I was right behind him by that point.
"Abos?"
He dropped the mop and jumped about three feet into the air.
"Miss Lofthouse. I was just—"
"Keeping the item abreast with current popular music trends, yes, so I see."
I couldn't resist teasing Mike. Although we are the same age, there's something young and puppy-like about him, and I know I act much older than twenty. I've run the household since I was fourteen. I often feel socially awkward or inadequate. But I can relax around Mike because he's even more inept than I am.
"Why Abos?"
Mike blushed and pushed his glasses up his nose.
"It's just a, well, it's silly. It's a nickname, really. Um, you know, just something..."
I waited. Eventually, he came to the point.
"One night, I called it an amorphous blob of slime, and the name stuck in my head. Like I said, silly."
"Abos. Amorphous Blob Of Slime." I considered it for a few moments and realised I liked it. If McKean was right, and the sludge inside the cylinder was alive, it was only right to give it a name.
"I like it," I said. "Abos it is."
As impossible as it sounds, I believe Mike managed to blush a little more.
Anyway, the visitors clustered around Abos and didn't seem to pay Father very much attention at all. As they were peering at the cylinder, Miss Hodge bustled in with some paperwork and wrote some figures on the blackboard in the corner. Before she had been there two minutes, the door swung open again, and McKean and Roger came in carrying instruments I hadn't seen for months. Once Father had introduced them to the suits, they started taking measurements, recording temperatures, comparing readings, and so on.
At that point, I understood what was going on. Father was putting on a show. Nothing has changed since we first saw Abos a year and a half ago. We've learned virtually nothing apart from the fact that it is impossible to gain access to the contents of the cylinder. Nothing will cut, dent, or even slightly mark that transparent surface. Every known chemical combination has been tested, along with extremes of temperature. Because of McKean's insistence that Abos is alive, a television and radio were wheeled in, and educational programmes played. English language lessons, basic biology, that kind of thing. No response from Abos, but a gradual deflation of excitement for all of us.
When I caught a glimpse of the bearded man at the centre of the small group, I understood what the visit was about and why Father was so desperate to impress them. Even I, with my feeble grasp of politics, was able to recognise the Chancellor Of The Exchequer.
They stayed for five minutes, then went straight to Purcell's office. I saw Father's shoulders slump as the door closed behind them.
Oh dear.
March 15th, 1971
They're not quite closing us down, but feels like it.
Father called a meeting this afternoon after spending much of the morning with Purcell. He came straight to the point.
"Our funding is being cut by ninety percent."
The silence was grim after that bombshell. McKean broke it.
"Bloody politicians. There's an election coming, and they want to protect their skins, find some extra cash to bribe the electorate with. Scum."
Roger was upset, too. His eyes actually blaze when he's angry. I may have flushed a little.
"Idiots! How can they turn off the tap now? I know we haven't been able to get into the cylinder, but it's not as if we can drop a bomb on the bloody thing, is it? There are new technologies being developed which could change everything. I was in Cambridge last week, watching gas-assisted laser cutting tools go through steel. In the States, my old team are working on—"
Father cut him off with a weary wave of his hand.
"There's no point, Roger. It's over. The decision has been made. We will meet here once a quarter. If there is any change in the item's status, we will be recalled. But for now, we all need to find alternative employment. We can expect glowing letters of recommendation, at least."
No one responded. A good job in a university science department could hardly replace the possibilities lying there in the lab. But everyone present understood we'd run out of options. No progress had been made.
"So what happens to Abos, er, the item?" Mike rarely spoke up in meetings and, when everyone swung round to look at him, he stared at the floor.
"It stays right here," said Father. "The new budget means I will be here one day a week. Mike, if you can find a part-time job that will allow you the time, I'd like you to come in every morning and keep up regular observation."
Mike nodded. Funny. I almost fancy he thinks of Abos as his friend.
The rest of the meeting involved a few half-hearted complaints, some fruitless speculation about the next election, and a great deal of bitterness.
Father told me later that I can continue to keep records, accompanying him once a week. I have been offered a secretarial position in a nearby government department for the other four working days. If I want to take it. Instead, he encouraged me to go to university as a mature student. He knows that's what I've always wanted.
I took a long look at Father's tired eyes. I'm convinced that, were I to leave home and pursue my studies, he would be utterly lost without me. So I lied and said I wanted nothing more than to stay in my favourite city with my wonderful father and continue to help him with Abos, despite the funding cuts.
He didn't even try to hide his relief.
So, no university degree, then. And a menial dead-end career for life. Not a good day for anyone. It ended even more badly.
Roger made a pass at me. I know, I know, it's what I wanted. We've been flirting for months, but I wasn't sure it would be a good idea to mix work and pleasure. Besides, he'd never yet even asked me out for a drink after work. Recently, I've started to think I must have been misreading the signs.
We all went to the Mason's Arms this evening. Even Sandra Hodge, although she only stayed long enough to sip primly at a bitter lemon before saying a curt goodbye and leaving.
