TIM, Defender of the Earth

  The small crowd clapped and cheered, grinning at each other eagerly.

  ‘Now,’ said Mallahide. Overhead, the swarm began once more to reach down its gentle grey fingers to the waiting crowd below. ‘Close your eyes. This will only hurt for a moment . . .’

  THE TRAP

  ‘HOW DO YOU know all this stuff?’ Anna asked. She and Ms Plimpton had left the British Museum and had set off back towards the bunker without incident – so far.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ said Ms Plimpton.

  ‘This business about the Defender and the bracelet and everything,’ said Anna. ‘How do you know about it? And how come,’ she added, ‘you and the bracelet were just waiting here until Chris came along, of all people?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ms Plimpton, ‘he’s not the most prepossessing person you could ever meet, is he? If the bracelet hadn’t started glowing like that, I never would have guessed.’

  ‘He’s got . . . hidden depths,’ said Anna judiciously.

  ‘He’s certainly hidden them well,’ Ms Plimpton agreed.

  They smiled at each other.

  ‘But seriously,’ said Anna. ‘Have you always known about the bracelet and the Defender and the rest of it? I mean . . . how long were you waiting before Chris showed up?’

  ‘Seriously?’ said Ms Plimpton. Her face took on a faraway look as she worked it out. ‘Twenty-two years.’

  Anna stopped walking. For a moment she was speechless.

  ‘Quite a while, eh?’ said Ms Plimpton, enjoying Anna’s reaction. ‘Yes, I guess a normal person would’ve given up. But there again,’ she added darkly, ‘being “normal” is something I’ve never had much talent for.’

  ‘How did you get involved in all this?’ asked Anna.

  Ms Plimpton took a deep breath and said: ‘Ah. Well, to cut a long story short, that would be when I decided to die.’

  Anna blinked.

  ‘I’d picked a pretty good spot for it,’ said Ms Plimpton, smiling grimly. ‘Thailand, one of the south islands. One beautiful evening I walked down to the shore. I stood there a while: the sky above was this extraordinary shade of pale purple. Then I turned, walked out into the sea, and started swimming.

  ‘I’m a good swimmer,’ Ms Plimpton went on as Anna stared at her. ‘I swam a long way. And at that exact point where they say you’re supposed to turn back – that point just before you start to feel tired so you’ve got plenty of juice left for the return trip – I kept going. I just kept on swimming into the night and the darkness, until finally I couldn’t swim any more. The warm water closed over me and I let myself slip down into it.’

  Ms Plimpton broke off her story and looked at Anna.

  ‘Now, what you’ve got to understand,’ she said, ‘is that I wanted to die. I wanted not to feel anything ever again: no me, no nobody – nothing. But instead . . . I had this dream.

  ‘Somewhere ahead of me in all that darkness, I started to think I could see a little speck of something. It was like a spark, tiny to begin with, but it soon got bigger and then it started changing colour. There was white stuff all over it, with blue and green underneath, and then I knew what I was looking at: the globe. Our planet. Planet Earth.

  ‘It looked so small, surrounded by all the dark. I thought of all the people going about their lives on its surface, as if everything they did was so important, and all the while this vast hungry darkness was waiting all around – waiting to swallow them. I was watching the little planet, holding us and keeping us all safe, with nobody doing much to look after it in return. And I suddenly decided: I didn’t want to die any more. Instead, I wanted to know what I could do to help. And then – and here’s the really weird bit,’ she said, turning to Anna again, ‘as soon as I thought that, I found out that I could.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Anna asked.

  ‘It was right there in my mind, all of it, instantly. I saw the bracelet, where it was being kept. I saw what it was for. And I saw my place in it all: not to be the channel myself but to watch and prepare and wait and be ready when the time came. That was what I had to do. That was the task I was given. And as soon as I accepted it . . . that was it.’

  ‘What was?’

  Ms Plimpton grinned. ‘Next thing I knew, I was on the beach. It was morning. I was very stiff, full of all sorts of cramps; I was pretty sick too and very sunburnt. But I sat up, brushed some sand off me and looked around. I thought for a moment that I was on the same beach where I’d started. But in fact I’d washed up all the way over on Nassau, in the Bahamas.’

