The Terminus (7 page)

The
British
Museum
?
Not a fortress!

“Know of any
thieves, Mike?” he asked.

“Only Danny.
He stole Emma Pearson from Eyeballs Dave! Remember?”

“Forget bloody
Emma Pearson! Grow up, for a change.”

“Okay,
Professor Brainbox! So you plan to rob the British Museum, land us both in
clink… and you can say bye-bye to your pretty little tomato girl! Is she
dressed in red like this dude?”

“Beetie? Hell,
Mike, I’ll never
say good-bye to her! And she wears blue, not red,
thick-head!”

“Okay… keep
your weirdo shirt on!”

“A hundred
thousand years old, Mike! An advanced human artefact! Found with
those
fossilised bones. You realise what this means?”

“People were
playing soccer long before Spurs got promoted to the first division, right?”

Mike winked at
Redfor, but the man failed to respond.

“What’s with
Mr Happy here?” Mike asked his friend.

“Mike, if you
had any idea…” Gary began.

“Take
him
,
Gary!” interrupted Redfor. “You’ll
need someone like Mike when you go to the Hatcheries. I’ll be spending some
time here in the past, anyway. For a start I’ve gotta track down God. Funny how
he said he must never meet up with you but wouldn’t explain why.
Big mystery, that man.
Damned clever,
though.
You’d understand what I mean if you were to meet him.”

“But surely
you
can’t
just take off the specs? Won’t you vanish into the future?”

“Give God a
little credit, Gary. He wasn’t
completely daft when he invented these things.”

He fiddled
with something behind his ear and removed the specs without disappearing.

“We never
showed you in the Retreat how they work. See, yours were pre-set by God, so you
and Beetie would meet up. Allow me!”

Mike, too,
stared in silent disbelief as he listened to Redfor explain the workings of the
extraordinary specs. On each limb was a minute switch. With both set in
neutral,
the wearer, upon removing the specs, would remain in whatever time he or she
had travelled to. One side had an option to push the switch forwards, taking
the person to the future at a defined point of entry into the ‘timeless
dimension’ (“Christ, man, you’ve lost me!” muttered Mike.). Backwards on the
other side, and they would return in a flash to the past… whenever the past
last visited happened to be. Mike appeared even more confused as Redfor tried
to explain how God had pre-set the default on Gary’s
specs to arrive earlier, and Gary
understood why the man did that: in case he might cause something in the future
that would need fixing as had happened with Beetie. Around each lens was a thin
diaphragm from ‘zero’ to ’infinity’, one side for forward travel, the other for
going back in time.

“They’re not
to play with!” warned Redfor. “No one’s ever travelled forwards to infinity...
to the empty universe, as God calls it. As for backwards… well, you don’t wanna
find out what this place was like before the Big Bang, do you?”

The diaphragms
controlling the spectacles’ travel through time intrigued Gary…
rings within rings. Mike stood gawping, speechless, but Gary
absorbed everything as Redfor explained the science, for he
had
to get
things right when the time came.

“But with
Beetie… I… I can’t afford to make a mistake in the Hatcheries. Not a second too
late. Can I be that certain? I mean from where we are, now…”

He couldn’t
bear to think of the ordeal the girl might be going through, despite what
Redfor had said about the future not yet happening.

“Remember
this, Gary. You alone can save her.
Yes, the time-specs are accurate to the nearest trillionth of a second, if you
find this reassuring. It all came about in an underground place straddling France
and Switzerland.
In the present.”

“Like ‘now’
present?” Mike queried.

“Research into
the micro-cosmos by busting elementary particles in something called the Large
Hadron Collider,” continued Redfor. “God loses me most of the time, but…”

“Hey, I read
about the LHC!” interrupted Gary.
“In
Popular Science.
Where
they found the Higgs boson.
The God particle! Place called CERN.
They’re trying to explain dark energy and why the universe exists at all.”

“Here we go!
Welcome back, Professor Brainbox!”

“No, Mike! Be
serious for a change. The sorts of energies they’re using might, in theory,
open up wormholes causing closed time-like curves. Don’t you see?”

“All
I
see
is a couple of weirdos in shiny, poncey suits. But the duck business
was
impressive.”

“It’s the
start of something, Mike. Perhaps they find a way of trapping those wormholes…
joining them together… wow! Awesome!”

Gary
quickly learned all he needed to about the time-specs, though the science both
troubled and fascinated him: truths way beyond the laws of physics they taught
at school, and he was determined to one day uncover them.

He stared at
the specs in his hand.

“And
meanwhile, dude?” asked Mike.

