'I don't intend to delay you, HG,' I said. 'If you are hurrying home, I certainly understand-'

'Yes, well.'

We had temporarily ceased our progress and were facing out across the station yard, where horse cabriolets and motor taxis were in compet.i.tion for our business. There was always a noisy scramble outside London's main termini, the horses which drew the Hansom cabs restive and alarmed by having to wait in close contact with the noisy and smelly motor taxis. I glimpsed the familiar sight of London's traffic, moving slowly out of Trafalgar Square and into the Strand, and the pavements crammed with pedestrians. The indescribable but unequalled smell of London's streets: that unmistakable blend of coal smoke, horse droppings, dust, sweat, food, petrol engines. Queen Eleanor's famous cross rose high above us.

Our two porters had come to a halt a short distance beyond us, waiting for our decisions about which of the taxis we wished to hire.

'I'm glad to be home,' I said.

'I echo that,' HG replied, glancing around at the welcome chaos of our capital city. 'Did you reach the Western Front?'

'Yes. And you?'

Briefly, the look of irritation I had seen as we met flickered across his face again.

'That is what I was there to do,' he said. 'But having finished, or at least having been informed in no uncertain terms that I had finished, I took a quick look-around at the sector I was in and then came home. In short, I was told to push off, and none too politely, either.'

'That's more or less what happened to me.'

'You don't surprise me. It was not what I hoped for, nor even expected. So there is no call for a magician in the trenches, then?'

'Sadly not.'

'You have come away empty-handed,' he said.

'I am simply glad to be out of it, and on my way home. The same for you, I suppose?'

'Well, because of past experiences, I always make sure that I travel with more than one commission. This time I had two, or three if you count my temporary induction into the British Army.'

'You told me about your system of communication,' I said.

HG glanced around us in a warning sort of way and in particular towards our two porters, who were it not for the constant hubbub of noise from the yard and the street would certainly have been within earshot.

'You and I know nothing of that,' he said, and the frown was back, creasing his high forehead. 'Military secret.'

'What do you mean?'

'I mean no one would tell me anything about it. Not if it had been tried out, not even if they had built the rig. The chap a.s.signed to me pretended he had heard nothing about it, and yet he was the officer named in my orders.' HG was leaning towards me, a fierce expression on his face, and his words came quietly but insistently. 'There was I, inventor of the blessed thing, given the ear of no less a personage than Mr Churchill, and no one in the trenches was prepared to say anything about it. The whole business was fishy, if you ask me. I went as far up the ranks as I could, but none of those officers would say anything to me either. Except to give me strong advice to catch the next train home and not mention anything to anybody at any time.'

'Did you see any evidence of it?'

'That's what I found fishy. The whole front is a mess of mud and cables and holes and dumps of things. The Germans don't help by sending over artillery sh.e.l.ls every five minutes, blowing everything up and making an even bigger mess. It's impossible to make sense of what's going on until you've been there a while. But right in the middle of it I noticed an elevated wire strung out on big strong poles, and it looked close to the device I had drawn and sent in. It was still clean, as if it had been there only a few days. But when I asked what it was the chap told me it was a kind of field telephone, or a warning cable, or something like that.'

'So nothing was being carried on it?'

'Not a d.a.m.ned thing.'

'I thought you had been invited out to the front to inspect it and make recommendations.'

'That is what I thought too,' said H. G. Wells. 'But either some Higher Up has decided my idea was not worth the sc.r.a.p of paper on which I drew it, or they have sold it to the Germans, or, well . . . I am furious with them. I think the truth is that when they saw me they decided not to trust me. Me! My idea, my plan.'

'I'm really sorry to hear this,' I said.

'You're right. I should not say these things. Nor even think them. I have no right to question the leaders of those unfortunate young men in the trenches.'

The expression of despair was slow to leave his face, though. Looking at him I felt that his experiences and mine had mirrored each other.

'You said you had more than one commission,' I said.

