Chapter Twenty-One
Vart used the penknife to cut and sharpen a stout hazel rod for a spear. He tossed the knife to me and I cut two more for myself and Tori. 'Can you see a good sparking flint around?' he asked, peering at the ground.
We didn't find anything useful, but he picked up several golf ball sized stones instead, which he shared with me. ‘I hope you can throw.’
‘I do OK.’
A rattling sound ran through the chain link fence. We crept towards its source and found Tori. She had managed to break a one meter length of angle iron off it by repeatedly bending it backwards and forwards. Armed with that and her spear she would make a formidable opponent, especially with those roundhouse kicks of hers.
Vart told us to stay where we were. He grabbed the petrol can and ran soundlessly into the scrubby trees. I tried to see where he went but he vanished like a ghost. I settled to wait. After three or four minutes he returned, minus the petrol can.
By the time we advanced from our cover at the edge of the airfield the moonless night was fully dark, but we knew CCTV or Infra-Red cameras would probably spot us. We had talked about what to expect when the guards saw us. Tori told us about the dogs. She had been here before and had seen them.
Vart repeated her warning. ‘Be ready for dogs when you see vehicles coming. Spears are good on dogs, so long as you keep the point moving,’ he told us. ‘I’ve fought off wolves many times with no more than a stick. They watch the tip all the time, see? It’s like they don’t see the rest of it. They get nervous because the tip moves so fast and unpredictably - not like an animal. So keep it moving and ...’
A klaxon drowned out his last words. Trees on the far side of the field were ablaze and I realised what Vart had been up to with the petrol can. I guessed he had made slow fuse with green vines and dry grass tightly woven into a cord. I'd often seen people do it in the stone-age for carrying fire from one place to another. It made the perfect diversion.
Lights came on amid the group of seemingly derelict buildings. About a dozen men piled out of a bunker. I counted four dogs on leashes. They scrambled into several Landrovers and headed towards the fire, their headlights burning through billowing smoke.
‘That’s a hell of a lot of guards for a disused airfield,’ I mumbled.
‘Now!’ Vart hissed. He ran out of cover and headed for the nearest building, crouching low as he went. Tori and I followed. We saw the vehicles stop at the distant blaze. Men tumbled out of them and started trying to put out the flames.
Vart reached the bunker first and dived inside. We followed. It was pitch black and stunk of cigarette smoke, and urine. Feeling around the walls, Tori found another door. ‘Over here’ she cried. ‘It’s rusted or locked. I can’t shift it.’
Vart pushed by me and I heard the clatter of his car jack on the door. I moved to help him. He had wedged the jack underneath the lower door hinge. I held it in place as he started pumping the handle. After a few strokes, I felt it begin to take weight. I let go as Vart pumped the handle. The metal groaned and creaked. Flakes of paint or rust hit me in the face. A couple more pumps and the doorframe gave out a loud crack. Tori worked her fingers into the gap Vart had opened up and heaved on the door. Vart used the jack handle as a lever, working it in and pushing out strips of doorframe and hinge. He released the jack allowing the door to sag back onto its now displaced hinges. Tori heaved it open and squirmed through the narrow gap. Vart and I struggled through after her. We found her peering down over a metal banister. ‘There’s a staircase. It sounds deep,’ she said.
We joined her, peering into what seemed a bottomless void. Vart recovered the car jack, and we started down concrete steps littered with rusting bits of pipe and old machinery. I remembered Tori had no shoes on. ‘Here get on my back,’ I said.
‘No, keep going. I’m OK.’
It was five flights of ten steps to each landing. The bottom was ankle deep in sludge and rubbish. A faint glow filtered in from a gap around a rusted door. Vart tugged on its handle. With a squeal like a wounded pig it opened onto a dark passage. A single wall light burned dimly behind its rusted metal cage. Vart led the way past it into blackness. I felt spiders’ webs on my face. Tori grabbed my hand. I don’t know what good it did her, but it sure helped me.
The darkness deepened as we shuffled along behind Vart. The corridor walls were slimy and cold. Water dripped from the roof. Vart stopped abruptly. ‘Another door,’ he said, and I heard the grinding squeal of a rusty hinge working as if after years of inactivity. We entered an unseeable space. It felt even more oppressive than the corridor.
With a heart stopping jolt the door slammed behind us. Red needles of laser gun-sight beams stabbed at us, as if from every point of the compass. We were completely surrounded. Torch beams speared the darkness from every direction. About twenty armed guards had been waiting for us. Our spears would be of little use against their rifles and night sights.
‘Hello Tori, how nice of you to drop in.’
I didn’t recognise the voice. Somebody was switching lights on at a large battery of electrical switchgear. We found ourselves in a stone room bigger than a squash court. An open passage led off into blackness, another to lights and painted walls.
