TIM, Defender of the Earth

  ‘Earthworms can expand and contract to an incredible degree,’ said Ms Lucas. ‘It’s how they move around underground. You don’t have to be super-accurate; just a rough idea will do fine. Anna and Chris, have you got anything yet?’

  ‘Eleven centimetres,’ said Chris, with effort. Suddenly he was feeling strange again.

  It was a little like the way he’d felt when he’d first woken up – only now, in the last second or two, it had become much, much worse. The throbbing in his head had returned with reinforcements: angry purple splashes passed in front of his eyes, and a dreadful kind of racking feeling seemed to travel all through him.

  It was coming from somewhere. It wasn’t . . . was it? Chris glanced at the bracelet on his wrist. He touched it. It was warm – much warmer than it could have become from his own body heat. It was almost . . . hot.

  ‘Johnny and Gwen, do you have an answer yet?’ asked Ms Lucas.

  Watching Johnny and what he was doing at that moment, Gwen stifled a giggle.

  ‘Wow!’said Johnny with a hard edge to his voice. ‘Twenty-one centimetres, miss – so far. Now it’s twenty-two . . .!’

  To Gwen’s delight, Johnny had taken hold of the hapless worm at each end and was stretching it.

  Pain flooded Chris’s body. His head rang with a dreadful inhuman noise, a screaming like brakes, like agony. It hurt so much he could hardly speak, and the bracelet now felt hot enough to burn him. He turned to Johnny and Gwen, saw what was happening to their worm, and the word came out before he could stop it:

  ‘Don’t . . .’

  Johnny looked up from what he was doing. Stretched between his fingers, the hapless earthworm quivered like a pink guitar string. ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t,’ Chris repeated. ‘You’re – hurting.’ The word came out without him thinking about it. The pain vibrated through him like an electric shock: welling out from the bracelet, echoing in his head, making his whole body shudder with it like each nerve was on fire, and all the time the terrible inhuman screech in his head went on and on and on.

  ‘Stop it!’ said Chris, standing up, not realizing that he was yelling, oblivious to the stares of his teacher and classmates. ‘Stop it! Stop it! STOP IT!’

  For a moment there was a stunned silence in the classroom.

  ‘Johnny Castle, you let go of that worm at once!’ said Ms Lucas.

  Grinning broadly, Johnny did as he was told.

  ‘Leave this class and report to the headteacher right now,’ Ms Lucas hissed in fury. ‘You too, Gwen Hadlock. Shame on you, the pair of you, torturing a helpless creature like that.’

  But Chris didn’t hear her.

  On the desk Johnny’s worm twitched once, then lay still. And now something else was happening.

  For Chris, the pain was gone. The agony had left him. In its place was a kind of howling black freezing emptiness. It opened up beneath him like a mine shaft, swallowing the classroom, the world, everything.

  The bracelet’s metal went ice-cold on his wrist.

  Chris swayed on his feet; then, with a crash, he collapsed to the floor.

  ‘Euuuuugh,’ said Chris presently – and sat up.

  He felt like his entire body had been stepped on, very slowly and carefully, all over. He sat there, blinking, because the daylight through the orange curtains on the other side of the room stabbed mercilessly into his skull every time he opened his eyes. As soon as he could manage it – which took a while – he looked around.

  He was lying on a bed in the school sick bay. On the wall over his bed was a small red box-shaped object with a glass panel: he was so groggy it took him a second to figure out it was the fire alarm.

  Anna was sitting on a chair beside him.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘you’re awake.’

  ‘Er . . . hey,’ said Chris. He looked at her. ‘Um, what just happened?’

  ‘You fainted,’ said Anna, the barest hint of a smile playing at the corner of her ordinarily so serious-looking mouth. ‘Right in the middle of a science class?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Chris. Then he remembered. ‘Oh no!’

  ‘It was kind of spectacular, actually,’ said Anna, pursuing Chris’s obvious embarrassment mercilessly. ‘Really, Chris, I’d never have guessed you felt that strongly about cruelty to poor defenceless little creatures. I mean,’ she added, ‘the way you pleaded with Johnny Castle to spare that worm’s life – that was almost . . . noble of you, I’d say.’

