by Sam Enthoven
He had left the Earth’s atmosphere. He was looking at the world from space.
He stopped.
And after a while he started to get restless.
The thing was, Chris had seen it before – hundreds, maybe thousands of times. He’d seen NASA footage of the way the Earth looks from the moon. He’d seen movies: shots of the Earth surrounded by flying saucers or whatever, special effects designed to suggest global peril. Although a part of him knew that what he was looking at at this moment was something else, something stronger, something different, the rest of him couldn’t help but feel a bit . . . well, disappointed, really. He’d preferred the flying stuff. Why had that stopped? What was he doing, hanging here in space?
At this point – almost obediently – the vision began to change.
In a tiny area of what Chris was able to identify as northern Europe, the creamy cloud cover suddenly gave a great shudder. There was a succession of tiny blinding white flashes: the clouds were shoved aside roughly like a fist had punched through them, and the place where the flashes had been was replaced by an eruption from below – another cloud, but dirty-yellow coloured and rapidly expanding.
When the cloud thinned enough for Chris to see through it, he had another surprise.
Britain wasn’t there. All there was, in fact, was a sort of wet brown smear. But then the smear, or rather something that came from the smear, started moving.
It was growing, spreading thin, dusty brown tendrils of itself across the seas. It spread over Europe, swallowing all in its path, as if the explosions had only encouraged it. It spread south, over Africa, and east, into Asia. It stretched a thin brown pseudopod right across the Atlantic, lassoing and finally swallowing the Americas. Soon the seas and the clouds were changed too, the whole world becoming a uniform seething brown as Mallahide assimilated it completely.
Chris knew what he was watching. This was the future as it would be if Chris failed to take up the responsibility that had been given him. If Chris didn’t do what he was supposed to do, then humanity would respond to the threat of the Mallahide swarm with nuclear weapons. This response would fail, and Mallahide would eat the world.
Gradually, Chris began to be aware of another presence in his mind sharing the vision with him. Through the medium of the magical bracelet that connected them, Chris realized he could feel Tim’s thoughts again: slow and ponderous, a little nervous and scared, but eager and ready to be brave if Chris would only say what he was supposed to say.
Chris had been chosen. Chris was the link between Tim and the natural life force that was the source of his power. Chris could help Tim become the world’s saviour. It was all down to Chris.
Chris thought about it. Then he said,
No.
No! Why should he, Chris, have to be the one? Why should it be him? See, he didn’t need all this stuff about giant monsters and clouds of all-consuming super-intelligent nanowhatsits. Sure, he cared about the world. Sure, he didn’t like either of the alternative endings the future seemed to be serving up for him – being wiped out in a nuclear holocaust or becoming another flock of specks in Mallahide’s swarm. But why should it have to be him who did anything about it? Why couldn’t it be people who were into this sort of stuff – people who were heroic or whatever?
Chris was sick. The way the bracelet worked was too intense for him: it had made him ill before, and now – now he was hallucinating! If he wasn’t dead already, he was probably sitting in a hospital bed somewhere. The sacrifice was too much. They’d got the wrong guy, that was all.
No, Chris repeated.
There was a pause.
Chris felt, in his mind, the way that Tim turned away from him then. He felt the rising panic in Tim’s slow dinosaur brain; he felt the sick twinge of despair, the loneliness of his vigil at the bottom of the sea, and the slow cold way he sank into it even further. Chris felt these things, and, sure, he was a little guilty about it. But he gritted his teeth and refused to change his mind. And then he woke up.
Chris opened his eyes. He only opened them a crack, but the light was like someone was jamming screwdrivers into his eye-sockets: for a moment all he could make out were silhouettes.
‘Chris? Chris, are you awake?’ said a voice he knew.
‘He’s coming round,’ said a second voice he recognized.
‘Step back everybody, give him a bit of space,’ said a third briskly.
Anna was there: Chris had known it was her straight away, and he was pleased to see her. The government aide guy, Wythenshawe, he was there too by the sounds of it, plus a couple of others, nurses or doctors most likely: it was a full room he was waking up to. But that middle voice . . . he knew that one too; he just couldn’t place it straight away.