‘Sir Mackenzie Carmichael is dying to meet you again, but without those natty little spears of course.’
The speaker was a benign looking man who, if he hadn’t been armed and threatening us, might easily pass for a young vicar. He cocked his rifle and twitched it to show us which way to go. Vart led the way poking his face defiantly into the vicar man’s scowl as he passed by him. I followed Tori.
We walked for about half a mile along clean corridors with overhead lighting and air conditioning. The air smelled of floral disinfectant. A pair of elevator doors opened on our approach. Vicar man prodded me with his rifle and we were shoved inside. The doors closed and I felt the lift going up. When it stopped we were bullied out into the fancy entrance hall of Mackenzie Carmichael’s office. I’d been here before. They shoved us into the room Tori had once trashed when she had pushed over the rig of television screens. The screens were all back in place, but mounted on a much sturdier frame.
Sir Mackenzie Carmichael was waiting for us, hunched in his wheelchair like a giant mummified spider. The chair twitched to face us as we entered. ‘Ahh, Tori. You have caused me a lot of trouble, my girl,’ he said in his soft, guttural voice. ‘I have had to bring my plans forward, but luckily everything is working out. Haleakala is no more, or at least not in the third millennium where you have just come from. Soon everything will be just as I want it to be. I only have to clean away awkward left-overs like you and your little friends.’
‘There’s nothing in that chair,’ Tori yelled. It’s just a dummy or something. I’ve seen its legs.’
Our five armed guards seemed shocked. They shuffled nervously and glanced at each other. The secret door in the wall of books clicked and sprang open. Sindra Gains stalked in to the room, beaming like we were long lost friends.
‘Tori, Jack, how nice to see you again,’ she crowed, and turned to Vart, her bejewelled eye patch sparkling in the light. ‘And this must be Vart - the cave man who went to Cambridge and got a first in quantum physics, but that was ages ago in the future, wasn’t it darling?’
She strode to the wheelchair and pulled away the cowl of medical gauze covering Sir Mackenzie Carmichael’s head. It revealed a desiccated corpse. ‘Yes Tori, you were right all the time, my clever darling.’ She held up a tiny remote control, pressed one of its buttons and set the wheelchair spinning on the spot.
‘I’m afraid he’s rather past his best. He had no vision you see. Money was all he wanted. He stole the first Time Wand and used it to play the stock exchange. I was his secretary. I did everything for him. He thought I didn’t know about the Time Wand. But I did. I saw him use it. He was a greedy old fool, and when I needed help he denied me.’ She paused sadly and touched her forehead. ‘He could so easily have helped
me. It was a car crash …’
‘And you were driving someone?’ Tori interrupted. ‘Who was it, your lover? Is that it? You crashed your car and lost much more than an eye.‘
‘You are so young, Tori. I can’t expect you to understand.’
‘But I do understand. You killed your boyfriend and when the old man wouldn’t help you, you killed him too. You stole the Time Wand and tried to save your boyfriend, but something went wrong. That’s why you turned into a power mad bitch who wants to control time. You still plan to go back and get him.’
‘Tori, you’re so hurtful,’ she said. ‘And we could have been such good friends too.’
‘I’d rather scoop my eyes out with a teaspoon.’
One of the guards stepped forward and snapped an electronic cuff onto Tori’s wrist. ‘This will kill you if you stray from your room,’ he told her. He aimed a device that looked like a mobile phone at the cuff and clicked a button. I saw Tori shudder and wince painfully. In that split second, as we all watched the cuff being fitted on Tori, Vart leapt at the open door in the wall of books and was gone. Two guards chased after him, another two jumped me and pinned me down before I could move. One fitted a cuff on my wrist and pointed the setting device at it. It reminded me of a spinner. I felt a quiver of electricity run up my arm.
Sindra was pressing her ear piece to her ear and looking distinctly annoyed. She started dabbing switches on the desk console and staring angrily at the TV monitor screens. I couldn’t hear what she was whispering into her microphone but I guess it had a lot to do with Vart.
More guards rushed in to the room. Sindra yelled and shoved them about angrily. She wanted us locked up and Vart caught in fast order. The guards bundled us out of the room. We were jostled across the entrance hall and shoved into the lift. I felt it plunge to the bottom level where more guards were waiting to take us to cells.
It was pitch black in my cell. Feeling my way around I found a plastic bucket and a mattress. I knocked on the wall wondering if Tori was next door, but got no response.
I think I had been in there about an hour when the door was opened, flooding the cell with light that stung my eyes. I was grabbed and manhandled blindly into the light. They prodded me with their rifles and made me get aboard an electric car. I was driven along the corridor for about twenty metres where it stopped at a cell door. Two guards opened it up releasing Tori and shoved her onto the seat alongside me. She was blinking and squinting in the light. The car moved off, silently whizzing along corridors. I couldn’t help wondering if our electronic cuffs had been properly set for this journey.