'I'm a writer, Mr Trent. It's hard enough making a steady income, even for one such as myself, who has had a few popular successes in the past. And in time of war the climate is even tougher for writers. So these days I cannot afford to go anywhere unless I first secure an agreement from a newspaper, or sometimes a publisher. This time I was travelling as an ex officio representative of the Daily Mail, and my experiences will now amount to an Opinion. I told you some people think I'm a meddler, but in fact I am much sought for my Opinions. They sometimes amount to the same thing. So, I shall write this new Opinion for the many hundreds of thousands of intelligent readers of that organ, and then, I dare say, I shall later transfer that Opinion to the pages of a new book. There I shall find another audience. In the process I will no doubt offer a Suggestion or two. That is my only true const.i.tuency: the interest and common sense of the ordinary man or woman. If my lifesaving idea has no influence on the military or their political bosses, and I am forbidden to discuss it between now and the end of time, at least I hold a strong Opinion on everything else I have seen. I also have the means to express it, and a public who will benefit from reading about it. That is anyway my belief and intention.'

I nodded dumbly. I was of course one of those many readers who would welcome anything he could write that would enlighten us about the war. In spite of my brief visit to la rue des betes I was feeling less informed about the war than I had been before I left home.

While HG and I continued to talk on the side of the station yard, many other pa.s.sengers were pushing past us. Our porters were still waiting, but they had let go the handles of their trolleys and were standing together, smoking cigarettes.

'What about you, Tommy?' HG said. 'Do you feel as I do now, that this war is unwinnable? That the just cause we thought we had at the beginning has already been lost?'

'I was most struck by the quality of the men I met in France. They are a generation who are doomed, which they know full well but they go on with it. Their bravery leaves me speechless. My experience of the fighting was minimal. Not even a skirmish or a dogfight, in the words of one of the people I met. Even so, I have been pitched into gloom by the whole experience. The war is a monstrosity!'

I knew my words probably sounded over-excited, but they poured out before I could think how they might sound.

'I believe we both travelled to France bearing ideas,' HG said. 'We have been disillusioned about the worth of those ideas. War is no place for ideas. It is about armies, fighting, determination and gallantry. Would that sum it up for you?'

'Yes.'

'Then that adds to the horror. When the imagination dies, so does hope.'

We fell into silence then, avoiding each other's eyes. HG was staring down at the stone pavement.

'Did you see anything of the trenches?' he said suddenly.

'No I saw hardly anything. I was at an airfield, a way back from the line.'

'Just as well, perhaps. Enough, though?'

'Enough, and more,' I confirmed.

HG stuck out his hand and we shook again. This time our gaze met. Those memorable blue eyes, that open expression!

'It seems we have both come home with an Opinion. I at least have somewhere I might express mine. I presume you do not.'

'No,' I said.

'I shall think of you as I write.'

We parted then, our porters hauling their trolleys to the cab rank. H. G. Wells took the first of the motorized taxis, while I selected one of the Hansoms. We drove off into the London streets, never again to meet.

PART 3.

Warne's Farm

1.

THE TEACHER.

Tibor Tarent was standing outside the Mebsher, the great armoured bulk high and dark beside him, the turbine idling but still screeching and the exhaust gases washing across the long gra.s.ses, battering them into constantly shifting patterns. The vehicle had halted on the side of a bracken-covered hillock. It stood at an angle, the right side higher than the left, which made clambering down to the ground without falling more a matter of luck than judgement.

While he protected his cameras from knocking against the sides of the metal stairs, Tarent gashed the heel of his hand on one of the sharply jutting catches that held the hydraulically operated door to the sh.e.l.l of the main hull. Pressing the wound to his mouth, Tarent looked to see what it was that had snagged him it was not the catch itself, but part of the metal cover of one of the clasps which had been torn back somehow, with a jagged edge curling nastily down.

Beset by a bl.u.s.tering wind charged with tiny particles of ice, he had to stand by and watch as the co-driver Ibrahim struggled to find and extract his bag from the s.p.a.ce beneath the pa.s.senger compartment. The soldier was working hard against the steep gradient inside the vehicle, caused by the angle at which the Mebsher had come to rest.

Finally the bag was found and Ibrahim placed it outside on the uneven ground. He made what looked to Tarent like a perfunctory semi-military salute, but said correctly and courteously enough, 'Inshallah, Mr Tarent.'

'Upon you too be peace,' he replied, with the automatic response.

The crewman operated the door mechanism and they both watched as the integrated steps folded up and out of sight, and the door swung down into place. Tarent noticed that the jagged piece was forced in by the weight of the door, but after a moment it jerked back out. He wondered whether he should point it out to the crewman but he already knew from experience of the Mebshers that the driving crew were normally not willing to service or repair the vehicles.

