The Terminus Read online

  “Um… I can explain, Mrs O’Driscoll,” Mike chipped in. “Perfectly simple. New soccer practice gear. Silicon-activated, energy-efficient tracksuits! Being all shiny makes ’em less wind resistant. Like what Olympic cyclists wear. We’re trialling them for the team. They asked for volunteers. Gary and I thought we’d help out. No one else offered. Gary was told to keep his on and they want us back for special tests later on.”

  “Special tests?” queried Gary’s mum, her expression a blend of despair and disbelief.

  “Yeah! A place near the British Museum where tests are carried out.”

  “British Museum?”

  “Sure, Mrs O’Driscoll! Dead important, they told us.” She didn’t appear to be listening. “Dead! Ha ha! Like the British Museum itself, ay?”

  “Your hair, Gary? What on earth have you done to it?”

  Gary’s mind was elsewhere.

  “Beetie cut…”

  He was about to say ‘Beattie cut it’ but checked himself. Mike baled him out:

  “A Beetie-cut, it’s called! Reduces drag on the head when you’re running fast. So you can beat the crap outa the other team. Ay, Gary? We’ll all look like that soon. Be able to spot a soccer player from a mile off, right?”

  Gary ruffled his hair in confused embarrassment.

  “Big photo shoot today, Mrs O’Driscoll! Gary with his Beetie-cut especially,” continued Mike.

  Gary’s mum eyed her son with suspicion.

  “Whatever you’re up to, boys, please don’t bring half the garden into the house,” she pleaded before retreating inside. Gary quickly transferred dust of the future from shoes to trouser legs and he and Mike ran upstairs to the privacy of his room. Together, they peered out of the window. No sign of Redfor.

  “Shit!” exclaimed Mike. “Where’s the nutcase gone.” Gary leaned out further then pointed downwards, aghast.

  “Oh, my God!” they muttered in unison.

  There was Redfor, naked, holding up his shiny, red tracksuit.

  “He is weird! Get your clothes off quick!” Gary said.

  Mike fell over his feet in his haste to remove his jeans.

  “Gary, what are you doing? Why are you crashing around?” Mrs O’Driscoll called out from downstairs. Mike hurriedly chucked his clothes out from the open window.

  “Some string… rope… anything for him to tie the tracksuit to?” asked Mike standing in his underpants. Gary searched the room as Mike stared at Redfor waving his tracksuit.

  “Computer cable?” suggested Gary.

  “What?”

  “COMPUTER CABLE!” shouted Gary.

  “GARY? WHAT ARE YOU GOING ON ABOUT A COMPUTER CABLE FOR?” yelled Mrs O’Driscoll. They heard her coming up the stairs.

  “Computer… um… get her to turn on your Dad’s computer,” Mike suggested.

  “MY COMPUTER’S GONE ON THE BLINK, MUM. COULD YOU START UP DAD’S FOR ME? IT’S URGENT.”

  “I’m so busy, Gary. Can’t you…?”

  “Say yours is doing a cybernetic flip-over and might implode and go bang if you leave the room, Gary,” whispered Mike, dangling the computer lead out of the window.

  “CAN’T MUM! MINE MIGHT DO A CYBERNETIC FLIP-OVER IF I LEAVE IT!”

  “Goodness, I wish I understood these things. How do I…?”

  “THE BUTTON, MUM! PRESS THE BUTTON ON DAD’S COMPUTER AND WAIT. DON’T LEAVE THE ROOM. AND FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE DON’T COME UPSTAIRS. EXTRA STATIC UP HERE MIGHT CAUSE AN EXPLOSION.”

  “Tell her your dad’s might go bang if she leaves your Dad’s office before she’s logged on,” whispered Mike, pulling up the tracksuit.

  “DAD’S COULD GO BANG AS WELL IF YOU LEAVE HIS STUDY BEFORE YOU’RE LOGGED ON!”

  “Such a nuisance!” bemoaned Gary’s mum. A few minutes later, when Mike was puzzling over how to get into the shiny red tracksuit, she called out again:

  “It’s doing funny things!”

  Mike gave his friend the thumbs up and hurriedly slipped into the strange red garment of the future.

