It was a year of storms and other strange events.

The Company negotiated rules of engagement with Podmore and his allies: magic, but no guns, or knives, or burglary, or other activities that the Metropolitan Police would recognise as ordinary crime. That left a great deal of room for creative unpleasantness.

The incident at the Savoy, in which two people had died, was generally considered to be an episode of ma.s.s hysteria. There was a common theory that it was due to the pernicious effects on the brain of too much electrical lighting and the sudden acceleration of elevators. There were lawsuits against the Savoy and against the London Electric Supply Corporation. There were diplomatic difficulties arising from injuries sustained by a minor Italian Prince, and injuries inflicted on a Bishop of the Church of England by a German Grand Admiral; but whoever's job it was to smooth things over smoothed well, and by the end of the year the lawsuits had been settled and peace between nations maintained.

There were riots in London. The mob took exception to something unpatriotic printed in one of Podmore's newspapers (though no two members of the mob could agree on what exactly had been said, or what was wrong with it). They set fire to one of Podmore's warehouses, and feathered a delivery boy, and heaved expensive printing equipment into the river. Another mob (with a certain overlap in personnel) a.s.saulted Sun's house, which-rumour had it-hosted immoral practices and was a prison for unfortunate young women. A curious sensation of vertigo swept through the mob before they'd broken more than a couple of windows; a sensation that left them reeling, vomiting, clutching at lamp-posts for fear of falling into the vast night sky above. This was generally blamed on a gas leak. A few of the ringleaders turned up the next morning on nearby rooftops, hanging on to chimneys for dear life. Sun's house survived, but his psychic exertions left him bedridden for a week. The mob, Atwood observed, could be a dangerous weapon, especially when one's opponent owned the newspapers.

Dr Sandys, the King's College theologian, hung himself in his kitchen. Archer was quick to claim credit.

Ravens ama.s.sed in the sky in great numbers, forming noisy black thunderclouds. Rats swarmed up out of the Underground. The vermin of London went to war. Their struggle lasted all through autumn, but ended inconclusively. Every morning there were dead birds and rats in the streets, on rooftops and window-sills, tangled in laundry. The newspapers concluded that the unusual weather of the past year had driven the wretched creatures mad.

In October, a Mrs Ada Carroll, a known a.s.sociate of Lord Podmore, lost her house to a quite extraordinarily aggressive infestation of termites; but Mr and Mrs Carroll were noted amateur Egyptologists, and the popular theory was that they had probably brought back some sort of virulent strain of insect in an urn or a sarcophagus. Some friends of Lord Atwood's in Parliament proposed an investigation of the Carrolls's trade in antiquities.

The new rules of engagement left Dimmick mostly idle. He took to drinking and fighting down by the docks. He suffered no significant injuries, apart from a broken nose and a lost tooth. He grinned and told Arthur that he should see what he'd done to the other fellows.

The Company of the Spheres recruited a woman called Sadie Paget, but she didn't last. One September evening, as she sang by the piano in the Queen's Head, the instrument improbably (a dropped match?) burst into flames. She left London in a panic the next day, her hands bandaged. Arthur never even met her replacement-a young painter who styled himself Parsifal. When Parsifal left the Company (for the madhouse), Dimmick took his place. Sc.r.a.ping the barrel, rather, Arthur thought; but though Dimmick's magical talents were somewhat questionable, and his morals worse, he was undeniably brave.

Arthur didn't pay too much attention to the ins and outs of the war, to who was on whose side, to the daily news of alliance and outrage and plot and counterplot. He moved out of London, glad to say good-bye to the city's growing atmosphere of unease and discord. He bought a ramshackle little house outside Gravesend, not far from the new Engine, where he worked all day and half the night to keep the thing running. He installed a hand-cranked telephone and hired a housekeeper and a nurse to take care of Josephine. They whispered behind his back; thought he was mad, poor fellow. Mad, but rich. He had the backing of the general fund of the Company of the Spheres, so money was just about limitless. It was time that was scarce. Every day Josephine seemed fainter, paler, weaker. He had almost forgotten the sound of her voice.

