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Control work III-III
James Herbert. SEPULCHREA conflict of evils
I. Reproduce the plot of the book (3 pages[1]): This story began three thousand years before the birth of Christ, when the first real moves towards civilization emerged from southern Mesopotamia. The people there were called Sumerian. The Sumerian high priests discovered a way of making man immortal. But they destroyed or hid all such records because for some reason. The main character of this book, Liam Halloran, is a professional bodyguard. He worked in the company “Achilles’ Shield” as an agent of security service, a specialist in life-saving of hostages. One day the Magma Corporation engaged him as a personal bodyguard for its researcher, who had paranormal abilities for searching minerals. The Magma Corporation practised the exploitation of the mineral wealth; it has widespread international interests in the mining, industrial and energy sectors. The researcher, Mr. Felix Kline, was insured for £50 million but it was not enough to cover the loss of the company in case of his death. Rivals had made an attempt upon Kline's life before, that’s why the Magma Corporation wanted to get help from the “Achilles’ Shield” in addition to its own security to protect him. Liam Halloran arrived at the Magma Corporation’s office and wanted to exam the security structures of that building because Mr. Kline was living at the time in that building, except on holidays, when he moved into his estate near London. There was a personal assistant of Felix Kline, Cora Redmile, who helped Halloran in guarding Mr. Kline. She had to coordinate Halloran’s operations and Kline’s timetable and his day-to-day movements. Cora was chosen by Felix Kline for that task. Cora led Halloran to a sky-high penthouse of Corporation’s building, where Kline’s apartments were placed. Kline had four bodyguards, two of them were in Corporation’s building, but they weren’t professionals, they were rather his servants. And Halloran was discontented with them. And Felix Kline made a strange impression on Halloran. He didn’t seem like someone whom a multinational corporation could possibly be depended upon. He looked nothing like a genius, and nothing like a wizard. His apartments were strange too. There were no windows, no furniture apart from a low dais in the centre of the white floor. The high ceiling and the walls were white too. In other words, that man had a lot of oddities but he was a man to protect. After examining the security and Kline’ bodyguards, Halloran came to the conclusion that the bodyguards needed some instructions on driving, shooting and fighting. At the time they were getting those instructions, he had to protect his client on his own. On Saturday Felix Kline with his group (his personal assistant and two bodyguards) moved to his estate near London. They were being followed during all the way but they were not attacked. But Kline was very worried about that event. The estate was called “Neath”. There was an old stone wall, surrounding the estate, massive gates and a lodge-house beyond the gates. In the heart of some kind of a grove there was the main building of the estate and a lake near it. There were another two Kline's bodyguards, the Arabs. From Halloran’s point of view the estate had no adequate security system. “Neath” had been built around the central courtyard. There were too many dark places, corridors, corners and niches to examine them all very attentively. Halloran also found too many locked doors. Kline told him that he didn’t have to explore the house so carefully because it was a safe place. He added that there was no need to worry, not inside the estate; and nothing could disturb Kline there. Step by step Halloran found new mystery things. During his investigations he found that there were dogs in the estate, but Kline denied that fact. The Arabs simulated the misunderstanding of English, but Halloran heard them speaking well enough. Cora seemed to be worried about something but she refused to speak about it. But Halloran tried to do his best to discharge his obligations. Next morning Halloran continued his investigations of the estate. The lake attracted him; he didn’t know why. It was a deep lake, almost round. Halloran felt something was in the depth of the lake. It seemed to him that something alive was there, something that called him to the depth of the lake; he could see shadows, moving in the depth. It was some kind of hypnosis. But he knew that there couldn’t be anything and he overcame that feeling. He was worried about the locked doors of the house especially the door of the cellar. His sense of danger told him that there was something unusual, something he never had met before. That was one more mystery. He was worried about the lodge-house too; he hadn’t investigated it yet. But he found out a troop of jackals near the lodge-house. They were non-aggressive, but there was something queer in their behaviour. That evening Halloran saw some kind of a natural phenomenon over the lake. There was a light from the water; the lake was lighter than its surrounding and some kind of clouds were over the lake. Sometimes the clouds were lighted up with lightings. But there was one more thing. There was a boat out there and four bodyguards in it. They were watching something that was outside the boat, in the lake itself. Halloran thought that his sense of danger hadn’t lied that morning: there had to be something. There was Kline too, but he wasn’t in the boat. It seemed to Halloran that he was… on the water. But nobody answered his questions after all. Next morning all of them had to return to London. One of the chiefs of the “Achilles’ Shield”, Dieter Stuhr, was killed the previous night. He was tortured before being killed and then thrown down