It was as if a large part of the twentieth century had marked a few square miles Out of Bounds.
Anathema pulled another card out of her index and flicked it across the table.
2315. Sum say It cometh
... 4 years early [New
in London Town, or New
Amsterdam till 1664] ...
Yorke, butte they be
... Taddville, Norfolk ...
Wronge, for the plase is
... Tardesfield, Devon ...
Taddes Fild, Stronge inne
... Tadfield, Oxon ...
hys powr, he cometh like
..!.. See Revelation, C6, v10
a knight inne the fief, he
divideth the Worlde into
4 partes, he bringeth the
storme.
“I had to go and look through a lot of county records,” said Anathema
“Why's this one 2315? It's earlier than the others.”
“Agnes was a bit slapdash about timing. I don't think she always knew what went where. I told you, we've spent ages devising a sort of system for chaining them together.”
Newt looked at a few cards. For example:
1111. An the Great
? Is this something to do with
Hound sharl coom,
Bismark?
and the Two Powers sharl
[A F Device, June 8, 1888]
watch in Vane, for it
Goeth where is its Mas
... ?
ter, Where they Wot
Notte, and he sharl name
Schleswig.. Holstein?
it, True to Ittes Nature,
and Hell sharl flee it.
“She's being unusually obtuse for Agnes,” said Anathema.
3017. I see Four Riding,
The Apocalyptic Horsemen.
bringing the Ende, and
the Man = Pan, The Devil
the Angells of Hell ride
The Witch Trials of Lancashire,
with them, And Three
Brewster, 1782).??
sharl Rise. And Four and
Four Together be Four,
I feel good Agnes had drunk
an the Dark Angel sharl
well this night,
Own Defeat, Yette the
[Quincy Device, Octbr. 15, 1789]
Manne sharl claim his
I concur. We are all human, alas.
Own.
[Miss O J Device, Janry. 5, 1854]
“Why Nice and Accurate?” said Newt.
“Nice as in exact, or precise,” said Anathema, in the weary tones of one who'd explained this before. “That's what it used to mean.”
“But look, ” said Newt..
.. he'd nearly convinced himself about the non.. existence of the UFO, which was clearly a figment of his imagination, and the Tibetan could have been a, well, he was working on it, but whatever it was it wasn't a Tibetan, but what he was more and more convinced of was that he was in a room with a very attractive woman, who appeared actually to like him, or at least not to dislike him, which was a definite first for Newt. And admittedly there seemed to be a lot of strange stuff going on, but if he really tried, poling the boat of common sense upstream against the raging current of the evidence, he could pretend it was all, well, weather balloons, or Venus, or mass hallucination.
In short, whatever Newt was now thinking with, it wasn't his brain.
“But look,” he said, “the world isn't really going to end now, is it? I mean, just look around. It's not like there's any international tension ... well, any more than there normally is. Why don't we leave this stuff for a while and just go and, oh, I don't know, maybe we could just go for a walk or something, I mean.. ”
“Don't you understand? There's something here! Something that affects the area!” she said. “It's twisted all the ley.. lines. It's protecting the area against anything that might change it! It's ... it's ...” There it was again: the thought in her mind that she could not, was not allowed to grasp, like a dream upon waking.
The windows rattled. Outside, a sprig of jasmine, driven by the wind, started to bang insistently on the glass.
“But I can't get a fix on it,” said Anathema, twisting her fingers together. “I've tried everything.”
“Fix?” said Newt.
“I've tried the pendulum. I've tried the theodolite. I'm psychic, you see. But it seems to move around.”
Newt was still in control of his own mind enough to do the proper translation. When most people said “I'm psychic, you see,” they meant “I have an over.. active but unoriginal imagination/wear black nail varnish/ talk to my budgie”; when Anathema said it, it sounded as though she was admitting to a hereditary disease which she'd much prefer not to have.
“Armageddon moves around?” said Newt.
“Various prophecies say the Antichrist has to arise first,” said Anathema. “Agnes says he. I can't spot him.. ”
“Or her,” said Newt.
“What?”
“Could be a her,” said Newt. “This is the twentieth century, after all. Equal opportunities.”
“I don't think you're taking this entirely seriously,” she said severely. “Anyway, there isn't any evil here. That's what I don't understand. There's just love.”
“Sorry?” said Newt.
She gave him a helpless look. “It's hard to describe it,” she said. “Something or someone loves this place. Loves every inch of it so powerfully that it shields and protects it. A deep.. down, huge, fierce love. How can anything bad start here? How can the end of the world start in a place like this? This is the kind of town you'd want to raise your kids in. It's a kids' paradise.” She smiled weakly. “You should see the local kids. They're unreal! Right out of the Boys' Own Paper! All scabby knees and 'brilliant!' and bulls.. eyes.. ”
She nearly had it. She could feel the shape of the thought, she was gaining on it.
“What's this place?” said Newt.
“What?” Anathema screamed, as her train of thought was derailed.
Newt's finger tapped at the map.
“ 'Disused aerodrome', it says. Just here, look, west of Tadfield itself..”
Anathema snorted. “Disused? Don't you believe it. Used to be a wartime fighter base. It's been Upper Tadfield Air Base for about ten years or so. And before you say it, the answer's no. I hate everything about the bloody place, but the colonel's saner than you are by a long way. His wife does yoga, for God's sake.”
Now. What was it she'd said before? The kids round here ...
She felt her mental feet slipping away from under her, and she fell back into the more personal thought waiting there to catch her. Newt was okay, really. And the thing about spending the rest of your life with him was, he wouldn't be around long enough to get on your nerves.
The radio was talking about South American rainforests.
New ones.
It began to hail.
* * *
Bullets of ice shredded the leaves around the Them as Adam led them down into the quarry.