Roger had squeezed in next to me on the bench, and I was extremely aware of his leg pushing against mine as we sat there. Roger and Father were talking about microprocessors, an innovation I had never heard of and was struggling to understand. Why on earth would anyone want a computer in their home? They'd have to set aside a whole room for it. Roger seemed enthusiastic, anyway. I was unable to contribute much, partly because of my ignorance of the subject, but also because of that leg. McKean was drinking pints of stout, one after the other, saying little.
While Father was at the bar, Roger slipped an arm around me for a moment and whispered something. I have no idea what he said because all I was aware of was the fact that he had gently licked my earlobe. After nearly spilling my drink, I managed to compose myself, although I was convinced my face must be broadcasting my feelings.
Which were what, exactly?
Shocked? A little. Annoyed? No. Turned on? Yes, very. No point denying it.
So when Roger was at the bar and Mike said something to me when he stood up to leave, I had to make him repeat it.
"I said, did you know Roger's living with a girl?" Mike held a cloth cap between his fingers and was kneading it nervously. He looked miserable.
I felt a stab of anger. Just behind it was a flood of understanding because I knew it was true. It explained why Roger had never asked me out., The fact that he had never mentioned this girl also spoke volumes. At that moment, however, I was too upset to think straight, and I'm ashamed to say I took it out on poor Mike. I told him to mind his own business, reminding him it was the nineteen seventies, not the nineteen thirties, and who I choose to sleep with was my concern.
No, I don't understand why I said those things. The only male I've slept with is Mr Tedkins, the bear I've had since I was tiny. My decision to stay in London felt like I'd just turned my back on three years away from home, a chance to embrace my womanhood, lose my virginity, "fool around," as Roger char
mingly puts it. And now Mike had spoiled this little glimpse of sexual freedom by telling me what, deep down, I already knew: Roger is a cad. It's an old-fashioned word, but, when it comes right down to it, I'm an old-fashioned girl.
It happened when I was coming back from the toilet. The Mason's Arms is one of those pre-war pubs where the toilet is still outside. I'd just stepped out when a shape emerged from the darkness. I think I shrieked a little, then giggled at my nervousness.
It was Roger, of course. I'm not going to go every detail here, as I intend to forget what happened as quickly as possible. Suffice to say, he had made a unilateral decision that we were going to have sex, right then and there, against the wall of the pub. As if I was a cheap whore. He had his hand up my skirt and was kissing me before I knew what was happening. Apparently, being pushed away and told, "no" over and over is meaningless to him. He treated it like foreplay.
A swift knee to the genitals did the trick, though. I walked back to the pub, leaving him vomiting in the gutter.
Father was just standing up when I got back in.
"Shall we call it a night, Cress?"
I nodded mutely at him. He was so wrapped up in what had happened that he didn't really look at me. I wonder if he would have noticed anything if he had. When we got outside, Roger was just coming back in. He held the door open for us.
"You look peaky, Sullivan," said Father. "I suggest you call it a night."
"I think you're right, sir." Roger smiled at him, and winked at me. The nerve of the man.
"Goodnight, sir. Goodnight, Cressida."
"Goodnight." The word was out before I could stop it, and as we walked to the tube station, I knew I would never mention what Roger had done. After everything that's happened, I wouldn't want to do that to Father. I know Roger's a key member of the team.
At least I'll only have to see him once a quarter.
5
Daniel
The summer of '98 was the best of my life right up to the day when it all turned to shit.
At first, I assumed the changes in my body were part of puberty. All the books mentioned a timeframe during which puberty would begin, and I knew I was at the far end of late. What the books didn't do was detail any unusual changes late developers might experience. For all I knew, what was happening might be commonplace in those who nearly made it to their eighteenth birthday before their voices dropped.
I assumed I had been suffering constitutional delayed puberty. It was inherited from one, or both, parents. I was still weeks away from the revelation about my father's identity, and there was no way I was going to ask Mum when she'd first grown pubic hair.
So when, just over a week after I broke the bed, my head brushed the lintel of my doorframe, I put it down to a growth spurt, which might be common during constitutional delayed puberty.
I had developed the kind of obsessive relationship with my mirror associated with narcissists. I spent far too long looking at myself, my gaze wandering from my face to my chest, stomach, groin, legs, and—thanks to a cunningly positioned second mirror propped against the cupboard—my arse.
I had a better excuse than most for my fixation. My appearance was changing daily. A fortnight after the incident with the bed, I was down to just two chins. I'm not sure how many seventeen-year-old boys have whooped and fist-pumped the air on discovering a double chin, but I danced around the room when I saw mine.
From five chins to two in fifteen days. By the following weekend, I was down to one.
The changes in my body were even more remarkable, but, since I could conceal them by continuing to wear baggy clothes and making sure I slouched, I didn't attract any unwanted attention. I had just left school forever, it was holiday time, and, since I didn't have a single friend, no one witnessed my impossible transformation. Mum was around every day but it was easy to stay out of her way. I left the house every morning and didn't return until late afternoon, by which time, she was drunk enough not to notice me. Even if she did, she was unlikely to remember it the following day.