  “KEEP WATCHING THE SCREEN TILL THE ICONS APPEAR, MUM!”

  “No icons, Gary.”

  “Put her out of her misery,” suggested Mike, grinning.

  Gary went downstairs. His mother stood in his Dad’s study across the landing staring at the monitor.

  “No religious things at all,” she said. “Not even a cross!”

  “Religious? Oh, it’s okay, Mum. Thanks. I’ll take over.”

  Gary went straight to the British Museum website. On the screen was a picture of the Pentatron tablet and the reconstructed skull of Homo atlanticus – the most important archaeological find ever – and it seemed the two objects were linked not only by their location, off the Gold Coast of West Africa, but through carbon-dating. A hundred thousand years old, some thirty thousand years before primitive Homo sapiens had spread out from Africa in search of food and water for its growing population. DNA studies had already confirmed the new species of human was as distinct from us as was Homo neandertalis. Strangely, the cranium size of the newly-discovered skull was significantly larger than modern man’s, and the precision of the Pentatron Tablet, with its complex markings, spoke of a highly advanced civilisation. The website didn’t state exactly what the tablet was made from. ‘Unspecified material’, he was informed. For Gary, most puzzling of all was why God, and presumably The Agenda, wanted the object so badly. Something to do with the goings on in The Terminus of the future? How on earth he and Mike would steal the thing he couldn’t begin to work out. Using the time-specs, perhaps? If so, he’d need to control the specs’ temporal function with pin-point accuracy.

  Mike was already proving indispensable. Sure, his friend often got on his nerves and had no interest whatsoever in the mysteries of science, but he had a real gift with people. He could talk the hind legs off an elephant, let alone a donkey, and his charm would seduce the most hardened of sceptics, but most of all he had a knack of pulling rabbits out of hats in the very worst back-to-the-wall situations.

  Like when they were set upon by a gang from Camden Town some months back. Mike told the would-be leader, holding a knife to his neck, that he had a duty to inform the dude about something important. He whispered into guy’s ear causing his face to fall like a brick from a high-rise. Within minutes the leader and the second-in-command were at each other, transformed into a pair of fighting dogs, slashing, snarling, punching and kicking... after which the whole gang erupted into a free-for-all as allegiance for one of the two top guys surfaced. Unnoticed and unharmed, Mike and Gary escaped.

  “What the heck did you say?” Gary asked his friend when they were out of harm’s way.

  “Only told him I’d seen his girlfriend snogging with the number two on Hampstead Heath.

  “But you don’t know whether he’s got one. Let alone what she’s like!”

  “I said, ‘your girl-friend, mate... the one with the tits!’”

  “But all girls have… oh, Jesus, Mike, how on earth d’you get away with it?”

  The truth was Mike took everything in his stride; never the least flustered or fazed by anything. A genetic absence of fear, Gary often wondered.

  Must study him some day in the future, he’d once told himself. Check out his DNA! Or do a PET scan of his brain!

  Yeah, Mike would be his most valuable resource in their plan to nick the Pentatron Tablet.

  Gary printed out information from his dad’s computer and returned to his room. Mike, now wearing Redfor’s red tracksuit, was seated on the bed, a small booklet in one hand and Redfor’s spectacles in the other.

  “What the hell are you doing?” asked Gary.

  “God’s Manual. In Redfor’s pocket with his duck-freezing machine,” replied Mike.

  He fiddled with something on one side of the specs.

  “Stop! Hand it over!”

  Gary snatched the booklet away from Mike.

  “Hey! Cool it, Gary! Team work! Remember?”

  “Sorry, ma
te. What with… Beetie… you know!”

  “Bloody right, I do! Beetie this, Beetie that! Can’t you forget her, like Redfor said?”

  “Nope!” answered Gary, perusing God’s Manual. “Give me those specs!”

  “Like ‘please’ or something?”

  Gary glanced at his friend. Sometimes he wondered why Mike stuck by him. If only he had a better way with people.

  “Sorry, Mike. Please! I’m pretty tense. Not much of an excuse, I know. Thanks, by the way. I do appreciate your help.”

  “Team work?”

  Gary laughed.

