‘What did you do?’ asked Paul.
‘I did what I’ve been told to do: slapped a D Notice on the whole thing, which meant the reporter who was there . . . and luckily for me the only reporter who was there, and a local at that – if it had been one of the nationals I’d have been well and truly sunk . . . anyway, which meant the reporter was stopped from telling anyone what had happened. And then I got on the phone to Gareth. Within twenty minutes, the site was full of helicopters landing, the SAS turning up fully armed, medics, and of course the top brass from the press office to make sure the whole place was shut down. By the time I left, there was a net of security around the site like I’ve never seen. Everyone in the area was taken in and had the fear of God put into them, and was persuaded they’d been the unfortunate victims of a hallucination caused by a leak of toxic gas.’
‘Maybe it was,’ said Paul. ‘Maybe there was a leak of toxic gas, some substance buried long ago. Some experiment that went wrong during the First World War, or something. There’s all manner of terrible stuff buried all over the place.’
‘I know what I saw!’ insisted Jake.
‘You know what you think you saw,’ countered Paul. ‘That’s what happens with hallucinations.’ He gave Jake a grin. ‘Considering everything, you did well, Jake, for a trainee.’
But it wasn’t a hallucination. Jake knew what he’d seen. A man had picked up something wrapped in faded leather. He’d unwrapped it and exposed an old book.
When he’d opened it, a fungus had started to spread up his arm, and within seconds it had covered his whole body. He remembered an ambulance turning up, and paramedics in complete body-protection suits putting that . . . thing . . . on a stretcher and taking it to the ambulance, and then speeding away. No siren sounding, so he guessed the man was dead. The site itself was sealed off, with armed guards posted around it, all dressed in radiation protection suits, just in case there was still something dangerous there. So how could it have been a hallucination?
‘News about it is bound to leak out,’ said Jake. ‘D Notice or not, one of those workers, or one of the protestors, is going to phone up their local TV station.’
‘What protestors?’ asked Paul.
‘These people who were protesting against building a new science block on the site. They said it was the home of fairies and mustn’t be disturbed.’
‘Fairies?’ chuckled Paul.
‘Don’t laugh.’ Jake shuddered. ‘One woman said to me if the ground was disturbed then whoever did it was cursed. And look what happened!’
‘Nothing happened,’ insisted Paul. ‘Like they said, mass hallucination.’
‘It wasn’t,’ insisted Jake. ‘I saw it. They saw it. And at least one of them will tell what happened, and some news editor hungry for an interesting item for page two will write it up.’
Paul shook his head.
‘It’ll soon get squashed,’ he said. ‘H or H.’
Jake frowned.
‘What?’
‘H or H,’ repeated Paul. ‘Hoax or Hallucination. The standard rebuttal to any story of that kind, whether it’s UFOs, people vanishing into thin air, weird monsters, spontaneous combustion, anything out of the ordinary. I’m surprised you weren’t told about H or H.’ Paul shrugged. ‘But then, you’ve only been here . . . what?’
‘I’ve been here nine months!’ protested Jake.
‘But you haven’t had to deal with one of these stories so far. So, now you have. Welcome to the wonderful world of H or H.’
Jake was about to carry on his protest about what he’d seen, when his phone rang.
‘Jake Wells,’ he said.
It was Gareth Findlay-Weston, his head of section in the press office.
‘Jake,’ said Gareth. Even though Jake couldn’t see Gareth, he could tell by the tone of his voice Gareth was smiling. Or, at least, that he had a smile on his face, which wasn’t necessarily the same thing. ‘Can you pop up to my office?’
Gareth’s office was on the third floor. Jake and Paul and the rest of the grunts in the press office were on the first floor. As Jake walked up the stairs he reflected on how the floor levels indicated seniority. In fact, the whole building that was the Department of Science reflected levels of seniority. The higher you went, the more intimidating the building became: the banisters changed from ordinary metal to brass. The light fittings, which were plain white plastic up to the second floor, became shining gunmetal from the third floor upwards. Jake wondered what the fittings were made of when you got beyond the fourth floor: solid gold, perhaps, or maybe platinum.