The Terminus Read online

  “I understand,” interrupted Beetie, leaning forwards and gently placing her warm hand over his. “So does Arthry. He was wondering how you’d react… testing you. We all know God shows himself to very few people apart from Arthry.”

  He looked down at that small hand, at those delicate fingers. How could a girl like this have been fed rat meat all her life?

  “And?”

  “Don’t worry! You passed the test!”

  She glanced at the cupboard.

  “As for Blinker, I’ll take his stuff to Arthry. You can use his side for your things. I’ll get you a green suit and Arthry can give you a fake number. G… whatever.”

  “Beetie…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Beetie, I honestly haven’t a clue why I’m here.” He shuddered to think about that other time when the girl got knifed. “Was on my way to soccer practice... kicking a ball around and into a big net called a goal... pretty naff, ay... spotted these specs lying on a bench in the park... tried them on and… hey presto!... I’m here… in the future… under the sea.”

  Beetie withdrew her hand and stiffened.

  “What about God? I know you’ve not met him, but how come...?”

  “Beetie, I must tell you something. This is my second visit. Things went all pear-shaped the first time, and… well, you got badly hurt. Because of Blinker. He tried to make Arthry believe I’m the spy. He and two others want the time-specs for themselves.”

  “They’re useless without God. But Gary, you still haven’t answered my question.”

  “I heard about God the last time. At first I reckoned it some sort of a joke, this God business, ’cos where I come from – in the past – God’s all to do with religion.”

  “Relig –…what?” Beetie’s questioning, pretty blue eyes widened.

  “Religion. God’s like… well, He’s just sort of there, out of sight. Not a person at all.”

  Beetie laughed. Such a lovely laugh!

  “You’re so funny, Gary. Out of sight? Not a person? Who is He?”

  “Not sure, to tell the truth! More of an idea, I suppose. A concept? Spirit? Everything?”

  The girl’s smile broadened.

  “You’re acting weird… but I do like you. So does Arthry. I can tell.”

  “Beetie... is Blinker… er... your… um…?”

  “Yes? My what?” asked Beetie, still smiling.

  “You know… your… um… well, kind of… like sharing a cell and all that. You know! Are you… erm... thingummies?”

  “Thingummies?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I might be able to answer if I had the faintest idea what a thingummy is. We’re brother and sister.”

  “Not thingummies?” Beetie shrugged her shoulders. “Separate beds? Like... always? Never in the same bed?”

  Beetie’s smile left her. Gary worried he’d gone too far, but to use the word ‘lovers’ seemed too painful.

  “Always hated him,” she replied, looking down at her feet. “Ever since we left the Hatcheries together. It’s so wonderful you’re here now! Please stay as long as possible and keep the creep away from me.”

  “No others, then? No boyfriends?”

  “Boyfriends? What are they?”

  “Never mind! S’pose I’m caught up in this now. I need to…”

  “Did you come back just because of me?” the girl asked out of the blue. Gary’s face went hot again. He nodded. “Thank you,” she said, resting her hand on his again. Once more and he’d kiss her!

  “Tell me about the Retreat, the Hatcheries and the Terminus. And who is Arthry? I mean, does he run this place? And what about The Agenda? Okay, they control things up there… and… well, the police give out food and stuff... but for me this is the oddest place imaginable. It’s still London, though. Where I live… in the past!”

  “You come from before the flood, right?”

  “Yeah! Got global warming, like, and the sea level’s starting to rise… but London submerged? No way!”

  “Arthry told me all about the flood. He passes on what God tells him.”

  “So?”

  “God was an important guy in the past. Arthry said he used to be something called a scientist.”

  “Okay! Makes sense so far.”

  “He found out the city was doomed, designed the defences against the rising sea level… then discovered SAME. Self-Adjusting-Molecular-Expansion. Really can’t understand it myself. Apparently to do with drawing energy from the surrounding space and using this to create molecules and make materials expand at an amazing rate. Sorry, I’m a bit of an idiot!”

  “No you’re not!” insisted Gary, fascinated by Beetie’s attempt to explain something way beyond her comprehension… and his. One day he’d find out and enlighten the girl.

