The Fall

43

Tuesday night, 21^st December 1865

Countdown commenced at nine o’clock that Tuesday night.

Carswell had brought the mantelpiece clock from the farmhouse and stood it on a shelf in the barn where everyone could see it. Then in firm, bold letters on the wall above the clock he chalked:

Through the open doors of the barn Sam could see the falling snow. Beyond that the fields lay in darkness. A darkness that was so deep and dense it was nearly tangible.

And for all anyone knows, Sam thought bleakly, those barbarians might be moving this way again. To finish looting the town. And to clear out the outlying houses they missed on their first raid. Houses like this one.

Sam looked back at Carswell, who was striding round in his iridescent red waistcoat barking orders. In the cold air of the barn his breath came out in huge bursts of white vapour.

First, he ordered that as many oil lamps as possible should be brought into the barn. ‘This is where we will work night and day,’ he told them as the lamps were lit, filling the great void of the barn with a golden light. ‘This is where we’ll eat; this will be home until the conversion work is finished.’

Most of the people there were men and women who’d made the first time-jump back from 1999. Even so, they’d started to go native after living and working in Casterton for the last seven months of 1865. They looked at the cars, the ice-cream van, the tour bus, with surprised expressions, as if seeing them for the first time. Many were still bewildered by the plan outlined by Carswell. And there were more than a few objections.

A grey-haired man held up his hand. ‘Why can’t we just get out of town until all this is over?’

Carswell sighed, irritated by what he saw as flagrant stupidity. ‘Do I have to explain all over again? The roads are now blocked. We are marooned here as effectively as if we’d been washed up on a desert island.’

A woman shook her head. ‘But how can we attack these barbarians? From what we’ve heard, there were thousands of them.’

‘Probably no more than two thousand, maximum.’

‘But you were saying that we’d probably only have about two or three hundred people at most to fight them. That’s suicide.’

Sam saw Carswell’s hands clench as he fought down the anger growing inside of him. ‘Dear lady. In 480 BC, in Greece, a force of four hundred or so Spartan warriors successfully held back the entire Persian army of several hundred thousand men.’

‘Don’t patronise me, Mr Carswell.’ The woman had the bearing of a schoolteacher. ‘At Thermopylae the Spartans delayed the Persian invasion of Greece by several days. However, those Spartans were highly-trained fighting men, and even so they died to a man. So how in heaven’s name do you suppose a few hundred townsfolk from Casterton are going to wipe out all those barbarians when they come marching into town?’

‘I don’t suppose for a moment we will kill them all.’

‘Why on Earth sacrifice our own people in what must be a futile endeavour, then?’

‘Because,’ Carswell said, ‘my way is your only hope of survival. Also, I intend to employ the same strategy as the Spartans did at Thermopylae. You’ve no doubt seen the Hollywood version of this historical event? So you’ll recall the Spartans didn’t meet their enemy on open ground. They held them at a narrow pass between a cliff face and the sea where the ground was only a few yards wide. This meant the Persians couldn’t deploy their cavalry and they could send forward only a few hundred of their troops at a time – because space was so restricted. That’s why we’ll launch our attack between the cliffs and the river.’

It was Jud who raised his hand this time. ‘Just how do we know they’ll come through the pass down by the river?’

‘Oh, they will. Rolle has assured me of that. Because that’s where the time-gate that they have to use to reach this year 1865 lies.’

‘But if he’s wrong that means we will—’

‘Then we must rely on the hope that he won’t be wrong, Mr Campbell. Now, I must tell you we are wasting valuable time. We should have begun work on these vehicles an hour ago.’

‘But what gives you the right to be in charge?’ Sam asked. ‘We haven’t appointed you as our leader.’

‘No, but that’s part of the deal. This is my plan; therefore I’m in charge.’

‘But who made the deal?’

‘I did.’

Everyone turned to see the man who stood in the barn doorway. Snow speckled his hair and face white. His eyes blazed as bright as before.

‘Rolle?’

Rolle walked into the barn, looking round at the vehicles. His eyes grew wide.

‘Rolle, is it true? You brought Carswell here?’

Rolle nodded so sharply that snowflakes dropped from his beard. ‘It is true. There are no other options now. In the past I have fought the plague with penicillin. Now the Bluebeards are the plague. We must fight them with every weapon at our disposal. All I can do is beg all of you to follow Mr Carswell. Do everything he asks, and perhaps with God’s love we will come through the inferno unharmed.’

