The Keeper. Part 1. An Invitation

‘Yikes!’ cried the cat, jumping down and making a run for the stairs. ‘Every cat for himself then—that’s what I say!’

‘Nice one, coward!’ Arthur shouted after him.

Arthur continued to watch in horror as two of the helicopters set down in the field next to the neighbour’s house, while the third took up a position right over their cottage, causing the whole roof to rattle and vibrate heavily.

‘Not good!’ he mumbled, creeping over to the top of the stairs. He could hear his mother and Aunty M frantically shouting something about seeing soldiers with guns coming into the garden. A few seconds later, the helicopter above them moved off, and a male voice boomed out, followed by the sound of footsteps going into the kitchen.

‘Arthur! Where are you?’ shouted his mother.

Definitely not good!

With that gut-sinking feeling that he was about to be in a whole heap of trouble, Arthur took a deep breath and descended the stairs, pausing at the bottom to gaze at the soldiers standing sentry on either side of the front door.

‘Are you okay? Where’ve you been? We were all worried sick!’ exclaimed his mother, rushing up to him as he entered the room.

‘Mum, I’m fine,’ he replied, noticing a tall man in an officer’s uniform, standing by the kitchen table.

The officer looked at him and smiled. ‘So you must be Arthur,’ he said, stepping forwards and extending a hand for him to shake. ‘Come and have a seat, will you? I’m sure this will all just take a minute.’

Arthur glanced at his mother who nodded for him to do as he’d been told.

‘My name is General Hammond,’ he said, pulling back a chair, and removing his peaked cap to reveal a buzz cut of greying hair. ‘I am head of the Space Projects Division at the T8 Joint Command Facility. Do you have any idea why I have come here today?’

Arthur shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

‘It’s OK. You do not need to be afraid. You are not in any trouble. In fact, quite the opposite. I believe that you are in a position to help me recover something very valuable, which was lost in a recent, and rather unfortunate accident.’

His mother was whispering animatedly with Aunty M.

‘A short while ago, a powerful energy spike was detected coming from the vicinity of this house. Do you have any idea what I might be referring to?’

Arthur nodded.

‘And am I also correct in thinking that you were able to open the object?’

Arthur nodded again.

The expression on the general’s face, which had up until that point been calm, suddenly became deadly serious. ‘Then the sooner you return the object to me and give me your assurance never to mention a word about it or what you have seen to anyone, the safer it is going to be for you and your family… Do you understand what I am telling you, Arthur?’

‘Yes,’ replied Arthur, feeling a shiver run down his spine. ‘I understand.’

‘Fine. And do you have the artefact in your possession?’

‘Please give the officer what he came here for!’ cried his mother before he’d even had a chance to say anything. ‘It clearly doesn’t belong to you! We’re so sorry, General, he’s always been a bit of a handful, ever since he was just a toddler. I think he gets it from his father, you know.’

‘Yes, it’s here,’ frowned Arthur, removing the box from his pocket and placing it on the kitchen table.

Picking it up, the general gave each side a cursory glance before tucking it into his shoulder bag. ‘Thank you. Now, I realise that you doubtless have a lot of questions, especially about what it was that you saw. But I mean it very sincerely when I say that the less you know, the better.’

The general turned to his mother and Aunty M, hovering by the door.

‘And the same, I’m afraid, also applies to the both of you ladies. The fewer people who know about this, the better. I trust I also have your assurances on this matter?’

‘Fine then,’ he said, as they both nodded vigorously. ‘Now, if you will please forgive the manner of this intrusion, I really must get going.’

Rising, the general shook Arthur’s hand, put on his cap and left, leaving the three of them watching through the kitchen window as he and the soldiers headed back up the garden path.

No sooner had the garden gate clattered shut behind them than Arthur suddenly found himself in the world of trouble which he knew was coming.

‘When are you ever going to learn not to go poking your nose into things that don’t concern you!? And look what’s happened this time—even the army had to get involved! I just don’t know what we’re going to do with you, I really don’t. Why can’t you be normal like your friends?’

