* * *
There were only three street lamps in Linksness and two of them were out at this time of night. Towns and cities in Britain and the developed world generally tend to have street lights blazing all night, supplemented by the lights of shops, blocks of flats, late sleepers and early risers, so that a large town lights up the distant sky and is never itself truly dark. Even dark corners are only relatively dark and whether darkness is perceived as a threat, a cloak for crime, a licence for lovers or simply an inconvenience it is usually incomplete in cities. The average Briton or American would, no doubt, find the darkness of a dark and rainy night in one of the world's unlit places very formidable. However, this was not the darkness facing the Professor when he left the hotel in Linksness that night.
Actually, to a city dweller like Professor Harrington, it did look totally dark outside when he first looked out of his bedroom window. He flicked the curtain back into place, telephoned the bird watcher and then dressed quietly. He pulled on a thick sweater, picked up his briefcase, switched out the main light and exited softly into the hallway, leaving the small bedside light switched on.
The car park was partially lit by the one street light still on, lighting the junction of the island's 'main' road and the road down to the ferry. However, the glow filtered through the branches of some trees and round the end of the hotel building. This left most of the car park in shadow, but a starry sky gave off much more light than anyone would have expected and the moon, not yet risen but already lightening the sky, helped. As a result the professor found his way to the car and unlocked it easily. The sudden noise of the starter motor sounded incredibly loud in the silence of the night on Hoy, but seemed to have attracted no attention. Nobody came to a window and no bedroom lights came on.
'Obviously,' he thought, 'the people of Hoy must be sound sleepers.'
He eased the car into gear, slid out of the car park and turned south towards the site of the dig.
There was no traffic. In fact there were no signs of life. The camp was in darkness as the Professor drove past and turned down a short track to a farm. He pulled up beside the bird watcher's station wagon and stepped out of the car as a porch light snapped on. A man came out, followed by a woman shrugging on a jacket against the cool night air.
"Is it wise for you to go out at night Juliana, now that you're pregnant?" asked Professor Harrington.
"Why on earth shouldn't a woman go out at night, just because she's preg ... How on earth did you know that? I haven't even told Ian yet."
"Never mind. I have plans for that baby, so take care of yourself."
Ian frowned but said nothing as the Professor continued, "Now you're up and about you may as well come with us. I am going to post the ring to myself in Warwick. I shall leave it with the other rings and reincarnate as your offspring. That way I can establish the new order while I'm still young, instead of being already an old man."
He held the rear door of the car open for the woman.
When Ian had settled into the front seat beside the professor, he backed the car out of the yard, turned it around and drove back down the lane onto the main road. Alongside the field where the camp was located, Professor Harrington stopped the car, doused the lights and slipped out. He reached back into the car for his briefcase and took out the University's spare set of keys to the cabin and caravans. He searched through it again and pulled out a silk- wrapped bundle, then he turned to leave.
He paused a moment. "Get into the driver's seat and wait for me. I may need to leave in a hurry," he whispered, and closed the car door quietly behind him.
The night was still and cool, the sea was breaking only very gently on the beach with a soothing and almost inaudible hiss and the moon had now risen - a waning crescent on the eastern horizon. The Professor experienced no difficulty in finding his way through the open gate and across the field to the camp. He walked round the back to avoid going near the tents and went round the end of the Portacabin to the door. The door was, of course, locked. He fumbled briefly with the keys before he went in and closed the door silently behind him.
Why Alicia woke up and couldn't sleep she didn't know. It might have been a noise of some kind but, if so, it wasn't repeated as she listened intently. No, it was more a matter of lying awake and 'knowing' - though she wasn't at all sure about 'knowing' what. When she looked out of her window and saw a shadowy figure cross the field towards the back of the cabin, she wasn't all that surprised or even scared. She got up out of bed and reached for her dressing gown then changed her mind, pulled off her night-dress and dressed quickly in sweater and jeans. The door of her room she left ajar for quietness, but the caravan door shut with much more of a 'click' than she intended as she crossed the soft grass in her bare feet.
