Omega

T think it's a marvellous name,' Moira said. ‘I propose we vote on it.'

'Point of information,' Angie asked. 'Who was Cerridwen?'

'A Welsh Mother-Goddess, who had a cauldron representing several ideas – abundance, inspiration, rebirth…' 'Enough said. I'll vote for that.' So did everybody; and Camp Cerridwen it was.

They worked hard, isolated from the outer world from which no news came. The few refugees who straggled into New Dyfnant came from no further afield than the devastated Vyrnwy valley and knew nothing outside their personal stories – except for terrible rumours of the Madness in Llanfyllin a dozen kilometres away and Welshpool, twice as far, which were always second- or third-hand and might or might not be wildly exaggerated.

The hourly BBC official broadcasts, cryptic and repetitious, told them little except by inference. The only specific information they gave and that only in the first Week or so, came in tidal wave warnings; particular areas were warned of imminent disaster. Angie, the camp's best geographer, noted the warnings and checked them on the map. The danger-line had been lowered to the fifty-metre contour, she noticed – presumably on more exact data – but the overall picture was still calamitous. No coastal area escaped but it was obvious that fu

Their first decision was that, barring extreme emergencies, the motor vehicles were not to be used. Every litre of petrol would be saved for the chain-saw and the rotovator which were now in action round the clock. Dan and Peter went down to the village to see what could be done about bartering for a horse and cart. The result was almost embarrassing. They returned with one sturdy draught horse, two saddle horses (with saddles and bridles), and a farm cart with a plough and a harrow in it; and any suggestion of payment was brushed aside.

'Look now, man,' Dai Forest I

'All the same…'

'All the same nothing, Dan bach. Their owners died in the earthquake, so they're communal property, like, see? And who better to look after them than our friends in the forest? Come now, and have a whisky while I've still got a bottle or two left.'

Another strange gift was wished on them by official decision of New Dyfnant council: two ruined farmhouses on the edge of the forest, from which only they had the right to salvage usable items and materials, the original owners also having died in the earthquake. The villagers were warned off and meticulously observed the ban. Camp Cerridwen appreciated this privilege greatly, because there were many things there, from doors and window-frames to a kitchen stove which would burn logs, all invaluable for the cabins they were building – not to mention hen-houses, garden tools and so on.

One of the farms had nearly half a hectare of vegetable garden, and that too was allocated to the camp. Most of it was potatoes, now ready for lifting, but there were also brussels sprouts and cabbage, carrots, and a few rows of beans. Everybody was delighted, especially old Sally, who had been appointed storekeeper and rationing-calculator.

The cabin-building went ahead surprisingly fast, considering that none of them were experts. All they had was Peter's knowledge of timber, Greg's flair as a handyman and two photographs of Fi

There were technical problems to be solved, mostly by trial and error – such as the shallowness of the topsoil over the rock plateau (how deep should holes be pickaxed for the uprights?) and the choice of suitable material for packing the crevices between the trunks (would mud bound with straw stand up to the weather?) – but they got round these one by one, and their first cabin took shape. It was to be a central, communal, living-and-eating room with a stove, in which the tent-dwellers could also sleep as a temporary measure if the cold weather came before sleeping-cabins were ready; the caravan-dwellers would be all right, though attention was paid to lagging and screening Angle's caravan and Peter's trailer for greater warmth.

With so much building to be done, there seemed little hope of tilling much of the six-hectare meadow yet. So they selected the easiest stretch – about a hectare of clean grass with no more than a dozen small bushes to be dug out – and began to rotovate it., But here Eileen's mute admirer took over and harnessed the draught horse to the plough they had been given. He was a very bad ploughman and the result was not pretty but the soil was turned and deeper than the rotovator could reach. Learning from him, after a few hours Dan found he could do almost as well as far as straightness of furrow went, though the horse paid little attention to his commands and the whole process was very time-consuming.

'It'll look better when we've harrowed it,' Greg said hopefully.

Moira, Rosemary and Eileen felt a little guilty and frustrated about the building and ploughing, because being young and healthy they wanted to help more but simply had not the muscles for this stage of the work. Even Dan and Greg, town-bred as they were, were exhausted at the end of each day.

The camp-fire was very welcome in the evenings, for the first chill of autumn was in the air. They dug a second hearth farther away, for use on the odd evening when the wind (which mostly was fu

Geraint found them more depressed than usual this evening; it had been a tiresome day, full of problems and false starts, and everyone seemed to feel that not much progress had been made. Nor had a gusty wind and a couple of rain-showers improved tempers.

'We've got to get the first cabin roofed and weathertight pretty bloody soon,' Greg was grumbling, 'so we can get cracking on the cook-house. We can't have the girls cooking in the open once the winter sets in.'