The Remarkables (The Remarkable Owen Johnson, part 1) (8 page)

Owen was floating through the clouds at what seemed like a gentle pace. Cumulonimbus, he identified the clouds as being, recalling
one of his geography lessons. Or were they stratocumulus? It didn’t matter; whatever they were they looked very pretty against the bright blue sky.

Owen wondered what it would feel
like to fly through a cloud. Only one way to find out! He angled his body and reached towards them, dragging himself effortlessly into their fluffy embrace.

Surprisingly, the inside of a cloud looked very much like
the countryside near his house. In fact it was the outskirts of his very home town! There was the reservoir that he used to walk around with Mrs Argyle and feed bread to the geese and swans; much like the lady kneeling beside the water below him was doing now. He glided down, doing his best impression of a swan.

It
was
Mrs Argyle! Owen went in for a closer peak, moving his arms using the butterfly stroke he was so fond of in the swimming pool. She was kneeling on the stony sides of the reservoir, just below the waterline that showed how full it was after the wet April they’d just experienced.

“Mrs Argyle!” Owen called out.
She didn’t seem to hear him, as she appeared to be concentrating on pulling something out of the water. As he got closer though Owen saw that she wasn’t actually dragging something out of the water but was holding something below the surface.

Owen landed silently behind her
and peered over his shoulder. It was a girl!  Why was she doing such a thing? Owen went to grab Mrs Argyle to stop her, but he couldn’t get hold of her, a cold wind pushing his arms away. He ran at her to try and knock her over but he instead was knocked off his feet, landing beside the water’s edge. He looked at the girl and recognised the face.

“Katie!”
Why was Mrs Argyle doing this to his friend, his beloved?

Owen thrust his arms into the water
but his hands went through his friend’s arms, as if she was just a reflection. He splashed into the water trying to get hold of her torso.  Before he had a chance he was pulled deeper into the reservoir, the water gushing past him along with some very startled looking fish.

He turned
around so that he was facing in the direction of the current. There was a light directly ahead of him, a figure silhouetted in the brightness, just like Trilby. But this person wore no hat, and his face was clearly visible, as were his arms which here held in front of him and from which disturbances in the water were appearing. A pair of spectacles and a trimmed beard came into focus.

“Ken?” Owen bubbled.
Ken smiled and moved his arms to the side, moving Owen along with the change in the direction of the current. Ken said something to Owen as he passed, but all that he could hear was a series of gurgles. Owen was now heading at some speed towards the surface of the water.

Skywards he erupted, but the picturesque blue sky
had been replaced with heavy and brooding dark grey clouds as far as the eye could see. In the distance Owen saw lightning illuminating the clouds from within. He moved his arms and reached out, changing his direction towards the clouds. Below them he could see a cluster of grey buildings. The power station where his father worked!

Owen angled for his descent,
hoping that his father was at work and hadn’t been abducted after all.

The five cooling towers
of the power station below were arranged as if they were on the face of a die, and as usual the outer four were billowing steam whereas the centre one was standing idle, as it always did (for “future capacity”, his dad had explained to him).

The ground around the plant was different though, with the car parks and other buildings replaced with strange black tiles with v
icious looking spikes on them. From the spikes shot up large tendrils that headed straight towards Owen. One of the tendrils was about to grasp Owen’s legs, so he propelled himself higher into the sky.

Alas
he was not quick enough and the tendril wrapped around his leg, small spikes digging into his skin.

Owen made
to climb higher into the air, but his arms could not grasp hold of anything, flailing uselessly before him.  The tendril dragged him out of the sky and tossed him into the inactive cooling tower, then released him so that he plummeted downwards.

The inside of the tower was black except for a speck
of light in the centre of it. Owen fell and fell, passing beyond where the bottom of the tower should have been.

Further into the Earth he fell, the light graduall
y getting larger and brighter. The air was becoming warmer and more humid, to the extent that it was making Owen sweat and feel very uncomfortable. As he fell he passed through gaps in a network of brightly coloured string. He reached out to try and grab one but it snapped in his hands, a sad moan emanating from it as he did so.

The light was starting to fill his
entire field of vision, the heat becoming unbearable. He looked at his outstretched hands and to his horror saw that the skin was becoming black and charred, with small cracks appearing, and was becoming so tight all over his body he feared that it would peel away. By now the light was everywhere, except for a tiny shape before him of a man in a hat.

