"Um, fell off my bike," I said. They kept staring. "It's, er, being repaired. Buckled the wheel."
Someone nodded. It sounded plausible. The body language of the other passengers relaxed a little. I glanced at my watch. Five more minutes before the bus was due.
That was when I saw the kebab. It was sitting at the top of the bin. Half-eaten, bits of lettuce sticking out of the pitta bread. Food.
My brain turned off again, and I staggered over to the bin. The other passengers flinched—I'm sure I heard a whimper from one of them—then froze, as they realised they had backed themselves into the corner of the shelter.
Ignoring everyone else, I grabbed the kebab and ate it in three bites. Including the paper it was wrapped in.
It had gone quiet. I turned and looked at some very frightened faces. There was a schoolboy staring at me, a Mars bar halfway to his mouth. He slowly handed it over and scuttled back. I nodded my thanks and threw it in after the kebab.
"Thirsty," I croaked.
An old lady shuffled forwards, reached into a shopping trolley and pulled out a thermos.
"Tea?"
"Please."
She handed it over, and I unscrewed the lid.
"It might be a bit cold by now, sorry about that. Hope you don't mind sugar, I never used to take it myself until the dentist whipped my teeth out and put falsies in, then I thought, 'Well, Ethel, where's the harm? Stick four sugars in if you like.' I said to Bert, I said, 'Stick four sugars in,' didn't I, Bert? Still, if you get to eighty-seven, I reckon you're entitled."
She talked while I tipped my head back and poured about half a litre of glorious lukewarm sweet tea down my throat. It tasted like the elixir of life. I handed back the thermos as the bus pulled up.
"Ethel," I said, "you're a bloody star."
She smiled nervously. I stood back to let everyone on the bus first but, as one, they waved me on ahead of them.
No one else boarded. For some reason, they all waited for the next bus.
8
Cressida
June 19th, 1978
The last seven days have been so surreal it's as if they happened to someone else. This is the first chance I've had to gather my thoughts and write something.
We got the call on Monday morning, just as Father was about to leave for the university. We walk to the Underground together most days, so I was already opening the door when the phone rang.
The morning sun hits the front of our terrace, and as I stood in the open doorway, light streaming in, I couldn't help noticing how old he looks now. I had hoped the Abos project would give him a new passion, a new reason to get up in the mornings, but the way it had ended had sucked the energy out of him still further. I have an awful feeling that the only reason he puts any effort into keeping going is because I'm here, and he doesn't want to let me down. Which is ironic, because the only reason I'm here is to stop him sinking into a pit of alcohol-fuelled depression from which he'll never emerge. We've trapped each other.
The phone call changed everything.
It was a short call, during which he nodded and said "yes," a number of times. The only other words he said were, "what do you mean, he?"
He put the phone down with shaking hands and looked at me with a spark in his eyes I haven't seen for years.
"That was Ainsleigh. Station is sending a car for us. The project is to resume with immediate effect. There has been a development."
I heard the car draw up in front of the house, but after nine years of looking at that container of blue-green slime without a single visible change, I wasn't going to let Father get away with "there has been a development."
"What do you mean?' What did he say?"
Father guided me out of the hall and down the steps to the waiting car.
"Ainsleigh referred to Abos as 'he.' When I questioned him, he said, 'wait and see'."
As the car pulled into the traffic, I put my hand on Father's arm.
"Have you considered the possibility that, after all these years of sacrificing a promising scientific career, Mike might have lost his mind?"
Yes," said Father, "I have."
No one would have been surprised if Mike Ainsleigh had slipped over the fine line between sanity and insanity. Either out of loyalty to the project, commitment to the advancement of knowledge, or because of the problems he had interacting socially, Mike had spent more time than anyone with Abos. He was paid to go in six mornings a week, record his observations and prepare the report for the quarterly meetings. Up to now, a photocopy of the last meeting's report would have been sufficient, since nothing ever changed. Despite that, Mike once admitted to me that, more often than not, he came in on Sunday mornings, unpaid. He couldn't explain why.
I have a soft spot for Mike, but I would be lying if I didn't admit I feel sorry for him. There's a little of the savant about him. A brilliant brain, but a limited understanding of how to relate to others. And, putting modesty aside for a moment, I would have to be a complete dullard not to notice the way he looks at me.
So my mood, as I took the familiar lift with its industrial beige carpet down to the labyrinthine complex of tunnels, labs, dorms, and who knows what else, was a little ambivalent, to say the least. If this was Mike losing his grip on reality, rather than a bona fide breakthrough with Abos, it might just tip Father over the edge. For three months after Mother died, he was in a place so black that I almost lost hope of his ever coming back. If he were ever to find himself back there, I doubted he would recover.
Mike met us underground as the lift doors opened. His frenetic manner and unkempt appearance did nothing to dispel my worries. He grabbed Father's sleeve and practically dragged him to the lab, such was his excitement. He was gabbling non-stop as we half-walked, half-jogged to keep up with him. I don't think he finished a single sentence before a new thought hit him and he plunged into another. The effect on the listener was very much like that of trying to tune the radio to listen to the news. Words and partial sentences flew out of him as if he were possessed. I stopped trying to understand after the first thirty seconds.
