'Gerr'of my train, gerr'off!' It was the uncomprehending voice of authority, righteous, correct and wrong, wrong, wrong. The other pa.s.sengers clapped a slow hand-clap until angry and shamed in equal measure Alexander got up, being forced to slide past the guard, under his bent body, and out onto the platform followed by the judgemental eyes of the pa.s.sengers, one stop short of his destination.

Pannie was leaning against the exit tunnel, still giggling. The train pulled off, leaving them alone under the inadequate strip lights.

'What now, boychik?'

'Did you do that?' exclaimed Alexander, angrily brushing past him and on down the platform.

'Oooh Hoo, what's gottinter you? I didn't do nuffin'. I just laughed. No Mate, you done it yerself.' It was Pannie's turn to skip after him down the grubby platform.

'Why didn't you argue wiv 'im, you was only wivout a ticket, people does it all the time, no need t' get so upset about it.'

'He wouldn't have listen to me. I know the type!' Alexander expostulated, striding quickly, angry with himself. After all his revelations, when it came to act, even in a small way he had done nothing. He deliberately disengaged his mind from Pannie, finding in his anger and frustration that he could manage it quite easily when he wanted. He followed the exit signs towards the barrier. Everybody wants me to act, as if I knew what it was I was supposed to do. I suppose I was to challenge that brute and shout him down. Feeling dissatisfied with himself his mind fell back to the thoughts which had plagued him in the park. What about this task from Zeus? How am I supposed to change people's natures if I can't stand up to a bossy guard? n.o.body asked me if I wanted to act. They're all asking me to do what they want. What about what I want? But I don't know what I want. Do I want what they want? I don't know. I wish they'd all leave me alone. What is it to me if the world gives up on people, it'll have to give up on me too. So what? I don't have any specially bright ideas about what to do if Gaia is having a hard time. There's loads of other people doing things, what's so special about me? In his self-preoccupation he forgot he could be overheard on the 'sphere and that Pannie was right, Zarian and Hera were tuned in.

They were lying in each other's arms in the green room of the penthouse suite of the Olympic building. Zarian had been rediscovering some of the forgotten charms in the arms of Lucina and was basking in the aftermath of some of some particularly sweet lovemaking. His little cuckoo turned out to be more loving than his numerous conquests, for she loved him for himself, and he had nothing to prove to her. With her he could be himself and relax.

Absolute relaxation was impossible. He needed constant vigilance and he had his 'sphere watchers hard at it twenty four hours a day, for if it were known that his control was less than total, there were enough forces from around and especially below, to creep about and plot without his knowledge.

It occurred to him Lucina was being nice to him to lull him into unthinking so she could carry out the plans she was hatching. Except that he had been quite honest about this Alexander and they did have a deal. It also occurred to him he had been too suspicious of his wife, although he never forgot it was she who led the last conspiracy against him. Enjoying the pleasure of her warm body against his, he nestled into her and their thoughts melded at a high enough level to exclude listeners although the vigilant would know they were communicating. In the wink of an eye they were in a high level meld.

'So you see my sweet' he murmured after, on the less tiring first level. 'I'm worried about Alexander.'

He nuzzled her white shoulder, and his loins stirred against the delicious cleavage of her b.u.t.tocks. 'By the way, you're not up to anything I should know about are you? The deal is the deal, isn't it?'

'Of course, leave it to me, it's all in hand, my Lord, but everyone has to help when asked, or it won't work. I've got Pannie on it at the moment and he's got the Morae sisters involved. Maybe Alexander will not resist them as he did me. In any event they have naturally written him in, even if he does.' With this she opened herself again to him and there was a sudden and long silence on the 'sphere from the direction of the penthouse suite.

Chapter 10.

Alexander found himself at the exit barrier. Without a ticket to push through the machine, he addressed an underground employee sanding by the narrow exit. Outside, his glimpse of the dawn showed the promise of sunshine.