Ibrahim turned to clamber back towards the drive compartment.

Tarent said, 'Just a minute, Ibrahim. Where is the place I'm supposed to be going?'

'You have global positioning software on your smartphone?'

'Yes.'

'Then the coordinates will already be filed.'

'But which direction is it from here?'

'Along this ridge,' the driver said, gesturing with his hand. There was a trace of an old footpath leading away. 'Parts of it are too narrow for this vehicle. You'll have to walk the rest of the way. Sorry about that but it's not far. This is as close to the place as we could take you, and this diversion means we are now running late.'

'All right.'

Ibrahim moved back towards the drive compartment. Tarent knew that it would take about two minutes for the crew to run through the c.o.c.kpit checklist, ensuring all systems were running, then power up again to drive speed. Tarent saw it as two more minutes in which he might still change his mind.

He looked around at the terrain where the Mebsher had halted. There was little or no shelter where he was standing: the vehicle had halted close to the crest of a ridge, beneath which a stretch of cultivated land spread out, undulating intermittently. There were few hedges and almost no trees. Lightly dressed because of the heating inside the Mebsher pa.s.senger compartment, and not having been given enough time to put on his outer clothing, Tarent now felt chilled and exposed. He found the coat where he last placed it, between the handles of his case, and he struggled quickly to put it on. The whining of the Mebsher turbine remained at idling speed, showing that the c.o.c.kpit checks were still not complete.

That afternoon, as they travelled inside the Mebsher, Flo had quietly pa.s.sed him a second handwritten note. It came as almost as much of a surprise as the first, the day before. He had not seen her alone again after their liaison at Long Sutton, not even at breakfast in the small canteen. She was already seated in the Mebsher when he boarded, apparently deep in the study of her laptop, speaking quietly into a headset. She repeatedly tapped the area behind her ear, a code of intermittent but systematic beats, the fingers touching the sensor area at different angles. Tarent tried several times to make eye contact with her, but failed. After that, he slowly reverted to the state of uncomfortable introspection that had been with him the day before.

Then the handwritten note: Change your plans? Skip Warne's Farm and come with me. I can tell you something about your wife.

The paper had been torn from some kind of official doc.u.ment, because in the top corner there was a small segment of an embossed seal. All that was legible was the end of an internet or electronic address: fice.gov.eng.irgb He thought for a few moments, staring once more at the back of her head. What could she tell him now about Melanie that she had not been able to tell him the evening before? Would this information explain the activity that was going to and fro in her digital implant? But for him the only thing that would matter now about Melanie would be the news that she had been found alive and well. His loss of her was still a poignant pain. He knew beyond doubt that she was dead. a.s.suming Flo had some new information, it could only be some extra detail about the way she was killed, or something about the people or group who had killed her. Tarent was not sure he wanted or needed any more of that kind of information.

Maybe Annie and Gordon Roscoe would welcome more facts about what happened to their daughter, but he was still too much in a state of torpid confusion: regrets, guilt, missing her, wanting her, remembering the best of her, loving her, wishing they had not argued so violently that last day together, feeling inadequate. Above all guilt and love intermingled, because he was certain she would not have left the comparative safety of the field hospital compound if had not been for him. Flo could hardly tell him anything more about that.

Once he had agreed to be repatriated from the Anatolian base by the OOR, he had yielded to the temptation to allow other people to make decisions for him. There was apparently an itinerary, a plan someone had worked out, a structure: the swift return to IRGB, the private meeting with Melanie's parents, then a debriefing session at this place called Warne's Farm, and finally he would be turned free to live his life once more.

What that would entail was something Tarent did not fully know and so far had barely had a chance to think about: their flat in south-east London, Melanie's property and personal possessions to be sorted out. At least she had made a will. Then afterwards, what? He could resume his freelance career, perhaps travel across to North America again, find some work there?

It did not feel like much but it had the attractions of a plan, of a practical way forward, even if the prospects for it were largely unknown. But also largely unknown was the alternative: Flo wanted him with her. There was no plan, no itinerary for that.

After a few minutes he wrote an answer on the back of the slip of paper: Still thinking about it. I want to be with you. But if I go to Warne's how would I contact you later?

