by Ian Hutson
The table held a reaction of silence such as only the chattering classes can. It was broken by the candles guttering and the carbon-based clatter of Lady Devonshire wrapping herself more tightly in her diamonds, against the evening breeze.
Mr Darwin, reckless in his regard for their collective digestion, continued. ‘I am convinced that each animal on this planet exists in a fearful isolation, neither enjoying youth nor growing old, and each fulfilling a most individual niche in the machinery of life. There is nothing here of my competitive evolution, no mechanism other than the original and most direct hand of Almighty God. Creation here has been most singular in its intent. No herds, no swarms, no troops, no colonies, no flocks, no pods, no mobs, no packs, no prides and no pairs.’
In that at least was something that the guests could grasp and handle, and they teased with the eagerness of children, easing their unease.
‘No caravan of camel?’
‘No gulp of cormorants?’
‘No array of hedgehog?’
‘No barrel of monkeys?
‘No crash of rhinoceroses?’
‘No escargatoire of snails?’
‘No knot of toads?’
‘No meet of hounds?’
The table was being quite merciless with Mr Darwin, and yet he realised or cared for it not.
Lady Devonshire, seizing the moment almost as though the stage were in her blood, looked horrified and held her Lorgnette to her eyes while she peered at Mr Darwin as a judge may peer at some vile miscreant before him. She baited and cast her line.
‘Mr Darwin, are you telling me that every creature here is a one of a kind? That the lovely burgundy and blue bear thing that one bagged only this evening is without equal on this planet?’
‘I am convinced that this is indeed the case, Lady Devonshire.’
Lady Devonshire reeled him in.
‘Oh dear - and one was so hoping for a pair, one each for either side of the fireplace in the great hall. Now I shall have to find a corner for him, and empty corners are in such very short supply at Devonshire House.’
Where the First Officer had failed to raise the mood, Lady Devonshire’s pithy, perfectly-timed manoeuvre succeeded and everyone was restored to laughter and happiness as they retired to the card tables, cigars or decanters, or all three in the case of the gentlemen and the two ladies from Bloomsbury.
Few noticed the steward who urgently caught the attentions of the First Officer and then passed him a telegram from the mothership in orbit. One of those few was the Colonel (Retired), who had been trained to look out for such things during his time in the Indian Army, and fortunately he could be trusted to keep the communiqué to himself. A Marconi message had been received from Earth to the effect that ‘...a hitherto unknown species had attacked the planet, made known an intention to expunge all mankind from their universe, and was then in the process of...’
In the process of what exactly, the Rorke’s Drift could not say because the message had ended abruptly and they had been unable since to reach London, Moonbase New Milton Keynes or even the Tunbridge Wells II colony on Mars, finding instead only some worrisome hiss and crackle on the radio waves.
The Captain of the SSS Rorke’s Drift advised the safari party to remain ashore overnight where the passengers might be more easily shielded from speculation about the news and from any attendant pressures. In quite an odd coincidence, he added, a strange vessel had appeared without warning from out of the hyper-aether and settled in rather aggressive juxtaposition to Rorke’s Drift, where it was even then engaging in some highly belligerent behaviours. There was talk in the lower decks of Earth’s situation and their own being somehow linked across the vastness of space.
The officers of the expedition consulted and decided that there was no need to bother the passengers with any of the news at this stage of proceedings. It would all turn out to be some dreadful misunderstanding or some ruddy silly technical problem.
Daphne saw it first.
A giant tangle of flaming wreckage streaming through the stars of the night sky.
She grasped the arm of one of the ship’s officers and cried out ‘Oh look - my very first shooting star! How lucky! I shall make a wish this instant.’ She closed her eyes and concentrated hard on forming a very complicated wish for her future life and some very romantic arrangements indeed.
The officer’s blood ran cold, wondering what the nature of Daphne’s wish might be, and how it could possibly relate to the elbow and forearm of a wholly confirmed bachelor in the Merchant Navy.
Having no binoculars immediately to hand, several of the gentlemen simultaneously improvised with Lady Devonshire’s lorgnette, and she found herself pulled quite hither and thither before she was able to restore her dignity with brutal use of her Chinese paper fan, and with the commanding Hiss of the Bene Gesserit (these both being survival skills she had acquired during her years at Roedean).
‘Good God! It’s the Rorke’s Drift!’
‘Shot out of the ruddy sky!’
Daphne tried her best with what Nature had given her by way of brain-glands. ‘Oh dear. Will she crash terribly?’
Some quite essential parts of the ship broke away and began their own flaming descents as the expeditionary party watched. The officers had to admit even among themselves that this was perhaps the most inconvenient technical problem they had been presented with in a long time.
The main fireball and some smaller, hitherto quite essentially mechanically related wreckage plummeted to form the base of a vast mushroom cloud of debris and smoke and flame, and none in the party could apply their minds to any other matter for not some few moments. They were held in the thrall of the disaster, and its grip was broken only by some of the ladies remembering to faint into chairs and into nearby gentlemen.
