The Terminus Page 10

  “I swear she was trembling. When she’d let go of the hairgrip I kissed her hand and gave a bow!”

  “You nutter!”

  “Wanted to kiss her on the lips like you did with yours, but... with those others laughing like a pack of hyenas... you know... kink of put me off… so I told her the divine messenger would always treat the loveliest girl in the world with overwhelming respect!”

  Mike winked at Gary as they sat on a west bound Central line train.

  “You said what?”

  “Nice one, ay?”

  “Poor girl! Must’ve been mortified!”

  “After which I vanished!”

  “So you picked the lock successfully?”

  “Erm… not exactly. A combination, see. Worth a try, though, don’t you think?”

  “So?”

  “Had to go back and steal a bloody chain cutter, didn’t I? Went all over the place to find one. Dragged you out from underneath that heavy in the nick of time. Heard him shouting again when we were round the corner. Don’t give you much time, these mag-stunners.”

  “So I got zapped as well ’cos that guy was touching me? Man, If only I knew how these things work. Must take one apart sometime...” Gary’s bruised face suddenly lit up like a light bulb. Mike knew that expression only too well. “Mike, you’ve made my day! Just had a thought.”

  “Here we go again, Little Einstein. Explain!”

  “P’raps the time-specs and mag-stunners share the same phenomenon! Molecular blending at interfaces, right?”

  “To hell with molecules and interfaces! The skin on the back of that girl’s hand, Gary, was like silk. I was kissing silk!”

  But Gary’s thoughts were elsewhere: a tiny cell, a girl from the future, their lips touching… he had to get back to her soon or he’d crack up! Then they’d solve the mystery of the Terminus together. Curse God the Man and Redfor for even suggesting she’d agreed to sacrifice herself for the cause. The whole lot of them deserved to rot in hell for letting Beetie get dragged away.

  “Pure bloody silk...”

  “Oh, shut up, Mike! I’m not in the mood. Gotta think this one out. We give the tablet to Arthry and hope he’s some sensible suggestion for getting Beetie out of that bloody place. Before she forgets who she is. Someone in the Retreat must have knowledge about the Hatcheries. They can’t have wiped out everyone’s memories. Perhaps if a whole bunch of us gets onto a shuttle bus we could burst out at the other end… SAS style!”

  “Game for anything Gary as long as there’s no giant rats involved. Then I’ll give my red-headed angel-girl back her hairgrip and tell her she’s just saved the world. Think she’ll come on a date with me afterwards?”

  “’Spect she’ll call the flipping trick cyclists if you carry on using language like ‘angel-girl’!”

  “Uh?”

  “Trick cyclists! Psychiatrists! They’d rush you into a high security ward!”

  “No kidding, Gary! She gave me the ‘look’. You can tell.”

  “You with zero experience?”

  The train was pulling into Bond Street station.

  “Now for the Jubilee line, northbound,” Gary said.

  Mike followed him to a familiar platform, both pairs of time-specs ready and set to precisely the same time point after Beetie’s capture in June, 2213. Mike held on tightly to the Pentatron case as they stood awaiting the arrival of the next train.

  Chapter 7: Treachery

  “You do realise this boy from the past – the one who calls himself Gary – is out to destroy you and all your happiness, Belinda?”

  “Yes, Chairman.”

  “Everything you have here would vanish because of him.”

  “Yes.”

  “When you were in the Retreat did he get close to you? Kiss you?”

  “What’s the Retreat, Chairman?”

  “Where you met Gary. Recall him and you’ll remember the Retreat and the cell you shared. Arthry’s told me what went on between you two.”

  “Who’s Arthry?”

  Arthry? The Retreat? Beetie hadn’t a clue what the Chairman was talking about. These things registered nothing, but the boy was different. She secretly thanked the man for reminding her he was called Gary. She did remember their ‘kiss’... and it was because of this she had to hide the truth. Even if the Chairman threatened to kill her, she’d keep this one thing – the memory of him – locked away at any cost.

  “Did the boy kiss you, I asked?” There was anger in the Chairman’s voice.

  “What does kiss mean?” Beetie asked in the flat tone of an unbrained surfacer.

  A smile distorted the ugly face of the Chairman, revealing the true size of his teeth.

