The Time Gene, page 39
Chapter Thirty-seven
The Invisible Man
Braemuir High School, Monday 25th March 2002
A sour mood clouded the air as the gang walked back from school. “I just think it’s bullshit none o’ us got parts,” Ade whined, bumping her schoolbag on the railings as it slid off her gangly body. “Me an’ you have been doin’ drama since primary two, Kayles.”
“So have I,” said Leonie. “Do you remember Ms...?”
“Always the same,” Kayleigh said, hacking the crocus beds with her hockey stick, swiping off their heads. “Blatant favouritism.”
“It’s always the IN girls that get everything,” Ade agreed, spitting her used gum onto the gym wall. “Brooke bloody Cumming. Her gran’s joined at the hip tae the head o’ Braemuir Primary, isn’t she? An’ that Porteous bitch is in the same clique. Tea and cakes every Sunday at Café La-dee-da.”
“As for that Brooke, she follows them two like a bloody fart,” Roxy added.
On cue, Leonie burst out laughing. “Oh, Roxy, you’re so funny.” She tried to high-five her but was rebuffed with a very withering look.
No surprise there. Nothing Leonie did impressed her since she’d taken up with that obnoxious Liam. At least he wasn’t around at school, where Roxy might chat to her if no better company was available. Outside of it she’d hardly offer her the time of day.
But, if she could just have got the part of Belle, she’d have had something to do all those evenings when Roxy gallivanted off with jailbird lover. Now that dream was gone too.
But was it? Leonie’s heart skipped a beat as a wild hope seized her. That cast list could be altered, couldn’t it? Not that Leonie supposed Roxy would do it for her. But hadn’t she hated Brooke ever since the latter made a pass at Liam at Rick’s 18th? How far might she go to get revenge?
“I think Jacinta deserved to be Belle rather than Brooke,” Leonie ventured. “I’m not in their league. But somehow I feel that...if I could relive the audition...I could do better. I messed up on that ‘what I’d give’ line. Do you know what my favourite song is?”
“Jingle Bells?”
Leonie’s lip quivered. “No, of course not. No, it’s If I Could Turn Back Time.”
The looks they gave her! Oh well, Cher couldn’t be cool either. No-one she liked ever was. But this wasn’t about Cher. She had to stake her bid. It was now or never. “If I could have the audition over again, I’d get it right...” she added with high-octane melancholy ardour, and a tragedy-queen look at Roxanne.
Straightaway she sensed that Roxanne had cottoned on. And that it was no-go, not an ice cube’s chance in a furnace. Roxy shot her a dark, impregnable warning. Don’t go there. Knock on that door, and the devil will knock at yours. Leonie cast one last pleading glance, a martyr seeking her torturer’s eye in a hopeless bid for mercy. But the return glance was riven with fiery venom.
Tears filled Leonie’s eyes. She’d have been torn limb from limb for Roxanne, whilst the latter cast her aside at the first hint of cooler company. Why wouldn’t she grant her this tiniest of requests? Why wouldn’t she do it? Could she even do it? Leonie had spent years trying to wriggle the truth out of Roxy: had the time-travel been real or a childhood prank? But Roxy just rolled her eyes and changed the subject. She never got a straight answer. Leonie began to wonder if Roxy knew herself.
Defeated, Leonie added cagily: “Of course I know time travel isn’t possible, but if it were possible, then I would...”
“Yeah - same bitches every time,” Roxy butted in. “Head girl, hockey captain, Leng medal, an’ now the bloody play. Texas Truman-Carr, the trollop what snogged the janny in the sports shed – that’s how he got suspended - and that tart Miley O’Rourke. President o’ the Christian Union but sellin’ the first years cannabis sherbet in the bogs.”
Kayleigh glowered at them, her face downcast. “It’s really nice to know you’re too fat an’ ugly to be the Wardrobe.”
“God’s sake,” snapped Ade. “You’re obsessed with how you look.”
Kayleigh hunched her shoulders. “Hark who’s talkin’. Sending nude photos to fifty modelling agencies.”
Ade jerked back her head. “How is five agencies fifty? An’ I was not naked.”
“Bra an’ knickers then.”
“I wore cocktail dresses for all but two shots,” she snapped. “An’ I looked bloody hot in them an’ all!”
