Omega (55 page)

'A disciplined Army is rather a different proposition from stray lunatics and bandits.'

'Of course it is. But there are thousands of these communities, scattered over nearly a quarter of a million square kilometres of Britain. The population is estimated at just over 500,000. To control them, I have fewer than 6000 men. One infantry brigade plus supporting arms. I'd have been happier with a division. So don't expect instant miracles.'

'You have been training Beehive civilians as military reserves. I'll authorize you to call up two thousand of them.'

'But good God, man . . .' General Mullard took a deep breath to control himself and then went on with deliberate calm: 'In the first place, there is a limit to the amount of effective military training one can give to civilians in a concrete rabbit-warren. They will have their uses but not as reliable assault troops in a guerilla situation. And in the
second place, what is Beehive f
or? To provide an effective administration which can start getting what's left of the country back on its feet as an organized State. To establish the King's peace...'

'Don't mention that man!' Harley snapped - his first show of real feeling since the interview began.

'All right, the State's peace. To provide services, a uniform system of law, meaningful currency - all of it very makeshift at first, of course, but beginning to work, and showing that it
can
work right from the start. The first days and weeks will be vital for establishing confidence in the Government.
Vital.
And if you give me two thousand of your five thousand skilled administrators, how are you going to manage
that?'

'I suggest, General Milliard, that you deal with your side of the problem and leave me to deal with mine. The administration has some aces up its sleeve of which you may be unaware.'

Exasperation made the General indiscreet. 'Such as the Black Mamba and her little brood?'

Now it was Harley's turn to control himself. After a moment he said icily: 'Do not underestimate them. They have demonstrated their effectiveness in ways of which you certainly
are
unaware.'

'Oh, I'm sure they have. But I'm just a soldier. I stick to the old motto - "Trust God and keep your powder dry, in reverse order of priority". God being on the side of the big battalions. How many battalions the Devil is worth, remains to be seen.'

Harley stood up from his chair, 'Since you have mentioned priorities, General, let us get ours clear. Beehive's first task is to
control
Britain - swiftly, completely and ruthlessly. Civilian resistance will not be tolerated and your orders to the Army will make that quite plain. Where necessary, for example, hostages will be taken to ensure obedience and shot if it is not forthcoming. You have stated the problem yourself: our forces are small and our territory large. To establish control, therefore, they must be feared. What you so vaguely describe as "confidence" can wait. Instil fear, General, and you will have played your part in Britain's rebirth. And my two thousand administrators will be better employed helping you to instil it. They can return to their desks once our hold on the country is secure. And now, if you will excuse me, I have work to do.'

The general left, not trusting himself to speak. Is Harley quite sane any longer? he wondered as he strode along the corridor. Does he see himself as a rehabilitator of the country or as Genghis Khan? . . . And yet there's a horrible logic in what he says. Too few men to impose discipline on seventy or eighty times their own number -what other means is left but tenor? It might have been different if over the past months Beehive had shown a few 'signs of being helpful to Surface, even if the daily BBC bulletins had given useful advice to communities struggling to survive, instead of conveying nothing but a sense of detached, quarantined omnipotence, biding its time.
...
It is too late now. I must play the hand I have been dealt.

Deeply depressed, General Milliard went to draft his Army's orders.

Harley had already forgotten him and was working his way through the morning's pile of documents that required his personal attention. Near the top was a note from Head of Intelligence, reporting that operative Gareth L. Underwood was missing, presumed killed, having failed to return from a mission in the Croydon area where gang warfare was rampant. Damned nuisance, that - Underwood had been a very useful courier between Beehive and Savernake Forest - he shouldn't have let the Section borrow him back for the Croydon mission. Now he'd have all the trouble of briefing a replacement.

Further down in the pile was a sealed envelope marked 'Personal'. Harley frowned, recognizing Brenda's handwriting. What now?
...
He slit open the envelope and took out the single sheet of private notepaper.

My dear Reggie, - I never thought I'd be writing you, or anyone, a suicide note. But here I am doing just that. I've got hold of a gun and I'm going up to Surface for a last look at the sky and the sun - and to save Beehive the embarrassment of disposing of my corpse. It's not just the ending of our long relationship that has brought me to this point, though it has, I will admit, contributed to my decision, because being involved with you helped to distract my attention from a problem that has since become intolerable. (Don't blame yourself for that - we were so careful from the start not to become dependent on each other.)

The real reason - which I hope I always managed to hide from you - is that almost from the beginning I suffered from Beehive claustrophobia. I used to dream about open skies and fields and rivers and wake up desolate. Waking up beside you, my dear, helped me to push these dreams aside. But in the past few weeks, they have become nightmares. I cannot suffer this troglodyte existence any longer. And since I am not equipped, by either temperament or toughness, to survive on Surface - nor in my present empty state particularly tempted to try - the quickest solution seems also the most desirable.

It's ironic, I suppose, that my access to the TSA room also gives me access to the list of secret Beehive exits! But don't hunt for my body. I shall walk it well away from, my escape hatch before I dispense with its services.

Good-bye, Reggie. Remember, if you think of me at all, the good times.

Brenda

Harley sat back, examining his reactions with some curiosity. Relief, yes; she was finished with, for him, and he preferred her out of his sight. Nostalgia? No; it was not an emotion he suffered from. Guilt? . . .
No!
He would not be blackmailed by those little barbed phrases - 'my present empty state', 'if you think of me at all' - revealing inserted among the sentences of pretended detachment. And she was no more claustrophobic than he was; of that he was certain. The whole letter stank of self-pity, of a determination to use her only remaining weapon - her own death - to punish him for rejecting her. Well, it wouldn't work. Let her rot, wherever she now lay.

