Skip The Budgie

It was not the winning that made Kath's name with the Royal Society, nor was it the fact that someone several years younger than most of the entrants - not to mention female - had won one of the most prestigious prizes for scientific invention of the age. The thing that really stood out about Kath was the way that she understood circuitry like nobody else alive. She really seemed to be one with the machine.

Or so everybody thought at the time.

Little Kathy had been invited to London to demonstrate her work to an eminent computer scientist, who at the time was excitedly promoting exciting ways of networking academic machines together in Universities, for research purposes. He had heard of this precocious child who lived in a house full of pieces of expensive computers and had thought he would be able to exploit her remarkable mind to help his own causes.

He was wrong.

When the little girl and her father first arrived, they were treated with ridicule and scorn. It was impossible for the bearded collective to imagine this little girl had anything at all to offer, but the scientist was very persuasive and eventually they agreed to give the child an audience, to satisfy their own curiosity for the most part, but also 'just in case'.

Kathy was utterly terrified when the nervous little bald man gave his introductory speech. She did not hear much of it and sat on the stage in the big hall wringing her hands and biting her lip, thinking about the ashen colour of his voice and the way each enthusiastic word spiked into the air like a tiny firework. Once the anticipatory applause had picked up and then died away, her father leaned over.

'Okay love,' he whispered, 'just like you showed me last night. Everything you need is there on the table.'

'I'm scared!' she said.

'Don't worry, pumpkin.' Her father squeezed her hand comfortingly. 'You have something very special to share today, don't you? I'm right here, I promise I won't leave your side.' He stood up and held out his hand. 'Come on, I'll buy you an ice cream after.'

They stepped up to the table together. There was nothing remarkable on it, a standard IBM 486 computer. One of the ones with the new VGA colour screen, some electronics equipment (diodes, capacitors, wires) and various tools.

The computer was switched on and the audience were treated to the familiar sight of the windowed operating system starting up, projected onto a large screen behind the couple on the stage. Kathy and her father played a quick game of Reversi to show this was indeed just an ordinary computer and there was polite applause when Kathy won easily, then chuckles when she ordered her father to begin dismantling the large white case.

The next half an hour was a blur of activity, wiring and soldering during which the little girl chattered away, explaining what she was doing in minute detail. She did not refer to any notes, or take guidance from her father, but merely spoke quickly in her sing-song voice, using the special language the two of them had created in order to make sense of the shapes and colours she could see and nobody else could.

She had the feeling that not one of the people in the room really knew what she was talking about, but their eyes remained glued to the big screen, which was now showing a bird's eye view of the workbench, computer parts laid out neatly like an exploded technical diagram. She knew her descriptions often left out many crucial details, but in the end it was impossible to argue with the results. For now she would have to try and ignore the pained looks and impatient coughing.

Kathy finished by carefully placing the monitor back onto the desktop facing the audience. She picked up a microphone she had plugged into the back of the machine, which now looked like it was being attacked by a swarm of snakes, or several octopi. She held the microphone up to her lips nervously, she had been so busy building and chatting that she had forgotten where she was.

The little girl looked up at her beaming father and he took her hand reassuringly.

'Go ahead, love' he said, squeezing her fingers. She shut her eyes for a moment, then spoke loudly into the microphone.

'Hello Unicorn.' Kathy said.

The screen flickered on and briefly filled with rows of text. The text was quickly replaced by a swirling whirlpool of rainbow colours that resolved into the image of a face, looking as if it were pressed against an undulating sheet of brightly coloured silk.

'HELLO WORLD.' the face said, pixellated lips forming an impressive approximation of the words, the voice a caustically grating electronic sound. Kathy winced. She would have to work on that.

'My name is Kathy.'

'HELLO KATHY, YOU MAY CALL ME UNICORN.'

'I am very pleased to meet you,' said Kathy, 'I would like to introduce you to the members of the Royal Society.' The multi-coloured eyes on the screen seemed to wander round the room and there was not a man there who did not feel in his bones that the machine was looking at him.

'IT IS AN HONOUR TO MEET YOU, THE ROYAL SOCIETY.'

The applause was deafening.

There was a loud, frantic banging on the door.

'Open up! Davey please open up!' Davey started. Janet's voice. Hysterical. It was a few moments before his old body forgave him for falling asleep in the armchair yet again. His joints cracked and complained as he fumbled his way to the front door.

'Alright Jan, alright!' he growled, his shaking hands dropping the door keys with a crash. She continued knocking even while he was strugglling with the locks.