'Excuse me....I'm sorry, I was unable to buy a ticket, can I pay you?' He held out a handful of mixed change towards the man. 'How much from Baker Street?' The man looked him up and down.

'No ticket?'

'No....sorry....didn't have time to get one.'

'No ticket, no ride,' the man commented simply.

'Yes, yes. I know. I just want to buy a ticket from Baker Street where I got on and to go on my way.'

'How do I know you got on at Baker Street, maybe you got on at Morden or else Hounslow. You might'a done it at Cannon Street or even Tooting Bec?'

'Please just take my word for it, I got on at Baker Street and came one stop to here.'

'Hmm. S'more than my job's worth to do that son. Can't just go around taking people's word now can I?

'Well I can't prove I got on anywhere without a ticket, can I?' said Alexander, his anger beginning to get the better of him.

'Exactly my point,' observed the man, calm as a cuc.u.mber, smiling winningly. 'You should have a ticket. It's an offence to travel without a ticket. With a ticket is how we know where you got on. Maybe you've got a season or a travel card or something?' He added hopefully.

'No I've nothing like that. Look I didn't expect to get a Tube, I was going by taxi and....well something happened and I got a Tube.'

'Ah yes indeed, but you didn't get a ticket now did you?'

'No! I just said so!'

'No ticket, no ride.'

'I know. But I've already ridden from Baker Street.'

'How do I know that you haven't come from Tooting Bec?' The man was all sweetness and light.

'Look, how much even if I did come from as far away as you can get?' This was really ridiculous.

'Where would that be then?'

'I don't know, say Hounslow.' Alexander was not quite sure where that was, but it seemed far.

'Did you get on at Hounslow then?'

'No, I told you I got on at Baker Street!'

'What time was that then?'

'What's the time got to do with anything?'

'Depends.'

'On what?'

'The time you got on.'

Alexander was getting really annoyed, but to leave the station he had to get past the barrier and the man. He considered leaping the barrier and making a run for it into the sunny morning, but wasn't sure he could make it successfully.

'It must have been about four o'clock in the morning. I didn't know you ran trains then, so I was surprised the catch the train to here.'

'We don't.' The man stroked his chin thoughtfully. 'So from Baker Street to here is one stop, say five minutes? So that makes four-O-ten now, allowing you to get here and all that,' he pulled a large chromium watch from a chain attached to his striped waistcoat. 'That's right, you couldn't have a ticket 'cos we ain't open yet. So we has to ask ourself what are you doing here? In any case you'll have to wait until we open in a couple of hours. You can't get out in any case, as that there's a padlocked gate and the doors are still locked. Tatta!'

He lifted a bucket and mop and vanished whistling, down some service stairs.

In exasperation Alexander turned back along the tunnel to the platform. He would simply wait for the first train to home. He supposed the train he had been thrown off was an early tube- worker's train of some kind.

On the platform a woman in Underground overalls was at a trestle table, cutting lengths of what seemed like flexible plastic into strips of various lengths. He sat in the middle of a bank of five plastic seats attached to the wall.

Another woman similarly attired emerged from the tunnel to his left. She held some sort of long rod in her hands. A third came down the stairs from which he had emerged carrying a sizeable container.

'When you've cut up that lot Antro,' said the woman with the container. 'I've made up some more here, there's one good thing, though, we'll be able to stop doing this soon. 'Though I expect the gaffer'll find us something else to do.'

Alexander wondered what bizarre activity London Transport expected of these employees.

'h.e.l.lo, h.e.l.lo! What have we here?' said the woman with the large container as she approached Alexander. 'It's not often we get people looking us up down here.'

'Too right Clotho,' replied the woman at the table. 'They usually only want to know us at first not later on.' This latter remark was clearly for Alexander's benefit.

'Have you come to be measured up?' asked the third woman, leaping nimbly onto the platform using her rod as a vaulting pole.

'Seems like it, Laki,' said the first woman, eyeing Alexander up and down.