And no amount of trying to explain that all he’d done was find it was going to get her to change her mind on the matter. The worst part about all of it, though, was that very shortly after the general had taken the box, Arthur discovered that he was no longer able to understand the cat. At first he’d thought that Cat was playing a joke on him, but after dousing him with water, and not hearing anything except hisses and unhappy meows, he understood for sure. In many ways it felt like losing a best friend, whilst not actually losing him.

Gradually, after unsuccessfully trying different ways to communicate, they fell back into doing what they’d always done. The cat continued to follow him around, and Arthur still talked to him as though he understood. But it wasn’t the same. And as for the box, well, the general’s insistence that he promise to not discuss it with anyone had only made him even more curious about what it really was.

4

Something Unexpected

Summer passed into autumn, and soon school was back in full swing. Days were becoming shorter and darker, and before long the ground lay covered in leaves. With the events of the holidays seemingly forgotten about by both his mother and stepfather, everything had returned to normal. Everything, that was, except for the fact that Arthur himself had been unable to forget. And no sooner had they arrived back in the city again than he’d spent most of his free time browsing the internet, studying star maps and hoping against hope that he might discover something more about the box and about what he’d seen. But it was a slow and laborious task and in the end, after becoming swamped with schoolwork, he was finally forced to push it all to the back of his mind.

That was until early one Sunday morning in the middle of October when the doorbell rang unexpectedly. His stepfather had gotten up to answer it and hushed, serious-sounding voices had followed.

‘Come on, wake up,’ said Sasha, entering Arthur’s room without knocking. ‘The general’s here to see you.’

‘The general?’ he yawned.

‘General Hammond, from the cottage. Remember him?’

‘Of course I remember him, but what’s he doing here!?’

‘Go and ask him yourself. They’re waiting for you in the kitchen.’

‘They?’

Dressing quickly, Arthur hurried into the kitchen to find several people sitting at the table. His mother, still in her dressing gown, was busy preparing tea and coffee. Seeing him coming in, the general got up.

‘Ah, my young friend,’ he said, shaking his hand and patting him warmly on the shoulder. ‘Nice to see you again. How are you doing after all those summer adventures of yours?’

‘Okay, thank you,’ Arthur replied nervously.

‘Good, good. Right, well, Arthur, as you can see, I’m not alone this time. So, before we get started, let me quickly introduce you to the two colleagues who have travelled with me here today. On my right is Peter, head of our Artefacts Research Team at the facility. As you can no doubt imagine, he has dedicated a great deal of time and effort into studying the box you found.’

‘A pleasure to meet you,’ replied the slightly plump man with a silver goatee. ‘You certainly did us all a big favour by finding it.’

‘Indeed, you did,’ nodded the general. ‘And, on my left, Doctor Semenova who heads up our Psychological Evaluation Committee at the facility.’

Arthur nodded shyly

‘So, let’s get down to it then, shall we? The reason why we’ve come here today is because we urgently need your help. More specifically, we need you to try to remember back to this summer, to your opening of the box. Do you think you can do that for us?’

‘Yes,’ Arthur said.

‘Excellent.’

Peter took out his mobile phone and pointed it at him. ‘It’s so we can recall exactly what you said,’ he explained.

‘Please go ahead and describe for us how you opened it and what happened next?’ prompted the general.

Trying not to look at it, Arthur cleared his throat and for a moment wondered where he should start. It all sounded so strange in his head that he was sure if he mentioned the cat and, even worse, the fish, that they’d all think he’d cracked.

‘Well, um, at first we tried to open it using some of the tools from my grandfather’s tool shed, but it was impossible,’ he began.

‘Just a moment, please. You said we,’ interrupted the general, looking surprised.

‘What?’

‘Yes, you said that we tried to open the box. Who was the other person with you?’

Shooting a look at the cat, who’d just jumped up onto the windowsill, he blushed.

‘No one. Sorry, there was no one else there. So, anyway, when I couldn’t open it with tools I… I began to think about the words written on it, you know, about wanting to know things and having to say “open” three times.’

‘And you worked that out by yourself, did you?’ asked Peter, rubbing his chin.

‘Well, yeah… I guess.’

‘Good. And that’s what you did?’

