Alexander understood. The meld in the barn made clear the distinction between his two worlds. He was readied for his work, and trusted Hep. The feelings for his mother mirrored those he had for the whole of humankind. Hera and Gaia had shown him the size of the task before them.

'Then know, mother of Alexander,' said Hep. 'That he faces his destiny. You can do nothing for him directly. Continue with your work. Is the most important thing. Use GAIANET to re-invigorate the planet, provide the relief it needs and change the way of things. We work together so you will have the means. But there is other, related business, which does not concern you directly. Alexander, he work for us now. Know there is another branch of the 'Firm' not known to you. He alone can have access to it. He is the one instrument we both need for success. For this you gave him life and.....'

She was gripped by a strong desire not to know any more. 'If you tell me things about the 'Firm' I don't know..,' Penny interrupted, '....will it help me? Will I feel less alone? Especially now you have taken Alexander from me. Will I Hep?'

'No, Penelope, it will not help you. It will confuse and distract you. I already help you all I can, you know this. I have no control for what concerns your son. He may tell you all when himself he knows it.'

Alexander held his mother's hand and was about to speak. Penny's head too buzzed with questions but before either could gather their thoughts, the door burst open and Ric rushed in.

At the same time Hep fleetingly melded with Pan - What kept you? Thought Hep with relief on Level 2. Come on you little goat....get on with it!

'Quick!' shouted Ric. 'The monitor....check the monitor!' In his rush he thrust Penny and Hep to one side and began hitting the keyboard frenziedly.

'See! There's definitely something. I've given him some commodities data to chew on , but he's not interested. The boy is right, whoever it is doesn't want our information! I don't know what to do now. Our usual methods won't work 'cos I can't get at it from this side. I've tried all the diversion tricks in the book and he's not interested. It's like he's sitting on the outside and just observing us. The only thing I can think of is it's like another kind of parallel network to our own and that's impossible!' Ric was almost shouting, he stared helplessly at Hep.

Hep gazed at Alexander, who had said nothing since their return and had observed Hep's interchange with his mother not knowing how to react. Hep gave a nod of a.s.sent and he was pleased to do something practical now the tension between Hep and his mother had been diverted by Ric's sudden entry.

'May I?' said Alexander to Ric.

'What? May you what?'

'May I look?' Ric turned his head towards Penny.

'It's okay, Ric let him do it,' she said. Alexander exchanged places at the keyboard with Ric.

On Hep's instructions he had kept Zeus' gift round his shoulders. On Level 2 he heard Pannie swearing to himself as he wrestled with the timelines re-linking Markham to the 'sphere. Alexander felt movement in the timelines with the re-integration of Hep's gap, Markham was now open to the 'sphere. The intruding presence, like thief in the dark caught by the snapping on of a light, fled to avoid detection.

The screen Alexander faced changed from its usual configuration to a ma.s.s of colour and speeding patterns. His mind slid into the developing vortex, whirling at ever increasing speeds. Aided by the power of the golden net he seemed to enter the screen. All sense of real time left him and he was truly travelling the 'sphere. Unlike his previous experience of it, this was not a sudden transplantation of s.p.a.ce like in Psathi. This time he had a definite sensation of movement. While his body remained in his seat, his mind was absorbed by the whirling screen. All around were other minds, synapses flashing, like fireflies in a dark summer night. One was brighter than the others for being nearest, just ahead of him and accelerating away from him. Escaping! He felt its anxiety as if fearful of being sensed by him. It was moving fast, too fast for him to be able to communicate with it. His mind sent out feelers and he encountered Hep's slow vibrations and Pannie's more jerky pulses. He slowed, or rather became less frantic, feeling for their company and support. His lack of experience of the 'sphere was made up by Hep and Pannie taking over control of his direction and he knew wherever he went, on whatever timeline, they would be close by. So he maintained his pursuit of the bright light which he understood as the retreating thought pattern of the intruder.

From then on he 'knew' he was to be stretched to the limit of his intellectual and emotional abilities. If he was on trial he was truly tested. He entered a mind-world containing images from his own separate mind. As he journeyed deeply within the Chronosphere he was aware of thought feelers from what he thought were other travellers. Hep and Pannie he recognised as friendly and he sensed Thea and Hera from afar. With an effort, he felt a resonance which must have been Zeus keeping a faint seminal hum, like a spider's web vibrating in the air. There were other sounds and movements, bat-like flittings, all too fast to comprehend. Through all of this noise on the 'sphere, he kept his attention glued to the bright flash he was following. He tried to get onto a L2 communication with Hep or Pannie, but the whirl of speed set up by his chase prevented him from making deliberate connections. His quarry spun off in different directions and following absorbed every ounce of his concentration.