The third Engine was staffed-at its height-by fifty individuals. Some of them had been in the second Engine, and a few had been in the first. They generally looked at Arthur with a certain dread and awe-Gracewell's mysterious enforcer; the great, gaunt, never-sleeping giant of the Engine; the man who knew the terrible secrets of the Work. He was rumoured to perform all sorts of odd rituals, and to keep his wife in an enchanted sleep. It amused him, in a bleak sort of way. He told a select few of the workers about his confrontation with Lord Podmore, and he showed an even more select few some tricks he'd learned from Atwood and Miss Didot, like gla.s.s-breaking, table-rapping, some small sleights of will. His small legend grew. They were afraid of him, and rightly so. He was not a cruel master, but nor was he especially kind. Time was of the essence. The Work remained hard. It was his policy that men on the verge of madness should be relieved of duty before they succ.u.mbed. A humane policy, under the circ.u.mstances; Atwood considered it folly. It didn't always work.

On nights when he couldn't sleep, or when the Engine was idle, he took long walks. He took up stargazing. He was menaced once or twice by a black dog, or a pack of owls. He was quick with a prayer or a charm to drive off evil spirits.

The Company expanded their ambitions. They refined their mathematics. Fortnightly, Arthur caught the train into London to join their experiments. Archer threw herself cackling into their business, and got her hands on the Liber Ad Astra over Atwood's objections. She said she didn't think much of this modern stuff-thin-blooded, she called it. She had ideas, which, much to Atwood's disgust, turned out to be good ones. The Work progressed rapidly. Each successive expedition into the void progressed further. Each time the face of Mars loomed larger before them. They began to plan an expedition.

It was Arthur and Atwood's habit to communicate weekly by telephone, to discuss the Engine, the experiments, Josephine's condition. In November, Atwood informed Arthur that the Germans had indeed arrived in London.

"How do you know?"

"It was in the newspapers. Professor Bohm and Professor Bastian of Heidelberg University arrived in London on the Lady Margaret, and are staying at the Grosvenor."

"And who are they, Atwood?"

"They are scholars. But they are also-and this is known only to those who know this sort of thing-members of the Hyperborean Society."

"And what's that?"

"The Society, Shaw-I'm quite sure I've told you. Honestly, you should pay attention to these things if you plan to move in these circles. You can't hide in the country for ever, Shaw-burying your head!"

"I don't see why not. Someone has to keep the Engine running. Well, so they're Hyperboreans; good for them. What are their plans?"

"Professor Bastian intends to lecture on political economy at King's, and Professor Bohm intends to visit the British Museum. That's what the Times reports. Bastian is terribly famous among the sort of people who like that sort of thing-economics, I mean; quite incomprehensible to me, I'm afraid. But both of them are up to their necks in the left hand path. Well, I suppose one can't be up to one's neck in a path-but the point is, their motives are without doubt ulterior. And we must a.s.sume that their allies will follow; or are already here."

"Podmore said that the Germans would intervene. I suppose he was right."

"We won't let the Germans stop us."

"What will they do?"

"Their worst. At least they haven't brought in the Americans-yet-so far as I know. Or the Chinese. I expect they'll do something dreadful. We will weather it. I'm more concerned about Archer, frankly."

Arthur didn't bother to respond to that. Atwood regularly complained about Archer-her repulsive habits, her base and primitive and unfashionable superst.i.tions, her crude and vulgar conception of magic, her open and aggravating contempt for the Company's philosophy.

There was a long pause, during which Arthur pictured Atwood staring silently up at the ceiling, lost in thought. He wondered where Atwood was. The man had half a dozen flats, and he moved among them frequently, to confuse the enemy.

"Lord Podmore strikes at my investments," Atwood said.

"Floods; fire at the mill. Funds are short. The Engine is d.a.m.nably expensive."

"G.o.d. Flood and fire. Will there be anything left when we're done?"

"Don't be dramatic, Shaw. There will be enough to run the Engine. I'll spend it all, if I must. Money is an illusion."

"There speaks a man who's never lacked it."

"It'll last. It need last only another month."

"A month?"

"Or thereabouts. We're closer-every time we get closer. We can see the sh.o.r.eline. Are you ready? Are you eager?"

Atwood had set down a regimen of daily exercises for the members of the expedition-rehearsals for the ritual and meditations to prepare them for cold and darkness, hunger and fear, and whatever awaited them among the spheres. They were quite exhausting.

"Eager as ever, Atwood."

"Good. Good man. Closer and closer. It's hard to find good men, Shaw, hard to find the right men for this sort of thing. But we will. When will you get us the latest calculations, Shaw?"

"I'll send a man up to town tomorrow."