‘Yes, I said “open” three times.’

‘And then what happened?’

‘Well, everything went really bright and then really dark and the room I was in turned into, like, a floating map.’

‘A floating map?’

‘Yes.’

‘And why do you think it was a map?’

‘I don’t know. I mean, it looked like a map—like a star map. Like something I’d seen at the planetarium with my dad.’

‘And did you recognise any of the planets?’

‘No,’ he said, shaking his head.

‘And can you tell us anything more about this map?’

‘Not really. But I remember that some of the planets were just kind of spinning, and some of them were grouped around what looked like suns.’

‘And that’s it?’ asked Peter after a lengthy silence.

‘Yes, I think so.’

The head of research leaned over and whispered something into the general’s ear, causing him to frown slightly and nod.

‘OK, well then, I think we’ve got everything we need,’ said the general, rising. ‘We don’t want to take up any more of your Sunday.’

‘No, hang on—wait!’ said Arthur suddenly, as the others stood up and followed the general over to the front door. ‘Actually, there was something else! There were like these symbols. Some kind of writing. I couldn’t understand them, though.’

Peter put down his coat and quickly took out his phone again.

‘Can you describe these symbols?’ he asked.

‘No, I’m sorry, but—’

‘But?’

‘But I remember that they were only next to one group of planets, and not any of the others.’

This time Peter nodded to the general.

‘Good. Thank you, Arthur. Now, if you could please give us a moment alone with your parents, there are a few things which we need to discuss with them.’

‘What? But why? I thought I answered all of your questions?’

‘You did,’ replied the general. ‘You have been very helpful indeed.’

‘Arthur, go and wait in your room,’ said his mother anxiously.

When Sasha and his mother came in a short while later, he could tell right away that she’d been crying. His stepfather was looking very serious.

‘Arthur,’ she said tenderly, sitting on the bed beside him. ‘The general has just informed us that there’s a problem with that box you found.’

‘What kind of problem? I didn’t break it or anything, if that’s what they’re thinking—honestly!’

‘No, it’s nothing like that. In fact, the problem, from what we can gather, is that you appear to be the only one who is able to open it.’

‘Me? But it’s easy, just say “open” three times. Anyone can do it.’

‘If it were that easy, I don’t suppose that they’d be here asking for your help, would they?’ said Sasha, handing him a piece of paper.

‘What’s this?’

‘Look for yourself.’

Arthur unfolded it.

TOP SECRET

To: General Hammond

From: The desk of the Minister of Defence: David James Mills

Subject: URGENT Directive T8-A89–21

General Hammond,

Due to the extreme importance now being attached to the opening of artefact A1–01 at the highest levels, you are hereby instructed on behalf of the Prime Minister of Great Britain and in full agreement with the President of the T8 council to use all means necessary to ensure that this is achieved. I am sure I don’t need to remind you that this is a matter of both national security and international importance. If this boy is indeed confirmed as being who you think he is, you are authorised to bring him to the T8 facility for further testing.

Yours sincerely,

David James Mills

Minister of Defence

‘For further testing!? What, they’re really going to make me go there?’ he asked after reading the memo several more times.

His mother laid a hand gently on his shoulder.

‘The general said you’d just be needed to help them to open the box again, thats all,’ she said.

‘But you’ll be coming too though, right?’

‘No, we can’t, Arthur. Anna is much too little to be going somewhere like that. And, in case you’ve forgotten, Sasha is finally up for promotion next week.

‘Yeah… But…’

‘The general has, however, just been speaking with your father, and after explaining everything to him, he has agreed to go with you.’

‘Papa? Really!? But… he’s on a business trip to America.’

‘Not anymore. They’re sending a plane for him as we speak.’

5

Papa

With his father on his way back, it had been agreed that they would leave the day after next. The general, on his way out, had taken Arthur to one side for a private word and had told him that he was confident that it wouldn’t be for long. Despite this though, Arthur couldn’t shake off the feeling that it wasn’t going to be as simple as just helping them open the box and then being able to leave again, especially when he remembered the contents of the letter.