These were the most lucid words Sam had heard from Rolle. He watched as the man went to the bus and ran his fingers abstractedly over the metal sides. Already he seemed to be slipping into that interior dream-world of his. He hummed to himself while continuing to run his fingers over the metalwork as if he was drawing pictures only he could see.

Sam spoke under his breath to Jud. ‘What on Earth could Rolle give to a man like Carswell in exchange for his help?’

‘Probably what you always give when you do a deal with the devil.’

‘All right, people,’ Carswell said, clapping his hands. ‘You heard the man. My word is law. Get to work. Lee, I need you to go into town and bring the Reverend Thomas Hather to me – now. Jud, Sam. Strip the seats and the parcel shelves out of the bus. A task that will be made all the easier if you stop whispering at the back there. Oh, you’d best remove the windows from the bus first. Now, people, get busy.’

And that was how it started.

With a motley range of tools collected from the cars, Sam started slackening the nuts and bolts that held the bus seats to the floor. Jud started pulling the rubber trim from the windows until—

‘Mr Campbell, don’t waste time taking out the glass in one piece.’ Carswell’s voice came from the hayloft where he’d established a kind of combined observation platform and command post. ‘We don’t need the glass. Smash it out, man.’

‘Aye, aye, captain,’ Jud muttered under his breath. He picked up a hammer. ‘Cover your eyes.’ Then he walked along the aisle between the bus seats and smashed each window in turn. It sounded explosive in the confines of the barn. The toughened glass burst into thousands of white crystals, scattering across the floor.

Carswell called down to the schoolteacher who’d raised the objections earlier. ‘Get that broken glass swept up straight away, then find more lamps. Those men have got to be able to see what they’re doing.’

Sam returned to slackening the nuts with the wrench. They were all shiny and new, without a trace of rust, but they’d been tightened with a power tool. Each one took a hell of a lot of sweated curses to turn. Fortunately, once they had begun to turn, it was easy enough to unscrew them. After that, Sam simply heaved the whole seat out through the side of the bus where the glass had once been.

He paused to wipe the sweat from his eyes. In the cold air he noticed that his arms had actually begun to steam from the sheer body heat he was generating. All around the bus, men and women were working, each with their own special task allotted to them by Carswell. Now they knew what they were doing there was an air of determined industry. The air was full of the sounds of metal being hammered, saws cutting wood, planing, chopping, lines being tied. One of the men who Sam knew had been a garage mechanic in that faraway world of 1999 was cutting a hole right in the centre of the Range Rover’s roof. Then he pushed a hefty timber fence-post down into it until a good five feet of its length stuck straight up like the mast of a ship.

As Sam heaved yet another seat out through the glassless window he shook his head. Here they all were, busy as ants in a nest, but none of this activity made sense. He hadn’t a clue why the mechanic was fixing a timber mast onto the Range Rover and he didn’t know why Zita was running power cables from under the dashboard to what looked like stumpy timber wings that now jutted out from the car’s side.

All he did know for sure was that Carswell had told them they would transform the tour bus into some kind of battleship on wheels. But he still didn’t see how.

He glanced up at Carswell, who stood on the timber platform high above the barn floor. He was looking down, his hands on his hips, his feet apart, like some master architect overseeing the building of a great pyramid.

So the little workers who toiled below didn’t know the grand purpose behind their labour. That didn’t matter to Carswell. It didn’t matter a jot. He alone possessed the vision – the great, glorious, shining vision – of the finished machine.

Sam returned to a bolt that was more stubborn than the rest. His hands had already begun to blister despite the calluses they already bore from the ferry work; but he slipped the wrench over the securing nut, braced his foot against the seat and heaved.

As he did so he realised that he, too, had at last surrendered himself to Carswell’s authority.

The man might be a bastard. A high and mighty bastard at that, who had the conceit and arrogance of a Caesar, a Napoleon and a Mussolini all rolled into one.

But he was probably all that stood between Casterton and the barbarians.

At a little after two in the morning Sam Baker found himself walking down to the river.

It took a good 20 minutes to cross the snow-covered meadows to the water’s edge where Jud’s boat lay moored.

