The Terminus (6 page)

“OW!” cried
Beetie as she was pulled further back by Blinker and his accomplices.

“BEETIE!” Gary
yelled, watching dumbfounded whilst the poor girl got dragged away kicking and
screaming.

“
Not
so
clever, my little friend from the past,” chuckled Teeth. “Oh,
she’s
the
one we want. Not you! Had your uses, I suppose. Like returning the other pair
of specs to me. Hand both pairs over and we might dispose of you more humanely.
Or would you prefer our friends, the gee-rats, to carry out the job? Mind you,
it’s not very pleasant the way they do things! Rat food’s getting scarce down
there in the tunnels, you see. Always seem so hungry, the poor creatures… ha
ha! Now B32968, she’s far too valuable to feed to gee-rats! She did make good
bait for the boy from the past, though. Our little puppet, huh? Oh... you’re so
predictable!”

“GARY,
RUN!” screamed Beetie.
“FOR
GOD’S SAKE!
GO BACK!”

God?
Which one?

Blinker held
the struggling girl with her arms behind her when she began to put up a fight,
kicking out in fury. He laughed and Gary
wanted only to kill him but was in no position to complete the task. Blinker’s
two mates edged forwards. Reluctantly, he backed away.

“The
time-specs, little boy,” demanded Teeth, his hand outstretched.

“GARY, NO!”
shrieked Beetie.

A sticky,
silvery ball shot from the wall below a security camera and hit Beetie with
bullet-precision. As Blinker released his hold on the girl, this expanded into
a silvered net, rapidly enveloping her, seeming almost alive as the thing
cloaked itself around her body. The net tightened and constricted and the
kicking and flailing stopped. Sobbing bitterly, she was caught like a trapped
beast. Once again, Gary experienced
a stab of guilt for involving the girl in his stupid plans. A silver-grey pod
swept silently past, halting abruptly alongside Beetie. Its circular diaphragm
door flicked open, and, still laughing, Blinker pushed his trophy into the pod.
The door snapped shut, muffling Beetie’s fraught cries, and the pod shot off,
in no time reduced to a shrinking dot on the horizon.

“BEETIE!”
shouted Gary, impotently punching
the air with a clenched fist as his anger erupted into a cataclysm of fury.

“Call out her
name as loudly as you like but it won’t bring her back!” smirked Teeth.
“They’ll soon be getting to work on her at the Hatcheries and her memory of the
boy from the past will vanish forever!”

“You bastards!
I’ll kill the lot of you!” Gary
threatened, retreating again from Blinker and his friends.

Meanwhile
surfacers continued to skirt around the scene, oblivious of the fracas. The man
who’d been purposively tripped up by Beetie (her idea… to distract Teeth)
merely picked himself up and walked off without a word. But Beetie’s frightened
face remained in Gary’s mind; her
voice, too… and her awful cries of anguish. ‘For God’s sake run’ she’d cried
out.
God’s
sake
?
God the
Man
of
course! This whole exercise was to help God the Man for Beetie had no other
concept of God. A terrible thought flashed through his mind. Were they already
torturing her? For sure they’d want to extract more information about the
Retreat to reach Arthry... or God.

Beetie being
hurt was the most terrible thing he could imagine, but the thought of this also
gave him courage. Taking Blinker by surprise, he ran at the boy and punched him
full on the nose. Blinker’s head jerked backwards from the force of the blow,
he staggered and fell to the ground. The other two were about to make a grab
for Gary when…

ZING ZING
ZING!

All three
froze into living statues.

“You stup…!”
began Teeth, before being silenced by another
ZING!

A tug at Gary’s
elbow and someone in red pulled him backwards.

“What the…?”

“No time for
‘whats’!” the man said. “Hurry! Three minutes at the most before the
mag-stunner wears off.”

“But Beetie? I
can’t leave her… I must…” protested Gary
as he was shoved backwards into a side-street.

“Quick! The
specs! I’ll explain later.” How could Gary
trust this stranger? Beetie was the only person he truly trusted here. “We’ll
have to try to save her from the past,” the red guy added, grabbing Gary’s
arm. “She’s as important to God as she is to the Agenda. Believe me. I’m Redfor
and I’m with Arthry. He sent me to guard over you.”

