Darkly's Laboratory

By Mike Preston

“Chance, it is true, is a variable. But it is one that appears on both sides of the equation and can thus be...balanced. Or removed.”

A storm is about to break over the world and nothing will ever be the same again. This, of course, is down to one man.

Professor Darkly watches over the town of Stempleigh from his Laboratory high on the mountain. Most closely of all, he watches the two children who are vital to all his plans; for Jed and Tessa are on a journey that will take them into the very heart of Darkly’s kingdom and change their lives forever.....

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mike Preston
• Release date: Mar 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463468890

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Darkly's Laboratory

Book 1 of the Darkly Chronicles

By

Mike Preston

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2020 by Mike. Preston

Smashwords edition License Notes

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Prologue

Laboratory subject L34V paused at the edge of the snow field and the shrieking wind immediately began to pluck and tear at her, cutting through her paper clothes, numbing her limbs. Below her she could just make out, between the squalls of driven snow, the grey concrete roof of the huge facility from which she had escaped. Above her, the tremendous blades of the vast windmills that powered the laboratory hummed and whistled as they cut through the air.

She screwed her thin face tightly against the wind, narrowing her eyes to slits. Her hair slapped against her, stinging chapped cheeks and lips. She was not short for her seven years, but the surrounding snowdrifts still came up to her waist, the snow, heavy and wet, dragging at her new metal legs. These legs had not yet fully settled into her body, and where they were attached to her hips, it felt like a burning brand was being applied every time she took a step.

Looking up, she saw that the windmill seemed closer, larger, more real somehow, as if it had solidified from the wisps of cloud and snowflakes. The noise from the swooping metal blades was also louder, a continuous thrumming whisper that grew as each of the three blades descended, swelling into a hoarse throb when the blade kissed the ground, and growing softer as it ascended back into the air. Twenty yards up from where she stood, she could see the beginnings of steps cut into the rock of the mountainside. It seemed a hundred miles to the first step. She looked across the span of smooth icy rock that separated her from the relatively easy climb of the stairs and a desperate sob escaped from her lips. The rock face, steep and unyielding, had no obvious hand or foot holds, it was sheeted with ice and compact snow, and the wind pummelled it as if furious at the little girl's audacity.

But she was a brave and resourceful girl. One hand after the other.

She pushed her frozen fingers between two sharp stones, scrabbling with her metal toes, the only part of her body that had any feeling left and her heart nearly burst as she pulled herself up and grabbed at a small icy ledge just big enough to hold the small fingers of a skinny child dressed in paper clothes.

She grunted with effort as one metal toe slipped and all of her weight rested on her precarious grip on the ledge. Her other foot caught and buried its toes deep into packed snow. Her world became small and focussed on the climb, on the next handhold, on pushing her aching body up twenty yards of cruel rock while the brute wind tried to pull her away and send her sliding to her death on the sharp rocks below.

It was inevitable. In her weakened condition, as the sun sank down over the top of the mountain and all the shadows merged into one, her grip on a narrow outcrop failed. Her desperately scrabbling fingers couldn't find an alternative hold, and she began to slide. The sloping wall was merciless. The handholds and footholds she had found on the way up became claws that tore at her skin, shredding and renting her paper clothes.

It was her metal legs that saved her. Pushing her feet against the wall to try and arrest her slide, the heel of her left foot slipped suddenly into a crack hidden by the snow. With a twisting, jarring squeal of protesting metal against sharp rock, she was flipped around, facing down the slope on her back, hanging from a metal strut in the shape of a leg and a foot. Had it been her own bone and flesh, her leg would have broken in ten places and all would have been lost.

However, it was not, and the depths of courage and resilience the little girl had were startling in one so young. She hung there for a moment, upside down, eyes closed, thinking that she would like to sleep and sleep and never wake up. Perhaps an adult in this situation would have: would have given up all hope there and then, and been content to hang in the cold wind till exposure and exhaustion caused them to fall into a sleep from which they would never wake. But the little girl opened her eyes and, with a lunge, twisted her body so she could reach the icy ledge that already had the imprint of her hand on it from her first visit thirty minutes earlier.

She was only half aware of accomplishing the final ascent of the rock face. It was now completely dark, and the wind had grown even more bitter. Every muscle in her frame protested. Her fingers belonged to someone else, and she shivered furiously, the quaking of her limbs threatening constantly to loosen her hold. But, at last, she grasped the edge of the lowest step, cut there a hundred years ago by explorers and builders long forgotten.

As she did so, the moon emerged from behind the clouds, the snow stopped and the wind became gentler, as if giving up in its attempt at murder.