'Please Davey! Please! It's William - I don't know where he is, you have to help me!' The little boy's mother burst through the door, knocking the old man aside and frantically scouring the dark cottage for any sign of her son. Davey pushed the heavy door closed and turned wearily to the distraught woman, who was disappearing into the hall.

'Wait, come back!' he shouted, chasing after her as she ran from room to room, slamming doors, disturbing decades of dust and calling out desperately for the little boy. Davey caught her when she rushed back past him and they both collapsed onto the hallway floor, the little boy's mother weeping uncontrollably.

'He ain't here, love.' the old man whispered eventually.

'B-but you saw him yesterday?'

'Aye, I did that. He sat wi' me for a while, like he always does. He went straight home.'

'But he didn't come back! He didn't! Weren't you watching him? Where would he go? Oh William what's happened to you?' She clung to his chest as fresh waves of sobbing overcame her. Davey struggled to comprehend the situation, little Billy gone? They couldn't have taken him, not that quickly, not that quietly. He had watched the lad run across the lawn to the door. He felt the shock of realisation dawning. They must have been inside the house, while they slept! He pulled Janet closer to him, stroking the shaking woman's hair.

'Y-you promised me!' she said. 'You told me - you said they wouldn't come back, ever - not after Michael!'

'I know love. I made sure it were all over. He's probably just out with his Fancy Pirate friends, out in the woods. You know how he is.' Davey cringed, even as the lie left his lips. He had to get Janet away from here before they came back. He had to get out there and find the boy, find him before it was too late. She pulled away from him.

'You don't believe that! You can't believe that! You must have felt it yesterday. I felt it, I knew someone was watching, oh Billy what have we done?' Davey seized the tearful woman by the shoulders and tried to hold her gaze. Her eyes wandered over his face, unfocussed, frightened.

'Now stop that Janet, look at me!' he said. 'You know I would do anything for the lad! I'll find him, don't you worry. I swear on my...' He struggled to find something she would believe and found nothing. 'I swear I will find him for you.'

'But the Seekers, they're back, aren't they? It's happening again, isn't it?'

'Seekers will never take the child from us, not while I'm alive, you hear?' Janet searched the old man's craggy features for signs of further deceit, then nodded reluctantly. She sagged.

'I was so scared, Davey, I don't - I called the Police, they said -'

'You did what?!' The old man was suddenly fierce and Janet shrank away from his anger.

'I'm sorry! I just wanted him to be safe, they said...' she tailed off, studying her wringing hands, eyes downcast. Davey forced himself to swallow the anger squeezed her arm reassuringly.

'Sorry, love. I didn't mean to be harsh.'

'I just don't want it to be true, tell me it isnt, tell me Davey please!'

The old man ignored the question. 'So what did old Smailes have to say for himself?'

'He- he told me to wait until the morning, he said he probably wasn't missing and I was just panicking about nothing. He said Billy was always in trouble and he wouldn't bother to come out until morning.'

'Hmpf, that bastard were always good with the ladies.'

'I'm sorry Davey, I just didn't know what to do.'

'Ah, don't you worry about that, I'll handle the police. It'll be alright, love.'

'No, no it won't, and you know it.' she snapped. 'You know William, he doesn't know where he is half the time. I don't know where he is, even when he's in the room with me!'

The old man sighed his agreement and helped Janet up off the floor, leading her gently into the kitchen.

'Aye, he's a funny one. But he knows what's what, even if he can't explain it sometimes.'

'I just don't understand him, I don't understand all this,' Janet waved her arms vaguely indicating Davey and herself. 'What's going on? Have they really come back?' She collapsed into a chair, her head in her hands. Davey watched her and wondered what the hell he was going to do now.

'You promised,' she whispered, defeated. He filled the kettle and the pair sat in silence for a while listening to the bubbling water, the hiss of steam and the loud irregular ticking of the old man's grandfather clock.

Tick... TOCK-tick... TOCK-tick...

'You might do something about your boiler, Davey.' Janet said, pulling the threadbare dressing gown tight around her. 'It's freezing in here.'

'Aye, suppose I might. Seems little point now, though hey?' The woman shrugged and worried at the dirty tablecloth with her fingers.

'I should be out there, I should DO something.' She was pleading with him now, as if hoping he would produce the boy from under the table at any moment. There he is. Now wasn't that a funny joke?

