by Sam Enthoven
‘Go on, Prime Minister. Tell the people. They need to know.’
‘Britain,’ said Mr Sinclair shamefacedly. ‘They’re going to destroy Britain.’
Ms Plimpton let the words hang in the air for a moment.
‘There you are, ladies and gentlemen. You’ve heard it from the prime minister himself. Don’t bother to run; you won’t get far enough. Don’t bother to hide; it won’t make any difference. In less than an hour, a nuclear attack is going to be launched at Britain, and the whole country is going to be wiped off the face of the map. Unless,’ she added, ‘Mallahide can be stopped. And there’s only one way that can happen.’
She took a deep breath. This was the moment. This was where it counted.
‘He’s green,’ she said. ‘He’s a hundred metres tall, and he’s all that stands between us and annihilation. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you . . . Tim, Defender of the Earth!’
St Paul’s Cathedral. The last set of double doors slammed shut, releasing a tidal wave of echoes that crashed back and forth against the walls and the enormous dome above. They faded, and Anna was alone.
She looked at her watch. 10:53. Wythenshawe and his team had cut things pretty fine if they were going to get clear in time. But then again, she supposed, with the situation being what it was, where was ‘clear’ anyway?
She walked down the cathedral’s central aisle. She chose a seat right under its three-hundred-year-old dome, as close to the centre as she could. Then she forced herself to sit down and wait.
The dome’s gigantic hollow-egg shape loomed over Anna’s head. It seemed to suck all the air and the light where she was sitting straight upwards, leaving her breathless. The silence gripped her like a bear hug.
11:00. It started.
Darkness fell across the stained-glass windows, as if the sun had been snuffed out. Anna felt tiny prickles of sweat at her temples as the temperature rose in the whole cathedral at once. A pencil beam of light lasered down in front of the altar; there was a faint fizzing sound . . .
And there he was. Her father.
‘Anna!’ he said, smiling.
‘Dad,’ said Anna, not getting up.
‘Well, I’m here like you asked,’ said Mallahide, as brightly as he could.
‘No, you aren’t,’ Anna pointed out.
‘I’m sorry—?’
‘All of you,’ said Anna. ‘That was what we agreed. It was going to be all of you. The whole swarm, all of it, right here and now. Why d’you think I picked this place to meet in?’
‘It is rather dramatic-looking,’ Mallahide agreed. He pursed his lips for a moment and took a step towards her down the aisle. ‘Anna . . .’ he said.
She didn’t move. ‘Yes?’
Mallahide shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other. ‘Well, there’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just say it out straight, and you mustn’t take it the wrong way. Promise?’
Anna said nothing.
Mallahide sighed. ‘Anna: this isn’t supposed to be . . . some sort of trap, is it?’ He looked at her carefully. ‘This isn’t something you’ve cooked up with those government fellows you’ve been hanging around with? Some silly nonsense about getting all of me in one place, making me a little easier to attack, something like that? I mean, if it was,’ Mallahide plunged on, ‘I wouldn’t get angry with you or anything. But I wouldn’t be able to stop myself feeling a bit . . . disappointed.’ He looked at his feet and forced a laugh. ‘Huh.’ It echoed around the cathedral hollowly. ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘Darling girl, you wouldn’t do anything to hurt your old dad!’
Anna let that hang in the air for a moment. Then she stood up and pulled the switch from her pocket.
‘Microwave emitters,’ she said. ‘They’re positioned all over the place: enough to charge the air particles and create a pulse a little like an EMP. Wythenshawe thought they might disorient you for a moment. That’s all they had.’ She laid the switch down on a chair beside her and looked at her father again. ‘Right. I’ve been straight with you. Time for you to be straight with me. Where’s the rest of you?’
‘Not far,’ said Mallahide, pursing his lips again. Anna had never spoken to him like this before. For all his vastly increased intelligence and powers, for a moment he wasn’t sure how to react.
‘So, what are you waiting for?’
‘Anna . . . I’m not sure you—’
‘What?’