The lab was a five-minute walk away, but that day it felt like an hour. The whole experience was like a dream one might have just before waking, when your mind is hovering around the border of consciousness, telling your sleeping self that this can't be real.
I started to wonder if I was about to wake up and find myself at home. Then Mike opened the door, and I saw what had brought on his manic behaviour.
I grabbed Father's arm to steady myself. He had become rigid, staring straight ahead. I only realised he had stopped breathing when he finally let out one long breath in an explosion of air.
Mike stood back as Father and I approached the metal table.
The cylinder was smaller. That was the first thing I noticed. The top of it had always obscured the clock on the far wall of the lab. Now I could see the time clearly: 8:17. It was so quiet that I could hear the second hand ticking as we reached the table and looked at Abos.
Father slowly and deliberately removed his reading glasses from his jacket pocket before staring at what had, just three days earlier, been a blue-green mass of mushy pea-like slime. What had replaced it was bigger - maybe twice the size of the slime it had replaced. And the transparent interior of the cylinder was now a viscous liquid, surrounding and supporting its occupant.
"Bigger," came a voice from the door. Neither Father or I could look away. Mike repeated it. "Bigger. He's bigger than he was even a few hours ago. He's growing."
What we were looking at was a hairless human body, tucked into a loose foetal position. The foetal comparison was further justified by the softness of the shape, the unfinished nature of hands, feet and skull, the lack of definition. The body we were looking at was still forming, veins visible just beneath the translucent skin, stretching thin red threads of blood out from the hub in its chest. A gently hypnotic rhythmic pulse emanated from a still-developing heart.
Father and I stood in
mute awe for a few minutes, then we both bent down to look more closely. The body was roughly the size of a twelve-year-old.
As if reading my mind, Mike spoke again.
"He was about the size of a toddler when I came in. I think he's feeding on the container."
Then I saw the umbilical cord. Instead of connecting the foetus to a host, it floated alongside the body. But the cylinder was smaller than it had been three days earlier, and the body was growing, so Mike's guess was probably a good one.
Father was near the head. He looked long and hard at the face floating just a few inches from his own, his eyes misted with tears.
I knelt and pressed my face close to the edge of the container. Abos shuddered, and I gasped at the unexpected movement. The change of position caused something to loosen and shift before it drifted into my field of vision.
"Oh, my," I whispered. At least one mystery had been cleared up beyond any doubt. I knew now why Mike was insisting on referring to Abos as he.
The rest of the day was a bit of a blur, as were the two that followed. Abos continued to grow, and we watched his development with fascination, hour after hour. Observation is still the limit of our involvement, as the surface of the cylinder is as impenetrable as ever. There has been a twelve-degree rise in temperature, but that's all we know.
The heightened atmosphere around Station has infected everyone. McKean and Roger are behaving as if they never exchanged a single harsh word. Mike can't stop grinning. Father has taken charge and assigned tasks, leading the team with calm, firm assurance. Only I can tell he's as excited as a four-year-old on Christmas Eve.
Hopkins came and barked questions at Father that first morning before disappearing for a few hours. Father couldn't answer many of them. When Hopkins asserted that the scientific team had failed in their duty, since they couldn't explain what had happened, Father calmly reminded him that Hopkins himself had supported the budget slashes leading to this situation. If the budget had been maintained, video footage would be available of the transformation, the moment the familiar blue-green slime began changing into a human shape. Since the cuts, a still photograph taken by Mike each morning is all we have. An argument ensued. Father has the flexible, curious, passionate, intellectually rigorous mind of a true scientist. He argues beautifully. There's no other word for it. Unfortunately, when arguing with someone who operates within certain limits, someone who delegates much of his thinking upwards within a military hierarchy, a well-presented, logical argument is next to useless. It always meets the same response: "because I said so." And, as Hopkins is in charge, the conversation is over.
Hopkins posted four guards in the lab and two more outside the door. We all feel uncomfortable around men with loaded guns. An uncomfortable reminder of who pays our wages.
Tonight—Wednesday—is the first time we've been back in the house since Monday. We slept in the dormitories, after sending home for clothes and toiletries. Abos's development had been so rapid that we didn't dare risk missing the next stage.
McKean's theory has become the model the team is adopting at the moment. He thinks the cylinder acts just as an egg does to a baby bird. Whatever the thick liquid is inside the cylinder, it must provide energy for the growth of the body. Measurements taken every fifteen minutes confirm that the container is shrinking as the body grows. At the rate this was happening, McKean predicted the cylinder would disappear by six pm yesterday.
For much of Tuesday, it looked like he would be right. We all watched as the body grew. We've been filming since Monday as our budget has not only been reinstated but increased. The team has been gathering video footage. This led to another argument with Hopkins, this time with Roger on the losing side. To be honest, 'argument' is too strong a word. Roger suggested we send copies of the footage to his colleague in New York, a brilliant biologist. Hopkins flatly refused. Roger pushed, making demands, insisting Hopkins was standing in the way of the progress of science. Since Monday, I've noticed Roger sometimes acts as though he's auditioning to play the role of Roger Sullivan in Abos: The Movie. It's quite disconcerting, and more than a little childish. Anyway, Hopkins slapped him down so hard, he barely said another word until this morning.