Davey pressed a hot cup of tea into her hands and settled down next to her. It was getting late. Every moment they delayed was a moment wasted. There had been so much he had meant to do last night. Everything was still all locked away, where it had been for the last seven years. He was not even sure if the mechanism still worked. He worried that he was too old for this, a couple of local thugs was one thing, but it had been mostly muscle memory and the muscles still betrayed him on occasion. Still, now he had to distract Janet, keep her busy and more importantly, get her away from here, from him. He stood up.

'Come on, we'll go out together. Bring the tea, it'll keep you warm.'

There was a flash of silver from amongst the trees as the two sad little figures stumbled out into the early morning mist, calling out the little boy's name. Once they were safely out of sight, a cloaked figure stepped out from behind the trees and moved towards the two houses.

In another corner of the country, a little girl was also learning that the world was not as straightforward as she had been led to believe.

She was sitting on a thick comfortable rug by an open fire at her father's feet. A minute ago he had been idly struggling through his sudoku puzzles and half listening to the girl practising her homework. She had said something. He had dropped his newspaper and was staring at her, with wide, questioning eyes. Her mother was absently embroidering a hideous cushion cover, or other such ghastly upholstery decor for their already over-decorated living room. She too, had dropped her work and was watching the girl, warily.

'What do you mean, Kathy?' asked her father. He sounded amused, but a little bit curious. Kathy felt the familiar flush of embarrassment sending a wave of redness up her throat to her cheeks. She clutched Alice, her little red-haired rag doll to her chest and tried to encourage an answer to her reluctant, trembling lips, to somehow explain what she had meant without seeming too silly.

They had been going through her times tables and something had happened, she'd managed to get one of the numbers wrong. What was it? She struggled to remember, to relive the moment and find out what had made her mother tut so loudly, and her father lean forwards in great excitement.

Two, four, six, eight, ten - no that wasn't it.

Five, ten, fifteen - no, not that either.

Three, six, green - The little girl gasped and put her hand over her mouth. Her father raised his eyebrows and caught her eye. He winked.

'Come on, love, you can tell Daddy. What do you mean; 'green'?'

'No! I-' Kathy looked down at her exercise book, running her fingers along the row of numbers. 'I meant gree- ' She paused again, her heart beating furiously, the rush of blood pumping through her ears making her head spin. This was all getting a bit much. She'd only started having these problems a few weeks ago, and it was not normally this difficult. She took a deep breath and concentrated on the page as hard as she could.

'N-Nine!' she managed at last. 'That's what I meant, nine! Not green! That would be silly, wouldn't it daddy? Three, Six, GREEN!' She began to giggle a little too earnestly, her desperate eyes searching his face.

'Yes dear, it would be silly.' he said gently, leaning down and lifting her onto his knee. 'And do you know why?' The little girl shook her head, still giggling desperately. Her mother sighed pointedly, exasperated at the child's silliness.

'Why Daddy?'

'Because "Nine" is a yellow-ochre colour, not green. "Three" is green!' He sat back, triumphantly. The little girl's giggling stopped abruptly. She stared at her father, stunned, her mind in overdrive. His words rang out in the suddenly silent room with only the crackle of the wood on the fire as accompaniment. Kathy watched them fly around the room and get sucked up into the chimney, their oscillating colours contrasting with the golden red of the fire. Was he joking? Was he making fun of her?

'No,' she said carefully, 'Nine is definitely green, look!' She turned the page in her exercise book and wrote a large nine on it. She held the page up for him to see.

'Green.' she said, settling the matter.

'I'm sorry sweetheart, I just don't see it the same way you do.' he said, shaking his head and laughing. 'It still looks yellow to me.' A disapproving cough erupted from her mother's seat on the other side of the fire.

'What are you two on about?' said Kathy's mother crisply, 'I've never heard such nonsense!' Her father gave Kathy a reassuring hug.

'I'm sorry dear,' he said, 'I know you've never believed me, but I think our little Kathy has the same synee responses as I do.' Her mother rolled her eyes, but had stopped embroidering and was watching the little girl nervously. Kathy wondered what she was really thinking.

'Syn- what?' she asked.

'Tell me about the other numbers, love,' her father said. The little girl told him.

Over the next few months the two of them devised a system of categorising the numbers and letters by colour, according to the way the little girl saw them. She discovered that now everything had a place she was able to find the answers to mathematical problems without having to go through the tedious process of writing out the workings. She could see the answer right there in her mind's eye, the shapes and colours of the different numbers twisting and merging together so there could only be one possible answer. The most difficult thing was keeping the whole process a secret from the other children.

