2012 Part 4

The pub was getting quite busy now and people were crowding around them laughing and smoking. It was becoming harder to talk.

Penny bent her head towards him and set out to reinforce his fascination and lead him away from difficult questions.

'JNO,' she responded. 'Is more than just money or the making of it, it keeps thousands in jobs all over the world, millions actually. If it closed down tomorrow it would be catastrophic for them, especially in the third world. JNO spends billions in Africa, Asia, South America, every continent benefits ma.s.sively. That's its great achievement, I'm proud to have contributed to wealth creation in so many places. Our annual shipping budget alone is more than the exchequers of some whole countries: if we stopped, the economy of a quarter of the world would be devastated. It was a long time before I appreciated the value of the Firm not only to me, but to the world. The Dodona's are remarkable people. Yes they make profits from dealing in raw materials. Yes, they own indirectly through the Firm vast tracts of land above and below ground, even below the sea, and mountains of raw materials which are constantly on the move, and yes, they wield power and influence over governments and markets. What you don't know, and what only a few really privileged people know is the quality of their stewardship. The reason why JNO grows the way it does is directly related to the way they go about their work and I'm very proud to have been and still be part of it. I like to think I've had some influence on policy and organisational direction in the last twenty or so years and intend to continue.'

No one but Lucina, Thea and Mnemosyne, and she supposed, the absent Zarian, knew her real task in the Firm. But because she thought Alexander saw it as a monster out of control, eating the world and spewing out money it was difficult to communicate to him the excitement and sheer pace of life of the birth and growth of this amazingly wonderful network of links. Day to day there were so many things to do, advantages to exploit, situations to handle. Her main concern was her care for the human and ecological scale of things. Let Lucina play games of her own, as long as she was not prevented she would throw herself fully into her work and take a lead. She would control the future. Neither Lucina nor Thea, gave as much attention to these things as they should. They were gearing up for some other task which concerned them and Zarian. Penny knew it must be something enormous, simply because she could not conceive of anything more important than her own work. She was pleased to have their tacit support but did not understand why the day to day control of JNO was increasingly left to her and her own staff. The only direct help she got from them was that Hep Mulciber from the New York office was seconded by Lucina to help her.

Her huge capital investments in plant and machinery were designed to make working conditions as favourable as possible and appropriate to local situations. Producers, of raw materials were made to meet her strict requirements for working conditions. Every aspect of production was controlled for the maximum benefit of employees and the local environment. Contrary to some people's view of the received wisdom of capitalism, this high level of investment in people and out of the way places produced huge profits. JNO invested sometimes overtly, but more often clandestinely and Penny had evidence that they had prevented famine, pollution, over production of agricultural land and on more than one occasion, war. Each success kept her going, each failure sent her raging to Hep for better systems. He did his amazing best, but their systems were not tyrant nor greed proof - what could you do with people who were h.e.l.l bent on the destruction of things for short term gain?

Grant Aid Developments (GRADE) invented by Hep and the rest of her team made sure the results of their productivity were as effectively distributed as possible. JNO World Aid was its best kept secret. The British economy itself would have collapsed without North Sea oil, undiscovered until JNO Exploration Co. made their strike using their long held knowledge of the geology of the North Sea.

Gradually through the years Penny came to recognise that a profound change in productive behaviour was needed to transform the effect of human life on the planet. Her self-appointed task was no less than to work unceasingly to this end. 1968 had been a beginning. The death of her father had taught her to care, he had died caring. Alexis nurtured this in her and he had also died caring. She owed this work to the two men in her life and the world needed their big idea.

Lucina had given her the means and she worked night and day to reverse what she considered the idiocies of the world. She was approaching a position of control through the Firm's ma.s.sive commercial power base. The actual point of control would soon be reached. Alexander of course had to be part of it. She would show him this was the only honourable role for the child of Alexis.

The means were at hand. The millions the Firm spent developing the World Wide Web was completed. She began with a complex paper system and converted to electronics as the technology developed. Her people worked furiously at the leading edge of technological development but she ensured the world did not know the extent of JNO's controlling interests or places on the boards of the large computer giants. Over time she deeply infiltrated the market with operational control over most of the best software houses in the world, had invested untold millions in hardware and R&D through secret grants via GRADE. No one alive knew JNO funds had secretly matched the Apollo programme dollar for dollar to squeeze new knowledge from that endeavour into JNO. The network was ultimately her baby and she was happy to share it with the world.

