Chapter Fourteen
Monkton Rudloe is about two miles from the entrance to the Box railway tunnel. According to my wristwatch I'd been walking half an hour inside the tunnel. I estimated that I must have covered at least a mile or more, though I had to pick my way slowly. There were cables, scrap railway lines and all sorts of engineering rubbish lying about – I could easily trip, especially as I was trying not to waste my torch battery. I used it only when I absolutely had to. I’d passed beneath a couple of ventilation shafts. I could see weeds and long grass growing over their distant edges and the blue sky beyond – even so they didn’t let in much light. Water dripped everywhere. I was drenched. I bet I looked howlin. My hair was soaked and I could taste soot in the dribbles on my face.
Old soot, decay, and diesel fumes fouled the air, but the smell of diesel reassured me that locomotives were still running on these rails, and why else would they be shiny? I soon found that walking between the rails and stepping on the sleepers was easiest. The silvery rails picked up even the dimmest light and reflected it like illuminated guide lines.
I wasn't alone. Something else was in there - you know, something that poops and makes shuffling noises. I don’t know what they were, and kept imagining bats and rats and stuff. The worst was the webby things hanging down. They tickled your face and made you jump like you’d have a heart attack or something, and I always landed in a puddle.
Eventually I saw a light up ahead, but it was a very dim glow – and far off. My first thought was that it could be another of those air vents. As I got closer I saw it was different. It was not natural light. I tip-toed towards it for the last hundred meters, trying to be as quiet as possible. The light was straying in from a grille in the sidewall. It was about waist high on me, and was obviously a new addition, not old and cruddy like everything else around me. Large slats like a Venetian blind trembled behind the grille, buoyed on air that smelled of warmth, paint and toilet freshener. It reminded me of the processed air in large department stores. I put the pannier bag on the ground and free of its weight, gratefully stretched my aching shoulders. I took out granddad’s screwdriver and began prizing off the flimsy metal grill. A sharp tug at one of the wavering slats released it in one piece. I pulled off another and a third, then poked my head through.
In one direction was darkness along a seemingly endless run of metal ducting. In the other, and less than two metres away, was light and another grille. Beyond it I could just make out some sort of metal railings. I pulled out a couple more vent slats and climbed into the air-duct taking the screwdriver with me. I soon had the second grille off and dropped lightly onto a staircase landing, where I carefully replaced the grille behind me.
The stairs were built of steel chequer-plate with handrails and banisters of steel pipe, like scaffold tube. It hung in a concrete stairwell serving five or six floors. Should I go up or down? I started down, but saw a CCTV camera on the landing below so turned back. I climbed two flights to an unmarked door. It was unlocked.
I supposed it must have been a soundproof door, because even with my ear pressed to it I heard no more than a soft drumming sound. I eased the door open. Warmth, light and the sounds of a busy factory poured over me.
The door opened onto a metal cat walk running between batteries of large industrial, bell shaped lamps. They shone a blue white light onto a busy factory floor like none I had ever seen. I was in the roof of a great chamber, carved out of solid stone. It was enormous. A football field would have fitted inside it with enough height for the floodlighting masts. Below were glass partitioned offices, laboratories, small concrete bunkers and blast walls. People were working at computers, electrical test benches, control panels, and huge machines unlike anything I had seen. There were concrete bunkers with extraction fans, air ducts and electrical conduits rising from them. There were small buildings like galvanised steel garages, I think they were pressurised workshops, or vacuum booths. There were strange machines surrounded by control desks with banks of computers. Directly below me was a travelling beam crane. The driver’s cab roof was only a few feet below the cat walk where I stood. I climbed down and stepped silently onto it. Peering over the edge of the cab I could see the shadow of the crane operator sitting at his controls.
A regular pulse of sound every second, like a note from a church bell with a muffled clapper, rang throughout the huge cavern. It was annoying at first but soon forgotten. I supposed it was a safety signal; probably the time to be worried was when it stopped. On one side of the cavern there was a wall of office windows. A huge vault door, big enough to admit a double-decker bus was built into another wall. Around it flashed orange lights. A security area of what appeared to be electrified fencing stood before it. It looked like a tennis court with gates and a security barrier at one end. Vicious razor wire topped the fences and the sequenced flashing of red and blue lights seemed to chase around it like strange, deep-sea creatures. Inside this electrified barbican I counted eight armed guards in dark green uniforms. It did not take a genius to work out that the sole reason for the existence of this enormous facility lay behind that vault door.