'They wouldn't understand,' her father had told her. 'It is best if we keep it between us.'

But keeping her skill a secret proved quite impossible.

Within a year, the little girl had completed - and rewritten in places - all of the maths books the small village school had access to. Furthermore, mathematics was not the only thing that Kath understood better than everybody else. She quickly developed a remarkable sense of electronic engineering, such an affinity in fact, that rumours of her conversing in binary sent ripples through the country.

In the autumn of 1989, Kathy received an invitation to present her latest project to the Royal Society of London. Her father was more excited than she was, but Kathy thought that it was probably time to share her creation with the world.

They had no idea that the Seekers were watching.

'Y'see lad,' the old man said, 'I were never able to fly like you, 'cause I didn't have the wings for it. When I were your age little boys didn't go scurrying about the garden waving their arms about.' He shook his head sadly, brushing away the long grey hair which had fallen over his eyes and scowling.

'Mother wouldn't hear o'it, not wi' Seekers hanging about the place and no father around to protect us. The war were just about over, beautiful country wasting into dust. Thought it would get better, but the real horror were just beginning.'

The boy wrapped his arms around his grubby knees and shivered. He was only 7 years old, why would this strange old man want to tell him these things? Usually good for a yarn or two about the days after the war, the old man's features were gaunt, greyish with cold resigned eyes and hands trembling more than usual. Somehow today was different. There was no exciting narrative of the old man's own father's wartime heroics and how they all Pitched In to Make Britain Great again, there was no ruffling of the hair and wanting to know how many ships had been sunk this evening. There were no cookies.

They sat quietly together on the dusty old step outside the old man's front door and contemplated the shadows in the overgrown hedgerow along the drive.

'So y'see, I couldn't go sailing on a pirate ship, not with the pond all dried up, all stinking of rotting weeds and neglect. Worst of all, I could never go Adventuring. In those days the bushes were too overgrown and dangerous, full of sticky cobwebs and dark secrets.' He raised his eyes slowly to look at the boy. 'Poor mother. Got her too in the end you know.' The old man shivered at the memory. 'Aye, it were a sad, sad day and what were I left with?'

'But what did you used to do?' said the boy. 'What else is there apart from flyin' an' playin' an' findin' treasure? Inside is borin', why couldn't you go outside?' The boy tried to keep the tone of impatience out of his voice, old people were so funny sometimes, why don't they play like normal people? 'There's always Important stuff to do!' he added, almost triumphantly.

The little boy tried to show confidence in this view, although he could sense the old man's trepidation. There was another emotion hanging in the air that he did not understand. Guilt, no - anger? It clawed at his mind but he pushed it aside, back into the general shadows where such things belonged. The night closed in on them then, when the old man stopped talking and there was no light, save for the dim flickering bulb in the dusty porch.

The old man made no reply to the outburst, but instead reached a shaking hand into his threadbare tweed jacket and pulled out an ornate wooden box, about the size of a cigarette packet. The little boy craned forwards for a better view. The box was covered in what look like intricate carvings, depicting a caricature of a man whose features were built from tiny pistons, cogs and pulleys, connected to even more elaborate machinery that covered the whole contraption. On the back of the box all the wires and cables converged on a hole in the centre, a beautiful, hypnotic pattern in the circuitry.

'What is it?' asked the little boy.

The cartoon man's face was contorted into a terrifying grin and the boy could not tell whether it was a grimace of pain or pleasure. Mechanical eyes seemed to follow him as the old man turned the box over and over in his hands, fingers tracing the lines of metalwork around its edges.

'Well lad.' the old man continued, ignoring the question. 'There are a lot of things in the world we pretend we can't see and there are people out there in the shadows who take a deep personal interest in the affairs of extraordinary folk like you or I.' The boy looked at him, startled. How did he know about the Shadow? What did he mean, 'extraordinary'? He began to speak, but the elderly gentleman stood up wearily, leaning heavily on the boy's shoulder. He patted the young lad's back thoughtfully and turned to retreat into the warmth of his house.

Almost as an afterthought he spun round and thrust the wooden box into the boy's hand. The boy looked down at the strange object wonderingly. The cartoon man grinned grotesquely at him and he was overcome with the old familiar feeling that somebody was watching, waiting. Behind the old man the grandfather clock in the hallway began to slow, a hypnotic, familiar sound of slightly out of time tick-tocking echoing far into the night, conjuring whirligigs of light slowly spinning and flashing into infinity. The old man laid his hand on the boy's head, bringing him out of the trance with a start.