to the Thames. It meant that the rivals acted with all brutality and tried to find out the way Kline was been protected. And it meant that there was a spy in the Magma Corporation. Halloran, Kline and Cora didn’t suspect anybody of spying. But Kline suspected Cora. That event made them all nervous. Halloran decided that it would be safer if they returned to “Neath”. In “Neath” Kline felt poor. His skin had become dry and some pieces fell away when he moved. Halloran was worried about his health because he couldn’t protect Kline from any disease. Halloran insisted on visiting a doctor but Kline denied any offer. Kline locked himself up in his room and only the Arabs allowed in. Cora was worried about Kline too; she had never seen him in such condition before. Meanwhile Halloran decided to investigate the lodge-house. At that time he entered the house. In the building Halloran discovered a lodge-Keeper, a guardian of the gates and a master of the troop of jackals. It was an old dying man, who told Halloran that his mind controlled the gates, the troop of jackals and the demons. But he was too weak to keep them longer. According to his words, Kline was inconceivably old. The Keeper told Halloran that Kline needed another Keeper to keep his life and it would be Halloran. Then the old man died. Halloran confronted the death of the old man with Kline’s condition and hurried to the main house. But there was nobody. Halloran could find neither Cora nor Kline. Then he heard a woman’s cry. He broke into run and found out the half-open door of the cellar. But when he began to come down the steps, one of Kline’s bodyguards brought a metal bar down against his temple. There was a sepulchre in the cellar. Kline’s sepulchre. About three hundred years before young Kline was a tomb-robber. He had found the heart of Sumerian man-god Bel-Marduk and controlled Sumerian knowledge of immortality. He performed the ritual and became immortal, but not absolutely. He needed a man, the Keeper, who could keep his soul in his body, who had to protect him from the ancient devils. The lake near the building was some kind of an energetic centre for the Keeper. When Kline’s Keeper became old, Kline found another one. That was Halloran’s turn to become the Keeper. But Cora, who fell in love with Halloran, couldn’t allow that. She shot Kline when he started to perform the ritual of converting Halloran into the Keeper. Then Halloran destroyed the heart of Bel-Marduk.
II. Draw character sketches of:
a) The main character of this book is Liam Halloran. The author described him as a tall, but not massive man, certainly not muscle-bound. He had pale blue eyes, and the warmth in them could turn to a bleak coldness in an instant. He was a man to feel safe with – unless you were his enemy. At first sight he seemed anything but a violent man. He preferred his clothes casual, nothing sharp or self-conscious about them. At first Cora Redmile supposed that Halloran was a murderer, but then she learned him better and understood that it was a mistake. Halloran wasn’t a murder; he was a good specialist and discharged his obligations as much as he could. If the conditions demanded of murder from him, Halloran murdered. But it was only in the name of saving life of his client. He was Irish and spoke with the little trace of Irish. His childhood was rough. And it is impossible to understand Halloran’s character being ignorant of his biography. Liam’s father was a captain in the British Army. He met his future wife while on leave in Southern Ireland. They were married and, within a year, Liam was born. But his duty required him long absences and his wife and Liam lived with Liam’s grandfather in Ireland. The captain spent as much time as possible with his family but their marriage had created a rift between his wife and the other members of her family. She had cousins who had strong links with the IRA, and they suspected that Liam’s father was no more than a British plant, put there to seek out information on the rebel activities in the area. And one day Liam, just eight years old, gone fishing with his father. And the gunmen struck. The boy was frozen with fear and could only watch when one of the masked men shot Captain Halloran in the back of the head. Liam got a very deep shock. Liam’s mother knew her cousins had been involved. And if not for Liam’s grandfather who was in the IRA a great person, Liam would have been murdered too, as a witness. As Liam grew older, it seemed he was always in some kind of trouble. His wildness grew out of hand when his mother finally committed suicide. He hated the priest, Father O’Connell, who had worn Liam that the wildness had to stop, that the Good Lord Jesus would punish the boy for his wickedness, that his cankered soul would be damned eternally into Hell. Liam set fire to the church, and Father O’Connell was lost in the fire. Liam hated the Good Lord Jesus, who allowed to his parents be killed, he hated all of his relatives. I think that if Liam had had no such rough childhood, he wouldn’t have been chosen by Kline for his purpose, because Halloran was bad enough to be a servant of the evil god. But, as times went by, his intense hatred and aggression became cold. One of his father’s friends arranged for him to board at an army school in England; that school turned out many fine cadets. After active military service Liam Halloran was engaged by the company “Achilles’ Shield” as an agent of security service. Of course, if he had had no military experience, he wouldn’t have been such a good specialist. Every time Halloran acts with confidence and presence of mind. He knows exactly what he has to do. In spite of his previous life he can feel deeply. Of course, he does rough work, he runs risks every day, but he is a sensitive and gentle man, a man to feel safe with.
