– .'I don't know whether it's magnificent or pathetic,' she told Gareth as they rested by the roadside under Wenlock Edge. 'I love their sheer guts and their… well, sort of shy optimism – you know? But then I think of Reggie and General Milliard – and the Angels of Lucifer – and 21 June, and I wonder just how much chance these people really have, once the bayonets and the bureaucrats move in on them. You know what? I've a feeling they'd do better without any imposed government at all. Does that make me an anarchist?'

'You said "imposed" government. There could be other kinds, in due course. Would you object to that?'

'Not if it emerged front these people. Beehive's kind will be alien to them – to everything they've been through. It is already, in their minds… Look, except for the Bicester place where they didn't ask, we've been telling them frankly we're Beehive deserters. And it's always made them even more friendly, hasn't it? That shows what they think of "the government"… What's it done for them, since the quake? Nothing at all, except to stir up this damn witch-hunt thing – which seems to have died out, by the way.'

'Not everywhere, Brenda. I've seen places where it's very much alive, I'm afraid.'

'So I've been lucky with the three communities I've met. But I'd like to think they're fairly typical – or if they're not already, they soon will be.' She laughed. 'I must be a naive optimist as well as an anarchist. Only five days out of Beehive and I'm starting to believe in people again.'

'It's the fresh air that does it.'

'And you, St George-on-a-bicycle.'

'St David, do you mind? I was born in Carmarthen.'

They fell to teasing each other; it was impossible to remain solemn for long. Besides, they both had an additional reason for a sense of well-being. On their second night out, lying in her sleeping-bag next to Gareth in his, still awake after he had gone to sleep, she had been oppressed by a feeling of self-reproach. Gareth was her only friend and had been for weeks; he was her comrade in a dangerous venture, which would have been far less dangerous for him on his own – though of course he had not said so. She was a liability gladly accepted because he loved her and she repaid his devotion with mere friendship. She remembered a phrase which had caught her imagination while she was studying ancient Irish tribal mores for her history degree: cairdes sliasait

, 'the friendship of her loins.' Did he not at least deserve that, in a partnership where death might be round any corner – or would it be an insult to his love, when she was not in love with him? And yet she loved him, as she had loved her dead brother or her longer-dead father… Her debate with herself had become more tortuous and amorphous as the sleep of physical weariness overtook her. Next morning she had tried to recapitulate it with a clearer mind and had realized with some surprise that consideration of her affair with Reggie had not even entered into it. The following night, unpacking their things in the room which the village commune had offered them, while Gareth put their bicycles away, she had with sudden decision zipped up their two single sleeping-bags as one double one and laid it out on the bare mattress of the big bed. He had not seen it till later, for she had gone down to join him and they had been immediately drawn into their hosts' company. When they had finally said good night and gone upstairs and he had seen what she had done, he had stopped short, unable to find words. She had smiled at him, hiding her own doubts, and had prepared for bed with deliberate unconcern. Once they were lying together, his respectful tenderness had brought a lump into her throat, and she had forgotten her trepidation in her determination to make him relax, even laugh. She had succeeded; and now, after three nights of increasingly natural lovemaking, she no longer tried to analyse the difference between loving. and being in love. She only knew that in spite of her uncertain future and the muscular weariness of their journey, she had never been so content in all her life. Certainly not with Reggie.

They arrived at Camp Cerridwen on the evening of the sixth day. Gareth received almost a hero's welcome, because the camp knew they owed the survival of the radio cabin (and probably of Geraint and Tonia) to his warning message; Brenda was swept up in it too but not merely by way of reflected glory. She felt an immediate rapport with Moira in particular, and since she was a librarian, schoolteacher Geraint and journalist Tonia adopted her at once as their personal property and virtually shanghaied her into the news network team before she could draw breath. They were eager to pump Gareth for information, too; he had to curb their enthusiasm a little, or they would have rushed on to the air to their British and foreign ham contacts with facts that could only have come from within Beehive -which, so soon after Gareth and Brenda's 'deaths', might have caused someone in Beehive to put two and two together. The two-man raid on the radio cabin, Gareth told them, had been made on the Army's initiative in consultation with Intelligence Section. It had not been repeated because, with the advantage of surprise lost, it would have required a larger force, which the Army could not spare during the preparations for Operation Skylight. But if they drew attention to themselves by being not merely a nuisance exchanging what news the hams could gather, but a real danger by transmitting Beehive secrets, Harley might order the Army to attack at once, regardless.

An Army attack was coming anyway; that was the central grim fact in the news which Gareth brought. But at least he could tell them the date and the time.

As soon as the welcoming was over, Gareth, with Brenda beside him, spoke to Dan, Moira and the camp committee.

'Operation Skylight – the surfacing of Beehive to take control – is fixed for 21 June. Zero hour is 0600 hours but some units will be setting out before that and others after. It'll all be carried out in waves, by shuttle-service from the secret helicopter bases around the various Beehives – the main forces coming from London. On the first day, they'll establish headquarters in about thirty places spread out over the whole mainland but thicker where the population's thickest. The places have been carefully chosen – mostly relatively undamaged small towns or large villages. The nearest one to here is Corwen, about thirty kilometres away. They won't be doing it with kid gloves. They'll requisition whatever they need and anyone who resists eviction or disobeys the Army's orders will be shot. On the second day they'll start imposing control over the surrounding communities, starting with the largest – and at the same time they'll begin announcing regulations and provisional tithe laws and so on.'

'Tithe laws?' Dan asked, incredulously.

'That's what they're calling them. How d'you think the administration and the Army are going to be maintained? The Beehive stores won't last for ever… And get this straight. It's going to be a military dictatorship, with no holds barred and Harley's administrative machine as the ruling caste. Big Chief Harley himself is the absolute dictator of Beehive and he has every intention of being absolute dictator of Britain. The Prime Minister's a puppet. My own guess is that after Operation Skylight, Harley won't even bother to use him as a figurehead. The Premier will either be framed as a traitor or simply meet with an accident.'

'Where does the King fit in?' Sam Warner wanted to know. 'The BBC broadcasts are still in the name of "His Majesty's Government", even though we never hear his voice.'

Gareth smiled wrily. 'Apart from Brenda and myself, the most distinguished defectors from Beehive have been the Royal Family. A few weeks ago the King, the Queen, the Prince of Wales and his wife and baby, and the two Princesses took a helicopter from one of the secret bases and disappeared. Being the King and a helicopter pilot, he was able to get away with it – though Harley still had the officer of the base guard reduced to the ranks. Intelligence Section did their nut trying to get wind of them. It wasn't till just before we left that an agent located them. Windsor Castle, of all places – the sheer cheek of it fooled Beehive, the Section never dreamed they'd go there. Holed up in it with a witch community, too… It's one of the priority targets for D-Day. Special task force to seize the Castle and take the Royal Family alive. Just like Camp Cerridwen. Dan and Moira are to be taken alive, too. I've a feeling that's a special request from the Black Mamba. I don't think Harley would have bothered with the "taking alive" bit as far as Dan and Moira were concerned.'