The Paradise War (16 page)

We walked through rich farmland, dusted now with a white powdering of windblown snow. The day was cold and misty, the wind crisp out of the north. A day to stay indoors by a fire. We spoke little. The professor seemed preoccupied with his thoughts, so I did not disturb him.

The chill silence unnerved me. It seemed as if we were trespassing, intruding in forbidden lands. The thick Scottish mist made everything appear broody and unearthly, and every step carried us deeper into this alien place.

Presently, the road led down and we descended into the small valley, arriving again at the stone bridge across the meandering Findhorn River. We crossed the bridge, continuing on into Darnaway Forest. The woods were quiet. The trees seemed sunk into winter hibernation.

Carnwood Farm appeared exactly as I had last seen it. The close-clustered buildings, the fields, and the broken, moss-grown tower beside the farmhouse—all exactly as before. This time, however, it seemed that the air of emptiness and abandonment I had noticed before clung more heavily to the place. In this serene and secluded part of the world, the silence was almost oppressive—a physical force gripping the land, choking off all sound. Even from a distance I could tell that the Grants were not at home.

Nettles insisted on knocking at the door, just in case. But no one answered; Robert and Morag were elsewhere. So we continued on our way to the cairn, following the deep-rutted farm road across the compact hills. As before, we met no one on the road—until we arrived at the gate leading to the field and glen which contained the cairn. And there, where Simon had parked his car, sat a gray van with the initials SMA lettered on the side, and some kind of logo.

Upon seeing the van, the professor stopped in his tracks. “What is it? What’s the matter?” I asked.

Nettles turned and looked across the field toward the glen. “Is the cairn down there?”

“Yes,” I told him. “It’s just there—where you see the tops of those trees.” I pointed out the line of treetops just visible above the broad flank of the hillside. “Do you wan—”

“Listen!” snapped Nettles.

“What? I don’t hear anything.”

“Quick! We don’t want to be seen!”

“I don’t hear anything,” I protested. “Are you sure?”

“Hurry!” Nettles began running back along the road to a small rise where a stand of trees overlooked it. I followed reluctantly and joined the professor on hands and knees, peering at the road from behind a large ash tree.

I squatted beside him, listened for a moment, and decided we were being overly skittish. I was about to say so when I heard the soft burr of a car’s engine and wheels on gravel. I rose up to look at the road below us. The professor grabbed my wrist and yanked hard.

“Get down!” he rasped. “Don’t let them see you!”

I slumped down beside him. “Why are we hiding?”

The sound of the vehicle grew louder and then I saw it on the road below, not more than fifty yards from us—a standard-looking, gray van, with the same logo painted in white on the side: a representation of the earth with rings radiating outward from it like ripples or emanating vibrations. Beneath the logo were the letters SMA.

“Down!” rasped the professor as the second van rolled to a stop behind the first.

Two men climbed out of the vehicle, passed through the gate, and struck off across the field toward the glen. We watched them until they were out of sight.

“Well, they’re gone. Now what?” I asked.

Nettles shook his head gravely. “This is not good.”

“Why? Who were they?”

“For many years, different groups have been pursuing the secrets of the cairns and rings and stone circles, attempting to force entry into the Otherworld. The men we just saw belong to such a group, and a very dangerous one at that: the Society of Metaphysical Archaeologists.”

“You’re joking.” I would have laughed if Nettles had not been so serious. “Metaphysical archaeologists, is that what you said?” “They are scientists, for the most part—rather, they are men acquainted with scientific principles and techniques. I have run into them from time to time at various sites, conducting their ‘researches.’ They would love nothing more than to know what we know, and I have reason to believe they would stop at nothing to obtain this knowledge.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Entirely serious!” the professor exclaimed. “We’ve got to think this over very carefully. We can afford no mistakes at this juncture. Care for some chocolate?” He reached into a deep pocket, withdrawing a large bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk which he unwrapped and passed to me.

“You think they know about the cairn?” I broke off a piece of chocolate and popped it into my mouth.

“I think we must assume that they do.”

“But maybe they don’t know. Maybe they’re just looking around. Yeah, they’re just looking around,” I offered, trying to convince myself. “Anyway, we should go down there and find out if they’ve seen any sign of Simon.”

“You’re right, of course.”

I climbed to my feet and scrambled down to the road. We approached the parked vans, walked around them to the gate, and would have started across the field to the glen—but Nettles thought better of it. “Let’s go another way.”

“What other way?”

He pointed up the road a little distance, to where I could see the line of the glen curve as the stream wandered among the hills. “We can follow the river.”

“Whatever you say. Lead on.”

A mile or so along, the road dipped to meet the glen. We found a sheep trail along the brookside and began making our way back toward the cairn. Almost at once, the trail entered a thick wood. Dark and silent, every step a creak or a crack—I thought we must sound like a mob of buffalo bulling through the bracken. In the gloom of the close-grown wood, the sheep trail disappeared, and we soon had our hands full, parrying low branches and preventing twigs from poking out our eyes.

We thrashed our way along, stopping every few minutes to listen— I don’t know what for. What I heard was crows. Faintly, at first. But each time we stopped, it seemed that there were more crows, and louder than before. Judging from the racket, they were gathering in the wood for the night. Soon their raucous croaks and squawks were all around us, although I could not see any of the birds. We continued on, the day growing colder, the sky darker.

Carnwood Cairn stood in the center of the glen. As before, it presented an unassuming aspect to the world: no more than a hulking heap of earth and moss-dark stone, very nearly shapeless in the feeble light. I gave it a cursory glance, for the thing that commanded my immediate attention was not the cairn, but the crow: a big, black, spread-winged menace watching us with a baleful bead of an eye from a low branch, its sharp black beak open. I fought down the urge to pick up a stick to protect myself.

