h2g2 - The Legacy of Terry Horowitz

Part One

'Flib-a-bor bidie-beat?' enquired the space suit that had suddenly materialised behind Terry Horowitz. This would have thrown most men who were doing some gardening off their stride a little but he kept a firm hold on the flymo instinctively.

'I beg your pardon...?' replied Terry - jaw dropping as he turned.

'Flib-a-bor bidie-beat?' repeated the space suit insistently.

Terry nodded, his jaw still hanging lower than is generally considered usual. 'Yes, that's what I thought you said...'

The space suit then moved its arms and pulled the helmet off and revealed a human occupant. It was his brother Neil.

'FLIB-A-BOR BIDIE-BEAT?' continued Terry's brother where the space suit had left off.

'Neil?' Terry scrunched his eyebrows and pulled his head back in way that, should aliens have visited the planet and based their theories of human evolution on his expression, would have made them absolutely certain that homo sapiens had evolved from birds.

'Ashle-flahgue due monduy?' whispered Neil, before collapsing on the floor.

Terry immediately went to catch him, not realising the weight of the suit - which took Terry down with it, and knocked him unconscious. A few hours later, Talia the other occupant of the little house, found them where they had fallen. She called an ambulance.

Several hours later...

'Are you all right Terry?' asked Talia, bending over Terry's bed and flicking a few collar length strands of dark hair out of her face.

Several months had passed since Terry and Talia had appeared from nowhere in the middle of a circus. No one knew of the strange events which had transpired to bring them to that point and frankly they were a bit sketchy on the details themselves. They had gone back to Terry's house in Browborough to try and sort things out. At first Talia had been adamant that she should try to find some way of getting back to her people. She tried to find the portals that the organisation she belonged to had used to travel through space and time but the ones she knew were no longer working. But in the time that had passed Terry and Talia had got to know each other very well and she had grown to know the planet of her birth.

Terry and Talia were the only ones who knew what had transpired and things had begun to slow down - until today.

'Doctor says I've got mild concussion,' said Terry groggily. 'I'm more worried about my brother.'

'That's your brother?' Talia looked over to the other side of the ward at the man on the life support unit 'You never mentioned him before.'

Terry tried to shift himself into a more comfortable position - awkwardly.

'We've never really seen eye to eye, me and Neil. There was never the right time to bring him up in conversation.'

'Have you got any other relatives I should know about?' said Talia. 'I thought you were an only child'

'Well he's more of a half brother. My mother died when I was about fifteen and my father remarried. Neil is the result of that unholy union.'

'That's not very nice. I guess you and his mother didn't get on then.'

'Get on?' Terry's smile could have almost have been a grimace. 'Like Godzilla and the Keep Tokyo Tidy campaign. I don't know what my father saw in her. Anyway I didn't hate my brother - but it didn't help that the woman who was his mother was Satan in a floral dress.'

'She can't have been that bad. What did she do to make you hate her so much?'

'I don't like to think about it - suffice to say she was quite keen on me moving out as soon as possible. Anyway,' said Terry trying to change the subject 'how did you get on today?'

Talia had thought she had seen someone she had recognised earlier in the day and had decided to investigate further. 'I lost track of him. It couldn't have been him though he looked... well, so much older.'

Terry nodded sadly. 'I guess we'll just have to keep on looking around for some sort of clue. Now I don't suppose you could go over to my brother and see what's wrong with him could you?'

Talia smiled back 'Go on then, I will.'

Outside the hospital a dark figure stood waiting. He had been searching for a considerable length of time and was close to his target. Kraa Fik was now bored and wanted to finish the job. He wanted to gut the little b*****d. But he had to torture him first there was information he wanted - information that his employer Tallance Calem required. This time/space anomaly had to be dealt with. And as a bounty hunter Kraa Fik was the ideal person to do the job.

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The Legacy of Terry Horowitz Archive