TIM, Defender of the Earth

  Tim ploughed through the wreckage of the office block he’d just flattened – and paused.

  ‘Good heavens,’ said Chris’s mother. ‘What on Earth’s that?’

  ‘What do you think it is, woman?’ Chris’s dad snapped back. ‘It’s a monster!’

  ‘I can see that, dear. But what’s it doing here? In London?’

  ‘What do we care?’ asked Chris’s dad, not unreasonably. ‘Come on! Let’s get the car turned round and get out of here!’

  ‘No,’ said Chris. ‘Let’s not.’

  It was the first time he’d spoken for a while. For a moment his parents were so surprised that all they did was look at him.

  Chris was feeling very strange.

  He was scared. That was part of it. And in a way that wasn’t surprising: there was, after all, a giant monster standing on the other side of the bridge. But the thing was, as soon as he examined the feeling, he knew that this wasn’t the reason. He was scared, he realized, in a different way: his whole body – radiating from the bracelet at his wrist – was positively shivering with adrenaline. His blood hammered in his ears. His stomach sluiced inside him like it was filled with icy water. But what he was feeling, he realized, wasn’t coming from him.

  ‘. . . Frightened,’ he said aloud.

  ‘What’s that, dear?’ whispered Chris’s mum. ‘Are you scared?’

  ‘Not me,’ said Chris, shaking his head and not really believing that he was about to say it. But he gestured out of the window. ‘Him.’

  Chris’s parents stared at him, then—

  Suddenly the gigantic beast was on the move. Thighs bunching colossally for a moment, Tim tensed his hind legs and sprang forward into the Thames.

  The river gouted up around him. With a crash, a long barge moored upriver at the embankment was simply washed upside down onto the bank by the tidal wave of displaced water. Slowly, but with gathering speed, Tim began to wade across.

  The engine of the Pitmans’ car coughed twice, then fell silent.

  ‘You’ve stalled it!’ Chris’s dad pointed out.

  ‘Yes, dear,’ said Chris’s mum.

  ‘We need to get it started!’

  ‘Yes, dear,’ said Chris’s mum.

  ‘Turn the key! Get the engine going! Now!’

  ‘Yes, dear,’ said Chris’s mum through gritted teeth as the desperate whinnying of the ignition was drowned out by the sound of the approaching giant. But the engine failed to catch.

  ‘Oh God!’ said Chris’s dad. ‘It’s coming to get us! We’re doomed!’

  ‘No,’ said Chris again, with a strange and sudden certainty, ‘we’re not.’

  He was right. Tim had stopped.

  From where Tim was standing, the Thames came halfway up his shins. The car was up on the river’s embankment. If Tim bent over far enough, his eyes were almost level with the small metal box and its occupants. He laid his head with its long jaws almost flat on the high ground at the other side of the river and brought one of his eyes right up beside the car.

  Tim, too, was feeling strange. For the first time since leaving his home and coming up into the world, he felt oddly . . . calm. His fear and confusion had receded a little, to be replaced by a kind of peace. It was something to do with the light: the strange greenish yellow light that seemed to be coming from the arm of one of the tiny people. Tim was curious.

  By now, Chris’s mum had given up trying to restart the engine. Silence had fallen inside the car. No one said anything: there was nothing to be said. Chris and his parents just waited, stock-still, while Tim’s gigantic eye continued to examine them. From where they were sitting, his eye was so big that its pupil filled the whole windscreen. The eye’s iris – around the vertical slit of the pupil – was an extraordinary warm green colour with flecks of orange in it. They could hear the great snort of Tim’s breath like the chugging of some colossal generator and the thick drip of his spittle as it fell from his fangs. Chris’s mum was rigid with terror. Chris’s dad was whimpering quietly. But Chris . . .

  Not knowing why he did it but unable to help himself, Chris took his arm with its glowing bracelet and held it up for the monster’s eye to see.

  The pupil shrank instantly, reacting to the light.

  Tim blinked.

  For a long, slow moment Chris and Tim looked at each other . . .

  . . . then a fusillade of explosions took them both from each other’s sight.

