Journeyman: The Force of the Gods: Part I (12 page)

Nothing here either. Must be something though or why would we be here?

He replaced his phone in his pocket and drained the last filthy dregs of his coffee, striding over to the bin. As he dropped the empty cup in to join the rest of the trash his phone beeped again.

Even the Guild makes mistakes. E.

Of course it does. But while Peter agreed that maybe their operation might have been a bit of a waste of time so far, he still had a strong feeling it wasn’t going to have been a
complete
waste of time. He didn’t send another reply, however.

That evening, once he had arrived safely at home, he knew he wasn’t in any danger of being disturbed. The smallest chance remained that one of the other magicians who had been detailed to this operation in Blackpool might either phone him or text him, but in reality that chance was remote enough as to be considered, to all intents and purposes, negligible.

He had a plan for this evening, which would involve the casting of a long, rather complex spell of his own creation. Creating one’s own spells, Peter had learned early on, was simpler than any pathete or beginning magician would have considered. It was very much like creating pieces of computer code: once a person knew the basic elements of what could be used to make spells, that person would be able to create their own spells pretty much on the fly. Canned, pre-created spells were generally only used either where creating the spell afresh would have involved too much effort, or else in the opposite case where the spell was so simple that it would have been a waste of mental energy to invest that energy in reverse-engineering the effects into its component steps.

This particular spell was one Peter hoped would enable him to revisit what he had seen on the stone. He wanted to have a chance to transcribe the markings that had been made on it, with a view to finding out what they were and what they meant. There was a potential advantage in being where he was, as opposed to in his own home at the Guild: he could use the Internet here to research recent discoveries concerning early writing systems and things like that, which went some way toward making up for him not having access to the Guild’s library for all this time.

Everything was ready: all the preparations for the spell had been made, mostly by way of meditations which he had been engaging in during the evenings over the last two weeks. The spell needed an incredibly clear mind to cast; to drag information out of his mind would require a forensic level of clarity concerning the information he was attempting to access.

The light was off, and he sat down cross-legged on the floor, facing the door. On the floor in front of him was a pencil and a ream of blank copier paper. He held his two-stick in his hands; his wand wouldn’t have been able to perform a spell of this nature, or at least not to a satisfactory level of accuracy and fineness.

First, there were small spells which would have been akin to subroutines. Spells he had created to enable him to remain in a calm state of mind. Spells to tune his senses in to his memory instead of the organs they were usually attached to. Failsafe spells to return his senses to his organs after an hour from the start of the main spell, or else at the sound of his phone ringing or beeping – in case another member of this operation needed to call him. Spells to improve his short- and long-term memories, in case there was anything he didn’t manage to get down onto the paper while the spell was in effect: that way he would still be able to recall it without needing to repeat this experience.

It took half an hour to perform the preparatory spells, and now all that was left was the main spell, the crescendo to which he had been building up. He wove it slowly and carefully, his fingers brushing against his bare scalp as he circled his head with the weaving two-stick. Images from long ago flashed through his vision: his first Christmas, his first day of school, the day he was caught stealing chewing gum from a corner shop which hadn’t been there in twenty-odd years, his last day of primary school, his first kiss… everything rushed by, just the way people say it does when one is about to die, until he got to the moment he had been aiming for.

It was all there, in ultra-high-definition. The flickering light, the fish-eye lens effect of the tangible, viscous energy in the room. His eyes didn’t need to adjust, because he wasn’t seeing through them. He was reliving the memory.

Frantically, by touch alone, Peter scribbled down everything he could see as his memory-self walked slowly around the stone. He was grateful, now, that he had walked around it.

There was a zen-like state of mingled calmness and frenzy in Peter’s mind as he deposited graphite on paper, and when the spell snapped itself off, it left him sitting there, on the floor. It brought about a non-magical reliving of a memory he carried from many years before: when the BBC had used to turn off their television transmissions, leaving Test Card J and Teletext displaying alternately on the receivers. Bee-bee-bee-bee-BEEP. Those were the days.

He slowly stood up and turned the light back on. Everything was down on paper, slightly smudged by his rapidly-moving hand, but all there. He laughed aloud and punched the air. It had worked.

Just then, his phone beeped. Right on cue. It was Eric again.

P. Everyone wondering what best course of action is. E.

So was Peter, if he was honest. He was sure, though, that there must have been something here if, after six months, the people who had been out on the operations which had built up to this one had had their suspicions. He thought for a moment, bringing himself back into the right mental state, and then tapped his reply.

Another month? Something may crop up. Also 3 months is a better chance than 2?

It was a good ten minutes before his phone beeped again, and during that time, Peter went into his small kitchen and made himself a mug of disgusting instant coffee. He winced, but grudgingly supposed that it was better than nothing. As he leaned on the counter and sipped at it, his phone beeped again.

Think you’re right. Everyone agrees. Another month. KBO. E.

The Churchill quote made him smile, and reminded him that the Guild mostly consisted of people who were of the same broad type as himself.

He had to admit, he was concerned about whether all their time here was going to waste or not. It seemed they were getting no closer to any sort of answer concerning the existence of this Werosaian base, and he had been beginning to get frustrated with the situation: that was a major reason why he had decided to continue his own research into early writing and his attempts to work out what the hell was scrawled all over that stone.

