H2G2 Storytime III: From Prussia with Love. Part XXXIX
Created | Updated Nov 18, 2006
Jamila popped open the tent flap and walked in with some water. She spotted Arthur wincing, sitting up on the camp bed, and Ody talking to another stranger in a suit.
Only a casual glance acknowledged she was in the room which made the newcomers miss her eyes tightening in suspicion before handing each of the men a glass. She rested against one of the tent's beams to listen.
Ody's mouth formed a sideways smile - she was suspicous. So was he - and looked to sit.
"Here." said X helpfully and offered his seat. The archeologist nodded a thank you to X who stood up, examining the room. If he was anywhere else Arthur probably would have appreciated his partner's casual attempt to listen in.
Ody pulled the chair up to Arthur - "You said we knew each other - I don't see how?"
"No, no of course you wouldn't." Arthur stretched painfully "and I confess I never expected to ever to cross paths with you ever again."
"Oh?"
Arthur winced and his mind breathed out in preperation. The Guilt came flooding back, as it had done in the desert. It welled up in him like a tidal wave washing over an archipelago, unstoppable. He started to speak when X gagged on his drink while looking at a diploma.
Jamila took the glass from his hands, smiling politely.
"I'll get you another."
"Than -cough- you." She disappeared out of the tent and X looked at Arthur who was.... unreadable.
Ody raised his eyebrow and turned back to Robinson.
Arthur searched for words.
"I knew your family back in Germany."
"I've not thought about Germany in...years. It's funny you don't have an accent." Ody said.
"I was just passing through."
"So you knew my father then?"
"By reputation mostly. We were never that close."
Ody looked at the floor and ran his hand across his mouth.
"I haven't spoke to my father in many years." Ody laughed slightly at the end of his sentence, reaching into his lapel pocket and withdrawing the old photograph of his mother and father; it was black and white but artfully composed. He paused to look at it through his reading glasses as if it had been a while since he last looked at it.
"I don't really remember my mother - this is the only image I have of her."
Carefully he turned the picture around in his fingers and held it up for Arthur to see.
Arthur's face was a mask of stoic calm but his eyes told a different story. From within the photograph, Sean Daltmooreby's face leered back at him. It was smiling then, to Arthur it was a maniacal grin and cruelly it only reminded him of that vile look of utter loathing that Daltmooreby gave him that night out on the tarmac on the Western side of the Wall.
The moment passed and Ody swiftly put the photo back into his lapel pocket and turned to correct his aim which gave Arthur the opportunity to lapse into a protracted fit of coughing. His lungs were only too willing to help, the beggars.
Ody helped him with his glass.
Anna stirred, and felt the rough weave of the wicker basket grate against her face.
She could feel her side was tender and bruised from the impact of the kick Sreka had given her.
"I really hate him," she said weakly.
In his haste, Sreka had not bound Anna's wrist in his usual thorough manner and there was mercifully a bit of give in the tape around her hands.
She fought against the restraint and managed to work them apart a little, just enough to get at it with her teeth and start pulling and tearing at the bond. After a while, she began to get somewhere until finally they ripped and gave way - her arms flew out to the sides from the effort of trying to pull the cuffs apart.
Free, thrust upward and popped the wicker top into the air, light poured in, she stood up, emerging sore, bedraggled and with absolutely no clue where she was.
It took her moment to realise that blocked in on both sides, light cascading from above, the sound of busy people in a hurry wafting - that she was in an alleyway.
She rotated back and forth looking every which way for that loathsome Russian, but he was nowhere around. She let out a sight of relief.
She remembered his plan to sell into slavery and decide fast not to stick around...
She could here sirens close by but the echo in the alley way made them distant and indistinct.
'What was it he has said?' "...In case the Agency pursues me...."
'Agency?' - "Arthur!” she exclaimed!
She clambered out of the basket - was he here?
Anna picked her way along the alley and emerged blinking into the full glare of the Cairo market in the middle of the destruction wrought by Sreka's bombs.
Instinctively, Anna backed away from the carnage and cluster of police cars.
She saw a long phone box standing ignored in the shadow of some flats
She wandered dazedly up to it, brushing her frazzled and unmanageable hair behind her ears. 'I wonder if they are in the phone book?' she thought aloud to no one in particular.
She found the phone book stashed on the shelf and after a moments thought, looked first under "S" for "spies” but came up short on Manufacturers and Distributors of various kinds of spring.
She then looked under "M" for Mi5 but they weren't listed.