He was aware somewhere behind him his body had lost consciousness, shut down to allow the sheer density of concentration needed to stay in contact. He knew too, that to prolong this energy level would leave his body short of the essential reflex actions needed for life and that his physical self would eventually die. He had no idea how long he had. Not too long, like a snorkler, he could only hold his psychic breath for so long. His mind was in free-fall without any sense of a floor of any kind beneath him. He was in full flight, plunging at immense speeds through s.p.a.ce and time. His prey knew how to journey on the 'sphere and he gave everything he had to keep it in view.

Swathes of existence flashed by him, taking him back to the beginnings of the world and then through a hundred and eighty degrees to far futures as unrecognisable as the far past. Suddenly the flash disappeared at the cusp of a tight turn near what he acknowledged to be an edge, the meeting place of time past and time present. He followed his quarry until they came to a place coloured by a shimmering purple light leading to a blue-black whirlpool which seemed to beckon him into limitless oblivion beyond which he felt once entered he would never again leave. His quarry shot directly and at speed into this spiralling black-hole which he knew he must avoid at all costs. However his task was to follow and he gathered the last remnants of his mind, determined to follow into the vortex. Around him he was suddenly aware of many other travellers entering at lesser speeds into the deep purple of the core. He felt a resistance against which he had to exert all the straining sinews of his tiring mind to overcome. The nearer he came to the edge of the darkness at the centre of the vortex the force repelling him redoubled. Through the black beyond, he glimpsed dimly cheerless grey-green fields, thronged with drab, ashen wraiths. White cypresses shaded a lifeless, flat pool. Three white, wide, paths tapered off into the distance. Utter will-power alone kept him at the dread farthest rim of the purple light. Everything that was in him demanded immediate flight. He felt Pannie's mind tugging at his to get him away. But he had to see where the intruder had gone. Feeling his brain would fuse with the effort, he watched with the last remnant of his will, the dimming flash he had been chasing, dipped along the central road and vanish over a horizon where it was now impossible for him to follow. As Pannie's tugging and his own tired mind drew him back from the brink, he was surprised to see the slower lights, now gathering in quant.i.ty around him, enter without difficulty and slip in among the wraiths at the water's edge. His initial sense of disappointment at losing his quarry was overtaken by the relief from the tension of fighting his own need to escape, he gratefully allowed the repelling force and Pannie's frantic tugging to take him where it would. He left the dreadful purple light behind and once more in the darkness of the 'sphere, the chase over, he felt a strong sense of relief and felt he was falling back into himself.

He was rudely brought back to reality by Hep taking his mind and almost forcibly re-uniting it with his body. He knew he had achieved something important. He had identified the source of the intruder and now his work could begin. He rested, unconscious, in the office chair before the burned out computer screen. Acrid black smoke wreathed the ceiling from the smouldering plastic. Penny and Ric, highly alarmed, lifted the inert body onto a sofa.

'Hep! What Happened!' Penny lifted her eyes from the pale, strained face of her son. 'What's going on? What the h.e.l.l......?'

'He will be well, have no fear.' While he thought to himself, the boy did well to go to the brink and know it for what it is. 'It is what I said ....our business. Not yours'. He was silent for a while, as if communicating privately with someone. We are safe from snoopers for a while, this place is no longer of interest to them, but your son is. I need to find somewhere for him to rest and recover.

'What happened?' asked Ric. 'I thought he'd died the way he just slumped in front of the screen like that. And just see what happened to the monitor, what could do that?'

'It a parallel network. You are right Ricardo my friend,' he replied. 'There is parallel network; what you might call the spirit of the nature of things and by definition not accessible to natural science'. Hep searched for a plausible explanation and struggled to find one. 'It's more...more ....metaphysical.'

'I don't understand.' Ric was puzzled and Hep realised he had made a mistake. His concern for these mortals was drawing him into impossible explanations and with regret he used the Olympian last resort and put his own explanation directly into their minds. What he placed there simply, was the idea that another 'Firm' had discovered what was done at Markham and Alexander had electronically diverted its messenger and left them free to continue their work without more interference. The fire was due to a simple malfunction of the machine and Alexander's faint was simply a matter of his mind being overwhelmed by all the new information he had taken in, in such a short time. As with all such imposed information, it sat awkwardly in their minds as insufficient, but they had no other explanations. The incident left its mark like a written-over erasure. Penny and Ric now had something else in common.