“Owen?” a voice called out.
Owen looked about him but couldn’t see who was speaking to him.

Suddenly Owen jolted in the air, and felt a strong pair of arms around his waist, holding
him from behind. Looking over his shoulder he saw a woman with bright blue eyes smiling back at him, her hands stroking his face. Even though their touch was freezing cold, they made him feel warm inside.

“
Mum!”  His mother, whom he had not seen for over ten years, was right next to him, tears forming in her bright blue eyes. As they streamed down her face they turned to steam. She moved him around so that he was facing back upwards and pushed him away.  Looking back he saw her falling to the light, her skin turning black as Owen’s had. She diminished to a small dot and then with a loud crack the light was consumed into the space he had last seen her.

A force blasted Owen into the
air making him spin and roll. Between the jerking movements he saw that the cooling towers were being consumed by the black tiles, which were also spreading out into the countryside like blood seeping from a wound.

Owen’s ascent had reached its zenith
, and he was starting to fall. Looking down he could see every type of landscape beneath him, ranging from deserts, mountain ranges, an icy tundra, and a tropical rainforest with a large tower protruding from the middle of it, rays of light emerging from its tip. The tower then vanished, the space which it stood instantaneously being filled by trees, before they disappeared only to be replaced by the tower once more. It all looked very surreal, so Owen picked out an expanse of land that looked most like home and less likely to vanish and headed towards it.

Bisecting the green fields that he was getting closer to was a winding road, along which something was moving
quickly. A car!

Owen
positioned himself so he would fall directly towards it, hoping that he would land on its roof. Faster and faster he fell towards what he now saw was a green Land Rover that luckily had an open sunroof.

Behind the wheel we
re Mrs Argyle and her brother! Owen tried to slow himself but couldn’t grasp hold of any of the invisible handholds that had helped him thus far. He just managed to spin his body forward so that he landed surprisingly softly on the back seat. Mrs Argyle turned around and smiled at him, apparently unaware that she had blood on her top and hands. Ken also turned around from the driver’s seat and gave a grin, keeping one hand on the wheel.

“Owen?”
That voice again. It sounded like Mrs Argyle but her lips weren’t moving.

Owen felt so comfortable
that despite being jolted about he curled up and closed his eyes.

“Owen?” the voice repeated.

If only they’d let him sleep!

“Owen?”

Owen opened his eyes
. He was lying on the back seat of an old and very rural smelling Land Rover, and was covered from his chin down by a tatty red tartan blanket.

Ken
was driving, with Mrs Argyle sitting in the passenger seat beside him. Owen found the experience of waking from a dream to find himself in the same unlikely predicament quite unnerving.

He made to sit himself up but realised that some
thing was holding him in place. He pulled aside the blanket and saw that he had been tied to the back seat with a rope around his waist. His rucksack had been placed on the other side of the seat next to him.

“
Helen predates luxuries such as seatbelts somewhat,” Ken said, looking at Owen in the rear view mirror. “Sorry about the rope. After you slid off the seat for the umpteenth time, I had to do a bit of improvising.”

“
Helen?” Owen looked about him, soon realising that Helen wasn’t a new member of their increasingly eclectic party, and was in fact their mode of transport.

“Helen Wheels.”

“Who? Oh, the car. Cute name.” The bumpy ride and noose-like rope around his waist made the car’s moniker very apt.

Owen felt aroun
d the rope and found the knot. Busying himself trying to untie it he looked out of the window to see where they were heading. He assumed that they were on a main road as there were lights in the central reservation, with cars passing frequently on the other carriageway. “Where are we going?” he asked.

“We’re off to London
,” Mrs Argyle replied, turning around in the seat to look at him. “How’s your head?”

Owen f
elt his skull with both hands. He couldn’t feel any bump or cut that might have been caused by his collision with the wall, a fuzzy image of a tower appearing in his mind. “It seems okay. Did I land on a church?”

“Crashed
would be a better description. Full marks for take-off and flight; zero for your very poor landing,” Ken chuckled.

Owen gave up trying to untie the rope, relenting to Ken
’s superior skills with a knot. “Were you in the Boy Scouts or something?” Owen asked.

“Hmm?”
Ken queried. “Oh, the knot. Scouts? No. Army? Yes. My rope tying skills came in rather handy when we were on missions, didn’t they, Sis?”

