The Cosmic Logos (25 page)

‘Not a good idea,' Maelgwn advised. ‘Viper's people will be able to spot you the same way you shall be able to spot them … your aura will give you away. Dark Orme casts a shadow over its initiates that can be psychically perceived, and the Chosen's light aura will just as easily be spotted by anyone of the Dark Lodge.'

‘You don't need to move from where you are to familiarise yourselves with the demon-dome.' Doc waved his hand at the screen.

There were mobile cameras that flew all over the rogue demon city and you could access the visuals via the Bloodlust website on the internet, which was now a supernet that was lightning fast and powerful, thanks to a network that ran on a photon optic linking system.

‘I also have files on Viper's conglomerate and his key political supporters,' Doc added. ‘But the Dragon and myself believe that the key to stopping this disaster from unfolding lies with these two men.' Doc pointed to the screen that displayed two still-frame images. ‘Hayden Ingram and his son, Rainer.

‘Hayden Ingram was the chairman of the conglomerate that made the original application for construction. His son, Rainer, inherited his father's empire some forty years later. Rainer brought his associates out of the biodome project after his father's death, allegedly from natural causes, but the finding was highly contested. Hayden had just announced his intention to sell his controlling interest in the biodome, when his perfectly good heart gave out on him. At age forty, Rainer then became one of the Bloodlust cult's biggest and oldest supporters.'

‘That explains how the cult moved into the Ingram biodome,' Rhun acknowledged. ‘But which era are we to target?'

‘We considered trying to prevent the construction of the Ingram dome,' Doc advised, ‘but having looked over the application there was no reasonable objection
to fight the construction. From a legal standpoint I couldn't see us winning.'

‘So we prevent old man Ingram's death.' Zabeel jumped the gun, being telepathically sensitive, to conclude.

Doc gave a firm nod. ‘Precisely.'

A
t the end of two weeks off, the writer had her first five chapters and had made huge leeway with her research.

It had been like a beautiful dream, waking early every morning, making a cup of tea and sitting straight down in front of the computer to be whisked away to the Dark Age. Tory, Maelgwn, Brockwell and all the other characters felt like old mates now and the writer delighted in each and every minute she spent in their company.

You would think that this writer would be overflowing with joy and pride from her achievement, but she wasn't. Tomorrow the beautiful dream was to end and the only time she'd get to visit her friends in ancient Gwynedd would be on the odd weekend she got
off and the nights when she wasn't left completely brain-dead from her day in the mall.

Her guides all feared that their charge was heading for a nervous breakdown. They observed as the writer sobbed uncontrollably into her husband's sweater; the man was doing his best to understand.

‘Look, I don't think we can do without your wage altogether, so you can't quit your job yet,' her husband reasoned and the writer whined, disturbed by the fact. ‘But perhaps you could look around for a casual or part-time job … whatever you earn will suffice.'

‘That's it!' Tory and Astarleia resolved at once.

‘You think?' The writer considered this a fair compromise and, although she couldn't dedicate all her time to writing her tale, she could at least dedicate more of her time to it. ‘I'll start job hunting.' She resolved with a sniffle to be more cheery and gave her lover a huge hug for his continued support of her writing career, even though it had never earned them a cent.

‘I'll submit our request to the matrix and see what I can arrange,' Astarleia advised the other guides.

‘The matrix?' Tory queried.

‘Yes. You might know it better as the etheric web — that's how we Oversouls keep in touch and arrange meetings, contacts, chance encounters and so forth for our charges,' Astarleia enlightened. ‘Thus, miracles can happen if the will of one's charge is sufficient to dispose another interested Oversoul and its charge to step in and help. At other times fate steps in to meet our requests and something beneficial will happen by
chance rather than arrangement. We'll just have to wait and see what eventuates.'

 

The next day when the writer trudged into work, she managed to look pleased to be there, safe in the knowledge that it would not be for long.

Since she'd started writing about Tory Alexander, the character seemed to have integrated herself into the writer's own personality. An inner strength and knowing now drove her and she found herself daring to trust in the universe once again. She would create the reality she wanted for herself if she did not fear or doubt her own power to do so. She had decided not to hand in her resignation at work until she found a new job, but she would get the paper early Wednesday morning and start hunting.

Upon arrival in the staff room, located right behind the record counter, the writer found the manageress in a bit of a tizz.

