scrolled down it, searching for the first thing she would have the fabricator create. Another fabricator, for redundancy. In case some accident befell the original. Three fabricators, in fact, with the third hidden in another remote location, carefully sealed in a waterproof container in case, by some chance, her hideout was discovered and she was forced to flee. She'd survived until now by taking no chances, by preparing for every eventuality, and that wasn't a habit she intended to break.
The fabricator confirmed her choice and presented her with the list of chemical elements it would need to carry out the task, along with how much it would need of each. She picked up a rock and dropped it into the intake hopper. The machine buzzed as it digested it and numbers appeared beside the list of elements, telling her how much of each the rock had contained. She was pleased and relieved to see that almost every element was present in the rock, even if just a couple of micrograms. Most of those that were absent, mainly phosphorus and magnesium, could be found in plant matter. There were a couple of rare earth elements that wouldn't be found locally, but the fabricator could transmute them from other elements. It was a very energy intensive process but only microscopic amounts of these very rare elements were needed. The fabricator could do it.
She would need to collect several dozen tons of rock to create the twenty kilogramme device she wanted to create, but it could be done. She gathered up all the rocks in the immediate area and dropped them in, making the machine buzz again like a small, oddly shaped beehive. A small hatch opened in the side of the fabricator and a cylindrical grey rod was pushed out. All the elements in the original rock that the fabricator didn't need.
Humming to herself with satisfaction, she went deeper into the cave, looking for more rocks to feed the fabricator.
☆☆☆
"More than a week now since the Boss went missing," said the Manager of The Halls of Valhalla. "And no-one's seen his squeeze either. You ask me, something scared 'em off. I mean, think about it. He just turned up one day, no-one knew who he was or where he came from. I reckon he came here to try to get away from someone. Someone even bigger and badder than he was. He thought he'd be safe here, that he could take over Badger's operation and live happily ever after, but his enemies found him and he had to run again. None of our business, of course. One of the heavies will take over as the new Boss and life will go on."
"But what if he comes back?" asked the Head Housekeeper. "He comes back and finds out we've cleared out the room he gave his girl?"
"He won't be coming back. He wouldn't risk being away this long, giving the others time to plot and scheme, if he were planning on coming back. An organisation like this, everyone's ambitious. Always looking for advantage, dreaming of moving up the ladder, and the only way up is dead man's shoes. A guy like that stays in charge by keeping a close eye on his underlings, making sure they don't get up to mischief. If he comes back now, after giving them this long to plot behind his back, they'll kill him."
The Head Housekeeper nodded, then used her skeleton key to open the door to the room that Jane Harper had stayed in. He and the Manager then went in and looked around.
Jane had left behind little sign of her presence. Other high ranking members of the organisation who'd been living in the rooms above the club for years had covered the shelves and cupboards with ornaments and little knick nacks, some of which they'd made themselves to while away the long evenings. Each a clue to the owner's personality telling visitors something about the kind of person who called it their home. Jane's shelves and cupboards were empty, though, except for a light covering of dust that she hadn't bothered to wipe away.
"You sure this is the right room?" said the Head Housekeeper.
"Absolutely sure," replied the Manager. "She was only here for a few weeks. Guess she was smart enough to know they'd have to run again, and sooner rather than later. Knew there was no point putting down roots."
"Here's something." The Head Housekeeper picked up a sheet of paper she'd found tucked behind the couch. She laid it out on the table and the Manager joined her to study it with puzzlement. All the letters of the alphabet, along with the words Yes and No, arranged in a semicircle. Crudely drawn with a thick, black pencil. Towards one edge was a dried bird dropping. "What in the name of VIX..."
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"Perhaps she was practicing her penmanship," suggested the Manager.
"With each letter written just once? Maybe it was a... a game of some kind. You flip coins, try to aim for specific letters. Win by spelling out a particular word."
"Maybe." The Manager scrunched up the sheet of paper and tossed it into the waste paper basket. It was already half full of scrunched up sheets of paper, he noticed. He pulled one out and smoothed it out on the table. There were paragraphs of writing on it, heavily edited, with words crossed out and others written above them as if the writer had been unsure how exactly to express herself. There was no rearrangement of entire sentences or paragraphs, though. The Manager knew, from having written speeches for public events, that an author frequently decided to swap two paragraphs or delete entire sentences, but there was none of that here. It was more as if Jane had been translating something that someone else had already written in another language.
"And he said 'I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,'" read the Manager. "'Prepare the way for the coming of the one true God. Make a straight road for him.'" He stared at the Head Housekeeper in puzzlement. "It's gibberish," he said.
"Maybe. Maybe it's supposed to be a song. Songs use all kind of fancy language. If this was just jotting down notes, then somewhere there should be..."
She began opening cupboard drawers and gave a cry of triumph when she found several thick bundles of papers rolled up into tubes and tied with red ribbons. She picked one up, untied the ribbon and the sheaf sprang open, revealing each sheet to be covered with neatly written handwriting. "The finished article," she said, leafing through it curiously. "Or part of it, anyway. There's loads of blank paper in here. Looks like she never got round to finishing it."
She turned back to the top page, where there was a title written in large, bold letters. "The Statement of John," she read. She glanced up and down the page. "Doesn't say who John was, unless it's further in, on another sheet." She took it over to the table, where the sun obliged by coming out from behind a cloud and casting a rectangle of light on the dark wood. It made the paper almost too bright to read but something about it caught her eyes and wouldn't release them.
"This is really weird," she said. "Listen to this. 'In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the word was God.'" She glanced up at the Manager. "What does it mean?"
"It means she was soft in the head. Toss it in the trash."