When he saw her left hand dangling over the rear of her seat he pa.s.sed the slip back to her. She showed no reaction and indeed continued to sit there in front of him for many more minutes, the paper resting loosely in her fingers. She did this for so long that Tarent began to wonder if she was even aware of it, but finally she shifted position and moved her hand into her lap. Tarent was reminded irresistibly of note-pa.s.sing in school, when the teacher was thought not to be looking. In spite of all this digital technology, people sometimes still preferred to scribble private messages on paper. She spoke to her male colleague about something, and laughed lightly and shortly at something he said. Moments later the hand that had been holding the slip went up to the implant behind her ear. If there was any sign that she had read the note, Tarent never saw it.

Tarent later drifted back into his reverie, an uncomfortable half-sleep, trying to doze but always aware of his surroundings. He was fully roused only when the Mebsher halted and the driver shouted his name on the intercom. He heard the turbine winding down. While he moved hastily to pick up his cameras and his shoulder bag, Flo leaned back towards him as if to help him with his stuff. Her hand touched his and briefly squeezed it. She said nothing, and nothing was pressed into his hand. The other two pa.s.sengers showed no sign of having noticed this.

Then he was outside on the windy hill, shivering, nursing the gash in his hand and waiting for the Mebsher to power up and drive away.

He felt tormented by his indecision. Maybe Flo really did have some new information about Melanie? He was only going to this Warne's Farm place because someone at OOR had told him to. He stepped forward, raised a hand, but he heard a change in the note of the turbine. Tarent moved quickly, clambering up the uneven slope to a point where he was sure he could be seen by the drivers, but it was already too late.

The turbine began to turn more quickly and a cloud of black smoke belched away from the outlet. Tarent had to step back to avoid being anywhere near the exhaust if the vehicle made a turn. The Mebsher first climbed at an even more extreme angle, because of the rise of the hill where it had stopped, but then it swung around and the vehicle levelled with a downward lurch. The programed reactive suspension system antic.i.p.ated much of the weight of the movement, but from long experience Tarent could easily imagine the effect on the pa.s.sengers inside.

He had lost his chance. The Mebsher went slowly down the trackless hill, rocking from side to side and leaving behind it two huge scars in the soft earth. Gases from its exhaust swept past him, with a smell of kerosene, burning oil, hot metal, scorched plastics or other synthetic materials. The noise was terrible, but within seconds the heavy machine had moved down across the edge of the escarpment and the sound level diminished at once. The only wind now a.s.saulting him was the one blowing from the north, with its load of stinging ice pellets.

He shifted his shoulder bag so that the strap ran across his chest, freeing both hands. He carried the camera holdall in one hand, then hefted his suitcase in the other. Treading carefully but heavily, trying to maintain his balance, he set off along the footpath that Ibrahim had indicated. After a few steps, though, he paused and put down his bag again.

He dug out the cellphone he had been given and selected the GPS feature. As it loaded the address appeared as text: The Paddock, Warne's Farm, nr. Tealby, Lincolnshire.

The simple Englishness of the address brought a wave of brief and unfocused nostalgia to Tarent: a sudden memory of a time when there were still farms with paddocks. Indeed, when there was still a county properly called Lincolnshire. And further behind that, to a time when England was the place of his childhood, or some of it. He glanced around ruefully at the landscape, almost entirely devoid of trees.

The electronic map loaded and an indicator instantly showed his position in relation to the target address as Ibrahim had implied it did not look as if it would be too far to walk, but he still had to carry his luggage over the uneven ground. He picked everything up again and continued. Having to hold the cameras separately made the weight of his luggage unbalanced and it was soon weighing heavily on his arm. The handle of the case cut into his fingers and palm. He was anyway out of condition after the long stay at the field hospital and the weeks of enforced idleness while he was there. For a short time at the beginning he had tried taking exercise at night outside the compound, when it was supposed to be cooler and in general safer. But he found the air temperature at night was still stifling, and the darkness of the bare hills seemed to make them into places of greater danger than they were in daylight.