However within the W.W.W. the Geo Accounting International and National Enterprises Technology project - GAIANET - was their secret. Thousands of people world-wide contributed to GAIANET without knowing. It was the system linking all text, data, sound, graphics and video on all the world's computers. Hep Mulciber's 'reader' had already digitalised the literature of the world, intercepted and stored almost every satellite communication and he was now working on an automatic translator. A single inter-linked hypermedia web. Nothing digitalised was beyond GAIANET's scope. Every letter, fax, telephone call, computer file entered it's ever open maw.

That in itself was not the most significant thing, the secret heart of the system was HIGO. The Hyperdigital Gopher Protocol System, miraculously invented by Hep, was used by GAIANET to interpret and pattern the vast acres of raw data at its disposal.

But here facing Alexander she felt as bereft as the day she lost Alexis despite the enormous compensation of her influence and contribution to the Firm. There was too much for her to explain to Alexander so soon into his baptism into the Firm. She had always known that he would one day be called to play his part, it was a tacit understanding with Lucina but she would never force him, she had planned to allow him to find his own way with a little cajoling here and there, but Lucina's outburst had changed everything.

She had given him all the freedom he wanted. Paid for his travelling, his winter sports in the right places to be seen, his climbing expeditions, his four-track adventures across deserts, his white-water rafting - whatever he wanted. She would know when he was bored with playing, and wanted something more substantial to do. To achieve something tangible. He'd watched him seeing his friends seeking ever more daring thrills with less and less real interest. She felt he'd been close to despair, with the drugs, the booze, the parties. There was more to life than this endless self-indulgence. But he had to get this out of his system for himself.

So then she had taken him in hand. He complained he was more inclined to spend than earn money. He couldn't cut a deal if his life depended on it. He didn't want power, wasn't scientific, couldn't manage the technology. He wouldn't know the right end of a screwdriver or computer bite if it jumped out of the petrol cap of a Porsche. Now struck by his new seriousness after a month in the shipping office she had an idea.

'Alexander, you've never been to Markham other than as a casual visitor have you? There's a lot there you haven't seen. We've made a lot of changes recently. Come with me? I have to spend a few days there next week, I'll be driving down with Hep tomorrow morning, come with us.'

'Yes okay but what about the shipping office on Monday?'

' I'll fix it, I don't think it was a good idea of mine to start you in shipping, you'll learn faster being closer to me and Hep. But I warn you, we deal in secrets, we play for high stakes. I want you with me, Thea is into something big with Lucina, I can't follow her, but you, I want you close in there with me.'

She suddenly became deadly serious, he felt she was offering something dangerous and final after which, there was no going back. He too felt something close off in his mind, a barrier shutting behind him stopping him from going back compelling him onwards, into the unknown. He had been considering making a commitment, but wasn't sure he was as deadly serious as his mother. Life as a junior executive was one thing, a game, playing at responsibility. You didn't have to pay out anything for it other than a bit of application, your soul wasn't involved. He didn't like his mother's tone.

His life had suddenly shifted its axis.

The Firm wasn't a playground, its amusing outer sh.e.l.l, had split to reveal chasms within. Like a roller coaster ride in the dark, he might zoom into the black vortex, unable to get off. His. .h.i.therto tenuous grip on reality seemed to leave him altogether, his overworked mind brimmed with the overwhelming image of Lucina coming out of a lift and filling the world.

Chapter 6.

Alexander's journey home was a whirl of thoughts slotting in and out of his mind like photographic slides in a manic carousel. Before he could grasp one thought properly it flashed into another and mixed up with his earliest memories.

He saw a bright world of women in white, coming and going low voiced, abruptly replaced by a vision of Lucina bearing down on him from the lift, her image made emerald by the surrounding green plate gla.s.s set in chrome. Dozens of other half-grasped pictures filled his head. Dominant, was a memory of Nemmi curled round him as soft as smoke. 'The Namer' who gave the world substance before he could read and write of it for himself. Nemmi made real, what he did not properly know. She gave substance to shadows. She told him of G.o.ds of ancient times in a country whose treasures are hidden under the debris of pa.s.sing centuries, locked in the hills, in ancient timelines, in the customs of the people, the names of places. Memories of a simpler past resonating just below the surface of the collective mind....it was still vital, she taught, he must delve a little to find it.