'Your work,' Hep said as if nothing had happened. 'Is safe from this other Firm for now. But you need to redouble your efforts, time is no longer on our side. (The present is at risk of being swallowed by the past, he thought, Chronos awakes). I will take care of Alexander, he needs training which I can give with Thea. I need place to hide where I instruct him, discrete and reliable.'

'Use Marina for your security,' said Penny, past asking questions for which there were no answers. 'No one better. She would welcome the chance to know my children better, she finds them quite unusual. Are you sure he will be alright? He looks so dreadful.'

'Yes, he's okay, tired and needs rest, I will take him from here. Here is where they might search for him and cause unnecessary problems...too distracting, you need all the time you can get to concentrate on work with GAIANET. I ask Marina to find safe-house. How long when you will have all GAIANET systems in place and ready?'

'They're basically there now, Ric has some more work do with HIGO, it still has some minor problems...another week or two at this rate and we'll have it working right.'

'Marina, she good at her job? She won't crack if things get hard?' asked Hep. He was concerned about too many mortals being involved in the next round of events while knowing Alexander might well need a mortal around to keep his bearings in an unreal world. Although he trusted Penny's judgement, he had himself no part in the appointment of her mortal staff and did not know them.

'You can rely on her to do her job. She will defend what's mine against all comers - to the death if need be, I wouldn't be at all surprised. She's a tigress and let's say she owes me, and will do anything I ask.'

'Good, tell her to meet us at the car. I'll email and keep you informed.'

Hep effortlessly slung the still lifeless body of her son over his ma.s.sive shoulder, Penny considered Alexander with new eyes. What had he experienced for her sake? What was it he was going into for all their sakes in the shadowy world of the inner reaches of the Firm, where she knew she would never enter. But he would go - is going - and it was precisely because he was going that she would reach her own goals. How she knew this she did not know exactly but it was so. Her own fears had gone, transferred to him and she experienced the fact that fear for a loved one is worse than fear for oneself. Your own fear can be a positive thing. It makes you search for change, helps you tackle things, the control of suffering can give you strength. Fear for another whom you love, when you cannot follow, means watching, helplessly standing by.

Penny was ultimately self-sufficient. She worked from within herself from her strengths. When unsure she bided her time waiting for certainty or the best level of risk. She never made serious mistakes for she never did anything outside the parameters of the broadly predictable. If things started to become unstuck she changed tack and so far had been able to head-off and re-frame problems. She never had actual disasters. Her most successful approach was to always to do her best to be ahead of the game. She had no illusions about what she was up against. The death of her father showed how far things had gone and demonstrated how difficult was the way through, unable to go back, there had to be a way forward.

The success of JNO stemmed largely from her ac.u.men and foresight. She chose her people well, subtly counselled-out those who did not fit. She tried to see no rancour was left behind to catch up with her when she was not paying attention. Her trust of those she appointed was calculated to pay her back tenfold. She gave in to them in all the small things which did not affect the large strategy, about which she would not budge an inch. She gained the affection of the majority for whom small things mattered more than the large and the serious respect from the discerning few who saw the courage in her larger purposes and who trusted her instincts if not always her every action. She had the affection of most of her people, the love of some and the respect of all. They followed her lead, it was their gift to her - unforced. JNO's ultimate success would come from such mutually supported work. JNO would free the world from ultimate despoliation. Each individual made free from their own exploitation and thus freed to end the exploitation of the world. The best of the human spirit would be the touchstone for collective activity, each individual freely weaving him or herself into the whole as it felt right for each one.

It was only now she was forced to recognise what she had really always known - it was not in the end, up to her, and despite her central role in the JNO empire, it never had been. Till now she had pushed the shadowy doings of the senior members of the Firm from her. Unable to grasp their full purpose, she had ignored them - Lucina, Nemmi, Zarian, Hep. When the time came she had wanted Alexander for herself. She wanted him with her, in her part of the Firm, unconnected to 'Them.' This explained her fury when Lucina in her imperiousness descended from the lift in her ostentatious way and grasped him to her bosom. She who was so retiring in the popular eye, publicly giving such a show of favouritism. G.o.d alone knows what the word around the office would be. Nepotism was not her way. Her plan was for him to work his pa.s.sage so the rest of the workforce would have no reproach. Now he was publicly the tool of Lucina. To cap it all she had no form of redress. He was as lost to her as Thea. And, as always, before 'Them', she was helpless.