Mrs Argyle didn’t reply, preferring to furrow her brow instead.

“You were in the army?” Owen asked Mrs Argyle. To look at her now, in her pristine mac and immovable hat, it seemed unlikely.

“That’s Captain Argyle to you, boy
,” Ken corrected him.

“A captain, huh?
Was that because no one dared to disobey your orders? I can sympathise with that,” Owen commented.  Still no response from Mrs Argyle, although the corners of her mouth did travel upwards briefly.

“She is quick to adopt a commanding tone
,” Ken agreed, “but her promotions were more for her fighting prowess, than for her bossiness.”

Fighting prowess?
“So were you in battles then?” Owen asked, excited at the prospect of his former baby sitter being a decorated war veteran.

“One or two,
” Mrs Argyle answered, shooting an imperious glance at her brother that truly befitted her military rank. Ken opened his mouth as if to speak, but his sister’s glare soon silenced him. “I would have imagined that after the day you have just experienced, you would have more questions about yourself than of others.”

“What do you mea
n?” Owen asked. “Oh! The flying and all that. At first it seemed strange, but now it seems….” Owen tried to continue, but couldn’t quite put how it felt into words.

It was true, Owen was puzzled at this new found ability, but for some reason it seemed to make sense
to him that he could reach out and pull himself along through the air. Explaining how natural it felt would be like describing how your heart knew that it had to pump blood around your body, or how your reflexes were tuned so as to enable you to duck when something was thrown at you.

“Seems normal?” Ken ventured.

“Yes. Like I’ve always been able to do it.”

“You probably have. It only seems to manifest itself w
hen your need is great enough,” Ken explained.

“Is it the same for you both?
Controlling and making wind and water, that is. Is that like what I can do?”

“We
can’t make or control anything. That’s not how it works. We merely…transfer the elements. What
your
gift entails is slightly different, but the mechanics are pretty much the same.” Ken steered the car into a layby, and turned around in his seat.

“What I and little sis here do is move water
and wind from one place to another.”

“From where?”
Owen asked.

Ken smiled.
“From here,” Ken pointed at the ground, “but also from elsewhere.” He waved his arms around him mystically.

Owen thought about this statement for a short while, attempting to construct a question that would force a more
cogent answer. In the end he settled for: “
what?
”

Ken nodded his head. “Okay, I’ll try again.”
He unbuckled his seatbelt and turned around fully to face Owen. “My gift involves the transfer of water from another world to this one. Think of me as a walking and talking divining rod. I feel for water in other worlds, open up a small gateway, and the water pours into our world as if from a tap, like I showed you back at the barge.

“For
Cee, it’s wind. She feels for somewhere blustery then she opens up a gateway and passes wind.” Ken chuckled, whereas Mrs Argyle scowled at his choice of words.

“
To put it slightly more succinctly and less bawdily,” Mrs Argyle interrupted, “is that we can create openings to other worlds. Whatever is on the other side of the opening will find its way into this world, so long as the atmospheric pressures and such are conducive for it to do so.” Owen didn’t think that Mrs Argyle had quite managed to construct as concise an explanation as she perhaps intended.

“How is it that you
aren’t affected by it though? When you showed me your water trick back in the barge, you were completely dry,” Owen pointed out.

“Aren’t we
the observant one?” Ken judged. “I
am
affected by it, but only if I direct the spray towards me. And the pressure of it coming out would push me back if I didn’t anchor myself. But we seem to have some kind of buffer zone around the part of us that is making the opening. So my hands won’t get wet, and sis here won’t get chilblains. That’s probably why you don’t cut yourself when you climb.”

Owen thought about this for a moment, recalling what had happened when he had cli
mbed. “Most of the time when I’ve reached out I don’t get affected by what I’m grasping,” Owen recalled, “but back in the field before we came to your barge I stood still and grabbed onto something. That time I had what looked like chalk on my hands after I had let go.”

Ken’s eyebrows darted u
pwards and Mrs Argyle frowned. “Now that is odd,” Ken said. “Best keep that snippet of information to yourself for now.” He glanced at his sister, their silent communication yet again not relinquishing any facts to Owen.

“
Okay,” Owen agreed, but vowed to himself to bring it up again later. For now another question had popped into his head. “What if there isn’t anything there?” Owen asked.

“What do you mean?” Mrs Argyle replied.