The mountain, lit by the pale light of a moon that looked so close that the girl might be able to touch it, was transformed. The snow glowed and shadows sharpened, the rocks glistened with ice, and there was no noise but the constant swelling and diminishing beat of the windmill blades.

Subject L34V turned and sat on the lowest step, hugging her arms to her body to try and preserve some warmth – it was still deathly cold despite the lull in the wind. She looked over the world below her. She could see red and green lights on the roof of the Laboratory that mapped out the polythopter landing pad. She could see the lights of the town at the foot of the mountain spreading out into the valley, but very small, so small that if she held out her hand in front of her eye, she could crush the whole town between her thumb and forefinger. She could see the streetlights of the town, and the diffuse glow of house lights turned on in defiance of the dark. She could, if she had wished, have traced the street shapes and perhaps found the glowing point that represented the block of flats in which she had been born. But she didn't. Instead, with a spark of the defiance and spirit that had taken her so far, she stuck out her tongue and blew a resounding, echoing raspberry at the town, the laboratory and maybe the whole world. I hate you! she shouted.

Her anger warmed her. She pushed herself slowly and painfully to her feet, looked up to the windmill that was very close now, and counted the steps. Fifteen. They were worn and slippery, and their height varied. Some were small, no higher than her knee, but some were cut higher than her chest and required climbing.

Her limbs had stiffened, but she set her mouth in a determined line and pushed her way up the smaller first steps. The final steps were harder; steeper and taller, each one scraping the girl's chest as she pushed her way onto it. But finally she reached the top, and in front of her was the windmill.

It was unclear whether the wind powered the windmill blades, or whether the blades of the windmill generated the wind, so certain and relentless were they. They seemed to suck in the air. The windmill had three blades, each a hundred feet long, attached to an elongated conical structure that rooted them to the bedrock of the mountain. In this building was the door that was the girls goal. She had heard, correctly, that each windmill was connected to the others through a network of tunnels cut through the very heart of the mountain, and that by using these tunnels she could travel underneath the un-scaleable peak to the other side. From there she had heard, again correctly, that a path led down the gentle slope of the Northern face of the mountain to a road that would take her away from the Laboratory forever.

She watched each blade descend till it almost touched the ground, making the air throb. So close she could almost touch it, a blade flashed past her in front of her eyes, deceptively slowly. She could easily step forward between them, but she didn't, not yet. Because they frightened her. The blades threatened with each diving swoop, guarding the door, relentlessly patrolling the air in exact formation. The windmill seemed to her a living thing; the door a mouth, the blades, strange hypnotic lures.

With a sudden leap as the boom of a descent died away, the protecting, whirling blades were behind her. She faced the door, a slightly recessed alcove in the moon lit phosphorescent steel of the building. At the side of the door, a button glowed with a pale green light and it was to this she ran. One step, two steps, five, ten, and she was at the door, on the tips of her toes, stretching as far as she could reach to press the button that would save her.

And nothing happened. Because this was the vital piece of information the little girl was missing: The doors to the windmills were always kept locked.

Laboratory subject L34V sat in the snow at the foot of the windmill, crying softly as the wind blew harder and the snow started to fall once again. She had exhausted the last fragments of courage and energy that had brought her so far. She tried to think of happier times, but her life had been hard, and she could only find a single good memory to cling to. She was very small, curled up in a dark safe place, hidden from her parents and everyone else who meant her harm, with Jessie her peg doll held close to her face and her brother's soft warm breath on the back of her neck as he sang a lullaby so she could fall asleep. She felt the warmth emanating from her brothers body. It was warming her now. Her limbs, numb with cold for so long were being unthawed, and at last she could sleep because she is so tired, and her brother would keep her safe like he always promised.

At the very end, the little girl curled up on her side in the snow and, tears freezing hard on her cheeks, her breathing grew slower and slower still, till each breath came in time with the five second hum and swish of the windmill blades as they continued inexorably to cut the wind into pieces. Her eyes closed, and her skin became paler with each passing moment, till quietly, with a sigh, a last breath escaped from her body and her heart stopped. Her pretty hair froze to the side of her face – each wet curl an icy lick.

Snow fell on her eyelashes and the windmill blades continued to turn.

Chapter 1

….for the future! concluded the mayor. He paused, expecting a rousing cheer from the sodden crowd below him, but was disappointed by the half hearted ragged chorus of wet claps from the gathered townsfolk. He regarded the sea of umbrellas. Ungrateful swine, he thought, and decided to extend his speech for another five minutes.

He allowed the pause to stretch out for longer than he should have. The rain continued to fall and the crowd became restless. Behind him, the other town dignitaries, on the stage to support their Mayor and lend an air of legitimacy to the proceedings, also shuffled their feet. Get on with it, you bloody idiot! hissed Judge Crampley, who was eighty this year and had rain-induced arthritis in his left knee.