She spoke as one who had been there with Achilles and Patroclus, with Alexander the Great in the raging snows and scorching deserts. She had travelled with Odysseus, tied to the mast-head, ears stopp'd. Folded in the couch of her lap he dreamed with her across the aeons, in worlds without past or future. Timelessly, they harmonised with great deeds and vast tragedies, when the Fates worked on G.o.ds and men and women. She spoke of wonders, of ageless visions, t.i.tans, heroes, and monsters. Of great battles and wild adventures that the world has long forgotten or made into mere fairytales for children.

She told of the Chronosphere and its timelines, of its swirling web, linking past and future, along which G.o.ds travelled hidden from humankind in the ever moving warp and weft of culture, part of the very fabric of time itself. Together they roamed the caves and dark forests with Theseus, toiled with Heracles and battled against Agamemnon for the stolen beauty of the Acheans and drank deeply from the golden cup of forgotten ages.

Alexander absorbed with a hungry mind, the mysterious and wonderfully real journeys they made in worlds of sunlight, shining seas, powerful and deadly thunderbolts, many headed and fantastic monsters. Towering, terrifying, breath-taking battles for power and revenge, the healing of forgiveness and above all the lightness and sufficiency of the teeming and eternal life of Gaia's generous world. Wrapped in Nemmi's physical and mental embrace, Alexander the child viewed immortality.

They began their journeying whenever they had time together. First in the little nursery at Psathi, a babe in her arms he absorbed her sweet songs of the aeons. Later in London, they would curl in the big rocking-chair by the hearth in winter and the wide-open garden-window in summer.

She would begin with the song of the Nereids, softly in her own language. He would snuggle down at her breast, sensuously aware of her calming warmth through the cloth of her robe. He was to be much older and wiser before he regained such feelings of unity. Together, they disappeared like mountain mist and reappeared with the great sky-G.o.d of the thunderbolt the creator of the G.o.ds of joy, eloquence, wisdom, knowledge, poetry, music, dancing and drama. With his small child's eye he saw them all. Was there with them. He too feared the jars of the great Zeus, was alarmed at the anger of Hera, watched with equal concern the pregnant Leto's frantic search for a place of escape from the scorned G.o.ddess to give royal birth.

He played at the forge of Hephaestos and hid from the Lernaean Hydra until Heracles finally set his rock upon it. He had not the words, as yet was unable to name this place without time, between past and future where meaning grew.

When the time came to go away to school he felt wrenched away from her. There he read story books about the ancient people and places Nemmi and he had visited and he shed tears when he learned their everlastingness was made into fairy stories of little substance. As he became older and wiser he understood the treasure given to him by Nemmi was lost to everyone around him. Nemmi alone kept immortality alive in an ever practical world of finite things. He learned that his shining immortals were now seen by the world as mere stepping stones to what had become a 'better' One G.o.d, The One, vastly more mysterious and all embracing than those easy going, but, treacherous, humanly vulnerable, but importantly earthbound, Olympians.

Without being aware of it she had taught him to value the truth of myth which rooted him in the rich earth of the Mother Gaia, progenitor and sustainer of life. He saw how science was tied and bound into myth. How this importance became lost, how when rediscovered centuries later, the true quality of the Olympian Treasure went unrecognised; overlain by a vastly more sophisticated science which explained and exploited Gaia's gifts without the need for apparently childlike G.o.ds to keep mortal feet in her basic clay.

He learned that this new science, now unenc.u.mbered by mythology, had failed to satisfy mortal minds. How they had subst.i.tuted the earthy realities of the ancient G.o.ds with a new and indistinct 'grown up' One G.o.d who lived not in or on the Earth, but 'out there' in his Heaven. This G.o.d of the capital letter, revealed in His Given Tomes had too, in the end, failed to redeem the world and was even now in His turn, relegated to the same realm where dwelt the uneasy fairy tales of the old G.o.ds. Pure invention reigned supreme, and Gaia was hugely and unthinkingly despoiled.

Nemmi had warned that the present lack of mythical complication in the lives of mortals was a serious error of awareness, a mistaken denial of the subtly pervasive knowledge of the immortals. Gaia was suffering at an increasing rate, while the treasure of the ancients was trampled in the dust, valued by only a few of the wise. She taught that the Olympians were not simple in the least. Their deeds, their secrets long forgotten could be unlocked for the benefit of people now and to come. Not for nothing had the ancient philosopher-scientists followed Homer and made myth central to the happiness and fulfilment of the lives of mortals. Now though hardly seen, the myths remained as invisible webs spanning past and future waiting, ready to go forth once more to gird the hopes of humankind and save them from themselves.

