Terminal

by Roderick Gordon

  ‘So there was nobody in this place when you got here?’ Chester asked.

  ‘It was all locked up,’ Martha replied, moving towards the doorway. ‘Are you hungry?’

  ‘You bet. What’s on the menu?’ Chester said.

  ‘Sheep,’ Martha answered. ‘That’s the one thing there’s plenty of around here.’

  ‘And you really mean just sheep?’ Chester said, pulling himself upright on the sofa.

  ‘Yes, just sheep. Nothing else. I promise,’ Martha said, giving him a crooked smile.

  ‘O … k … a … y,’ Chester said through a yawn, as Martha scurried off to the kitchen.

  As soon as she’d gone, Stephanie cleared her throat to get Chester’s attention. As he turned towards her, she shot him a what-was-that-all-about frown, but he merely shook his head.

  They could hear Martha crashing around in the kitchen at the end of the corridor. ‘She’s busy in there – she can’t hear us,’ Stephanie whispered.

  ‘Don’t count on it,’ Chester whispered back. ‘It’s not worth the risk.’

  With a shrug Stephanie went back to her magazine and Chester dozed on the sofa until Martha finally reappeared with some bowls of steaming food, which they ate at the table in complete silence.

  Well, almost complete silence. Chester was struck by the stark contrast between his two dining companions as they ate: Martha, with table manners typical of most Colonists, occasionally mumbled to herself as she slurped the juices from her spoon and chewed with her mouth wide open. The noise was frightful, as if she was trying to make herself as repugnant as she possibly could.

  And then there was Stephanie at the other end of the table, strikingly attractive, her manners impeccable as she daintily used her fork.

  The only thing that the two of them had in common was their ginger hair – other than that they could have been from different species.

  God, I’m beginning to sound like Will, Chester thought to himself. And with that he began to think about his friend, hoping that both he and Elliott had survived their mission and were safe somewhere. Chester remembered the times they’d had together – although they’d by no means been easy, at least they’d shared the burden and endured them together. An aching hollowness inside reminded him how much he missed their companionship.

  ‘All right there, my dearie?’ Martha enquired, as she noticed he’d stopped eating. Chester could see pieces of lamb stuck in the gaps between her dirty teeth.

  Nodding, he resumed on his bowl, swapping a secret smile with Stephanie while Martha’s head was down and she was shovelling the stew into her mouth.

  But despite Stephanie’s presence there, Chester felt so alone.

  He sighed as he finished his bowl of stew, which had actually been quite appetising. As Martha, too, finished, Stephanie offered to clear the table. Martha wouldn’t have it; she carefully stacked the bowls one on top of the other, then went to the front door and simply slung them outside, where they landed on the paved yard with a crash.

  ‘There – that’s all done,’ she said, rubbing her hands together.

  ‘That was great, Martha. Thank you,’ Chester said, slightly surprised at what she’d just done, but not about to comment on her very peculiar form of domestication.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ Stephanie said.

  Martha, who hadn’t once looked in the girl’s direction, during or after the meal, was gawping at Chester with her usual wide grin on her face.

  ‘I’d better fetch some more wood so we can keep the fire stoked up,’ Martha said. ‘Want to keep it nice and snug for you in here.’

  Chester gave her a grateful nod, and as Martha went outside, he moved to the window where he could see her, and leant on the windowsill. Although she was around thirty feet away, she was aware that he was there and kept glancing at him and giving him that odd little wave.

  Chester pretended to scratch his nose to hide the fact that he was talking. ‘Stay on the other side of the room,’ he told Stephanie. ‘You don’t know how close Martha came to killing you. What the hell were you thinking when you followed me? Anything can set Martha off. She can turn into a right nut job.’

  ‘I don’t understand – why did you go off with her, then?’ Stephanie asked.

  ‘Because I didn’t care. I don’t care and, anyway, it’s better than hanging around Parry with his stinking lies.’