Atwood's plan extended no further than Mars. He seemed convinced that if he could achieve that goal-if he could plant his flag on Mars-then he would be guaranteed victory. He would prove his pre-eminence among magicians. From the vantage point of Mars, all the world and its secrets would be laid bare before him; his enemies would acknowledge his greatness and scatter. Arthur's own plans extended no further than finding Josephine. After that, he supposed they'd flee London together. South America, perhaps. He didn't know. He'd started h.o.a.rding money, skimming from the expenses of the Engine, saving for a disaster that he was certain would soon materialise.

After a long silence, Atwood said, "Is she...?"

After another long silence, Arthur said, "The same as ever."

"Ah. Well."

"Well."

"Ever onwards, Shaw."

"Ever onwards, Atwood."

Arthur hung up.

He arranged for a messenger to take the Engine's latest calculations into town; but the unfortunate fellow was lost when his train derailed, along with a briefcase full of important papers and a dozen of his fellow pa.s.sengers.

The work continued for more than another month. There were unforeseen difficulties, as anyone might have foreseen there would be.

Arthur spent the Christmas of 1894 alone in his little house on the edge of the woods at the foot of Rudder Hill. He had a fire to keep him warm, cold ham, a bottle of wine, and plenty to keep him busy. He spent two hours in the morning on his exercises. In the afternoon, he had calculations to work through for the Engine-problems of organization and the efficient flow of numbers through the great machine. He worked until the numbers danced in front of his eyes.

At midnight, he put down his pen, lit a lantern, and went out into the garden. He followed a path through the woods and half-way up Rudder Hill, to a place where he could blow out the candle, sit and watch the stars, and wish Josephine a merry Christmas.

Chapter Twenty-six.

The Company of the Spheres came together towards the end of March 1895, at an evening hour governed by the Sphere of Mercury, to embark on what was expected to be-G.o.d willing-the expedition that would at last cross the void and touch the face of Mars itself. A first tentative exploration. A proof, G.o.d willing, that the thing was possible, that it wasn't madness.

They met in a warehouse in Deptford, not far from where Gracewell's second Engine had once stood. The floor was painted with star-maps, and the windows were full of candles to ward off the prying eyes of the Company's enemies. Mr Dimmick had hired some toughs, just in case, to be look-outs on the street outside. Two of them halted Arthur as he approached, stepping from the shadows and giving him quite a fright. He snarled ill-temperedly at them, shoved past, daring them to lay hands on him. They thought better of it.

He was already on edge, and late. In fact, his train had been so severely delayed and so slow, and the staff at the station so rude to him, that he'd begun to suspect the hand of the enemy at work. He was also tremendously anxious about Josephine. He'd left her behind that morning in the care of a nurse, having made arrangements with a lawyer to see to her in the event that-well, it was better not to dwell on what might go wrong. The expedition was not expected to take more than a matter of hours, but of course one never knew. He'd told the lawyer and the nurse he was travelling to Switzerland to consult with a specialist in the treatment of sleeping sickness.

As he entered the gloom of the warehouse he had a moment of panic and considered turning, running, and booking a journey to Switzerland after all. Mountain air, cold springs, and rest cures might be precisely what she needed ...

"Shaw!" Jupiter's voice, echoes booming from the rafters, dispelled all thoughts of Switzerland. "Come in. You're late."

"Trains," he said, folding his coat on a shelf by the door.

"The spheres won't wait for the trains, Shaw. The hour is almost upon us."

Inside the warehouse, preparations were under way. Therese Didot was striding around placing and lighting paraffin lamps. Sun, his sleeves rolled up, was painting a great complicated magic circle on the floor, while Jupiter consulted the calculations and barked instructions. Atwood was meditating. A number of men Arthur didn't recognise were talking, smoking, and bustling about, moving boxes. There was a great deal of fussing, as there might be backstage before an opening night at the theatre, or the launch of a luxurious sort of ship. n.o.body knew exactly what to expect, so they prepared for all manner of conditions.

Nine men would go on the expedition. Atwood insisted that-should they reach Mars itself-the dangers and privations that the expedition was likely to face were so great that it would be disgraceful even to consider sending women, especially after what had happened to Josephine. In fact, Atwood had confessed to Arthur that he and Jupiter had adopted this policy mainly in order to justify excluding Mrs Archer, whom they both mistrusted-and, in Atwood's case, at least, loathed. The policy had quickly taken on a life of its own, and had come to seem a very important moral principle.