Things at home had remained tense after the general and the others had gone. One minute his mother would be angry with him for having found the box in the first place, and the next she was hugging him, telling him it would all be OK. His stepfather, in his turn, had taken it upon himself to keep reminding everyone that because Arthur was going to a special government division, that it meant that he’d have to be on his best behaviour at all times. Even his baby sister, sensing that something was up, kept crawling past his room, popping her head in, and screaming out until she found him. Fortunately, by evening they had managed to calm down a bit. The day after tomorrow still seemed far enough away to be able to push it to the back of their minds.

Arthur, for his part, had been trying his best not to think about it at all. Ironically though, the more he’d tried not to, the more his mind kept conjuring up dark images of mad-looking scientists deciding that it was going to be a matter of national security to keep him there for the rest of his life.

‘I don’t know, Cat,’ he said, as the cat came and curled up next to him on the bed. ‘Don’t you think it’s really kind of strange that the government needs my help? I mean, it can do almost anything, right? Build nuclear missiles, space weapons, cool tanks and stuff. I don’t get why they can’t figure out how to open it themselves.’

The cat stretched out a paw and rested it on his arm.

‘I really wish we could still talk,’ he sighed, tickling him behind his ears.

The following day, Arthur decided to try and find out more about the T8 facility and what he could expect to find when he got there. Curiously however, not only did it not appear on any maps but after searching for hours, all he’d been able to come up with were a few broken links and occasional references to it being a government facility, location unknown. One link though, which he had been able to open, was to a conspiracy theory blog in which the writer had said that whilst knowledge of the existence of T8 wasn’t exactly a secret per se, it was rather strange that it couldn’t be located on any satellite photographs, especially given their general availability these days. The writer had also gone on to say that, in his opinion, it had to mean that there was more to it than it just being a UK government facility and questioned whether it was even in the UK at all.

The afternoon of their departure, the general had arrived with his father at the appointed time.

‘Papa!’ shouted Arthur, rushing to greet him as Sasha opened the door for them.

‘Hellooo, you!’ cried his father, hugging him. ‘How are you doing?’

‘Fine!’

‘So, I hear we’re being sent somewhere, but no one wants to say exactly where that somewhere is. What did we do to deserve that, I wonder?’

‘Ha ha, very funny. It’s a restricted facility called T8. But it doesn’t exist on any maps—I checked!’

‘Did you now? Well, don’t you worry yourself, I’m sure they know how to find it.’ He winked. ‘And anyway, a few days off from school is never a bad thing, right? Are you all set?’

Arthur nodded and pointed to the bulging backpack at the foot of the bed and grinned.

‘Your mum packed that, did she? I bet there’s enough food in there to keep you going for weeks.’

‘And you’ll thank me later for it,’ she replied, appearing out of the kitchen. ‘I’ve heard enough stories about the standard of army food.’’

‘But Mum, I don’t think we’re going to an army base.’

‘Maybe, but as General Hammond here refuses to say anything much about where you are actually going, it can’t hurt to be prepared, can it?’

‘Oh I don’t think you need worry,’ grinned the general. ‘You can be sure that we’ll take good care of them. And, speaking of which, I’ve just been informed that our plane is already waiting for us on the tarmac, so I suggest that we get our skates on.’

‘What, right now?!’ asked Arthur, panicking that he was about to forget something important.

‘Arthur, come on,’ called his mother when he suddenly darted into his room and didn’t reappear again. ‘Everyone’s getting ready.’

‘Yes, yes, I’m coming,’ he called back. What is it that I’m forgetting? He wondered, looking about his room. But there was nothing that stood out.

‘Ah ha! Of course!’ he exclaimed as the cat happened to wander in at that exact moment and meow at him. ‘Cat—it’s you!’

Hurriedly removing the sandwiches and other provisions his mother had packed for him, he laid the pack on the floor in front of him.

‘What? Don’t look at me like that. I know you understand why the general’s here.’

The cat meowed.

‘Yeah, yeah, come on, quickly,’ he whispered, pushing it closer to him.

Meowing again, the cat got in.

‘Okay, now whatever you do, remember to stay quiet and stay hidden, got it?’