‘Well, I’m not sure you’re ready to see me like this,’ Mallahide admitted. ‘I’m quite strange to look at en masse, I should imagine – especially up close. I don’t . . .’ He trailed off, twisting his fingers distractedly. ‘Well, I don’t want to scare you.’
Anna blinked and took a deep breath. For a moment she was so annoyed with her father that she had trouble getting her words in the right order.
‘Making me think you were dead,’ she began. ‘Becoming what you’ve become. Trying to do the same thing to me against my will. After all that, don’t you think it’s a little late to be worried about scaring me?’
Mallahide bit his lip. ‘Yes, of course,’ he said, chastened. ‘You’re quite right, my dear: how silly of me.’
‘So . . .?’ prompted Anna.
‘Yes. Just a moment.’ Mallahide closed his eyes.
It happened very fast. The shadows over the cathedral’s stained-glass windows seemed to thicken as the darkness outside pressed against them. There was a second of nervy horror, then the swarm dissolved the ancient walls and remade them behind itself, passing through as easily as boiling water passes through a tea bag. Now the dome, the nave, all of it was teeming with machines, an orange-brown tornado that filled St Paul’s to bursting.
They didn’t touch Anna: they kept their distance. It was as if she was encased in a kind of invisible glass bell jar. She looked down at her feet in their round-toed black school shoes: a circle of floor around them, perhaps sixty centimetres in diameter, was clear. Beyond that, glittering and fizzing in uncountable trillions, was her father.
Abruptly the swarm rose up into the dome. Revealed once more, the professor’s human projection stood a little way up the aisle, an umbilicus of tiny buzzing machines linking him to the boiling mass above. He looked nervous. Strangely, Anna thought that he looked almost as nervous as she was.
‘So,’ said Mallahide, the distant hum of the swarm just audible under his voice. He shrugged and tried for a smile. ‘What do you think?’
Anna gestured upwards. ‘This is what you’re like now, isn’t it? This is what you are,’ she emphasized, jabbing a finger at the whirling mass, ‘not what I remember of you. Isn’t that right?’
‘How do you mean?’ Mallahide asked.
‘That body,’ said Anna, pointing at the figure standing in front of her. ‘That face you’re wearing now. It’s not really you any more. Is it?’
‘Anna,’ said Mallahide, ‘I . . .’
‘Is it?’ Anna repeated.
Mallahide pursed his lips.
‘A body isn’t a person, Anna,’ he said. ‘A body is just a machine for carrying a person around: one day, for whatever reason, the machine stops working and the person inside it dies. We’ve talked about this before.’
‘Yes,’ said Anna irritably. ‘But—’
‘We could improve the machine, of course. But here’s the thing,’ said Mallahide, grinning again, ‘I’ve done something even better!’
‘Dad . . .’
‘Soon everyone in the world will have the ability to step beyond the boundaries dealt us by biology. At last we can break out of the prison of meat we’re all locked into from conception and—’
‘DAD!’
Mallahide blinked. ‘Sorry, my dear: what did you say?’
‘You promised!’
‘Promised what?’
‘Promised you wouldn’t start spouting any more of your same old claptrap,’ said Anna, exasperated. ‘That stuff may sound good coming out of your mouth, but it won’t work on me – and I’ll tell you somet
hing else: I don’t think it works on other people either.’
‘I’ll have you know,’ said Mallahide, ‘that a number of people offered themselves up to me to be . . . translated just yesterday afternoon. Why, that’s what I was doing before—’
‘Not enough people,’ said Anna, shaking her head. ‘Not for what you’re talking about. Not a majority. Not the whole world.’
They looked at each other in silence except for the faint crackling buzz of the swarm.
‘Bodies are . . . what separates us from each other,’ said Anna, doing her best. ‘Bodies are the line between us and other people. That’s the way it’s always been; that’s the way people are. If you take that away from people against their will, then that’s just . . . wrong!’
‘Anna,’ said her father, ‘I am so, so sorry for what I did. I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I lost my temper. It was a terrible mistake, and I would never—’
‘Really,’ Anna cut in. ‘So what about all those people you’ve already done your thing to? What are you going to do? Set them free?’
Mallahide froze. Suddenly he looked awkward. ‘Anna, I . . .’