“Well, what if you open up a gateway and there’s no wind or water there?”

“We always find what we’re looking for,” Ken explained
proudly, “there’s no shortage of worlds after all.”

“But the nearest planets are millions of miles away, and none of any of the ones near us have water on
them. How can you open up gateways to them?”

“
The worlds that we connect with aren’t in our solar system. They’re not even in our universe.”

“Then where are they?”

“In other universes.”

Owen thought f
or a moment, trying to recall the limited knowledge of astrophysics that he had acquired from school and, more extensively, television. “Like parallel universes?”

“Exactly!”
Ken exclaimed with a clap of his hands. “Cee, we’ve got a smart one here!”

“Not really,” Owen admitted.
“I’ve heard the term, but I don’t really understand it.”

“Don’t
knock yourself,” Ken said, “all you really need to know is that there are an infinite number of universes layered upon one another, each one different.

“These differences can range from
subtle changes such as a hedgehog deciding it won’t cross a busy road in one world, and getting squished in another. In one world the air might be still, whereas elsewhere there might be a stronger wind blowing, as a result of any number of causes, ranging from atmospheric variations to solar flares maybe.

“But the d
ifferences can also be immense. Human life may not have evolved in the way it has here, or it may not exist at all. Another Earth may have a totally uninhabitable atmosphere.”

“What would cause that?”

“Who knows? A volcano that didn’t erupt here may have exploded elsewhere and filled the air with noxious gases that might poison or destroy the ozone layer. An ice age may have endured for whatever purpose. The reasons for such variations in our own world can be multiplied over and over and over again, manifesting themselves in any number of ways.

“So
right here, right now we are in the middle of a land mass, whereas in another world the tectonic plates may have moved differently and what we know as Britain is hundreds of feet below sea level. Or there might be a large lake over there.” Ken pointed at where a large warehouse stood. “Personally, I prefer fresh water to salt water: it tends to leave less of a mess behind once it dries.”

Owen considered this.
“So how come you can stand next to each other and one of you makes with the gusts and the other soaks everyone?”

“
Good question!” Ken responded. He stared at Owen intently for a few moments.  “Any ideas?”

“You’re asking me?
How am I supposed to know?”

“Well
we
don’t know for certain, so it’s always advisable to be open to other ideas. We do have theories, but none we’ve been able to prove. My favourite one, today at least, is that we somehow resonate towards particular worlds with certain characteristics.

“
I seem to like water, little sis here likes to blow up a storm”.

“So what about me?
What draws me to places with rocks and stones I can hold onto? And how come I can climb so well? Why don’t I get out of puff? Tonight I was flinging myself about all over the place without breaking into a sweat!”

“
More excellent questions! Again we don’t know why each of us is drawn to worlds with distinct characteristics. I for one never had an affinity with water, and Cee here wasn’t obsessed with flying kites.  Have you ever had a thing for rocks?”

Owen shook his head.

“Well there you are; another mystery. But for whatever reason, you have a connection with worlds where there are rocks or stones for you to hold onto. There are so many worlds out there that in one of them there will be some geological formation for you to interact with. A dormant volcano perhaps, caused by a fracture in the Earth’s crust. Or a mountain that had been thrust up by the plates moving in a different way to how they did here.

“As for how you can move around so athletically, a
gain, we don’t know for sure but it would seem that whilst we are flitting about in other worlds, the laws of physics seem to get muddied somewhat. So your mass on this world seems to be diluted by the gravitational effects on the other world. So you’re not going to build up your muscles launching yourself about, alas. However, there are some benefits.” Ken smiled at his sister.

“What benefits?”
Owen asked.

“How old do you think I am?” Mrs Argyle asked.

He didn’t want to reveal that he had overheard them discussing their ages earlier, so Owen made a show of looking at Mrs Argyle, assessing her features and tried to match them up with the athleticism she had demonstrated earlier in the day. He sighed. “I wouldn’t like to say.”

“A
nd nor should you!” Ken laughed. “It would be very bad form to ask a lady her age.  What about me?”

Owen looked at Ken.
“I dunno, fifty?” he offered, generously.

“Ha!  Nice try.
Times it by two and a half and you’ll be closer!” Ken was beaming back at him.

“One hundred and
twenty five?” Owen exclaimed. “You’re one hundred and twenty five years old?”  Even though he had by now had time to consider this revelation, it was still difficult to accept.