  Anna frowned. ‘But that’s . . .’

  ‘Practically on the other side of the world?’ Ms Plimpton’s grin widened. ‘Yup. I had a hell of a time explaining it to the immigration people! Now, is it my imagination,’ she asked suddenly, ‘or has it been getting kind of dark around here?’

  Anna had been so wrapped up in what Ms Plimpton had been telling her that for the past five minutes she hadn’t been thinking about her father at all.

  Big mistake. All around them on the eerily empty London streets, a shadow had fallen. It was as if a storm cloud was forming overhead. But it wasn’t a storm cloud.

  Anna’s hand went to her mouth. ‘Oh no . . .’

  The sky seemed filled with a looming bruise-black. A long drifting fringe of hazy grey tentacles now reached down through the air, combing the streets. Mallahide was on the move again.

  For a moment Anna just stood there, frozen by indecision. They had almost reached the bottom of Charing Cross Road. The remains of Trafalgar Square opened out around them – the shattered paving and raw black earth underneath. There was no cover to speak of. For however long it took them to cross that space, Anna and Ms Plimpton would be totally exposed.

  ‘All right,’ Anna said. ‘We’re going to have to run for it.’

  Ms Plimpton gave her a grim look. ‘Ready when you are.’

  ‘OK . . .’ Anna took a deep breath. ‘Go!’

  They set off.

  Anna hated running. She always had. But she ran until the air was like knives in her chest. And all the time she knew it was useless.

  Up ahead, two of the tentacle things suddenly froze and changed direction. They converged at the top of Whitehall. They merged, twisting and glittering for a moment, and then Professor Mallahide was waiting for them.

  There he was, in his tweed jacket and corduroy trousers, his hair still sticking out in a ruff around his head.

  ‘Anna!’ he said, grinning delightedly as his daughter gasped painfully for breath. ‘What are you up to out here? What’s the rush?’

  ‘We were trying to avoid you, actually,’ said Ms Plimpton.

  Anna gave her a look that she hoped would shut her up, then looked back at her dad. ‘Hello,’ she said eventually.

  It was a strange combination of emotions that she was feeling at that moment. Her father looked so ordinary, so exactly like his everyday self, that it was almost impossible to connect him with the vast shadow above and the drifting horror of the searching tentacle things. She had missed him, she realized: missed him dreadfully. But at the same time she remembered what had happened the last time they met and what he had tried to do to her.

  She still loved him. Of course she did: he was her dad, and what she felt for him was so strong that it couldn’t be changed in one day, even by something as powerful as his attacking her. But now she was scared of him too – more scared than she’d ever been of anything in her life. Feeling both those things at once was almost unbearable.

  ‘Hello, Anna,’ said Mallahide. Without thinking, he reached out his arms to give her a hug.

  Anna took a step back. The look her father gave her then almost broke her heart. For a second there was silence.

  ‘And, ah, who’s your . . . friend?’ said Mallahide, with an immense effort to be casual that fooled absolutely nobody. His arms dropped to his sides and he nodded at Ms Plimpton. ‘How do you do? I’m—’

  ‘I know who you are,’ she replied.

  Mallah
ide’s eyes narrowed. ‘Then you have me at a disadvantage, Ms . . .’

  ‘Not as much of a disadvantage as I’d like.’ Ms Plimpton gave Mallahide a long look up and down, then shook her head and made a sucking noise in her teeth.

  ‘You scientists,’ she said with utter contempt. ‘All you do is find new ways to screw up the world! Why can’t you people do anything that helps humanity to live in harmony with the planet for once?’

  Mallahide frowned. ‘But . . . that’s exactly what I’ve done,’ he said. ‘Don’t you see? That’s what this is all about! No longer will our bodies separate us from our world or from each other. Instead, for the first time, the whole of mankind will be truly united in its common purpose.’

  Anna sighed. Here we go again, she thought. ‘Dad . . .’ she said quietly.

  ‘What “common purpose”?’ asked Ms Plimpton. ‘Your common purpose, I suppose – namely making more of yourself!’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Mallahide admitted. ‘To start with, our primary motivation will be to increase the swarm, to protect it from those too shortsighted to see its full significance. Those, if I may say so, like you seem to be—’

  ‘Dad . . .’ Anna repeated.

