Voices in Stone - Emily Diamand Page 0,43

being married. Instead I stared at the sky through the windscreen. The clouds were all piled high and golden with shadows, like when you see old-fashioned pictures of God.

“Full blasting hasn’t started,” Dad said to Stu. They were chatting about the quarry, of course. “One of the protestors told me they’ve been holding things up for weeks now.”

Stu snorted. “I doubt it’s anything to do with the protestors. Probably money or the weather. I went to that protest camp last week, to ask if anyone had seen any UFOs around there, and they didn’t even know what I was talking about!”

I spoke up from down on the floor. “Why were you asking them about UFOs?”

Stu turned around in his seat. “There’s a lot of activity in this whole area. Unexplained lights, people losing time, mysterious beings. And all the witchcraft traditions associated with the standing stone.”

I felt a bit sick when he said that. By then I was starting to think the shapes I’d seen could’ve been anything, even witches.

“And then this quarry, right in the middle of it,” said Stu. He turned back to Dad. “I bet a million pounds we’ll find out the military is involved in that.” He sounded really pleased with the idea.

“There could be some undercover police hiding among the protestors…” said Dad.

“Not only the police. MI5 at least. This is just the kind of thing they’ll be watching.”

“Why would MI5 care about a quarry?” I asked.

Stu still had his hood up, straggles of grey hair poking out of the sides. He gave me this look he has: poor-stupid-you-for-not-understanding, lucky-I’m-here-to-sort-you-out.

“This is a rare earth quarry, Gray,” he said.

“I know,” I answered. He’d probably forgotten I was one of the people who’d been inside the quarry, now he was Mr Expert.

“So then, where are the main deposits of rare earths?” he asked me.

I thought back to our geography lessons. “China? The coast of Japan?”

“Exactly. Yet right here in our county is one of the richest and rarest deposits in the world, apparently. Don’t you think that’s odd?”

“No. It has to be somewhere.”

Stu leaned over his seat at me. “I know geologists who say that a rare earth deposit shouldn’t even be here.”

I wondered what kind of geologists Stu would know. Ones who think volcanoes are really a secret plot by an underground lizard civilisation, probably.

“Combine that with it being a hotspot for UFO sightings…” said Stu, meaningfully.

“So… what? It’s an alien base?”

Stu laughed, shaking his head. “Of course not! Everyone knows those are in the Welsh mountains. But it doesn’t mean aliens aren’t mixed up in this. Think what rare earth metals are used for – tablets and smartphones and so on. Haven’t you ever wondered how a technology could be so addictive that people queue all night to buy it, and once they’ve got it they can’t do anything else? All swiping away on their touchscreens. What if it’s not just chance?” He turned to Dad. “You still don’t let him have a mobile phone?”

“I don’t,” said Dad.

“Which isn’t fair,” I said, “because everyone else has one! They said on TV that in three years from now, all kids over ten will have a smartphone. All of them except me.”

Stu frowned at me from inside his anorak hood. “You think it’s just playing games and tweeting your friends? What are smartphones really doing?”

I shrugged.

“Tracking you! Every call, every text, everywhere you go, everything you say and do. It’s all recorded and sent off, so they know exactly what you’re up to, every minute of every day.”

“Why would anyone do that?” I said.

“Control!” hissed Stu, leaning right over the seat. “They talk about monitoring terrorists, when really they mean all of us. And you go along with it because they make it fun. Clever, aren’t they?”

Stu’s always going on about ‘they’. It’s why he keeps his hood up, so ‘they’ can’t take his photo. Sometimes ‘they’ are the government, sometimes ‘they’ are a secret organisation, sometimes ‘they’ are aliens. But I bet whoever ‘they’ are, ‘they’ aren’t even interested in Stu.

“Why would they want to control all of us?” I asked.

“There’s a hundred people in the world,” hissed Stu, “who between them have as much wealth as the three billion people on the bottom half of the world’s heap. Did you know that?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “With that kind of money being piled up, of course they need something to keep people nice and distracted! Stop them asking if it’s fair. That’s