‘Chris,’ it said. ‘Chris, can you hear me?’
It wasn’t . . . was it? Oh, great, Chris thought, it was! The crazy lady from the British Museum. The one who’d first got him into all of this.
‘You,’ he said. Then he paused.
His own voice had shocked him. It had come out as kind of a husky croak. He sounded like an old man. Come to think of it, he felt like one too. He ached all over: a bone-deep weariness that filled every particle of his body. His eyes hurt. His brain hurt. His ribs hurt. Breathing hurt.
‘Hello, Chris,’ said Ms Plimpton. ‘Remember me?’
‘Anna,’ Chris asked, ignoring Ms Plimpton completely, ‘what’s going on?’
‘You’re a very lucky young man,’ said Wythenshawe earnestly. ‘You’ve been in a coma for nearly a whole day. The doctors here honestly weren’t sure whether you’d be able to snap out of it. I—’
‘I was asking Anna,’ croaked Chris.
Anna and Wythenshawe exchanged a look.
‘He’s . . . telling the truth, Chris,’ said Anna. ‘I sat with you for as long as I could. But there didn’t seem to be anything I could do. So . . . I decided to fetch Ms Plimpton.’
‘And it’s a very good thing that she did,’ said Ms Plimpton primly. ‘If you’re to fulfil your purpose and help the Defender to save us all, then we’ve got a lot of work to do. Now . . . have you had your vision? Has the Defender linked minds with you directly yet?’
The look she gave Chris was very eager. Chris, looking back at her, was surprised to find that – though it hadn’t seemed possible a moment ago – he now felt even more tired than when he’d woken up: her looking at him like that was making him feel that way. But since no other answer suggested itself, he said:
‘I . . . had a dream.’
‘And you linked minds with Him – right?’ Ms Plimpton pursued.
The H in ‘Him’ was a capital letter. Chris just knew from the way she’d said it.
‘Maybe,’ he replied. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I think so.’
‘Wonderful!’ said Ms Plimpton. She was so happy, she almost clapped. ‘Oh, that’s wonderful! I can’t imagine what that must have been like for you. What I wouldn’t give to trade places with you now!’
‘Really?’ said Chris with sudden interest.
‘You actually joined minds with Him,’ Ms Plimpton burbled on. ‘You actually swapped thoughts with the Defender Himself.’
‘Kind of,’ said Chris. ‘I guess. Yeah.’ He would say anything now, he decided. Anything in the hope that it might make Ms Plimpton get herself and her obnoxious enthusiasm out of his face.
‘Then you must know what you have to do,’ said Ms Plimpton.
‘Er . . .’ said Chris.
‘Mr Wythenshawe,’ said Ms Plimpton suddenly, turning to the government aide, ‘have you done as we asked? Is everything ready for the emergency broadcast?’
‘We’re . . . having some trouble getting hold of all the remaining channels,’ said Wythenshawe.
Ms Plimpton looked stern.
‘But,’ he added quickly, ‘I’m sure they’ll all fall into line eventually.’
‘Good,’ said Ms Plimpton. ‘It’s time to spread the word. It’s time to make everyone in London – eve
ryone in the world – sit up and take notice of Tim, and what He is, and how we can help Him to do what He must do.’ She turned to Chris.
He shrank under her gaze, wanting to sink through the bed, the floor, the Earth’s crust, anywhere to get away from this woman and the way she was looking at him.
‘Chris,’ said Ms Plimpton, ‘it’s time to make you a star.’
For a long time Tim did nothing. He just stayed there, at the bottom of the sea, alone in the cold and the emptiness and the dark.
What had just happened exactly? He wasn’t sure.
Tim had felt the tiny person in his mind. He had felt the hot, fast, sticky strangeness of tiny-people-speed thoughts: he had felt it like some sort of insect was wriggling in his brain. He and the tiny person had shared the vision: the tiny person, like Tim, had been shown what would happen if Tim failed. But instead of acceptance, instead of agreement, something else had taken place. A strange burst of feelings had squirted into Tim’s mind – and then the answer had come. The tiny person had turned away. The tiny person had refused to help. And Tim was now stranded. Alone.