'How long do you think this one should be?' asked the one called Clotho. 'Don't I recall him from Ios? Elithia was personally involved as I remember.'

'He's got the same as the others Antro my dear.'

'So I should snip him about here,' said Antro, and drawing a length of material from Clotho's drum, she offered it to Laki, who measured off so many lengths with her rod and held it up for Antro to snip it off with her shears.

'That's exactly it my dear. Okay by you my lad?'

Laki turned to Alexander. He observed a strong family likeness in the three. They appeared to be sisters - the noses a dead give-away. He wondered if they might be triplets, even close to, he found them hard to distinguish. He was still struggling to comprehend what they were doing, and why they were asking his advice. Their ages were hard to determine, they seemed ageless, around middle years, but the half-light of the underground made that kind of comparison difficult.

'Is what okay by me?' he enquired.

'This length, about long enough is it? Takes you up to 2012, like all the others. You can have it shorter if you want, but I'm sorry the Gaffer won't let us make them any longer any more.

'Make what shorter?'

'Your life span,' said Laki. 'Should I make it shorter?'

He thought somewhere in his mind he knew them, what they were but he was too pre-occupied however, to dwell on it.

'I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about, I'm waiting for the trains to get going, you'll have to excuse me I've got a lot on my mind, so you just get on with your work and I'll sit here quietly until the trains start.'

'He expects the trains to start,' observed Clotho, with an infectious chuckle which made the others smile indulgently at him. 'Nothing will start until we know what you want us to do with this.' She grabbed the strip of material from her sister and held it up so he could get a better view.

'What do you want from me?' Alexander was aware of more expectations arriving from unexpected sources and spoke through the aggression he felt.

'Hoity-toity eh? No, no, my lad,' called the one named Antro from her place at the table. 'It's for you to tell us what to do, up to a point, that is, things don't have to be exactly what we say. This can be as long as you can make it, provided you know what you're doing. Of course we won't tell you exactly how long, at least we wouldn't have before now, but 2012 is it, eh girls? Orders from the Gaffer, see?'

'I think he said about 2012, Antro,' mused Laki, there's a bit of leeway up to when Gaia gives them up, could be another thirty, as much as fifty, years p'raps more, or so I'm told. I thought he said nothing would happen straight away, he's never usually exact, not that he was ever bothered about the details, more of a broad-sweep sort of chap in my experience.'

'Yes,' said, Clotho. 'Not like us, we've always had to be so exact ourselves....you see dearie.....,' she explained turning to Alexander. '....or else people would complain of us getting it wrong and they wouldn't go quietly when the time came. There was some who complained right up to the end, and there was one or two who got things changed even after it was all over, and Antro had snipped them off.'

'They were a minority,' interrupted Antro. 'I don't suppose you'll be one of them. He's not one of them, Laki is he? You usually know the ones when you see them. You see dear, Laki's the one you have to arrange things with. Clotho and me, well we mainly does the necessary, which doesn't mean it's easy, no way, all that making is hard work and knowing exactly the right moment to cut it off, for everybody. Takes a lot of careful working out, it's quite mathematical you see. But I suppose the negotiation stuff is probably the hardest, and Laki does that, don't you dear?'.

'I don't think he's quite got it yet, Antro,' Clotho interjected, we ought to introduce ourselves, then he will be able to work it out if he's half the man I think he is. I'm Clotho, that's my full name, Clotho Horae at your service I make this material, it's called DNA strip nowadays. Her over there with the measuring rod is sister Lachesis, Laki for short, the rod's old fashioned, more a kind of symbolic thing now. Actually it's all digitalised and computerised nowadays. But we like to do it the old way from time to time just for the fun of it. Well, you don't know if these new fangled things will always work so we keeps up the manual version just in case. This here at the table, is sister Antropos, she snips it off, exactly at the last second. Like I say it's all automated, so we only have a bit of material here, to show you, some of yours and some people you know. The rest is at the works.'