Sam walked with his head down against the stinging cascade of snowflakes. In one hand he carried a small lantern by its iron hoop handle. Unlike an electric torch that would have blazed a cone of white light through the blizzard, it threw little more than an orangey gleam onto the snow in front of him.

After five hours cranking that wrench to loosen off the seating bolts his hands felt hot enough to burst into flame. His knuckles bled where the wrench had slipped and his fists had rapped against the inner walls of the bus. Periodically he’d move the lantern from one hand to the other, then turn his free hand so that the palm was exposed to the falling snow. The icy cool of the flakes melting on the blistered skin was sheer bliss. There was something almost erotic in the sheer intensity of the sensation.

He paused for a moment to check where he was. In that snowfall it would be too easy to wander off from the buried path and lose himself in the woods.

There was no one about.

No houses.

The only sound was the faint crunch of snow beneath his boots.

He switched the lamp to his right hand.

As far as he could tell he was on the right track. The ground was running downhill now. He was probably only three or four minutes from the amphitheatre. The river and Jud’s boat would only be another 30 seconds or so walking time beyond that.

He walked faster.

He pulled the brim of his cap lower over his eyes to try to prevent the snow from actually striking his eyeballs.

And more than once he remembered that in this weather he could walk into a Bluebeard before he realised he was there.

What then?

A brief scuffle before Sam Baker’s blood stained the snow?

But there was a good enough reason for him to be here. In 1865 electric cables were only available for the telegraph system that sent Morse dashes and dots pulsing from town to town. They did have a bit of electric cable at the farm, but they needed more.

Jud had said there were a couple of spools of cable on the narrow boat, and as far as he knew it hadn’t been taken when a Bluebeard had looted it the day before.

The narrow boat itself was, of course, deserted. Jud and Dot had moved into the farmhouse until the danger was over.

One way or another, Sam thought grimly.

He’d left the people at the barn still working furiously. Already a strange clutch of vehicles were arising like mutant phoenixes from the carcasses of the original bus, van and cars that had come through the tear in time with them.

Years before, Sam had been given a book called Wacky Inventions. He’d loved to sit cross-legged on his bedroom floor and slowly turn the pages, looking at each of those bizarre inventions in turn.

Of course, they weren’t real inventions, not ones that would actually work, and you couldn’t seriously think of operating them without being dragged away to the nuthouse. They were cartoon-like drawings of machines that allowed you to combine two completely separate activities, such as a bath tub on wheels with an engine and a steering wheel that enabled you to go shopping while still taking a bath. That drawing showed a cheerful man sitting in bubbles up to his chest and scrubbing his back with a long-handled brush while selecting products from a supermarket shelf. Another favourite was a device that allowed you to read a book while taking the dog for a walk. A pole extended out from a headband, something like a unicorn horn. From a clip at the end hung your book, comfortably at eye level. (Illustration: an unfeasibly happy young woman walking her poodle through the park as she avidly read her novel.)

The vehicles in the barn had taken on the appearance of those ‘wacky inventions’. Most had stubby wings made of lightweight timber torn up from the farmhouse floors. (Did Carswell in some mad flight of fancy believe those machines would actually fly?) The only seat on the bus was the driver’s seat. When Sam had left the barn, Jud and a couple of other men had been building what looked to be a large box around the seat, using the stout wooden doors from the outbuildings to form the walls.

Carswell had said he’d explain his plans fully. But that, Sam was sure, would be in his own sweet time.

Sam reached the amphitheatre car park. Falling snow still blotted out the river, but he knew he was almost there now.

He quickened his pace.

He still felt all too vulnerable and alone out here. The gateway that the barbarians had used to enter 1865 was a mile or so upstream. Even though the Bluebeards probably wouldn’t attack again for another couple of days they might send out scouting patrols.

Sam crossed the car park. The snow there was flat, pristine.

When he reached the top of the amphitheatre he paused to look down into it.

Immediately he ducked back.

A dozen figures stood at the bottom.

Bluebeards.

That was his first thought.

Turning down the wick of the lamp until the speck of flame was so small it wouldn’t betray his position, he cautiously looked over the edge.

If this was the start of another attack, he’d have to run as hard as he could back to the farmhouse to warn everyone.

What then, he didn’t know.

He cautiously lifted his head over the rim of the amphitheatre and looked down.

Snow swirled into his face in tingling flakes.