She watched Haephestos bear away the unconscious body of her son. Despite her busy life and the influence of Nemmi as his special mentor, he was the only living person to whom she felt close, with whom she could share herself. An unexpected wave of deep disappointment washed through her, and she let forth a long wail of grief which came from her torn and suppressed feelings without warning and was out into the air without her knowledge or control. For a long second she wondered where the sound came from. She had frightened herself and wondered about her sanity. She quickly fought to regain control, surprised to find she had allowed the startled Ric to hold her closely as he would a child, scared to the depths.

'Oh Ric....I....haven't....I can't....I've never....Ric what's happening? I feel....robbed of....of my....life somehow...I suppose....'

Her voice choked against his shoulder and tailed off as she fell into uncontrolled sobbing. Ric saw his chief was deeply wounded, more so than the mere events he had observed. Having no explanation he simply responded by holding her firmly, caring for someone in need. They stood thus for some time until she was quiet and he felt her strength returning. It came as a surprise, until this moment, as he held her warm in his arms, that he loved her more than he knew. With infinite gentleness, coming strangely from such an angular man, he disengaged and said, 'I think you need a rest Penny, go home, I'll hang on here in case anything happens. I'll run checks to see if the....thing has finally stopped snooping. Go home. Take my car, I'll get a lift.'

Penny, sheepish and tearful, feeling wholly vulnerable, gathered up her belongings, took the proffered keys from Ric, kissed him on the cheek with grat.i.tude, smiled wanly and left in Hep's wake. Being a few minutes only behind him and Alexander, she lingered in the reception area to give them a head start. She had no wish to get further involved in what she could not control. She could not bear to drive with the thought she might overtake them on the road.

On the way back to London, she did something she had set her face against years ago, and allowed the full rein of her feelings to well forth. They reached up in her like the slow movement of a symphony, unbidden from unknown depths. Perhaps it was Lucina and those eyes which had made her bury her feelings so deeply in order to concentrate so utterly on her work. The importance of the work for the future of the world had been so exciting that her own life had been totally sublimated in it. So utterly had her emotion for physical love been taken by Alexis that she realised with a long slow moan, that her current ability to feel had been totally cut off. She stopped the car in a lay-by, too overcome to drive. Alexander's life, the gift from Alexis came at a high price. She could only observe alone, and worry. For the first time since Alexis she thought of loving another and she thought of Ric. Far off, and unknown to her, her pain was sensed and noted with relief.

Chapter 14.

For some weeks, Penny's only communication with Hep was through GAIANET. He reported that Alexander was none the worse for his extraordinary experience. He was in a safe place and Hep would tell her if there was anything she needed to know and she was above all to trust him. Marina was watching their backs, and had found a well equipped safe-house for Alexander's R & R and his training. Penny still balked at the idea of him being trained by one of 'Them', but her sense of loss had reduced as the weeks drew on. After all, he was not dead or missing like Alexis, he was with Hep, watched over by Marina, and all the security paraphernalia of JNO at her command.

She could trust Hep, he had been as frank with her as he could she was sure. Unlike Lucina he was not duplicitous or aloof. She knew with certainty she did not want to get mixed up with their affairs, she did not want Alexander to either, but that, like much else was out of her hands. Hep was right, she was better off not knowing.

She had spent most of the next three weeks or so working round the clock with Ric and his team at Markham. The work had been so exhilarating she had managed, most of the time to drive everything else from her mind. They concentrated on the culmination of twenty years work and then they celebrated. Nothing fancy, a private party of the secret cabal of Markham boffins. Their success made her spirits soar and at the same time gave her the biggest dose of collywobbles of her life.

They cracked a few bottles of champagne, ate a pot-luck meal and got mildly drunk. They had achieved the key to a transformation which could change the world, provided they used it satisfactorily. Ric and his team had provided JNO with the means, it was up to the rest of the JNO staff to deliver. The principle was simple, the technology prodigious and the operational consequences mind-blowing. There was not much room for error and total secrecy was the main ingredient. While the objective was clear and the machinery was under control; people, the most unpredictable element in any operation, would be the problem.

The staff selection programme in JNO was rigorous. But Penny was enough of a realist to know not everyone in such a large operation could be totally reliable all the time. The only way to limit leaks was to develop a cellular, cut-off system of communication with everyone knowing only as much as they needed. All tangible information that might be filched by unauthorised personnel was digitally coded and had randomised pa.s.swords to minimise access. The precautions meant that Ric's special team, including Penny herself, were the most vulnerable, since they would be the best target. So far, she was sure no one knew of their existence. Marina and her large staff, were employed to warn and protect them.