Preoccupied with the crow, at first I did not see the camp set up on the further side of the glen. Nettles nudged me with his elbow, and I looked in the direction he indicated. I saw a large canvas tent surrounded by the gear of what appeared to be an archaeological dig: lots of wooden stakes driven into the ground with white plastic flags on them, a gridwork of string overlaying a shallow excavation where the snow and dirt had been cleared away, shovels and picks standing in piles of fresh-dug earth. On a pole before the tent hung a blue flag bearing the words
Society of Metaphysical Archaeologists
, and the vibrating world logo in white.

Two men in khaki overalls hunched over their work at the grid, one sitting on a camp stool and holding a large drawing board, the other on his knees, scraping at something with a trowel. Their backs were to us, and, because of the crows’ unearthly racket, they had not heard our approach.

“What now?” I asked softly.

“I’d like to examine that cairn.”

I looked at the men, and something told me that they were not likely to let us, or anyone else, come near the cairn. “I don’t think that’s going to be easy,” I muttered.

“No,” Nettles agreed, his eyes narrow and sharp in the gloaming. “Nevertheless, we have come all this way.”

Twilight comes early to Scotland this time of year. Still only midafternoon by the clock, the sun was already sinking toward the west. The time-between-times would soon be upon us. The realization filled me with dull alarm. My heart palpitated, lumping awkwardly in my chest. My stomach felt like a ball of worms. The professor stepped into the clearing of the glen. “What are you going to do?” My voice grated like the sound of the crows filling the trees around us.

“Hello!” Nettles called, stepping boldly into the clearing. “Hello, there!”

I watched him stride boldly toward the men, then plucked up my sagging courage and followed. “Hello, hello,” he called, flapping his hands amiably, the very picture of a Hail-Fellow-Well-Met eccentric.

The two men’s heads turned as one, their eyes automatically swinging toward the sound of the disturbance. Despite Nettles’s kindly greeting, neither man smiled. Their faces remained expressionless and unwelcoming.

Together, Nettles and I trooped up to the digging site. The man with the drawing board put it aside and stood up. He opened his mouth to speak, but the professor did not allow him the first word.

“Oh, this is splendid,” Nettles burbled. “I had not expected to find anyone here. It is so late in the year.”

Again the man drew breath to speak, but the professor rushed on. “Allow me to introduce myself,” he said. “I am Dr. Nettleton, and this is my colleague, Mr. Gillies.” He placed his hand on my shoulder as I stepped beside him.

“How do you do?” I said.

“I was just saying to my friend here,” Nettles continued, “I hope we don’t come too late. I see that we haven’t. Indeed, I think we have come just in time. You will be packing up soon, I should think, and—”

“What do you want?” the man with the drawing board asked bluntly. The crows in the treetops squawked loudly, shifting in the upper branches like wind-tossed rags.

“What do we want?” the professor replied, ignoring the man’s rudeness. “Why, we have come to see the site, of course.”

“It’s closed,” the man declared. “You’re going to have to leave.”

“Closed? I don’t think I understand.” Nettles blinked at me in apparent confusion.

“This is a private dig,” the man replied. “The public is not allowed.”

“The public!” Nettles reprimanded lightly. “I assure you, my good man, we are not the general public.”

“We have a special interest in this site,” I added. I could feel my armpits dripping inside my coat.

“Maybe you didn’t hear,” the second man said, pointing his trowel. He slowly stood. “The dig is closed. You don’t have permission to be here. You’ll have to leave.”

“But we’ve come a very long way,” the professor protested.

“I’m sorry,” the first man said. He seemed about as sorry as a sack-ful of snakes. “You had better leave.” He shot a glance at his partner, who tossed aside the trowel and took a deliberate step toward us.

Just then a head poked out from the flap of the tent. “Hello!” it called, and all four of us turned as a tall, distinguished-looking man with a nattily trimmed gray beard emerged. Unlike the others, he was dressed in a long, dark coat and Wellington boots. “Andrew,” he said, stepping quickly over the tools and debris scattered around the site, “why didn’t you tell me we had visitors?” To Nettles and me he said, “I’m Nevil Weston, project director. How do you do?”

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Weston, I daresay,” the professor replied, managing to convey a slight irritation at the way we’d been treated thus far. “Dr. Nettleton and my colleague, Mr. Gillies,” he announced. “We have no wish to disturb you, but, as I was telling your friend here, we have traveled a very great distance to see the site. We have a particular interest in the history of this locality, you see.”

“I quite understand,” Weston replied. He nodded to his men. “Thank you, Andrew, Edward. I’ll deal with this.” He smiled at us, but the smile lacked any real warmth. “It’s just that this is a privately sponsored project, so regrettably we cannot allow visitors without prior permission. It is the policy of the board of directors, I’m afraid. It’s out of my hands.”

As he talked, Weston stepped between us, turned us around, and began gently to escort us away from the cairn. It was smoothly done, but Nettles was not diverted. He stopped dead. “Oh, I know how it is, believe me. We wouldn’t dream of interfering.” He turned to the cairn. “But we’ve come all the way from Oxford, you see.”

“Yes,” Weston agreed sympathetically. “I’m sure we can work something out. Perhaps you would like to call again tomorrow. It’s getting late; we’ll be closing the site for the evening very soon.”

Nettles stepped toward the cairn and put out a hand, as if imploring it to help him. “That’s quite out of the question,” he said. “We had no way of knowing it would be occupied, you see. We’ve made other arrangements.”

“I’m sorry,” answered Weston firmly, flashing his empty smile again. I could see him coming to the end of his tether.

“He’s right, professor. It
is
getting late,” I said, breaking in abruptly. “Maybe we should go.”

Nettles sighed heavily; his shoulders sagged. “Yes, I suppose you’re right,” he said, but he did not move.