Temple of the Winds Page 3

  She and the Zulu warrior had some unfinished business.

  Chapter 2.

  ARNIE TRINDER AND NEVIL RIGSBY were having a bad day.

  The two men were Department of Trade and Industry investigators from the Radio Communication Agency in Southampton. They were wet, cold, tired, hungry, thirsty, ached in every joint, and were generally about as pissed off as two men who had spent five hours falling about a storm-drenched landscape wearing inadequate clothing could possibly be. Being mistaken for particularly tenacious ufologists and threatened by a farmer with a shotgun if they didn't get off his land hadn't helped although the general belief among the locals that they were UFO-hunting was useful cover for what they were really up to.

  Rigsby was of the shorter of the two. What he lacked in stature and breath, he made up for with fat and sweat. Clipped to his rucksack was an assortment of instruments that included a wide-band scanning radio receiver with a direction-finding loop antenna, a hand-bearing compass, a map case, and binoculars. Other burdens included large balls of mud clinging to his feet that grew bigger each time he dragged a shoe out of the quagmire.

  Trinder's feet were also so equipped. He was a tall, muscular, West Indian. His finely-defined features were normally relaxed in a good-natured smile but not today. His right shoulder was weighed down by a portable Jensen spectrum analyzer. After five hours slogging around the West Sussex countryside, it no longer felt very portable. Hanging from his other shoulder was a Husky field computer whose hard disk was loaded with detailed maps of the Pentworth area which they were currently investigating. His three months with the Radio Communications Agency was turning out to be the worst period of his degree course. The thought that it was nearly over and come August he would be taking up a promised job in Trinidad was the only thing that kept him going.

  `This'll do,' said Trinder, looking around for a dry spot to unload his gear for a brief respite and seeing nothing but yellow lake. They were a mile south of the sandstone bluff that Pentworth was built on, standing on the edge of the broad expanse of Pentworth Lake -- a stretch of wetlands lake that had defied drainage attempts for 200-years. The symbols on the detailed maps in the Husky for this location were clumps of reeds, indicating a lake surrounded by marshland that normally covered about three square kilometres, but it was now double that size owing to the storm. It was a noted beauty spot but there was nothing beautiful now about the yellowish, silt-coloured water. Nevertheless it had attracted a large number of herring gulls and little gulls in addition to the usual inhabitants of herons, and an assortment of waterfowl that included a few curlews, probing the shallows with their curious, downward curving bills -- not caring about the colour of the water provided the feeding was good.

  `Let's make it the last one,' Rigsby suggested. `I've had enough for one day.' He switched on his AOR scanner and punched the air band key. The scanner howled. `Christ -- it's strong here.' He held the D/F loop above his head and turned it to null out the signal. It faded only slightly when he pointed it away from the swamp. The two men didn't need the hand-bearing compass to tell them that the squat and incredibly ugly Cellnet mobile telephone repeater mast a mile to the east was not the source of the rogue broadband emissions that had been screwing-up the aircraft navigation beacon at Midhurst for the last 24-hours.

  Trinder consulted the Husky and used its tracker ball to plot a line on a large scale map from their present position to the centre of the swamp where it formed a cocked-hat intersection with two previous lines plotted by the men during their investigation. Rigsby swept the area with his binoculars, paying close attention to clumps of reeds that might be camouflaging an aerial.

  A portable telephone in Trinder's anorak pocket trilled. `That can only be Townsend again,' the West Indian muttered. `Does that man like to give us hassle.'

  `He's got the National Air Traffic Service on his back,' Rigsby commented.

  Trinder grimaced and answered the call.

  `So what's the latest?' Townsend demanded from the warmth and security of his Southampton office.

  `It's definitely the plague swamp, George.'

  `The what?'

  `Pentworth Lake,' Triner explained. `The locals call it the plague swamp. The bodies of Black Death victims from London and Chichester used to be dumped here. We've got three bearings from over the entire area and they all point to the centre of the swamp. The Orange box at Henkley Down is whistle clean, and so is the Cellnet box. No spurious emissions from either of them.'