Nemmi taught that timelines were pathways of the G.o.ds. Outside time they travel even the most delicate of them at the speed of thought. They move freely through time zones. They feel disdain and sorrow for mortals for whom time is linear and finite. So bound are they within the short allotted length of their lives, they see little more than the immediate before or the just possible after. They don't see The ALL. This doesn't mean it isn't there, only those who study and see the timelines for what they are, can make sense of past and future, seeing clearly what 'was' 'is' and 'can be'. Mortals are rooted in a present as on a moving pavement, aware mostly of where they are, than from where they came or to where they go. They are too alone. Too afraid of loneliness to share all they really know, fearlessly. So they live their truncated lives. If they could only truly share the all they have, then....they would see the G.o.ds truly as they were and learn to live fully with Gaia and prosper.

The idea of immortality as rooted in the earth was natural to him. Nemmi radiated her remembrances in telling, in naming, joining myth to life, an earthly continuity from which came understanding.

Nemmi's teaching made him acutely aware how the ma.s.s of people with whom he travelled daily on the Tube, linked each to the other in the present and each to the past and future through their ancestral links and through the history of the species and the world they inhabit. Their very thought patterns made part of the of the timelines themselves. Values, ideas, logic, behaviours based on the past, shared in the present, creating society....mother-culture. timelines running along the long thread of human experience, For this race of mortals, Nemmi had taught, the timelines of the Chronosphere are the link between past and future. 'You, Alexander are destined to journey there, so be warned of all you meet, there, at the critical fulcrum, the place between past and future. For that is where the G.o.ds watch over the world of mortals'.

This train of thought led him back to the emergence of Lucina from the lift. A shock, like a bolt of lightening lit up his mind. That was it! It was she. How could he have been so stupid. The appearance of Lucina was a visitation in the now by Hera along a timeline. Of course it was! He was supposed to get it at once. What must she think of him and all his learning? This, his first significant contact with her since early childhood and he'd missed its significance. What an idiot! At this realisation he thought he felt the G.o.ddess's presence in his inner-mind and that of her companion Pan.

He felt an obstruction lift in his mind like a shift in his psyche. It revealed the thing that had continually seemed to draw him on and that he had always resisted. It was Hera's call to him! She had been waiting in the wings of his consciousness since his birth. He now felt her authority almost as a physical blow. It had history in it, had future in it. She had transfixed him like an insect on a pin and his present turmoil came from a sudden understanding that she was to make known to him the place where the past met the future and he had things to do.

There were other things about the confrontation that startled and confused him. He knew his mother worked closely with Lucina, had felt her awe, but this was the first time he had seen the dominant nature of the relationship for himself. Was it that obvious for other people? What was going on? What did Hera have in mind for both of them?

All his life he had felt marked out. No one else had anyone like Nemmi as a companion, or a mother as single minded about her work as Penny, or a sister so strangely self-sufficient as Thea. No one else he met gave him even the slightest touch of the splendour he received from five minutes with 'Nemmi.

Now, since the coming of Hera, there was the beginning of a transition. Powers other than his own were acting on him. He was being drawn closer to Nemmi's understanding of things and this time he knew he was to be an actor not a mere observer, he felt deeply unprotected, and exposed.

He walked swiftly up the sweeping curve of the drive of the Hampstead house. The mansion was a convenient base for small numbers of important visitors in more homely comfort than a hotel and a reasonably short taxi ride from the City office.

In his shaken state of mind he wanted to be with Nemmi. She would sense his mood and calm and sustain him. He went directly to his study. It gave views over the Heath and on a clear day he could make out the tower at Canary Wharf in the distance.

He snapped on his PC and mailed to: [email protected] While he typed he worked out it was about 10.00 am on the West Coast.

He desperately wanted her to be available. He typed:- Hi Nemmi, need you badly, something's going on here, I don't understand, help! Reply now.

He waited - 'Be in' - he earnestly wished under his breath.

'Thank G.o.d!'

He watched the screen, relieved, thinking how he was to explain what was going through his mind when he couldn't properly marshal one thought after another.

