The Terminus (29 page)

He went quiet.
The affection in his old friend’s eyes he found almost disturbing. Cathy
caressed his hand, giving him the strength he needed.

“She’s right.
I will!” he said. “Since when did Mike Bellini ever let you down, Gary? Can’t
wait to tell your other self I’ve…”

“No, Mike.
Tell me nothing. Do I ask about myself in your future? Do I say, ‘hey Mike…
let’s see what we’re gonna be doing next year… or in ten years’ time?’”

“No, but…”

“I’ve always
tried to tread cautiously when playing with science. Right now, the other me
will be thinking about those specs. Thinking how they work, where they draw
energy from… and what might happen to self if past and future should meet, and
if the answer’s not obvious I’ll not let this happen. Just tell
me
… tell
your friend, Gary… you know the child’s his. Nothing more. He’ll believe you.
Thinks the world of you!”

“What’ll
happen to you now? Retirement in the Costa del Sol?” The old man didn’t reply.
A low rumbling heralded the approach of a train. “Bloody glad I didn’t kill
you!”

“Like I said,
there was no need. Here, take these and watch over me!”

Those were the
last words of his old friend. Mike took the glittering spectacles case as a
train roared into the station. The doors slid open. Mike and Cathy got on, and
when Mike peered out towards the far end of the platform he saw an old man
climb down onto the track, unseen by anyone else, and set off into the
blackness of the tunnel; a man he’d planned to kill, and who turned out to be
the greatest friend he’d ever had; a man who loved London so much he’d spend
two hundred years trying to save the city, but who realised, when the battle
seemed lost, that people matter more than anything else; a man now too tired to
carry on... a man called God.

The doors slid shut. Cathy and
Mike sat down, the case balanced on Mike’s lap.

“What a lovely
old man!” Cathy said.

Ashamed of his
moistening eyes, Mike looked the other way.

“Yeah!” he
replied. “Oddest thing, Cathy, getting old. Can’t imagine
you
ever being
old.”

“Never set
eyes on an old person till I came here. No one talked about birth or death in
the Hatcheries. After they took me back with the other girls and made us wear
dresses and things, I couldn’t even remember ever have been in the place
before. They only told us it’s where we came from, and they turned us into
dream-people with those pills and injections.”

“Dream-people,
huh? Good description! When
I’m
an old man, Cathy, I’m gonna take to
writing. None of this charging around. D’you know what my first book’ll be
called?”

Cathy shook
her head, grinning.

“‘Dream-Girl’…
and it’ll be all about you!”

He kissed her,
oblivious of the stares of other passengers.

They arrived
at Stanmore in what seemed no time at all and, holding hands, set off for
Stanmore Scientific Laboratories. The same security guy sat in his booth, and
they played the same game with the time-specs.

“Poor bloke!”
exclaimed Mike, as he clambered over the fence under cover of darkness taking
Cathy to the marked-off site where the Terminus would one day be built. “He’ll
blame stress, no doubt. Sitting in that little box all day, every day... enough
to drive anyone bonkers!”

Standing at
exactly the same spot where they’d entered the present, their hands firmly
clasped together, Mike slipped on the time-specs and in a flash the present
became the past. The Terminus was packed full of surfacers in military rows,
silent, waiting to follow others already filing up the steps of the ramp
leading into the Belindaron. Bullying Atlanteans coaxed them with flailing
whips. Mike, in the knowledge these were people selected by Arthry and not
zombies to be treated like cattle, had an urge to mag-stun and thump the little
blighters, but he resisted. Crouching low, he and Cathy joined the queue
boarding the giant space-craft. By some miracle they weren’t spotted as they
climbed the ramp towards the wide, beckoning doorway of the space-craft. The
boy became engulfed by a wave of emotions he’d never before experienced. Fear,
excitement and sheer joy merged into a mental tsunami that swept him towards an
unknown that would either mean the end of everything or a new beginning for the
human race.

***

“Dose Specs of
yours, Gary! Dey make a nonsense of all dat security in de airport, sure dey
do!

“Did the same thing
when Mike and I stole the Pentatron tablet… and when we got past the security
guy in the Stanmore Research Laboratories. People will believe anything if they
can’t believe their eyes! Not the best way to travel, though.”

Monday
morning, Swiss Cottage station.

“Is it far,
Da?” asked the child.

“Well is it,
Gary? Caitlin’s little legs need to know.”

“Short walk
down the hill.”

“Will dere be
toys in de man’s house?”

“Caitlin,
don’t you be talking like dat, now? Ask Mr Gary nicely.”