Gary
remained pensive.

“You’re right,
Mike. Gotta get on. Beetie’s relying on me. I understand now. Shall we decamp
to my place?”

“What about
your soccer boots?” Mike asked on setting off. “Gone and left ’em under the
bench, you dozy sod.”

Sure enough,
they were where he’d put them in another time… dimension… whatever. Made no
sense to him they should be there if he’d recently returned to relive the same
past. Retrieving his boots, he shrugged his shoulders and logged a mental note
of the phenomenon.

“Oh… via the
playing fields, please, Gary.
The hockey pitch.
See,
I
’m still trying to get Emma
Pearson out of my head, and that redhead… I’m not kidding about her legs.
They’re a-a-a-awe... some! Okay for
you
now with that Beastie girl...”

“Beetie!”
snapped Gary. “
Not
okay,
anyway. She might be getting tortured… in the future.”

“Did she let
you kiss her?”
persisted
Mike as they headed for

“Shut-up, Mike!
We’re trying to bloody save what’s left of
the world. Redfor, I’m not so sure this is such a good idea taking Mike with
me?”

Redfor said
nothing, and Gary refused to admit
to the hard-on he’d experienced whilst kissing Beetie. Surely he was allowed
some secrets from a best friend.

“Afraid she’ll
go for my irresistibly superior Italian looks, mate?” teased Mike.

“Nope! More
afraid I’ll be tempted to feed you to the gee-rats, Mikey boy!”

“There! He
can’t take competition,” Mike announced to Redor. “Like he’s always dodging
soccer practice. Not the same with science or maths at school when he leaves us
all way behind counting on our fingers. So how about going for the redhead
first, Gary? The future hasn’t
happened yet, anyway! I bet you a fiver her legs are better than Beetie’s!”

Gary’s
mind returned to the night he shared a cell with Beetie, to his fantasies of
her wearing a flimsy, see-through nightie. Nothing wrong with her legs then...
or in her tight-fitting tracksuit.

“Mike, please
stop distracting me! Think ‘greatest archaeological robbery of all time’ can’t
you? That’s what we’ll need to pull off with this British
Museum exhibition thing. You
started thinking yet?”

He stopped and
grabbed Mike’s arm.

“I’m warning
you, Mike. Don’t let me down or I really will feed you to those rats! Okay?”

Mike nodded
and, unseen by Gary, raised his
eyebrows in mock desperation. They took the Jubilee line train bound for Swiss
Cottage and sat in silence, attracting curious stares. Gary
no longer cared. All he could think about was Beetie and the seemingly
impossible task between him sitting on an Underground train in London
in 2013 and ever seeing her again at some unknown time in the nightmare of a
distant future.

The circular door flipped open as
soon as the shuttle-pod came to a standstill. A strong arm belonging to a large
surfacer reached in, grabbed the net ensnaring Beetie, as if she weighed no
more than a bag of sugar, and flung her to the ground. The door snapped shut
and the pod sped off as the ogre ogled the girl, amused by her futile attempts
to punch and kick herself free.

“Hey, this
B32968’s a bit frisky!” he chuckled to his over-muscled colleague. “Should give
us a bit of sport, huh?”

“Get me out of
this thing, you oaf!” shouted Beetie, fighting the net.

“Will do, but
only when we’ve got you to the right block,” the man replied, his thick lips
stretching into an ugly grin. “Don’t you remember your old home, Belinda?”

Belinda
?

The man lifted
up a struggling Beetie, holding her at arm’s length so she’d be able to take in
her surroundings. Nothing about the Hatcheries was familiar. Several other
girls stood around the drab concrete precinct, or sat on benches, each wearing
something Beetie had no memory of: a dress. Faces glazed, disconnected from
their surroundings, they took no notice of Beetie when she screamed for help.
Another thing: like Beetie, all were exceptionally pretty.

At first,
horrified seeing girls with arms and legs half-bare, she merely stared. Some of
their dresses had coloured patterns, strange designs and frills. Also, their
toe and finger nails were painted pink, lilac or red. How odd! But what caused
her to stop struggling and stare was the girls’ hair… long and styled to suit
each owner. None had the obligatory pudding-basin. Some had ringlets, others
French braids, pony-tails or bunches. Most wore accessories – flowers, ribbons,
bands or patterned clips. Beetie’s expression betrayed her amazement.

“Can’t wait to
become one of
them
, ay?” remarked her captor, noticing her stillness.
Beetie frowned. The other girls remained silent, like the surfacers, but the
man holding her up was different. “All in good time,” he continued. “At least
you’re one of the fortunate ones. Because of your looks. Some aren’t so lucky.”

