And the World Changes - A M Kirk (books to read fiction txt) 📗

his drink and toasted sandwich, nobody paid him any attention. After he had eaten, he sat back to enjoy what pleasure he could glean from the feeling of being, for the moment at least, warm, safe and full, and in the proximity of people who seemed to be enjoying normal lives.
In the foyer Mark found a public net-phone. He stood with his back to the wall as he picked up the receiver. He could watch the entrance and see what was happening in the bar at the same time.
Holding the receiver lightly in his hand he channelled his thoughts. Circuits opened and closed; electrons moved; through miles of fibre optic and then through the air, currents flowed. In Logan’s former flat, in the spare room, in Carrie’s pocket the mobile phone buzzed softly.
Although they could not speak each saw the excitement leap into the other’s faces as Janette and Carrie’s eyes met. Both knew it had to be Mark. But, as the mobile was still wedged virtually inaccessibly in Carrie’s jeans pocket, there was nothing they could do. They could not use the phone to communicate.
And Mark knew there was nothing they could do, but that did not worry him. The call had been enough. It was intended to let them know he was on the way.

**********

Keeping on the single track road that passed beside Loch Coulter Reservoir, Mark drove the bike carefully, light on full beam for most of the way. It was eleven thirty and the night sky, though still not fully dark, was becoming overcast. Through plantations of conifers, and round nasty little bends, the road led him until he had to circle round the Polmaise Castle estate and enter Cambusbarron. This once small settlement had grown in recent years, spreading up the hillside to its south. Touch was only a couple of kilometres further on, and Stirling a few kilometres in the other direction.
He half expected further trouble from the agents of the League, but none came. The well-lit main street was quiet this Monday night.
He drove the motorbike slowly, with the utmost caution into Stirling from the western approach and doing no more than twenty kilometres an hour, motored through the brightly lit streets, scanning, reaching out and searching with his new power. Carrie and his mother were close, very close.
He turned up Princes Street, a narrow steep road that led eventually to the castle’s heights, and knew he was closer than ever. But as the bike puttered to a stop at the top of the street, a flicker of concern crossed his face.
A police car, unmarked but wearing its blue flashing light, cruised to a stop in the street beside a darkened tenement doorway.
Mark sat back in a more relaxed posture on the motorbike’s imitation leather seat.
A single figure sat in the police car and made no effort to get out. It seemed to be waiting.
Mark smiled to himself. What was about to happen was insanely dangerous, he well knew. A more sensible approach would be to alert the army, alert Allied Command, and let them deal with what was in that flat. For Mark knew what was awaiting him up those tenement stairs. He knew the danger he, Carrie and his mother and, indeed, all of Scotland were now in. But he could deal with it. Of that he was certain. There was not a scrap of doubt in his mind now. He got off the bike and walked in a relaxed manner over to the police car.
The electric window lowered as he approached.
“Hello, Mark. I figured you’d happen along. Are you all right?”
“Mr Roberts. Why the blue light on an otherwise unmarked car?”
“In case we get into a hot pursuit situation, you know the kind of thing.”
Mark nodded. “Okay. You know about General Miller.”
“Yes. How did you escape?”
“I’ll tell you later. I actually figured I’d see you here.”
“I had to come.”
“I know. I called Carrie after she switched on her mobile phone. I reckoned that should give your police tracking machines enough of a signal to locate her.”
“Well, it worked. Clever boy. We can locate any mobile phone as long as it’s switched on, but not always accurately. Your call helped us out.”
“You’re alone?” asked Mark.
“I … was not sure how much of an audience you wanted so, yes, I came alone. Do we need any back-up?”
Mark grinned. A hand passed through his hair. “No. I don’t suppose we do, really. There is just one little problem.”
“I think I can guess. I was at Allied Command half an hour ago. Our satellites have sweeping the area, scanning constantly for anything out of the ordinary in the area of the Soros ship. Half an hour ago we picked up a radiation trace. It’s the kind left behind when nasty stuff like uranium or plutonium is transported. Tell me I’m wrong, Mark. Tell me there’s not a something horrific about to explode up there.”
“I wish I could. I really wish I could.”
“Then if it’s some booby trap left by the League, I should call in the bomb disposal boys.”
“Normally that would be fine idea. But now, I really don’t think we have the time. I kind of sense the bomb up there – it’s in the top flat, by the way, that room there – and it has a timer going. “
“A timer?”
“Yep.”
“Set for… ?”
“Oh… about fifteen minutes from now.”
Roberts felt his insides turn to water. “Oh. That’s not so good, is it?” He thought of Jackie and Little Sally. The thought that he was never going to see them again almost overwhelmed him.
