The Age of Ra by Lovegrove James

Author:Lovegrove, James [Lovegrove, James]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Rebellion Publishing
Published: 2011-02-12T07:44:17+00:00

17. Airstrike

David was home.

Home wasn't his London pad. Pleasant and well furnished as that was, it served as a convenient place to live, nothing more.

Home was Courtdene, the family estate on the Sussex Downs, the flint-and-brick manor house with its walled gardens and its long, valley-hemmed views of the Channel, the sheep-cropped fields, the oak copses and hawthorn thickets, the wide expanses of grassland that were treelessly bleak and bare, the curving driveway, the main gates capped with sphinxes, the pyramid folly which Archibald Westwynter commissioned to be built the day after he bought the property, the lake with its replica Solar Barque dinghies and small overgrown island, this secure and private world where nothing intruded from the outside that wasn't permitted by the family within.

Home was always the place where life was at its simplest.

David strode up to the front door, pausing to glance up at the family cartouche that was carved into the lintel. It was the best kind, a compact, logogrammatic one. You could spell out any name in the uniliteral manner and get a string of simple demotic hieroglyphs, but that was little better than an alphabetical substitution code and looked ungainly. For real class, you paid the priesthood a small fortune - the current asking price was €50,000 - and had your surname translated officially into hieratic logograms. The cartouche for Westwynter consisted, logically enough, of the logograms for west (a bird crown and a sun setting over hills) and winter (four assorted geometric shapes), arranged one above the other and enclosed in a box.

David had always thought of a cartouche as a sign of vanity, but a necessary one. No family that was held in high regard could do without.

He passed under it and entered the house.

The hallway was empty. A clock ticked. Dust motes hung in a shaft of sunlight, swirled by a draught. He smelled the familiar musk of waxed floorboards, mixed with the hint of damp which hung around the draughty old building constantly, even in high summer.

No one.

He was home from war. He had a right to expect some kind of reception, a welcoming committee. Didn't he? He had been away for weeks. He was presumed dead. Why wasn't anyone waiting in the hallway to greet him, rejoicing? His mother at least, even if his father had chosen to disown him.

''Hello?''

Echoes echoed echoingly. No answer.

''Mum? Dad?''

Nothing.

''Jepps? Mrs Plomley?''

Silence.

He searched the ground floor: all the drawing rooms, the library, the dining room, the billiard-room, kitchen, scullery, pantry. Everything exactly as it should be, spotlessly tidy. Not a soul to be seen.

He went upstairs. He tried Steven's bedroom, then his own. The beds were tightly made, sheets turned down, awaiting occupancy. Finally he approached his parents' bedroom at the far end of the corridor.

The door was ajar. He nudged it open.

His mother and father lay in bed together, naked, entwined, locked in a fervent kiss. Jack Westwynter was kneading Cleo Westwynter's breast. Cleo Westwynter's hand was under the covers, working away at Jack Westwynter's crotch.

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