  “Anyway,” continued Beetie, “by using this, the defences around London shot right up to the sky. Like the walls built themselves. See, God had discovered a huge lump of rock heading for earth... something called an asteroid. He got them to quickly close the defences over the top of London and start up the APUS – Air-Purification-System. Arthry told me most other cities on earth had died from the heat of the sun and the Great Pandemic even before the rock hit the sea. God had already invented a way of keeping London cool and separated from the rest of the planet. Shortly after the flood, they decided to begin all over again. The leaders had an ‘agenda’ to save the human race and ended up calling themselves ‘The Agenda’. God was their top guy. Apparently he had a different name before, but ‘God’ seemed simpler. Besides, everyone was already calling him God, and...”

  “You’re beginning to make sense!” interrupted Gary.

  “Things seemed fine for a while… but then it all got a bit muddled. Disagreements. God fell out with his friends in The Agenda.”

  “As politicians do!”

  “Being one of those scientist people, he was always busy inventing things in that... um... laborrowa… er…”

  “Laboratory?” suggested Gary.

  “Something like that. In the Terminus. The place where he just appeared one day wearing the time-specs, saying he used to work there long before the flood. He never said how or why he invented the specs. Apparently people complained that God didn’t exist before he arrived. Funny, ay? Can’t think what they meant! Anyway, he changed everything and began top secret stuff in the Terminus beyond the Hatcheries. After getting kicked out of The Agenda, he founded the Retreat for his band of faithful followers. Us lot! We’ve all sworn to find out what’s going on in the Terminus… though he still refuses to say what he’d started there. Only that they stole his ideas to use for something unbelievably bad. He must be a strange man, don’t you think? Oh, and the Hatcheries… according to God, in his time as boss, test-tube babies were brought into the world and looked after in the Hatcheries. Until The Agenda took over and did those things none of us remembers. Blinker and I must have been the last to come out with our brains...” Beetie paused, upset. “Our brains cleaned,” she continued. “Never used to happen in God’s time, Arthry said.”

  “Gross!”

  “The gee-rats would’ve been tiny before God modified them as a source of food for the starving population.”

  “Just ordinary rats then, I guess,” suggested Gary. “Finger in every bloody scientific pie, this God bugger! ’Scuse my French!”

  “Uh?” Beetie face betrayed her puzzlement.

  “Just an expression… from the past,” explained Gary. “You’ll get used to my ancient speech!”

  “I like the way you speak! Everything else about you, too!”

  Everything? Oh God help me, thought Gary, firmly pressing his legs together.

  “Anyway, if the rats hadn’t got bigger we’d not have much to eat. Only the veg-eatables from The Belt!”

  “Veg-eatables? The Belt?”

  Beetie laughed again. Gary adored her laugh. So fresh, so genuine... so innocent.

  “Not heard of The Belt? What a strange place t
he Old London must be! Used to be green once, I think.”

  “The Green Belt? Yeah! Rings a bell all right. So you lot grow vegetables – veg-eatables – there?”

  “That’s the job of the police. Gee-rat killing as well. No one else is allowed to touch the gee-rats, but…” Beetie appeared pensive. “But we thought them clueless about what goes on down here till I began to suspect we had a spy in our midst.”

  “Veg-eatables… and water... how d’you get hold of these for the Retreat?”

  “The Collectors.”

  “Collectors?”

  “From when God ruled London. Collected information for God if things didn’t go to plan. Now they get food and other important items as well. No one asks how, so if anyone’s captured they can’t give away information.”

  “And water?” The taste of the revolting sweet liquid he’d forced himself to drink lingered in his mouth.

  “God again! Things were in a terrible state just after the flood… long before I was made in the Hatcheries. People died young and he blamed the water. He set up the WTP – the Water-Treatment-Plant – at a secret location in the sewers. Treated sewer-juice is so delicious, don’t you think?”

  “Um… well… kind of, I suppose.” What a hopeless liar! Beetie grinned.

  “You’ll get used to it.”

  “Beetie, this ‘Hatcheries’ business… have you any idea what’s going on there? Erasing memories and all that business?”

  Beetie shrugged her shoulders.