GAIANET - was complete. Tested and in operation. 'HIGO' had worked impeccably for three weeks continuously and seemed now to be bug-free. The Firm was now able to monitor the world's financial and trading activities on a moment to moment basis, to make out patterns, suggest interventions, carry them out, monitor the minutest effects and adjust their interventions accordingly. JNO was potentially in a position to fine tune the economy of the world in secret. Penny had nothing less than the levers of world economic activity at her fingertips. In so far as the activity of almost everyone on the planet was ultimately geared to economic ends, she had control of the effects on social relations, scientific enquiry, ecology, conservation, politics, even peace and war.

She had worked for this moment for as long as she could remember and the moment of achievement left her elated at the task completed and also terrified of the responsibility it implied. She knew with absolute clarity why most people seemed to prefer the uncertainty of events. Why they reacted to happenings rather than sought control. She knew why those that obsessively sought control were often mad, tyrannical, or both. Was she therefore a tyrant? Was she mad? The idea of GAIANET and HIGO had been the most exciting thing in the world. To achieve it she had sacrificed the love of men, the upbringing of her children, submitted to the enigma of Lucina and Zarian, given all her time and considerable energy to the Firm. Now at the pinnacle of her achievement she met head on, an unexpected fear of what they had done and a horror of herself.

At the beginning in Psathi with Lucina, when they had planned the relief of the planet, the goal was already decided and Penny was thrilled and flattered at being chosen to help. It was a necessary task. Unlike some 'Green movements', JNO never harked back to previously and doubtful 'simpler' times and technologies, but adopted a great going forward, fully embracing new technology through control and redirection with a continual forward movement into new possibilities in partnership with natural forces. Through the years she had used Lucina's strength as a guide. Even latterly when Lucina had given her head, while she saw it as her due for effort, she never really thought about the power success would give her personally. She was a cog in a wheel, okay a big cog, in a big wheel. The Firm knew what it was doing. It would take control, everyone else would be powerless, except they would not know it. At the start she got real pleasure from having the potential for hidden control. To be able to manipulate systems until enough of the change was made, until the critical point was reached. Eventually, the Firm would invite the laggards to become partners in the new deal and thereby change the very nature of production in the natural world.

Since their agreement Lucina had kept her distance. Penny couldn't help feeling isolated, wondering if Lucina still shared the same ideals. Now she was afraid to be left alone with the full knowledge of what they were doing and its monumental power. Only Hep had given her any time and now he too was elsewhere with her son. Alexander was to have provided her with the companionship she missed, but now he too was absent. The pleasure of success was severely tempered by an overwhelming fear of being alone with more power than was right for one person. a.s.sailed by doubts of the propriety of the thing now wrought she sat with Ric, alone in her private suite of rooms in the converted attics at Markham, after the party.

'You're quiet - a bit flat?' he asked softly, feeling a need to break the silence.

She did not speak, unsure how to react. Perhaps the size of the task they had been working on alarmed him as well. But the ultimate responsibility was not his, he was still able to pa.s.s the buck.

'Speak to me Penny, what is it?'

'You feel it too?'

She turned sharply towards him. She owed him much, he had been undyingly loyal through all the difficulties of the last ten years. She had hired him as perhaps the best software programmer in the world. His 'Biteasy' programmes were sold and pirated world-wide. He was a multi-billionaire through the ownership of the rights to the working software of eighty five percent of PC's in the world, and yet had agreed to work with her in JNO. Lucina had introduced them at a software convention in Los Angeles and she had been overwhelmed with his vision of the possibilities of computer development and communications. It would not be true to say she had hired him. He already had more money than it was possible to spend in several dozen lifetimes and she soon discovered he was bored. Penny had told him about the potential of JNO and he saw its aims as the epitome of his own ambitions for the power of computing. At heart he was a simple computer scientist, dedicated to making computers as powerful a means of communication as money and technology could manage. Penny's drive and her dedication to the huge task JNO had adopted was the perfect vehicle for his abilities. JNO's ideals were self-evidently sensible and necessary but in the end he was more concerned with the technology than its application.

'Always remember Penny you gave me direction when my life seemed impossible. Your certainty alone made all this happen, but you know that already....don't you?'

