The Terminus Read online

  “You blame me for going all starry over Beetie! You’re a hundred times worse! Oh Mike, you’ve gotta stop thinking of the whole thing as one big laugh. This ain’t no game, mate. It’s for real. Those gee-rats nearly got me twice. This bloody train we’re sitting in almost smashed the shit out of me. Life and death stuff! Okay?”

  “Right, boss!”

  Mike gave a mock salute and Gary grimaced in despair.

  “She’s called Veronica. Nice name, ay? Better than ‘Beetie’ any day!” Gary, saying nothing, only wanted his friend to shut up and allow him to think, having, minutes earlier, wished he was there. “I asked her out, and guess what? She said ‘yes’. Cor… those legs. Don’t mind telling you, if…”

  “Mike, please switch over to problem-solving mode if only for a few ticks. Go back to the lusting after you’ve worked out how we’re gonna break into the Terminus.”

  “Easy! Stand in the middle of the field where God’s gonna build a place to do his research crap in, specs on and hey presto! Appear from nowhere. It’ll scare the shiny pants off ’em... assuming Redfor was telling the truth.”

  “Who the heck do we believe? Blinker, who Beetie seemed sure was working for The Agenda, or Redfor, who Blinker thinks is one of The Agenda’s blokes and out to kill God… the real God? Oh God, I dunno! Would never have suspected Arthry was in with them!”

  “What about Beetie? Why are you so sure you can trust her?” Gary glowered at him so sharply Mike feared he’d get sliced in two. “Sorry I spoke. You asked for help and I’m only saying what entered my head.”

  “Yeah! Too right!”

  “She’s one of the chosen few… or so the guy said. She’s everything to lose by taking on The Agenda, whatever they’re up to! She might even have been seduced by some…”

  Gary held a fist to Mike’s jaw.

  “Don’t say it! Hear me?”

  “Jesus! Okay, okay! Cool it, Gary! A good arch criminal has to think of every possibility. Leave no stone unturned.”

  Gary relaxed his grip.

  “I’m sorry, Mike! When you said she might’ve been... you know… the worst thing imaginable flashed through my mind. I’m kind of on edge. We’ve no idea what’s happening to Beetie and time-travelling straight into the Terminus could land us in one mega heap of shit.”

  “What about the other place?”

  “The Hatcheries? Where Beetie came from after all her childhood memory got wiped clean?”

  “Yeah! Where they took her to first, correct? We need to get to her before they take her on to the Terminus. Before it’s too late!”

  “But Blinker said...” began Gary.

  “That’s just it! Blinker said!”

  “But how the heck can we tell when that’ll be?”

  “Simple! Arrive from the past. Call out ‘Beetie! Beetie!’ (Mike put his hand to his mouth, sideways, pretending to shout for the girl) No Beetie? Pop back in time. Have another go. ‘Beetie… Beetie!’ Stepwise time-travel. How about it?”

  “Hmmm! Guess you’re right. Hatcheries first. Have to find out more from God before we end up the Terminus. Too sort of terminal. No turning back.”

  “The other God, ay? God the Mystery Man!”

  “And find out what Redfor’s up to. Anyway, first thing we do is bring Beetie back to the present. Here and now... safely with me. I’ll take her home… a real home for once in her life!”

  “How are you gonna explain this to your parents, Gary? ‘Oh… I found this girl in the future and thought she should come and live with us.’”

  “Something along those lines, Mike. Leave the talking to you.”

  “Thanks a million!”

  “Well that’s your forte, Mike. Bullshitting! It’s in your Italian blood!”

  “Embellishing the truth, Gary. Anyway, before you get yourself killed hunting down God and Redfor, I think you’ll owe your girl a trip to the flicks. With me and Veronica. Guess your one’ll be into pink and fluffy girly Hollywood shit if you’ve kissed already.”

  Once back on the subject of Veronica, Mike’s verbal floodgates opened and Gary got a monologue all the way to Stanmore. On arrival, the boys were the last two left in the carriage.

