A plug for a friend
My occasional co-author has written a novel. Please help it become a blockbuster!
Dear readers,
My friend, ex-business partner, and occasional contributor to joint articles on this page, Steve Whitehouse, has written a new novel, just published on Amazon in paperback and Kindle e-book versions. A reading sample is available on Amazon, but for convenience I have embedded an image of the cover, and a sample comprising the Prologue and Chapter 1, below.
The book is very good! A unique, imaginative blend of science fiction, religious history / mythology, and a rip-roaring adventure to boot. One for the thinking person - as which, of course, all viewers of this page qualify!
Steve had some health problems (a significant heart attack) a couple of years ago, as he was completing the book, and it has been quite a struggle for him to get it finished during his recovery, with friends and family chipping in to help with the formatting, proofing, and publication challenges. It would mean the world to him to see it gain widespread success.
The Yellow Cross has been called “cinematic in scope” by reviewers, and it is Steve’s ultimate dream to see it made into a film. Unusually for a novel like this, it includes many colour images which add to the book’s atmosphere. Colour printing costs mean that the paperback version is not the cheapest, but you are getting a high-quality addition to your bookshelf at the price. The Kindle version, at £4.99 or local equivalent, is a bargain.
The book is available for sale worldwide, but here are quick Amazon links to the UK & US sites:
UK https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0H4HQYYWP
US https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H4HQYYWP
Please consider purchasing either a Kindle or paperback version yourself and, if you appreciate the book, amplifying this message via your own social media channels.
Enjoy, and many thanks for any support you can provide,
John.
Prologue – And Evil Ruled the Land
“It’s God’s work we do this day, your Grace,” said Hugh of Arcis, Seneschal of Carcassonne. “The Sanctum Sanctorum of Satan will soon be purged, and the heretics of Montségur will burn in hell.”
“I am glad you have not lost your zeal for the task ahead, Hugh. The Holy Father will see you are well rewarded, and your master, King Louis, will be told of the great service you do this day,” said Peter Amiel, Archbishop of Narbonne.
“Ten long months, from the Holy Feast of the Ascension, we have toiled in this wretched place to bring the heretics to holy justice.”
“Yes, Hugh, but it will be worth it if we can purge Languedoc once and for all of these hideous and corrosive false Christians – the Cathars.”
*****
“Look, Perfect Bertrand, the bonfire in the west!”
“Praise be to God,” said Bertrand, rejoicing that his plan to smuggle the holy relics out of Montségur had succeeded. “They are safe, safe! And no one else knew of our undertaking?”
“No one, Perfect Bertrand.”
Bertrand fell to his knees, praying and giving thanks to the true God, the God of the Gnostics. “While Yaldabaoth, the Demiurge, and his followers can exterminate us in our weak and impure Earthly form, they cannot dim the true bright light forever. This day, we have dealt a blow to the Demiurge and his servant, the Pope. Blessed be our Holy Father and Mother.”
*****
“Everything is arranged, Your Grace. The Perfecti and their followers will leave Montségur on the 16th March.”
“Have they recanted, Hugh? Will they save themselves?”
“No, Your Grace, they accept their fate without complaint. They seem to welcome their impending doom.”
“Good, the purge of these non-Christians will strike a blow for His Holiness and put the righteous fear of God into the other heretics of the Languedoc. It would be insufferable if they recanted and I was forced to show mercy. Make the arrangements, Hugh; we want a spectacle these people will never forget, at least those who survive,” he said dryly. “And let the stakes sit on a pyre twenty feet high.”
“Yes, your Grace,” Hugh replied, hoping his place in heaven was secure, as the full scale of the planned carnage finally dawned upon him.
*****
On the 14th March, Bertrand assembled the people of Montségur: defending soldiers, believers and Cathars. The Credentes – believers – gave the sign of theMelioramentum[1] to the Cathars as a mark of respect, which they acknowledged.
“Good Men,” Bertrand said with no connotation of gender, “The occasion of our surrender is just two days away. As you all know, yesterday I was approached by twenty-one Credentes who asked to be given the Consolamentum.[2]”
His body sagged, the weight of his responsibility bearing down upon him. To become a Cathar now meant certain death – by fire!
He continued slowly. “This was duly administered.”
The faith of the believers still humbled him after all these years. The twenty-one new Perfecti, with two days of life remaining, came from all stations of life: knights, soldiers, peasants, nobles, merchants and their families.
“The two hundred and twenty Perfecti will burn at the stake,” he said softly. “The rest of you good people will be released on license, and may God be with you.” “This is the last time we will be all together; let us pray...”