  “One day I’ll show you, Belinda, my dear, as long as you always tell the truth. Remember the boy who seems to have got stuck in your beautiful little head only exists to serve us both. That’s his pitiful purpose for remaining alive. Soon everything will be ready so you might as well forget him. He’ll be wiped from the face of the Earth as Arthry and the Retreat have been erased from your mind.”

  Beetie stared at the Chairman and gave him a hollow smile and from then on she hated him with a passion as strong as her love for Gary.

  “A poem for a good girl, eh? You know, this poetry I read to you will soon come true. I promise. So close your gorgeous eyes, Belinda, and listen:

  “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?Thou art more temperate and lovely…”

  Beetie closed her eyes and let the caressing words flow through her mind as she clung to an image of a boy from the past. He would be her summer’s day. If not, she’d arrange for death to take what was left of her fragile life.

  ***

  “Jump!” shouted Gary as the train doors slid shut. Putting on the time-specs in sync, they landed on the empty track of a long-abandoned platform. In the dim light, the yawning black entrance to the tunnel seemed to challenge them to take just one step closer. Gary remembered the rats… whilst Mike just thought about them.

  “Pitch black! Shit, you might have told me! I’d have gone back for a torch if I’d known. Could’ve returned to the hockey…”

  “No need for a torch, Mike. Only the ability to count. I’ll do that!”

  “Don’t have to rub it in! I can count to a hundred, mate!”

  Gary always came top in maths and Mike was invariably somewhere close to bottom; the reverse in English, as Mike constantly reminded his friend.

  The only sound was of their footsteps on gravel. Gary counted in his head as the darkness swallowed them.

  “Bloody awful smell!” whispered Mike.

  “Shhh!” Gary didn’t want to muddle up the numbers. “Must be hereabouts,” he whispered after another hundred paces. He stopped, reached out into the darkness, made contact with the cold, damp wall and patted until it gave a hollow sound.

  “I frankly don’t like this smell, Gary,” continued Mike. “Reminds me of dead mice. Our cat used to catch them. Till she lost her teeth. She’d leave them about the place as presents. Usually we’d only discover the dead mice when they began to stink. My dad once found one in the…”

  “Please shut up, Mike!”

  “Sorry, boss! Sometimes I forget how not to talk. D’you realise talking’s the one thing that separates Homo sapiens from…”

  Mike’s prattle was cut short when the door to the Retreat swung open, bathing the tunnel in yellow light.

  “Wow!”

  “Maybe I should take the tablet, Mike… and do the talking for a change. I’m trusted here… assuming we’ve got the timing right.”

  Gary relieved Mike of the case and led the way into the Retreat. The door slammed shut behind them. Mike remained uncharacteristically quiet as the boys slowly walked the length of the corridor, watchful of Retreaters who glanced up from computer screens, their faces blank. Gary felt uncomfortable. They halted outside the door marked ‘R31267’. He nodded at Mike, knocked and entered. Arthry, seated at his desk, swivelled round and smil
ed at them.

  “I’ve got the…” Gary began, but stopped abruptly. Someone lurked in the corner of the room. Half-turning, he saw it was Blinker. If it hadn’t been for Arthry’s knife, he’d have smashed the other boy’s face in for what he did to Beetie. He gritted his teeth and glanced down with uncertainty at the Pentatron case.

  “As I was saying, he’s here,” Blinker carried on, as if Gary and Mike’s entrance had been an irritating interruption to his flow of words.

  “Okay!” exclaimed Arthry. “Just a minute...”

  Arthry so rarely smiled. That alone seemed wrong. Gary was aware of the door reopening behind him and of Blinker leaving the room.

  “Have you any idea what that bastard did to Beetie?” Gary asked, jerking a thumb at the open door. “Why is he still here?”

  “At last... the Pentatron tablet!” exclaimed Arthry, ignoring Gary’s questions. “God said we’d be able to rely on you. Who’s your friend in Redfor’s suit? Also sent by God... or a hanger-on?”

  “Oh, most definitely sent by God!” Mike answered unaware of Gary’s escalating unease. “God searched the whole world for someone with the necessary skills and cool demeanour (Mike, an incorrigible logophile, loved the word). Couldn’t have made a better choice, could he, Gary?”

  Stony silence from Gary now locked in an eye-to-eye mental tussle with Arthry. He was trying to read the face of the man whom Beetie so trusted but felt only Arthry’s spear-thrust gaze tearing through his defences. Neither took any notice of Mike’s monologue.