  ‘He didn’t know what Danforth was planning at the time,’ Stephanie countered.

  ‘But he did afterwards, and he was too much of a coward to tell me. That’s what hurts,’ Chester said. Although he was full of anger, he managed to grin at Martha as she gave him another wave. ‘Better if we stop talking now. She might get suspicious.’

  ‘First tell me what you said to her,’ Stephanie demanded.

  Chester sighed. ‘I had to come up with something quick. It wasn’t easy for me to say it, but I told her that she was my mother now my real mother was dead. And I also told her the only reason you and I were friends was because you reminded me so much of my sister.’ He took a breath. ‘You know that she was knocked down and killed by some idiot in a stolen car when I was young?’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ Stephanie said quietly. ‘Is that true? Do I remind you of your sister?’

  ‘Nah,’ Chester replied. ‘You’re nothing like her. She was shy and sort of dumpy and short. But I had to give Martha a good reason or she would have assumed you were my girlfriend, and it would have been lights out for you.’

  ‘So am I your girlfriend?’ Stephanie asked after a moment, searching out Chester’s eyes with her own.

  Chester tried to suppress a small smile, not least because Martha was heading back to the farmhouse with an armful of firewood. ‘I suppose you are. If both of us live long enough for that to mean anything.’

  Werner was far enough away from the Kübelwagen that Karl couldn’t hear him muttering and cursing after he’d finished the conversation with his brother over the radio.

  If it wasn’t enough that they’d endured a hailstorm of rock and half the jungle seemed to have been dropped around them, Werner was finding what his brother had to say very difficult to believe. Something about a new tower in which Jürgen had seen views of the Earth from outer space. Had his brother completely lost it, or had he been drinking? ‘Gott im Himmel,’ Werner spat, kicking a chunk of stone lying on the track, then wishing he hadn’t as he discovered it was heavier than he’d anticipated.

  Hobbling the remaining distance to the vehicle, he got Karl ready, and they set off on foot. The trail, now littered with debris, was impassable in the small-wheeled Kübelwagen. So their options were either to fetch the half-track from where Jürgen had left it and try to bulldoze their way back down the trail and return to the city, or to walk all the way to where Jürgen was.

  And Werner was in turns concerned for his brother and curious about what the usually level-headed anthropological scientist had been babbling about over the radio. But the evidence was all around him that something significant had taken place, and Werner wanted to get to the bottom of it for himself.

  However, the journey turned out to be far more of a challenge than he’d anticipated; once he and Karl had left the main track and entered the jungle, it wasn’t the occasional large chunk of masonry that hampered their progress, but the substantial amount of mashed-up foliage that was strewn everywhere.

  All this uprooted and shredded vegetation was still settling, and every so often whole branches or tangles of roots that had been suspended up in the giant trees fell to the ground. So not only were he and Karl clambering over the debris between the unaffected trees of the jungle, they were also forced to keep an eye out for anything that might drop on them from above.

  As they trekked through the jungle the amount of displaced greenery increased, until they were trying to circumnavigate small hillocks of it. Then, finally, the trees thinned, and they stepped out onto the huge area of bare earth.

  Karl glanced enquiringly at Werner.
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  ‘I know – it’s incredible,’ his uncle said. ‘Just look at it.’

  And they did for a moment, at the new form of the pyramid and then the incredible sight of the tower in the distance.

  ‘Maybe my brother’s not losing his mind, after all,’ Werner said under his breath, and they began across the fields of sundried dirt in this new landscape.

  By the base of the tower, Jürgen had been looking out for them and, as he spied them in the distance, rushed off to meet them.

  Elliott, still slightly shaken, had moved into the entrance chamber of the tower accompanied by her new shadow, Woody. The moment she was back inside the tower, a marked change came over her and she seemed far more at ease. She also took up Will’s suggestion that she lie down with her head propped on her rolled-up jacket, and soon drifted off to sleep.