Having by this somewhat accidental method convinced themselves that the expedition to Mars was essentially a military one, Jupiter and Atwood had gone out and hired ex-soldiers and sailors. The soldiers' names were Frank, Payne, and Ashton; they were hard men, weathered by travel to remote and unfriendly corners of the Empire and prepared for danger. They joked and cursed and lounged against the wall, and only the methodical way they smoked betrayed, perhaps, a touch of anxiety. Ashton shook Arthur's hand and said, apropos of nothing in particular, that all this pagan b.l.o.o.d.y magic didn't scare him these days, not after some of the things he'd seen and done in Afghanistan. Then he walked off without further explanation, pacing the circle's bounds anxiously, as if checking it for leaks.

Atwood's brief attempt to exclude Sun had failed. He had never been able to offer any sort of argument for this position, other than some mumblings about the necessity for someone to stay behind to prosecute the war, in case they were gone longer than expected; but that was a role that Jupiter and Miss Didot and Mrs Archer considered themselves more than capable of fulfilling. It was hard not to suspect that Atwood was merely jealous of Sun's place in the history books; that he did not want to share the first exploration of Mars with any other magicians whom posterity might mistake for his equal. In any case, he had been resoundingly outvoted. Atwood and Sun were to lead the ritual, to navigate the expedition's course through the aether. Equally importantly, they were to perform the ritual that would-after a brief reconnoiter of their point of arrival-bring them back home. They had both been practicing their parts for a month.

Arthur was to join them. No objection from Atwood. His motives were pure, His Lordship had said; let bygones be bygones. His place in the circle was marked out on the floor, a dense knot where several lines of painted power converged. Dimmick was going too, over Arthur's strenuous objections-just in case, Atwood had said, just in case a firm hand was called for. And Archer's son was to join them-though Atwood didn't like it, it was the price of Mrs Archer's a.s.sistance. The son sat silently on the floor in a corner of the room, eyes half-closed, apparently entirely unperturbed, while his mother fussed over him.

Lastly, there was a dark young man at the far side of the room, with a bent nose and a thin beard, smoking and watching the proceedings with an air of amused disbelief.

"Our ninth," Atwood said, rising from his meditations. "A former employee of Gracewell's-he has some small magical talent, and comes recommended by Dimmick, who says he has a fighting spirit. More importantly, he's a sailor, used to long voy-"

"Good Lord."

"Good Lord what?"

"It's Vaz-as I live and breathe, it's Mr Vaz!"

Arthur almost ran across the circle-Payne snapped at him to watch out!-to take Mr Vaz's hand and shake it, while Vaz, equally astonished, let his cigarette fall from his lip.

"Good Lord, Mr Vaz. Good Lord. I thought you were dead. I thought you'd died in the fire."

"I thought you were dead, Mr Shaw! That was a terrible night, wasn't it? It was. It was! I had not thought to see a friendly face here."

"Good," Atwood said. "Good. A good omen, no doubt. The closing of a circle. Do you see, my dear? Do you see?" He walked over to Jupiter.

"I see, Atwood."

To Arthur's surprise, Atwood took Jupiter's hand and kissed it tenderly, then they embraced as if they were husband and wife and Atwood were about to go off to war.

"Places," Jupiter said, extricating herself and clapping her hands. "Places, gentlemen." She checked her watch. "The hour will soon be upon us."

The members of the expedition arranged themselves in the positions that Sun had marked for them on the floor: a complicated nine-pointed star. Therese Didot lit incense, and soon the room was filled with a dizzying sickly sweet haze.

In the centre of the circle there was a heap of boxes, packs, sacks, ropes. The paraphernalia of a polar expedition, heaped up like a Pharaoh's grave-the treasures of this world, waiting to be translated into the next. This was a precaution. Not knowing quite what to expect, or in what form they might arrive on Mars, Atwood had insisted that they be prepared for anything.

The chanting began, and it went on for some time. They rehea.r.s.ed, over and over, Atwood or Sun or Jupiter stopping them again and again. The music of the chanting rose and fell. Archer's voice was the loudest, harsh and rasping. The words didn't matter, not in Arthur's opinion; it was the sound, the rhythm, the state of mind they created. But Archer saw things differently, and who knew what Atwood or Jupiter really thought.

Outside, night winds battered at the eaves and shadows pa.s.sed across the windows. The warehouse was lit by paraffin lamps and a large number of candles, some of which dripped wax from the rafters. Atwood owned the warehouse, and it crossed Arthur's mind to wonder if he was insured against fire. Then he put those thoughts out of his mind, sat on the floor, and performed the meditations a.s.signed to him. The hexagram. The red plains. Sand. The sword. Josephine's face appeared unbidden before him. He dismissed it.