How had this happened? How could this be? Had Tim done something wrong? He ran what had happened through in his mind, searching for answers in his slow dinosaur brain, but of course, none were forthcoming. And, Tim realized suddenly, it didn’t matter.
In a sense, nothing had changed. He still knew what he had to do. He was the Defender of the Earth. His task was to face up to the threat as best he could, no matter what the cost. He was still aching, still hurting all over, still smarting from his defeat and how close he’d come to being utterly destroyed. But there was no choice. He had to try. He had to face Mallahide again – and now, he realized, before his enemy had the chance to recover either.
All right, Tim thought. What else? Had he learned any lessons from the first time he and Mallahide had fought? Perhaps he had exposed some hidden weakness of Mallahide’s, something he could exploit. Dutifully, already knowing what he would find, Tim played the fight through in his mind again, every last humiliating instant of it. Nothing. In fact, all he could find were the opposite of weaknesses: everything that Tim had tried, from the biting to the wrestling to the throwing things to . . . well, all right, actually that was all Tim had tried, all he knew how to try. The point was, it had all failed.
Mallahide was stronger and faster than Tim; he never got tired, he never got hurt – there was nothing for Tim to get hold of. How could he, Tim, possibly defeat an opponent that couldn’t be bitten or hit? It simply didn’t seem possible. But he had to do it. It had to be done. He had to find a way. Without him, the world would be destroyed. He was the Defender of the Earth, and he—
Alone in the dark, Tim froze. The surrounding deep-sea chill met a cold seeping feeling inside himself that penetrated his leathery skin and ran all over his dinosaur body in a way that Mallahide’s nanobots had only just failed to do. Tim stopped kidding himself and looked at the clear facts of the case. They were these:
Tim couldn’t defeat Mallahide. Tim was going to lose. He was going to fail, and die, and soon after the world would die with him.
Slowly at first, but with gathering speed, he started to swim.
ENDGAME
‘NO,’ SAID CHRIS again. ‘Absolutely not. No way.’
‘Chris!’ Ms Plimpton shouted at him – then sighed. ‘Let me explain this to you again.’ She spoke quietly now, but her words were filled with no less urgency. ‘You are the channel for the Defender’s power. You are His link to the life force of the world. Everything depends on you. Understand?’
‘Yes,’ said Chris, ‘so you keep saying, but why—?’
‘For the duration of this ritual,’ hissed Ms Plimpton, cutting him off, ‘you are humankind’s link to every other living thing on this planet. Two-thirds of the world is covered by water, hence the pool – but tell me, Chris,’ she said, poking him in the chest for emphasis, ‘do any other creatures you know of on this earth wear jeans, or T-shirts, or trainers? Does any animal, apart from human beings, wear clothes of any kind?’
‘Well, no,’ said Chris, ‘but I don’t see why—’
‘Our clothes may make us feel and look different from other animals,’ said Ms Plimpton, ‘but they don’t make us different on the inside. We’re all animals,’ she added. ‘Every single one of us!’
‘I guess,’ said Chris, ‘but—’
‘No buts, Chris!’ said Ms Plimpton. ‘Don’t you understand what’s going on here? Mallahide is a threat to every living, breathing creature on this Earth! Anything that makes you feel closer to other animals has got to be a good thing. So,’ she finished, drawing herself up, ‘you’re doing this naked, and that’s final.’
‘Look, at least let me wear some boxer shorts!’ said Chris, desperate now. ‘In fact, if I can’t wear my boxers, I’m leaving right now. The whole world can come to an end if it likes, but there’s no way I’m doing this in . . . in the buff!’ He crossed his arms. ‘No way in hell.’
Ms Plimpton gave him a long look.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘But you’ll have to wear extra body paint. Now, where is the make-up guy? CAREFUL WITH THAT WATER TANK!’ she yelled suddenly, catching sight of one of the studio technicians over Chris’s shoulder.