There wasn’t anything more he could do this evening, though. It was getting late, and he needed to up for work in the morning. It seemed a little like admitting defeat, but after what he had done this evening, he was mentally exhausted, and for all coffee has always been known to be a stimulant, all it was succeeding in doing was warming him up, which when combined with the tiredness he was already feeling, made him want to simply fall asleep, leaning on the kitchen counter.

The next day at work was a quiet one. They were usually rather quiet, but some days there was nothing to do but sit there – it was all down to whether maintenance or upgrades needed performing on the computer network, and whether someone had managed to break one of the computers. This was one of those days when there was no maintenance to do and no broken computers to fix, and so nothing to do in the office other than to pass time until either someone did break a computer or else five o’clock came.

It just happened, though, that Peter had something he could do while he was waiting for something to happen at the college: he had his research to work at. He felt no guilt at doing this: on days where there wasn’t anything to do, often the other technicians there would read, or play network matches of games like
Unreal Tournament
. It was normal and, as long as you were quiet about it, perfectly acceptable.

Thus, for most of that day, Peter was reading on various websites about palaeography, learning about the evolutions of a number of writing systems throughout the world, both extant and extinct. It was all fascinating, and not merely because of its link to what Peter was trying to find out. These ancient glyphs had a genuinely interesting appearance, and it made him want to learn more and more about them, and maybe even learn how to read and write using them, just for the fun of it. He had no doubt that he could; he had once learned how to read and write a simplified flavour of Egyptian hieroglyphs when he had been at primary school, along with the rest of his year.

There wasn’t anything here, however, that
quite
resembled what had been inscribed on the stone under the Guild. The closest that anything came to that was a precursor to the Latin alphabet, variously called Old Italic and Etruscan. It had the same broad appearance as some of the writing on the stone but there were differences that were big enough that he imagined transcribing it would involve a certain measure of imagination. All part of the fun.

Eventually, he started finding his way from writing toward cave paintings and similar early kinds of art, which often seemed to describe events – as though they were writing. Of these, caves at Font-de-Gaume looked promising, as did Rouffignac and Pech Merle. There were others too, but those three caves seemed, according to the Internet at least, to be among the few most well-known and well-documented occurrences of cave paintings in Europe. Not that he was planning – or even able – to go and see them.

Peter had been studying the markings he had transcribed for almost the whole month, and now he knew them pretty intimately. But he was no closer, really, to understanding what they were, or what they meant. His palaeographic research had forked into two directions: the one avenue being continued study into early writing systems and the possibility of finding out if there were any associated languages with an extant corpus from which the actual language could be extrapolated; the second avenue being cave paintings, some of which – like those he had been looking at the most – included symbols and glyphs which almost resembled writing.

He was still looking, in a careful and subtle way, for anything which might link anyone from the college to Werosain or the Fraud’s Army, but there wasn’t anything at all for him to find. As a matter of fact, it had become difficult to motivate himself to keep looking of late, though he knew he had to try: at the end of the day, if there was a large Werosaian base, or even a small one, nearby, that could potentially put the entire world at risk. It
had
to be found. But it felt to him like it was either an insoluble problem, or else he was simply looking in the wrong place.

For the most part, what this added up to was that he was having to spend a lot of his time making a conscious effort to do what he was there for, rather than give in and spend all his time trying to solve the problems he had created for himself. With that and being back at the old college campus again, it felt just as it had when he had been a student all those years before.

But, really, there was nothing for him to find. His boss didn’t have anything about him at all that was out of the ordinary, or even particularly unpleasant. In fact, Peter had come to this conclusion not long after starting to work at the college, and had been so intent on finding
something
that was out-of-place that he had ended up working the same spells on everyone with whom he was in regular contact. Again, nothing. It was infuriating.

So his mind invariably ended up working on the problem which was more interesting to him. The problem which, even if it did turn out to be insoluble, would involve Peter learning a lot, and that was a far more attractive situation.

It was ten past six, Friday afternoon. He had stayed the extra ten minutes after work just in case something happened. He had arranged it: this would be his last day. Of course, the college didn’t know the real reason for this was that he hadn’t found what he was looking for, but he did let them know that it had been interesting to work there, and that he had enjoyed it. It was true, he had enjoyed being there – but again, the reason for this wasn’t anything like what they at the college would have thought, which was likely to have been something about the challenge of doing something different, the varying pace of the workload and the like. Sure, there was an element of the challenge of doing something different, but for the most part the challenge didn’t even come into it. Peter had enjoyed it merely because it was so vastly different to what he had been doing with the Guild for the previous five years. Hell, only around a year ago he had been stuck on an island with only himself and a bamboo flute for company.

It hadn’t escaped him, either, that the life he had been living back here in Blackpool for the last three months had been pretty much all he had ever wanted, all he felt he deserved, when he had finished doing his own degree here. There was no “entitlement,” as people called it, borne of the intellectual snobbery of the academic, not like there was perceived in a lot of other people. No, all he had wanted was a chance, an opening through which he could enter the world and be allowed to make an effort to make his own living and, dare he have thought it, his own fortune.

He got back to his flat for seven o’clock. There wasn’t much he needed to pack, he had mostly been storing his clothes in his suitcase in case he needed to make a quick escape. His satchel was hung at the end of his bed; he went and fetched it, hanging it over his shoulder.

Was there anything else? He couldn’t think of anything else that needed packing, or attending to. His suitcase was mostly packed already, his clothes were clean, his satchel on his shoulder. His phone was charged and had fresh credit in it, just in case he needed to contact any of the other Guild members while in transit – or they needed to contact him.