Rehearsals bled imperceptibly into the real thing. The big show. The chant rose and fell, around and around. It revolved towards a dizzying peak. It was hard to remember precisely when it had begun. Smoke and incense filled the room, so that Arthur could hardly see Payne, the man next to him. Vaz was nothing but a smudge in the distance. Archer and Jupiter, walking around the circle and chanting, were strange monsters in the smoke-the coloured lamps they carried like eyes, like moons.

Sun was the first to go. He swayed and his chin fell on his chest and he slumped over sideways. Arthur's heart leapt. If all had gone well, Sun would soon be opening his eyes in another world. A translation, a transformation, a transmigration of the soul, perhaps not unlike death.

Atwood went just a moment later, falling elegantly backwards as if in a faint. Payne went shortly afterwards, with rather more of a thud.

Five minutes later-it felt like hours-Archer's son went. He grunted and dropped his enormous head and swayed. He grunted again, and shuddered all over, then opened his mouth and roared. Black mud poured from his nose. He clenched his fists and tore at his thin black hair. Archer stopped chanting and screamed, No, no, my boy, my boy, what's happening to you, what have they done, what have they done? His shoulders quaked. His eyes were bloodshot. He appeared to be having a seizure. Archer dropped her lamp and screamed, her hands to her mouth. Something in her eyes suggested that she had made a terrible mistake. As her son fell forward, blood streaming from his nose, she threw herself upon him, sobbing and shaking him.

Arthur had no idea what had happened or why. An error in the calculations? Something they'd failed to consider? The cause hardly mattered now. Archer's son appeared to be dead. That was a disaster. The ritual, all of Gracewell's calculations, a.s.sumed nine.

Jupiter and Miss Didot glanced at each other, then continued their pacing and chanting, stepping over Archer as she sobbed and wailed. Vaz tried to stand, but Dimmick seized his hand and pulled him down again.

It was too late to run. If Arthur quit now, leaving the thing undone, then anything might happen. Atwood and Sun might be stranded-the whole thing might fall apart.

Arthur sat and furiously strained for calm, for patience, for the dream-like peace that was conducive to projection. His head spun. Archer sobbed. Wind and rain beat against the windows. Jupiter chanted the names of the planets. Miss Didot chanted the names of devils and angels, the ninety-nine gates, Agares and Va.s.sago and Marbas and Valefor. Vaz and Frank slumped over on the floor-dead? Sleeping? Successfully voyaging through the aether? He didn't know.

Arthur sat on the floor. It seemed to him that he also stood, swaying. He was in two places at once. His head was now very far from his feet, as if he'd stretched, like Alice, as if he were rising up through the roof of the warehouse. Beneath him, Jupiter's and Therese Didot's lights revolved through the gloom. Archer's dropped paraffin lamp had started a blaze on the floor-the flames licking at the great heap of provisions in the middle of the circle, which threatened to burst into a pyre, and at the shoes of the rec.u.mbent body in a tweed jacket that he recognised, before the lights dimmed, as his own. But now there were lights above him, too, and he rose towards them. He held in his mind the images of the ritual: the hexagram, the sword, blood and sand. There would be ninety-nine gates to pa.s.s through. It seemed to him that the warehouse below him was full of swirling red sand, swallowing the lights. And was it his imagination, or had he glimpsed, at the edge of vision, a dozen strange men creeping through the alleys towards the warehouse, moving with sinister intent-Germans, perhaps, or Podmore's men, or possibly the Americans Atwood dreaded? Well, it was too late to warn Jupiter now. That was her problem. He could hardly hear the chanting now. There was nothing to guide him but his own will. Ninety-nine gates; he had committed the signs and names to memory. He pa.s.sed through a hexagram of red light and became a ray of black light, streaming into the void. The gate named Apep was a ring of angels that shouted as he pa.s.sed. Rising up and falling at the same time. Faster and faster, hotter and hotter; colder and darker and deeper. He faltered, almost, at the ninety-second gate, Da'ath, which took the form of a great revolving pentagram of ice; and at the ninety-ninth gate, which Atwood had named Yaldabaoth-the shape of it was indescribable. He closed his eyes in horror and it was only his will and his memory that carried him through, deeper and deeper into utter darkness.