He counted 11 figures. But they were not Bluebeards. He recognised Rolle first of all, unmistakable with his red hair and orange overalls. He seemed to be lecturing the others.

But who the hell were they?

They didn’t look like people from Casterton. And why on Earth would they travel all this way out of town, anyway?

He wiped the snowflakes from his eyes and looked again. All the figures were wrapped against the snowstorm. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he recognised one of them.

It was the long blonde hair fluttering this way and that in the wind that did it.

Nicole Wagner. It had to be. But what on Earth… Then he recalled Lee’s strange encounter with her in the wood. He knew that she was now a Liminal – Rolle’s word for those who lived in Limbo outside the normal flow of time. And that an animal had fused with her during the last time-jump.

So she’s been hiding out here all along, Sam told himself in wonder. Living like an outlaw.

And wasn’t that heavy-set man the one with a bird fused partly inside his face?

But what were they doing here?

Why were they talking to – or rather being lectured by – Rolle in the amphitheatre in this blizzard at the dead of night?

All this made as much sense to Sam as the weird and wondrous machines taking shape in the barn back at Perseverance Farm.

After Rolle wound up the meeting he stood there shaking hands with each of the Liminals as they left.

Sam left the lamp at the top of the slope and slithered down through the snow, staying well hidden behind a line of bushes.

Concealed there, he watched the heavily-clothed figures move off, following the river upstream.

He’d been right about Nicole. She walked by, her arm linked with that of a tall young man with blond hair. They leaned forward into the driving snow.

What with the darkness and the snowflakes Sam couldn’t make out much detail of the others’ faces, although strangely he heard what sounded like a hive of bees as one of the men passed him – his face was bluey-dark and Sam couldn’t be sure whether he was bearded or not.

Last of all came what Sam at first took to be a boy of around ten riding a cow or bullock.

He looked again, then turned quickly away, his stomach fluttering queasily.

The boy had become fused with the cow.

If anything, it resembled a centaur; the half-man, half-horse of Graeco-Roman myth. The top half of the human body rose up from the neck of the cow. The cow’s head was still there but turned crookedly to the left. The bones in the neck must have locked at an awkward angle, so the head always appeared to be straining back and slightly downwards, as if trying to look back at its own hind legs.

The boy, with a mass of curly hair that had itself taken on the black and white Friesian patterning of the cow, stared impassively forward.

Sam looked back as the line headed away into darkness. Soon all he could see was the swish of the cow’s tail.

A moment later that, too, was gone.

By the time Sam Baker returned with the cable to the barn at Perseverance Farm the Reverend Hather was there.

He stood in the pools of golden lamplight, his palms lightly pressed together as if in prayer, and looked around at the bustle of activity, his eyes wide.

Sam gripped the coils of cable under an arm as he pulled the barn door shut behind him to keep out the never-ending snowfall.

Hammers still clattered down against nails or sheet metal.

Sam handed the cable to Zita. ‘How goes it?’ he asked.

‘Bizarrely,’ she said. ‘Carswell’s now got us sawing the glass ends off light bulbs.’

‘Light bulbs?’

‘They’re from the bus’s luggage shelves that you removed earlier.’

Sam shook his head, bewildered, his face too frozen to show anything other than a blank expression.

‘You know the ones? The little lights set above the passengers’ heads that they could switch on to read, do word searches or whatever.’

‘I know the ones, but hasn’t Carswell even hinted why?’

‘No. Like God, Mr Carswell prefers to move in a mysterious way. Anyway, must carry on. He’ll go ballistic if he thinks I’m standing here chatting to you.’ She threaded her arm through the spools of cable to carry them back to the workbenches, where a couple of women were carefully cutting through the light bulbs with fine saws. ‘Oh, and he goes ballistic anyway if we break a filament. Thanks for the cable; we’ll talk at the next tea break.’ Shooting him a dazzling smile despite her obvious exhaustion, she returned to work.

As Sam pulled off his overcoat and stamped the snow from his boots, the Reverend Thomas Hather walked across the barn floor towards him, still looking around in amazement. He could have been a kid who had somehow stumbled into Santa’s workshop.

Sooty marks still mottled his face from where he’d helped pull the wounded and the dying from the burning houses.