Gary often
thought of his little sister and
her
toys after she died. His mother had
kept them all, neatly boxed up in the spare room. What would his sister have
made of Beetie, he wondered? Would she have loved her too, in her own funny
little way? Only since befriending Beetie had he begun to realise how much he’d
missed the child. Mike was fantastic… best mate ever… but nevertheless, he was
a bloke. Gary now needed closeness to a girl, though ‘closeness’ hardly
described what he felt for Beetie. She
must
have been aware of the depth
of his love, whatever that bastard God did to her afterwards. Since first
setting eyes on the girl, and after following her and Blinker into the Retreat,
he’d been convinced they were intended for each other, and... oh God, that
wonderful night when they came together in passion as one! Surely his embraces
had meant something to her?

Try as he may,
Gary was unable to remove Beetie from his mind.

“Plenty of
toys, Caitlin! Where we’re going you’ll have
lots
of toys to play with.”

“Seamus
O’Malley, why did I have to fall in love wid you, daft eejit dat I was?” Molly
asked.

“What’s an
eejit, Da?”

“A beautiful
bird dat needs to fly free, Caitlin,” Seamus replied.

“Isn’t dat an
eagle?”

“Eejit? Eagle?
It’s all de same. We’re together again, and dis is all dat matters!”

Gary rang the
bell. His Mum opened the door.

“Oh!” she
exclaimed, her expression strained. “Redfor’s told us you’d soon be back, but
said nothing about bringing friends.”

“Redfor? Here?
The old man too?”

Gary knotted
his fists.

“Only Redfor.
With a memory stick.”

“
A memory stick
?
”

How the boy
wished a virtual Beetie could have been loaded onto a memory-stick and released
into his brain to stay lodged forever in some hidden-away collection of
neurons. The thought of never being with her again was bad enough. The thought
of forgetting her one day… losing her from his memory… was a thousand times
worse!

“Your friends,
Gary? Aren’t you going to introduce me?”

“Sorry, Mum.
Bit distracted. Seamus and Molly O’Malley and their daughter, Caitlin.”

“Pleased to
meet you, to be sure, Mrs O’Driscoll. So kind of you to take us in till Seamus
finds a place for us.”

Mrs O’Driscoll
didn’t ask any more questions. She’d given up on them. Rather, she found
herself accepting reality because nothing changed when she pinched herself. She
was fully resigned to await the next episode in the unreal saga into which her
son had catapulted the family over the weekend.

“Fine,” she
said. “We’ve a very small house, if you’ll excuse us, but you’re most welcome.
Hello Caitlin!”

“Mr Gary says
you’ve got lots of toys,” the child announced excitedly.

“I’ll see what
we can do! Gary, Redfor’s in the sitting room. You’ll have to ask him about the
memory-stick thing. Can’t get my head around any of this. Your dad’s gonna
phone the school from work. Later. Told him I’d just go hysterical if I did.”

Gary went
alone into the sitting room. Redfor looked up from the settee.

“Close the
door!”

Gary shut out
the childish chatter and the blarney of his Irish friend.

“So, he hadn’t
the courage to come himself! I’ll get him, though. I’ll hunt him down and kill
him. No one’s gonna get away with treating Beetie like a whore!”

“Gary, God
asked me to give this to your parents. This memory-stick. Everything he’s ever
gonna invent is here. They’ll need the information in the future, because the
person who’ll come up with all those scientific theories, solutions and
designs, he’ll be gone. Like he never existed. Because of you, Gary. You and
Beetie.”

“What d’you
mean, ‘he’ll be gone’. I’ve gotta kill the swine. With my own hands. No idea
how, but I’m gonna.”

“No, Gary!
Killing God’s the very last thing Beetie would want you to do. Seems she’ll
have to change you like Belinda changed God.”

“What on earth
are you talking about, Redfor? You really do get on my nerves!”

Redfor
chuckled.

“Which is precisely why God got
Mike involved! Gary, Mike was wrong. The child’s yours!”

Gary, dumbfounded, stared at the
red-headed man.

“Can’t be!” he finally said. “I
mean… well, we only spent one night together. Listen, God told everyone the
child was his. He wouldn’t lie about such stuff, would he? Not the kind of
thing an old shit would be proud of!”

“You and
Beetie made love together, Gary, and you’re going to be a father. This was
God’s plan. Beetie’s, too!”

Gary frowned.
He didn’t want to be a part of God’s anything, least of all his plan… but
Beetie?

Go to her,
Gary. Now! Quick! With the O’Malleys!”

“To the
future? With the O’Malleys?”

“They’ve no
future for them here, Gary. May not have been in God’s plan, but God’s not particularly
brilliant at planning. Great inventor… but the rest… well! Needs help from
people like Mike and me... and Arthry.”

“
That
creep?”

“Arthry’s a
very good man, Gary. A born leader. Ask Beetie when you see her.
She
, at
least, understands!”