Alexiki - how goes it? what's the flap? You want me now?

He typed in the words'Yes. Now!'

The image of Nemmi was visible in a window on the screen above the text. Having now got her he couldn't now think how to articulate his needs. While he considered what to say Nemmi's voice came over the speakers.

'Alexiki-mou, you have me and you have other significant advantages not available to any other person. You know I am given to you to remember. Other people have to work things out for themselves without me. Also you are protected by Thea.....and not the least of things, you are financially privileged....and what's more you are indulged by Penny. So you have gifts beyond the ordinary, do not take them for granted - you have been given them for a purpose. You soon will be called on to use them in a great enterprise. Do not judge other people because they have not had your advantages. They are bound up in their very real needs to earn a living, to survive in their various ways. Unlike you they must engage in the real world, get up in the morning to make something out of the manipulations people must make to get a living from their fellow men. What do you know of such grappling? You have me to smooth your brow, my friends to lull you to a blithe sleep, to keep you in touch along timelines to G.o.ds of old. What do you know of fuel bills, hospital visits, queuing for bread, waking in a cold damp houses? Human life is precarious at best and the prognosis is not good. Uncertainty breeds anxiety, fear-cynicism, greed-bigotry and anxiety-cruelty. People have so much to strive for, the more they struggle the more they have to lose. Fear of loss is the greatest of goads to action of all kinds. Only when they have nothing to fear from loss will people be free from fear of the elements and each other. Only then will they find what they seek. Do not be too proud to engage with the little people who think they have no choice. You will help them to make their choices, you and Penny and JNO have no other purpose. It is Zeus' will. What do you fear my little Alexiki?'

'Everyone seems to know what's best for me....I can't bear it...and I don't know......What am I supposed to do? '

He knew he sounded unconvincing. He continued suddenly changing tack. 'Why don't other people call you for remembrance like me?'

She replied sadly. 'They can, but few do, only those who are able to cope with loss'

'What happens when they call?'

'I go to them and help their remembering. I help them through the Chronosphere and to follow the timelines, I help them with what they seek. Sadly people are short on remembering and long on striving. Each generation thinks itself anew, using little or nothing contained in the timelines which they leave in the dust, unnoticed and useless. This pure gold is buried beneath their dignity while they search for certainties in the now and wish for a better future. They use the past as justification for or against their little plays. Few have true remembrance, merely a patchy memory for what they have lost or regained and a fear of what they might lose in the future. Remembrance is made of different stuff which brings the light of meaning. Those without remembrance tear the earth apart seeking for what is in all of them if only they would see inwardly and remember. I too am sad for them, they try so hard. But what is it Alexander that upsets you now? Have you finally woken up to the fact that our lessons were real? You know Zeus is real. Perhaps it's that Zeus announced that you had joined the Firm? He's pleased you're one of us. He has plans for you, you know. You are expected to do well in the Firm.'

'That's just it, you're doing it too!'

'Me? No I don't have any plans for you, my dear boy, my job is remembrance not planning.' 'Nemmi gave a short laugh and continued, 'It's the others who do the planning. JNO doesn't just grow by itself, it needs thought and action. To tell you the truth I'm not surprised you called me, something is afoot in the Firm, Zeus is edgy and Hera's been here several times in the last month and...' Alexander cut her off, it seemed everyone suddenly had expectations of him. Nemmi's lessons were real. From the pit of his stomach fear rose in wave, draining the blood from his face. Fear too found his tongue.

'That's why I called you, I too met Lucina today and she shook me rigid I can tell you! She really did Nemmi! Yes you're right; what got to me was that she wasn't playing Lucina, Nemmi. She was actually being Hera! In public! Just like that! Stark or what? She gave Mother a real start too! She had that special possessive authority of hers; simply radiated it! When she looked at me she just absorbed me! She said something about getting to the centre of things and about my education. She scared me Nemmi! They all scare me; they always did in the flesh. Zeus scares me - they want something from me and mother doesn't know what's going on but she's suspicious and as jumpy as h.e.l.l. Let me tell you...Hera had someone who was awfully like Pan with her....and he scares me as much as she does. Thea's in on it too isn't she? What's it all about Nemmi? Help me I can't cope! What is this job everyone keeps hinting I'm supposed to do? I'm feeling really got at, I didn't want to join the Firm you know that. Mother did it for me and then I thought I was only to learn the business in the shipping office and now I've got the biggest of the 'Named' after my hide to do something serious, and I've only been there five minutes. What's going on Nemmi? Tell me what's going on!'