  ‘But my ambitions stretch far beyond that, I can assure you,’ Mallahide went on, ignoring her. He smiled. ‘Further than you can imagine!’

  ‘Oh yeah? And what if people don’t share your ambitions?’ Ms Plimpton shot back. ‘What if people don’t want your perfect future? What if people don’t trust you because what you’re saying is a crock of—?’

  ‘Will both of you PLEASE JUST SHUT UP!’

  Anna’s voice echoed around the empty square. Mallahide stared at his daughter, so surprised that, for a moment, all over the city, the drifting tentacles of the swarm stopped their searching and froze in place like stalactites. Ms Plimpton, shocked, stared too. Her mouth was open.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Anna. Using the pause to gather her thoughts, she added, ‘Ms Plimpton, I don’t mean to be rude, but these kinds of arguments are ones that me and my father have had a number of times before. And I don’t think this is the time or the place to be going over all that again.’

  Ms Plimpton closed her mouth and frowned.

  ‘But . . . Anna,’ said her father, smiling uncertainly, ‘this is exactly the time and place. My swarm is growing. The first people have volunteered to join me, showing the way for the others. I hit a sticky patch, true, but now my plans are moving ahead at last, and soon you’ll see what—’

  ‘Dad,’ said Anna, looking at him hard, ‘I told you, I’m not going to talk about this now. If you’re not a monster, if there’s anything left of you after what you did to yourself, anything real about you any more from how you were before – then you’ll understand and respect that and keep quiet.’ She waited, looking at him. ‘Well?’

  Mallahide looked back at his daughter. He blinked. Then, simultaneously horribly ashamed of what he’d tried to do to her before and suddenly and intensely proud of her and what she’d become, he looked down at his feet.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘What do you have in mind?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said Anna. Her heart began to pound as her plan fell into place in her head. She held her hands tight behind her back to hide their shaking, hoping that nobody noticed how scared she was. ‘I’ll meet you tomorrow, just you and me. Bring the whole swarm,’ she added as she thought of more details. ‘I want to see everything: exactly what you’ve become and exactly what you’re hoping me and the rest of the world are going to turn into – if we decide to join you. Be at’ – she thought for a second – ‘St Paul’s Cathedral at eleven a.m. Then we’ll talk.’

  She fell silent. Anna and her father looked at each other.

  For the last few moments a sound had become audible, growing louder and louder through the surrounding empty streets as what was causing it came closer and closer. Three armoured police vans were making their way up Whitehall. They were approaching Trafalgar Square at top speed, their engines roaring and complaining as their drivers forced them on, crashing across the potholes in the tarmac. The vans were painted black, with wire-mesh riot shielding over the windscreens. They swung to a gravel-spitting halt behind Mallahide and their side doors slid back, disgorging some twenty men with police shields and armour.

  ‘Go! Go! Go!’ roared Wythenshawe. The men fanned out, jabbing threateningly but uselessly at Mallahide with their guns and waving their truncheons. They were all, Anna noticed, plainly scared out of their wits.

  ‘Step away from the girl!’ called Wythenshawe through a megaphone. He was still hanging back at the passenger-side door of the van, ready to take off at a moment’s notice. ‘Get back, Professor, or we shoot!’

  ‘And what do you think that’s going to do?’ Mallahide asked.

  ‘Come over to the van, Anna,’ said Wythenshawe doggedly. ‘Come on, quickly now! And bring your friend with you. Stay back, Professor! I’m warning you!’

  ‘Well?’ said Anna quickly. ‘What do you say?’

  ‘All right,’ Mallahide told her. ‘Eleven at St Paul’s it is, then.’

  ‘And,’ Anna added, ‘no more dissolving people. At least not until then.’

  ‘Not even if they want me to?’

  ‘Not even if they want you to.’

  Mallahide frowned and kicked a small stone with his shoe. ‘All right,’ he said.

  ‘Then see you there,’ Anna answered. ‘Come on, Ms Plimpton, we’re leaving.’