The Head Housekeeper was still staring at the text, though. "I dunno, I think I might keep it. There must have been something going on in her head when she wrote it. Maybe I can figure out what it was."
"Do what you like with it," said the Manager. "Clear everything else out, though. Any clothes or other possessions you find. Whoever takes over as the new Boss will probably want to put his bird in here. The place needs to be empty, ready for her to move in."
He turned and left without another word, but the Head Housekeeper stayed for some time, turning sheet after sheet as she read the strange text. She had the undeniable sense that she was on the verge of some great revelation, that something important would become clear if she only studied it for long enough. She would show it to her friends in the sewing circle, she decided. They might find it interesting as well, even if it turned out to be nothing more than the ravings of a lunatic.
☆☆☆
"Where's Danny?" asked one of the boys playing in the street.
Peter Dunnegan, the eldest of the boys present, being nearly twelve, and the unofficial leader of the street gang, gave the leather ball a powerful kick that sent it flying through the air. It sailed past the outstretched fingertips of Sammy Longbill, the goalkeeper, to bounce off the brick wall behind him inside the wavy, indistinct chalk outline that had been drawn on it to make a crude goal. Peter ran around cheering, his grimy hands stretched high over his head, while Benny Cheller ran down the street to catch the ball and kick it back to the part of the street the boys were using for their game.
Timothy Bakerson had to repeat the question another two times before someone answered him. "His gramps died. Had to go to his funeral."
"But he's our best goal scorer! One of you've got to join our team to even us up."
"I ain't joining your team," said Timothy Bakerson, guiding the ball back to the pothole in the middle of the street that they were using as their centre spot. "I'm a shirt. Always been a shirt. You skins are losers!" A chorus of cheers from his team mates confirmed his judgement.
"You're the losers!" A member of the other team protested, his affiliation denoted by his bare chest. His shirt was piled with those of the other members of his team, at the foot of their goal. "We've won every game this week."
"You're not winning this one," pointed out Timothy Bakerson. "You ain't scored a single goal yet."
"That's because Danny's at his stupid gramp's funeral. One of you've got to join our team. Just for today. Take your shirt off, Billy."
"Tup off, loser!"
"Get Jesus to bring his gramps back from the dead," laughed one of the shirt wearing children. "Then Danny can come and play."
"Who's Jesus?" demanded one of the bare chested children.
"Some guy Petey's always going on about. Right, Petey?"
"Right," said Peter, nodding wisely. "This woman turned up a few days ago, started telling us stories about him. Said he lived ages ago, back before the Old Ones. He could do all kinds of things. Bring the dead back to life. Turn water into wine. Feed a whole city from a couple of fish and a few loaves o' bread. Parted the Red Sea so the Essrilites could escape from the Gyptians."
"That's rubbish!" said Billy. "Not even the priests can do that!"
"Jesus could," Peter insisted. "The lady said so. She said he was the son of God."
"VIX doesn't have a son."
"Not VIX. She said VIX wasn't a real god. She said there's a real god that they knew about back before the Old Ones. She said the Old Ones went bad because they forgot about him."
The bare chested child laughed. "Sounds like she's a poppyhead."
"She weren't no poppyhead!" declared Peter angrily. "She was nice. She wore proper, posh clothes an' everything. She... Well, she were nice an' I believed her."
"So where is she now?"
"I dunno. She turned up every day for a week or so to tell us stories about him. Great stories! Bill was there. Tell 'em, Bill."
Bill, a member of the bare chested team, nodded distractedly. He was more concerned with the chilly air, which he was beginning to feel as a slight breeze began to blow. The air had been almost still when they'd started their game and the cold had been invigorating rather than unpleasant, especially as they were keeping warm by running around. Now, though, goosebumps were springing up on his bare, grimy skin. Whose stupid idea had it been to play shirts and skins in late December, with the new year only a week away?
"They were just stories, though," he said, eyeing his shirt in the pile of shirts and wondering if he could put it back on. The others must be feeling cold as well.
"They weren't just stories!" said Peter, and there was a fervent gleam in his sandy brown eyes that brought the others gathering around, fascinated despite themselves. "They were true, all of them."
"How do you know?" asked Brian Rusk, the skinniest boy present. Behind him, bare chested boys began slipping back into their shirts as the cold wind gathered pace and even the shirt wearing children were wrapping their arms around their bodies and shivering.
"I just do," said Peter with such utterly certainty that every one of the other children believed it too. "He actually lived, way back before the Old Ones, and one day he's going to come back."
He looked around at the other children. His eyes met each of theirs in turn, and as he did so the other child nodded with acceptance. Peter was telling the truth, they knew. They could somehow sense it.
"He was always saying that people should be nice to each other," said Peter. "He would say that you should treat other people like you'd want them to treat you. There was a time, for instance, when the wife of a big toff was caught shagging another man. The Toff came right in and caught them both at it!" The other children laughed at the mental image. "The Toff were furious and wanted her hanged, but all the other big toffs wanted to know what Jesus thought they should do. They all thought he would say yes, hang her, but instead he said 'Let he who's never done anything wrong put the rope around her neck'. And of course they couldn't, 'cos everybody's done something wrong sometime in their lives, aven't they?"
"So what happened to her?" asked Brian Rusk.
"Well, they had to let her go, didn't they? And Jesus says to her 'get away now and don't do it again.'"
"And what did her husband think about that?" asked Timithy Bakerson.
"She didn't say, but I suppose he had to let her off too, 'cos Jesus was important back then and what he said goes. Ya see?"
The other children nodded, enraptured. The cold forgotten. "What else did she say?" asked Brian Rusk.
Peter began telling more of the stories that Jane had told him, and the children listened while, around them, the wind died down and a few perfect flakes of snow began to fall.