  Someone entered the room. Gary didn’t look round.

  “Not been properly introduced to God yet, have you, Gary?”

  The boy turned. A repugnant little man with a big head, large eyes and buck teeth, grinned at him. He wore a long, grey coat over his tracksuit.

  “Hello, Gary!”

  Gary, speechless, stayed rooted to the spot.

  “Aren’t you gonna introduce me to your friend? I can see he’s not my pal Redfor, despite the suit. Ha ha ha!”

  Teeth’s guffaws hammered at Gary’s brain like machine-gun fire.

  “Michael Bellini,” Mike replied, offering his hand which the little man only looked at. “Pleased to meet you, God. Gary’s told me everything.”

  Mike withdrew his hand. “Suit yourself then!” he muttered.

  “Interesting,” observed Teeth, “since Gary knows next to nothing about me... or indeed anything. So... are you gonna give us the Pentatron Tablet or not, Gary?”

  Gary glanced at Mike. “But this isn’t God! Can’t be!” he whispered.

  Frowning, Mike shrugged his shoulders. Gary turned to face Arthry, the Pentatron case safely flat against his chest.

  “Oh Gary! At last you and your partner in crime get to meet the one and only true God! Hand it over, there’s a good boy!” the big man said, standing and reaching for the case.

  Gary backed away. Something was seriously wrong.

  “Where’ve they taken her?” he demanded. Arthry just laughed. “You’re not the Arthry Beetie trusted,” Gary blurted, “and this goofy monster… whoever he is he’s bloody-well not God!” He glanced sideways at Teeth whose teeth were now bared in a mocking grimace.

  “Everything’s going fine, Gary. She’s cooperating perfectly, and with that…” He nodded at the case. “With the Pentatron tablet the two of us can move on! She’s so looking forward to the next stage, is Belinda.”

  Without warning, he grabbed Gary’s arm. Gary wrenched himself free, swiping at the man’s hideous face with the case which sprang open. Something flew out, but Gary no longer cared, his mind full of thoughts of what had happened, or might happen, to Beetie.

  “RUN!” he yelled at Mike as Teeth reeled sideways and Arthry sprang forwards to catch the Pentatron tablet. Another swish with the now empty case caught Blinker on the nose. Gary and Mike ran from the room, hitting out at those who looked up whilst they fled along the narrow corridor to entrance of the Retreat. The door swung open automatically, snapping shut behind them as they disappeared into the tunnel enveloped by blackness and deathly silence.

  “Man, what the bleeding hell was that about?” asked Mike.

  “Arthry’s been with them all the time. With The Agenda! And Beetie so believed in him. That bastard Redfor arranged for us to walk straight into a trap! There’s only me and you and Beetie, now. We’ve gotta get to her. Stop the bastards from…” He couldn’t think about the horrors in store for Beetie if they failed to rescue the girl. “Back to

  Baker Street, Jubilee line to Stanmore, and…”

  Gary stopped in his tracks.

  “Via the hockey pitch, if you don’t mind, Gary. After all I’ve done for you …”

  “Shhh!”

  Gary held up his hand. He’d recognised the sound. A deep-throated chatter blended with the noise of something large moving rapidly towards them over the gravel and coming from the direction of the station.

  “Gee-rats? Holy Entrails!” croaked Mike.

  Gary didn’t reply. He chucked away the empty case. It hit the ground with an echoing thud as he reached for his mag-stunner.

  “You aim to the right,” he whispered, “and I’ll take the ones on the left.”

  “How big?” questioned Mike, fumbling in his pocket for his own mag-stunner.

  “Bloody enormous!”

  “Bugger! I really do hate rats. Can’t we take the flipping specs off?”

  “And risk being hit by a tube train going at fifty miles an hour? Give me a dozy bunch of gee-rats any day!”

  “Don’t sound dozy to me!”

  The chattering got louder by the second. The boys pressed themselves against the tunnel wall, aimlessly pointing their mag-stunners at the void. Something moved ahead, black against black. A jittery, jerky movement, and Gary’s nose fell victim to the raw, reeking smell of rotting flesh as a waft of warm, stale breath wisped through the cool of the tunnel. The mucous sniffle-snuffle of large nostrils warned his ears of the rodents’ proximity before an unblinking eye showed, and, pale against the blackness, two huge, yellowed chisel teeth.

