Johnny Mackintosh and the Spirit of London (10 page)

“Leave him,” shouted Clara from halfway down the steps. “It's closing.” She was right—the sundial was slowly sliding back across the grass to return to its original position. Without thinking Johnny picked up Bentley and ran, stumbling toward Clara and down the stairs just before the sundial closed the opening above him. Johnny was covered in blood, but it wasn't his. The three children reached the foot of the stairs, where their way was blocked by piles of discarded boxes and wooden crates. Johnny lay Bentley gently down and he and Clara set to work on clearing a path. Finally, they were all able to squeeze through into a very long corridor, crisscrossed by many others. They started running along it. Johnny was doing his best but carrying Bentley meant he couldn't keep up with the two girls.

“You've got to leave him, Johnny,” said Louise. “I'm sorry. He's no good to us now. If we're not quick they're bound to catch us.”

“I'm not leaving Bentley,” Johnny replied, almost out of breath. “You go on.”

“She's right,” said Clara. “The Protectors will be everywhere in a minute. He's only a dog.”

“Only a dog?” said Johnny, outraged, but just then they heard
a bang and turned to see a shower of splintered crates fly into the main corridor they'd just joined.

“Quickly—this way,” Clara shouted. She led them into another corridor at right angles to the first. “Look—if he's that important I'll come back for him later. OK?”

Johnny's arms were aching so much he knew he couldn't carry Bentley another meter anyway. Very reluctantly he said “OK—in here,” pointing into a storeroom off to the side. They all piled in and he lowered Bentley carefully to the floor in front of some cardboard cartons. “Listen, Bents,” he said, stroking the dog's blood-matted fur. “We're gonna come back for you—I promise.” He stood up and followed the two girls to the doorway. Bentley whimpered. Johnny turned and stopped, seeing the pleading look in the sheepdog's different-colored eyes.

“Come on,” said Louise, grabbing his arm and tugging him out of the storeroom.

There were voices and footsteps coming from nearby. The three children ran as fast as they could in the other direction, Louise trying not to drip blood on the floor, turning this way and that as they attempted to lose their pursuers.

They passed a half-glass, half-wooden door on the left and Johnny stopped. “Let's hide in here till they've gone.” He knew Louise needed to rest. Her bleeding was getting much worse. They couldn't outrun the men chasing them, but maybe they could lie low for a little while, double back, pick up Bentley and make a run for the fence. He turned the handle, but the door didn't budge—only then did he notice the electronic keypad beside the lock. The footsteps behind were quite loud now. He pressed his hand onto the keypad, pushing numbers frantically at random, thinking “please open,” and by some miracle there was an electronic click.

The three of them burst into the darkened room and ran the
length of it, bashing into unseen pieces of furniture as they made their way through the blackness. Finally they reached the far end and slid to the floor, resting their backs against a large glass tank while breathing heavily. They could hear shouting from the corridor; footsteps stopped outside the door. Johnny peered around the corner of the tank—through the clear panel halfway up the door he could see three silhouettes. He shushed the others, and they all held their breath, but then the footsteps disappeared and there was silence. Johnny looked at his watch. It was 11:16. They'd wait five minutes and then make a run for it.

“Where are we?” whispered Louise. “What is this place?”

“I don't know,” said Clara. “I've never been down this corridor.”

Despite Johnny's shushing, Louise stood up. “What are you doing?” Johnny said. “Stay still.”

“Don't tell me what to do,” Louise whispered back. “You're the one who got us into this mess. There's evil here—this place stinks of it. I want to see for myself.” Louise was feeling along the wall for a light switch. She found it and there was a flickering of fluorescent tubes before the room was bathed in dingy light.

“No!” Johnny hissed, but then his jaw dropped. There wasn't just one tank in the room—there were dozens, in rows, leading all the way back to the far wall. And in each, suspended in the murky water within, was the body of a different boy or girl. Johnny looked at the tank beside them, containing a boy floating face down in water, arms and legs splayed either side of him. He'd been left there so long his skin was turning green. He must have drowned.

“It's not Peter, is it?” Johnny asked. Louise and Clara shook their heads. Nobody moved—they simply stood there, transfixed by the terrible sight. Then the boy in the tank opened his
eyes. Clara screamed and ran. She reached the door, opened it and was out in the corridor before Johnny could stop her. Louise was frozen to the spot as the boy pressed his face against the glass walls, smiling manically at her and breathing happily from underneath the water. Johnny had to make a choice.