‘Our casual just quit,' she explained.

The news was like a gift from heaven and the writer could hear a crowd of voices in her head crying, ‘Yes! Take the job!' Four hours a day, five days a week, sounded pretty damn fine.

The concerned look on the manageress's face had tripled. ‘Well, I don't see what you're smiling about.'

The writer thought she'd best explain her amusement. ‘I want the job,' she said, but what she was thinking was,
The universe works swiftly, I must be on the right track.

The people at work thought she was nuts, throwing in a full-time position to go part-time when work was so
hard to come by. Her family and friends even found it difficult to fathom her new spurt of enthusiasm for writing. She never went out any more and, although the writer didn't mind the odd interruption in her writing time, once she was in writing mode it was hard to get her to emerge. Visits from people, and telephone calls, went on without the writer really heeding what was transpiring, for she was entranced by the Dark Ages. Everyone close to her was very supportive. Still, some feared that, like the five years she'd dedicated to film writing, naught would come of all her efforts.

‘What are you going to do with the manuscript once you've finished writing it?' a friend asked one day, eager to help her form a strategy. ‘Will you send it to a publisher?'

The writer shrugged, having not given this much thought, but as her belief in the supernatural world grew daily, she replied, ‘By the time I am finished writing this, the right person to aid it to publication will come along.'

‘But haven't you even considered who you'd like to publish it?' Her friend obviously thought that the writer's faith was a little naive.

The writer turned to peruse her reference books and finding that most of them bore the HarperCollins logo, she made her decision. ‘HarperCollins would be good. If they're good enough for my references, that's good enough for me.'

And that's all the planning on that front that the writer intended to do. She would leave the minor details to the universe to sort out.

 

Consorting was a more apt way to describe what those concerned with the writer's little universe were up to.

Tory was learning all about six degrees of separation: that via mutual connections, only six people separate you from any other person on the planet — the same applied to Oversouls and guides.

Astarleia and Tory had managed to track down the Oversoul of the literary agent they felt would best represent their charge. The agent was the most reclusive and influential to be found on this side of the planet, so arranging a chance meeting was not going to be easy. And before they could start scheming, the Oversoul in question had to feel kindly disposed towards the writer before the agent in her charge would feel the same.

The Oversoul they sought to impress was a beautiful dark-haired gypsy called Karmalina, tracked down via the Oversoul of an actress friend of the writer's mother, who happened to know an author who was already in the agent's huge stable of talent.

In the first instance, Karmalina visited Tory and Astarleia at their charge's house, to observe the young writer at work, before deciding whether or not to plot her a path to the literary agent whose interests Karmalina safeguarded.

‘A formal introduction,' Karmalina decided, after hours of observation. ‘But a meeting with my charge is still a way off. And will require a few leaps of faith for your girl,' she stipulated.

‘Thank you so much,' Tory said happily — scoring
an agent would mean one of her major hurdles was out of the way.

‘What must we do?' Astarleia prompted the fiery Oversoul, all dressed in shimmering red, black, purple and white.

‘When the manuscript is complete, your charge will give a copy to her mother, who will pass it on to her actress friend. She, in turn, will like the manuscript and suggest to her author friend that
he
show it to his agent.' Karmalina held her arms out wide as if to imply she would take it from there. ‘However, the author friend is not going to know your girl from a bar of soap, and that's where this mission is going to require a little effort on your aspirant's part. For there will be made known to her an opportunity to meet this author, and if your girl manages to impress him, she'll get her break and her manuscript will be passed on to my charge for perusal. I can't guarantee my charge will take your girl on board, but at least she'll get a look in … fair enough?'

‘Very fair,' Astarleia nodded. ‘You've been most gracious.'

‘She seems like a good kid.' Karmalina glanced back to the writer, still buried in her work. ‘I hope I see you all again soon.' She waved and vanished to attend to her own charge.

‘So that's how it works,' Tory mused now that they were at leisure. ‘We can arrange these opportunities to occur for our charge, but it's up to her to seize the moment.'

‘Exactly,' Astarleia confirmed and Tory exhaled heavily as she considered.

‘Geez, I must have had my guides working overtime during my life,' she concluded, and gave Astarleia something to chuckle about.

‘They still are,' Astarleia agreed.