  ***

  Beetie was picking flowers in the garden, the only place where she experienced any semblance of pleasure. In her room, although the colours and decoration were cheerful, she felt confined, restricted and strangely unreal. The door, otherwise always locked, would be opened by the warden whenever the Chairman said she might be let out to enjoy the delights of a world soon to be her new life… only in the Terminus everything would be ‘far, far better’.

  Walking amongst the flowers, she smiled to herself as she wondered whether the boy from the past, the one called Gary, had ever seen such things. In her head she’d often speak to him about them:

  “This one, Gary. The blue one. So beautiful! Am I wrong to want to pick it? Seems so natural. The warden gives me water to put them in. They like to drink because they’re alive. Like us. Oh, I do wish you’d tell me more about things like flowers. Did they have them where you came from? Maybe God the Chairman invented them as well.”

  Beetie would talk to the boy in her head for hours on end, but never aloud. She had no idea what the Chairman might do should he find out. Perhaps have her sent to the grey building.

  Now, after her preparatory lesson, Beetie realized why the Chairman wanted to take her to those places she’d seen on her computer screen… and the mere thought of this became unbearable. More so with the boy inside her head. The Chairman called their going to the Terminus ‘Moving On’. Why couldn’t she stay in the Hatcheries with her beautiful garden and her secret thoughts of the boy?

  “Quick, Belinda! He’ll soon be here!” called the warden. The girl glanced up from the flowers. “Come in at once! We can’t have him see you looking like this. You must be ready for ‘Moving On’.”

  Beetie wished the woman talked about the boy with whom she’d been conversing, but reality dispelled her dream. Her time was up. The Chairman was to take her to those lands of mountains and rivers and waterfalls and blossoms beyond the Hatcheries, where… oh God, what was he going to do to her… or to the boy inside her head?

  Beetie stood, clutching a posy of pink flowers, and obediently followed the warden. Back in her cell she gasped. The most amazing dress she’d yet seen lay spread out across her bed; yellow, with gold woven into its intricate patterns, and the waist band, the hem and the edges of the short sleeves were an exquisite blue that matched her eyes. Pretty items of pale blue lace-trimmed underwear had been neatly placed beside the dress. She couldn’t figure out why he kept giving her new underwear, although since the preparatory lesson she had an uneasy notion this had something to do with ‘Moving On.’

  Only Gary should ever see me like this, she thought whilst easing into her smalls, but she knew she had no choice. After doing up the buttons at the back of her dress, she sat on the chair in front of her mirror and spent an inordinate length of time brushing her now long blond hair before slowly applying lipstick, face powder and a touch of eye shadow.

  Once the Chairman had chided her for putting on too much eye shadow:

  “You whore!” he’d said, angrily.

  “What?” she’d asked, tearfully. The word meant nothing to her.

  “No, Belinda, my love! Please!” he added. “You must never be a whore!”

  He was forever calling her ‘my love’. She hadn’t a clue what this meant either, but whatever the Chairman’s meaning, she didn’t believe him. The boy inside her head was the only person she could believe in.

  So, a little more eye-shadow... those blue high-heeled shoes...

  The warden had polished them. Her job… and, boy, she complained like hell about this! The Chairman had told her the girl mustn’t spoil her pretty hands. Picking flowers was the most she was allowed to do apart making herself beautiful for him. Under her breath, the warden said she couldn’t wait till Belinda was gone for good,
either to The Terminus or the grey block.

  “Maybe then I’ll get an ordinary girl!” she complained. “With none of this stupid fuss and bother!”

  A knock on the door. The warden appeared.

  “He’s here,” she said, coldly.

  Beetie got up and walked slowly towards the door… trembling.

  Chapter 9: Stanmore Scientific Laboratories

  “Now where?” asked Gary when they emerged from Stanmore station. He trembled with rage, frustration and fear – fear for Beetie – all mixed together in a mental potpourri.

  “Admit you’d be useless on your own, professor!” Mike fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a scrappy piece of paper which he proudly unfurled. “Da-da! A map printed off the internet with Stanmore Scientific Laboratories marked by a cross.” He showed Gary. “Half a mile…” He turned the map round a couple of times. “...this way, boss!”