  “It’s where I came from. That’s all I know.”

  “Don’t you learn about natural birth? How babies are made?”

  “Babies?”

  “Well… sex.”

  “Sex?”

  Her face told him she hadn’t a clue.

  “So you remember nothing whatsoever about the Hatcheries?”

  “Only getting on a shuttle-bus and ending up near the entrance on the surface above the tunnels. With Blinker.”

  “And the Retreat? What led you to this place? And is Arthry your boss... or is God?”

  Beetie chuckled.

  “Too many questions at once, Gary!”

  “Sorry!”

  “We Retreat people can tell by looking at each other. From the eyes. Like I realised immediately you were one of us.”

  “Do my eyes show okay with these funny specs on?” To think, if he were to remove them again she might be gone forever.

  “Brown!” Beetie exclaimed, and giggled. “Of course they show, silly! They’re… well...” She looked bashfully at the ground. “They… um… make me feel good. I think…” She looked up at Gary. Please touch my hand again, his brain begged as that ‘thing’ trapped between his crossed legs swelled even more. Please do!

  She didn’t.

  “Your eyes are the most honest I’ve ever seen,” she added quickly. “Gary, something terrible’s about to happen. We all sense it. You must help us! God’s kind of warned Arthry. Yeah, he is my boss… and the most wonderful person you can imagine.” A pang of jealousy pricked Gary so sharply he felt tempted to say he’d already witnessed the man stab her to death. “Arthry said God’s trying to get hold of something he thinks might save us all. We thought this was why he sent you, Gary. Perhaps you’re a sort of link?”

  “The missing link, huh?” Beetie appeared puzzled. “Er… missing from the past… kind of! Tell me, how come Blinker got let into the Retreat? Or did he change?”

  “Tagged onto me, I guess. Never liked him,” replied the girl. “And it was Arthry who met us at the shuttle-bus stop.”

  Gary frowned. He couldn’t bear the idea of anyone ‘tagging on’ to Beetie.

  “So how long… I mean when did you both come out of the Hatcheries?”

  “Last year.”

  “And you remember nothing from before? Your whole childhood wiped out?”

  “Childhood?”

  Gary thought about those streets on the surface. He’d not seen any children or old people. So strange! All the surfacers were young adults. Even in the Retreat, Beetie and Beefor were the only teenagers. Little point in asking the girl her age, but Gary reckoned about sixteen, like himself and Mike. Poor Beetie… her whole childhood erased!

  “Gary?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Something else! And I think Blinker is in on this. There’s another God.”

  Gary laughed, mindful of multiple religions across the world, each with its own god or gods. On seeing Beetie’s discomfort he stopped. “No, honestly! An impostor!” insisted Beetie, her upset at his mirth clouding her pretty face.

  “I’m really sorry,” apologised Gary. “Afraid I still can’t think of God as a person.”

  “Someone’s pretending to be God and going around saying our God isn’t the real guy,” continued Beetie. “From The Agenda. One of them. I’m certain. I think Arthry worried…” Jesus, when Beetie gazed into Gary’s eyes she gave him stomach-butterflies the size of flipping swans. “Maybe for a moment he thought you could be a guy sent to kill the real God. Because of the time-specs… and you’re so different. You’ve got a funny name, too. See, we reckon The Agenda has the other pair.”

  “Other pair?”

  “God made a second pair of time-specs. For someone special, he’d told Arthry. After they went missing I realised there had to be a spy. You know, God hasn’t been back here since Blinker and I arrived last year. Too dangerous! Arthry only meets with him at secret locations...”

  “Teeth!” interrupted Gary.

  “What?”

  “The little rodent-toothed man who tried to pinch my specs in the past. Who vanished when a taxi ran into him. He had similar specs on in Regent’s Park but not when I saw him here.”

  Beetie stood up, as if something had just occurred to her.

  “But why?” she began.

  “To pinch my time-specs and keep God in the past. Stop him finding out what The Agenda’s up to. Stop me from returning...” Gary paused. The way Beetie was looking at him caused his confidence to soar like an eagle. “... from returning to you?”