  ‘No,’ Chris repeated to himself. ‘Oh no, no, no . . .’

  ‘Then, of course,’ Anna carried on blithely, ‘you crashed out right there on the floor. Made quite a racket, I can tell you.’

  That’s it, Chris was thinking. My life is over. What could have possibly happened to make him behave like that in front of everybody? And just because of a worm! He would never live this down. He might as well go and throw himself off the top of a tall building or something, because physical death seemed better to him just then than the social kind he’d just condemned himself to. Doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom, doom.

  ‘It took two people to carry you up here to the sick bay,’ Anna was saying. ‘I had to come too to answer questions from Nurse Hatchard about what happened. She’s gone off to call your parents right now.

  ‘By the way,’ she added, looking towards the sick-bay door for a moment to make sure they weren’t being overheard, ‘I just told Nurse Hatchard that as far as I know, you hadn’t taken any medication or drugs of any kind.’ She leaned a little closer towards Chris. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘Sorry?’ said Chris.

  ‘You’re not on drugs at all – right?’ said Anna. ‘Only, I’d hate to have been anything less than completely helpful. I mean, who knows what you’ – she sniffed delicately – ‘cool people get up to on school time, eh?’

  Chris looked at her bleakly.

  ‘I’m the one who stands up for the rights of earthworms, remember?’ he said finally. ‘I don’t think I really qualify as a “cool person” any more.’

  ‘Seems more like you fall over for them, not stand up,’ Anna pointed out, ‘and yes, from the way Johnny and Gwen were looking at you, I’d say your cool rating has taken a bit of a knock.’ She looked at him carefully. ‘Does that bother you, by the way?’

  ‘Does what bother me?’ Chris shot back. ‘The fact that everyone in the school now thinks I’m some kind of weird freak? What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Anna mildly – surprising him. ‘I know how I feel about it. I’m used to it.’

  Chris stared at her. But then he heard the door open: presumably Nurse Hatchard had returned. He looked over at the door – and got another surprise.

  It wasn’t Nurse Hatchard; it was someone else: three people, in fact. They were men: big men with big shoulders, in black suits with white shirts and narrow black ties. The nearest one had just taken off his sunglasses, but the other two were still wearing theirs.

  ‘Anna Mallahide?’ said the first man.

  Chris looked at her.

  Anna sighed. ‘Yes. That’s me. And what do you gentlemen want, as if I didn’t know?’

  ‘We’re from MI6,’ said the first man, making Chris boggle even further. ‘We’d like you to come with us, please.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Anna – still sitting down.

  ‘Come on, miss,’ said the first man, not unkindly. ‘You know how it is. We’d rather not discuss it with . . . civilians present, if it’s all the same to you.’

  ‘Civilians?’ asked Chris. ‘Who? Me?’ He looked at her: ‘Anna, who are these people? What’s this all about?’

  ‘If it’s about my father,’ said Anna with dignity, ignoring him, ‘then I don’t think it’ll matter much if Chris here hears whatever you have to say. If what I think has happened has actually happened, then everyone’s going to have to be told the truth soon enough.’

  ‘So you know, then?’ said the second man.

  ‘I . . . can guess,’ said Anna care
fully.

  ‘Anna,’ Chris repeated, ‘what’s going on?’

  ‘Chris,’ Anna replied, ‘yesterday these men told me that my father was dead.’

  Chris was gaping now. Even when the men arrived, he’d still been thinking about how much of an idiot he’d made of himself in class earlier. Now, strangely, that didn’t seem to be the most important thing in the world any more.

  ‘But what’s bothering them now, I think,’ Anna went on, looking up at the men again, ‘is that he actually isn’t dead. Am I right?’

  The three men exchanged a look.

  ‘Very well,’ said the nearest. He snapped his fingers, and the one guarding the door unzipped a small cloth case from which he produced a laptop computer. ‘You’d better take a look at this, then – both of you, if you like. It’s a live satellite feed.’

  ‘Of what?’ Anna asked.

  ‘There’s . . . a situation going on at the BT Tower. It’s on all the news.’