  With Gary so hopelessly lost, like a small boy, Mike had virtually become a Dad-substitute. Gary had total confidence in his friend… after all, one wrong decision, or a fraction out in time or space, and he might never again set eyes on Beetie. The guilt of getting her involved weighed more heavily than he imagined possible; only half an hour back, the thought of his best friend being recycled as gee-rat food hadn’t upset him to anything like the same degree.

  They headed off in a direction suggested by Mike.

  “First we’ll have to get inside the place here and now… in the present,” continued Mike.

  “Won’t be somewhere you can casually walk into,” remarked Gary. “Not without ID or a letter of introduction or...”

  “Since when did Michael Bellini-Houdini need that sort of shit? Leave things to me, professor! I’ll wake you up when we’re there… and don’t freak out on me like you did in the tunnel. I thought I was the one scared of rats!”

  “What actually happened, Mike? Sorry, but I never asked you. Bit distracted!”

  “Gary, you’re getting too soppy over this Beetie business. Veronica, she’s smashing. Best legs in the world… but I’d never go all candy-floss soft over her. That’s only for girls, the pink and fluffy stuff. They won’t respect you if they think you’ve gone doolally about them. Remember all that alpha male business we discussed when we thought Emma Pearson’s tits might still be on the agenda?”

  “Yeah! I remember the thumping Danny gave you in the playground! No, Mike, what happened in the tunnel?”

  “When you’d vanished I managed to zap a few with my mag-stunner. Reached St John’s Wood of the future before the rest of those Mr Ratties realised they were confronted by a deadly superior force, and… well, even you can work out what happened next, Professor Brainbox. On my own in a weird place? Maybe your last chance, mate, I thought! Pretty restrained, though. I mean, I could’ve gone and robbed a bank and bought a couple of Club 18 to 30 tickets for me and Veronica to have a fortnight on some Greek Island. Pinch a few packets of johnnies from…”

  “You’re not eighteen. Not even a proper criminal. Don’t think for one moment what we did at the British Museum can be thought of as a crime!”

  Gary found it hard to suppress his anger at his friend’s continued light-heartedness over rescuing Beetie and saving the future rump of human existence from an unknown horror being planned in the Terminus.

  “Okay, we only borrowed the flipping Pentatron tablet. Like free of charge, ay?”

  “Mike, the real crime has to be me believing in Arthry. Not trusting my first instincts and protecting Beetie.”

  “Here we go! Getting all smoochy again. Won’t do you any good. Hey… let’s say God sent me to save you from yourself, right? Action’s what’ll you get from Mike Bellini! So will Veronica when the time comes. Boy, I’ve got things all worked out after watching Danny and Emma Pearson together. Got to admit the bastard’s got style. Makes the girls swoon, he does! Touches ’em in the right places. Given me ideas, see. About erogenous zones and the like!”

  “I’ll kill him!” Gary said.

  “Danny? Oh, he can keep Emma Tits Pearson!”

  “No… God! For using Beetie. Blinker, too! Okay, he saved my life… like Beetie did. Twice. Perhaps it was Arthry who put her against the wanker. Or… you know, I still wonder what went on in the Hatcheries before she was released. Before her brain got washed out. Why did they…?”

  “Will they, Gary! We’re in the present. Oh, for goodness sake shut up! We’ve arrived, anyway! Stanmore Scientific Laboratories!”

  Ahead stood a large windowless grey building with a flat roof like a warehouse, surrounded by several white-washed, single story out-buildings, the whole complex enclosed by eight-foot high spear-tipped railings. A giant red-and-white striped horizontal barber’s pole barricaded the entrance, beside which a hollow-eyed man in toy military uniform peered at them from a little booth.

  “Don’t try that Romanian business again, Mike.”

  “No need! Bit of the old ‘peek-a-boo’ instead. You’ve no imagination, Gary.”

  “You’ve got too much! Explain!”

  “Guess the place closes at 5.0 pm. We leap forwards in time to five-thirty, then back to now in a different place in front of Mr Happy in his box… on to five-thirty, move somewhere else, return to the present… over and over. Make him dizzy. Bet you Emma Pearson’s knickers he’ll end up not believing his eyes.”

  “Not interested in Emma Pearson’s knickers.”

  “Beetie’s then?”