Next to the vault a pair of elevator doors with a guard posted beside them suggested one way up to the surface. As I was looking, the indicator light above the doors glowed green and the lift doors opened.
I thought my heart would stop. Three people, two armed men and a woman stepped out. The woman was Sindra Gains. She strode ahead of the men to the entrance to the electrified barbican. Two guards stepped forward. Sindra held out her hand. The guard fitted what looked like a steel wristwatch bracelet to her wrist, then did the same for two men. When all had steel cuffs fitted, the barrier lifted and the double gates opened to admit them.
Another guard approached Sindra and handed her something. It looked like a Bluetooth telephone headset. She fitted it to her ear, adjusted the headset, and then spoke.
To me!
‘Hello, Tori. Welcome to our little cave of wizardry. I’m so pleased to see you again. But we can’t talk nicely with you up there, now can we? Some of my men will help you down.’
The door I had crept through so carefully was suddenly thrown open. Men rushed in, pointing guns at me. Their officer was the young vicar man. He smiled coldly and held out a hand to help me back up onto the cat walk. ‘Hello, Tori, you took your time getting here. We’ve been watching you on screen ever since you hid your bike. How are you? How’s little Ryan?’
There was nothing I could do but go with them, but I refused the smarmy rat’s helping hand and climbed up onto the cat walk unaided. One of the men, a plump, chubby faced individual, stepped up close, his automatic levelled at my head as though I posed some terrible threat to their safety. I thought how ridiculous he was, and reached out past the barrel of his gun and nipped his chubby cheeks. I felt really pleased with myself at that. He stepped back blushing. One of his comrades hid a snigger. The vicar man was not amused. He just eyed me coldly.
They directed me along the cat walk towards the door. We went down four flights of stairs, our footsteps ringing on the metal strings. At the bottom the vicar man spoke into a voice recognition locking mechanism fixed to the wall beside a wide roller shutter door. The door started to rise, accompanied by the repeating harsh blast of a klaxon. When it was fully raised I was prodded in the back and made to step into what I thought was a goods lift. The roller shutter door started closing behind us, trapping us, and I realised it was a double security door, like an air lock. When the second door eventually opened I found myself on the main floor of the cavern. I looked up to the lamps high above, from where I had first gazed down on the incredible sights around me.
Chubby chops poked me in the back with his rifle to make me follow the vicar man into the bright light and warm filtered air of the cavern. They led me to the security barrier at the electrified barbican. A guard placed an electronic bracelet on my wrist and set it with a small device that looked like a mobile phone. I felt a tingle of electricity run
up my arm.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said chirpily. ‘It’s for your protection. It will only kill you if you go anywhere you are not supposed to be. In your case that means everywhere except here.’
‘At last you’re here, sweetie,’ cried Sindra Gains, striding towards me like a model on a catwalk. ‘It was so good of you to come, darling. We can have so much fun together, don't you think?’
She led me towards the vault door then paused, turning to face me. ‘I expect you’ve worked out most of it by now. That thing Jack found is ours, darling. It’s called a Time Wand. It was stolen from us about two years ago. We have been trying to trace it and recover it ever since. A few months ago we got a rather imprecise fix on it. For some reason the thief had buried it at Stonehenge five thousand years in the past. We had to pin point it and dig it up. But as you know Stonehenge is a World Heritage site. You just can’t march in there and dig holes – people notice you, darling. So that’s why we offered to fund the dig that you and Jack were ...’
‘And you insisted on doing your own geophysical survey and positioning the trenches?’
‘Yes we did, sweetie. How clever you are. But we had to get our property back – didn't we? And most important of all we had to keep it a secret. Unfortunately for him, when Jack found it he didn’t report it to our site monitor. Instead he fiddled with it and set it off. He time leapt to some place we can’t trace. We don’t know where he is, darling. Just like the first thief, he and our Time Wand have vanished. We’ve had to start again trying to get a fix on it.’
‘What about me? Everybody knows I’m here,’ I lied.
