The Terminus (13 page)

From somewhere
he discovered new energy. His legs pounded the ground as if independent of the
rest of his body, frantically trying to go faster, though whether or not there
was any increase in speed, he couldn’t tell. The rumble grew louder. Electrical
sounds cut the air, accompanied by fiery flashes of white light.

Underground
trains are a bloody site faster than gee-rats!
 
Specs back on?
No
time!

The train was
almost upon Gary and he was still
ten yards from the station. His one consolation would be a quick death. The
tunnel flickered alive with electricity and the blare of the locomotive’s horn
threatened to burst open his skull. A sizzle of bright sparks lit up an alcove
into which threw himself just as the train thundered past in a rush of air and
a scream of noise.

“Oh my God!”
he gasped, drawing in his breath.

With the train
safely in the station, he crawled onto the platform.

There was a
commotion at the far end. He’d been spotted. Specs on and he was two hundred
years in the future on the same platform, now deserted. No Mike, but the
chattering had returned; dark faces of the rats hung back menacingly, a few
yards into the tunnel, uncertain.

“MIKE!”
he yelled, pointing his mag-stunner at the leading animals.

“
ZING!
ZING! ZING!
”

They stopped
moving, but a further wave of rat-chatter built up behind them. He pressed
something on the specs and removed them, still in the future with the gee-rats.
After making a small adjustment to one of the rings around the left lens, he
put the time-specs back on his aching nose.
St John’s
Wood
Station in the present; his
…
not Beetie’s.

He hadn’t a
clue what to do about Mike but there was no room in his mind for
sentimentality; no time to worry about the guilt of getting his best friend
caught up in this time-travel business… only for saving Beetie, London
of the future and the human race. An incoming train − the one that almost
killed him − slowed to a halt. He alighted and found a seat. Only forty-five
minutes to work out how he might complete the task of rescuing Beetie.

God, I wish
Mike was here.
He’s so much better at this sort of shit!

“Hi,
Gary
!
Where’ve you been?”

Gary
gaped in disbelief as the doors snapped shut behind Mike.

“Mike! Thought
the bloody rats’d got you! Didn’t you hear me call out?”

“Yeah, but…”

Mike came over
and sat beside Gary.

“Had to give
her back her hairgrip, didn’t I?”

“You’re a
bloody screw-case! That’s the last time I’ll worry my guts out about what
happens to you, mate.”

“Thought you’d
object... so I went to the hockey pitch only minutes after I borrowed her
hairgrip.  Boy, you shoulda seen her face! They were all huddled in a
group, like, discussing their out-of-this-world experience, when… WHOOSH… I’m
back! Oh, that expression of hers! Priceless! I…” Mike frowned. “I told a bit
of a porky, I’m afraid. Said her hairgrip had kinda saved the world of the
future. Made no mention of the combination lock and the bloody great chain
cutters I nicked. The way she made eyes at me, though!”

“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.

“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 Beetie 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.

“Thank you,”
said Mike politely, holding open the door.

“Oh… thank
you
,”
she graciously insisted. “What…?”

“Sorry, can’t
talk. Timed experiment!”

Mike slipped
inside, followed by Gary who shut the door firmly behind him. They found
themselves at the end of a long, brightly-lit corridor lined with
glass-windowed doors. However, the present day layout of the place was of no
interest to Gary. He couldn’t care
less what now went on in the Stanmore Scientific Laboratories.

“Okay?” Gary
checked before adjusting the diaphragms on both specs to the pre-set distant
future as marked.

“Yeah!” agreed
Mike. “Hope you’re right about those sodding marks. Could be an execution squad
waiting for us at the other end!”

Anxious not to
make one false move and lose Beetie forever, Gary hesitated. Suppose Mike was
right and someone other than God had made those marks? Teeth, for example? To
fool him? Worse than an execution squad, perhaps they’d arrive to discover
whatever was to happen to Beetie had already happened.

Oh God!

They slipped
on the time-specs and reappeared together, two hundred years later, using
technology that spanned time from the initial few trilliseconds after the Big
Bang to an infinitely remote point in the future.

Same corridor,
same grey building but now dangerously dark and different, for an overwhelming
sense of evil pervaded the place; their nostrils even detected it in the smell
of the dank, heavy air.

“Man, this
place is creepy!” muttered Mike.

Mag-stunners
at the ready, they edged slowly forwards along the corridor. The deathly
silence was not one of solitude or emptiness but that of a snake or spider
about to strike at some unsuspecting prey. They were aware of something
watching… hidden eyes, hidden cameras, perhaps like the one that trapped Beetie
in a silvery net before she got shuttle-podded off to this God-awful hell.

“The smell,”
whispered Mike, right behind Gary.
“It’s like the stink in those underground tunnels where you nearly got gobbled
up by gee-rats.”

“Shhhh!”

The corridor
ended in a T-junction. In one direction, blackness; in the other, dim lighting
and the unmistakable sound of voices. Gary
raised his eyebrows, Mike nodded, and they continued on towards the brightness
and the voices.

***

Beetie
followed the warden out of the blue building into the courtyard packed with
surfacers lined up in neat rows facing the grey block. The woman pushed them
aside to make way, meeting no resistance. Had Beetie poked one on the nose
she’d probably have got the same docile, unquestioning response. Their blank
faces terrified the girl as she followed in the wake of the warden. She
remembered nothing of surfacers in the streets above the Retreat.

At the far end
of the courtyard was a vacant space along the edge of which, in front of a high
wall, sat girls in colourful dresses like hers, barefoot and with beautiful
hairstyles,
their
faces also blank.
Everything
seemed
wrong: those girls, her empty head, the warden and her cruelty, the Chairman,
his toothy grin, his poetry, and… oh Gary,
that
awful
lesson!
Gary
,
please don’t let him do that to me!

But could she
be sure about Gary being real? She
began to doubt that secret flicker of hope. Maybe the boy in her head was only
the remnant of a passing dream… a delicious stain that they’d been unable to
remove from her cleansed brain?

Beetie halted
when she spotted the Chairman. She recognised him at once: his large head and
his teeth, although he appeared shorter than she’d imagined and even uglier.
She could
not
go through with what he’d promised to do to her. Not even
for all those beautiful things she’d been shown on her computer screen: the
mountains, waterfalls and flowers. He ogled her, his teeth mocking from behind
a cruel grin. Her legs refused to move any closer for she couldn’t bear to be
even one step nearer the monster. He called her by that
other
name...
the wrong one, the one they all used here.