Terminal

by Roderick Gordon

  ‘So you can’t shed any light on precisely what was guiding Elliott through all this?’ Parry asked. ‘Because it seems that she knew exactly what to do at each step.’

  Will shook his head. ‘She didn’t know herself. Perhaps my dad would have called it a race memory.’ Will touched his forehead. ‘Something deep in here because of her Styx blood – something that had been woken up by the tower or the pyramid, I suppose. I don’t know how else to explain it.’

  Parry and Will chatted for a while longer until Mrs Burrows and the First Officer returned to the room. Then, as Parry stood up to leave, Bartleby was roused from his sleep. He immediately scampered over to the window where, with his paws on the sill, he seemed to be staring out at the horizon.

  ‘Silly kitten,’ Mrs Burrows said affectionately. ‘What’s got him so interested?’

  Groaning with the discomfort, Will was trying to raise himself up so that he could say goodbye properly to Parry when something caught his eye through the window too.

  ‘What is it?’ the First Officer asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Will mumbled, squinting. ‘But … but is it my imagination, or does the sun look smaller than usual?’

  Chuckling as he heard Will’s comment, Parry was about to leave, his hand on the door handle when his satphone went off. He stopped to take it out and look at it. ‘America calling,’ he said.

  ‘It does look smaller, you know,’ Will murmured, still transfixed by the pale circle in the sky. Bartleby hadn’t shifted from the window, as if his animal intuition was telling him something too.

  ‘Yes, Bob, what can I do for you?’ Parry asked.

  ‘That’s it!’ Will burst out. ‘That’s what she told me! The last thing Elliott said to me was that we were all going home … that she’d had to start some sort of recall.’

  ‘What do you mean, going home? Home where?’ Mrs Burrows asked.

  ‘NASA are saying what!’ Parry bellowed into his phone.

  ‘Elliott said she had to start a recall in order to stop the Styx and the Armagi,’ Will said. ‘She didn’t know where we were going, but she said this might happen. The whole planet, or spaceship, or whatever you want to call it, would begin to move.’

  ‘That all sounds a bit crazy, Will,’ Mrs Burrows said. ‘How can you really believe in this whole planet-as-spaceship theory anyway?’

  ‘You wouldn’t dismiss it so quickly if you’d seen what I’ve seen in the centre of the world. And no, it’s not so crazy if you think about it,’ Will replied. ‘Why do you think humans have always gone underground at the first sign of any trouble? Because that’s where we feel safe. Why do you think Sir Gabriel Martineau and all the Colonists built a city underground with the Styx?’ Will posed to his mother and the First Officer. ‘Because that’s our natural instinct. Because the centre of the world is where we all came from, and maybe for all these thousands of years we’ve just been trying to get home again.’

  Parry hadn’t finished his call with Bob, but had his hand over the microphone as he hurried to the window. Bartleby still had his paws up on the sill and regarded Parry with some curiosity.

  After a moment, Parry turned to Will, his face ashen. ‘The latest positional information from NASA is that the Earth has begun to deviate from its orbit. NASA says it’s unprecedented. They believe we’ve started to move away from the sun.’

  ‘Told you,’ Will said, as he struggled to sit up. ‘Mum, can you find out what they did with my clothes? And can you also find a doctor to do something about these tubes, because I can’t get very far with them still inside me.’

  ‘Why? Where are you going?’ Mrs Burrows asked.

  Will glanced at the view through the window again. ‘You need to get all those Colonists underground again, and I’m coming back there with you. Because I don’t think any of us should stick around here on the surface any longer than we have to.’

  ‘Bob – sorry to keep you hanging on like that,’ Parry said. ‘Yes, you’re right. Seems we’ve got ourselves another situation here. And it’s damned serious.’

  Chapter Twenty-three

  One week went by, then a second, and the tower didn’t allow Elliott to go outside. Although there was a risk that Limiters might still be alive and lying in wait for her, Elliott would try the door each day, but so far it had been to no avail.

  And not much in the tower would allow her to operate it, with the exception of the lift. Elliott had even tried the transporter on the penultimate floor, thinking that she might return Topsoil. She was incredibly concerned for Will, and had no way of finding out whether he’d survived the impregnation by Hermione. But again, try as she might, the surfaces of the console had remained grey and lifeless, with not the smallest sign of the blue lights. And the remote viewing device was completely unresponsive to her.

  Out of desperation, she also tried everything she could to extract the sceptre again, but the plinth wasn’t giving it up.

  Elliott assumed that the tower, and whatever it was part of, was running some sort of program that restricted what could be done inside it, but for how long she had no way of knowing. It was as if the program, once activated, had to run its course.

  And as she whiled away the hours in the tower, she wondered what had become of the New Germanians and the bushman. Perhaps, as the Styx had begun to materialise out of thin air, they had all fled. She couldn’t imagine Woody going very far from the tower in her absence, so she assumed that the Limiters must have caught him early on.

  And the three New Germanians might not even have been anywhere near the tower when the mass influx of Styx began. Perhaps they’d been safely out of the way in their city. However, it would have been the Limiters’ first port of call, so she didn’t give much for their chances unless they’d hopped on a boat and fled to one of the remote outposts she’d heard them talk about.