*****
In the early hours of 16th March, 1244, Bertrand Marty led the procession out of the citadel, down the track towards the place of execution. He and his fellow Perfecti, barefoot and dressed only in coarse shifts, the Credentes and remaining villagers following them, one final demonstration of the faith inspired by the Cathars, a simple belief structure that has challenged the established church and taken an era to eradicate.
Unbidden, the Perfecti climbed the ladders that propped up against the side of the bier and were lashed together in groups by the King’s soldiers, their backs pressed into the tall stakes jutting up from the twenty-foot pyre.
“How I despise these creatures, Hugh,” said Peter Amiel, watching the Perfecti, barefoot, clad only in coarse garments, walk meekly to their deaths. “Give the signal; the moment of glory has come.”
Soldiers stepped forward, throwing burning brands onto the stacked dry wood, and a low ripple of prayers spread through the observers. A fierce flame soon took hold, the screams of the Perfecti rang out defiling the Languedoc, fear and unbearable pain their only solace, as their bodies lit up one by one: first the hair caught fire, blazing like candles, then their fat started to melt, running down their bodies, exposing the underlying skeleton, just before their eyes exploded, projecting forward a sea of burning flesh.
The defeated and humiliated Credentes looked on, transfixed in silent tears, unable to comprehend the wickedness that enveloped them.
Hardened soldiers of the northern army looked on in wonder, mesmerised at how such simple people could take on the might of the Pope and King of France and nearly prevail, armed only with simple beliefs.
Thick plumes of black smoke rose above the inferno, blackening the sky and spreading the message of death across the Languedoc. The Demiurge saw it and rejoiced as its presence covered the land.
Chapter 1 – The Signal
Royal Holloway College, Egham, England, Present Day
“Bastards. Fucking bastard chemists,” yelled Jonathan, with feeling.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you say that every night,” Rachael responded listlessly, ground down by his nightly tirade. Suffering fools had never been a trait of his, and last year’s controversy at the University – well, scandal really, if she was honest – had badly affected him. “Welcome home, darling, have you had a good day at the office?” she continued sarcastically.
“Don’t wind me up, it’s all right for you, you don’t have to work with the fucking idiots.”
“I could comment...”
“Well, don’t,” he snarled, making his way into the kitchen, mumbling in disgust.
Whatever did he see in her? He asked himself, coming to a halt in front of the fridge. By the time he had opened the door, he had his answer. She was beautiful, extremely keen on sex, rich, with a well-connected father, and rather fun most of the time, he begrudgingly acknowledged. This, coupled with the fact that their relationship was unusual - how could he put it; open, non-exclusive...
Okay, he thought to himself, I’m lucky to have her. His mind moved on.
“Anyway, do you want to hear something interesting?” Rachael said, joining him in the kitchen. She took the milk out of his hand and continued before he could say anything.
“You remember my friend, Jeff Jones?” She was careful to stress the word friend. “You know – the guy who works for the MOD doing that secret stuff?” She looked at him for confirmation.
“Yes, isn’t he seconded to GCHQ and involved in some spook shenanigans?”
She interrupted before he could finish. “Well, he said they’d found a signal from a moon – not our moon; another one –, and it was all terribly exciting!”
“Okay, you’ve got my attention. What moon?”
“Enchilada or something like that, and the powers that be are getting awfully agitated.
It’s all very exciting, what do you think?”
“Do you mean Enceladus, a moon of Saturn?”
“Yes, that’s the one; it’s so sexy being clever,” she said in a sensual tone, draping herself in front of the fridge door provocatively and looking him straight in the eyes. He knew that look, and it was great!
*****
University of Comparative Religions, Bozeman, Montana
“Professor Bélibaste, thank God I’ve found you!”
“Freddy, it’s time. We must move quickly; the servant of Yaldabaoth is stirring from his great sleep. Alert the Coterie; recent events do not augur well for us; we are getting weaker and weaker; our knowledge is ebbing away into the ether of materialism. We must arouse what’s left of our sleeping gnosis, call the meeting for tonight.”
“Yes, Professor,” Freddy responded, ashen-faced. He was one of the professor’s closest and most trusted postdoc researchers, and in all the years they had worked together, this was the first time he’d seen Guillaume Bélibaste visibly shaken.
*****
Half an hour with Rachael and all his worldly stress and worries ebbed away. She was remarkable, truly beautiful and, unlike a lot of women, looked equally good with her clothes on or off. Mind you, how she survived as a journalist, he never knew. He put it down to the influence of her father and her considerable womanly charms.
“No, don’t get dressed just yet,” he said, leaning over her side of the bed, “Let me look at you.” Her body tightened to emphasise the flatness of her stomach and the swell of her substantial breasts.
“Wow, you are a beauty,” he murmured.
She smiled lazily and ran her foot down his leg. “Five feet ten inches, exquisite bone structure, perfect white skin, blue eyes, blond hair, small bum and 34D breasts – I know I’m beautiful!”