Eventually she turned and started looking under the "A's" for Agency....
X had rappelled so silently down the rope into the Moon Chamber that Jamilla hadn't heard him come in. She'd left the lights off and was examinign a wall of hieroglyphics with a torch. she jumped when X introduced himself.
"You startled me." she clutched at her chest and bent down to catch her breath.
"I - er...look I'm sorry, I'll go."
"No, no, it's fine - I need an extra pair of hands, turn on that lamp will you?" she pointed obscurely to the lamps either side of the plinth at the far side. X trotted over and rummaged in the gloom until his hand closed around on switch . Switching it's on, he got a shock - the beam suddenly exploded into a complex web of beams reflectig out of dozens of huge globular diamonds - so clear X had stared right through them - arranged on plinths all around the room.
"That's good, now the other one."
X did as she said - and the same thign happened. He noticed the way there were two empty plinths. One beam was projected back towards the centre illuminating the empty plinth and the second beam now terminated uselessly on a wall as pale blue spot-light.
"I discovered that there are a series of channels carved into the wall here, that run between these hieroglyphs." she said pointing at the wall where the useless spotlight shone onto. "I think it's some sort of map, which would be incredible. I'm just trying to take a rubbing."
Appearences can be deceiving, it's a universal principle. X was, in spite of appearences and nearly all of his conscious actions, actually extremelly brilliant; and it was at times like this that he really started to regret that fact.
He was staring at the lines in the rock Dr Najil has indicated, and a familiar shape was suggesting itself. Meanwhile his prodigcal brain began starting to piece several things together at once - the rest of his cerebellum looked on in awe - he was self-consciously aware that he didn't at all like where this thought process was taking him.
"Can...can I see that?" he said pointing to the half-completed rubbing Jamila had pressed up against the wall of the temple.
She showed him the tough ashen paper daubed with think lines of charcoal.
"It's an incomplete diagrammatic of some sort - I've not been able to piece it together yet."
It was incomplete, but the drawing felt eerily familiar to X.
She took it back and carried on rubbing the charcoal back and forth, each swipe bringing out more of the pattern of lines, more delictae and intricate than the huge designs at Nazca.
X stared, he took a torch from a stack of equipment and shone it up into the upper reaches, where wall turned and became ceiling. He walked back towards the empty plinth scanning with the torch looking for something. Then he found it. Etched into the ceiling, above the empty plinth, was a design - an orb surrounded by rays spreading outward.
It looked like an image of The Sun, that is to say, a star at the highest point in the sky, it's light radiating down onto the... design on the wall.
Just then the image was there, he could see it - and he recognised it. instantly. He'd seen it somewhere before.
"It could be star...." X heard himself say.
"What?" Jamila turned around and looked at him
"...or a moon."
His brain suddenly arrived at an answer.
"Pilchards are salt-water fish aren't they?" said X, almost dreamily.
"er...I think so."
"I need that," he said snatching the incomplete rubbing out of her hands" and making off towards the rope and the skylight.
"Hey!" she shouted, angrily.
"I'll bring it right back.", stuffing it into his pocket, he started up the rope with surprising speed.
In the tent, Arthur was bent double in agony as Ody dug a little further into his back looking for the final shotgun pellet, pouring alcohol over the open wound that made Arthur whimper quietly.
"There!" Ody said triumphantly yanking a small - malformed metal disc from inside Arthur bloodied flesh
Arthur just breathed heavily. "I'll just pack into some gauze and apply a bandage. I'm no expert - better out than in , but you're going to be laid up for a few days - maybe ever a week or more."
"Not possible." Arthur grunted.
"You need to rest"
"My mission is...too important - nnnh" a stab of pain caused Arthur to wince and reach for the bandage
Ody caught his arm by the wrist - "Rest", he insisted.
As Arthur collapsed into a heap on his side Ody quized him "So what brings you to Egypt Mr Robinson?"
Arthur capitulated, "I'm hunting someone - I'm a cop...sort of." Arthur said though gritted teeth as Ody pressed the gauze into his back.
"A vigilante then?"
"No!", red-faced and angry at the pain, at Ody and at the thought of Sreka. "It’s complicated, I work for the government...sort of. It's an internal investigation."
Just then, X swept aside the cover to the tent.
"Arthur we're in big trouble, this is a lot worse than we first thought. The Cult has been planning this for centuries."
Arthur looked at him through a fog of pain. "What?" he winced rolling over.