Now it clicked for him. The Morae sisters, the Fates, spun, measured and cut to length, the lives of mortals. This was his life they held and played with in their hands as if it were a mere length of material. Piles of cut lengths lay around the platform. Lives lying about on the dusty concrete.

'See!' said Clotho triumphantly, he's got it now. 'We put it all together, not here usually, like I said, at the works. We're only here for your benefit actually. We nearly went back when you didn't come, but seeing as you made it we're at your service.'

'What do you want from me?' Alexander repeated weakly, shocked again by this latest manifestation of Zeus' followers. It seemed everyone wanted something from him today. 'I'm exhausted with all this. If I knew what I wanted I'd do something about it. As it is Hera wants something from me, Thea is making demands, and Zeus has given me an impossible job and you want me to take part in determining my fate. I thought you were supposed to do all that when I was born, and I had no way of doing anything about it.'

'That's a common fallacy,' observed Laki, measuring him up with her eye squinting at him along her rod. There's such a thing as luck, you know, chance, and you can make a lot of your own luck, especially by avoiding wrong decisions and being adventurous. Why Apollo got us all legless once so that Admetus could avoid his fate, it was a bad piece of work for his wife, but it turned out all right in the end, though it put a lot of people to a lot of trouble. Still, it goes to show things are not always inevitable if you know your way around.'

'What are you trying to tell me? That I can change the fate Zeus has in store for me?'

'We..ell,' chipped in Laki. 'You know Zeus doesn't control us. We have the last say even over him. But it's true you can't exactly change it so you can get out of it, if that's what you're driving at. It's more like you can be in some charge of the details and the outcomes, if you are careful about what you get up to. I can show you what I mean if you like, but it'll be hard for you to make it all out. We don't usually give previews, that can be dangerous for us, and it can be very upsetting when you know the truth. It needs a brave man to see into his future and go boldly on after. It's very costly on the psyche if you're not ready for it. What do you think?'

'What do I think?' he exclaimed. 'Why is it I have to do all the thinking round here, I thought you were all to help me, that's what I heard Hera say. Come to think of it, that's what Pannie said, his job's to 'help me on'. Talking about him....where's he got to?'

'Oh, don't you worry about him, he'll turn up when he's ready,' said Clotho. 'More to the point, are you going to take up Laki's offer? 'Cos it's time we got back to the works, Gaffer's given us a big job reviewing all our clients. We only came down here to give you a hand like Hera said, but it's your decision not ours. We tell it like it is and you decide.' She bent down and began to wind the cut DNA strips back into her drum including his own.

Then as if she had second thoughts she re-examined a few of them before picking one out, which she threw to Laki who caught it cleverly in mid air and allowed it to wind itself neatly onto her measuring rod.

'That's yours, Sonny Jim,' said Atro, waving her shears. 'See you in due course. Got to get back now.' Atro and Clotho, tidied up and set off arm in arm through the exit, leaving Alexander with Laki. Alexander glanced at his watch, four-fifteen, real-time had not budged, at this rate he'd never get out of the tube system.

'You'll not get out until you've decided,' said Laki. 'Time will start again only when you've decided. I can give you a preview if you want or not, you know, no sweat as far as I'm concerned, no big deal. I know it's not an easy decision. I'll quite understand if you say no and wait for a train out of here. Though where you'll go, and what you'll do will be more of a problem than if you knew. Knowledge like yours in a mortal is pretty powerful stuff. I've seen stronger minds than yours crumple, but then they didn't have your parental advantages, so I expect it's even stevens on that score. Still, like the girls said, time to go.'

'Hold on!' exclaimed Alexander. Laki turned. 'I'll look! What do I have to do?' Laki stopped and unwound the Life-strip from her measuring rod and fed it into a machine she carried in her London Transport shoulder bag.

'Right, this is like a video recorder, this...' and she threw him a small oblong device '...is the remote. It's just like the one you use at home for the telly. See there, at the entrance to the tunnel, it'll act like a screen. There's one thing though, ever since Hep got into electricity, he's been nuts over virtual reality, so you can get into the picture like, if you want. You just put on this headset, remote too, like the controller, no wires to get in the way. Want it?' Alexander fingered the remote and reached for the headset.