‘Lee told me something of Mr Carswell’s plan.’ Thomas’s eyes gleamed behind the spectacles. ‘But I had no idea it would involve anything like this. What has he done to your vehicles?’

‘We’re converting them.’

‘But to what?’

‘The bus is to be some kind of battleship on wheels. As for the rest?’ Sam shrugged. ‘Search me.’

‘And he thinks he can really defeat the barbarians with these machines?’

‘No, not defeat them. But, hopefully, inflict enough casualties among them to dissuade them from ever coming back here again.’

‘But I still don’t understand where those men came from. Those Bluebeards.’

‘It’s not exactly a case of where they come from, Thomas, but when.’

‘You mean to say they have travelled through time like yourselves?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good Lord.’

‘Only they’ve come from the past, not the future.’

‘But why? Why attack a law-abiding town? What harm have we ever done to them?’

‘None. These Bluebeards are nothing but bandits. What they’re looking for are easy pickings. So they travel through time looking for a vulnerable period to raid.’

‘But why now? Why this moment in 1865?’

‘We were just unlucky. And, like I said, we are vulnerable and comparatively wealthy. They probably wouldn’t bother raiding this place five thousand years ago when there’d be nothing more than a couple of daub-and-wattle huts here. And they wouldn’t have raided the town 1,700 years ago when there was a Roman legion garrisoned here.’

‘I see your point; the Roman troops would have given them a sound thrashing.’

‘Got it in one, Thomas.’

‘Now Mr Carswell’s summoned me here, and I gather that, during the term of this emergency, he is in charge.’

‘You gather right. And if you ask me he’s getting a kick out of being our lord and master.’

‘Getting a kick?’ Thomas gave an understanding smile. ‘Oh, I see, you mean he’s rather enjoying himself?’

‘And that’s putting it mildly.’

‘But why in heaven does Carswell need me? I’m a man of God, not a fighting man.’

‘Well, Thomas, old buddy. Speak of the devil. I think we’re just about to find out: here he comes.’

Carswell had been dishing out instructions. Jud nodded and began cutting letter box-like slots out of the doors that formed the walls of the container around the driver’s seat in the bus.

Now, briskly rolling one of his plans into a tube, Carswell tucked it under one arm like a sergeant-major’s swagger stick and strolled across to join Sam and Thomas.

‘Ah, Reverend Hather. We’ve never met before.’ He held out his hand, which Thomas shook. ‘My name is Carswell. You’re well acquainted with Mr Baker here, I see.’

‘To all intents and purposes, the Reverend Hather is our landlord,’ Sam explained. ‘The farm here is church property. We took—’

‘Excellent,’ Carswell said, with no interest in the explanation whatsoever. ‘Now, to business, and why I asked you to come here to see me.’

On the shelf the clock chimed three a.m.

‘Yes, I – I did wonder,’ Thomas said in his shy, stammering way (a mannerism that Jimmy Stewart would make famous one day). ‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘Yes, Reverend, there is.’ Carswell gripped Thomas by the elbow and moved him away from the people working on the vehicles, as if he wished to share a secret with him. Sam, determined not to be excluded, followed.

Carswell said, ‘The truth of the matter is, Reverend, I need your help. Rather, we need your help.’

‘Help?’ Thomas looked back at the frenzy of activity behind him as something resembling a ship’s mast was hoisted above the roof of the bus. ‘How can I help? This machinery is beyond my understanding.’

‘No, the technical side of this operation is my province. But I understand that there is a military barracks outside town. I need you to persuade the commanding officer there to supply me with men and arms.’

Sam’s thumb scars prickled as a mixture of surprise and shock hit him. ‘A barracks? Why the hell didn’t they help us when the town was attacked?’

Thomas pushed the glasses up the bridge of his nose with a trembling finger. ‘Ah, they are some way out of town on the York road. First, they wouldn’t have been aware of the trouble until several hours later. Secondly, as far as I know, the barracks is deserted, with all men on Christmas leave.’

‘That’s not entirely correct,’ Carswell said. ‘Most of the troops are on leave, true. However, there are still some 40 cavalrymen of the Queen’s Own Lancers on station and some 70 or so foot soldiers of the Yorkshire Light Infantry.’

