'Are you there?' she called and approached the alcove.

Cold air was welling up from below carrying a dank reek of decay. The walls glimmered with a putrid green.

' I've been alone so long. Like you, Victoria. But together... I've been alone so long. Like you, Victoria. But together... ' '

'I'm coming,' she whispered and started down the crumbling steps.

She went down step by step, clinging to the damp wall, using the staff for support. She called out again but there was no reply. The cold air devoured sound, sense and hope. She reached the foot of the stairs and the glimmering light revealed some sort of private chapel. There were faded paintings on the walls, dancing monsters in once-gaudy robes. She shivered with the cold. There was a groan from the far end of the dark chamber.

' Victoria? Are you there? Victoria? Are you there? ' '

'Yes. I'm here.' She could just make out an archway with something strung across its portal like a cobweb.

' Release me. Release me. ' The pitiful voice came from beyond the arch. ' The pitiful voice came from beyond the arch.

'I heard you. I've come all this way.' She went closer and saw that the web was composed of coloured threads, all intermeshed and stretched across the opening. It was a Tibetan spirit trap, built to contain evil and malevolent demons.

Filaments of waving gossamer had caught on the strings.

Inside the trap, something shuffled in the shadows.

' I said, release me! I can endure the darkness no longer! I said, release me! I can endure the darkness no longer! ' '

She tried to see through the mesh, but could make out only a dark, hunched figure in the gloom. 'I don't know. How can I be sure? They said you were dead. But in the dreams...'

' Victoria. Victoria. ' His voice was suddenly calm with authority. It was familiar. Something she could not doubt. ' His voice was suddenly calm with authority. It was familiar. Something she could not doubt.

'Father,' she said. The sense of relief and recognition went beyond the circ.u.mstance. From her heart she said, 'Yes, of course I'll help you.'

Inside the trap, a bony hand was reaching out to her. She raised the abbot's ceremonial staff and thrust it into the web.

A roar of green flame.

Victoria stumbled back, shielding her face. Burning threads were falling all around her. She heard the tap-tap-tap of a stick and the rasping of breath. A figure was shuffling against the light, emerging from the archway. Victoria fell to the floor staring up in disbelief.

This wasn't her father at all. It was delusion. Its ancient features were wasted and slack. Its white hair and beard matted; its eyes sunken and blind. Blind like all the people in this G.o.d-forsaken place. Yet she knew the face. It was an uninvited memory resurrected. Lost in time like her.

'You!' she whispered.

His white stick touched her.

The figure faltered. Its voice, the voice that had been in her head for so long, was fierce and tortured. 'Find me the Locus!'

it commanded.

She heard the tinkling of bells, the fluttering of prayer flags and a surge of demonic laughter.

The darkness forced itself into her head. It devoured her thoughts and senses. It swamped her consciousness. She sank under its weight.

'Well,' said Charles 'you've led us a fine dance, I must say.'

To her drowsy eyes, he looked like a hovering angel, his yellow hair shining. She closed them again and went back to sleep.

When she woke again, she saw that he was still sitting close at hand. Beyond him, the ceiling and walls were a sort of munic.i.p.al conformist cream colour. There was a strong smell of something clinical. Very soothing.

This time, the third time she woke, he said, 'Well, are we going to have a conversation for a change?'

She groaned and felt a sharp pain in one of her arms. But at least it would keep her awake.

'h.e.l.lo,' he said very gently.

She tried to talk, but her throat felt like a cheese-grater.

'Don't worry, sweetheart. You're in hospital in Kathmandu. Everything's fine now.'

She managed a vague smile and was content to lie and let him talk, although everything he said seemed to get jumbled up in her thoughts.

She had been flown back from Lukla. That was two days ago. Did she want a drink? Tundu and Sonam had brought her out, carried her back. She was managing a bit of solid food now. They had all been very worried. She was doing well.

They thought it was alt.i.tude sickness. He had squared it with the British Emba.s.sy. She shouldn't move too much. Did she want a drink? The burns were healing quickly.

'That's good,' she murmured drowsily.

'Iodine,' she said and managed to sit up. 'That's what I can smell.'

Charles looked startled. 'Well, you're you're much better, aren't you?' much better, aren't you?'

She slid back into the sheets. 'How long have I been asleep?'

'About ten days on and off. Mostly off. We were very worried.'

'Yes. I remember, you said.'

He sighed. 'They want to fly you home as soon as possible.'

'Good. I don't think I can manage that by myself...not at the moment.' The grin that spread across his face puzzled her.

'Don't you ever take things seriously?' she said.

'Not if I can help it. Too depressing.'

She smiled at him. 'Was I badly burned?'

'Yes.' He seemed cautious. 'On your hands and feet mainly.'

'Hmm. I can't think how that happened.' She saw him shrug.

Then a Nepali nurse appeared and said, 'h.e.l.lo. Good to see you awake at last. The doctor's here to see you.'