“Stay here,” he said to Louise, who clearly wasn't going anywhere. “I'll be back,” and with that he ran through the door after Clara. As he looked one way then the other he saw her feet disappearing up some metal steps further along. He ran as fast as he could and started climbing the stairs. “Clara, wait,” he shouted, but his sister was already through the door and out. Johnny followed. He pushed the door open to find her standing right in front of him. They'd emerged into the main building at the T-shaped junction of two corridors. Several thick-set men in suits were calmly walking toward them from both the left and the right—there was only way to go. “Come on,” said Johnny, grabbing Clara's hand and dragging her forward, running toward a lift at the far end. Perhaps if they got there in time they could lose their pursuers on the upper floors.

Clara was shaking her head from side to side. “I don't understand,” she said. “I thought they were my friends.”

“Well they're not anymore,” said Johnny. They reached the lift and he pushed the call button over and over again. He turned to see two of the men in suits with their weapons out, walking together toward them. A bell chimed and the lift doors opened. Johnny and Clara backed inside.

“We're not supposed to go in the lift,” Clara muttered, more to herself than Johnny. “Use of the tower lift will lead to automatic expulsion.” She seemed to be mimicking an announcement she must have heard many times before.

“That's the least of our problems,” said Johnny, now frantically pushing the only button in sight, hoping the lift doors would close before they were caught. But they were staying
resolutely open and the men in suits were now only five meters away. Unexpectedly, the men stopped. One of them pointed his weapon at Johnny and made a pretend shooting movement. Then he lowered it and, as the lift doors finally closed, Johnny could see him laughing on the other side. The truth dawned on him. They had been directed here. It was a trap. He'd walked right into it and brought his new-found sister with him.

The lift started going up—and quickly. The odd thing was it didn't show any sign of stopping. Its walls began glowing electric blue. They were still going up. Johnny braced himself—they were bound to smash into the roof at any moment. The tower was tall but it couldn't be
that
tall. Gradually, though, the lift walls were becoming transparent as they moved faster and faster upward.

“What's happening?” Clara asked.

Outside, Johnny could now see fields disappearing beneath wispy clouds and still they went upward. “No way,” Johnny said, more to himself than to Clara. The roof of the institute was far below them and the sky turning from blue to black before he finally understood what was going on. He'd read about these things, but they weren't meant to exist. Incredible as it seemed, someone had built a space elevator. The lift only had one button because they were only going to one place. That place was exactly 36,000 kilometers above the tower of the Proteus Institute—the place from where Kovac had identified the signal.

“I'm scared,” said Clara, squeezing Johnny's hand tightly.

“It's OK,” he told her, thinking it was definitely not OK. “We're going to be fine.”

“It's not that,” said Clara, looking up at Johnny. He saw that her eyes, although pale blue, had the same silver flecks as his own. “I just really hate heights.”

Johnny started to laugh, but that turned to choking as gas
began pouring into the lift from above their heads. Johnny could feel it burrowing into every corner of his lungs—his legs buckled and he had to struggle to stay standing. “Close your eyes, Clara,” he said. “Go to sleep. We'll wake up in a nice place.” He tried to squeeze her hand but his body went into spasm and he found himself on the floor of the lift, looking down at the curvature of the Earth beneath him. All his life he'd wanted to witness that view, to be entering space. He closed his own eyes hoping he'd wake up to see it properly.