  Ms Plimpton opened her mouth, then closed it again. With a last scowl at Mallahide, she followed Anna, climbing into the middle police van. The men jumped back in. The doors slid shut and they were off, on their way back to the bunker.

  Bouncing up and down on her seat, surrounded by the insanely brave men with the useless weapons who’d come to rescue her when she hadn’t needed rescuing, Anna sat in silence. She was thinking about her father.

  He had taken the bait, as she’d known he would.

  Now . . . she thought, what was the trap?

  CHRIS THE CHOSEN ONE

  WHEN CHRIS WAS small, his mum and dad had taken him skiing.

  The first trip had been the best. After that Chris had started to become jaded. But there was still one memory from that first holiday that Chris had always kept with him. He was thinking about it now.

  Chris must have been about eight years old at the time: young enough still to get excited by things. The thing that made him most excited was . . . a chairlift.

  It was a three-person chairlift. Chris sat in between his parents: his dad was on the left, his mum on the right. The lift was a steep one: it took them straight up the side of a mountain ridge that marked the boundary of one of the resort’s valleys, and would shortly take them over the top and down into the next. The open air all around was crisp and sweet in Chris’s nostrils, and Chris was happier than he’d ever been in his life before. Or, indeed, since.

  I’ve never seen anything like it, a voice was saying. His brain activity’s reading way above normal, but everything else? Zilch. He’s unresponsive to stimuli, his pulse is way down, but his brain’s going faster than it would be if he was awake! What do you think he’s—?

  It was late afternoon, and Chris and his mum and dad had been skiing all day. Chris’s legs ached and tingled with the exquisite sensation of a day’s hard and pleasurable use. The sun was already setting. In fact, where Chris and his parents were sitting, it was already dark. The sun had dropped below the line of the mountain ridge the lift was climbing, plunging everything Chris could see into shadow. Beyond his ski goggles the blinding blue and white of the sky and landscape had now shrunk to a near-uniform grey. Out of the sun it was colder too. The three of them huddled together a little against the gathering crosswind. The metal chair started rocking, just strongly enough to make Chris not mind his dad putting his arm across his shoulders. They sat there like that in a long and happy silence.

  Nurse, what have I told you about patients wearing jew
ellery?

  I know that, Doctor, but you don’t understand – his bracelet just won’t come off –

  ‘Look, Chris,’ said his father quietly (but still much louder than the other voices had been). ‘I think you’re going to like this.’

  The lift was nearing the top of the ridge now.

  ‘What, Dad?’ said Chris. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Wait for it,’ said his dad. ‘Are you ready?’

  The darkness was thick all around, thicker even than Chris remembered it. But at that moment, as the lift reached the top of the mountain . . .

  ‘Now!’

  The darkness blazed with light.

  The setting sun struck Chris full in the face. The force of it hit him like a blow, annihilating everything else in his head in a heart-stopping blast of beauty. His retinas pulsed with glimpses of glittering blue-white snow crystals; the mountaintop was so close he could touch it with the tips of his skis.

  ‘Wow!’ he and his mum said both at the same time, and he felt his father’s arm tighten, holding them both.

  They hung there, at the top of the world, swamped with light. And in that moment, that perfect instant, Chris was utterly happy.

  He’s . . . Is he? Is he . . . smiling?

  In his memory, Chris closed his eyes. The next second, in the past, he and his parents would start their descent down into the valley, and the rest of the fragment would recede into a blur. He didn’t want to open his eyes because that would mean that the moment was gone, and nothing that came after it would ever be as intense, as pure and good, for Chris, again.

  Still, he opened them. He had to. And he had a surprise.

  The first thing Chris noticed was that his parents were gone. The chairlift, his skis, they were gone too. So were his clothes, his legs, his body, everything except the landscape – the valleys and peaks, stretching out all around him, as far as he could see in every direction.

  The next thing he noticed was that he was still rising.

  He was going upwards at an even pace that felt not much faster than the chairlift had been. But it wasn’t: the details of the world shrank beneath him quickly. The horizons rolled back, their curve becoming more pronounced, and still Chris continued to go higher. For a brief moment his view was obscured by a clammy layer of wet whiteness, then the view around him turned a beautiful pure blue, which darkened and then finally turned black.