'Now then, stay with me here, son.' he said, smiling kindly down at the frightened little boy. 'We can worry about that later.'

'Yes sir.' The boy watched his friend, warily.

'Don't worry,' the old man said, 'keep the box close to your heart, I pray to the Gods you won't need him but he will protect you when the time comes. Now go straight home and tell your mother I said to keep you safe. Tell her - Tell her Davey says it's time to move again. Tell her it will be okay, I'll call in the morning. Now go, quickly and don't look back! I'll see you soon, I promise.' He stretched with much bone crunching and a satisfied groan.

'Right. It seems I have work to do tonight, so off you go!' The old man smiled vaguely again and slowly shut the creaking door.

The boy ran.

The old man watched the boy head for the gap in the hedge and scramble frantically back into his own garden. He muttered to himself as he headed back inside, securing all five large iron bolts on the big oak door.

'Mark my words, lad. There've been stirrings in the shadows these last weeks. Somebody knows about you, and it's not safe anymore. I thought I could keep them away but it's all starting again. It always starts again. I'll see you soon, I promise. I swear I will make it right.'

The old man did not catch the movement in the bushes. He was unaware of the cold eyes watching, a sudden glint of metal in the moonlight and the hurt mewling of an indignant cat that had just been kicked.

The little boy did not come around again.

The next day there were sirens and dogs and shouting. The old man let the net curtain fall and slumped heavily into the tired old armchair in the window, sending up a little cloud of dust.

He put his head in his hands.

The boy lived with his mother and several arrogant cats in a small stone cottage, in an anonymous village, in the far north of England. An ancient aga spluttered and grumbled at them under a huge stone chimney in the center of the room, half-heartedly heating the cluttered room for a radius of about two feet. Thomas jumped up onto the hotplates and curled up contentedly.

Mother and son perched on rickety worm-eaten chairs around a small oak table, stoically munching through an uninspiring combination of shrivelled and insect-plagued garden vegetables and potatoes.

Conversation was scarce - the little boy's mother had long since given up asking him about his days at school. Either he would not reply at all, or would blurt out some fantastic story of his Latest Adventure, which just confused and upset her. His teachers always gave him glowing academic reports, but regularly told her he did not mix well with other children. The other children were afraid of his quietude, his knowledge. His aptitude for mathematics and science.

Once, his teacher, Miss Hollinshead had come round to the house, shown her a copy of what the little boy had written and asked her what it meant, as if she had been doing work for him. Unable to help, ashamed and frightened, she had accused the poor teacher of making it all up to embarrass her and sent her packing. Her son hadn't spoken to her for days afterwards, although she guessed he was as confused and worried as everybody else. Not to mention that the incident had made his life in the classroom just a little bit more difficult.

A tense, worried woman, she kept constant watch over her son lest he abandon her, following the example of his father. Every day she anxiously watched the boy return from school quiet and thoughtful. She would stand at the kitchen window and wonder at the transformation from aged philosopher into a typical 7 year-old, playing happily in an unfathomable world, bursting into life in their wild garden.

Later, while knitting absently by the fire and half listening to the boy chatter about his latest adventures, she would daydream of a time when life wasn't so secluded, when the world used to be safe.

The little boy knew nothing of his dear mother's dark moods, of course. His world was too full of wonder and excitement. Of course, the Shadow always lingered on the outside of his consciousness, but he was used to pushing it aside in favour of lighter pastimes. He did not know any other way to be.

Eventually the woman's weary head drooped onto her chest, pins and wool falling to the floor as she began to snore. The little boy gently covered her in a blanket then quietly slipped out into the dark. He blocked out the clawing, clutching Shadow and crawled through a well-worn hole in the overgrown hedge into next door's garden.

The old man was sitting on the front doorstep as usual, his hunched figure silhouetted against the open doorway, a thin wisp of white smoke swirling out of an ancient wooden pipe far up into the stillness of the November sky. They often met like this, the old man and the little boy, both appreciating the opportunity to share stories of the day's adventures.

'That foolish old man,' the little boy's mother would say, 'He has a worse imagination than you!' But the old man hardly looked up when his young friend settled down next to him and began to tell him about the pirates. The old man let him finish, then with a sigh began to speak softly, as if ending a conversation he had started in his head.

The little boy listened.