He turned his attention to the next document on the pile.

Brenda's body ached in every muscle; she had not ridden a bicycle since she was a schoolgirl and even the fifty kilometres to which Gareth had considerately limited their daily target she had found heavy going at first. She had been driven, for the first two days, by an obsessive compulsion to get as far away from London as she could, as quickly as she could. Gareth, too had wanted to be away from the risk of any chance encounter with other agents who might know he was supposed to be going south not north-west. After that, she had pedalled doggedly, knowing that Gareth could have moved twice as fast and determined not to let him down. By the fifth day she was getting into the swing of it but net: body, so long deskbound, still protested.

Nevertheless she was happy. She realized that the Beehive claustrophobia which she had pretended in her 'suicide note' had been more real than she had thought. Aching and tired, she could still not keep a smile (no, a grin, a great big adolescent grin) off her face when she heard a bird sing, or resist calling to Gareth to stop for a moment when they crossed a river, or feel anything but pleasure at the smarting of her sunburnt forearms. The outside world - even fraught with danger and pockmarked with catastrophe -was a beautiful place.

Danger there was, though less than Brenda had expected. They both carried revolvers at their belts, and on their second day, during their mid-afternoon rest near Aylesbury, they had very nearly been surprised by four young men who tried to jump them and steal their weapons. Brenda had been overpowered, but had rolled on top of her gun long enough to keep her attacker from getting hold of it while Gareth knocked down one, evaded another and managed to draw his own gun and seize control of the situation. The attackers had withdrawn, shouting insults -Gareth had not needed to fire - and they mounted their bicycles and ridden away. Gareth had been furious with himself for such unprofessional carelessness, and Brenda only slightly less remorseful at the knowledge that she had been absorbing his attention at the time. After that, they had rested in places where they could not be approached unseen.

But all in all, Brenda was surprised and heartened to find how peaceable the decimated population was, how ready to be friendly once the first cautious mutual appraisals were over. Of their four nig
hts on the road so far, one had
been spent in a ruined and deserted house but three as guests of communities, the smallest being a family of six and the largest a village commune of more than fifty. One was already known to Gareth - he had a cousin in it, discovered by chance on an earlier mission - so there was no problem there. The other two they had approached with their hands clasped on top of their heads (this seemed to have become the recognized gesture for armed strangers seeking peaceful contact) and, after questioning, had been accepted. One had required them to hand over their guns till they left; the other had not even asked for them. At each p
lace, they had paid for their k
eep with gifts from their rucksacks and pannier bags. Gareth knew from experience what was both easily portable and generally acceptable: tea, instant coffee, dried milk, chocolate, ballpoint pens, antibiotics, packeted seeds, concise medical and veterinary handbooks (which had quickly disappeared from library and bookshop shelves), clinical thermometers, batteries for digital watches, safety pins and other small treasures. He had smiled when Brenda, during their secret planning of escape in the TSA room, had announced her intention of bringing some lipsticks, compact refills, eyeshadow, and tights, but had been surprised to find how eagerly some at least of their hostesses accepted them.

It had been the evening talk that had been balm to Brenda's soul, and which made her memories of Beehive's daily preoccupations increasingly unreal. Talk of the practical problems of keeping alive, well, fed and warm; of big or little triumphs of ingenuity or determination; of the success or frustration of experiments in division of labour and inter-community barter; even in one place (Brenda could hardly believe her ears) of that perennial problem of Christendom, the repair of the church roof. Talk of human relationships, as absorbing, tender, foolish, astonishing, obtuse, splendid, farcical or transfiguring as anywhere, and yet, to Brenda, a world away from the hot-house pettiness and bitchiness of the equivalent talk in Beehive. Some talk of possible futures, mostly diffident, as though the speakers were afraid of being thought too hopeful too soon. And yet Brenda sensed this undercurrent of hope, this tentative dawn of confidence that what had been achieved so far could be built on - even if the achievement had been no more than survival and a wary friendship with scattered neighbours.

-.'I don't know whether it's magnificent or pathetic,' she told Gareth as they rested by the roadside under Wenlock Edge. 'I love their sheer guts and their . . . well, sort of shy optimism - you know? But then I think of Reggie and
General Milliard - and the Angels of Lucifer - and 21 June, and I wonder just how much chance these people really have, once the bayon
ets and the bureaucrats move in
on them
.
You know what?
I've a feeling they'd do better
without any imposed government
at all.
Does that make me an anarchist?'

'You said "imposed" government. There could be other kinds, in due course. Would you object to that?'

'Not if it emerged
front
these people. Beehive's kind will be alien to them - to everything they've been through. It is already, in their minds
...
Look, except for the Bicester place where they didn't ask, we've been telling them frankly we're Beehive deserters. And it's always made them even more friendly, hasn't it? That shows what they think of "the government". . . . What's it done for them, since the quake? Nothing at all, except to stir up this damn witch
-
hunt thing - which seems to have died out, by the way.'

'Not everywhere, Brenda. I've seen places where it's very much alive, I'm afraid.'

'So I've been lucky with the three communities I've met. But I'd like to think they're fairly typical - or if they're not already, they soon will be.' She laughed. 'I must be a naive optimist
as well
as an anarchist. Only five days out of Beehive and I'm starting to believe in people again.'