‘Arthur!’ called out his mother, again. ‘Come on, whatever are you doing there? We’re all waiting.’

‘I’m coming, I’m coming!’ he shouted and heaved the backpack onto his shoulders.

Although it was understood that they weren’t going to be gone for long, he still felt bad about saying goodbye to his mum. She was looking tearful again.

‘Now just do as you’re told and don’t get up to any mischief,’ said Sasha, shaking Arthur’s hand.

‘I will.’

‘And please call us when you get there,’ said his mother.

‘Of course. Don’t worry, he’ll be fine,’ replied his father, patting Arthur on the head.

And with a wave, they turned and followed the general to the lift.

Outside, three large, blacked out SUVs were parked in a line near the entrance. As they emerged, men dressed in black uniforms got out and stood between them and a small crowd of onlookers that had gathered to see what was happening. Recognising several of his neighbours, Arthur couldn’t help but wonder what they must be thinking, seeing him coming out with the general.

‘Quite the little show we’re putting on for everyone, eh?’ said his father, putting his things into the boot. ‘There’s plenty of room in here, you know,’ he added, looking puzzled as to why Arthur was still clutching his pack.

‘Yeah, I know, but I might need something.’

‘You can’t be hungry already, surely. Your mum said you just ate before I arrived.’

‘Yeah, I did, but not much.’

‘Fine. Suit yourself.’ He smiled and opened the door for him.

Getting in, Arthur gazed up at the windows of his flat, which all faced that side. He could see his mum peering out, holding his sister. They both waved.

‘It’ll all be okay,’ said his father softly, as Arthur turned to watch them out the back window. ‘Sometimes life throws us curve balls and forces us to do things we don’t necessarily want to. Just try to think of it as a little adventure—nothing more, nothing less.’

6

T8

An unmarked jet had been waiting for them at a small airfield just outside of London. Flanked by two more SUVs, similar to the ones in their convey, the plane had, the moment they were all on board, immediately taxied out to the runway and taken off.

Attempting to work out where they might be going, Arthur had tried to keep track of their route by searching for familiar landmarks on the ground. But no sooner had the aircraft climbed through several large banks of cloud than he’d completely lost his bearings. What he didn’t fail to spot, though, was that after less than an hour in the air, they were no longer flying over land! The words of the blogger had immediately rung in his ears.

And so it was that for the next seven and a half hours their course continued to take them out over open water, finally hitting land again a little after nine o’clock UK time. By now Arthur had worked out with some certainty that wherever it was they were going, it was most definitely in the northwestern hemisphere, because had they been flying east, then it would already have been dark outside. Nose pressed up against the window, he’d watched as a landscape of forests and mountains unfolded in front of them, stretching away to the horizon. In places, it was already buried under blankets of early winter snows.

In between dozing and covertly checking on the cat, who didn’t seem to be having any trouble sleeping the whole way, Arthur had spent quite a large portion of the flight seriously regretting having allowed his mum to talk him out of taking his mobile phone with him. Not only did it have all his games on it, but all his music, too.

‘If you leave it there, then you’ll probably never get it back. And don’t think for a minute that we’ll be buying you another one any time soon if you do. In any case, your father will have his, and a few days away from those games of yours won’t do you any harm, either,’ had been the speech.

As a result, he’d been forced to listen to hours of the general and his father discussing world affairs, all of which seemed to be so far removed from his own life that the only interesting moment had been when his father had attempted to badger him into finally telling them where they were going. The general, though, had smiled apologetically and said that it was top secret.

And so, it wasn’t until the plane had finally begun its descent that Arthur got his first chance to learn something about it. Resembling a kind of town, it was much bigger than he’d been expecting and dominated by several very large buildings, which were themselves flanked by tall tower-like structures. Linked together by networks of over-ground walkways, the whole base, from what he could make out, appeared to have been constructed around a central glass dome. Trying to take in as much of it as he could, he barely noticed that they had landed.

‘So, here we are then. Welcome to T8,’ said the general, as the minivan which had been waiting for them on the tarmac came to a stop inside a hangar. Two soldiers ran up and snapped to attention as he got out.