Tunnels 06 - Terminal

to return back to the base of the tower, not least because Elliott was in such a state. Will had never seen her this distraught before, and had been forced to help her all the way down the circular flight of stairs. As the two of them sat together on one of the fractured boulders, her head was buried in Will’s shoulder. She’d stopped crying, although he could still hear her take the odd involuntary breath as if the tears weren’t far away.
    Jürgen glanced at the bushman, who was hunched over on the ground ten or so feet away from everyone else, then leant back against the tower and took another, even bigger mouthful from his flask. He swallowed noisily and then exhaled just asnoisily. ‘This stuff is jolly wizard for steadying one’s nerves,’ Jürgen remarked after a moment.
    ‘Jolly wizard?’ Will repeated, wondering why all of a sudden the New Germanian’s language had become so odd.
    Jürgen grinned. ‘Sorry, that’s probably something I picked up from the English books we had in the city library. The Jeeves and Wooster stories somehow found their way onto a helicopter when the first settlers flew in.’
    Jürgen’s radio suddenly crackled, and he pushed himself upright to fumble in a pocket and retrieve it. As he spoke to his brother in German he was waving his flask demonstratively in the air.
    Although Will didn’t understand what was being discussed, Jürgen’s side of the conversation grew rather terse after only a short time.
    Will used the opportunity to speak to Elliott. ‘Are you feeling better now?’ he asked her softly.
    She nodded but still didn’t show her face.
    ‘It’s all been too much for you – for all of us. You’ve had a bad shock – that’s all,’ he tried to rationalise to her.
    She nodded again, simultaneously shivering despite the heat.
    ‘You don’t ever have to go back inside again,’ Will said. ‘No, maybe that would be for the best. We can leave this place – you and I – and never come back here again.’
    Jürgen finished his conversation on the radio. He looked angry.
    ‘What’s the matter? Are Werner and Karl going to join us?’ Will asked him.
    ‘They are, but my brother says I must be mistaken about what we’ve found. He even went as far as to accuse me ofdrinking too much when I described what we all saw. My own brother doesn’t believe me.’ Jürgen had been about to take another swig from his flask, but instead he suddenly jerked his head as if something had stung him. ‘What are we talking about here, Will?’ He was silent for several seconds before he continued. ‘If we accept that the new, exposed pyramid and the tower are connected, and all indications point to that …’
    ‘And Woody’s ancestors built on top of the pyramids many thousands of years ago …’ Will put in.
    ‘… then we’ve just seen a display of technology that could pre-date us – Homo sapiens – as a species by … well, who knows how long? And the big question is how it came to be here. And maybe the right answer is that it’s non-terrestrial.’
    ‘Non-terrestrial?’ Will repeated with a frown. ‘But my dad’s ancients must have been around at the time, because they saw those views of the planet.’
    ‘How do you figure that?’ Jürgen immediately challenged.
    ‘Because they were able to draw their maps inside the pyramid from them. That’s why they were so accurate,’ Will replied. ‘So it follows that the technology was in use then.’
    ‘Maybe,’ Jürgen said, holding up his flask as something occurred to him. ‘But talking about those views … they’re from outer space … but from what exactly?’ he asked, his voice oddly flat. ‘And from when? I mean, from what time?’
    Will hadn’t had the opportunity to examine the scenes in any detail as they’d circulated around the walls, but because of the size and appearance of London in the images it hadn’t occurred to him that they were anything but current. He was about to comment on this when Elliott stirred.
    ‘From now,’ she said, her voice barely audible because her face was still pressed against Will.
    ‘So they are from now? You mean they’re live images? How do you know that?’ Will asked her gently.
    ‘I just do,’ she answered.
    Jürgen had been staring out over the fields of soil that were gradually turning grey under the fierce heat of the sun, but now he swung his head towards Will. ‘It’s evident that the technology … all the technology we’ve seen so