Notes:
This story occurs between the television serials 'Castle of Fear' and 'Achilles Heel' and follows on from events in 'Hitler's Last Secret'. And (just to prevent confusion) this piece is completely unconnected to any of my other writing.
'The Tomorrow People' was created by Roger Price for Thames Television and characters and situations are used here without permission, but with genuine admiration and appreciation.
The quotation which provides the structure for this story is a line from the David Bowie song 'Oh You Pretty Things' and is also used without permission. (See if you can spot it!)
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"Let me go!" The angry demand, voiced in a child's high-pitched tones, attracted Andrew's attention first. It faded into a desperate denial. "I won't wear it!" Andrew's hands strayed automatically towards his belt. Instinct prompted him to flee, not to place himself in a danger to which he was genetically unable to respond. Sternly, he overrode the frightened animal lurking within. As he was learning from John, Liz and the others, being a Tomorrow Person was about more than that. It was about facing up to your responsibilities - including the protection of those in danger.
"Me heart bleeds for you, kid, but then, I'm not the one who's gonna be bleeding, am I?" The East London tones were filled with a dark menace, and Andrew heard a whimper in response. Squaring his shoulders, he raised his chin high. He was a Scotsman, and a Highlander too. He was afraid of no one.
Make this good, Andy, m'lad, he thought to himself. In his mind's ear the words were spoken in his father's thick brogue. He took comfort from hearing it. His Dad would never stand by and let anyone be intimidated by someone bigger and stronger. In fact, Andrew thought with a sudden smile, his Dad would probably have made an excellent Tomorrow Person. He was still smiling when he stepped around the corner of the building and into a run-down little courtyard, but the smile faded as he took in the scene.
It was no surprise to see a burly teenager looming over a kid of no more than seven or eight. It was no surprise to see the older boy's hand bunched into a fist, ready to strike the youngster for disobeying him. What shocked Andrew to the core was the uniform the aggressor was wearing, and the insignia on the jacket he was forcing onto his victim.
Plain disgust filled Andrew's face and he gave an inarticulate shout. Angrily, he squared up to the older boy, despite his disadvantage in both height and weight. The thug swung around to face the new threat, his frown becoming a smile of amused anticipation as he saw the short kilt-clad newcomer. With a casual gesture he discarded his plaything, shoving the child forcefully away from him and into a brick wall, not bothering to look where he had fallen. Andrew's expression hardened, his eyes becoming distant as he summoned the teenager's own worst nightmare to confront him. Screams split the night, fading into the distance as the would-be assailant tried to flee. But there was no escape, Andrew thought, a vindictive smile on his face as he squatted by the unconscious child. The implanted hallucination would take weeks to fade, a slow and haunting punishment.
*****
"You still didn't have to bring him here!" Mike sighed, shaking his head as he looked down at the boy on the medicouch. The news of a teenage assailant in Nazi gear had bothered the older Tomorrow Person even more than Andrew had guessed it might. He'd heard the stories the others told, of course, about the 'Sleeping Giant' and what the Tomorrow People had done to prevent it from waking. Andrew was just grateful that he had been away at school at the time, the isolation protecting him from the peer-pressure to which Mike had succumbed. Listening intently to Liz or Hsui Tai tell the tale, he hadn't noticed the haunted look in Mike's eyes until now. How must it feel to have your will suppressed so totally, knowing that what you were doing was wrong, evil even, but unable to stop yourself? Sudden realization left Andrew guilty for what he had done to the attacker. He hadn't meant to abuse his powers, but he knew he had gone too far. Would he have done the same if it had been Mike in front of him? He looked up at the boy who had become an older brother to him in the tight family atmosphere of the Lab. Mike seemed to have followed his thoughts, and placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "Well, I guess it's done now. Let's just get him out of here before mummy and daddy get home - John and the girls are due back from the Trig any time now." He forced a smile onto his face, sensing Andrew's guilt. "Hey, relax. TIM's given him a clean bill of health, but he'd have been in real trouble if you weren't there. You did good, okay?"
"Gotta do what ya gotta do, I guess." Andrew's attempt at imitating Mike's London accent failed miserably, combining with his natural Scots brogue to come out somewhere in the mid-west of America. Despite that, it had the desired effect, bringing a hint of a grin to Mike's face. Andrew grinned back, the smile lighting his face for a moment before his frown returned. "But Mike, I thought that after Hitler - Neebor, I mean - appeared on TV, this whole thing was over. How could this happen here in London, a whole year later?" he asked, as he helped Mike lift the still unconscious child down from the medicouch. Mike shrugged, nodding towards the stungun rack as he walked slowly towards the jaunting pad, the little boy in his arms.