"The Cult?" said Ody
X gawped, he'd put his foot in it again.
Arthur just raised an open palm - "Tell 'im."
"The Cult of The Dying Pilchard - they infiltrated our Agency, it's complicated -"
"I...I already know about The Cult."
Jamilla burst into the group - hot on the heels of X.
"Give that back!"
A flash of inspiration crossed Arthur and he looked from X across at Ody. "They've already been here - haven't they?"
Jamila was aghast, "A man - he took one of the diamonds."
"Oneof the ...what? Did she say diamonds, plural?" Arthur asked in disbelief "How many are there?"
"Ooh lots." X replied "you really out to see this for yourself it's quite soemthing."
"He also held us hostage." Ody said, backing up Jamila
"This man," X interveined, "about 5',8"? indicating a rough height with an outstretched arm, wiry whiskers, narrow features, possibly wearing white, British?
Jamilla nodded, upset.
"Sounds like the man I'm after." Arthur looked over at X
"He used fake documents - caught us off guard." Ody started.
"Off guard?" Arthur scoffed. "I'm surprised you didn't recognise him Mr Daltmooreby. The man we are all talking about after all is your father."
"Ody?" Jamilla, backed away alarmed.
Ody said nothing.
"You knew?" she said, horrified.
"Of course. I don't why he did it. That man has been my curse ever since my mother died. It was his fault! I never expected to see him again - certainly not here. I am sorry if he scared you."
"Ody..." Arthur said preparing to admit soemthing.
"It's Ohio." he said. "My name is Ohio Daltmooreby. 'Ody' it's my initials, you see."
"Ohio - I'm looking for your father, Sean. He's caught up in something, something big."
X couldn't resist, and broke the mood, "Why on earth would your father call you after a medium sized mid-easten state?"
"It wasn't him - it was my mother. She was a passionate Atlantacist. my sister's name is Oklahoma."
X winced. He couldn't stand it when people called their children weird names.
"So," Ody said re-capturing the solemn mood, "my dad is caught up in this...cult..and he needed to steal a diamond for them - why?" he finshied accusitorially.
"I can answer that." X said stepping forward.
Arthur, do you remember the map from Fort-Willaim's office?
The one that was drawn badly? Arthur replied
It wasn't drawn badly Arthur - on the contrary it was drawn very accurately.
There's another one just like it in in the cavern with the diamonds.
X unfurled the rubbing for the group.
"The Turqoise Moon - I've not figured it out- yet but I think they want to use it as some sort of...lens to make this a reality."
The group all turned their heads at the putlined map X had on the charcoal rubbing, it was like no map they'd ever seen. Half the countries were missing for starters.
You should see the others they can all bend light - that crazy lighting system in their gave me the idea. But see there was this design on the roof, above the empty plinth. It showed this diamond lens shining light down...on this map. Pilchards can't live in fresh water you see?"
"No, not really." said Arthur a bit confused at his partner's mental gymnastics.
"It'd have to be up high. That's the part I've not figured out yet. There no mountains near here tall enough."
Doctor Ohio Daltmooreby looked at the three faces in the tent with him .
This is ridiculous! I'll just file this nonsence about my father along with the Lost City of Atlantis and The Holy Grail shall I?"
"What?" said Jamila.
"It will be greed, in the end, that's what it will come down to. The man is selfish like no-one else I know. He's only ever looking out for one person and that's himself. so if you think he's part of this...cult you're kidding yourselves. That man has no time for anything or anyone. Anyone. Group activities are just not his thing."
"You," he spun on Jamila, "may be ready to believe stories of diamonds giant lasers, diamonds and mass floods but I'm not. This isn't story time. I don't have time for this."
Ody got to his feet and grabbed his hat as he walked out into the desert air.
"Want me to go after him?" Offered X.
'Why didn't he tell me?' Jamila thought to herself, biting her thumb. She realised X had spoken. "What? No... No. He's just going to the Chamber to think. Work keeps him motivated."
She looked to the two men.
"Tell me who you are. Really."
Ody tugged on the rope leading into the Moon chamber. The moon chamber with pilchards... horrible wet pilchards, flapping about in the diamond fish tank.
He hated speaking like that to Jamila. So did his jaw regularly but he need to figure this out. Now. What was his father was up to? It had been so long since they'd last met. Cult? No that wasn't Sean Daltmooreby. Was it?
He growled at the enigma of it all and lifted up his journal for his notes and ran his fingers along the walls. He'd figure this out.