'Really?' She started to sit up again. 'That's amazing. I'd been thinking so much about him lately.'

But the man who came through the door was tall and Asian with thinning hair and a white hospital coat.

The postcard arrived just as she finished packing her bags. It was battered and had been forwarded from Lukla. The picture showed Trafalgar Square. How typical of Mrs Cywynski to send a postcard from home to someone who was on holiday.

'Hope you are having a wonderful time,' it read. 'The cats say you should come home soon. I say so too. The ether is very strange. Regards, Roxana.'

She plainly knew nothing about the accident.

'I wish Tundu was here. He might tell me what happened,'

said Victoria. She sat nervously in the pa.s.senger seat as Charles drove her to the airport. The Kathmandu traffic was a dusty nightmare. 'I've been so frightened, Charles. I keep thinking I should go back to Det-sen.'

She gasped as Charles slammed on the brakes to avoid an errant cyclist. 'You can't be serious?' he joked. 'Even I I can't afford to pay for you again.' can't afford to pay for you again.'

'I'm sorry. I will pay you back, I promise.'

'No problem.'

'Will you see Tundu soon? When you do, give him my love.'

'Sometime. I'm flying to Paris tomorrow, once I've got you packed off safely. Jill will be waiting for me.'

'Jill?' asked Victoria.

'My wife. She helps catalogue my plant specimens.' For the first time, Victoria noticed a wedding ring on his left hand.

She was certain it hadn't been there before. She sat silently watching the traffic until they reached the airport. Once they had booked in her luggage, she gave him a long hug.

He laughed and hugged her back. 'We'll be in London soon. I'll give you a call.'

All she could think to say was, 'Yes.'

2.

Bug Alert he mountainous terrain scrolled below like the graphics on T a computer game. UNIT helicopter Valkyrie Valkyrie 74D dropped to one thousand feet so that the pilot could follow the track. 74D dropped to one thousand feet so that the pilot could follow the track.

From the pa.s.senger seat, Second Lieutenant Douglas Cavendish watched the landscape from inside the perspex security c.o.c.kpit. 'Pretty wild out there,' he opined suavely.

'Yeti country,' said the pilot.

'Right.' Cavendish scrutinized the ground below more carefully. 'Don't most sightings turn out to be lost backpackers or leftovers from the Hippy Trail?' He laughed out loud at his joke.

Pilot Per Londqvist, a hulking flight lieutenant drafted in from the Swedish Air Force, smiled politely. He had about as many flying hours as his pa.s.senger was old.

'What's that?' shouted Cavendish, pointing at two grey shapes scuttling across rocks below the snowline.

'Goats.'

'Ah.' Cavendish sat still for a while. On his lap was a file marked 'UNIT Operations Gargarin Tracking Station' and dated 84/18/08. It consisted of enhanced satellite images of Section China 9G: Tingri Plains, Tibet, timed 23.08 hours GMT. There was also a monitored report from Reuters and two transcription reports from CNN and the BBC's Delhi office.

In fact, Cavendish decided, he was on a bit of a mercy mission. The file had sat on a desk at Geneva HQ for four days while the relevant duty officer was away on leave in St Moritz or somewhere equally recherche recherche, and it wasn't until New York came down the blower breathing fire that anyone had noticed.

The enhanced satellite images showed the mountains north of Nangpa La. On the contours between the white snow peaks, there was a brilliant splash of gold and red.

The reports referred to a mystery explosion in the Himalayas. A remote Buddhist monastery had apparently been totally destroyed.

The Valkyrie Valkyrie was flying along the length of a valley that twisted sinuously between two white-capped mountains. was flying along the length of a valley that twisted sinuously between two white-capped mountains.

Another peak rose ahead, its summit snapped off to reveal a dead crater, blackened and free from snow.

'It's an extinct volcano,' said Cavendish incredulously. 'I didn't think the Himalayas had any seismic activity.' From the far side, there was a veil of dark smoke rising against the clear sky.

They rounded the mountain and saw, in the pit of the next valley, a dark smoking lesion burned into the slope. Londqvist circled the helicopter while Cavendish took photographs.

'What in h.e.l.l caused that?' he murmured.

Where the Det-sen monastery should have stood there was a huge black hole as if something had burst up through the mountainside catching the buildings in its path. The hole still smoked. Mounds of rubble lay scattered around it and right up the slopes.

Londqvist put the helicopter down and Cavendish clambered through the detritus wishing he had worn more practical shoes.

There was no sign of a living soul or any sign of the emergency services for that matter. Lying among the broken stone and wood was the sheered-off head of a huge Buddha, its blank eyes staring at the sky. The head was still hot. Here and there, tatters of something like web clung to the rubble, rippling in the wind as if they were alive.

Cavendish set up a tripod and took the standard reading for radiation. The geiger-meter registered nothing. He bagged up a few samples from the soil round the crater important evidence for establishing any trace of UFO landings.