by Oliver EADE
“Teeth? Betrayed by Arthry? I don’t understand. The geyser wanted me and Gary… I mean me and you… killed outside the Retreat by those freaky gee-rats. Came snuffling after us, they did!”
“Never heard of a double agent? Have to admit gee-rats aren’t the greatest of my inventions, those genetically-modified horrors! Still, we needed… rather, will need… a reliable source of protein in the future. Like I said, Arthry’s a good double agent. Only way I could find out what’s really going on in the Terminus. He had to somehow pretend to prove to the little weasel, Blinker, he’d been against us all along and working for The Agenda. Was Arthry’s idea to get Blinker to rescue you in the tunnel! So you could honestly mislead Blinker into thinking you trusted him. Mike, I swear you can trust Arthry… and I don’t swear as much as I used to. Belinda changed that. She changed a lot of things, but I’m afraid Gary O’Driscoll will never make a leader. Not even with Beetie beside him. Arthry’s your man from now on, though I’m hoping one day you’ll learn enough from him to take over yourself when the time comes. Arthry’s decided on the people he’ll be taking. Had free rein because the Chairman thought he was their man. Left him to choose good men and women… in addition to girls like Cathy and Beetie who were being groomed in the Hatcheries by Zaman. For the delight of himself and his Atlantean cronies! Arthry’s chosen a thousand or so. Not as slaves for Zaman but pioneers for a new beginning. Based on their skills… their commitment. Most’ve been through the Retreat without the Chairman’s knowledge… and you, chum, effectively got rid of my biggest headache… Blinker! Funny thing, ay? All this having happened already in two hundred years’ time! Even I never get used to time-travel!”
Ashamed that he’d not recognised his friend straightaway, Mike knew this had to be Gary.
“The other Gary’s out to kill you. Funny sort of suicide, eh? I came to carry out the deed myself. Seemed the least I could do for a friend.”
God chuckled.
“Yeah! I know only too well how I feel about Beetie. Of course you would never be able to do me in. But there’s a far more important reason why I must never meet up with myself. I’m only beginning to understand these strange forces I’ve been playing around with for two hundred years, but one thing is certain. Present and future must never collide. We might both be destroyed. As for killing me, Gary O’Driscoll… the old man? No need for anyone to bother, Mike.”
“Gary, I’m getting a pretty uneasy feeling here. You’re saying Cathy and me are gonna whoosh off to a distant paradise planet in that weird contraption plonked there in middle of the Terminus. The Belindaron, or whatever? With the younger you?”
“Precisely!”
“Jesus Christ! So my mum knows too?”
“Mmm! She know’s it’s for the best. Redfor’s seen to everything. Same with my folks.”
“You met them again?”
“Yeah! Damned close to seeing the other me, I was, too. Didn’t like hiding things from Mum, but seems she has enough to cope with.”
“We’ll no longer exist back here. Right?”
“Chaos theory? A risk I have to take, Mike. This is why you’ve gotta be quick when you get to the Terminus. Why you have to listen to Arthry.”
“Gary… what about our parents? Mum and I both felt a sort of sadness… like we knew. Why can’t they come too?”
“I’m not God. Not the real God. In fact, I wish I’d never even signed things using my initials. Mike, something happens in the summer vacation. You and I have our last time together. We go on holiday. Youth hostelling in Scotland. Each of us desperate to meet up with a girl in one of the hostels, but we don’t. When we’re away something happens in London which affects our little part of the city in a big way. Terrorists! Can’t say any more. No point. Some things you can’t alter. This is what fired the anger that drove me forwards for the rest of my life… apart from that little interlude of bliss with Belinda. ’Course, someone from the past I’d befriended and wanted to help had to ruin everything! Chaos theory proved right, eh? Maybe things would’ve been different if I’d had you by my side for longer. You’d have advised me, given me direction. You understand people so much better than I do. As it is, we never saw each other again till when we met in the Terminus yesterday. You go to your Aunt Mabel in Harrogate after what’s gonna happen and I end up with Dad’s relatives in Ireland till university. By then, we lose touch. The whole country’s in a mess.”
Mike’s head was spinning.
“I… I’m… not sure I can leave them. I…”
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.
Chapter 16: The Power of a Child
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 f
lash 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 str
ength. 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.