Jonathan moved in for round two.
“Not now, I have things I need to do,” she said, shaking her long blond hair provocatively. “I don’t want to spoil you – I need to keep you hungry!”
“Well, it’s working,” he said, “Surely you can stay a bit longer.”
Laughing, she pushed him away and started getting dressed again. As the madness of sex finally subsided, his higher cognitive powers kicked in.
“What was that again about Enceladus?” he asked.
“Don’t you ever listen? It’s sending out some sort of signal, and it’s got everyone in a bit of a flap.”
Jonathan grinned. “Yeah, I know a girl working for SETI; she used to be a radio astronomer working in the UK. I’ll give her a bell and see if she knows anything.”
“You know lots of girls,” said Rachael, smiling indulgently. “What’s SETI, some kind of sofa company?”
“Oh come on, Rachael, everyone’s heard of SETI?” said Jonathan, confirming his view that she wasn’t in journalism on the strength of her intellectual prowess.
“I probably have,” she said, smirking, “remind me.”
“The SETI Institute – in California.”
She still looked completely baffled.
“It stands for the Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence,” he explained patiently.
“Ooh – you’ve got girls in all the right places!” giggled Rachael. It was such a turn on, knowing lots of other women wanted, and were probably having, Jonathan.
*****
“Freddy, can you come along to my office? I’ve had some interesting news.” Professor
Bélibaste was calling Freddy on his mobile, taking care not to be too specific.
“Sure, I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”
Freddy shared a room with a couple of other postdocs. His desk was situated in the best position – the corner by the window – and the others were jealous. There was just enough room to walk between the desks to get to the door. The only concession was a space in front of the large whiteboard, which was attached to the wall by the window. It is well known that researchers can barely function without whiteboards, paramount for communication and the exchange of ideas. Elsewhere, the usual postdoc paraphernalia abounded – computers, piles of research papers and dirty coffee cups.
Freddy headed downstairs and along the corridor to Professor Bélibaste’s suite of rooms, located at the head of a long line of offices which housed the tenured readers and lecturers, their names inscribed on the shiny copper door plates.
Mrs Richards looked up from her desk as Freddy opened the door.
“Hi Freddy, go on through. He’s expecting you,” she said, smiling. Unlike the PAs to most Departmental Heads, Mrs Richards was very helpful and accommodating; she never tried to use Professor Bélibaste’s reflected authority to empower herself.
Freddy knocked and walked into the main office. “Freddy, please sit down,” said the professor, indicating a chair next to his desk. The room was massive, crammed with books and the walls covered in religious iconography. An imposing picture of Buddha hung on the wall behind the Professor’s desk, and Freddy always felt uncomfortable under its impassive gaze.
“The Coterie met virtually last night,” the Professor began. Freddy had arranged the meeting, and he knew that the Diaspora was distributed throughout the world. Group communication was often difficult, especially for the Coterie, as many of them held senior positions in governments and businesses across the globe. He prayed fervently that one day he would attain the necessary knowledge that would admit him to the Coterie, the Keepers of the Knowledge. For focus and solace, he silently recited the movement’s aphorisms: enigma, quietness and secret knowledge, as it was in the beginning.
“It has been confirmed that the forces of Yaldabaoth are rising, and the Good Men have been called to action.”
“But why now, Professor?” Freddy asked. Although they always prepared for the worst, he never thought this day would actually come. Indeed, he believed and was preparing himself for reunion with the God of light, the God of all creatures.
“Good question,” the professor responded. “I am not sure; we can only speculate. This is one of the areas we are actively analysing. Clearly, the dark one, He – It….” The professor paused. Description of Yaldabaoth was always a problem, and it was never referred to as God, “…believes,” he continued, “that we are vulnerable and susceptible to the final disorientation where the continuity of knowledge will be broken forever, and there will be no way back to the light. However, be of good heart, the Coterie has a plan, and we have a part to play in it.
Now is the time to believe in ourselves.” He smiled.
“What must we do?” asked Freddy.
“Our job – your job – is to check out Dr Jonathan Bowen, everything you can and as soon as possible.”
“Why?” Freddy was confused; it didn’t sound particularly exacting.
“Because in one of the paths of destiny, he has a role to play, although before you ask, I don’t know what his contribution might be.”
“Do you have any more details, Professor?” asked Freddy.
“No, only that we need to get as much information about him as soon as possible. I’m sorry I can’t tell you more at the moment. Matters are at an early stage, but I can assure you the wheels of destiny have been set in motion. The time is coming when we will all be counted on, and tested.”
*****
“Just put me through, I know she’s there, she’s always working.”
“Sorry, sir, we are not allowed to do that; we need a prior reference….”
