Downtime - Marc Platt [71]
‘Well, sir?’ whispered Harrods.
Danny was nervously tapping a finger against his teeth. ‘I don’t know.’ The certainty of what he was seeking had gone.
It was part of his gift – seeking and finding an object; visualizing it and then simply going to collect. But he was seeking a person, not an inanimate artefact or a computer code; not his sister’s watch hidden in the garden, or his father’s car keys. He couldn’t visualize. He just didn’t know any more.
‘This way,’ he said and they hurried west towards Wigmore Street. The cafés and shops were deserted, the roads clogged with abandoned vehicles. Danny ran, his head turning this way and that, vainly searching for some clue. His head was starting to swim. He was removed from his thoughts, flying above their surface, but unable to reach them. They flashed and rippled mockingly like sunlight on water.
He saw a cluster of huge white eyes flickering and glaring.
They drew him in. In his head, he heard a high pulsing beat.
He went to it, but an invisible wall barred his way. Arms stretched out, he pinioned himself against the barrier, trying to force a way through.
In his head he saw a toy – a lumpen carving of a bear creature. He couldn’t get past it to see the Brigadier.
Fingers dug hard into his shoulders and Harrods pulled him away from the shop window. Inside, a dozen television screens were flickering balefully, their reception reduced to blank white light.
Clive Kirkham sat in the plush surroundings of the Millbank studio at Westminster waiting for something to happen. The BBC’s hospitality was beginning to wear a bit thin. The young upstart correspondent they had assigned to interview him about New World University kept apologizing for the delay.
There was meant to be a report to accompany the interview, but the top brass at New World were unavailable for comment and the camera crew were stuck in traffic between Westminster and Shepherd’s Bush.
‘Gone to the pub if they’ve any sense,’ muttered Kirkham.
Initially, the producer had said that the interview was for the evening news. Now, in between bouts of blasphemy, she was muttering that the news might not go out at all. If it did, it would wholly concern the technological meltdown that was infecting every major computer system around the globe.
Millbank’s link to Television Centre had gone down. All TV and radio stations were currently running on their own generators and several of the transmitters had failed.
‘Christ,’ the producer complained, ‘what the hell’s going on out there? The licence-payers complain we spend too much time speculating, but how else do you cover the end of the world? Get Kate Adie to summarize Armageddon after the event?’
‘It’ll never get the ratings,’ crowed Clive Kirkham.
The producer gave him a withering look and retired from the studio to the bedlam of her control room. The correspondent apologized again. The lights went out. With no internal phones working, they were isolated and literally in the dark.
Kirkham stayed put, determined to have his say no matter what. He sipped his BBC tea, enjoying the dimly lit sight of the world’s most prestigious broadcasting organization reduced to grovelling about trying to change a fuse.
Twice, a secretary from the House came in to see if there was any news. The second time, she announced that Parliament was to be recalled for an emergency debate.
The back-up generator came on. Clive Kirkham grabbed at the microphone boom and glared at the producer through the glass window of the control room. ‘Young lady, are you listening? If you want this interview, I suggest you get it now.
Or maybe you can afford to get me back at a time more convenient to you.’
Within minutes, Kirkham was facing the camera and unleashing his tirade against New World, neo-Nazism, the Education Secretary and the irresponsibility of the government in general.
As the correspondent nodded dutifully, there