As we approached the great cavern I saw Sindra and some guards gathered before a video camera mounted on a tripod. Our car stopped nearby. Tori and I were bundled out.
‘Ahh there you are, darlings,’ Sindra sang. ‘Come and have your picture taken.’ We were shoved in front of the camera. I was pleased to see Vart was not there, and realised he must still be on the run, even despite all the cameras, guards and security in this place. The amazing stalking and hiding skills that had kept him alive in the stone-age were still proving a major asset, even five millennia later.
Photo-lights flared up and a camera man took position. A technician with a sound boom held a mike above our heads. A large video screen on the cavern wall had been displying a canteen menu. It switched to a new scene that we were part of. I thought how good Tori looked, even in rags, standing next to me. I couldn't help it, I grinned at her like a loony bear.
Sindra stepped up and put herself in centre screen. She touched her head mike and earpiece and spoke, her voice echoed around the cavern. ‘Hello, Vart. It’s time to come in now, darling. You can’t stay out playing all night, now can you?’ She turned and smiled triumphantly at Tori and me. ‘I have your little friends here with me. I know you can see them, my dear. Every screen in the complex is now carrying this image.’ She paused, seeking confirmation from a technician.
‘So, I want you to come to me now. You can’t escape. The time vault is sealed. Wherever you are, my dear, you're trapped. You can’t move. But don't worry, all you need to do to give yourself up is speak into any voicac lock. We will release you and let you come to me. Your little friends want you to come in now, my dear, because I’m going to kill one of them if you don’t.’
I reached for Tori’s hand and tried to look cool. She was glaring at Sindra, challenging her with serene defiance.
‘That won’t work, Sindra,’ Tori cried. The microphone picked up her voice tossing it around the cavern. ‘We all know what the price of our mission could be, and we are all ready to pay that price in full.’
I wasn’t too sure that I was. Well yes, I was, but I just hadn’t thought about it lately. In fact I’d tried not to think about it at all. Being heroic is fine afterwards, but it can be a real pain during.
Sindra looked annoyed that Tori’s voice had been heard throughout the complex, but got on with her plan. ‘I’ll give you twenty seconds, Vart, to show yourself or speak into a voicac lock. You must come out unarmed with your hands up. If you don’t I will kill Tori first. Ten seconds more and I’ll kill Jack. Time starts now.’
The cavern fell silent, only the regular beep of the radiation alarm continued. ‘Sixteen – fifteen – fourteen.’ It was Sindra counting down the seconds. ‘I will do it, Vart. This is too important to let you spoil it.’
‘Don’t do it, Vart. Kill the bitch,’ I yelled. My own voice came back at me a split second later and echoed round the stone galleries and caves.
‘Don’t give in, Vart. It’s all up to you now,’ Tori cried, tears sparkling on her eyelashes.
Sindra shot us a snarling glare and stomped over to take a rifle from one of her jumpy guards. She aimed the gun at Tori’s head. ‘Eleven – ten – nine. You had better move fast cave-man, or you’ll see what happens when moving lead meets static bone. As a physicist you should appreciate the demonstration.’ She cocked the rifle. I pulled Tori towards me and turned my back to the gun barrel. The guards pulled us apart, and knocked me to the ground.
‘Five –four – three –two ...’
The large screen on the cavern wall flashed and switched to another view. It was Vart walking down a corridor ahead of three guards. They each had a rifle trained on him and were glancing about nervously.
‘Ah haaa, good. What a lovely sight. You are a very sensible man, Vart,’ Sindra crowed.
‘No, Vart! Don’t do it,’ yelled Tori. ‘Think of the others. For God’s sake.’
Vart came into view in the corridor leading to where we stood. He pressed ahead, the guards behind him seeming more nervous with every step.
Sindra went eagerly towards him. She tossed the rifle she had been holding to a guard and trotted on her high heels towards her prisoner. Suddenly Vart turned and grabbed a rifle from one of his escort. The other two guards didn’t budge. One of them fell to his knees and started weeping like a baby. ‘Don’t kill me, please don’t kill me.’ Vart kicked him aside and levelled the gun at Sindra. He had a cuff setter in his hand which he held up for Sindra to see.
‘Good thing this,’ he told her. ‘It’s almost as versatile as one of our Spinners, especially now that I’ve modified it a bit.’ He pointed the cuff setter at the nearest voicac door lock and pressed a button on it. The door swung open. Sindra looked about astonished, her mind racing over possible options.