“Look,” Jonathan shouted down the phone, “I’m a very good friend of the family, just tell her, there’s something she must know about her cousin – it’s urgent.”
“I am sorry, sir, but…”
Jonathan broke in angrily. “What did you say your name was? I need someone to blame when this hits the papers!”
He stopped, hoping the operator wouldn’t ask for details.
“This is most irregular, sir. We don’t normally put through calls on a Sunday unless they are authorised.”
He waited, hoping his silence would convince her to put him through.
“Okay, just this once, I will see if she is there, and she wants to talk to you.”
“Thank you.”
The line went quiet, and then eventually he heard Carolyn’s voice. “Jonathan… Jonathan, is that really you?”
“Thank God, got through to you at last,” he said churlishly, before recovering himself. “Marvellous to speak to you again, it’s been such a long time. How’s the SETI thing treating you?”
“Just great! I love it here in Mountain View, and I get time to play around with the latest radio telescopes like the new Allen Telescope Array. We are even allocated some time with the James Webb Space Telescope.”
“I never thought I’d see you leave Jodrell Bank.”
“Ah, well, sometimes you just have to move on, and SETI is treating me great, very few rules, even fewer bosses, and based in the wilderness. And I’m still working in Radio Astronomy, which has always been the love of my life. But what about you? I know you’ve had your difficulties, but I don’t believe half the stories I’ve heard.”
“Thanks,” said Jonathan. It was good to know he would have at least one sympathetic supporter. “Who would believe that your own research partner would cook the books?”
“I know, what a mess. I really feel for you, a world-class physicist reduced to helping out in the chemistry department. I never really knew the details of what happened.” Jonathan paused. There weren’t many people he would have discussed this with, but he knew he could trust Carolyn and, unlike Rachael, she could understand the finer points.
“Well, after the debacle of the Magnesium Dibromide superconducting papers, I was unceremoniously stripped of my readership and the shortly to be announced Professorship, and kicked out,” he explained. “And, of course, no other academic institution would touch me with a barge pole. The only exception was the chemistry department, which has basic, and I mean basic, research facilities in a beautiful outpost in the sticks, and only then because the Professor of Chemistry owed my old boss a big, big favour. They gave me a desk in a darkened room and had me doing pointless quantum mechanical correlation calculations for the nasty and stupid Professor. Obviously, my name never gets anywhere near the author’s list; God alone knows how he gets research grants.” He managed to avoid his usual litany of bastards, bastards, etcetera; Carolyn had never been keen on foul language.
“So as of now, I am keeping my head down, which suits the chemistry department… well, everyone really. I’m not even on the phone list! It’s a fate worse than death,” he sighed.
The line went quiet before she replied. “I’m sorry, Jonathan, I don’t really know what to say. What are you going to do?”
“Not much I can do,” he said. “But enough of my woes – right now I need your help.” He stopped. “Where are my manners? Let’s start again. Sorry to phone you on a Sunday, how are things, and when are you next coming to the UK?”
“Forget the social niceties – it’s not you!” laughed Carolyn. “Come on, what do you want?”
“What do you know about Enceladus?”
“Quite a bit, why are you interested?”
He ignored her question. “I read an article about Enceladus in Scientific American a couple of months ago, something about the south and north poles being different – jets of steam and icy grains erupting from deep fractures in the South Pole, due to gravitational crushing by Saturn, leading to heating, and suggestive of an underground sea of water.”
Carolyn smiled, remembering how, in another life, she’d liked nothing better than him talking dirty to her about dark energy, dark matter, general relativity, worm holes, etc. She had always loved him, and she always would, but she knew it would never be reciprocated. She was happy enough to accept the next best thing: incredible sex whenever they met up at a conference or meeting – a confirmed theoretical physics groupie!
“Why is it I think you know more than you’re saying about Enceladus?” she asked, not taken in by his gushing schoolboy facts.
“Well, there is something else,” he said sheepishly.
“Don’t say anything more over the phone – it’s not secure. You’re in enough trouble as it is, and I don’t want to join you. So tell me,” she said, changing the subject, “have you done any more work on Quantum Entanglement? I read some of your papers, and I thought they were pretty good.”
“Thanks, not for a long while.” She was right – if Enceladus was causing a flap, they needed to be discreet. When he’d been testing his entanglement theory, they’d set up a secure, encrypted mail facility. That would give them the privacy they needed. “Anyway,” he said, “It’s been great catching up, but I’ve taken up enough of your time. Next time you’re in the UK, we must get together and have a glass of wine, like the good old days.”
“It’s a deal, great to hear from you, and keep in touch!”
[1] Formal greeting exchanged between Cathars.
[2] Cathar rite of spiritual baptism generally administered before death.
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