  While Tim had been distracted, the two battalions of tanks had arrived. They had formed up on the far side of the river, just next to the Houses of Parliament.

  ‘Target acquired, sir,’ Field Marshal Thompson had said to the prime minister. ‘Permission to fire?’

  ‘Yes! Shoot it with everything!’

  ‘Permission granted. Fire at will.’

  Knocked sideways by the sheer pummelling weight of so many large-calibre shells, Tim straightened up. Confused for a moment by all the smoke and noise – but no more hurt than he had been by the helicopters’ missiles – he turned, looking around for where this latest attack had come from. It took him a while to make out its origin, but he found them soon enough: those long, flat, box-like objects on the other side of the river, the ones with the barrel things pointing at him.

  Tim bared his fangs. Now he was getting annoyed. He was doing his best not to break things, he really was, but he was having a very unhappy and confusing evening, and the tiny people trying to hurt him were not helping matters. While more explosions pounded off his chest and abdomen, his eyes narrowed. He took a purposeful wading step back towards the Houses of Parliament, and another one.

  Chris’s mum and dad were cowering, their heads between their knees. Chris was still upright: mesmerized, he watched what happened next.

  Tim had reached the tanks now. One by one, they’d stopped firing as their occupants – seeing Tim’s approach and how little effect the shelling was having – had simply opened the hatches and fled. It was lucky they had, because at that moment Tim picked up two of the tanks in his claws. He stood there for a second, hefting them as if weighing them, then with a short, easy movement he brought his great hands together, flattening the tanks against each other in one blow.

  ‘Hell’s teeth!’ roared the prime minister, sitting forward on his chair, all thoughts of how cold he was momentarily forgotten. ‘Did you see that?’ He jabbed at the monitors with one finger. ‘Did you see that?’

  ‘This is Thompson to all ground units,’ said Thompson, who had, in fact, ‘seen that’. ‘All remaining ground units, abort. I repeat: abort. Pull back out of range until further instructions. Air units, provide cover and continue to engage with the enemy. Drive the monster downstream as best you can.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Mr Sinclair.

  ‘I’m pulling my men out,’ said Thompson as patiently as he could. ‘I can’t ask them to go up against that. And I hope you don’t expect me to go against my judgement on this, sir.’

  Surprised at the sudden venom in the field marshal’s voice, Mr Sinclair blinked. ‘But . . . what do you propose to do?’ he asked.

  ‘A direct assault is too risky,’ said Thompson, searching the faces of his colleagues from the navy and air force. ‘Agreed?’

  They nodded.

  ‘Very well: then our only chance lies in attempting to drive the creature down the Thames and out of the city as quickly as possible.’

  ‘Drive it where, though?’ asked the prime minister.

  ‘Frankly, sir,’ said Thompson, ‘I don’t know. The sea would seem to be the most sensible option. But for the time being our first responsibility must be to London’s civilians. If we can persuade Tim to stick to the river, then the damage to buildings and property should be kept to a minimum.’

  ‘But the bridges . . .!’

  ‘London’s bridges are a small price to pay compared to what other damage this creature might cause. Sir . . .’ added Thompson, ‘we can’t fight this thing, not now and certainly not here.’ r />
  ‘Very well,’ said Mr Sinclair, pouting.

  A fresh volley of missiles struck Tim in the side. He stopped playing with the tanks and stood up straight.

  Tim wasn’t bright, but he wasn’t entirely stupid either. With all the explosions and everything, he was beginning to get the hint that the tiny people didn’t like him being there very much. Well, that was fine by Tim: he didn’t like it there either.

  He looked down at the dark water, feeling the way the current surged around his scaly legs. There were fewer things to break or get in his way out here in the river. And walking would be less effort if he followed the flow, so that suggested a direction.

  Ignoring the helicopters, Tim turned and set off down the river. Chris watched him go.

  After a time, Tim noticed, the tiny people gradually stopped trying to shoot him so much. They hung back, watching him from their clattering flying vehicles, and – apart from the occasional distracting shattering of the bridges across his legs – things gradually became quieter and less dramatic.

