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Greater
than the sum…
or
How to make a molehill
out of a mountain
being a story of molar solar magic
for Christmas 1996
by Juliet Eyeions & Paul Brazier
As the midsummer sun rose, the Druids at Stonehenge began the ceremony
they believed had been ancient before history began; but in fact it had
been foisted on them by an enterprising 17th Century charlatan for a bet.
It was, however, much closer to the Truth of the Real Earth than the Druids
guessed. Around the world, in unrecognised annular temples both humbler
and more grand than their simple circle of standing stones, the true ceremonies
of the solstice began. One took place at Hollingbury Ring in Sussex, a
truly ancient hilltop fort, so insignificant to humans that they had almost
surrounded it with a golf course… although no human had ever dared
touch the circular fort itself…
Mike was biggest, so he was first. He pushed his nose cautiously above
the ground and sniffed. Good! The fox was gone. He sniffed again. It was
almost time. He nudged the dozing mole next to him, then scrambled out
onto the grass.
‘Hoi!’ said Mark. ‘There’s no need for that! I
wasn’t asleep,’ and he followed Mike out onto the surface.
The sky was bright, and painful to his poor eyes, but he moved further
out, and soon Matt, Max, and Malcolm had joined them. Silently, Mike turned
to face the brightest part of the sky and the others formed a line to
his right. Then, forepaws touching, they wheeled left, until Mike and
Mark’s noses touched. Mark stopped, and the remaining three moved
on around the rhinocentre until they formed a five-pointed star on the
grass. When the star was complete, they began to shuffle widdershins and
to hum, a single wordless note. Faster and faster they moved, round and
round, until they became a blur. The humming rose in pitch a fraction,
and, as the spinning disk of moles rose gradually above the ground, so
the sun pushed above the horizon. The disk slowed, sank back to the ground,
and stopped.
“A flawless performance,” a dark voice said.
“Who’s that?” cried Mike. The others shuffled clumsily
towards their burrow while Mike waved his digging claws and blinked around
for the source of the voice.
“Don’t panic! I’m quite harmless,” the voice said,
and a small, female mole scrabbled out of some nearby scrub. Something
in her voice was compelling, for the other moles turned back.
“Who are you?” Matt asked bluntly, “ and where’s
the rest of your five?”
“There are no others,” she announced to their consternation
– moles that lost their four co-holers never thrived. “I am
alone.”
“But how can you live alone?” asked Max, the least overawed
by the sepulchral tones: she was ever the practical one among them.
“I am Miracula Pentacula, the five-in-one, the messenger promised
to you in the Song of the Truth of the Real Earth, and I come from your
cousins at cern.” As she spoke the very ground seemed to resonate
with her words.
“But we heard from Kieran, Cameron, Karen, Carol and Colin only
a few days ago,” said Mark, their Rememberer of all Real Earth relatives.
“Faugh!” exclaimed Miracula, and the five trembled to hear
a female so uncouth. “I speak not of your dear neighbours at the
Giant of Cerne Abbas, but of the greater community that lives within a
human research community beneath a far-off mountain. So vast is this human
community that it overspills the boundaries of three nations, and they
conduct experiments on molecular energy!”
“Then we must rescue our cousins,” said Mike. “We can’t
let the humans experiment on moles, however peculiar!”
“The humans do not know of the mole colony in their midst. They
experiment with energy, and they have emulated unknowingly our temples
and our habits of reverence in their experiment: they have built an annular
tunnel, which they call a toroid, underground; they use it to accelerate
tiny parts of tiny parts of molecules to ever higher speeds –”
“But you said they weren’t experimenting with moles!”
Mike was annoyed, and confused, but Miracula’s voice overrode his.
“– tiny parts of tiny parts of molecules they call particules,
so small even eyes a million times stronger than ours cannot see them!
They accelerate them in the toroid, and then bash them into other particules
coming from the other direction to see what happens.”
“Well, I could tell them. They’d get a fearful headache,”
said Max. She resented the intrusion of this solo female mole whose compulsive
alto rumbled through their nice stable side.
“Silence!” bellowed Miracula, and the five were dumbstruck,
for moles are humble creatures, and not used to such behaviour from any
of their species. “I bring news of a great project and a great honour.
Hollingbury Hill has been chosen as the site of the greatest circulation
ever to be attempted by the Real Earth movement.”
“And what do we have to do, then?” Malcolm rarely spoke, unless
he sensed unusual extra work coming his way; and this felt like it might
need a lot of work.
“No more than hospitality requires.” Miracula’s pale
face shone in the early morning sunlight. “You must welcome each
side-of-five as it arrives, and guide them in the construction of the
temple. The Call has already gone out, and moles from the five corners
of the Real Earth will soon come to aid in its construction and operation.”