Nemmi's reply, he thought, sounded too calm, too matter of fact given his own fragmenting state of mind, as if this was all expected and unsurprising.

'Don't be so alarmed Alex, really....you can be quite tiresome sometimes. You know perfectly well you've been being prepared for ages. You knew all that silly gadding about was just preparation. You know perfectly well if you think about it. And stop panicking. Only Zeus and the Named knows anything about what he wants from you. As usual he doesn't know that most of the Named pick up all the gossip on the 'sphere sooner or later, or if he does he doesn't care in that lackadaisical way he....' The expression on Alexander's face made her stop in mid-sentence. 'What is it my boy, are you going to faint? Listen, the G.o.ds shouldn't scare you, remember, you know them, remember, always remember. But be respectful, they know things, you know so little, they will teach you to know.'

She focussed intently at him across the vast distance, their eyes seemed to fuse, their minds merged across time itself, suddenly the screen appeared to melt in front of him and he was travelling the line as in his childhood dreams. They met physically in Psathi. Nemmi, fully Mnemosyne, G.o.ddess of remembrance was sitting across from him gazing out to sea over rows of vines bordering the strand. Radiant, flawless, her robe ruffled by the blood-warm breeze betrayed the mould of her body. Knowledge seeped into his frantic brain from deep inside him. His conscious mind drew up images from somewhere out of sight but known in another sense, another time. He felt her weigh complex thoughts, discard some re-introduce others.

'So you see....as the son of Zeus by Penelope. It's not surprising he's got a job for you! '

He was aware of the blood draining from his cheeks, the back of his head seemed to float away from the rest of him and Mnemosyne's face lost focus.

Chapter 7.

He came to in the darkness of his study. The sound of a telephone was ringing loudly in his head still full of the image of Mnemosyne. The computer screen, bright in the gloom, held a message which gradually came into focus.

Alexiki? Don't worry, Thea has it in hand. Bye for now.

He groped for the 'phone without removing his eyes from the glow of the screen.

'h.e.l.lo,' he croaked hoa.r.s.ely, collapsing into an armchair.

'h.e.l.lo!' It was Thea. 'You okay Alex?....It's me, I'm home....I've been ringing you for ages, are you alright? I would have come up sooner but I've just got out of the shower. What are you doing for a meal, Ma's out with some folk at the opera, I thought we could go somewhere together, it'd make a change. What do you say?'

For a long moment he felt caught between the question on the screen and the 'phone. With an effort he pulled himself together.

'Er...hang on a bit Thi...I'll come down in a couple of minutes.'

He hung up, it was not often these days that Thea was at home wanting his company. Then he remembered what had just happened. He felt trapped between two worlds. His and Nemmi's. I'm going mad, he thought. His mind slipped like the faulty clutch in a car, unable to find a gear or make traction. He was losing his grip on what was real and felt a growing powerlessness and a fear of external control. Like a pendulum he was swinging between what he knew of the world of the Chronosphere and the real world and he felt he was losing touch with the latter.

All through his babyhood he had swapped one for the other without difficulty. He had co-existed happily, moving between them naturally. As he got older the outer world had become more palpable. Travel, friends, adventure had reduced to a remnant his conscious remembrance of the world he shared with Nemmi. It was dreamlike and far away, set in his mind like a geological layer in the prehistory of his childhood, there, ineradicable, influential - but far away. So he just concentrated on getting on with his life - things ought to sort themselves out. Wouldn't they?

He had rationalised the feeling he had from Lucina in the foyer of JNO as no more than an escape of fantasy, a leak of ancient informational gas, seeping through from far down in his mind. Maybe he was not going mad, perhaps he was just growing up. He had to get these things into a proper perspective; pull himself together, put his mind to real things and stop this silly dreaming. He sat in the gathering darkness, his thoughts gradually coming to rest in the here and now. Reality burst in with Thea who banged open the door and snapped on the light while speaking, 'Alex, whatever are you doing sitting here in the dark! Come on, I thought we were going to eat somewhere. I fancy Italian!'

Brother and sister made a remarkable couple. Alone, each was liable to turn heads, together, they had a rare natural and innocent grace unknowingly burnished each by the other, handsome without the need for art. He did not have the slightest idea of the effect they had on others, although Thea knew. He was not enough together with her of late to notice any such effect, and he was too unselfconscious of his physical self for such awareness.