So that was how it happened. Before Chris really knew what was going on, he was sitting hip deep in a small pool of water, clad only in his boxer shorts.
‘Action!’ said someone.
And now Chris was on TV.
He couldn’t see his audience, of course. All Chris could see were cameras, and even they were indistinct and shadowy behind the dazzling brightness of the hastily erected studio spotlights. But from the trembling in his stomach, the raw sick taste of his embarrassment that backed up in his throat until he felt like gagging, he knew that made no difference. He could kid himself they weren’t there, sure, but he knew the truth: right now the whole country, perhaps even the world – was staring at him, in a tank of water, on TV, clad in nothing but his boxer shorts and the bracelet on his wrist.
How had it come to this? He blinked, looking down at the way the lights glinted off his goose-pimpled skin. How had this happened? What was it about his life before that had invited this, now? Footage of this would be circulating the Internet for ever. For as long as he lived, he’d never be allowed to forget it. From this moment on, he was always going to be ‘that guy, the one on TV’. In his underwear.
‘People of Earth, listen up,’ Ms Plimpton began. All over the country, all over the world, her face had appeared on the screens. The words EMERGENCY BROADCAST flashed in red letters just under her chin. ‘My name is Eunice Plimpton. And your world is about to come to an end.’
Chris hung his head: it couldn’t come to an end soon enough, as far as he was concerned.
‘Do not adjust your set,’ said Ms Plimpton. ‘Do not try to change channels. This is a government broadcast going out to everyone who can hear it. And I’m here to tell you, one thing – and one thing alone – is all that stands in the way of the total and final destruction of this planet.’ She paused and gave a thin smile. ‘But don’t just take my word for it. Take the word of the British prime minister here, David Sinclair. Mr Sinclair?’ she questioned, beckoning. ‘Over to you.’
Mr Sinclair blinked. He’d been standing at the back of the studio, hoping that nobody was looking at him.
‘Come on now, Prime Minister,’ Ms Plimpton coaxed. ‘No need to be shy.’
Numbly Mr Sinclair watched as the cameras and spotlights swung round and targeted him mercilessly.
They were going out live. Everyone could see him hesitating. There was no choice.
‘That’s right,’ said Ms Plimpton. ‘Up you come. Wonderful. Now, Prime Minister: why don’t you tell your electorate what you told me?’
For a second Mr Sinclair just gaped at her. His mouth closed a little, then opened again, giving him the look of a landed haddock. Bad enough that this woman had asked him up here without w
arning or preparation, but this. This was . . .
‘Let me jog your memory,’ said Ms Plimpton with contempt. ‘This afternoon you attempted to escape the country in your private jet. But before you could leave British airspace, you were halted and forced to land by one of the international fighter squadrons currently patrolling our British coasts.
‘Chances are you must have noticed them, ladies and gentlemen,’ Ms Plimpton added, turning to the cameras. ‘Perhaps you heard about it from other people who’ve tried to escape. The media has been forced to keep the details quiet, but the fact is that for the last forty-eight hours, this country has been in a state of total lockdown. In an attempt to stop the spread of the Mallahide swarm, the international community has clubbed together to ensure that nothing – nothing – has been allowed to get in or out of the British Isles. Including’ – she smiled – ‘Mr Sinclair here. Now, Prime Minister,’ she asked silkily, ‘could you tell us what exactly you were trying so hard to get away from?’
‘I . . .’ said the prime minister. ‘Er . . .’
‘What’s going to happen to us?’ Ms Plimpton pursued, losing patience. ‘What did the president tell you?’
Behind her, still sitting in his tank of water – and beginning to get a bit cold, not to say wrinkly – Chris watched.
The prime minister gulped. ‘The president told me,’ he began, ‘that the Mallahide swarm was a threat – not just to us here in the British Isles – but to the whole human race. The possibility that the swarm might spread to other countries – might grow until it was impossible to defeat – could simply not be tolerated. A . . . decision was made’ – he paused – ‘unanimously, by the United Nations. In one hour . . .’
He coughed.