Over the ensuing months, sides-of-five-moles migrated to the merry circus,
mollifying the natives of Hollingbury Ring with gifts of moleskin trousers,
wild garlic (‘magical moly,’ they called it), and mystic molar
communion. Each side was allocated five feet of circumference to excavate
and maintain, and the construction of the temple proceeded apace. Of course,
when the moles had finished their work for the day, they had to forage,
and the keepers of the surrounding golf course were driven to distraction
by devastatingly doughty molehills in their previously pristine greens.
The keepers pumped carbon dioxide into the tunnels to poison them, and
planted sonic pulse probes – ‘thumpers’, the moles called
them – to perturb the moles. But the mole’s awareness of one
another grew with the size of their community, so that, when a gas attack
began, the nearest moles not under direct threat would dig across the
affected area and collapse the tunnel, sealing the fumes in. Occasionally,
the toroid temple itself was breached, but so many moles worked there
that it soon became necessary to bore vertical ventilation holes, after
which any gas attack would dissipate harmlessly out of the roof.
Miracula Pentacula, the one solo mole in this new community, took up residence
at the centre of the new temple. When sonic probe attacks came, she would
retreat into her solo burrow and, burying her proboscis deep in the ground,
pulse out an interfering frequency; the moles would hear a thumper start
up, and moments later a shudder ran through the earth as Miracula’s
counter sound found its way around the grounds of the temple. But, for
all her mastery of security, there were molish mutterings about her molier-than
thou attitude, and her miraculous mono-mole maintenance of immunity to
solitude. Moreover, no mole ever encountered Miracula nocturnally on their
ever-wider foraging sweeps, and to them this was the greatest mystery
of all; for moles must eat regularly, and by now they were falling over
one another in their search for food.
At last, late in December, the wonderful underground Temple of the Light
of the Real Earth in Hollingbury Hill was completed, and all the moles
who had taken part in its construction took turns to tour the toroid tunnel.
The amplifying power was so strong that their claws barely touched the
floor as they circled the great underground ring, so they were anxious
to give it a trial run; but Miracula demurred.
“We must wait for our cousins from cern,” she proclaimed.
“Only when they arrive will this side of sides be complete.”
There were more mutterings at this. They could all feel the potential
of the place, and didn’t see the need to wait for latecomers just
to test the circulation. And the winter solstice drew ever nearer.
On the night of the solstice, as dawn approached, the moles drifted into
place, ready for their act of reclamation, reverence, and return. This
was a vast movement of moles, and the Earth trembled as their claws approached
syncopation in the ground around the top of the mound we all call Hollingbury
Hill.
“Stop!” screamed Miracula, and as one the molish multitude
quailed before her awesome energy. None could see her – few were
aware of where she was – but all heard and obeyed.
“We must not begin without the cousins from cern. You feel the massing
of the molish multitude, and move towards mingling; but we are gathered
here to served a greater purpose.” The mass of moles were quiescent
now, minds made malleable by their constant exposure to Miracula’s
malfeasance. “Here are gathered side on side of fives, and five
by five by five by five by five, fifteen thousand six hundred and twenty-five
moles will celebrate the molish mass. We are only five moles short of
critical mass, and they are arriving even as I speak.” And, sure
enough, as the sun rose on what humans called the shortest day, the cernish
moles arrived at the periphery of the Hollingbury Ring.
Many moles were profoundly disturbed. They had not performed their ritual
of reverence and revivification on the correct day. Some thought the sun
might not return until they performed the ritual, but the Swiss moles
and their stories of their travels distracted even the most conservative;
and the welcoming of the cousins lasted two days – with their thick
Swiss accents, gifts of chocolate and cheese full of moley holes, and
their stories of their travels – they had had to dig a parallel
tunnel under the channel, as the human one was blocked by a lorry-drivers’
strike, which is why they were late – everyone wanted to meet them,
and a single day was not long enough. And, underneath it all, the moles
felt that the Swiss cousins were trying to convey something that could
not break the language barrier, and this disturbed the moles still more
profoundly.
On the morning of Christmas Day, as the sky lightened, the moles once
again foregathered in their vast circular tunnel temple. This time, Miracula
Pentacula rested content at the centre of the circle and cooed sympathetic
sonorous songs that focused the minds of the moles, so that as they waited
they began the shuffle that would grow into the great circle. As the last
moles slipped into place in the pattern – it was the Swiss side
– and completed the great circuit, so the moly-circular energy doubled
and redoubled, and the great mass of moles moved together, widdershins
around the epicentre that was Miracula. As they moved, a mind-numbing
mantra arose. Beating through their packed numbers, it motivated them
to move ever more precisely in unison, so each mole touched minds with
the other moles until they could hear each others thoughts, while beneath
the full telepathic communion the mesmeric metronome of Miracula’s
mindbeat kept them moving, round and round, fast and fast and faster,
until the molish mind-disk lifted. Such was the power of the massing of
mole minds that the temple rose with the moles, and on that foggy Christmas
morning the entire hilltop lifted away from the hill, as if it were reaching
for the stars.