The Mayor, who had secretly loathed the judge for years, waited for precisely ten more seconds, then smiled and leaned forward into the microphone. There are some, he said, his voice echoing around the town square, who spoke out against this project.

This was certainly true. The Mayor could see the young reporter, Julietta Harmony, standing in the front row less than three feet in front of him, her head level with his toes, jostling for position between the reporters from the nationals. The nationals! thought the Mayor. She was juggling an umbrella, a notepad, a pencil and a camera, and at this moment was furiously scribbling her notes, holding the camera strap in her teeth and the umbrella in the crook of her left arm. It had been Harmony who had written the article in the Stempleigh Post asking why a town you could walk across in fifteen minutes needed a mass public transit system at all. It had been she who had written the article that listed the top ten improvements the mayor could have commissioned with the same amount of money it would cost to build the Ant-o-bus, which started with a complete rebuild of the old marketplace and ended with a refurbishment of the problematic Darling Estate. Harmony was the one who had coined the phrase ‘Ant-o-bus’ in the first place, extracting it from the official ‘Anti-Gravitic Auto-Bussing System’. It had been Harmony who had persuaded the editor of the Post, Ernest Red, usually the most complacent and timid of men, to commission and publish a series of unflattering cartoons that depicted the Mayor as a hugely fat caricature riding a gleaming Ant-o-bus carriage across a town filled with decaying buildings and beggars, while sitting on a throne made from bulging bags of money, each complete with the Darkly Laboratory logo.

The Mayor had been angry at the time but had also noted with dark amusement that the cartoons were run on the same page as the recruitment advertisement for Laboratory subjects. He had lambasted Ernest soundly at the Lodge meetings they attended, where Ernest had bleated about the freedom of the press and the Mayor had taken pains to remind him exactly who funded his freedom and that this freedom included the freedom to pursue other avenues of funding if the freedom he was speaking about was made too free with. The cartoons had stopped soon afterward.

I believe, continued the Mayor, that our town needs this. That our town needs to think of the future and not of the past. We continue to celebrate our history and we never stop to think, to say ‘What can we become?’ All we ever seem to say is ‘What have we been?’ Our new Anti-Gravitic Auto-Bus…

Ant-o-Bus! shouted a voice from the crowd.

Come on, mate, it’s bleedin’ freezing! shouted another. There was scattered laughter.

In the lull caused by the interruption an older voice called out, Hurry up, Mayor! Me old granddad could open it quicker than this, and he’s been dead for fifty year! More laughter. The mayor could sense they were reaching the end of their patience.

Our new Anti-Gravitic Auto-Bussing System, the Mayor repeated, raising his voice and causing feedback to whine through the square, will usher in a new era of prosperity for our town, an era of jobs and wealth creation that will attract investment and provide funds for other important improvement programmes.

And by god, we need it, thought Judge Crampley as he pulled the collar higher on his greatcoat and tried to wrap his scarf even more tightly around his thin neck and shoulders.

The Judge stopped listening to the nonsense Bert Flowers was gushing and looked over the Mayor’s head towards the mountain. The top speared the clouds that were supplying the steady rain. Just under the cloud cover he could see the huge grey edifice that was the Darkly Laboratory. His gaze travelled down to the white houses with large gardens that covered the lower slope of the mountain, in which lived most of the Laboratory staff in glorious isolation from the town itself. His eyes followed the road into town. The town was built in the valley that segmented the foothills to the south from the mountain to the north. The valley itself was split into two by the Ere, the river that bubbled excitedly out of the moors and flowed across the county till it disappeared into Yorkshire. The river had once carried bargeloads of slate, quarried from the Eastern slopes, to the canals that took them to Newcastle and Hull and Liverpool from where high quality Stempleigh slate was shipped all over the world. Judge Crampley remembered them well, the wild colours and gaily painted pictures covering the sides of the barges. The shouting of the bargemen as they navigated stacks of grey and white slate through the glorious confusion of the docks.

Why did we stop using slate? thought the Judge, and looked around the town square, bordered on three sides by squat square buildings improbably formed from water stained concrete. Thank God for Darkly, he thought, as his gaze travelled across the hillsides where warehouses and slate works and factories stood empty and decaying in a circle around the town.