  Gary grabbed his friend.

  “Don’t… or I’ll smash your face in!”

  “Hey, keep your freaky hair on, Gary! Only joking!” The other boy let go.

  “Well don’t joke about her. I’m not in the mood!”

  “Set the specs for five-thirty… on, off, a dozen times, varying positions. He’ll come out to investigate. Nothing like curiosity. Particularly when the impossible happens.”

  The boys took out their time-specs and adjusted the rim controls, setting each pair to precisely the same time. The guard stood up, his hawk eyes trained on them.

  “Now!” whispered Mike.

  Together, they slipped on the specs and re-appeared in front of an empty booth and deserted buildings. Mike and Gary swapped places, winked at each other and removed the time-specs. The man was out of the booth like a shot.

  “OY!” he shouted. “YOU TWO!”

  Gary and Mike vanished, only to reappear, moments later, in their original positions. Over and again the boys would disappear and come back, always in different places, sometimes on the opposite side of the road, other times just feet in front of the guard, who, as Mike predicted, became increasingly distressed by thoughts of impending insanity.

  “Next time we reappear behind him, get inside, thank the guy… then whoosh... gone again! Loved his expression! He’s not gonna report anything ’cos he can’t believe in magic. Bet you he’s wondering about the mushrooms he ate last night. Next thing, he’ll go off sick! One last time, okay?”

  Gary stood beside Mike at the gate, behind where the man had been in that other present, facing the other way. They removed the time-specs.

  “Shouldn’t’ve eaten those mushrooms, mate! Thanks, anyway!” Mike called out before walking on beyond the booth.

  “Hey, what the bleedin’…?”

  Specs on. Five-thirty in the evening. The door to the grey building was locked. Beyond, a large car park. One car remained.

  “If only I knew where they’d taken her… or had some idea of the lay-out of the Hatcheries,” said Gary. “D’you reckon this is the building where those things are gonna happen… in the future.”

  “Why?”

  “Go back a couple of hours, get inside, and…”

  “And grab your girl? Hey… wait a minute!” Mike frowned. “I realize I’m pretty crap at maths, Gary, but two pairs of specs and three people?”

  “I think… well, when you zapped the guy who’d me pinned down outside the British Museum, you froze me as well. Remember? So if I put the specs on B
eetie and hold onto her… onto both of you, even… depending on the amount of molecular separation between the physical bodies, maybe…”

  “You could always… sort of… do it with Beetie?” Mike chuckled.

  “Shut up, Mike! Have some respect for girls, can’t you?”

  “Gary, if things go wrong… if we get separated… what do I do?”

  “Take her back to my place if I fail to reappear. Tell Mum the truth. She’s gotta find out some day. Whatever happens, keep Beetie away from Redfor. I don’t trust him.”

  “And God?”

  Gary shook his head.

  “I’m tempted to kill him, be done with the whole business and live in the present with Beetie. Only, I dunno, Mike… the things he’s gonna do for London one day. I can’t believe he’s really in with Arthry and The Agenda. Somehow I think he’s being conned. Anyway, I couldn’t.”

  “What?”

  “Kill!”

  “No, you couldn’t. About the only thing you couldn’t bloody do. Apart from write a poem. Okay, man! Ready?”

  Gary stared at a tiny mark on the spectacles lens... a future point in time... a link to Beetie and all that now mattered in his world.

  “Mike... your glasses, please. I want to look at them.”

  Mike handed his time-specs to Gary.

  “As I thought. On these as well. God put that mark there! He knew when we should return for her.”

  “Oh come off it! Now you trust him, now don’t! Anyway, how...?”

  “This time I’m sure. Can’t explain why! There are things...”

  “Okay, Catholic boy! God the Almighty, eh? Showing you the way? Now let’s get a bloody move on!”

  Together, they froze time by making a minute adjustment to each pair of specs then reset these for two hours earlier before putting them back on. The guard sat in his booth with his back to them. The car park was full and a few people walked about, too engrossed in private thoughts to notice a couple of lads in funny tracksuits. Gary tried the door to the grey building. Locked! He reckoned sooner or later someone would enter or leave the building. Sure enough, the door opened and a young woman emerged.