“Didn’t help
Beetie, ay?” Gary glowered at the
man whose rampant pudding-basin red hair was badly in need of Beetie’s
attention. “I said
you
, Gary! Beetie realised the risk she was taking.
She understood about going back to the Hatcheries and relying on you from now
on. All planned... but she couldn’t tell you everything!”

Confused, Gary
relaxed his grip on the second pair of time-specs when Redfor held out his hand
for them. Blinker’s eyelids began to twitch. The mag-stunner was already
beginning to wear off.

“NOW!”
cried the man.

Together they
ran and, as Redfor slipped on one pair of time-specs whilst Gary
removed the other, both leapt from the pavement onto the shuttle-bus run and landed
in the middle of

“Wankers!”
shouted the driver, shaking his fist as they took off again, running.

For the second
time in one morning, Gary had
returned to the present and the world he loved so much, though more
heavy-hearted and more desperate than ever to return to a nightmare future… and
to Beetie.

“Mike
should...” began Gary.

“Yeah!”
interrupted Redfor. “We know. Soccer practice in Regent’s Park. Right?”

Gary
raised his eyebrows but said nothing. They hurried on to Regent’s Park in
silence. After so much to-ing and fro-ing between the present and the future,
he had no idea whether he’d find his friend still beside the bench or whether
the boy hadn’t yet arrived. Perhaps Mike would already be at soccer practice…
their friendship in tatters!

No Mike, but
the bench was there... now with a flyer on it.

Funny
,
he thought,
that wasn’t here before
.

Gary
checked the trees, half-expecting Teeth to appear despite Redfor wearing the
bastard’s only means of transport back to his past. He picked up the flyer...
an advert for an exhibition at the British
Museum. He shrugged his shoulders,
flicked it with irritation to ground and slumped onto the bench. In his
tight-fitting, shiny, green tracksuit, with Beetie’s pudding-basin haircut, and
his mind in future, somehow he no longer belonged to his own world. Redfor sat
beside him.

“Gary,
I’ll do what I can to help, but God’s chosen you and Beetie for what he has in
mind and Beetie’s done
her
bit.”

“Crap!” Gary
snapped. “She’s got mixed up in all of this, yeah, but not out of her own
choice. It’s
all
my
bloody fault! And what the
hell’s happening to her now, anyway?”

“Nothing’s
happened yet, here in the past. Beetie doesn’t even exist.”

Gary
couldn’t bear to think of Beetie not existing. Almost worse than her existing
and being tortured for information about the Retreat, as would be likely to
happen in the Hatcheries of the future.

Christ,
what a mess!

“Gary,
Beetie’s gonna have to rely on you. And God must believe in you or he wouldn’t
have left those time-specs on the bench.”

Gary
glanced at the specs in his hand, returned them to their sparkly case and
stuffed this into his pocket, his mind dancing like a scalded spider.

“Hey... Gary!”

He glanced up.
Mike stood, feet apart, swinging a sports bag from which dangled a pair of
soccer boots and gawping at Gary and Redfor. What a strange pair they must have
seemed in their gaudy tracksuits with weirdo haircuts.

“Shit, Gary!
No need to turn gay because Emma Pearson’s boobs are out of reach!”

Gary
could find no space for his friend’s humour.

“You’d never
believe me if I told you the truth, Mike, so there’s no point in trying.”

He was staring
at the flyer on the ground... a British
Museum exhibition about some archaeological
find in Africa? Not his thing at all, ancient history,
yet the image there both teased and fascinated him.

“Try me!” said
Mike.

“What?”
responded Gary, distracted by the
picture on the
flyer.

“Explain why
you’re dressed up like an alien fairy... and why you weren’t at the station
like you said you’d be when I called you this morning... and why you’re sitting
here with some poncey freak who doesn’t speak a word.”

“I’ve
travelled to the future and come back. Nothing, really! Get the drift? London submerged,
the Retreat in the Underground where giant genetically-modified rats lurk, The
Agenda, a hideous bastard called Teeth and… oh God, Mike, they’ve gone and
taken Beetie to the Hatcheries. They’re gonna torture her and I can’t bear it.
Her memory’ll get wiped out again! And it’s all my flipping fault!”

Mike’s smile
faded.

“Gary?”