Still unconvinced,
Gary took the memory-stick from Redfor.

“What do I do
with this?” he asked.

“I was gonna
suggest you took the thing yourself to a man called John at Stanmore Scientific
Laboratories, but, on second thoughts, I think you and your little Irish family
ought to get going. The police’ll be after Seamus for a crime he never
committed. Do you think they’d ever believe
his
story?”

Gary grinned.

“Not if he
insists on calling Beetie the ‘Holy Virgin’. Poor Seamus! So… this
memory-stick? Why can’t
you
take it?”

“One day I’ll
work there, Gary. I’d rather not. Chaos theory again, eh? Your parents were
told everything. This is our only chance… and even now we’ve no guarantee
things’ll work out. No guarantee other people would be able to take over from
God… though God has John well-trained. He’s
clever
, too. I remember. No,
your parents
must
go to him today!”

“There’s
something else you haven’t told me… about to happen? Here? I feel it!”

“Your Mum, too,
feels it, but I can’t say any more. Might destroy all you’ve done if I do. Now
hurry!”

Redfor was
right. His Mum appeared terrified, but after the pleadings and tears she showed
her true strength. She’d always feared one day she’d lose both her children,
although with Gary things were so very different. More re-birth than death. She
promised to deliver the memory-stick to the laboratories in Stanmore first
thing when Gary had gone. The boy was so sorry he was unable to also say
farewell to his dad for he’d only begun to understand the man in that B & B
in Golders Green. He told his mother he couldn’t have had a better father.

Mrs O’Driscoll
whispered in her son’s ear before they left:

“God told me
everything. More than you’ll ever know, Gary. I hoped this wasn’t true, but it
is. Treat Beetie well. Love her with all your heart. Our grandchild, too. Dad
and I’ll pray for all of you. Never forget us… please.”

Pray? Funny
how religion hadn’t really entered Gary’s mind since picking up the time-specs
in Regent’s Park on Saturday morning, apart from having to cope with the notion
of a man called ‘God’, and Seamus O’Malley’s belief that Beetie was ‘de Holy
Virgin’.

Virgin
?

He smiled at
the thought of a tiny person starting to grow already inside the girl. Barely a
day old? How on earth was God so sure about the pregnancy?

Obvious!
Time-travel!

Redfor took
them to a shuttle-bus stop not far from the Finchley Road... which happened to
be inside a green-grocers’ shop. Here the man, who neither belonged to the
present nor the future, would say goodbye, for he told Gary that with God gone
there’d be no further need for him to keep travelling to and fro across the
time-barrier. From then on
his
part in the story would have to remain in
the present and, when old enough, he’d help John get on with the data on the
memory stick. John would soon be the only person left on earth with full
knowledge of what had happened over the weekend.

“They’re gonna
die, aren’t they?” Gary asked Redfor.

“We all die
one day.”

“What about
you
?
Your future… as you are… here and now?”

Redfor said
nothing.

Gary felt both
saddened and angry, though not as angry as he’d have felt if he’d known
how
they would die. Not angry enough to turn God’s carefully worked out plan upside
down, lose Beetie for ever and destroy any chance of human survival in the
universe of the twenty-third century A.D. on earth.

“Thanks,
Redfor. Sorry for not trusting you before. I was confused.  So many lies…
so much damned deceit!”

“Like God
said, Gary, you’re a poor judge when it comes to people. Yes, you and Beetie
love each other, but even you thought she’d
betrayed that love.”

“I guess God
used the time-specs to confirm Beetie’s pregnancy… travelled with her into the
future. But he did more than that, didn’t he?”

Redfor laughed.

“Don’t even
ask, Gary. Just accept there are things we’ll never find out,” Redfor said as
they rejoined the O’Malleys in the hallway.

“He’s been
there, hasn’t he? To ‘Paradise Planet’? He’d have checked things out. Of
course, he would’ve!
I
would! Only
how
did he get back?”

“Lips are
sealed! The things on his memory-stick are only the bits that take this world
up to a point you’re going to now. The launch of the Belindaron, shortly before
London disappears for good! Now, little Caitlin, are you looking forward to
shooting off into the sky and outer space in the largest airplane ever built?”

“Is it a
flyin’ saucer, Mr Redfor?”

Redfor
chuckled.

“Yeah! I
suppose so! But enough of talking. You lot had better get going, and make sure
you take the shuttle-bus in the right direction, Gary. Don’t want you ending up
in the Belt with all those veg-eatables! The one going from right to left all
the way to the Terminus. A full ten seconds!”

The other
customers and two shop assistants scratched their heads when a boy, a little
girl, a middle-aged man and a young woman vanished holding hands.