‘Oh I don’t think so. You gave Special Branch the slip, we saw you do it, sweetie. You even managed to get away from our agents. That little escape act of yours with the brewery truck – very clever, darling. How did you do that? It was very good, but of course, it means that nobody knows where you are now. We worked it all out for ourselves once we'd found your mobile telephone.’ She stiffened her shoulders and glanced at the guards and technicians around her. ‘Now, that brings us neatly to the reason for being gathered here.’ She waved her arm at the great vault door. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to send you on a little trip, Tori. But it will be cool, I mean really cool.' Giggling she looked around at her onlookers. They were all sniggering as if at some private joke.
'I'm glad you're all so cheerful.' I said.
'I’m sending you back to Britain’s last ice age, about fifteen thousand years ago. You should enjoy it, lots of skiing and skating. Do you have your skis with you? Oh well, never mind.’
There was no opportunity to answer even if I had wanted to. The lights around the vault door suddenly started to flash much brighter and faster, a klaxon sounded. The outer gates closed automatically, trapping us inside the electrified cage.
Sindra looked delighted. ‘Oh you lucky girl, you will enjoy this. Apparently we have someone tempuring in to see us. That’s why the alarm is going. I always find this so exciting.’ She hurried to a nearby control desk where two guards were frantically punching buttons and adjusting dials. I saw her smug expression change. She looked cross and worried.
I could see the two men were clearly struggling with the controls. ‘It’s acting strange. I’ve never seen anything like it. It won’t respond. It’s rejecting the code,’ cried one, his face reddening with effort.
‘Have you got a lock on it? Don’t let it tempur out again. Get a lock on it!’ Sindra cried, looking furious.
‘I can’t, it won’t fold. It’s just holding there - acting like a stranger.’
‘We need a different code,’ the vicar-man said, barging through to the control panel.
Sindra turned away angrily and spoke into her head set. ‘Doctor Anwar! Tehman Anwar, this is an emergency. Report to the Differential Vault immediately. Emergency.’
I heard her voice echoing around the cavern from a public address system. Moments later a young man ran up to the outer gates and spoke into a voice recognition box. The gate slid open and the inner barrier raised itself.
‘What’s up?’ Tehman Anwar was a handsome Asian man in his mid thirties. He was the world’s leading quantum physicist. His reputation would be made when he invents time travel in about a thousand years into the future.
‘Incoming,’ Sindra said, pushing him towards the control panel display screen. ‘Look, but they can’t get a lock on it.’
Doctor Anwar, switched a few switches, typed a couple of lines of code which he checked on the screen and then keyed enter. Calmly adjusting a large central dial he handled the system’s reaction to his new code. ‘Do you know why it’s doing this?’ he asked her softly, wrapped in concentration. ‘It’s our old stolen unit again. It’s coming back, but it wants to go to Stonehenge not here. That must be where it took off from in the past and also the last time it was in this present.’
‘Get it! Don’t lose it. I want that Time Wand and the thief who’s tempuring on it. I want him dead.’
‘Them! There are two of them. One’s hitching.’
‘Is that possible on an old unit?’
‘Of course, as long as they are both in the field when it differentiates.’
‘Get them! I don’t care how or what state they are in. I want that Time Wand.’ She marched to the vault door. ‘Get this open. You three, come with me,’ she yelled, lassoing three guards with a manicured finger.
‘Bring her too,‘ she ordered, pointing at me. ‘Keep your eyes on her every second. If she makes one move to escape shoot her.’
The vault door rolled away soundlessly. Beyond it was a brightly lit room lined with a white ceramic material. It was bigger than a tennis court or two. A steel bench stretched along its back wall. Arranged along the length of it were computers and various electronic control equipment and switch panels. Above the bench were seven metal housings with switches, dials and flashing LEDs. Each had a docking bracket for holding a Time Wand, the silver things such as the one Jack had found. Two of the docks were empty.
‘I’ve got them,’ Doctor Anwar called from the outer control desk. He ran into the vault and took station at the main control panel. The vault door rolled shut. I shuddered feeling we were completely cut off from the world.
Doctor Anwar moved to a control desk and flipped some switches. The Time Wands in the holsters on the wall flashed briefly. ‘I have them. Stand back. They are coming in rather erratically. They could appear anywhere.’