Kayleigh turned away, her face blotchy and her tarry mascara leaking down her face. “Buck up, girl!” Ade shouted. “I’m a size 8, 6 foot 2, blonde, don’t eat carbs an’ I’ve got longer legs than Cindy Crawford. I get honked at by traffic and I got told by two agents I’ve got better cheekbones than Kate Moss. He said I was too young now, but he’d sign me up next year or he was Elvis Presley. If I don’t get to be Belle, then the cast list’s rigged.”
Ade had intended that last point to be comforting, but Kayleigh’s eyes had turned into a tomatoey mush.
“We’re just four misfits who nothing good ever happens to,” Kayleigh sighed.
Roxy was pulling a face that reminded Leonie of Nanna’s month-old purple turnips. “You’re only a misfit as long as you’re bothered. Me? I don’t want to fit in. I want anarchy. I want revolution.”
“Revolution and anarchy sound really fun,” Leonie nodded, trying desperately to dampen Roxnne’s anger over her time-travel request. “But showbusiness is my dream.”
“Your dream? Stop livin’ in bloody Disneyland. I only auditioned so’s I could have a laugh watching Fousty. His singing reminds me of my Uncle Jock barfing after a three-night bender. An’ Rick? He sounds like a Yeti wi’ throat cancer, an’ as for Haggis...”
Kayleigh whacked her on the crown for “dissing her man”. In return, Roxanne kicked Kayleigh in the groin, and she howled like she’d taken a bullet through the abdomen. “Shush!” Roxanne shrieked. “Someone’s followin’ us.”
Kayleigh pinioned Roxy against the railings. “You kick me on the pussy an’ you’re tellin’ me to shut up!”
“No...Kayles...there really is someone followin’ us.” Panic filled her voice.
“I didnae hear anything,” Kayleigh spat, squeezing Roxanne’s throat until she choked and coughed.
“I heard something too,” said Leonie. The others snorted. Maybe they thought she was parroting Roxy. But she genuinely had heard something. A creepy something. A rustle in the ferns. A crack of a twig. The clank of footsteps. The plucking of a guitar string. Nothing tangible; nothing concrete. But something deadly real.
“God’s sake, look at you, you’re like a jelly,” sniggered Kayleigh. “Who’d be following us?”
“Jayjay?” suggested Leonie.
The Bhoys exploded with laughter. “You must be jokin’,” Kayleigh snarled. “He’d rather swallow petrol. Come on, we’re like the Mutant Ninja Turtles o’ Braemuir High. Or we were, until Texas’ and Miley’s gang started doin’ drugs.”
Ade snorted. “Face it, Kayles – no-one pisses themselves about us any more,” Ade said. “We’re history since the Jayjay shit stopped. Even Roxy’s gone soft since she found ‘lurve’ wi’ your dickhead brother.”
“When you’re the Pride Leader, you don’t need to hunt,” Roxy retorted. Then she shrivelled backwards. “My God. They’re really close.”
Kayleigh cast her eyes heavenward. “Mind yourselves, you two. You’ll start a rumour the Darroch gang’s small time. Who’d mess with us? Darth Vader wouldnae. Batman wouldnae. Even Godzilla wouldnae. Who cares if someone’s following us? I mean, like, and? Are we Braemuir Bludgeoners or are we Care Bears? Let’s go an’ batter him.”
But this proved tougher than expected because their pursuer appeared to be invisible. They searched behind cars, down dodgy closes and under hedges, to no avail. At length, both Leonie and Roxy distinctly heard a thump, like someone falling, from behind a bus shelter, and the discordant wail of a dropped strings instrument.
“Over there!”
But by the time they stumbled to the front of the shelter, they ambushed only a breath of wind and a swinging seat, creaking ominously.
Chapter Thirty-eight
The Tweener
Baker Street Tube Station, December 14th, 2051
Seven years on, and the smell of death still hung like a bat. Holding his fingers over his nose, Murdo clambered down the stone steps into the bowels of the station. He wrested his ankle away from a mangy fox. Far above, remains of once-fine buildings lay in mountainous piles. But of the once teeming crowds there remained no trace. The few scattered bones likely came from a Minesweeper - one of the ill-starred kids who earned a crust weeding out unexploded bombs. No-one else had touched the place since they cleared away the bodies. Only mad dogs and rodents hung out in the Death Zone nowadays.