  ZING!’ The nostrils went still, but the eye was unchanged and the noise continued. Other black shapes emerged from the gloom, more eyes, nostrils and chisel teeth and the crescendo chatter gnawed at Gary’s brain.

  ZING! ZING! ZING!”

  “MAKE A RUN FOR IT, MIKE! REMOVE SPECS AS A LAST RESORT!”

  They turned and fled but didn’t get far. Gary’s foot hit a pot-hole. He stumbled and crashed to the ground, his already bruised face slamming the gravel.

  “AAARGH!”

  He felt for the specs. Still on and intact, thank God… and God’s technology!

  “Gary?”

  Mike’s voice sounded distant.

  “GO ON AHEAD, MIKE! STANMORE SCIENTIFIC LABS… THE HATCHERIES! GET BEETIE OUTA THE BLEEDING PLACE!”

  But the gee-rats’ crescendo had smothered Gary’s cries. One loomed above the boy. He felt a clawed paw press down on his leg, the heat of its foul breath like a hairdryer on the back of his neck. Droplets sprayed from searching nostrils as the giant rat tried to figure out where to begin chiselling at its cowering prey. A burst of light illuminated Mike’s terrified face some ten metres away. The gee-rat pinning Gary to the ground went quiet before slumping painfully onto his leg.

  A dozen zings in rapid succession and the chattering ceased.

  “Gary?”

  Blinker? Surely not! Gary spat gravel from his mouth as he raised his head to see three silhouetted figures against the open doorway to the Retreat. One approached, slowly. Judging from size, shape and the nervous twitch it had to be that bastard, Blinker.

  “Gary?” he repeated, his voice touched with concern.

  Gary pulled his leg free from a ton-weight of gee-rat which, being limp, he took to be dead and not just mag-stunned. He scrambled backwards, searching the ground for his own mag-stunner from which he’d parted company.

  ***

  What did the Chairman mean
by ‘won’t be long now, Belinda’?

  He never explained anything to her and that bitch of a warden even less. Her name wasn’t Belinda, she felt certain, although the Chairman took every opportunity to remind her he wanted her to be called Belinda. But now there was another name in her head… Gary. Gary had called her by a different name, of this she was in no doubt, only, like everything else, it had been erased. A vacuum had formed in her brain and was gradually being filled by the Chairman with things of beauty: mellifluous lines of poetry, computer screen images of an incredible paradise, time in her private flower garden and pretty clothes. Every day, there were new clothes... much to the warden’s annoyance! Dresses, skirts, tops, pretty underwear – lots of pretty underwear – stiletto-heeled shoes and hair accessories. As the vacuum was filled with these things, and as her resistance against the pull of the Chairman weakened, she stubbornly held on to the memory of a boy… the boy she’d been ordered to forget and who would soon be rubbed from the face of the Earth and from her mind.

  ***

  Out of the blue, one morning after breakfast, the warden told Beetie her preparatory lessons were to start. She was holding something in a tightly-closed fist.

  “What do you mean?” the girl asked, eyeing the woman’s hand with suspicion.

  “Precisely that, girl, though if I had my way it’d be another visit to the grey block instead!”

  Nothing could make Beetie enter the building again. She still had nightmares about the place.

  “Preparatory for what?”

  “For going away. The Chairman said nothing more. Wants you properly dressed in your special white, blue and gold dress, face presentable (the warden’s way of warning Beetie to apply modest make-up) and ready and sitting in your chair in twenty minutes. Also…” She opened out her palm and Beetie screamed.

  “NO! NO!”

  “Oh yes, yes! Otherwise I’ll take you straight to the grey block. This time you mightn’t come out as pretty little Belinda!”

  Beetie closed her eyes whilst the smirking warden held her arm straight and stuck the syringe needle into a vein. She had a terror of needles not far short of her fear of the grey block. Although she’d no recollection of the details of those repeated needlings, the dread remained; dread of the awful vacuum which had almost obliterated the boy and which came from those needles. What they injected into her body over and over had clouded her mind and forced her to desire ever more things from the skull-faced beast who played with her like a puppet from the computer screen. Could her worst fear come true... would the boy soon be gone forever?