  “Sure! Man, this is awesome! So well-written. Not the usual Japanglish crap. See here… you can set the specs to the nearest split second. Right hand lens frame for moving forwards into the future, left backwards in time. Press that little switch at the side and everything returns to default mode… here and now ’cos it’s pressed in. God must have made pre-adjustments to change the default time.”

  He showed Mike the other, identical, pair.

  “Diaphragms round each lens… six in all… and see those markings? As you turn them, they slide past that tiny red dot. Your destination! The scale’s as close as you can get to infinity in both directions, and logarithmic. With me?”

  “Like... sitting on this bed with you?”

  “Never mind! Working inwards, the diaphragms get more precise. Correct geological era… millennium… century… year… day… down to the nearest split second. If only I understood the science behind those experiments with the LHC!” Gary stared into the distance, momentarily lost in thought. “The specs have to come from the future, but…”

  “Hardly ancient Egyptian, Professor Brainbox!”

  “No, Mike… this Pentatron Tablet business from the past… p’raps the time-specs... but no… they must’ve come out of the place in Stanmore that God’s gonna build. They’ll have discovered a space-time wormhole with the LHC, like some people are predicting right now, and God must’ve harnessed it. Will harness it. Expand it and break it up into quantum factions, control it. Oh, I really wish I could meet him!”

  “And I really wish I could meet up with that hockey-playing redhead!”

  “Mike, you’ve gotta take things seriously. Here, read this stuff on the tube. Your homework!”

  “Back to Regent’s Park, then? Watch a game of hockey?”

  “

  Tottenham Court Road. The British Museum. Afterwards… God only knows where!” Gary slapped the manual onto Mike’s lap. “The real God!”

  “Gary…”

  “What?”

  “Gary, there’s a man from the future out in the shed. Don’t you think we should do something about it?”

  “Holy Mackerel… nearly forgot! Go and amuse my mum in the kitchen and I’ll check on Redfor.”

  But the garden shed was empty.

  Later, en route to the British Museum, they discussed tactics. Gary had been right about Mike. His friend would make an ace big time crook… if only he weren’t so soft-hearted over people. He could imagine the boy immediately handing everything back after a major heist because he’d feel so sorry for those who’d been robbed… particularly if the victim happened to be a girl. He visualised Mike adding interest to the returned goods in exchange for a first date with her. Poor Mike! But would he be so desperate for a girlfriend if he had even an inkling of the torment he, Gary, was suffering thinking about Beetie the whole time? Sheer bloody hell!

  Chapter 6: A Boy from the Past

  They took away her blue tracksuit. All she had to wear were those dresses and, in bed, a pink silken nightdress with lace trimmings. Each morning and afternoon she’d be let out – or rather, told to go out – into the garden.

  This was on the other side of the blue building away from the courtyard. When she first went, in a yellow dress and high-heeled shoes, she stood and gawped for ages, for she’d never imagined anything so beautiful. Plants everywhere! Some huge, like those (trees?) of which the boy from the past had spoken, and the green spreading expanse of lawn tempted her to run free and tumble on the grass – only she didn’t dare. The clothes and shoes (why did the Chairman want to make her taller with such high up heels?) restricted her like delicate bonds and colourful chains; gorgeous, like the garden, but to tear or dirty these would be unthinkable. Tottering, she walked with difficulty along the small paths winding between the dappled flower beds. Sometimes she would stop and twirl the skirt of her dress, aware of the fragrant scents of surrounding blossoms caressing her body as she did this. Everything was wonderful… but illusory. Her personal paradise was little more than a painted hell.

  Already, those daily injections had wiped out most of her memories of the Retreat. Her private warden, the woman in the blue overall, often tested her:

  “If only Arthry were here, ay, girl?” She was usually addressed by the warden as simply ‘girl’.

  “Who’s Arthry?”

  “Don’t you remember?”

  “No.”

  “Blinker… and others in The Retreat?”

  “No idea who you’re talking about.”

  “The tunnels? The gee-rats?”

  “Yuk! What are they? Sound horrid!”