  ‘Is it him?’ said Anna.

  ‘It’s him,’ said the man. ‘But brace yourself. It’s worse than you think.’

  ‘Show me,’ said Anna.

  ANNUNCIATION

  SIR REGINALD SHERIDAN paused, wineglass in hand, to savour his most recent fragrant forkful of Dover sole and admire the view. Yes, he thought: this was, most definitely, the life.

  He was sitting in a restaurant on the thirty-fourth floor of the BT Tower – one of the most famous buildings in London. Beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass in front of Sir Reginald’s table, as if set out specifically to complement his meal, was a panoramic view across almost the whole of the city. Better yet, since the BT Tower was cylindrical in shape, the restaurant had been built to revolve. Sir Reginald’s view, spectacular as it was, was therefore also constantly changing: the restaurant took exactly twenty-two minutes to perform a complete revolution, so Sir Reginald never got bored. Finally – and best of all – thanks to some silly business with a terrorist leaving a bomb in the toilets back in the early 1980s, the restaurant was no longer open to the public. Sir Reginald and certain other select individuals were therefore free to dine there in utmost luxury without any danger of having to mix with . . . ordinary people at all. Sir Reginald was in his heaven and, as far as he was concerned, all was right with the world.

  The BT Tower had been built in 1964 as a telecommunications hub. Constructed from over 13,000 tons of concrete, it stood a full 189 metres tall – the tallest structure in London at the time it was built. It was also incredibly strong, having been designed so that the floors and floors of broadcasting and communications equipment that made up the vast majority of the tower’s contents could remain protected and continue to function even (supposedly) in the event of a nuclear attack. And Sir Reginald was sitting on top of it.

  Sometimes Sir Reginald liked to imagine the floors of humming machines and equipment, vibrating just faintly below him with the terrific speed of their secret calculations. Sometimes he liked to imagine that it was all happening just for him – those sorts of thoughts tended to make Sir Reginald very happy. But now, washing the sole down with a flinty sip of white wine, Sir Reginald touched his napkin to his lips – and frowned.

  Annoyingly, the view suddenly didn’t seem to be quite as spectacular as usual.

  It was this confounded haze that had started appearing lately. The skies over the whole of London seemed full of it now, casting its sludgy orange pall over everything. Still, Sir Reginald consoled himself, if the view was disappointing today, the food certainly wasn’t. The fish was sensational. Sir Reginald’s latest mouthful of Dover sole was about to follow its predecessors when he froze in mid-chew. A shadow seemed to have fallen across his table.

  The sky was darkening outside the restaurant’s windows: not just the sky, Sir Reginald noticed, but everything seemed to be darkening, the light leeching away as if the sun was setting. He checked his watch. It was two in the afternoon! How could it possibly be—?

  Abruptly – shockingly – the window went blank.

  Still with a mouth full of fish, Sir Reginald gaped. What was going on? The outside of the windows – the outside of the whole building – seemed to have been suddenly coated in something, as if giant hands had wrapped the tower up in a blanket. It was dark orange-brown in colour, like a dust storm of some kind, only the dust was boiling, seething outside, almost as if . . .

  Well, as if it was alive.

  At the corner of Sir Reginald’s eye, something flickered for a moment. He turned.

  Someone was standing beside him. There had been no footsteps, no signs of anyone approaching, but a tallish man with unkempt hair and a strange twinkle in his eye was standing at Sir Reginald’s elbow, looking down at him.

  ‘How do you do?’ asked the apparition. ‘I’m Professor Mallahide.’

  Sir Reginald remembered to swallow his fish, but no suitable reply occurred to him.

  ‘I’m sorry to have to disturb your meal like this,’ said the man who’d just appeared out of nowhere. ‘But I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave. You see, I’m taking over this building. In a moment or two I’m going to use the equipment it contains to broadcast a quick address to the nation, and then the whole of this structure – and everything in it – is shortly going to vanish.’