They were put at a central table in a small, but expensive, Italian restaurant by a manager who subliminally recognised their value to attract trade by their mere presence. Neither he nor they recognised the meaning of his broad smile and the a.s.siduity with which they were waited upon. Neither was aware that the other diners spent most of their time taking pleasure in them, their presence giving everyone a sense of well-being that this was truly a brave new world that held such people.

As they ate, Thea exercised a great calming influence on Alexander. For him as for everyone, she radiated order and sense. Thea ate in a comfortable silence, and Alexander was too absorbed by the happenings of the last few hours for speech.

Over gla.s.ses of sweet Amaretto, relaxed, Thea released her shining hair from the pins which had been threatening to come out on their own for some time. (Watched by the manager who had observed her throughout their meal and who now caught his breath as gleaming, jet tresses fell over perfect shoulders; he would go home a happy man that night and be especially tender to his wife.

'Alexander. I need to talk to you. I know you've had a difficult day and I want you to talk to me about it. I can help, It's what I'm good at - giving advice.' She smiled as he grinned back at her. 'I know, I know,' she continued. 'When was I ever wrong about anything? But it's true, it's my nature to know, to be calm to judge, weigh up the evidence. I want to hear in your own words what happened today. What were you emailing Nemmi about?' Alexander studied her for a long minute before replying.

'You know why I go to Nemmi so much, she pays me special attention, she understands the real me, all of it. You know what I mean. She doesn't ever want me to become anything or do anything particular, being.....well....me...is enough for her. Not like you two, taking me in hand, getting me to do well...things. Like getting my hair cut, wearing the right clothes, going to the right schools, you know... joining the Firm. I feel like I've been forced into...well you know ...all that. I know I was getting bored but you made it all happen so fast and so completely. I think it's that that's upsetting me most. I feel I've been rushed into something I'm not quite ready for, even though....you know....though I might be later,' he trailed off.

'But you look fabulous, everyone has noticed you, you stand out in the crowd - you will do well in the Firm, it's already having an effect. Even Lucina noticed and we all know you didn't have anything better to do than join up. We, Ma and me, were getting worried about you. Lucina herself kept asking us about what you were doing with yourself. Hanging around with that crowd of rich kids going nowhere dangerously, it was such a waste of talent. You've got such a lot to offer, you will be a real a.s.set to the Firm.'

'There you go too! You're all at it! Lucina, Lucina! She's everywhere today! She's up to something, Nemmi said so, and now you're going on about her too!' His exasperation was noticed by other diners as he became less composed, though the completeness of Thea's smile calmed him and charmed them.

'Everyone's been telling me I'll go far, do well - they all seem to have expectations about things I'm going to do, when I have no expectations about anything. Who's in control of my life, me or everyone else? '

'Be more precise Alex, who exactly has expectations about you?' asked Thea who paid particular attention to his response.

'Well, Ma who just expects things, like you do, and Lucina talking about me being more at the centre of things. But that's not what frightened me most about her Thea. She was being Hera! Actually! In public openly.....I can't explain it properly.'

He paused, deep in thought, Thea nodded at him to go on.

'Then I emailed Nemmi to talk about it. I had to talk to someone who would understand; but the weirdest thing happened. I blacked out. That's when you called me. I've never done that before. Listen Thi, I know you don't have time for navel gazing, all that kind of stuff runs off you and Ma, but I'm scared of something and it comes from inside and I don't know properly what it is. It's got to do with the fact, slowly dawning on me that loads of people seem to know what I'm supposed to do, including Nemmi, even Lucina and Zarian. I mean Mnemosyne, Hera and Zeus.'

'What about Zeus?' interjected Thea quickly.

'Well that's when I blacked out. I had this kind of waking dream when I logged on, Nemmi wasn't there but it seems I thought she was. I put her on the videolink and then...well...then...I don't know what happened. I just flipped Thi, I thought I was back in Psathi, but not then, when we were kids, but now....with Nemmi, no Mnemosyne...the real one. It was real Thi, really real, I could smell the sea and there were vines, I saw the details Thi. That's what made it real. But it wasn't just that that made me faint. It was something she said, something that made sense of what's been happening to me today, but no sense in reality.' He tailed off, confused.