Unable to hold his eye, she felt an utter fraud. The certainty he was talking of drew its strength from Lucina's matter of fact acceptance of the inevitability of what they did and from Thea's sense of its simple rightness. Alone she could never have taken on such work, no one could. It was the work of a crazed megalomaniac to attempt, G.o.d-like, to control the economic activity of the whole world. Whatever the potential 'good' of a positive redirection of the exploitation of nature, who was she to think she could handle such an insane enterprise? In short, it came not at all from her but from 'Them.'

In her own opinion, until now, she was merely an 'operative'. A helper in Lucina's enterprise. Was Ric aware that at this moment of achievement, this moment when the means were delivered she felt she had no real grasp on anything, particularly the next stage?

She realised how dependent on the Firm she really was. Lucina and Thea would have no doubts about what to do now and Alexander was being trained by them at this moment. Should she tell Ric that deep within she knew she had been used? She was a p.a.w.n in a wider game and had never found the inner strength to effectively question what was happening. Partly from her own unchallenged a.s.sumption that she would manage to maintain her integrity despite 'Them' and partly because the game was hugely and sufficiently exciting and fulfilling of itself. Now the 'game' was over and the real work was about to begin. 'They' were in control as they always had been. She was having to ask herself if she had the strength of character to take the responsibility they deliberately left with her. Her first thought was to have it out once and for all with Lucina, but she knew nothing would come of that. She was really and truly on her own....would have to make her own way.... alone. But there was still Ric....she must risk him further now or be entirely alone with the fear of going totally off her trolley.

'I'm scared, Ric, now at this moment...I...,' she tailed off.

He too was anxious. He knew the scope of what they were doing, but he wanted to know exactly where she was coming from before feeling confident of making the right responses. For all his concentration on the technical task, anyone who had developed a business as large as 'Biteasy' was in touch with the motivations driving those closest to him. He needed to know she was going to the same place with him before declaring himself involved up to the hilt.

Penny spoke, in an attempt to draw him into her own mood.

'We've done it...got it to work....GAIANET and HIGO....and I'm frightened by it. The worst thing is not the rightness of the idea....that goes without saying. It's the...ma.s.sive enormity of the responsibility, and G.o.d knows that's bad enough on its own, objectively speaking. But what's....what's really frightening the life out of me is the actual taking of responsibility. Making the choice to act. And then doing it. What if....what if...it...doesn't work, or it's simply wrong to do such things? Think what a desperately worse mess we could make. It doesn't bear thinking about! Nothing gives us the right to take on the world in this way. I feel like some kind of despot, playing G.o.d. I wanted all people to share freely in what we do, of their own will. But we have here...in our command...ours remember...powers to do...well, almost anything we like...I'm desperately afraid of losing...I don't know...trust...trust in myself.'

'You mean...power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely...to coin a phrase.'

'Yes, that's precisely what I mean.'

'I'm glad of your doubt. That's good, I would be more worried about you if you were certain and elated about the future. Even if we can do anything we want - and I'm not so sure about that; isn't it how we use the means that counts? I mean more than the power itself. That's just a tool.'

'You mean you have to ask why power corrupts?'

'Exactly. Having power is one thing, using it to maintain a tyranny over those without it is the problem.'

'But Ric, how can that be avoided?' Penny walked about the room, talking more to herself than to Ric. 'Just having superior information and to be able to manipulate people and events is exercising huge power. You know as well as I do, good intentions don't work. Lots of...well...awful tyrants have started out that way, even egged on by their followers in the spirit of ultimate good. They all succ.u.mb to arrogance, all of them, there are no exceptions. Only the truly humble overcome. It's as if their very vulnerability gives them ultimate power without it actually touching them. They just keep going, true to themselves not to their hold over anything.'

'You mean ultimate humility, like Jesus on the cross?'

'Yes - I suppose so.'

'But he knew he was the Son of G.o.d,' Ric smiled. '....Seems to me he had some pretty powerful connections.'

Penny smiled too.'Yes, but he didn't use them to get people to do what he wanted, he just behaved...like he was the son of His Father and got their attention from just being.'

'What's to stop you acting like a child of the world? As you are, as we all are.'

'Nothing, I suppose...that's helpful actually, that means I don't have to act out power, I just ply my own furrow, with the confidence of knowledge. It's a fine line though, don't you think?'

'What's the alternative?' asked Ric. He was taking pains to bring her back to herself. Like her he had serious misgivings, but of a different kind. He was more worried about the parallel communications net Alexander had stumbled across.