‘Recent recruits still undergoing training, I understand, which means—’

‘Which means the makings of a fighting force. Therefore, Reverend, at first light you will visit the barracks, taking a delegation of senior townsfolk with you – a solicitor, a magistrate… I understand Mayor Woodhouse was killed in the attack last night, which is unfortunate. Nevertheless, if you can take enough people of high civic standing with you, you will be able to convince the commander we need his men to give our fighting force backbone.’

Thomas stammered. ‘Really, I – I don’t know, it’s quite a – a—’

‘Reverend Hather, our salvation here depends on you being persuasive enough.’

‘But—’

‘And you will also need to persuade the townspeople of Casterton to accept me as their leader for the duration of this emergency. I repeat, I am their only salvation.’

‘Their physical salvation, maybe, Mr Carswell. As for their spiritual salvation, that’s in another – and altogether mightier – pair of hands entirely.’

Sam recognised what the clergyman had seen. Carswell wasn’t only taking charge. He saw himself in a Messianic role as saviour of the town. The man’s egotism knew no bounds.

Meanwhile, Carswell began to describe his plans in more detail.

‘See the bus?’ he said. Thomas watched as Jud and half a dozen other men clambered over it, securing with ropes the mast structure that protruded through the roof. ‘Well, that will be our gunship on wheels. I’m going to fix four cannon to where the seats once where. Two at each side. They will fire straight out through the windows.’

‘You mean something like the pirate ships of old where the cannon fired directly out from the flanks?’

‘If you like. Fortunately, the artillery pieces of today are breech-loaders so it will increase the rate of fire.’

Sam jumped in. ‘And I take it those extensions at the sides of the bus and the Range Rover aren’t actually wings?’

‘No, although they do resemble wings, don’t they, Sam old boy? Why, you didn’t think I believed these vehicles would actually fly, did you?’

Sam shook his head and feigned a smile.

Carswell gave a cold laugh. ‘No, we won’t be flying into the attack against the barbarians, even though it is a charming idea. No, Mr Baker, those wing-like protrusions will carry the rocket pods.’

‘You mean we’re actually going to fire rockets from them?’

‘Of course. Rockets have been used by the British army since they were badly mauled by them in India in 1799. Naturally, they developed their own war rocket. One Sir William Congreve successfully developed a missile that had an explosive warhead and a range of several thousand yards.’

‘But they were something like firework rockets, weren’t they? Lit by a match? How do you propose to fire them from rocket tubes outside the bus?’

‘Ah, I’ll give you all a practical demonstration of that in a little while. But now you have an idea of how our gunship on wheels will actually work. The artillery guns mounted inside will deliver a heavyweight broadside with their 18-pound shells. Firing forward from the wing-assemblies – for want of a better description – will be 16 three-inch-diameter rockets, tipped with high-explosive warheads. The Range Rover will carry eight rockets. I also plan to pack the bus to the gunwales with soldiers wielding rifles and throwing grenades. Devastating firepower, hmm, gentleman?’

Sam rubbed his jaw. ‘But once the rockets are fired aren’t we going to have to withdraw to a safe place to reload?’

‘Yes, absolutely. We hit the barbarians hard as they come through the narrow pass between the cliff face and the river. Then we withdraw, reload, attack again. Those barbarian Bluebeards won’t know what hit them.’

‘I see,’ Thomas said, ‘that you have it all thought out.’

As Carswell painted a verbal picture of victory over the Bluebeards, more and more people stopped work to listen to him.

‘Now for a practical demonstration,’ he said. ‘Sam, you’re quite right. The rockets are little more than larger versions of the sort of firework rockets used by you on 4^th July and here in Britain on Guy Fawkes Night: the fuses are normally lit by a match. That won’t be possible in the field. These rockets must actually be fired when the bus is moving forward, so…’ He waved his hand over a workbench on which was a metal dish. From the dish a pair of wires trailed to a battery. One of the wires lay loose on the workbench, still awaiting connection to its terminal.

‘Some people have been questioning why I have asked them to remove the glass casing from light bulbs. Well, here’s the reason.’ People formed a semicircle in front of the bench like students watching their lecturer perform an experiment.

Carswell smiled, enjoying the moment.

‘The light bulb makes light when an electric current is passed through a fine filament, causing it to glow white-hot. Reverend Hather, I take it you won’t be familiar with light bulbs since they won’t be invented for several more decades.’

Again the patronising tone, but Thomas merely gave a diplomatic nod.