The Judge had, at first, been opposed to the idea of the Ant-o-bus; agreeing with the article in the Post by that young reporter that a squat little town of fifty thousand people precisely one mile side to side and top to bottom, with a mass transit system was a rather silly idea. However, the representative from the Darkly laboratory had been very persuasive. They needed to test the concept he had said. The laboratory would fully fund the build and maintenance, and just think of the jobs it would create. The Judge had allowed his objections to slide away. For the good of the town he thought, as he did on a daily basis when considering the decisions he had made in regards to Darkly’s schemes.

The Judge remembered well the day the slate quarry had finally closed, its product unable to compete with cheaper building materials. A thousand quarrymen had trudged home silently, each with a small severance cheque in his hands. Doors were locked on a hundred supporting industries. The bargemen disappeared overnight to lug coal or steel or glass from other towns, turning the docks into a quiet and sad place. Shops closed and the dole lines became too long for the town to support. Had Darkly not made the trip from his Government Offices in London and decided that the mountainside, with its seclusion and limitless supply of energy from the wind and the unused muscles of a desperate town, was a suitable place for his Laboratory….well, the Judge didn’t really like to think of what would have happened.

He watched the Mayor raise his hands as he reached yet another climax in his speech. Behind him, the rain bounced off the thousand glass panes that formed the main terminus of the Ant-o-Bus, and ran in channels down the banner that hung over the entrance to the shopping arcade. The first thing the Judge had asked when he saw the plans a year ago in the Mayor’s office was, Where are the tracks?

There aren’t any, replied the young man, whose name the Judge could never remember.

So how in the hell does it get from here, the Judge stabbed his finger at the terminus in the town square on the plans, to here, and he pointed at the red spot that represented the stop at the bottom of Research Avenue, the entrance to the estate of large houses that was home to the thousand or more Laboratory scientists.

It glides, said the young man smugly, Watch.

The project manager had then pulled the white sheet off the other table with a flourish, where it had been covering a model made from Hardfoam and plastic. It was a scaled replica of the town. The young man reached under the table and pressed a button. There was an almost inaudible hum, and a small silver tube rose from where it was perched on top of the model of an Ant-o-bus terminal in the miniature town square to hang suspended about three feet above the table. With a click, slim multicoloured ribbed and strutted wings unfolded quickly from the side of the little tube, a tail popped out from the rear, and like a paper dart, it glided forward, gaining speed and losing height till it seemed as though it must crash into the side of one of the small plastic warehouses. But then, as it passed over the replica of Stonemason Road, and the Ant-o-bus stop there, it slowed till it came to a stop in the air, and then it slowly descended to rest on top of the station-stop. It paused for a few seconds then up it went again. It turned slightly in the air, the wings opened, it fell forward, and came to a rest just above the stop at Warren Hill. Up, glide, down. Round and round the town it went. Straight lines from stop to stop. The young man put another tube on the model at a different station, then another and another, and soon there had been eight carriages. One at each stop at all times. Up, forward and down they went, a complicated dance timed to perfection.

Amazing, said the Mayor, Is it, you know, safe?

The young man smiled, Watch this, he said, and when the next carriage came to rest on the station-stop in front of him (Berkstead Avenue noted the Judge), he put his finger on it to prevent it from rising into the air. Instantly, the dance changed. It became tighter, more focussed. The slim silver rainbow winged tubes avoided Berkstead Avenue and pursued other routes across the town. The young man released the carriage, and it rose into the air, once again part of the dance that changed again to include Berkstead Avenue once more.

It’s all automated, explained the young man, the movement of the carriages are centrally monitored at all times. The system compensates for any delays or failures. In addition, the Darkly-field that’s used to provide the lift and braking forces, exerts a weak effect over the areas between the station, so if I do this… he reached over the model, and as a carriage glided past his hand, he had poked it hard with his finger. The carriage was jerked off course, and it spun once in the air. Falling quickly, it looked certain that it would crash. But at the last moment, it slowed and came to rest on the base of the model gently.

Safe as a train, said the young man.

The Judge had been less certain. I’m not going on that thing, he had thought.

But now here he was and he doubted he would have missed it for the world. He smiled ruefully to himself despite the cold and rain, and glanced at the Mayor who must surely now be coming to the end of his protracted speech. Like everyone else in Stempleigh, the Judge had watched the test flights with great fascination over the months, and, as the carriages obstinately refused to crash, he had found himself becoming more and more excited with the thought that he, Judge Crampley, was to be a member of the select group of individuals chosen to be the first passengers of the Ant-o-bus. It seemed to make up for some of what they had given in Darkly’s name.