“I tried you
and you don’t believe me… so!” He managed to stop himself saying ‘piss off,
can’t you?’ before adding, quietly, “
please
... leave us alone.”

His words sounded
hollow, for an inner voice told him he was going to need Mike big time in the
future. Mike, annoying though he might be, had people skills Gary
could only dream of.

“Jesus, Gary,
this is serious. I mean, I’d better get you help. You don’t need to take things
so badly.
Plenty of other girls around apart from Emma… with
boobs just as luscious.
We could watch the girls in the park playing
hockey, for a start. In fact…”

Gary
wasn’t listening. He picked up the flyer. The picture was trying to communicate
something. A five-sided tile showing a geometric pattern and strange script
made up of varying triangles and circles.

The
Pentatron Tablet Exhibition
, the caption read.
A unique tablet
discovered by divers off the African Gold Coast. Over one hundred thousand
years old. This, together with fossilised jaw and skull bones found on the
shore, challenges all theories of human evolution to date.

“Like I’m
trying to tell you, mate,” continued Mike, “the hockey pitch. A redhead with
amazing legs…
and
…”

“God put this
here for a purpose! Makes sense, now!” Gary
said to Redfor, ignoring Mike.

“…boobs pretty
cool, too!” Mike burbled on. “Wow! If only she didn’t have to wear that awful
hockey gear. Oh, come on, Gary.
Shall I call an ambulance? Maybe they’ll find you a girl in hospital.
An inflatable one.
Part of your emergency treatment, ay?”

A duck waddled
into view on its way to the lake. Mike eyed Gary
with suspicion as his friend fumbled in his pocket and took out what appeared
to be a mobile phone. Gary pointed
it, pressed with his thumb, there was a high-pitched whining ‘
ZING
!’ and
the duck froze mid-waddle. Gary
turned to Mike.

“Three
minutes!” he announced. “Then it’ll carry on as if nothing happened. Mike stood
silent, his mouth open. “And this is Redfor. He’s one of Arthry’s guys. From
the Retreat.”

Mike smiled
weakly and nodded without saying a word.

“Pleased to
meet you too, Mike,” said Redfor, his face giving away nothing.

“Fashionable
specs, mate,” Mike added, nervously.

“And
this
is a message from God!” Gary held
up the flyer.

“Sure,
Gary
!
God
!
Message from God.
Cool one!” responded Mike, half-smiling, his voice faint and squeaky.

“God the
Man
, Mike.
You with us?”

Mike cast a
nervous glance at the duck.

“Yeah, Gary,
I’m with you… sort of…
God the Man. Good one!”

“This
Pentatron Tablet thing… God
must’ve
left the flyer about it here. He’s
trying to tell us something. About what The Agenda’s after, maybe? And himself,
of course! A hundred thousand years old… but somehow this holds the key to the
future.”

“The future?”
echoed Mike, still staring at the duck as its feet began to twitch.

“Sit down,
Mike. I’m gonna show you something else.”

“Sit down.
Yeah! Sounds good!” agreed Mike, eyeing the bird with apprehension when it
continued on towards the lake as if nothing had happened. He sat not too near Gary,
leaving what he felt was a safe space between them. His friend took the
spectacles case from his pocket.

“Those specs
on Redfor... they’re the same as these,” he said, opening it and removing the
time-specs. On seeing a thousand tiny eyes peering up at him, Mike’s own eyes
widened. He reached out, as if drawn by a magnet.

“NO!” warned Gary.
“Sorry, but don’t touch... unless…” He was thinking about Beetie. “Not unless I
let you. They’re for
her
, Mike. Wearing these is the only way I can...”

“
Her
?”

“Beetie. Only
way I can get to her! Like I told you last time I returned… but time’s gone a
bit different now, I guess. So what I said then hasn’t yet happened. May never
happen! God willing!”

“Oh, you
Catholics!”

Gary
paused.

“Yeah!
I swear to the real God Beetie’s the loveliest girl
that’s ever been!” he said, staring at the ground.

Mike grinned.

“Perfect
boobs?”

Gary
nearly said ‘piss off’ again, but he remembered and controlled his anger.

“She’s not
cheap ’n’ pretty, like the Pearson girl.” He stared at Mike for a few moments.
“Nope! You wouldn’t understand. Not yet.” His eyes returned to the flyer.