 

It took one year to complete the manuscript that was, at present, simply titled
The Dark Age
. Tory was a little concerned as the title wasn't the one that the book would be published under, but Astarleia assured her that somewhere along the road to publication their writer would be encouraged to rethink the title. Once the writer's mind was open to a change, it would not be hard to suggest the destined title. At present, however, the writer felt that every word of her manuscript was etched in stone, including the title, so there was no point trying to persuade her into changing anything until the publisher's editing process started.

The writer's best friend had been doing a fine job of tidying up the manuscript and had been just as open to Tory's guidance as the writer had been. With every review of the text, ‘The Dark Age' got closer and closer to reading as Tory knew it eventually would. This initial editing process would take another year to complete, as their charge couldn't spell, was dyslexic, and had never been very good at English. Thus, the poor best friend had her hands full trying to explain why the story wasn't flowing as well as it should and why useless bits of researched information had to go.

This was where musing was not an exact science, for although Tory conveyed the story to her charge, the writer had her own free will and thus would wander off
on little creative tangents. These would later be addressed and corrected by editors who would bring the story back to its pure form, as per the completed version of the tale that Kuthumi had given Tory as a reference.

 

During the course of writing
The Dark Age
the writer had a few strange experiences of note. One that happened constantly was that words would pop into her sentences that she didn't even know the meaning of and, after referring to a dictionary, the writer would discover the word was in the perfect context. The same kind of strange coincidences had occurred during her researching sessions. For example, placing Taliesin's Otherworldly abode at Lynn Cerrig Bach. The writer had known this location was the last stand of the druids against the Romans — as good a place as any to stick a temple, the writer thought. Then, later on, when the writer was researching something else, she chanced across a story about an excavation team who had started digging statues of the Goddess out of the ground at Lynn Cerrig Bach and the statues dated to the same time as the temple in her story … weird! Still, as the character Miles said in the story, a little bit of Tory's magic rubbed off on all she touched and it seemed that her creator was no exception.

Now that the story was complete, the writer made a gift of a copy of her manuscript to every member of her family — her mother included. Her mother, after reading the story and finding it thoroughly enjoyable, asked her best friend, who was an actress, to read it.

‘I don't know if I am just biased, or if this story is really as good as I think it is,' their charge's mother
explained upon passing it to her friend, who promised to read the manuscript and offer her professional opinion.

In two days' time the actress was on the phone to the writer singing her praises of the story. ‘I have a very good friend who is an author,' she explained to the writer, ‘and although I doubt he has time to read your story, I believe he will take my word for it and pass it on to his agent if he feels you are worth his recommendation. I am taking him to the opening of the Sydney Spring Festival of New Music, and as so many people you know are going to be there, why don't you come down and meet him?'

 

And that was how the writer found herself at the promotional reception standing on the balcony overlooking Sydney. She was very nervous about meeting a real author and had no idea what she was going to say to him, not having read any of his books. The author had also written for TV, so she did stand a slim hope of not appearing to be completely ignorant, for she was familiar with this aspect of his work.

She was sucking hard on a cigarette, trying to reclaim her nerves, when she spotted her mother's actress friend through the large glass windows, entering the reception with a couple of male friends in tow — one of whom she assumed was the author she was here to meet.

This was one of those defining moments in her life; the writer could feel destiny urging her to put out the cigarette, swallow her fear, walk inside, and introduce herself. ‘Well, here goes everything,' she mumbled,
losing the smoke and, taking a deep breath to rouse her courage, she did as her instincts prompted.

At least she was spared the embarrassment of introducing herself. Her mother's friend gave her a sterling recommendation to the renowned author, before leaving them alone to talk.

‘So you're the one who wrote this amazing manuscript I've been hearing about?' asked the distinguished-looking gentleman politely, although the writer could plainly see that he wasn't really very interested and she didn't blame him — she must have seemed to be like a starstruck kid to the man.

‘I am.' She grabbed a drink from a passing waiter's tray.

‘So, tell me, what is your manuscript about?' He scanned the crowd for someone he could wave over to spare him having to hear a long and drawn-out synopsis.

‘It's about a female martial arts expert who gets transported by a merlin back to the Dark Ages to aid him to change the course of British history,' she spat out, hoping the subject matter would interest him.

‘Really?' He looked at her, obviously a little intrigued.

‘Yes,' she replied enthusiastically, trying to think of something intelligent to say. ‘I find the concept of simultaneous time very interesting.'