The click woke Gill. It was only a slight noise in her room, but this was only the second night without sleeping pills - and she had been taking them for two years. The light of the rising moon fell on Steve's face, relaxed in sleep, and she hardly liked to wake him. But wake him she did. "Steve!" she hissed in a loud whisper. "Steve!"
"Ugh?" he responded sleepily. "What is it?"
"I don't know, but I heard something." They listened carefully and heard the faint bang of the Portacabin door.
"That's someone trying to be quiet," said Steve and, much more wide awake now, he got out of bed and pulled on his jeans. When he quietly opened Gill's door he could see the door to Alicia's room still ajar.
He drew back into Gill's room and said in a loud whisper, "Alicia's door is open, but I'm not sure I ought to go waltzing in there to see if she's awake."
"All right," said Gill, emerging naked from the covers, "I'll get dressed."
The flashlight beam wandered over the table and picked out the filing cabinet. It snapped off and the Professor moved across the cabin by moonlight. The light snapped on again to peer at the lock for a moment and again to peer inside the drawer as he took out the ring and stuck it on his finger. He turned, the drawer still open.
Alicia entered. "Hello Professor." Her voice was low but clear. "I was expecting you to come back for the ring."
"Were you," he said coldly. "Why."
"It would be impossible to forget those eyes in a thousand lifetimes."
"Eyes?"
"You were the high priest. Your eyes were the last thing I saw."
"Where?"
"Atl-Andes. I've known since this afternoon. Your expression when you saw the ring was enough."
"Ah," he said, nodding, "Now I understand. That would account for your little fainting episode."
"What did you intend to try and do with it?"
"I spent more than a hundred lifetimes searching for the rings. As an Egyptian priest, a Phoenician sea captain, two or three prehistoric chieftains, the governor of a Roman province, a Moorish pirate. I have lived as an eccentric Renaissance Gentleman with nothing better to spend money on than archaeology. I found this in Egypt." He produced the silk-wrapped bundle and unwrapped it to reveal a dagger. The blade was bronze, polished to deadly sharpness and the hilt was shaped like a monstrous scaly leg with evil claws. "Perhaps you recognise it. The rings, the ritual knives and so on, they're all safely hidden a few seconds in the future, and they'll stay there waiting for me to start the new age. And I'm almost ready."
His laugh was hollow and empty and evil. "I spent a lifetime as a wealthy Victorian, looking for this ring and for the talisman. I had begun to think they were lost, but I just need the talisman now. So far this dig doesn't seem to have turned it up, but it might yet."
"What did you intend to do now?" asked Alicia again.
"I was going to take the ring and post it to myself at the University. I don't want it going to some museum. I intend to use the rings to recover the crystal from Atl-Andes."
"Atl-Andes is a myth to most people and deep beneath ocean, lava and volcanic waste now. What is lost there is beyond recovery."
"I said I would recover it. I could do the mos
t extra-ordinary things if they were called for."
"I suppose you're going to come back as a squid or something."
"Sneering won't help you."
"And now that I've stopped you, what do you intend to do?" asked Alicia.
"You haven't stopped me, just caused a little change of plans. When you disappear at the same time as the ring people will assume a connection. We shall have to go for a drive."
He held up his hand with the ring on, fingers splayed. Alicia followed his hand with her eyes. "You were once my slave - now you are my slave again," he said, vibrating the words in the air around him. "To the car."
Alicia turned and, as one in a trance, began to walk in front of him back around the end of the cabin and across the field to the car.
"Get in," said the professor, opening the rear door, and Alicia climbed in silently. "She won't give you any trouble," he added to Juliana, and shut the door. He let himself into the front passenger seat himself.
"Slight change of plan," he said. "Drive to the stone circle on the Rackwick road."
"Who's she?" asked Ian, indicating Alicia.
"My student in charge of the dig. You must have seen her before."
"It's dark!"