With a turn
and a nod of his head, he indicated a large, windowless grey building. Bearing
only a door and a tall chimney, there was something terrifying about its drab
soullessness. She tried hard to remember whether she’d seen the place before.

No one at the
Retreat had any idea what went on in the Hatcheries, all having emerged in late
childhood with memories as blank as a clean sheet of paper. Rumours travelled
around – and Arthry could neither confirm nor deny these – suggesting older
surfacers, those who became sick, slowed down or went against the authorities,
would return to the Hatcheries to be re-cycled… un-brained and turned into
gee-rat food.

“Release me at
once!” Beetie screamed. “Let me go! I belong somewhere else.”

Like others in
the Retreat, the girl had vowed under no circumstances to mention their
underground safe haven.

“Not any
longer, you don’t. Now… ‘B’ for blue, huh?” He grinned as he swung the netted
Beetie like a sack of potatoes over his shoulder and carried her towards a pale
blue, two-storey edifice beyond the shuttle-bus precinct. Colourful buildings
of differing pastel hues were spread out across a large area, connected by
attractively tiled pathways and well-trimmed gardens… with flowers! Beetie had
never before seen flowers. Apart from the grey block, the Hatcheries should
have been beautiful, but, bumped up and down on the brute’s back, the girl
experienced only beauty-eliminating nausea during the short journey. He dumped
her at the entrance of the blue building, took out a knife and cut her free.
She struggled to her feet on shaky legs and leant against the wall, facing the
grey block in front of which stood a row of grey crates on wheels. Beetie
hadn’t noticed these before.

“God’s got a
good reason for making
that
place ugly!” He informed the girl, enjoying
her unease. How she hated the monster! “Gotta keep you girls right. So make
sure you don’t go getting ideas of your own after we’ve re-erased those silly
little memories you’re trying to hide inside your pretty head ’cos it’s where
you might end up if you do.” He chuckled and banged on the blue door. “Well,
not finally. Inside the stomachs of the gee-rats... that’d be your
final
destination.
And from there food for the people. It’s called recycling!”

Could she
outwit him? She felt for her mag-stunner but the pocket was empty. Blinker must
have stolen it. Would Arthry know they’d taken her to the Hatcheries? Send a
rescue party, perhaps? There again, Blinker might have returned to the Retreat
and denounced
her
as the traitor? She could only be certain about the
boy from the past who had touched her lips with his own. A ‘
kiss
’, he
called it. She’d tingled all over and for the first time in her remembered life
she felt truly like a girl.

The door
opened. A woman in a blue overall stood before her, arms folded.

“Put up a bit
of a struggle, this one. She even…” began the heavy.

“Get me out of
this place, you fat idiot!” rebuked Beetie. “Take me back to the shuttle-bus at
once!”

“He said she
might be a bit feisty. Thought she might need a bit of taming. Ha ha!”

“He? Who the
heck are you talking about? Blinker?”

“No matter,
girl! The Retreat’s irrelevant, now. For you and anyone who goes against The
Agenda.”

He knows
about the Retreat? This imbecile?

“You’re evil!
The lot of you!! We’ll find out what…”

“
We
?
You and who else, my dearest?”

‘My dearest’
emerging from that thick-lipped grin? She felt like vomiting.

“Arthry!
He’ll…”

“Yeah! Does a
grand job for us, Arthry. Expect he’ll get a reward for handing you over. Maybe
one of the other girls, ay?”

“Arthry? With
you
lot? You don’t fool me!”

“They all show
respect in the end!”

His smile
gone, the man grabbed Beetie by the arm and pushed her into the hands of the
female warden.

“And who on
earth are
you
?” demanded Beetie held firm in the woman’s grip, glowering
at her.

“
I
am
no one,” the warden replied blankly. “
I
just take you to your cell.”

“No you d...!”
With a violent jolt, Beetie was yanked into the building and the door slammed
shut behind her.

“LET GO!” she
yelled, twisting and squirming in a futile attempt to break free.

“Like I said,
I’ll take you to your cell,” repeated the stone-faced woman as she began to
pull a protesting Beetie backwards along a brightly-lit corridor, its blue
walls patterned with pretty flowers. A girl sporting ringlets of auburn hair
and a red and yellow dress appeared from around a corner and brushed past,
showing no interest when Beetie pleaded for help. They halted outside a door on
which had been written ‘Belinda’ in elegant flowing script.

“Who the
hell’s Belinda?” asked Beattie, tugging herself free.

“You!” the
woman replied. “This is
your
room. Can’t say you deserve such
pampering.”