  And she began to think of the tower as a living thing, some sixth sense telling her that processes were going on within it. But if it did possess some form of sentience, then she asked herself if it had any consideration for her, because she could quite easily have died of starvation or thirst if it hadn’t been for the supplies left behind by the New Germanians in the entrance chamber. Elliott would make her way down there during the day, light a fire and prepare herself meals, although it had to be said she never felt very hungry. Perhaps, she wondered, that was why the tower felt it could lock her in. Because perhaps she didn’t actually need any sustenance while she was inside its walls?

  And then one day when she pressed her hand to the wall by the doorway, the tower suddenly freed her.

  The panel slipped open, and she stepped out into the now knee-high fields of green grass and saplings. She hadn’t wandered very far when she came across a Limiter’s body, almost stepping on it where it was stretched out in the new vegetation. Although the Limiter had already been ravaged by birds, he was lying with his rifle at his side, as if he had been waiting to ambush her.

  Elliott kept walking through the fields, aware that she might stumble across her father’s body.

  And there, in all those lush fields, she felt so very much alone, imprisoned in the middle of the world, with just the flocks of birds to keep her company.

  As her only travelling companions.

  Because Elliott was only too aware that the planet was returning home. She had used the word ‘Recall’, and that’s what it was; having failed to reach its destination, the ship was being recalled to its rightful place. Back home again.

  But where that home was, and what manner of beings would be there to greet her when they arrived, she couldn’t even begin to guess.

  But she had no option now.

  She – and the world – were on their way.

  Epilogue

  ‘Come along. Up you get, Bart Kitten,’ Will said, patting the bed beside him. Apart from the occasional excursion outside to catch a rat or two, the young Hunter had been Will’s almost constant companion since his mother had brought him down to
the Colony with her to convalesce.

  It was all rather fitting, because Will was being tended to in the very same room in which Mrs Burrows had made her miraculous recovery after the Styx had left her for dead following her excessive Darklighting. The sitting room in the First Officer’s house was precisely how it had been for her stay, the furniture moved aside to make space for a bed. And that was precisely where Will had spent the last couple of weeks, lolling around in bed and largely left to his own devices except for the odd house call from a doctor.

  Truth be told, Will was having the time of his life.

  Safe in the knowledge that the threat from the Styx had been removed once and for all, he was enjoying the opportunity to laze around all day long, sleeping as much as he felt like in his nice, warm bed.

  And he certainly was being well and truly pampered – the First Officer’s mother and his sister, Eliza, had been asked to do their bit and look after him in the daytime when the First Officer and Mrs Burrows were busy with Colony matters.

  The Colony had indeed become a very busy place again. Parry and his SAS unit had moved there, along with a contingent of Topsoil survivors from London and the South East. At least there’d been ample room for this influx of new residents because the Styx’s merciless harvesting of the Colonists for the Phase had left whole streets empty.

  Will found he didn’t miss being Topsoil at all, although he knew there was much debate up there over how the atmosphere might be affected as the planet continued its inexorable drift away from the sun. Would the air be lost as the planet edged further and further from its orbit and, eventually, out of the solar system, or was there some form of field to keep it intact? And would surface temperatures plummet until they were only a few degrees above absolute zero, the temperature of deep space?

  Human life, and all life, would become unfeasible in that situation.

  But Will didn’t linger on these fears for too long – he was more than happy to hide away in his darkened bedroom and wait for his next meal to be brought to him. He felt that he’d had more than his fair share of unpleasantness at the hands of the Styx, and it was someone else’s turn now to solve the problems. So he was quite content to fill his days with trivial and insignificant things for a change, which included playing with the oversized kitten.

  ‘Oh, do come on, Bart!’ he said tetchily, patting the bed beside him even harder.

  Much to his surprise, the cat narrowed his eyes and began to back out of the room, snarling at him. Then, with a last rumbling growl, Bartleby was off, haring down the corridor and into the kitchen.

  ‘Stupid bloody moggy,’ Will muttered in a disappointed voice, folding his arms huffily across his chest.

  Hearing the commotion, Mrs Burrows came to investigate. ‘What’s got into that cat?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve absolutely no idea,’ Will replied. ‘Something must have rattled him. He’s nothing like Bartleby – that’s for sure.’

  For a moment Mrs Burrows remained in the doorway, staring at her son with her sightless eyes. She sniffed, then said, ‘Supper’s nearly ready. Hope you’re hungry?’

  ‘Certainly am, Mum,’ he replied.

  At first it had felt a little peculiar to be part of his mother’s new life in the Colony, her apparent domestic bliss with the First Officer. But in a way, Will believed that he had every right to be there; he was making up for lost time because he’d never known anything like it when they’d lived together in Highfield. All through those years, Mrs Burrows had been far from a perfect mother as she occupied her days with her beloved television and not much else. Certainly not cooking meals for him!

  ‘Can you guess what we’re having?’ she said, smiling as she and her son went through their little routine.