‘It’s a straight question,’ said Anna. ‘Are you going to let them go or aren’t you?’
‘Anna, it’s not quite as simple as that,’ Mallahide blustered. ‘All those people I . . . translated, I can release them anytime, bu—’
‘So why don’t you?’
‘Well, there are particular circumstances right now,’ Mallahide went on with gritted teeth, ‘that make that rather difficult.’
‘Such as . . .?’
‘Right now, my dear, I need to be as strong as I can be. Until people realize it’s pointless to resist me, I just can’t release anyone. One day, yes,’ he finished primly, ‘but right now – no.’
‘And what if those “particular circumstances” last longer than you think?’ Anna asked. ‘What if every time you get to the point of allowing the people whose lives you’ve stolen to be free again, something else just comes up? No, Dad.’ She shook her head. ‘Maybe you mean well, but I think you’ve gone too far to turn back. At any rate,’ she added, ‘most people won’t trust you now, not after what you’ve done.’
‘So what are you saying?’ Mallahide snapped. ‘Are you saying that’s it? They’re always going to fight me, down to the last human cell?’
‘I . . .’ Anna thought about it. ‘I don’t know, Dad.’ She shrugged. ‘I think so. Yes.’
For a moment Mallahide stared at her. Then, crestfallen, he looked at his feet.
‘But . . . I’ve so much to offer!’ he said quietly, almost to himself. ‘A whole new way to live! A new era full of new sensations, a new way to share the universe – to share our knowledge and feelings and work together, in harmony, as a collective. And the only reason, the only reason why people won’t take it, is that they’re scared. Scared of the unknown.’
Anna looked at him. ‘That’s what people are like, Dad,’ she told him. He really could be very slow on the uptake sometimes. ‘Maybe if you hadn’t spent so much of your time in research laboratories, you wouldn’t be so surprised.’
There was a pause. Mallahide looked up.
‘What about you, Anna?’ he asked.
‘What about me?’
‘Do you trust me? Are you scared of the unknown like the others? Or are you prepared to take a chance?’
Anna’s heart lurched in her chest: here it was, the moment she’d known would come. When she spoke, she was amazed at how calm her voice sounded.
‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ she said sadly. ‘But I’m with the human race on this one, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh, Anna . . .’ said what her father had become. ‘Not you too.’
BOOM! A sudden eruption of noise, followed by a rumble like thunder.
BOOM! The noise came again, closer this time, then—
WHAM! A jagged crack appeared straight up the side of the dome.
‘It couldn’t be,’ said Mallahide, blinking.
In answer, there was a piercing noise like a squadron of jet engines taking off, like two aircraft carriers being grated against each other – a mashing blast of sound, a groaning tearing screeching bellow, inconceivably, immeasurably loud . . .
Tim’s next blow smashed the dome of St Paul’s like an egg.
The air went thick with plummeting tons of masonry. Mallahide’s human projection vanished as the swarm formed a shield to protect Anna – and not a nanosecond too soon. Without an improvised umbrella of machines to deflect them, the tumbling ruins of Christopher Wren’s masterpiece would certainly have crushed her to death.
Anna had dropped to her knees and held both her arms over her head. Useless as the gesture would have been, it was instinctive. After what seemed a very long time, the wreckage stopped falling – and she opened her eyes.
Sunlight poured into the cathedral, turning the dust in the air into a glittering shaft of gold. Anna was momentarily dazzled. But then the light was blotted out again.
To an answering groan from the cathedral’s ancient walls, Tim leaned against the side of St Paul’s. He stood on the tips of his hind claws, peering over the lip of the shattered dome to inspect the contents beneath.
Anna just stood there gaping.
She’d had read an Internet essay once about how the laws of physics made it theoretically impossible for a bipedal creature to live beyond a certain size. No bones (the theory went) would be strong enough to support it: the creature would literally collapse under its own weight. Yet there he was: here Tim stood in defiance of physics, of reason. But the strangest thing for Anna at that moment was the way Tim was looking at her.