  `Where are you now? Give me your GR.'

  Trinder provided a grid reference and waited, holding the handset slightly away from his ear so that Rigsby could hear.

  `Bloody radio amateurs up to their tricks,' Townsend grumbled. `Do you know anything about that one in Pentworth High Street?'

  `Bob Harding,' said Trinder, feeling his feet sinking. `He runs the Pentworth Repair Shack. Yes -- we've seen him. Rigsby here knows him slightly and says that what he's interested in planting isn't bugs. Also he's a top-flight government scientific consultant. Member of Pentworth Town Council. Hardly your average bug planter.'

  `You told him to be circumspect about all this? The local plods don't want those UFO nutters back in the area.'

  `We told him.' said Trinder patiently.

  `What about the landowner? Maybe he knows something?'

  Trinder consulted a list. `Ellen Duncan. Also a local councillor. Runs a herbalist's in North Street. Doesn't sound like a likely bug-planter either.'

  `Well obviously some clever sod's planted one. So you lads be even cleverer and find it and fish it out.'

  `We're going to need a boat for this job, George. We're already up to our ankles in mud. They had 50-mill on Tuesday night. The water's the colour of shit.'

  `I'll cover your cleaning costs. At least take a look.'

  Rigsby took the telephone from his colleague. `This isn't the work of a radio amateur, George. Amateurs may indulge in jamming other amateurs but they don't risk having the RCA crawling all over them by going out of band and putting out broadband white noise right across airband navigation beacon frequencies. More likely it was planted by a local to stop the UFO spotters from going home. They bought in a lot of trade on Wednesday and Thursday.'

  `Find the bug first and then we'll argue over who planted it later,' Townsend retorted. `It's not a bug, George. Bugs put out milliwatts of ERP and rely on their closeness to a repeater to jam its input frequency, and their batteries die after a few hours. This is something seriously large with a large power supply to match if it's been transmitting for a day.'

  `And a large co-linear aerial sticking up to match which shouldn't be hard to find,' Townsend snapped. Then he moderated his tone. `Just find it please, lads. It's buggering-up aircraft DME in the Pentworth quadrant, or something like that. I've promised that it'll be located and disabled by nightfall.'

  Rigsby ended the call and returned the telephone to Trinder. `All they're worried about is their bloody distance measuring equipment,' he grumbled. `Airline pilots have forgotten how to navigate without masses of ground gear.'

  The West Indian tried to muster a grin. He gazed across the yellow water. `Maybe there was a Silent Vulcan UFO afterall, George. Sitting on the bottom of the lake, and the RF they're splatting is them phoning home.'

  `What? On 105 meg?'

  `It's as good a frequency as any. It would go to the stars.'

  Rigsby glumly surveyed Pentworth Lake and thought that the locals had got it right: it looked more like a swamp. He pointed. `Maybe there's an aerial in that clump of reeds. Be the best place to disguise it. Come on.' He took several glugging steps and sank up to his knees. He tried to lift his leg but transferring all his weight to one foot caused him to sink even deeper. `Oh -- fuck it. I'm stuck. Give me a hand. Go that side -- it looks firmer.'

  Trinder avoided following Rigsby's footsteps and squelched in a semi-circle to grab his colleague's outstretched hand, and he too sank to his knees. Despite being the lighter of the
two men, he found himself sinking faster. His feet pumped frantically in the glutinous ooze, releasing sluggish bubbles of marsh gas that erupted through the cold, clay-coloured water that was closing around his thighs.

  `We're going to have to get rid of all this clobber,' Rigsby panted, sweating profusely despite the icy cold of the gunk that was inexorably claiming him. `Chuck it where we were just standing.'

  Trinder expressed doubts about subjecting their expensive equipment to such treatment.

  `Fuck that. It'll be up to our waists soon if we don't get rid of it.' With that Rigsby tried to release his haversack harness but he suddenly sank up to his groin. The shock of the cold, yellow mud groping his balls made him gasp but didn't stop him swearing. `Oh, shit, fuck and damnation.' He tugged the binoculars from around his neck and lobbed them to firmer ground.