Using a key
card, she opened the door, pushed Beetie into the room and banged the door shut.
Without a handle on the inside, Beetie could only beat at it with both fists.

“LET ME OUT,
YOU RAT… LET ME OUT!” she shouted.

Silence!

Beetie turned
and surveyed her ‘prison’, so different from that miserable little shared cell
in the Retreat. She saw a pretty room with florally-decorated walls, a pink
desk and computer screen, matching chair and cushion, and something she’d never
seen before: a bed. Not her usual shelf-bunk, but a bed with sheets and a
patterned quilt cover. Her eyes widened at what had been carefully spread out
on top of the bed: a shimmering white dress with, across the bodice, a red
floral pattern. Beside the dress were items of pretty silk underwear. A
beautiful pair of red high-heeled shoes with silver buckles had been placed on
the floor beside the bed. Opposite, stood a dresser bearing a range of objects
that intuitively intrigued Beetie: lipsticks, eye make-up, an array of perfumes
and toiletries, all of which smelt exquisite.

Beetie’s anger
faded on seeing such incredible things. She tried on the shoes. A perfect fit.
She stood in front of a full length mirror holding the dress up against her
body. The right size. How come? Arthry’s input? Surely not Arthry...

Confused, she
knew there was something horribly wrong about all this beautiful stuff. 
Her world had suddenly been turned upside down. Back at the Retreat, never had
she experienced the joy of being a woman – only a sexless tom-boy before Gary
showed up. Gary had set free the
woman in her with his kiss and by making her feel so special. Here, amazing
clothes defined her sex in a way that was so deliciously feminine, yet an
unpleasant creepiness pervaded everything in the room. And those angelic girls
in the yard outside hardly seemed real; the warden was more robot than human
and that brute of a surfacer and his taciturn colleague just brainless bullies.
Now, it seemed she’d become imprisoned in someone’s sick dream?

But Arthry with them
?
Please… oh please no!

Beetie refused
to believe what the heavy had said, though she also cursed her leader for
keeping her in the dark. He’d only told that her going to the Hatcheries was
something to do with The Agenda’s plan... and with what was happening in the
Terminus beyond the Hatcheries… and with God. But where did
she
fit into
this plan? And could she believe in God any longer? After all, she’d never seen
the man since her brain got ‘cleansed’ before arriving at the Retreat. Was
there truly another God working for The Agenda? Which
God did Arthry
follow? Which should
she
follow? Which one was the impostor?

Oh
Gary
...

Gary who said
he’d been sent by God! The extraordinary Gary
who’d kissed her, made her so happy and who seemed to
care
so much for
her… as she, for reasons she couldn’t fathom, cared about him. Where did
he
fit in?

She went over
to the computer and stared at the screen. A hideous, goofy face appeared. She
recognised the man Gary called ‘Teeth’, the man who had the second pair of
time-specs. He spoke:

“Hello,
Belinda! Just think, soon we’ll be together! You must be so proud I’ve selected
you out of all the lucky girls. When that horrible past has been erased from
your consciousness you’ll begin to understand true bliss. With me! As for the
future, you’ve no idea how glorious things will be. God’ll make this happen.
Just relax and put on those lovely clothes and make-up he’s chosen especially
for you. There are more in the wardrobe behind you. They’re from the past, my
dearest. And learn with the programmes I’ll show you… widen your young mind and
most of all, believe in me. Oh, and by the way... my name... just call me God,
if you wish, but most address me as The Chairman. Now, a little journey, my
dear…”

The screen
flickered and the ugly face was replaced by mind-stretching images of
landscapes, mountain scenery, plants and creatures which both enthralled and
troubled Beetie; a vision of the Terminus, or an illusion as unreal as those
girls outside in the courtyard? She knew only a dying world in the undersea
city of London so these images of beauty must have somehow escaped from the
mind of the cruel, crazed creature who only wanted to deceive her… ensnare her…
beguile her.

She looked
again at the garments on the bed.
They
were real enough. Surely no harm
could come from trying them on?

Ten minutes later,
Beetie stood in front of a full length mirror wearing the lovely white and red
dress and the silken underwear, so softly smooth against her skin, whilst she
applied eye-shadow and lipstick. An inner female instinct had told her how to
use cosmetics, and she warmed to the attractive face she saw reflected in the
mirror… until she realised it was a painted puppet who smiled back at her.
Confusion enveloped her as, overwhelmed by a desire to be a woman, she clung to
the memory of a boy from the past and struggled to hold on to her true purpose
for being in that beautiful room.