‘If they are armed, shoot them while they are still in TM. Don’t wait,’ snapped Sindra to the guards. ‘The Time Wand is more important than them.’
I couldn’t believe what I saw. Two men, one completely naked and filthy, and the other, some sort of cave man with an owl painted on his face appeared in the middle of the room and fell down screaming and squirming as if their flesh was burning.’
‘Oh dear me,’ said Anwar. ‘I’m afraid that’s because we held them up so long, they’re a bit warm.’
‘Cuff that one. He stole the Time Wand,’ Sindra yelled. Then turning to the man with the owl painted face she pointed her trembling finger. ‘Shoot him. I don’t need him. Shoot him! Shoot him!’
The cave man leapt to the bench in one enormous bound and grabbed Anwar by the throat and used him as a shield. ‘No shoot! No shoot peeeeoow, peeeeoow,’ he yelled, and grabbed a Time Wand that was lying on the bench. ‘No shoot peeeeoow.’
In a brilliant flash of light they were gone.
‘Get them back! Get them back,’ screamed Sindra, her eyes wide with horror and panic. The terrified guards gaped helplessly. Neither of them knew how to operate the equipment. The vicar man, who could operate it, was on the other side of the vault door. Sindra struggled to open it, shrieking at the voice recognition switch, but the system refused to accept her hysteria as a valid voice ident. She had to calm herself and try again before the switch’s smarmy electronic voice accepted her and rolled the great door aside. By the time she had found the vicar man and explained what she wan
ted done it was too late. Nevertheless, he tried, but the control console screen showed him that the signature was gone. The cave man with his hostage had vanished, and there was no way of knowing where in time they had leapt to.
‘It wouldn’t do any good even if we did have a trace on them,’ said the vicar man. ‘They are both duck patty by now.’
‘What are you talking about?’ screamed Sindra.
‘The Time Wand they took from the bench is one Doctor Anwar was using for his experiments in tele-portation. Where they’ve gone is irrelevant. All that will arrive there is about two hundred and fifty pounds of chopped liver.’ He indicated with a grim nod to a refrigeration drum standing beside the bench. Sindra lifted its lid and almost vomited as she peered inside. ‘What the hell is that?’
‘It was one of the guard dogs,’ the vicar man told her. ‘Though you’d never know it from that mess. The only thing that was recognisable was its whimper.’
Sindra turned on the guards in the vault. ‘Did you hear that?’ Her voice was a chilling snarl. ‘My research director is turned into meat paste and it’s your fault. You were supposed to be guarding him.’
The men backed away, quaking. Sindra took a rifle from one of the guards who had been outside the vault and aimed it at the two. Tears of fury mixed with her snot as she wailed and moved towards them. She fired the gun. One guard fell dead, and the other ran around screaming, hiding behind anything bigger than a pencil. Bullets whizzed around endangering all of us. I dived for cover behind a battery of fire extinguishers. The vicar man jumped at her and grabbed the weapon before she could shoot anyone else. He hugged her to him as she wept and howled into his shoulder, banging her fists on him in anguish. I watched, realising it was her ambitions she wept for, not Doctor Anwar and the poor cave man creature that had died so horribly.
Sindra was helped to a chair at the control desk. The vicar man tried to console her like a parent with a distraught child. Eventually her sobs subsided and she wiped her face. The vicar man watched her for a moment then, without displaying even the slightest hesitation, he drew his pistol, walked in to the vault and shot the naked cave man.
I had watched in horror as Sindra had lost control and shot at her guards, but the detached, businesslike coldness of that killing was truly shocking.
Two men lay dead, their blood staining the ceramic floor of the vault. A third sat shivering on the floor his knees drawn up to his chin, blood oozing from a wound on his hip. In a simple swivel chair drawn up to the silent control desk, Sindra stared at a glass of water and two pills which someone had placed there for her. Exhausted, she sagged over them like a defeated athlete at the end of a marathon. She had lost a Time Wand, but much worse than that, she had lost Doctor Anwar, the man she had kidnapped from the future, cajoled, courted, and finally won over to her side, the man who in the future would be credited with inventing time travel. For Sindra Gains things could not be worse.
Time Rocks Page 44