  Jürgen finally arrived back with his brother and son. Seeing Elliott was soundly asleep, he gestured to Will that he was intending to take the other two upstairs, and they tiptoed off.

  Will found himself at a loose end. Not wanting to go too far from Elliott in case she woke up, he passed the time by making an exhaustive examination of the walls of the entrance chamber, knocking against them to see if he could find anything. Then he turned his attention to the two large columns, trying to work out what they were, and also seeing if he could produce any sort of change by touching their surfaces just as Elliott seemed to be able to do. He’d nearly finished exploring every inch of the columns he could reach when a voice from behind made him jump.

  ‘Here, let me,’ Elliott said. Rubbing her eyes, she didn’t seem to be fully awake as she took a step forward and brushed the column in front of him with her hand.

  There had been nothing to show that the particular area she’d selected was any different from the rest of the matt grey surface, but under her fingertips a three-pronged motif glowed blue. To the right of the symbol a door in the cylinder slipped silently open to reveal a chamber filled with creamy light.

  Will was speechless. He could have been performing a strange new dance as, moving from foot to foot, he tensed his arms in frustration and tried to shrug at the same time. ‘I don’t understand,’ he finally burst out, wheeling round to Elliott. ‘Why is it that only you can make this stuff work?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, massaging a shoulder to ease her muscles after her nap on the hard floor. She appeared far more relaxed now – the rest seemed to have helped her to get over the shock of what had happened at the top of the tower. But now Will was the one who was becoming increasingly unnerved.

  ‘But what makes you different from the rest of us? Is it because you’re half Styx?’ he suggested, then narrowed his eyes with suspicion. ‘Or is there something you’re not telling me? Because why didn’t Woody and his mates have a love-in with the Rebecca twin … or Vane … or any of the other Styx, for that matter, when they showed up in this world?’

  ‘Maybe my blood changed him?’ Elliott said with a frown. ‘Or maybe because Woody and all the other bushmen kept their distance. He told me they thought the Styx were like the New Germanians – just another load of people muscling in on their land.’ She was silent for a moment, her frown deepening as she touched the column twice, closing and then opening the door in it again. ‘And how I know these things – well, I told you, it’s the same as something you remember from a dream. It feels so real, but at the same time you know it can’t be real because it didn’t actually happen.’

  ‘Thanks – that’s made it all clear …’ Will said, cocking an eyebrow and grinning, ‘… as mud.’

  ‘I know it sounds crazy.’ Elliott looked at her feet as she rubbed her forehead. ‘And I feel as though there’s more in here, although I can’t tell you exactly what right now.’

  ‘There is? But you must have some idea what it is?’ Will shot back at her.

  She laughed with the strangeness of it all. ‘I won’t know what I know until I need to know it.’

  ‘Can you run that by me again?’ Will chuckled, but he was shaking his head in confusion at the same time. He turned to the column where the door had remained open. ‘But maybe we ought to find out what Jürgen and his brother are doing upstairs. That’s if I’m allowed in the lift, and don’t have to take the long way up like the rest of us lowly humans.’

  Elliott punched him gently in the chest, laughing. ‘Come on, lowly human,’ she said.

  Predictably Woody wasn’t going to be left out of the running, and slipped inside the lift too.

  Elliott touched a plain panel, sliding her hand up it, and the door immediately closed.

  Will was peering around him as he muttered, ‘Safe as houses.’

  ‘What?’ Elliott said.

  ‘No, nothing – I just remembered how much Chester hated lifts,’ Will explained. ‘After that dodgy one in the Colony.’

  ‘I hope he’s okay, wherever he is,’ Elliott said.

  ‘So do I, but come on – Woody and I are here and waiting – why haven’t you hit the up button?’ Will asked.

  ‘I already have,’ she said.

  The door slid back to reveal Jürgen and Werner having what appeared to be a heated exchange while Karl listened in, his eyes wide with alarm. The two New Germanian brothers instantly fell silent, their expressions quite comical as they watched Elliott step from the lift with Will and the bushman on either side of her.