  “Gary, this is so important! I’ll tell Arthry straight away. We must get rid of Blinker’s stuff here. Even the smell of it reminds me of him. I’ll fetch you a green suit and… and...” The girl seemed unable to contain her excitement. “Oh, it’s gonna be so wonderful to have him out of here...”

  Not quite the same as ‘wonderful to have you in here’, thought Gary, sadly.

  “First I’ll show you the bathroom and… um…”

  “Beetie?”

  The girl glanced at him. Dare he ask?

  “Beetie, did Blinker ever try to kiss you?”

  “Kill me?” Her eyes widened.

  “No, silly,” beamed Gary. “Kiss you.”

  “Dunno what you mean,” she replied shrugging her shoulders.

  “Never mind!” Gary, doubtful a girl as beautiful as Beetie could be so totally innocent, added: “One thing... the lights… the electricity? How d’you get your power in the Retreat?”

  “Yeah! Electricity! Invented by God, too.”

  Might’ve guessed, thought Gary.

  “The sea. Water pours down long tubes and... well... this makes High Joe electricity.”

  Gary chuckled:

  “Hydroelectricity!”

  “If you say so! But how come…?”

  “Oh, we’ve got it in the past. Not invented by God, though!” Nevertheless, he reckoned God must be quite a guy.

  Beetie showed him to the bathroom. For a moment he thought he’d stepped backwards into his old life, until he noticed the water coming from the taps: brown and murky and sweet-smelling. The girl gave him her key and he returned to the cell to await her return. He hated her being out of his sight for his mind kept flicking back to the scene in Arthry’s office in some other dimension (had that particular future already passed without happening?) when Beetie had been so willing to risk her life for his. Now he trusted Arthry… but did the man trust him?

  Bac
k in their tiny cell he surveyed the Spartan furnishings. How odd that the few remaining sentient humans on earth lived in ‘prison’ cells. He thought of the surfacers, walking, zombie-like, all day long; he wondered about the Hatcheries and their hidden secrets, about The Agenda and the Terminus. What had God been up to there before The Agenda banished him? He envisioned a priceless apartment block for their elite in the Terminus with a pent-house suite at the top for the nameless big boss. The guy pretending to be God? Teeth?

  The glowing computer screen on the shelf distinguished the cell from a prison of past. Not difficult to guess who had invented that! He was eager to meet God, what with science and mathematics being his favourite subjects at school. Mike forever pulled Gary’s leg for regularly coming top in these subjects:

  “A bloody walking brain-box!” his friend once complained. “Pity those legs of yours can’t kick straight, though!”

  Gary missed Mike. He vowed to bury the hatchet next time, and thinking of Mike gave him an idea. He’d share this with Beetie when she returned, for it seemed the only way forward for all of them. Meanwhile, he opened the cupboard and peeked inside. On Beetie’s side, girl’s clothes of the future… notably a flimsy, white, see-through garment he took to be a nightie and which re-aroused his privates. Oh God! How on earth would he get through the night alone in his own bed knowing Beetie was on the other side wearing that nightie?

  The door opened. Beetie reappeared, bright and cheerful!

  “Here, Gary. Should fit! You’re G37917!”

  “Why not ‘007’?” the boy joked.

  “What?” Beetie frowned.

  “A joke! From the past.”

  “And I’ve gotta do something about your funny hair if we’re going up on the surface.”

  “It’s not funny!” objected Gary, smoothing down his tousled, dark brown mop. But the girl grinned, and he had a change of mind. His hair was all hers! “Okay! Sure! Sort it out… please do!” he added.

  As Beetie carefully shaped his feral locks with a comb and a pair of scissors, Gary explained his plan. Talking helped him control the excitement a crucial part of his anatomy experienced every time the girl’s fingers brushed against his neck or his cheeks.

  “Beetie, we must get hold of those other time-specs from Teeth. You see, I want you to come back with me. To the past. I’m sure it’s what God intended. Maybe you’re the special person for whom the other time-specs are intended. And there’s gotta be something in the past that’s the key to this whole thing. Explains why he stayed on there and sent me to get you… and bring you back. He needs both of us, Beetie. D’you understand? He used me to get to you!”