Tim’s eyes were like nothing Anna had ever seen. They glittered with ancient power. They looked into her and all through her, as if the mind behind them was examining every thought or memory she’d ever possessed. For a second all Anna could do was stand there, hypnotized.
Then – blasting past so fast Anna’s hair blew about her head – Professor Mallahide took up Tim’s challenge. The swarm poured out of St Paul’s like a huge cloud of angry wasps.
And then the final battle began.
MORTIFICATION
‘TIM IS NOW all that stands between us and the end of the world.’ Ms Plimpton’s eyes were bright and moist. She sniffed, blinked, pulled herself together. ‘And he needs our help. Cameraman? Can we get a close-up on Chris here?’
Chris watched with helpless horror as, cannon-like, the camera swung its muzzle onto him.
‘People of the Earth, this is Chris Pitman,’ said Ms Plimpton. ‘I guess some of the sharper-eyed among you will be wondering what he’s doing sitting here in a tank of water, clad only in his underpants. Well, all is about to become clear.’
Chris was blushing. He was blushing so hard it felt like his whole body had gone hot and red with shame.
‘Chris here may not look like much, I grant you,’ said Ms Plimpton with a dainty grimace. ‘But he’s an extremely fortunate young man. You see that bracelet on his wrist? Chris: hold it up, would you? And can we get a close-up on that too, please?’
Obediently – if reluctantly on Chris’s part – both Chris and the cameraman did as she said.
‘That’s what brings us all here. For twenty-two years I’ve been watching over that bracelet, waiting for this moment.’ Ms Plimpton held up a hand. ‘Allow me to explain.
‘The Defender exists to protect all living things on this planet. He is our world’s Guardian Spirit, a living, breathing, fighting force of nature. The Defender doesn’t work alone: the Defender is an aspect of the life force inside every one of us. That, ladies and gentlemen, is why he needs our help. And that’s where Chris comes in.’
She took a breath.
‘Each time the Defender rises to protect us, a representative is called. One among us is chosen to be a channel, a point of focus for the energy that crackles and breathes in every cell of every living thing on Earth. That person – that ordinary, everyday, fallible
person – will be the only one who can wear the bracelet. And the bracelet’s wearer – Chris here – will form the connection between the Defender and the source of his power. Now, ladies and gentlemen,’ Ms Plimpton added, drawing herself up to her full height, ‘here’s what we’re going to do – and I don’t want you to question me or think too much; I just want you to do it. First of all, I want as many of you as possible to come together and hold hands . . .’
She stepped up to Chris’s side and took hold of the hand that had the bracelet on it.
‘Don’t be shy now,’ she said. ‘Don’t be embarrassed. Believe me, if this doesn’t work, then feeling like a bit of a fool is going to be the last of your problems. Come on, everyone!’ With her free hand she gestured at the various people standing out of the line of sight of the camera. ‘We need to lead by example on this one. And that includes you, Prime Minister,’ she added sternly.
Gradually, with varying degrees of sheepishness, Mr Sinclair, Mr Wythenshawe, other military aides and any spare studio staff all stepped forward. Wythenshawe went round the other side of the paddling pool to take Chris’s right hand. Before long, everyone except the cameraman and the sound guy had formed up in a line with Chris at its centre. The scene was pure theatre: if it wasn’t for Chris sitting almost naked in the paddling pool, everyone would’ve looked like they were about to take a curtain call.
‘All right,’ said Ms Plimpton. ‘You at home: are you holding hands? You’d better be, ladies and gentlemen, because here comes the important bit. I want you all to concentrate.’
Chris sat in the water, at the centre of it all, waiting. The studio lights beat down on his eyes and body like miniature suns. His arms stuck out to either side (Wythenshawe’s grip was dry and firm; Ms Plimpton’s was faintly clammy) and he was getting a headache. ‘Feel it,’ Ms Plimpton commanded. ‘Feel the energy of the world all around us. Feel it inside you, quivering in every cell in your body. Feel it . . . and summon it.’
The silence stretched out.
‘Close your eyes if you think it’ll help. But concentrate, concentrate as hard as you can. Make that connection between us all as strong as you can make it. And reach out, reach out to the Defender, because this is when he needs us most . . .’