  Now, at last, Tim had a little more time to think.

  Where was he going? Tim didn’t know. What was he going to do? Tim didn’t know. Right now all he was doing was walking . . . and seeing what he could see.

  The world, he decided presently, certainly was very big. The further Tim walked, the more the possibility began to occur to him that this place might not actually have any limits at all. Was that possible? Could he keep walking and never reach the end of it? The idea of this was very frightening. Above him, the open sky loomed down: pitilessly infinite. Ahead of him, the furthest point Tim could see had now developed an infuriating habit of just . . . changing into something else whenever he thought he was getting closer to it. Big as he was, Tim felt small and alone. The only thing that kept this feeling under any kind of control was if he just kept walking. So he walked.

  The world watched him. All over the globe they stared, awestruck, at their screens, seeing his huge silhouette against the sky. To either side of the river people trembled in their beds at the surging thunder of Tim’s watery footsteps – hardly believing that this gigantic creature still wasn’t going to choose that moment to start causing more havoc. But Tim didn’t: apart from the bridges (and Tim couldn’t help that) he didn’t appear to be attacking anything. He just walked on, endlessly, through the night.

  The river was widening. The water was getting higher too, reaching slowly up past his knees and as far as his scaly belly, but Tim kept walking. As he walked, he sniffed the air, huffing in great gulps of it through his cavernous nostrils, tasting what it contained. The hot metal taint, the sickly machine stink of the tiny people, was gradually beginning to recede. At the same time, the pinkish tinge to the air from the lights of their city was fading, revealing more of the stars. Still pursued by the rattling, clattering machines, Tim kept walking, and soon the water was up to his chest. Before much longer it was up to his neck, then covering his face. And soon after that, following the memory of his daydream and a strange dark urge to keep walking like this until a better idea occurred to him, he vanished under the water.

  ‘We’ve done it, sir! He’s heading out to sea!’ one of Field Marshal Thompson’s aides confirmed delightedly.

  ‘Thank you, Jenkins,’ Thompson replied. ‘That will do.’

  ‘Well?’ asked the prime minister, still wearing his pyjamas and dressing gown. ‘Is it over?’

  ‘Frankly, Prime Minister,’ Thompson answered, ‘there’s just no way of knowing.’

  Field Marshal Thompson knew that the monster’s departure had little to do with anything he or his chief-of-staff colleagues had done. Clearly, a creature like that only went somewhere if it wanted to. But Tim had left London, with a minimum amount of collateral damage.

  For now.

  THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS

  ‘SO, PROFESSOR . . .’ SAID Mr Sinclair the following morning, ‘we’ve agreed to the funding you wanted, and we’re prepared to let you break a treaty ratified by the United Nations. As I’m sure you know, we currently have a rather large problem on our hands, so tell us: what exactly are we going to get from you in return?’

  Professor Mallahide looked from the prime minister to the rest of the party. Among the small but highly select crowd visiting his laboratory at such short notice (and on a Saturday, too!), he recognized the head of MI6 as well as various commanders in chief from the British army, navy and air force: an impressive audience, even if they did all currently look a bit anxious. He took a deep breath.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I have one word for you.’ He smiled at them. ‘GRIN.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ said the prime minister.

  ‘GRIN,’ Mallahide repeated. ‘It stands for Genetics, Robotics, Information and Nanotech – the four cornerstones of the current scientific revolution. And although the first three all have their parts to play in this project of mine, my particular area of specialization lies in the N: nanotechnology. Now, can any of you tell me what nanotech actually means?’

  There was a pause. The assembled VIPs exchanged awkward glances. They’d been expecting a straight demonstration, not a school lesson.

  ‘Anyone?’ asked Professor Mallahide delightedly, enjoying their discomfort.

  ‘Isn’t it . . . the science of making things that are very small?’ asked Sarah Flitwick, the head of MI6.

  ‘How small?’ Mallahide shot back.

  ‘Tiny,’ Ms Flitwick replied. ‘Particle size. So small you can barely see them under a microscope.’