Grease, dust and dark rust-coloured stains smeared the walls. Murdo shuddered at these gigantic tombstones that echoed and throbbed with the cries of the victims. In the warped metallic mirrors of the stairwell a host of pale and petrified faces rose upward, their mouths grotesque. Cracked billboards, disused escalators and cobwebby ticket offices stooped in silent tribute to the fallen. The damp tunnels, peeling paintwork and rotted beams wept. Death, fear and loss bled from beneath the cement. Only the scurrying of a few skeletal rats, and Murdo’s heartbeat broke the silence. It seemed indecent to be alive in this bodiless mass grave. His very breath repulsed him. At least the nausea quelled the gnawing hunger. Since the League of Kairos had disbanded, Murdo no longer had the right to black market rations. At times he even eyed the rodents with a pang of appetite.
Almost four years had passed since he’d heard a whisper of any of the Kaironians. Whatever had happened to Old Pro? Last he’d heard, he had been posted South Eastern Pakistan as part of a ‘peacekeeping’ mission. Skeggy and Hathersage? Depleted as they were, they wouldn’t make two old men fight, would they? According to a mutual friend, Gordonstoun had been called to America “to work in pharmaceuticals”. Baloney, Murdo reckoned. Probably only wanted him to build more advanced cyborgs. Hathersage? His missus had told Murdo he had been posted to Houston, Texas. Some big codebreaking project. And Perun? Hush-hush as ever, but if you believed the rumour mill, he was in Syria. Unconfirmed reports from the underground press said he was searching for a Russian missile factory in some top-secret location.
Rumours of an armistice spread. And were quashed, and quashed again. So far, peace was as unreachable as the edge of space. The past 24 hours had seen the gassing of a Kosovar village, the bombing of a US Military base, killing 400 soldiers as they slept; and the shooting down of a relief plane carrying 200 Iraqi children to hospital in Switzerland. It was no longer a war, but a chaos, an anarchic bedlam, a jungle of flame and poison ivy.
Murdo had gone back to teaching. Almost four years now, reserved occupation, it was a sweet lull while it lasted. Two weeks ago he’d got a letter. They were posting him to a British submarine corps off the coast of Japan. He had appealed, insisting he could no more blow up a Japanese submarine than unicycle along a tightrope. But conscientious objection was no longer viable. The better men were mostly dead. So he claimed exemption on account of his bad leg. He was due to present himself for a medical at a military hospital in Elephant and Castle the following day. The result was a formality. If your head was still attached, you were A1. Murdo knew what he needed to do. He would sooner die, his hands untainted, than kill and maim. Besides, he’d served his purpose on Earth. But he simply had to give this place one last try.
For the first two years he’d haunted Baker Street. Dug himself in heaven alone knew how many times, and wandered the dank staircases and bloodstained floors. And never so much as an ill-tuned guitar riff. His visits had decreased since then. Once, twice a year, hardly that. But he knew this one would be the last. It had always been a long shot. How could a man reside in this godforsaken pit? Yet Baker Street Station was where he said he “lived”. The former Kaironians would have dismissed Murdo’s subterranean wanderings as a slippery slope into insanity. Yet for Murdo, the planet’s fate depended as much on curiosity and guile as on science.
The tube station was boarded up and marred with ‘Danger of Death’ signs. But mercifully the electrics had never been taken out. The eerie emergency lighting still flooded the platforms and gangways, drowning everything in its fluorescent glow. Murdo had battled his way through rampant weeds and sprawling undergrowth; across the concrete walls and barbed wire fences that sealed off central London. Ugly red scratches marred his hands. The station had been a haven for drug barons, until police raided the place two years ago. Since then, it had lain abandoned. As Murdo clambered onto what had once been the platform, he gazed upon the littered gangways and shattered tracks. Broken train doors, a reeking carcass of a fox, disintegrating plastic bags floating on a stray wind, two threadbare mattresses, a needle, two syringes, a torn sleeping bag, a smashed wooden seat, an abandoned gas mask and four bullets. And the faint smell of rotting flesh. A torn and ripped sleeping bag lay on top of the wooden beams on the ceiling. How the blazes had it got up there? Every time he turned around, he found new testimony to man’s wantonness and stupidity.