  Trinder was normally a quiet, methodical man, not given to extremes of emotion except at cricket matches when the West Indies were getting hammered. He released the spectrum analyzer's buckle and managed swing the heavy instrument by its strap so that it fell near Rigsby's binoculars. Losing the 10-kilo burden made matters worse because the recoil from his exertion quickened his sinking.

  Until now both men had thought that solving their difficulties was merely a matter of floundering their way back to firmer ground, but the mud was closing around them like a straitjacket, and the water soaking into their clothes made movement virtually impossible. Pumping their legs merely tended to create a vacuum beneath their feet so that atmospheric pressure pushed them deeper.

  `Fall backwards!' Trinder gasped. `Maybe we can swim through it!'

  Rigsby was too preoccupied trying to release his harness to pay any attention. His fingers fought blindly through the cold and mud in search of the buckle that had slipped to his side. Suddenly what little support the ooze provided beneath his feet was gone and he was up to his neck and screaming in terror. Trinder fell forward and grabbed Rigsby's collar. Pushing his colleague's head above the surface resulted in his own head going under. He swallowed the sand-particle charged water: it clogged his throat and windpipe. He managed to get his head above the surface, choked, gagged, and went under again, taking Rigsby with him.

  The swamp closed over the two men, shutting off Rigsby's screams of panic. There was no returning to the surface; no frantic cries or waving of arms -- the merciless swamp allowed no encores. Lost from the sight of their wildfowl audience, the two men flailed blindly at each other like drunks in a slow-motion movie, but the viscosity of the mud was such that the struggles of the plague swamp's latest victims were not recorded on the surface although grubs and larvae churned up by their death throes attracted the attentions of the curlews.

  Chapter 3.

  DAVID WEIR WATCHED with avid interest as Charlie Crittenden added another old aluminium saucepan to the semi-molten mass in the iron cauldron.

  `Step it up a bit, Gus, me boy,' Charlie ordered his youngest son. Dad was a lumbering, amiable giant of a man, and his two boys -- both in their 20s -- were turning out much the same.

  Gus was working the lever connected to the antique leather bellows increased his cranking. The saucepan collapsed slowly into the liquid like a sinking ship. His older brother, Carl, stood by, ready to take over from Gus when he tired but the younger lad kept up his vigorous pumping so that the searing charcoal, banked around the cauldron, pulsed red and white like a breathing monster.

  The heat became more intense, forcing David to take another step back although Charlie didn't seem to notice as he used a shovel to skim the accumulating dross from the surface of the molten aluminium. Ruth Crittenden was leaning against the huge rear wheel of the Charles Burrell 50 kilowatt showmans' engine, ready to help her husband with the pouring of the aluminium. The other curious onlooker was Titan -- a towering, 18-hand Suffolk punch that weighed over a tonne and was one of the largest shire horses in West Sussex, and certainly the most inquisitive. Titan hated missing out on anything; no stable door survived his abiding curiosity.

  What Charlie Crittenden was about to attempt in the farmyard was something that David would not have considered possible, but nothing was impossible for the resourceful Gypsy and his family.

  The giant steam road loco traction engine, neglected, rust-encrusted relic of a bygone age, was David's latest acquisition for the museum. Her name was Brenda according to an engraved brass plate. It had been built in 1929 by Charles Burrell and Son of Thetford as a mobile power station capable of generating the electricity needs of a large travelling fair. In its day it had powered not only bumper cars, dippers, whips, carousels and all the other amusements of the traditional fair, but also the hundreds of coloured lights that festooned the rides. With a plentiful supply of coal, coke or charcoal, and a willing team to keep the behemoth's firebox roaring, Brenda could even meet the power needs of a large village. But no longer; in 1951 one of its metre-diameter cast iron front wheel rims had broken. The monster had been abandoned as not worth repairing to be replaced by a modern, truck-mounted diesel generator that needed little tending other than filling its fuel tank and pressing a starter button. The old showmans' engine had been allowed to rot in the corner of a Sussex field.