'I'll have to stay with you, 'cos we're not allowed to show too much, so I'll have to give you edited highlights. Personally I don't care how much you get, but company policy is not to give previews unless we have to and then only extracts, or else the Erinyes girls, the Furies, get upset and it's no joke if they get after you. Anyway I daresay you'll get to meet them in due course, but I'm running on too much already.'

Alexander viewed the instruments with trepidation. Laki, had sat down on the seat next to him to better balance the video machine and feed in the Life-strip. She got it all rigged up and signalled him to push the 'Play' b.u.t.ton.

'Wait...wait a minute, this is going too fast for me!' exclaimed Alexander, do you mean to tell me that if I push this b.u.t.ton the tunnel entrance will turn into a TV screen and show me my life to come?'

'What do you want to know? How the technology works or if what you will see is a 'This will be your Life' programme?' She laughed gaily.

Alexander for the umpteenth time that night was losing his bearings. Until now, the logic of events happening in sequence had kept him going. He knew more or less how he had got where he was and what seemed to be happening, but the content of the happenings was all dream stuff, built from sc.r.a.ps from his mind so that he thought he would soon wake up. As in a nightmare, he struggled to wake up, wanting it to be over. It was possible in the dream that his future would be available to him, but in real time this was impossible unless...

'You gott.i.t, boychick'. Pannie appeared cross legged, balancing on a rail at the tunnel entrance. 'No dream matey, it's for real, 'cept that real time's on hold 'til yer makes up yer mind what yer gonna do. 'S'like the 'ole world's waitin' on yer t' make up yer mind.'

'Who asked you to chip in? You smelly old goat,' interjected Laki shortly,.'We're busy, so shut your trap while I explain a few things to this young chap. Seriously, do you want to know about how it works, or what it's going to do?'

'Neither, What I want to know is what is happening to me. Why me? What do Zeus and the Firm want? What have I got that singles me out from all the rest to change the very nature of humankind?'

'Oh that, that's all written in the life-strip. That's my job, it's been there all the time, your job's to try your best. What's in there's...well, you can see for yourself if you like. Once we used to tell oracles and that, but nowadays we're into technology, it's supposed to make it more believable, personally I prefer oracles, more mysterious, more fun. Still got to move with the aeons, fact of life; if you'll excuse the pun.'

Alexander felt he was not communicating what he meant. He tried a new tack, if he pushed his almost exhausted mind by an effort of will, perhaps he could get on level two with both of them and explain. There were too many one-off things happening, there was no pattern, no framework to explain anything that was happening to him. All he had to go on was stories of mythology got from Nemmi, which were peopled with the characters he was now meeting. It seemed that any one of the thousands of characters in the ancient Pantheon could suddenly pop along a timeline, from anywhere or anywhen on the Chronosphere and confront him with themselves as real characters. Two questions revolved around his mind like the twin helix of DNA itself. Were the ancient G.o.ds more than symbolic? Were they real, having tangible existence in their different time zone from mortals? Did they exist there separately but with the power to influence? Or were they notions and concepts embedded in the human collective unconscious? If it were the first then he was truly and magically transported into another dimension. If the second, then the more he delved into the machinations of his own mind the more he would experience the archetypal mind which he shared with everyone else, based on a species commonality in which this symbolism had a life directing force. That might be innovative enough to change the nature of people. If it could be done. But how would it? He was surprised at what came back to him on the 'sphere. In his effort to reach level two he had quite forgotten the open quality of the network. In his ignorance of the way the system functioned he seemed to have failed to get Pannie and Laki in a direct line and his thoughts were spread far and wide. There was a cacophony of incoming thought patterns, all broken up like busy short wave radio, only s.n.a.t.c.hes were intelligible at any one time. As his head filled with this noise he broke off contact by another effort of will.