  ‘Are – are you some sort of terrorist?’ stammered Sir Reginald, finding his voice at last.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Mallahide. He grinned. ‘No, not in the least – rather the opposite, if anything. Still,’ he added, ‘for your own sake, I’d advise you to take what I say very seriously. This place is no longer safe for you. In a few minutes, my machines’ – he gestured at the boiling orange-brown mass waiting patiently just beyond the glass – ‘are going to go to work, and everything in this building will be . . . changed. If I was you,’ Mallahide went on politely, ‘I’d make sure I was safely back at ground level before that happened.’

  Sir Reginald looked up at the man and, frowning, touched his napkin to his lips. ‘What absolute balderdash,’ he replied. ‘This restaurant is private: I don’t know how you managed to get in here, but I think it’s you who should be leaving. In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the men in white coats were on their way right now to take you back to whatever mental ward you’ve obviously just escaped from. Now if you’ll excuse me’ – he gestured at his plate – ‘I was eating.’

  Professor Mallahide’s smile widened. ‘You think I’m mad?’ he asked.

  ‘As a hatter,’ said Sir Reginald.

  ‘You’re not the first to think that, and I’m sure you won’t be the last,’ said Professor Mallahide airily. ‘But it’s as well to be sure of one’s own sanity, I always think, before casting aspersions on someone else’s. Here’s a simple test for you.’

  Sir Reginald heard a sudden sort of fizzing noise, then the professor brought his hands out from behind his back.

  ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’

  Sir Reginald’s fork dropped from his own nerveless fingers, hitting the crockery with a crash. ‘G-good Lord,’ he stammered.

  Professor Mallahide had decided to change his hands a little, just temporarily, for fun. Now the grossly misshapen palms with their fronds of digits spread in front of Sir Reginald like two giant fans or large pink sea anemones.

  ‘Go on,’ said Mallahide, waggling them at the old gentleman. ‘Take a guess! No? All right, I’ll tell you: I’m holding up twenty fingers. Twenty-five,’ he added gleefully, ‘if you include all the thumbs!’

  Sir Reginald blinked, gulped, stood up – and ran away. He’d got up so fast that his chair had fallen over.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mallahide to Sir Reginald’s retreating back. He waited until the lights on the lift panel told him that the building’s remaining occupants were safely on their way back to ground level. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Time to get started.’

  All over London – all over the country – TV screens abruptly filled with static, then went blank. Then, simultaneously on all
terrestrial channels, a smiling but unfamiliar face hazed into view.

  Professor Mallahide was ready to address his public.

  ‘Good day to you,’ he said. ‘My name is Edward Mallahide. I’m sorry to interrupt your afternoon’s viewing, but I’ve got some rather exciting news to share with you.’

  In homes and pubs all over Britain, fingers stabbed fruitlessly down on the buttons of remote controls. But Professor Mallahide was broadcasting on all channels. Gradually, as the news began to permeate through to broadcasting corporations everywhere, the satellite stations started to show his broadcast too. As he continued to speak, the whole country stopped what it was doing and, curious, began to listen.

  ‘Just two days ago now,’ Professor Mallahide announced, ‘I did something rather amazing. I stepped out of my body and became something . . . different.’

  He paused, grinning delightedly.

  ‘Two days ago,’ he said, ‘I was a human being. Now I am something else, something I’ve come to call posthuman. I believe that, as a species, this is the next stage in our development, and I have had the very great privilege of being the first to take that step. I can now do things you won’t be able to believe. I’ll never get tired, I’ll never get old, I’ll never die – and those are among the least of my gifts. But more important, I want to share these gifts with everyone.’

  He paused again.

  ‘Imagine a world,’ he said, ‘without physical limitations of any kind, where you can go anywhere, do anything, and feel everything. Imagine a world where man is finally able to escape the prison of his crude fleshy body and, at last, be truly free. There will be no age, no death, no disease, no hunger – only life and what you choose to make of it. My friends, that’s what I’m offering you. Join me on humanity’s greatest adventure. I promise, it will be the best decision you’ve ever made.’

  ‘What on Earth’s he talking about?’ The question was being asked up and down the length of Britain – in this case, though, it was being voiced by David Sinclair, the prime minister.

  ‘Ah,’ said Dr Belforth unhappily. ‘I was afraid of this.’