The path unexpectedly led to a steep decline, with taller gra.s.ses and shrubs leaning across it and bushes on either side. The GPS display went blank, but he carried on. Satellite gain must be weak here, but at least in this lee the wind lessened a little. He walked another hundred metres or so, climbing uphill again, then came to a high metal fence, expertly and stoutly built, with blanking panels to above head height, wire mesh above that, then two counter-spiralling coils of razor wire. He could not see much ahead of him through the fence, but there was a small familiar symbol mounted on a metal plate: the skull-and-crossbones mortality warning, plus the international trefoil symbol of radiation hazard.

To his left, the fence followed the contour of the hill, moving up through the trees to the right, the fence ran down into an area of rough brambles and undergrowth. He set off to the left, up the hill, moving away from the fence. After a while he came to another path, slightly wider than the first. He crossed this and continued climbing the slope, and not long afterwards came to the edge of the hilly ridge. Tarent put down his luggage for a moment, to rest his arms.

He looked away down the slope to the west, the direction taken by the Mebsher. The large personnel carrier had returned to his view and was now moving slowly away from him across a wide, roughly rectangular field. The Mebsher appeared to be heading towards a road, whose position was shown by a long sequence of high steel poles, with mesh laid between them, often seen along roadsides in areas where farming still continued and trees could no longer be relied upon to provide a wind-break. He glimpsed a village beyond the screen of poles. From this height and position the Mebsher looked a lumbering, difficult vehicle, anomalous in this familiar English landscape, making a heavy business of crossing the soft earth, tearing up whatever crops there might or might not be in the ground. The icy wind sent veils of cold precipitation across the view.

As he watched it the machine halted abruptly, swivelling around slightly to the side, as if coming to a skidding halt, something of which Tarent knew the vehicle was incapable. Almost at once, a point of brilliant blue-white light, small but intensely bright and threatening, appeared in the air directly above the Mebsher. It was impossible to say from where it had come, but it was a glint of sinister, painful luminance, against the dark rain-clouds scudding swiftly above.

The light grew even more intense. Tarent was already lowering his eyes, looking away, looking back quickly, fearing some kind of blinding laser beam, but now he raised his hand to his eyes, tried to watch from between his fingers. The light-point suddenly exploded like a firework, shooting three angled white shafts of light directly down to the ground. They surrounded the Mebsher, one each of the light shafts striking the ground a short distance away from the wheels. A skeletal pyramid of white light surmounted the Mebsher, a perfect tetrahedron, and moments after it had formed it solidified into pure light.

There was a huge concussion, an explosive blast. Tarent was thrown violently backwards, and he tumbled helplessly through the rough bushes and weeds on the level ground immediately below the edge of the ridge. The shock and sheer shattering noise of the explosion stunned him, made him incapable of motion or even thought. All he knew was that he was still alive, because he could feel movement around him, branches and pieces of vegetation and earth falling to the ground. The immediate memory of the explosion kept returning, terrifying and paralysing him.

Gradually a sense of normal life began to return. He moved his limbs tentatively, scared of discovering serious injuries, but apart from a feeling of having been a.s.saulted and bruised by the wall of blast, there seemed to be nothing broken. None of his body felt as if it had been burned, not even his face and hands, unprotected at the moment of the blast. It was more difficult to breathe than normal because his chest was hurting. He had taken the concussion full-on. He rolled over, pressed down with his hands, brought up one knee, then the other, tried to shift his weight. He made himself breathe regularly, but his chest was in agony. Beyond that there was little pain as such in his limbs but a sensation of overall stiffness, a shocking feeling of having been dealt a physical hammer-blow of vast pressure. He raised himself more, so that he was crouching, balancing on his hands and knees, deep in the tangle of vegetation where he had fallen.

Half crawling, half walking, he worked his way back towards the edge of the ridge, to where he had been when the Mebsher was attacked. He became aware that he had been thrown back much further than he had realized. He pa.s.sed his luggage, dislodged by the blast, but apparently undamaged. His suitcase had not burst open, and when he anxiously examined his camera cases he found those too appeared intact. All three cameras responded normally when he briefly switched them on and off.

Carrying the Nikon he at last regained the ridge. There had not been many trees along it when he was there before, but now none remained.

A drift of grey smoke rose from where the Mebsher had been when it was attacked, but in the time it had taken for him to recover, most of it had dispersed. If there had been a mushroom cloud after the moment of explosion, it too had either blended with the rain-clouds or been spread out by the wind.