Johnny's head really hurt. He didn't want to open his eyes in case he was being watched so he lay there, wherever “there” was (it felt very strange) and tried to get a sense of his surroundings. The stench was awful—a cross between a toilet and a barrel of rotting vegetables, mainly cabbage. He had to steel himself not to be sick and tried holding his breath so he wouldn't have to smell it. He could hear faraway sounds like a rickety building creaking in the wind. And as he slowly moved his right hand, it disappeared into something wet—which started crawling up his arm. “Uggggh!” Johnny opened his eyes to see his fingers covered in dirty orange slime. He tried to roll away, but there was only air to push against. He was floating … in a vast, gloomy chamber … in mid-air. And, having pushed against it, he was now moving ever so slowly away from the goo beside him, which was contained within a square, about twice his height, cut into the wall or floor or ceiling or whatever it was. Wherever he was it had to be a spaceship, but it didn't look at all how any spaceship Johnny had imagined would look. It wasn't gleaming metal or plastic or supermaterials he couldn't even dream about. Instead, it looked almost alive, like the leaves of a giant blue-gray vegetable, but covered on every surface with mushroom-shaped nodules. Looking up, he could just about see a dark floating figure silhouetted against the ceiling, beside the next patch of the orange slime. There were squares
of the goo regularly spaced all along the wall, and a collection of weird and wonderfully shaped things tethered to the ceiling by giant tendrils with octopus-like suckers along their length.

As he squinted, getting used to the darkness, he could make out the checked pattern of Clara's school uniform on the figure above. Johnny looked around the chamber—there was no sign of anyone else.

“Clara,” he whispered. There was no reply. He tried again a little louder, but again nothing. She must still be asleep and he was slowly drifting further away from her and into the middle of the chamber … with no way to stop himself. It was as if he was floating in a swimming pool but with no water. He shouted Clara's name and this time she stirred. Johnny had to get back to her. He felt inside his jeans pockets—the only thing he found was the games console. He knew he didn't need it any more, but even so … He flung it as hard as he could in the opposite direction to Clara. It worked. Johnny changed direction and began to float toward his sister.

“Johnny?” Clara asked sleepily. “Where are we? What's going on?”

“I think we're in a spaceship,” Johnny replied. “We're in zero G.”

“Zero what?” Clara asked.

“Zero G. Zero gravity. That's why everything's floating,” Johnny said.

“But what's happening behind you? The walls … the space …”

Johnny didn't need to look back—he could see it in front of him. The blue-gray walls were collapsing and coming closer. His insides were being scrunched up too. He felt really sick. Clara was suddenly right on top of him. They were going to collide … hard. As Clara was about to bash into him he heard her say, “It's so beautiful,” only she didn't hit him—they seemed to pass right through each other. And then the wall was
going to hit him but again he passed through it, or it through him. Was that ringed planet off to one side Saturn? It looked like it, but before he could check he was pulled upward at ever increasing speed and found himself rushing toward what could only be a star. Then, just as suddenly, he was jerked ninety degrees in another direction. He thought he could hear screams. Hundreds of stars rushed by—becoming lines rather than points of light. He changed direction again and then, without warning, he stopped dead. The walls of the ship flew through him and beyond and then stopped in their original position. Clara did the same. Johnny couldn't hold it in anymore and was violently sick. Without gravity, a ball of vomit flew out of his mouth and wobbled toward Clara, only just missing her. As a result, Johnny's momentum changed, sending him floating slowly away from his sister toward a nearby wall.

“Wow! That was unbelievable—didn't you think?” Clara said, breathlessly. “Wasn't it just amazing? I've never felt anything like it. It was like being part of everything … of the whole universe. It was incredible.”

Johnny moaned.

“Are you OK?” Clara asked, now noticing he might not be.

“I'm not sure,” replied Johnny, who was actually very sure he'd be sick again at any moment.

“What was that?” Clara asked. “I didn't know anything could be like that.”

A noise from above interrupted her—the tethered pieces of space junk were being pulled upward onto the ceiling. A moment later, Clara screamed and started falling upward toward the ceiling, only now it had become the floor. Someone had turned on a gravity field and it was moving closer. Johnny stretched out his arms as far as he could and just touched one of the mushroom-shaped growths on the wall. He felt his body start
to become heavy, but he didn't fall. The wall was sticky and he pulled himself forward so his hands and trainers were glued tightly onto it. But his body was getting heavier. He looked down—Clara seemed OK, but there were two people walking toward her. Before Johnny had time to shout out his hands peeled away from the wall and, with his trainers still attached, he fell backward till he was hanging upside down facing outward. He stayed that way for about half a second, but then his feet peeled away and he fell again, finishing upright facing the wall. Almost at once he was on the move again … and again, somersaulting ever faster down the wall until he finished dizzily in a crumpled heap on the floor of the chamber. Lifting his head from the smelly blue-gray surface he found himself staring into a shiny black pair of shoes. On all fours, Johnny looked upward.