‘Your boys here are a bit worried I'll blow their cuffs. That’s the trouble with weapons,’ Vart said. ‘They’ve no conscience or reasoning. They’ll work for whoever is pointing them. I’m surprised you didn’t use gene-locks. We often use them on our weapons. They read the holder’s DNA and won’t fire if it’s not a match.'
The guards who were supposed to be watching Tori and me were now gaping in stunned silence. I plucked their rifles from them, one in each hand, and swung the barrels under their noses. ‘Remove her cuff - one wrong move and you’re dead.’
The guard scrabbled in his pocket for his cuff se
tter. He released Tori and let the cuff fall away to the floor.
Tori accepted a rifle from me and aimed it at the same guard. ‘Now his.’ The cuff pinged open and I caught it.
Vart was moving slowly towards us behind Sindra. He prodded her with a rifle to keep her on track. She was yelling abuse at her guards, telling them not to shoot.
I began disarming them. Tori took the weapons from me and tossed them out of reach.
‘We’re going to the time vault,’ Vart told Sindra. ‘Just keep moving and you may survive. Tell your men to drop their weapons and back off.’
Sindra hobbled, she had lost a shoe. Around us her guards were caught in indecision. Some refused to drop their rifles, and kept them trained on us waiting for us to make the slightest slip that would give them the chance to fire without Sindra being killed.
At the vault gates, Sindra ordered the guards to open up. The sergeant at the barrier shook his head. ‘I can’t do that,’ he said, almost choking on his words. ‘I am under orders never to give in to force, even if it is Sir Mackenzie Carmichael himself who demands entry.'
‘Well he’s dead, so open up,’ Sindra snarled.
Vart leaned past her and sprayed his cuff setter at the gate lock.
‘That won’t work, sir. It’s a mechanical lock, not electronic,’ the sergeant said, sweating profusely.
'Can you believe this guy?' Tori said.
Vart shrugged and then called one of the other guards over. ‘Can you open this gate?’
‘Y-yes,‘ he stuttered, ‘but only if he orders me to.’
‘If he wasn’t here could you open it?’
‘Y-yes …’
Vart turned to Sindra. 'Tell the sergeant he’s off duty. Tell him he’s not on the gate any more. Tell him he’s fired, tell him any damn thing but get him away from this gate.’
Sindra glared at the trembling sergeant. ‘Go and check the time vault console – you're relieved of gate duty.’
‘Thank you, Ma’am,’ croaked the sergeant and saluted. He turned smartly and marched to a control console beside the vault door. Vart leaned over the barrier pole getting as close to the electrified gate as he dared. ‘Right. Now you're in charge and I want you to open this damn gate, or I will shoot you.’
‘Yes sir,’ squeaked the sergeant's replacement and began fumbling to load a series of numbers into a brass lock. Finally, he operated the mechanism and the gate swung open.
‘Now open the time vault and think about living to a ripe old age. Think about having grandchildren and birthdays. One slip, one stupid bit of heroism and you won’t enjoy any of that.’ The trembling guard gently elbowed his sergeant aside at the console and punched a series of keys on the control panel. The vault door silently rolled aside.
Shots rang out. Some of the guards had opened fire as we tried to get into the vault. Vart sprayed the cavern with gun fire and ran to the vault dragging Sindra in with him as a shield. I grabbed a guard and did the same. Tori was left trapped, sheltering beside the control console. I had to get her out of there, but how?
I looked about and noticed the big bell shaped mercury lights high in the cavern roof. I fired a burst at the nearest. It exploded showering glass down into the cavern. The armed guards beneath it ducked and covered their heads as glass and debris fell around them. I ran out and grabbed Tori. Luckily she had already set off towards me and we headed for the cover of the vault together. Gunfire started up again, splashing lead into the stainless steel and concrete around us.
The vault door rolled back locking out the bullets and the noise. I looked around and tried to recover my breath. Vart had hold of Sindra and was fitting her with a cuff. There were two guards who had been on the vault gate and a startled technician who had been quietly working inside the vault.
Vart walked briskly up to the technician and fitted a cuff on him. He led him to a position bedside the vault door and told him to sit on the floor. The man obeyed, looking greatly relieved.
‘Where’s the old Time Wand - the mark one?’ Vart asked him. The man pointed to a rack on the back wall. Vart glanced at me and I understood he wanted me to fetch it.
The two guards stared sullenly as Tori led them to the steel bench along the vault’s back wall. She made them sit beneath it and tied them to its legs with some electrical flex she had found on the bench.
Vart programmed three Time Wands and handed them to us. Keeping a firm grip on Sindra he walked to an area of the floor marked out as the TM pad. Tori and I followed and stood beside him. Sindra struggled and kicked as Vart released her cuff. I tossed him a roll of duct tape from the bench and he taped her hands with it.
Finally he gave us the nod to leap.
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Time Rocks Page 56