I had been accepted at a North London college to take a degree in English. The college in question called itself a university, but we all knew you only went there if you couldn't get in anywhere else. I didn't care. I was finally getting away. I had applied for a student loan, I'd be able to rent a room in a shared house. I could escape. And, since no one at university was likely to know me, my changed appearance would go unnoticed. Although, as I admired the slabs of muscle where my sagging breasts used to hang, I dared to hope I might attract a little female attention.
It's difficult to look back without pitying the optimistic young man I briefly became that summer. I might have gone to university. I might have got a degree, a job, a normal life. A girlfriend. Kids, maybe, one day.
But even then, even as I posed in front of the mirror, I think there was part of me—the part that had got used to the hundred insults every day—that knew there would be a price to pay.
I just didn't know how high that price would be.
I took the bus to Harlow every day. I'd told Mum I had a summer job, but that was just to stop her asking questions. Not that it was likely she would. That would mean taking an interest in my life.
Tilkley business park stood in an undeveloped wasteland three miles out of town. Built in a flurry of early eighties economic optimism, its developers had hoped to entice companies from London's booming financial services industry. The timing couldn't have been worse. Before the park was even half completed, the economic crash sucked away all the interest along with all the cash.
There had been a few unsuccessful attempts to reverse the site's fortunes over the years. Now, the few completed buildings gave the otherwise empty landscape an eerie atmosphere, like a nineteen seventies science fiction film with a tiny budget. A cheap, man-in-a-rubber-suit monster wobbling around the cracked-concrete roads wouldn't have looked out of place.
For a few weeks, I had the place to myself.
My first visit was the most memorable.
I got off the bus at the stop after Tilkley, jogging the mile back. Jogging was a new experience, and I relished it, feeling no pain in my legs, no slap of fat against fat, no burning lungs as I casually ran along the road to the entrance. I didn't realise how fast I was going until I caught up with a cyclist. Not wanting to draw attention, I backed off. I couldn't stop smiling.
When I reached the park, I didn't slow, just turned into the curving entrance road leading to its chained gates, then followed the metal fencing to the left, where a forest butted up against the southern perimeter. I ran a whole circuit of the site. The back entrance was locked. At one point, the trees grew as close as three yards to the fence, and it was here that I left the path and headed into the cool shade of the forest.
From there, I climbed a tree and had a good look at the site. Despite the prominent signs on the gates and fence, I doubted Tilkley Business Park was "patrolled twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week." The whole place was surrounded by an unbroken, twelve-foot steel chain-link fence topped with razor wire. Why pay for a security company too? There were signs with pictures of video cameras on them, but no actual cameras. The place was too far out of town for local teens or druggies to hang out. There was graffiti, but it was old.
The place was deserted. It was perfect. I just had to work out how to get in.
I inspected the fence. Right at the top, just under the razor wire, it looked like it might be possible to peel back the metal links, which were rusting. Over the course of the previous week, I had started getting stronger every day. There were three bent forks, a crushed tin of cat food and a telephone book ripped in two to prove it. If my half-baked plan of becoming a freelance writer failed, I could always enter The World's Strongest Man competition. I squinted at the top of the fence. I was sure I'd be able to bend the metal. If I could get up there.
I decided to take a run-up, jump as high as I could, grab the fence and climb the rest of the way. Every kid has climbed a ch
ain-link fence. It's easy when you're eight years old and weigh very little. It's a different story when you weigh...well, I have no idea what I weighed. I'd stood on a big pair of scales at Boots the week before, and they'd broken. I had no desire to find out what effect that kind of weight might have on my fingers if they were the only things supporting me as I hung from the fence.
I took ten paces backwards, eyeing the area I hoped to reach when I jumped. I decided that if it was too painful to climb the fence, I'd just have to find another way in. That proved to be unnecessary.
About six steps into an explosive run-up, I pushed down into the dirt as hard as I could with my right leg and propelled my body upwards. My fingers formed claws ready to grab the chain links.
I missed the fence. It passed under me. I was at least five feet above the razor wire as I soared over it, my mouth open in surprise and delight. I had about a second to panic about landing before my feet hit the concrete. There was no grace in the manoeuvre that followed. I rolled six or seven times in total before coming to rest in an untidy heap, face down in a nettle. Weirdly, my face didn't hurt at all.
I sat up and crossed my legs underneath me, taking stock. My fat had turned to muscle, I was now over six feet tall, I could jump about fifteen feet into the air, and my face could withstand the sting of a nettle. Does resistance to nettle stings count as a superpower? I like to think it does.
I don't know if anyone will understand this, or believe it, but I didn't spend much time wondering what was happening to me. I didn't care. I was alive, strong, fast. Unstoppable. I sat there and laughed at the sheer joy of being alive.
It was a great moment.
I came up with a daily routine. I'd arrive at Tilkley and jog around the site. The first couple of laps to make sure I was alone before upping my speed. I discovered I could run fast - how fast, I couldn't tell, but I guessed my pace was somewhere between keen amateur runner and professional athlete. I wouldn't be outrunning a car anytime soon, but I was respectably quick. I could sprint very fast but only over short distances. About a hundred yards before my lungs started to burn and my legs couldn't take any more punishment.
Children Of The Deterrent (Halfhero Book 1) Page 3