  Charlie Crittenden had recommended purchase and had assured David that he could knock-up a replacement for the broken front wheel.

  `Be in ally -- not cast iron,' Charlie had said. `Be just as strong and no one will know when it's painted up and the original spokes are rivetted back on.' And he had brushed aside David's doubts about making a copy of the massive rim.

  Charlie's age old technique was deceptively simple yet required great skill in execution. He and his sons had dug a trench, filled it with dampened green sand, and used the broken wheel's segments as a pattern to form a sand mould for the new casting. A little sand sculpting to tidy the form when the broken segments had been lifted clear and the mould was ready. `Like cope and drag casting,' Charlie muttered, glancing up at the sky and mopping his forehead. `Haven't done this in years.'

  It was late afternoon. Charlie and his two sons had been working since first light and now they were almost ready for the final and most crucial stage of the operation.

  The last piece of scrap aluminium from what had been a large pile was lowered carefully into the nearly brimming cauldron.

  `How do you know that you've right amount of ally in the pot, Charlie?' David asked.

  Charlie grinned. `Easy, Mr Weir. Dropped the bits of the broken wheel in a tank of water and marked the amount the level went up. Took it out and dropped scrap ally in the tank until the level matched. Plus a bit for losses and luck.'

  David remained silent. Charlie Crittenden had had no schooling; he could barely write his own name, and yet he had an intuitive understanding of the physical world that many of David's educated friends lacked. It was the same with all the members of Charlie's family.

  The Crittendens were travellers who moved around Southern England in search of seasonal farm work and customers for their remarkable repertoire of skills. They were cartwrights, wheelwrights, farriers, blacksmiths, charcoal burners, trug makers. They could layer hedges that no animal larger than a rabbit could get through. They could turn a stand of hazel or ash saplings into sheep hurdles, or trench-in bundles of brushwood as mole drains that could keep a field healthy for 40-years. They could build and repair barns as they had done for David Weir's museum. They were a repository of all the skills that had created England and the English countryside, and much of its wealth.

  Overall, the only traditional British skill that the Crittendens lacked was paying taxes.

  David had made the entire family and their caravans welcome two years previously when they had arrived to help restore old agricultural implements, and they had stayed, glad of the regular work he offered and the chance to be free of official harassment other than school attendance officers interested in the youngest members of the family. Like many travelling families, the Crittendens had attendance officers like farm dogs ha
d fleas.

  It was Charlie's skills and love of the past that had turned the rural museum into a practical business. Apart from the restoration of horse-drawn implements, he would tackle anything, but this particular job was the most daunting task so far.

  Gus pumped even harder, sending charcoal sparks spiralling into the sullen sky. Charlie pulled on a pair of goggles and watched the cauldron carefully. He skimmed more dross to reveal the aluminium's molten surface, gleaming like mercury. He stirred the hellish liquid and watched it run, smoking and spitting, off the shovel.

  Titan tossed his great head. David grabbed his snaffle bridle and backed him away.

  `Reckon that's it, lads. Now you get back, Mr Weir... And that bleedin' great lump of cats' meat. Right back... Okay, lads -- get that kit on.'

  Gus stopped pumping. He and Carl pulled on ancient welding helmets and gauntlets, and waited expectantly.

  `Now listen,' said Charlie seriously. `You all know the drill. If I can't hold her, I'll yell out before letting go and you all leg it like fuck. We can always start again tomorrow if we screw-up, but you can't grow new feet. You all with me?'

  The boys and Ruth understood.

  Charlie crossed himself and spat on his hands. `Right -- let's get started.' He picked up a T-handle that was about three-metres long and hooked it onto a handle near the cauldron's lip. He braced himself, feet planted firmly apart, his banana-size fingers clasping the T-handle. Ruth Crittenden stood behind him and got a good grip on her husband's leather belt.