"Mr Sullivan, I want you to listen to what I'm about to say as if your life depends on it. Because it does."
Roger paled.
"When you joined Station, you signed several documents. One of those was the Official Secrets Act, which forbids you communicating any aspect of your work here to anyone, ever, without written permission from the commanding officer. Which is me. Should you break those terms, you will be committing an act of treason. Outside these walls, a conviction of treason might lead to a significant period of imprisonment. But, since you also signed a document accepting secondment to Station, which is part of the British army, any transgression will be dealt with by a military court, convened by me."
Roger had, impressively, paled still further. We were all silent by then. Each of us had signed the same documents.
"Let me assure you, that I will deal robustly with any treasonous act that takes place under my command. And, just in case you're confused about what that means, allow me to clarify. Step out of line and you will never see the sun again, Sullivan. We have cells right here. Station has certain discretionary powers granted by Her Majesty's government, and I will use them without hesitation if security is compromised. Is that clear?"
Roger nodded. I was terrified, so goodness knows how he must have felt.
The atmosphere was more than a little muted after that. Towards late afternoon, we watched Abos and the cylinder, wondering what would happen next.
The word cylinder was inaccurate now, as, minute by minute, it had moulded itself to the shape of the body it contained. By teatime on Tuesday, the container around Abos looked like an aura surrounding him, a crude outline about four inches away from his skin. It was very similar to what happens when I first remove my glasses. Anyone more than a few feet distant has a blurred outline for a few seconds, until my eyes adjust.
What made Abos more unnerving now was his movements. It was like watching some kind of slow-motion modern dance, graceful at times, at others awkward and almost painful-looking. He would stretch out his limbs, raising his arms over his head, fingertips reaching towards the edge of the table. When he did this for the first time, we realised how tall he was. The table is eight feet long, and Abos nearly covers the length of it. I'm ashamed to admit I let out a little scream when I witnessed it. I pretended to sneeze afterwards so I may have got away with it. Not that I was the only one to react. Roger took a step back, McKean's massive eyebrows went so high they looked like they were trying to catch up with his receding hairline, and Mike actually giggled. Father was outwardly calm, although his hand was shaking a little when he checked his wristwatch.
The movements that followed that initial stretch turned out to be a sequence, repeated twice every hour. There were more stretches, contracting and extending muscle groups in the legs, arms, chest, and back. There were sudden jerks of the arms and legs. The muscles in the neck flexed. The whole body turned onto its front, before rolling onto one side, then the other.
Throughout each performance, Abos's eyes remained closed. The face itself was eerily unformed. All the expected features were present and intact - eyes, nose, mouth, ears, and so on. He was bald, but there were early signs of hair growth - a dark stubble shadowing his scalp. It was an anonymous face, impossible to describe due to the lack of prominent features. It didn't help that we hadn't yet seen his eyes.
As McKean's predicted deadline approached, the process of change and growth slowed. Measurements confirmed that the cylinder was now shrinking at a far slower rate; a few millimetres per hour.
We pulled chairs around the metal table and watched. It was oddly like a hospital bed vigil, the main difference being that the body we were watching went through a series of contortions every so often.
It was Father, after watching for a few hours,
who came up with an explanation for the slowing down of whatever process is underway.
"The brain of a human foetus develops most rapidly late in pregnancy. If Abos is developing in a similar way, the growth that is taking place may not have slowed at all. It may even have accelerated. The difference is that we cannot directly observe this period of development. Gentlemen, Cressida, I believe we may be witnesses to the final developmental stage before birth. What birth might mean for Abos, none of us can say, but I suggest we prepare ourselves. Cressida?"
I blinked. Father rarely addressed me directly when working. It was as if I were an invisible team member. I knew this wasn't meant as a slight, and I never took it personally. For my observations to remain objective and pure, it was best that I should be almost unnoticed. So when he said my name, I barely reacted at first. Then I blinked again and looked at him.
"Professor Lofthouse?" Never Father when we were working.
"You did some pedagogical training after A-levels, did you not?"
He knew that I had volunteered at the local primary school, although pedagogical training was far too grand a term for it. Mostly, I had cleared up paint and glue and handed out milk and biscuits.
"If my theory is correct, Abos will need a teacher."
My mouth went dry.
"But I have no experience...you need an expert, not..."
He waved his hand in a characteristic gesture of dismissal.
"Hopkins has tightened security. We have no access to any outside agencies. Until that restriction is lifted, we are limited to the skills we have available in this team."
I am to be Abos's teacher.
Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and the weekend suggested Father's hypothesis was correct. Abos's visible development continued, but far more slowly. His musculature has taken on definition, and the evidence confirms puberty has occurred. He looks like an athlete in his twenties. A seven-foot athlete with a chest like a bodybuilder. There's something about his face that I find unnerving. A kind of familiarity. I almost said something about it, but it sounded so silly in my head. "Is it just me, or does he remind you of someone...?"
Children Of The Deterrent Page 5