  In her cell Beetie would receive instruction, only she was no longer ‘Beetie’. To the Chairman she was ‘Belinda’. Belinda learned about a world beyond, in the Terminus, even more wonderful than her garden. On her computer screen appeared pictures of incredible buildings, palaces and fantastical creatures. Her own food she enjoyed, but in the Terminus she was promised a daily feast of dishes the mere sight of which made the girl’s mouth water. Each day, God-the-Chairman would appear and tell her all manner of things. Gradually, she got used to his face... his large, hard eyes and buck teeth. He spoke softly and sometimes read her poetry: verses of love and what went on between a man and a woman in private… the tenderness and the caressing. She began to look forward to his ‘lessons’ as he called those obligatory periods when she was forced to sit and stare at the computer. He’d become her only friend.

  One thing from the past that injections could not erase from Beetie’s mind was the face of a boy. His name had vanished though she seemed to recall this had been strange like the boy himself. On closing her eyes his face appeared as clearly as if he were in the room. His voice spoke to her, softly; she sensed the touch of his hand and, oh, the feel of his lips against hers! She even remembered that word... kiss. Why? Had this boy been with her in the past… or was he another phantom from the Terminus? She thought not, though perhaps from a real and very different world.

  The Chairman she considered her ‘friend’, but the warden in the blue overall her ‘fiend’. Beetie was unable to soften towards her as she felt herself mellow to the poetry-reading Chairman. The woman was sharp. Not just a robot. Somehow she sensed something that Beetie was unwilling to let go of, and, like a blood-hound from hell, she was going to find out.

  “There’s a boy, right? A boy from the past?”

  “No!” insisted Beetie.

  “Belinda, don’t lie to me. The Chairman doesn’t appreciate girls who lie. Only those with minds as clear as a mountain stream.”

  Beetie hadn’t yet done mountains in her lessons. Besides, something inside warned her not to say about the boy, her one and only secret and a key to true happiness to be kept hidden at all costs.

  “Come, girl. We’ll take a little walk together. I want to show you something.”

  Beetie slipped on her high-heeled shoes and tripped along daintily behind the booted warden, out into the courtyard. Other girls in dresses, all barefoot, either stood motionless or sat on benches. Not one acknowledged Beetie.

  “For a start you’ll lose those ridiculous shoes if he finds out you’ve been lying. ‘Oh, a mere nothing!’ you say to yourself? Well, maybe we need to get rid of your smugness, eh? Follow me, girl!”

  Beetie followed the warden across the courtyard towards the bleak, grey building. The door opened automatically and they entered a dark
corridor before passing through another doorway to a huge hall. The girl immediately clutched hold of the woman, turned her head and heaved, covering her mouth.

  “Had enough?” chuckled the warden.

  “Take me out! Please… no more!” begged Beetie.

  “Is Belinda going to be a good girl and tell me everything?”

  “Yes, yes! Anything!”

  Back in the courtyard, Beetie took in lungfuls of air. Beads of cold sweat stood out on her forehead, for the horror of what she’d seen inside the grey building had reduced her to a quivering jelly of submission. The warden’s voice now sounded distant and disconnected… but one she must obey at all costs.

  “You still remember the boy?”

  Beetie nodded. She didn’t want to. How desperately she’d wanted to guard her only secret, yet slowly, guiltily, she nodded.

  “Good! You can tell the Chairman everything! Let’s hope you can convince him of a reason for lying to me before!”

  ***

  “Another thing about these specs, Mike,” Gary said. “In addition to setting a default you can close the wormholes in one direction. Like a valve. Even on removing the time-specs you stay wherever you are.”

  “So?”

  Mike’s head was spinning. Gary hadn’t stopped babbling as he tried to explain the theory behind proton-against-elementary-particle-collisions and the bending of time. Periodically the other boy switched off and thought about the redhead in Regent’s Park, but this only depressed him. How the heck was he ever gonna get a girlfriend? Okay for Gary to moan, but at least he’d kissed the Beetie girl he kept wittering on about. What a daft name, anyway... Beetie!

  “Only one solution, Mike! We time-travel together, I bring Beetie back with me, leave her here and return to the future for you.”

  “No thanks, mate! Not with giant rats about! I hate even smaller ones. We’ll have to do this the other way around. I’ll bring her here and hop back… I mean forwards… a few seconds later to collect you!”

  “Whatever! The point is, all three of us can come and go across the time barrier with two pairs of specs.”