  ‘Um … not pennybun stew, by any chance?’ Will replied, playing the game and acting as if this was some startling novelty when the large mushrooms were just about the only thing that Colonists ate, day in, day out.

  Mrs Burrows cleared her throat. ‘Eliza tells me that Stephanie came to see you yet again today,’ she said matter-offactly because she knew Will was still missing Elliott terribly. ‘It wouldn’t do you any harm to let the poor girl in and talk to her.’

  ‘Maybe …’ Will replied noncommittally. ‘When I feel better.’

  Mrs Burrows wasn’t going to push the point; she was just on the way out of the room when Will said, ‘If that cat isn’t coming back, can you shut the door, please, Mum?’

  ‘You really like the dark now, don’t you?’ she said.

  He’d asked to have the luminescent orb removed from the fitting in the middle of the ceiling because, even shrouded, it had been keeping him awake. Of course it made no difference to Mrs Burrows if there was light or not, and every Colonist had been raised to live with constant illumination, even during periods of sleep, because the orbs burnt unceasingly.

  ‘I do. Yes,’ he answered and, as she pulled the door shut, Will let out a long sigh, relishing the pitch black in the room.

  Ah, the wonderful, chocolatey darkness, he thought to himself, allowing it to lap over him now he was alone.

  In the silence of the house, snatches of his mother’s conversation with the First Officer carried down the corridor from the kitchen. She was talking about the Hunter’s strange behaviour, then there was a large crash as she dropped something and swore loudly. It sounded like a pan, so it was probably their supper hitting the deck. Mrs Burrows evidently still had a lot of catching up to do when it came to domesticity.

  There was the low rumble of the First Officer’s voice – Will couldn’t make out the words, but he sounded concerned. Then Will heard his mother announce, quite clearly because she was at the kitchen door and facing down the corridor, ‘I know you’ll think me mad, but I tell you – I can smell Styx. It’s faint, but it’s in this house!’

  The First Officer’s booming laugh filled the building. ‘You are mad,’ he said with affection.

  ‘Too right, mate. She is mad,’ Will echoed in a whisper, chuckling to himself.

  He stopped chuckling as the realisation struck home.

  The way Bartleby was reacting to him.

  His sudden yearning to be in the dark.

  His mother’s supersense, which was rarely wrong.

  Will placed a hand on his stomach, gingerly feeling it. Jiggs had said that the Styx grubs might have left something behind: chemicals … enzymes …

  Will sat up slowly.

  Was he somehow changing?

  Changing into something else?

  Changing into a Styx?

  He held quite still for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Does this never end?’ he cried.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank:

  Barry Cunningham, publisher and editor of the Tunnels series, without whom there would have been no beginning and no end. He has the patience of a saint (he’s needed it when dealing with me), and the imagination, empathy and the light touch that have helped and encouraged me through all these books. So, thank you for everything, Barry. We finally did it. We got there. Now where’s that film you promised?

  I would also like to thank …

  You. If it wasn’t for all you readers out there, who have supported my series over the years, there’s no way that I’d be writing these words at this very moment. So thank you. And, yes, I do care about what you think, and I do read your reviews!

  The Chicken House: Rachel, Nicki, Steve and Esther, and all the rest of the team who have made the books what they are.

  Karen Everitt, who has been so instrumental in keeping me on the right track with each instalment, and has spotted all the things I’ve missed. And there have been many!

  And all those people throughout the world who have helped with the series and made such a difference. I know I’m going to put noses out of joint by not listing all your names, but I’d like to give the following a particular mention: Sirius Homes (aka Javier Recari Ansa), Kirill Barybin, Mathew Horsman, Joel Guelzo
, Simon Wilkie, Craig Turner, and Julian Power.

  And, of course, my hard-put-upon family, Sophie, George and Frankie, who are now allowed back in my study again. I find I can only write books because I have an almost religious conviction that I’m doing the right thing, and I know that sometimes it isn’t easy for those around me.

  And lastly I want to say goodbye to my friend. Will, I’m really going to miss you.

  Roderick Gordon

  But if you leave me to love another you’ll regret it all some day,

  You are my sunshine …

  Please don’t take my sunshine away.

  You Are My Sunshine by Jimmie Davis and Charles Mitchell, 1940

  Helen Hayes, published in Guideposts (January, 1960). Walt Whitman, ‘Salut au Monde!’, first published in Leaves of Grass, Second Edition (1856).

  Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright holders. The publishers would be pleased to rectify any errors or omissions brought to their notice at the earliest opportunity.

  From The Chicken House

  I can’t believe this is the last part of the bestselling Tunnels series. I’ve waited so long to find out why, when and oh no – not that!

  The secrets revealed here are deep, rich and satisfying – there’s sadness, joy and excitement, too.

  Rod Gordon has continued the original Tunnels vision to a stunning and terrifying conclusion. The only thing left to find out is: how did it all start? Answers, please!

  Barry Cunningham

  Publisher

  Text © Roderick Gordon 2013

  Cover illustration © David Wyatt 2013

  All inside illustrations and chapter headers © Kirill Barybin 2013, except for

  “Bartleby Kitten” © Roderick Gordon 2013.

  First paperback edition published in Great Britain in 2013