'You have to act on what you know, you can't help it,' he continued. 'You know the current economic system is destroying the world, you know the different interests of the main protagonists are probably irreconcilable, at least not in time to prevent a catastrophe. You know people will act only when the inevitable is proven incontrovertibly and even then the key vested interests will always deny it until they are overtaken in the end. The human race seems doomed by its very nature. The only action worth taking now is to change this nature. It's a shift in the archetype of the species that's needed. There's no time left for evolution, we have a generation at the most, maybe two to make a fundamental change. We must do it Penny, we must, if only because we can, if for no other reason. The Firm must, because well....there's just no one else who can do it. Think of the panic as the crops fail, as the rich nations begin to experience the famines of the poor. Think of how the powerful nations will scramble and fight with whatever weapons they have to ensure their own survival. You only have to see what they do to the Third World, to ensure their life-styles. Not to mention the unthinking extinction of animals and plant life. All this and they're not yet even threatened by anything more alarming than not being able to get a beef burger on demand, or having to think twice about jumping in a car to go to the shops half-a-mile away.'

Penny felt an unconscious irritation within herself as she listened.

'I know all that Ric. I'm sorry - it's not you, it's me. I know we're right and that we've got a job to do. What bothers me is my...no...our, yours and mine, the team's, JNO's, Alexander's'...all of our relationships with what I can only call 'Them'.Lucina and her crew - you see I know we are not in control...' She hesitated, unsure whether to go on, but it was too late she had to speak. ' ...'They' are'!'

There! It was out! She had said it! Her vulnerability was henceforth entrusted to him. Ric felt privileged to be the recipient and hoped she felt relieved. He carried on to absorb her anxiety about his response, as if she had said nothing significant, he hoped by this, he would convey his understanding of the confession she had made.

'You mean it's not your power which corrupts but 'Theirs'? So you feel able to be trusted but you're not sure about 'Them'. '

'Exactly. Right! Except that because I've got doubts about my own ability to make this thing work, I'd hate to find myself relying slavishly on them. I'm not sure if my ideas and theirs ever properly coincided. I don't know if what we are doing is being done for us or for them. That's what I can't get out of my head and....it's....fundamental. I know what we're trying do and scared as I am of our sheer ability to hold it together; I can't help wondering what's theirs?'

Ric pa.s.sed his hand over his head, in a futile gesture to clear the wispy hair from his face, 'I wondered when you would raise that? It's bothering me too. Though not, I think in the way it's affecting you. You have a different relationship with them from me. I mean your family is involved, you're part of the beginning of all this with them. I worry about you and them too, but in a way that's not been my problem till now. The cause is right, the timing is right and I've got the technology in place. It doesn't really matter to me who is in control while ever we're trying to get this human paradigm shift we're talking about. I believe in it and there's no time to worry about the finer points, I'll leave that to history, if there's going to be any. Listen Penny,' He came close to her holding her tightly by the arms and their eyes locked. 'I don't know either, that it's possible for sure, but from where I stand there's nothing to lose. Sure a few rich people will lose out, and we're bound to make serious mistakes and some powerful enemies, but that'll be the worst of it....and for my money that's a small price to pay if we keep our heads. Maybe we'll blow it, and the world will be plunged into more economic tensions and wars. So what's new? No, Penny, we go on, we do it, starting whenever you say the word.' He tightened his grip on her arms so that he hurt her in his excitement. 'What's getting to me isn't who has the power, after all without JNO we wouldn't be here at all. It's this parallel network Alexander has cottoned on to. There is something out there. Hep certainly knows what it is, and if he does so does Lucina and her crew. So we're not in this alone, something outside of us has an interest!'

He let go of her pre-occupied by his own logic.

'Like I told you,' said Penny. 'It's 'Them'...my worry is that their game is not the same as ours.'

'No Penny, that won't do...you see I think Lucina, Hep and Thea and Alexander and the whole of JNO including Zarian in New York, are playing exactly the same game as us. But someone only they know about, someone else has got other fish to fry and that's what's worrying them - and, through them - you. What's more, you, you don't really want to know because the whole thing is bad enough as it is and you are afraid you will have to find out because Alexander is caught up in it. Am I right?'

Penny walked angrily to the window to find herself staring at rolling lawns. The view seemed totally out of place with her mood. There were unwelcome sensations in the pit of her psyche.

'Don't want to know what?' she almost spat out the words, only respect for Ric prevented her from telling him to mind his own business and walking from the room. She spotted her car in the courtyard and wanted again to speed away from everything.