As this magical moment of mole mellifluity melded the minds of the moles
into a mental mansion, the message of the Helvetic Happenstance Hierarchy
(the Swiss original uses the letter ‘M’, of course, but some
things are simply not translatable) finally achieved congruence with their
British hosts, and the awesome truth of their revelation flashed instantly
to the mind of every mole mirroring the millenial milling in the Temple
of the Real Earth beneath Hollingbury Hill. Yes, Miracula was known to
the Swiss – but not as messenger pentumvirate; she was Molecula,
a stranded alien scientist spy who, discovered in the human cern community,
had taken refuge in the mole community as a pseudo-mole. This was why
she could live solo. She had then found that molish psychic force was
nourishing to her, and had become a psychic vampire, preying on the community.
When she left, she had decimated their community. She had discovered that
the same psychic energy that the moles used for their solstitial ceremony
could be harnessed to project molish matter through space. Six months
previously, the minds of the majority of the mole community in cern had
been sucked into her person during an attempt to use the cern accelerator
to launch her into her homeward journey to the stars. The attempt had
failed, and she had only travelled as far as this hill in Sussex. But
she still harboured these souls, and while she lived the moles’
souls remained in limbo, waiting to travel over to the Next Real Earth;
but she was intending to use them as food for her long journey through
the stars to her home world, even as she was intending to sacrifice many
molish souls to drive the extraordinary matter-transmitter she had constructed
under the guise of a Temple.
“Too late!” Her crowing cry swamped their consciousnesses.
“You cannot stop now, or you will all be destroyed! Continue, send
me home, and some of you will survive. Cease now, and you will all die!”
Her voice cracked through their collective mind like a whip. But beneath
it rumbled a further message from the Swiss that she could not hear above
her own triumphal trumpeting –
“We dance widdershins for her. We moles must emulate vermicular
habits. Turn, moles, and dance the solar dance, drive the desperate devil
Molecula down to be swallowed by the Real Earth, and release the souls
of the moles into the Promise of the New Earth we all expect when we die.
Turn, moles, turn, for the return of the moles’s souls; let Molecula
burn, in turn, for the moles who died in cern; turn, moles, turn.”
As one, the moles massing widdershins beneath the floating summit of Hollingbury
Hill turned on their heels and marched ever faster in the path of the
one true sun and the crown of the hill ceased rising into the sky, and
settled back into place.
“Stop,” cried Miracula/Molecula, “for you know not what
you do.”
But her voice, once thunderous, was covered and tumbled by the mumble
and the rumble of the moles and their hills, and their mountain, and their
round. Round and round they went, and the power, now with them, drove
down through the crust and the mantle of the Earth to the core and at
the centre of the circle a great bore of light opened, and the glare in
the sky was momentary as the alien Molecula was drawn down ineffably to
perdition in the heat and the truth at the heart of all things, and, as
she perished, many molish souls flew out to the bosom of the Real Earth,
and the moles in their awe at the power and their joy, slowed and settled
and lavishly relaxed, and their sun-saving ceremony was complete.
As the mid-winter sun rose, human children in the environs of the hill
woke to an especial feeling of warmth and cosiness on this Christmas Day.
What the moles had done was no more than humans would do if their security
were threatened by an alien psychic-vampire; and the psychic energy released
for their good spilled over into the minds of all sentient beings in the
area, even into the mind of a solitary druid who lived nearby. He had
rejected the neo-christian claptrap about Christmas and was busy ignoring
it, out early walking his dog on the golf course. He was thinking of the
many long empty months until the ceremony at Stonehenge when he looked
up into the sky above Hollingbury Ring and witnessed the revolving and
the rising of the hill-top, and the prodigy of light. Mind filled with
wonder, he thought, I bet I could make my brethren believe in a newly-discovered
mid-winter ceremony, properly pagan, high on the windy shoulder of Hollingbury
Ring, in the deep and draughty mid-winter, the snow-clad, cold and frosty
hill-top… But the overspill of psychic energy filled his mind with
ripples of joy. No-one would want to be out in the cold away from home
at Christmas, he thought. Let it be. And he turned towards home, and thereafter
campaigned for the protection of the moles on the golf course at Hollingbury
Ring, but when his friends and fellow druids asked why, he could not say,
but could only repeat, baffled himself–
“It’s the turn of the moles, that’s all, it’s
the turn of the moles!”
Greater
than the mole… is copyright © 1996 Paul Brazier & Juliet
Eyeions
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