b) Janusz Palusinski is one of the secondary characters of this book. He was a bodyguard and worked for Felix Kline for many years. He didn’t like his chief but he owed his life to Kline. And Kline knew that Palusinski didn’t like him, that’s why Kline never gave him any serious mission. Palusinski was a driver and bodyguard when Kline was living in the Magma Corporation’s penthouse. On holidays he only escorted his chief with others bodyguards. Janusz was the only child in the family. His father was a peasant farmer. When Janusz was a kid, it was very hard time for Poland. There was famine, and no one had enough food to subsist, and his family too. Janusz grew up among hunger and poverty. Janusz was sturdy enough to help his father in the fields but there was a sly laziness to him, a reluctance to offer more than was required of him. His mother often did extra work his father had ordered boy to do, always taking the greatest care that her husband would not find out. At the time of the Second World War Janusz used to go into the forest with the food for the Polish partisans. He was picked up by the Nazi and for his own life gave the names of partisans under the Nazi threats. Then he was sent to one of the Nazi concentration camps. Time passed and Janusz mentally sank into himself. He had to bury victims of mass executions. And it was his chance to survive. He became a cannibal, a man-eater, and the corpses were his food supply. I think, Kline knew about Palusinski all the truth and that’s why he made Janusz his bodyguard. Kline needed a man who would act like a beast, being obedient to his master and, at the same time, being ruthless. And Janusz obeyed his master, but in the condition of satiety and prosperity he wasn’t a beast, he was a man with gentle soul and deep feelings. He knew what his master was and what his master wanted to do, but he couldn’t do anything against it. That’s why Janusz didn’t help his master to become immortal and didn’t help Halloran to stop Kline. It was a too big problem for him, a too difficult choice between his conscience and his devotion, and he preferred to die.
III. Give your interpretation of the controlling idea(1 page) There is a house called ”Neath” that holds a dark and terrible secret. In that house is a psychic called Kline who is part of its secret. The Keeper is a guardian of the house, of the psychic, and of the secret. But now an outsider must protect them from a terrible danger. And eventually he would discover the horrific and awesome secret of the Sepulchre…
The main idea of this book is centred on the eternal problem of the Good and the Evil. But there is no absolutely good character in this book; there is no absolutely evil. And real people are opposed to the Evil, real people with their weak points, problems and fears. The fight, typical of reality of the 20 century, unwraps on the ground of mystic surrounding, created by the author from Sumerian myths, biblical legends and a traditional gothic romance. The creature (I can’t call Kline, almost immortal and powerful, a man), acting in this book as the Evil, aims to rule the world and doesn’t spare anything and anybody on his way to the absolute power. This creature has real prototypes, which were presented to the author by outgoing century. Aspiration for the supremacy over people, for the supremacy in its worse (Can I say “the worst”?) demonstration, becomes the main characteristic of our century, the main disaster of it. Starting with communism, which set up the unprecedented experiment on human psychology, which turned people into zombies, and ending with totalitarian sects of the end of this century, we can say that all of them aimed at only one purpose – to the power over people, to the power over the whole world. Only a man who has no stereotypes, who believes in nothing (a man like Halloran), is able to hold out against totalitarianism, which is the Evil of our century. On the contrary, the opposition a real man to the general Evil is not an innovation of our time. On the other hand the Evil can take various faces and more – the Evil may be asking for defence. And only if the hero relied on his own feelings, his own instincts and his own vision of the Good and the Evil, he could define the real Evil. But actions of a “strong” man aren’t as interesting as actions of “weak” men, who obey Kline. Their liberation plays the general role in the fight of Halloran and Kline. It shows man’s ability to overcome the Evil inside and finally defeat the Evil outside.
IV. Narrate the most interesting episode from the book(1 page) There were no dull pages in this book. Halloran and Kline with his bodyguards returned to “Neath” after finding out the information about the death of Dieter Stuhr. On the way to Neath Halloran tried to find out where Kline was keeping his jackals. But nobody answered. And he decided to examine the old lodge-house near the gates. On the way to “Neath” Kline began to feel unwell. In “Neath” Kline was getting worse. His skin became dry and some pieces fell away when he moved. Halloran insisted on visiting a doctor but Kline denied any offer. Kline locked himself up in his room and only the Arabs allowed in. Some later Cora came to speak to Halloran about Kline’s health. She said that Kline had informed her that he had been suffering from a rare type of psoriasis and there was nothing to worry about. And there was one more thing that bothered her. It was her feeling of “Neath” and her feeling of Kline. She was afraid of being suspected in spying, because she was Kline’s personal assistant and knew all about Kline’s defence. But Halloran calmed her down. Halloran understood that there was no thing he could do for his client and headed to the lodge-house. This building frightened him, but he entered it. The lodge was in darkness, not even a glimmer showing from the grimed window. Halloran didn’t find any sign of life inside but that didn’t mean the house was empty. There were shattered bones on the floor and several containers with clogs of meat Halloran was afraid of the jackals; it seemed to him that they were near the house, but outside. And he closed the door tight. Then he moved along the wall to investigate the house. Having examined the rooms of first floor, Halloran found nothing. But there was a second floor in the house. The room he entered smelled musty, uninhabitable. But it wasn’t a usual room. Having entered, Halloran fell into his own recollection. He didn’t want to recollect, but did it. It was the room that made him recollect! And he didn’t know how much time he had been staying in it, but it seemed to him it was too long. After his recollections had leaved him, he saw an old man in the corner opposite. The man was extremely old; he told Halloran that his mind controlled the gates, the troop of jackals and the demons. But he was too weak to keep them longer. According to his words, Kline was inconceivably old. The Keeper told Halloran that Kline needed another Keeper to keep up Kline’s life and it would be Halloran. Then the old man died and Halloran hurried to the main house.
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