'That there's something else going on from which you have been excluded. Thea is part of it and so now is Alexander. I'm willing to bet they've been involved for a long time and your resentment goes very deep indeed. You see, like you, I don't think the fact that you're excluded matters to the eventual outcome either. What matters to you, my wonderful girl, is that you feel used.'

Penny was surprised at Ric's insight. She had known Ric mainly as a boffin. Even though they had been closeted together for years, their conversations had been exclusively work oriented. Neither had reason to delve into their own personalities and she was in any event not usually concerned with what went on under the surface provided people did the work. Someone as brilliant as Ric aroused her infinite respect, much like Hep, except Hep was something else, one of 'Them.'

She bridled at being so transparent, especially to Ric. She subsided back into her chair, crossed one long leg over the other, and leaning towards him engaged him Firmly with her eye.

'So you keep a close watch on me then?'

'Answer me! Am I right?'

'Yes, G.o.dd.a.m.n you! You're right, but only partly. It's true, I don't like being excluded, but I can live with exclusion, it isn't not knowing what's going on that's the real b.i.t.c.h, and there is something going on. It's as if 'They' have taken their eye off the ball, to do something else, even though they trust me utterly, have given me all the vast resources of JNO but for the life of me I can't think what could be more important than saving the planet.'

'Neither can I, and if Hep's anxiety is any guide it's got something to do with what he is up to with your lad. So, I've been checking the 'Alexander burn out' and there's no electronic or any other scientific reason why the computer melted down like that. The reason was not physical. Despite the effects, there was no detectable malfunction of the machine. I can only conclude that Hep was right when he talked about Alexander's mind. The whole event was psychic rather than electronic. It doesn't make any scientific sense but I believe the game they are playing has nothing to do with the physical world. What burned out the computer wasn't an electrical overload on the machinery, but an excess of reaction to whatever Alexander was relating to which Hep was so concerned about. I've been pondering it a lot. The only conclusion I can come up with is quite illogical in scientific terms, but makes sense if you think of it in terms of the mind. You see, while we're using the physical, technical reality of cybers.p.a.ce to connect what people are doing, it's only a change of mind that will matter in the end.' He stopped to gather his thoughts more clearly. 'So - what if it's not what controls the physical world that will cause the breakthrough, but a who or a what that can fathom people's minds and get down to the basic natural mould which shapes us equally as members of one species? Why can't people live as one family, grown from the same earth? Why continually emphasise difference why not emphasise similarity? We share the same physical mind with all the other racial groups, cultures and tribes and therefore the same potentiality. The problem, as I see it, is that none of the current solutions for the survival and development of the human animal in the physical world, have any really useful function with our nuclear arms and exploitative economics. In terms of saving the planet, territorialism, tribalism, nation-states, super-corporations, governments, don't work any more and this lack of coherence is what is contributing to our extinction. We don't any longer have the evolutionary time scales to get things right before we pollute ourselves into oblivion and create untold suffering into the bargain. But, if you make a species wide a.s.sumption that the Earth in a kind of way also has a mind. That the Earth is like a person, let's call her the Earth Mother. After all we are all made of her clay. Then it all makes sense. 'They' are still part of Her, but we no longer act as if we are. We used to be part of Her once, long ago and so then we were part of 'Them' and everything was in harmony. It's like the old G.o.ds had time for us because we had time for them. The whole world of things, and of thought, flowed through them, to us and back again. Then, more recently we unilaterally became responsible for ourselves, clever monkeys that we are; but it didn't matter until now, because the Earth could cope with us. But now, if we don't take care of it soon, we'll perish so it can survive. Because there's no doubt that without us, It will recover in no time. We have to save the Earth for Herself so as to save ourselves. If we just save Her for ourselves, we'll go on keeping Her at the just acceptable limit of survival and everything then becomes mere survival. It won't do, Penny. That's why the Firm exists. People will only be able to save the world if they are of the world, consciously, publicly, politically, economically. Think about it - the species commonality among animals makes them all predictable within given bounds. All cats behave like cat. All humans behave like men and women. We are all vulnerable, have common needs, and common satisfactions. What will make people safe for the world is not merely treating it differently; but the adoption of a completely different way of thinking about the world. If the mind of the world and the human mind were seen as the same so we cared about it as if it were one of us, in us not outside us, we would not exploit it...'

'Why not?' Penny interjected. 'We exploit people outrageously who are clearly in our likeness - especially in the Third World. When it comes to preventive action we've nothing to say unless our interests are involved.