Crampley huddled down further in his seat, willing his raincoat to cover more of his face and neck and fervently cursing the Mayor under his breath. The banner above him, that read ‘Stempleigh, Forward in Fallshire’ flapped wetly, lank from the streaming rain, pouring large drops onto the head of the Government minister sat to his left. He grunted with amusement as he noticed the mayor’s wife, Mrs Flowers, who was sitting directly behind her husband, lashing out unobtrusively and clinically with the pointed toe of her shoe, and catching her husband just above the ankle. Not so hard that anyone would notice him wince, the Judge noted, but hard enough to make him aware that now was a good time to finish.

…ensure our town’s place in the history books, concluded the Mayor finally, And now, in my capacity as Mayor of Stempleigh, I am proud to declare the Stempleigh Anti-Gravitic Auto-Bus open!, and, with a deft snip of the mayoral scissors, he sliced the red ribbon into two. The crowd cheered.

There was at least one person in the crowd who, like Judge Crampley, hadn’t listened to a word the mayor had said, and who didn’t watch him as he cut the ceremonial red ribbon and who certainly didn’t join in the cheering. He didn’t watch the small congregation of well-heeled citizens on the stage enter the silver bullet that was the first Ant-o-bus carriage ever to carry real passengers. He hadn’t cared that the carriage had noiselessly swept straight up, two hundred feet into the air where it paused, rainbow wings and tail snapping open, to fall forward, automatically gliding to the next station-stop on its way to revolutionize the world. Jed Plimsoll, with Tessa Canary by his side, wove his way delicately through the crowd, his eyes only ever on the lookout for a loosely held handbag or a bulging pocket, either of which, together with a delicate flip of the fingers would mean that he may get fed that night and spared from a beating.

However, the rain was his enemy. It meant tightly held raincoats and greatcoats covering otherwise accessible valuables. It meant hands thrust into pockets to avoid the cold air, and it meant that, after the crowd had dispersed and Jed was trudging disconsolately down Warehouse Row towards the decaying flat on the Darling Estate that was his home and secretly dreading the reception he would receive from his mother, he and Tessa were empty handed.

Bloody rain, said Tessa, walking alongside him, kicking angrily at the water that ran along the side of the road.

Aye, bloody rain, agreed Jed, wiping his nose on the wet sleeve of his dirty sweater.

Do you want me to come in with you? asked Tessa. They were standing at the end of the alley that cut its way between Greenacres House and Twotrees House, the two blocks of flats that guarded the entrance to the Darling estate.

Nah, said Jed, You know what it’ll be like.

Tessa nodded, You could come back to my place. Dad’s not going to be in for a couple of hours. Maybe not till tomorrow. He’s still got some money left.

Nah, Jed shook his head, might as well get it over and done with. Mam’s going to be pretty narked. It’d just be worse if I left it till tomorrow.

Tessa sighed, and squatted on her heels in the recess of the first doorway in the alley, It’s not your fault it were raining, she said.

When’s that ever bothered me Mam? Jed snorted, and disconsolately kicked a can at the stairs that ran up to the first floor of Greenacres House, She don’t care. She thought we’d be well loaded, with wallets and purses coming out our ears, what with such a big crowd and all. I bet she’s spent it already, he viciously kicked at another empty beer can, the old cow.

The two children sat on the stairs, side by side. Jed looked up. The rain was still falling, and he pushed a thick, water-heavy fringe of black hair from his eyes. Don’t worry though. It’ll be right, he said, and smiled at Tessa We’ll meet up at Barty’s later and see what’s going on tomorrow.

Will your Mam let you out? asked Tessa, with doubt in her voice.

Aye, I’ll tell her we’ve got a big score coming up. That always puts me on her good side. Jed glanced at Tessa, noticed her thin arms and pinched face, Maybe Barty’s got something in to eat.

My Dad won’t have, said Tessa, unless our Mick’s swiped something. He sometimes goes to the Trolley before he comes home. The trolley was what the residents of the estate called the large grocery store at the top of Quarry Road. The proprietor, Mr Trellice, was occasionally known to turn a blind eye to shoplifters he knew to be from the poorer families on the estate when they pushed milk or cheese or bread or bottles of baby food into deep pockets sewn inside their coats. As long as it didn’t happen too often, and as long as you, at some point, returned a favour when Mr Trellice asked you to. If he has, I’ll try and fetch you a bit out tonight.

Thanks, Tess. Jed realised they were stalling, and would have to go in at some point. He sighed heavily and got to his feet. Come on then, he said, Quicker we go in, quicker it’ll be done with. He held out his hand to Tessa who grabbed hold and side by side, hand in hand, they walked slowly and heavily up the stairs.

Jed had lived in the apartment on the eighth floor of Twotrees house his whole life. As he opened the door very slowly and quietly, the familiar dense smell of cigarettes and damp welcomed him home. Jed stepped inside, and closed the door behind him, being careful to hold the latch down