"Make yourself useful and pass me one of those, would you?" he asked, considering his answer. He nodded gratefully as Andrew attached one of the devices to his belt, taking a second for himself. "Look, Andrew. Most of us got cured when we saw that thing on TV, right?" He paused briefly as the pair of them jaunted, using the jaunting pad to boost their own power as well as that of the kid's matter transporter. Looking around to ensure that they hadn't been observed as they appeared in this London backstreet, he sighed. "Well, what about the kids who weren't watching TV that day, and didn't watch the repeats on the news? There were still gangs who refused to give in for weeks after it happened. Oh, they abandoned it in the end, of course. Too many of their mates thought they were loony by then, and Hitler was gone." He spat the name almost as if it were an insult itself, then frowned. "But there are going to be a few who can't give it up. They can't help themselves, Andrew. And it's up to us to show them they're wrong. That's the TP way."
"Way to do what?" Andrew asked, confused. Mike just shook his head, signalling for silence as the little boy, freed from TIM's sedating influence, began to stir. Andrew leaned forward as Mike lowered the boy to his unsteady feet. "It's all right," he said reassuringly, remembering how Mike had spoken to him when he had been lonely and afraid on top of the Folly back home. The boy just looked in confusion at this strange apparition of a boy wearing a skirt. He struggled until Mike let him go, bolting the moment he was released. "Ye just stay away from Nazis in future!" Andrew shouted after him somewhat unnecessarily. He turned back to Mike. "Way to do what?" he insisted, picking up their discussion.
For someone accustomed to sharing the openness of telepathy, Mike's expression was remarkably cagey. He squirmed uncomfortably, before settling himself on a half-collapsed wall. "Look, Andrew. Really it should be John telling you this - he does it better. I know this whole Tomorrow Person thing is all still new to you. You're trying to work out what it all means, and I know that's tough sometimes. I mean, I hardly adjusted to it quickly myself, now, did I? John and the others thought I was a crook for weeks." He smiled to himself, the small satisfied smile of justice done. "But if there's one thing I learnt, it was that we have these powers for a reason, and it's not to abuse them. It's no good telling yourself that you 'should' do something simply because you 'can' do it. The thug that was beating up that kid thought that his muscles gave him the right to do it. We're not like that. We joke about the Saps, sure. But when there is something we should do, we don't stand by and watch, right? You found that out earlier. So we're going to go find that poor thug you scared the pants off, and we're going to show him the error of his ways, okay? Not because we're better than him, or just because we can, but because we were lucky and he wasn't." He paused, and his earnest expression faded into his usual casual poise. He reached out and ruffled Andrew's hair as if he were a little kid. "And if you ever tell John I was rabbiting on like that, you're for the chop, TP or not, understood?"
*****
The teenage boy lurked in the corner of the taproom, nursing his pint. He peered about him with a suspicious look in his shadowed eyes, as if everyone and everything in the bar were an enemy. The pub's other patrons openly shunned him, muttering darkly about the uniform he wore, unable even to dismiss it as fashion. The kids had stopped wearing those bloody uniforms since the fuss in the news the year before. >From the corners of their eyes they watched him, angry that he was there, angry that he had bullied the barman into serving him, despite clearly being underage. Andrew watched through the pub window, trying to feel anger at the young man's actions, but finding nothing within himself but pity.
Homo sapiens or Homo superior, it didn't matter now. The young man was lost, afraid and very, very alone. Andrew both could, and should, show him his way. Eyes locked on the young Nazi's face, Andrew began to soothe away the nightmare he had left, and then to project the image he himself had seen on TIM's screen. Before the boy's eyes, the face of Hitler melted away, dissolving into a gelatinous mass that turned the stomach. The young man squirmed, trying to deny it, but Andrew had learned a lot since the day, a few short weeks before, when he tried to frighten an old man away from his whisky. Now he held the boy in a firm telekinetic grasp, not letting him run or cry out as the images marched through his mind. He showed him the Nazi terror and the horrors they had perpetrated, the way Neebor had manipulated an entire nation, and the 'empty' canisters that had landed on London with their insidious cargo. There was no room for denial left in the young man's mind by the time Andrew had finished. He stared into his drink as if the sight of it revolted him. With a slow, hesitant gesture he reached up, tearing the insignia from one epaulette and throwing it to the ground with an expression of disgust. He looked around him as he removed the second, as if wondering where he was, and whether he had spent the past year in some half-forgotten dream.
Superior - no, Andrew smiled to himself, as he walked away from the pub window. Just different, with a gift to use and the duty to use it. He was still smiling when he jaunted back to the Lab to find John and the others home and waiting for him. Mike caught Andrew's eye as the younger boy settled between John and Liz on one of the big sofas, and Andrew nodded, the gesture subtle enough to escape notice from the older TPs. Mike nodded back, solemnly, and Andrew knew the matter was closed. He turned back to Liz, just as she asked whether he was getting used to being a Tomorrow Person now. Andrew grinned, a mischievous look in his brown eyes. "Oh, aye," he told her. "I think I'm getting the hang of it."
The End