Carswell continued, ‘Expressed simply, my idea is to remove the glass case from around the filament and insert the remainder of the bulb into the fuse end of the rocket with a small quantity of gunpowder. A cable connected to the bus’s battery via a switching arrangement on the bus itself runs out to the rocket. When the switch is pressed the electric current turns the filament incandescent, which in turn ignites the gunpowder, which in turn ignites the rocket propellant. A second later the rocket screeches from its firing tube to the target.’

There was an appreciative murmur from some parts of Carswell’s audience; already they were falling for the image of saviour-genius the man was projecting.

‘Now pay attention, please,’ Carswell said, waving his hand above the workbench. ‘Here is a battery. The wires are connected to one of the bulbs with the glass removed. I have placed the bulb into a small quantity of gunpowder in the metal dish. See what happens when I connect the wire to the battery terminal and send a charge of electricity down into the bulb’s filament.’

Carswell picked up the wire and brought the end into contact with the battery terminal.

People leaned forward to watch what happened in the bowl. The Reverend Thomas Hather shielded his eyes against the expected flash.

Someone put their hands over their ears.

Nothing happened.

Carswell brushed the bare end of the wire against the terminal. There was a clicking sound and Sam clearly saw the blue-white spark of the contact.

But no flash and no puff of smoke from the metal dish.

‘Let’s see, there must be some… ahm…’ Carswell lifted the bulb assembly from the bowl, blew it, checked that the wires were connected, then rested it on the small mound of gunpowder and brushed the wire against the battery contact again.

And again nothing happened.

Sam expected Carswell to make some excuse about a loose connection or a lack of charge in the battery, but suddenly he locked up as if every muscle in his body had gone into spasm. His face turned white, a sweaty dangerous-looking white; his eyes locked onto the dish of gunpowder with his light-bulb rocket trigger; for all the world he could have been a snake, its eyes transfixing a victim, ready to strike.

The silence became uncomfortable.

At last Jud cleared his throat. ‘Perhaps one of the wires inside the casing has cracked?’

Carswell didn’t appear to hear. The only thing that existed in his universe right now was the light bulb that had treacherously betrayed his great scheme. Veins stood out in his temples and neck, a tracery of purple cables beneath his skin that seemed to pulsate with pure boiling rage.

Without a word he marched out of the doorway into the yard.

A moment later someone said, ‘Well, they do say there’s a thin line between genius and madness.’

That was enough to break the tension. A couple of women even laughed, but it was high and scared-sounding. People drifted away to sit around the barn. No-one resumed their work.

‘What now?’ Jud asked. ‘Carry on without him?’

‘Or forget the whole stupid thing,’ a man said. ‘We could still just get out of town until all this is over.’

‘Through those blocked roads?’

‘Why not?’

‘One reason why not is that we’d have to leave the old, the very young and the sick. behind. They’d never make it through the hills on foot. It’s like the Arctic out there.’

‘Well, what’s the alternative?’

‘There’s only one course of action,’ Thomas said thoughtfully, while gazing at the open door through which Carswell had exited. ‘Someone has to go to Mr Carswell, eat humble pie, and persuade him to come back so he can complete what he started.’

Sam looked at Thomas. ‘You think Carswell’s plan will work?’

A grey-haired man laughed. ‘Did you see the man? He’s off his head.’

Thomas said, ‘There’s a saying: Come the hour, come the man.’

‘You have to admit he’s a bit… brittle.’

‘You are right, of course.’ Thomas returned to the workbench and experimentally flexed one of the cables that connected the battery terminal with Carswell’s impromptu rocket triggers. ‘But although my name might be Thomas, I am no doubter. I believe that, when Man is in crisis, the Lord God does send help. Even if at times it is in a perplexing form.’ He picked up the loose cable and looked at it thoughtfully for a moment. ‘And I do believe that, however difficult and challenging Mr Carswell’s personality might be, he is heaven-sent.’

‘Heaven-sent?’

Thomas lightly brushed the frayed end of the wire against the terminal. Instantly there was a loud pffft. With a brilliant flash, a perfect smoke ring rose from the bowl towards the ceiling of the barn.

‘You were right, Jud,’ Thomas said. ‘The wire was cracked in the casing, after all.’

Jud gave a wry smile. ‘Come on, Sam, it’s time we cultivated an appetite for humble pie.’