Scratched onto the tiles were messages begging for food, money, lost loved ones and...most elusively...world peace. The cold seeped through Murdo’s skin. His blood congealed when he saw a mark on the tiles. The shape was unmistakable. A body had once lain there, perhaps for years. A life extinct but unerasable. He walked on and on towards the tunnel, his resolve unwavering. Yet, save for the dripping of a disused pipe and a hideous scurrying within, he found the tunnel empty. Murdo was on the verge of giving up when he heard a low whistle. He stopped short – that was no rodent! All at once he buckled under a crushing and paralysing fear.
“H…hello?”
“Boo!”
Murdo snapped his head round so fast he keeled over in agony. The platform was empty...had he imagined it? Had it been the delusion of a deranged mind? Still combing the platform, he turned around again.
“Up here!”
Murdo fixed his gaze on the beams. He put a hand to his chest. He saw him hangling like an alcoholic moth, the shaggy, unkempt busker. In his outstretched hands he held his battered guitar, as though awaiting applause for a rousing solo. He swayed in this attitude for a few seconds. One false move, and he would be dashed against the tracks below. He draped his guitar over his shoulder and swung onto another beam, hoisting himself up before sliding down a disused pipe. He had shown not an inch of fear.
“Should’ve been a flyin’ trapeze artist.”
He strutted along the platform, arms outstretched, as if to bow to a riveted crowd. He swaggered past Murdo without acknowledgment, gazing vapidly at the crumbling Sherlock Holmes tiles.
He wore the same long grey overcoat he’d worn at Faslane, faded jeans and a dirty ruffled shirt. His lank grey hair was greasy and grimy. Murdo doubted he was seventy, but his jowly and bloated face seemed enormously aged and debauched, warped by decades of sinful living. Bitter, colourless lips twisted into a mocking smile. Rheumy, bloodshot eyes laughed and cackled at him, cold and webbed as snowflakes. But soft deep within. There had been kindness in them once. What was it that blotted his soul?
“You cannae make much money these days, wi’ all your acrobatics,” Murdo said to the busker’s lithe silhouette. “No’ too many commuters at the mo’.”
“Ah…the Beatles were about the money. The Midges weren’t,” the Busker said sanctimoniously.
“Midges!” Murdo soliloquised. His eyes glistened at the image. Highland walks in bleak paradises where the only thing to fear was the irksome little parasite that bit your arms and legs as you bivouacked in a cool breeze.
“We were the best band in Liverpool. Lennon told me so himself,” the busker bragged. He avoided eye contact with Murdo, but glanced in his direction, as if to gauge his reaction. Murdo was not all that surprised that he should have met a musician who had been dead over seventy years. The busker plunked at his guitar strings.
“I know what you’re doin’,” Murdo said. “I just don’t know how you’re doin’ it. Who are you, anyway? What is your name? How did you meet the Anchor?”
The busker ignored him, strumming a discordant air on his guitar.
Murdo had conducted extensive research of the League of Kairos’ database of time-travellers. He had found no-one fitting the busker’s profile. Time-travellers could do many things, but they could not hide. Perun’s seismometers could seamlessly detect a five-second reversal at the other side of the planet. Unless…
Unless the Busker was a powerful time-traveller from a prior era, outwith the detection power of Perun’s tachyophones – and this time - this now - was not his original now. What if the Busker possessed a power beyond the reach of all known humans – even Roxanne – and could travel truly freely in time, without chronoporters, Al’jira or transmitters – a veritable human time machine? What if the Busker was another Anchor?
“Tell me how you met young Roxanne,” he urged. Murdo hedged his bets. “Lemme guess: you were a failed Merseybeat musician. Your ‘Midges’ were just another band what wanted to be the next Beatles, an’ didnae make it.” Murdo continued.
“We were better than the Beatles,” carped the busker. “We jus’ got screwed over.”
Murdo, seeing that he had struck a nerve, seized a chance to profit from the busker’s weakened defences.
Murdo had expected this. “I’m acting on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, and am callin’ you in the King’s name tae divulge all you know about the Anchor!” Though echoing the words of Prometheus, Murdo alas could not replicate the Director-General’s authority. He sounded more like Mickey Mouse commanding the allegiance of King Kong.
The busker gave a contemptuous laugh. “You can call me in the name o’ King Methuselah if you fancy.” With his pipe he blew a smoke ring straight into Murdo’s face, and the latter coughed. The busker tossed his head and laughed. “No-one finds me if I don’t wanna be found. Before Murdo’s startled eyes, he dissolved away like a lump of butter on a stove. As Murdo’s eyes pirouetted around, he heard an insolent cry: “Hi, there!”