  ‘Oh, hi,’ Werner said.

  ‘Elliott,’ Jürgen cut in before his brother could say more. ‘I suppose it’s asking a lot, but would you mind proving to these two,’ he said, indicating Werner and Karl, ‘that I wasn’t hallucinating up here? Could you give them a demonstration of what you can do on the next floor up?’

  Will was outraged on Elliott’s behalf. ‘She’s not a performing monkey, you know!’ he exploded, repeating a phrase he’d heard Dr Burrows use once. ‘I don’t think it’s fair for you t—’

  ‘No problem,’ Elliott interrupted him, moving towards the flight of stairs that led to the uppermost level of the tower. As soon as she was at the top, she went straight to the small console and laid a hand on its surface.

  They all watched in stunned silence as the circular wall was again filled with multiple images of Earth, of the ink-blue oceans and the wispy clouds up in the atmosphere and the brown-greens of the land masses.

  Will was again mesmerised. ‘I don’t understand. These views have to be from something floating around the Earth, like a satellite, or satellites … but why wouldn’t they have been discovered by now? Especially because they must have been there for donkey’s years,’ he reasoned out loud, turning to the New Germanians. However, they seemed to be too stunned to say anything at all.

  Karl had taken his father’s hand as the two watched in wonder, and Werner was laughing and shaking his head and saying ‘How is this possible?’ over and over as they watched the images of the outside world that none of them had ever actually been to.

  Then Werner stopped. ‘But is this really from now?’

  Will was standing beside Elliott as she touched different areas of the console, the blue lines and symbols glowing as her fingertips danced over them. ‘Sure it is,’ she answered.

  ‘Then can you show me Germany, please?’ Werner requested.

  Elliott had been moving her fingers over the console, but now she leant towards Will. ‘You’ll have to help me find it.’

  Will realised then that of course she wouldn’t be familiar with the world’s topography – why would she, when she’d spent virtually her whole life in the Colony and the Deeps?

  ‘There,’ Will said, pointing. ‘Close in on that area where the sun’s setting.’

  The whole of central Europe now filled the walls, although to the west a dark shadow was advancing across it as evening set in.

  ‘And now zoom in on that area …’ he directed her, pointing at part of the wall, ‘… but more over to the left.’

  ‘Look Jürgen, there’s the Ruhr!’ Werner said in an excited voic
e. ‘And there’s Cologne … and Essen, where our parents grew up. Isn’t that incredible!’

  It wasn’t that easy to see the river and the surrounding valley itself because dusk was settling over the area, although the various towns and cities along it were sparkling with all the many lights in them.

  ‘Okay, now can we go west towards England? I’d like to have another look at it,’ Will said, again pointing so Elliott knew where he wanted her to move the focus. The wall flickered, then settled down as France appeared, its cities iridescent against the evening sky.

  ‘Now go up,’ Will directed, as Elliott moved the view across the English Channel, and then stopped. ‘There it is again!’ he exclaimed excitedly, then was silent for a moment. ‘But why’s it so dark?’

  Although nothing had appeared amiss the last time they’d seen England, it had been in daylight. The picture that greeted them now was alarmingly different. There was none of the wash of illumination you’d expect to find in London, or indeed any of the major cities in the South East.

  ‘That can’t be right,’ Will said, trying to find an explanation for the darkness. ‘Zoom in a bit closer, will you?’

  Elliott did, so they could see that there were a small number of areas in the capital that were lit up, although these were few and far between. And several areas radiated a different type of light, with a red hue.

  ‘No. Are those fires?’ Will asked, his voice thin. ‘What’s going on down there?’ He looked at Elliott. ‘Unless there’s some sort of major power cut right across the UK, it’s all gone horribly wrong.’

  ‘So maybe my father and Parry didn’t stop the Phase and—’ Elliott began.

  ‘And the Styx have already done that to England,’ Will finished for her, unable to tear his eyes from the ominous darkness across London.