  ‘Correct!’said Mallahide. ‘The name nanotech comes from nanometre, the unit of measurement that I – and others like me – most commonly work in. One nanometre is one millionth of a millimetre. The results of most of my efforts take place around the one-hundred-nanometre mark: that’s a thousand times smaller than the thickness of the average human hair. And in that realm, ladies and gentlemen – in that magical dimension, so far beneath the limits of everyday human perception as to seem, to the untrained mind, completely insignificant – in that realm, I do not flatter myself when I say that I am the undisputed leader of the world: the God of Small Things, to quote the title of the well-known novel.’

  Mallahide beamed. The VIPs were frowning. But he was just hitting his stride.

  ‘I make machines,’ he said. ‘That’s the shortest way of saying it. Tiny machines, capable of operating at a cellular level. And what do my machines do?’ He paused, sweeping his audience with another dazzling grin. ‘My machines – my nanobots, I call them – can quite literally do anything.’

  ‘Anything?’ the prime minister echoed, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Mallahide. ‘The first and most important thing that they can do – now that we have your permission’ – he nodded graciously at Mr Sinclair – ‘is replicate themselves: make more nanobots. They can also work together to manufacture other things, depending on how I instruct them: larger or more complex items, increasingly powerful and complicated machines – whatever I tell them to do! Each individual nanobot is networked with the rest: they can share information; they can work as a team; they can move in a swarm as one.’

  ‘Professor Mallahide,’ said the prime minister. ‘That’s all’ – he coughed – ‘absolutely fascinating. But is there any way we can skip any further preamble about your work and cut straight to its military applications? Those are what we’re here to see, after all.’

  Mallahide’s gaze went cold, but his smile didn’t change in the slightest. ‘Of course,’ he said easily. ‘Please, step this way.’

  He led the party over to the large picture window that dominated one side of the room.

  ‘Through there, as you see,’ said Professor Mallahide, ‘is the central area of my laboratory. For obvious reasons, my work requires an environment that is as sterile as it is within our powers to make it – so this will be as close as you’ll be coming for today, I’m afraid. Nonetheless, with the kind help of my assistant, Dr Belforth, I’ve take
n the liberty of preparing a little demonstration that should be of some interest to you.’

  He reached for the intercom that was on the wall beside him and pressed a button.

  ‘Belforth? Bring the test subject in now, please.’

  In the glittering icy-white lab space beyond the triple-layered glass screen, a figure shuffled into view. The figure was wearing a thick white protective suit that covered its whole body from head to toe: you couldn’t even make out if it was a man or a woman under there, and the suit was thick enough to make the figure’s movements quite ungainly. A cart with a rectangular object on top of it was wheeled into position in front of the window; with a flourish, the figure drew off the white sheet that had been covering the object to reveal . . .

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Professor Mallahide, ‘I give you the star of this afternoon’s show: Sciurus carolinensis.’

  ‘A squirrel,’ said the prime minister, eyeing the bushy-tailed creature in the box before the window with an expression of distaste.

  ‘An American grey squirrel,’ Mallahide corrected. He put his mouth to the intercom again. ‘Thank you, Belforth. You can begin connecting the box to the hive now, please.’ As the white-suited figure in the lab shambled to do his bidding, Mallahide turned again to face his audience.

  ‘As my daughter first told me,’ he said proudly, ‘there’s actually a rather interesting story attached to these fellows. Common as they are in this country’s parks and wild spaces nowadays, the grey squirrel isn’t actually a native of the British Isles. As his name implies, he was brought here from the United States and introduced into the wild – for, I believe, ornamental purposes originally – in Cheshire, in 1876. In the short time since then,’ the professor went on, ‘our friend here and the rest of his species have utterly taken over from Sciurus vulgaris – our own red squirrel – to the extent that grey squirrels now outnumber red ones by a factor of no less that sixty-six to one. Due in part to a type of smallpox the greys carry but to which they are immune, the British – or Eurasian – red squirrel, to give it its proper classification, is now being considered as a candidate for the international list of endangered species. And all because someone once decided they preferred the colour of this chap’s fur. Extraordinary, isn’t it? There’s a lesson for us all in there somewhere, I think.’