“We’d better get going,” said Mark, shouldering the rucksack he had brought with him.
Although he felt like running away, starting up the car and getting the hell away from there as fast as it could carry him, Roberts left the car, which locked itself up automatically, and followed Mark on barely stable legs up the dark stairwell of the tenement. He wished he could have just five more minutes to say decent goodbyes.
Their footsteps echoed on the stone landings they passed. Madge Hartley heard them and peered from the fisheye security lens sunk in solid wooden door, but she was too late. The man and the boy had passed already to the top floor landing.
Mark handed Roberts his rucksack. “Just stay here and hold that for me, will you, please?”
“I can’t believe how polite you are given the fact that we may all be blown to kingdom come any minute now!”
Mark smiled.
“This doesn’t faze you at all, does it? Why the hell does this not faze you?”
“Time for some more magic,” Mark said, turning away, and in a fluid movement stepped through the wall. Roberts dropped the rucksack and felt his knees go even weaker. He leaned against the wall behind him; his legs were threatening not to support him.
Mark stepped in. The sensation of passing through solid matter was strange but not unpleasant, but his nerve endings seemed to jangle briefly. It was like being scrubbed all over, quickly, with a hard, dry sponge. The wall behind had left no trace of his passage. He had imagined an electro-magnetic field like a body-tight envelope surrounding him completely, shielding his body, and this field could part the molecules it came into contact with; he likened the experience to wading through thigh-deep water: as water would, the paintwork, the plaster, the bricks and mortar and the interior wallpaper parted in front of Mark and closed up again behind.
He quickly surveyed the room. He noted the wires, the electro-magnet, the wardrobe door. The digital computer inside was booby-trapped too, he sensed, so that if he cut the wires, or negated the magnet, or simply stopped the timer the primer would fire anyway. With his mind he reached into the digital control. For an instant his courage almost failed him. Only a minute remained.
Good God, he thought. What if I’m wrong about this? No – that cannot be. I walk through walls. I can bend the world to my will. I can do this too. I can do magic!
He concentrated his life to the device. With his mind he explored its surfaces, every corner, every groove, every minute intricacy. The display counted down inexorably.
The explosive will hurl the primer into the plutonium. The unstable particles of the plutonium will burst apart, energy will be released, the same kind of energy that fires the sun itself. The temperature will exceed a million degrees.
Only seconds remained.
I can do this! He focused his mind around the bomb, not just imagining it but literally seeing it with the utmost clarity, and with his mind he wrapped the plutonium in a sub-atomic shroud, a cover of particles so strange that they defied logical analysis. He imagined it, this magical suffocating blanket, and because these particles were what atoms themselves were made of, he could make this enveloping shroud around the device utterly –utterly - impenetrable. No atomic particles could escape this shell, so no radiation could escape.
The digital display silently came to zero.
Zero.
Mark felt the blast ignite in his mind. The sheer force of it, a million erupting volcanoes, made his mind reel for a millisecond then his strength took hold again – instantly – and snuffed the explosion and its causes out as if it were no more than a candle flame in a church. He made the material simply disappear, their particles separating off into some infinity of sub-atomic universes. Not a ripple of it showed or was felt in the everyday world so when Mark opened his eyes, he saw the untidy little room with the remains of the booby-trap devices, now useless, but all continuing to exist.
For a moment he was reminded of General Miller’s dead face.
The world still existed. He was still alive. He let out a long breath, leaned a trembling arm against the dirty wall and tried not to fall over.
At last, after what seemed like a long time but was in fact less than a minute, he had pulled himself together sufficiently to let Roberts in and they quickly located Janette and Carrie in the adjacent room. It was the matter of moments to undo their gags and free their arms and legs from the ropes and tape that bound them.
There were hugs and tears. Roberts looked on, smiling widely, still holding Mark’s rucksack, hardly able to believe he was still alive.


25 Monday Night

Mark gave them water and energy bars from the rucksack supplies. Mark had supposed his mother and Carrie would be hungry and thirsty. They were. They also both had headaches, after-effects of the drugs they had been injected with.
Mark and Director Roberts told them all that had happened, from Mark’s rescue in the glen to the killing of General Miller.
“I couldn’t save him,” said Mark quietly.
“What do you mean?” asked Roberts.
“If I had known then what this ‘power’ can do, I could