"By a strange coincidence she was a sacrifice at the original dedication ceremony of the rings. In Atlantis. She actually remembered me, so I had to bring her along."
"Once a sacrifice..." said Juliana, rather nastily.
"Quite," agreed the professor.
A glance told Gill that Alicia's room was empty. "Quick, the Portacabin," she said to Steve in a loud whisper.
"Keys," said Steve, "She said she'd leave them on the table." In the moonlight they were instantly visible. "If she went to the cabin she wasn't expecting to get in." The two of them headed for the Portacabin to check there first. "I wonder if she dressed," said Gill, hesitating. "I'll go back and check." Gill turned back while Steve went on into the empty cabin. He looked around by the light of the rising moon and saw the filing cabinet drawer open. He looked inside the drawer, pulling it further open and straining his eyes in a vain attempt to see its contents. There simply wasn't enough light. He glanced across to the calor gas stove and saw the matches. It took three matches to be certain, but he was satisfied that the ring had gone. Turning abruptly he glanced around the cabin and then started for the door.
It looked to Gill as if Alicia had dressed hurriedly and gone out with bare feet, since her socks and trainers were still by her bunk and her night-dress was lying half off it. She glanced out of the window. Two figures were just outside the field and one was closing the gate.
Gill recognised the foremost of the two figures as Alicia by her build, but there was something odd about the way she moved. In the dim light there was no sign of any weapon, but she felt certain all the same that her boss was not going voluntarily. She dashed out of the caravan and met Steve coming out of the cabin.
"There's a couple of people just leaving the field," she said in a loud whisper, "and I think one of them is Alicia."
"Let's have a look," muttered Steve, and ran towards the gate. A distant car door slammed and an engine started.
Steve turned and ran back in the direction of the caravans. "If we're going to follow them it's going to have to be in the Landrover." he said to Gill between breaths as she caught up with him.
She answered, "You get the Landrover started and turned round while I go back for that amulet." and started to run back to the caravan before Steve could argue.
The lights of a car snapped on and the beams of its headlights lit up the road.
"Jawohl mein Kommendant!" he muttered to himself as he climbed into the vehicle "Anything you say." though he didn't really mind so much and was impatient with curiosity himself.
He held the heater plugs on for a few seconds to make sure the vehicle started easily. He didn't want to rouse the rest of the camp if he could help it. The engine fired first time and he turned it towards the gate, driving slowly by the light of the moon until Gill jumped in. Rather to his surprise the rear passenger door opened as well as the front one and a still dressing Manjy was bundled in by Alan who ran to the gate and opened it, before climbing in the back himself at the same time as Gill scrambled into the front next to Steve. He drove out onto the road with the doors still swinging shut and Manjy tucking a blouse into her jeans.
"I must have woken Manjy the first time I went back and I met Alan coming out of the other caravan just now," said Gill. "What woke you?"
"I wasn't asleep. I was reading," said Alan.
By the time the Landrover turned onto the road, there was no sign of the car.
"They went in the direction of Linksness," remarked Steve.
"Can you follow on just side lights?" Gill asked.
"I think there's enough light. I'll try." answered Steve. He had driven the road daily going to the ferry, so he did know it reasonably well and there was a moderate light too. They rumbled on at around twenty-five miles an hour for nearly ten minutes without seeing anything, driving past the turning to Rackwick and on into Linksness. Steve stopped alongside the turn down to the landing stage.
"They won't have driven to the ferry, because it doesn't arrive 'till mid morning." said Steve. "Where to next?"
"I'll try the hotel car park," said Gill, opening the door and jumping down.
She ran the short distance to the hotel and disappeared into the darkness at the side. Steve presumed she was looking for the car the professor had taken that afternoon, but couldn't see why she needed to know.
Less than two minutes later she ran back into view and panted up to the Landrover. "Gone," she said as she scrambled in.
"If the car's gone I presume the Professor has gone as well," said Steve.
"I'd bet anything that's who was with Alicia, and I think I know why." Gill said. "The question is where?"