Several porters were despatched in the direction on the impact, along with an experienced officer and a large First Aid Kit, and their Rolls-Royce raced away at a dozen or more miles an hour. As well as their more obvious humanitarian mission they were secretly tasked with making an assessment of the take-off capabilities and space-worthiness of the Rorke’s Drift’s remains.
Lord Devonshire and some of the others held conference with the officers and they demanded answers. Earth silent? The cruise ship engaged in some risky manoeuvre? What the blazes was going on?
The First Officer confirmed that the mothership appeared to have experienced an unexpected landing, almost certainly due to some severe loss of altitude.
‘Will she have been badly damaged, do you think?’ asked the Bishop, the mushroom cloud on the horizon behind him flattening and beginning its global distribution in the jet streams, gravity and the coriolis effects of the planet.
Some defeatists among them muttered in reply that she was likely to have been very well damaged, very well damaged indeed.
‘We must await close visual confirmation of course, but for the moment we must assume nothing’ replied the First Officer, very kindly and very bravely considering the uncomfortably shocked condition of his uniform underwear.
Lord Cameron’s thin mental elastic snapped. ‘That's it then chaps. Game over, my good fellows! Game over! What the Garnier Fructis are we going to do now? What are we going to do eh?’
The chef’s tongue was in “sarcasm mode” and he could not hold it further. ‘Maybe we could build a fire, sing a couple of songs? Why don't we all try that? Ging gang ruddy ruddy goolie...’
Sir Clippe, having had experience on the boards of several engineering industries in his youth, ventured more pragmatically. ‘How long after we're declared overdue can we expect a rescue?’
‘Seventeen days’ was the unfortunate reply from the officer. ‘Rorke’s Drift was quite the fastest ship of the line and we have explored far into space in search of adventure.’
Lord Cameron, the ex-Prime Minister, took his own fist out of his mouth, the better to squeal like a big girl’s blouse. ‘Seventeen days? Look here, I don't care to rain on your par
ade, but we're not awfully likely to last seventeen hours. Just consider the ratio of staff to passengers - it’s wholly inadequate for a long-term stay!’
‘Lord Cameron! This little whatever the heck this furry little aliens thing humping my leg is survived all of its life here, with no training and no weapons.’
‘Are you now proposing then to put the furry humping whatever it is in charge?’
‘We will deal with this, Lord Cameron. Please maintain your decorum in front of the ladies. There is nothing that mankind puts his mind to that he cannot achieve.’ The officer launched the admittedly fairly unique terrier-analogue towards the horizon, having grown weary of its affections.
Cameron then sensibly bit his tongue and refrained from a pithy retort in re winning the World Cup a second time, carting home a decent number of medals from any Olympics or retaining any heavy industries in England. Mankind hadn’t been able to achieve any of those things.
Not one among them spoke aloud further of the curiously truncated message from Earth, or ventured that London being cut off so might indicate some serious problem with the main body of humanity’s total number and with their ability to mount a rescue for the far-distant passengers of a wrecked cruise-rocket.
The staff and crew made up a more permanent camp for the night, and the passengers were content with such beds, bathing arrangements, nightclothes, night-lights and light supper courses as could be produced for them under the straitened circumstances.
The cold light of an alien dawn woke them all the next morning, and the practicalities and brutal exigencies of life in God’s truly artistically populated Garden of Eden began to sink in. Several of the passengers awoke bearing the foul mark of the indigenous mosquito. It had been a busy little mosquito overnight, flying from tent to tent.
Doris, a small scullery maid with the expedition, went to fetch water from the river for the guests’ baths. Her demise in the jaws of something that looked like a crocodile pretending to be a fresh-water whale was, at the least, mercifully brief and decisive. One of the guides removed Doris’s feet and lower legs from possibility of being stumbled upon by any of the passengers, and not wanting to hide them about the camp, he disposed of them by throwing them after the wake of the beast and cursing it as an utter rotter. He had been growing quite fond of Doris, who had been so generous during her short life with slap and with tickle for those of the Merchant Navy crew so inclined.
Chef, endeavouring to gather sufficient fresh supplies to allow him to present some sort of breakfast, sat before a table laden with two hundred found items that had about them the potential of the egg, the vegetable or the meat course. Not one of them bore much resemblance to any other, each of course having been Created unique in its own right rather than in a single god’s image, and each was a splendid but mysterious thing. Which was nutrition and which was deadly poison? Chef held his head in his hands. Each nibbled item, having been deemed thus far edible and safe, assisted him no further along his menu. There could be found no two of any variety, let alone a dozen eggs or a sack of mushrooms or a side of bacon. What was, was, and the next item might be deadly nightshade or some sentient rock for all that Creation allowed him to know.
They had discovered what appeared to be a carrot. It was the only such on the entire planet. Somewhere on the globe there might be a familiar potato, and it too would be the only one - would have been the only one throughout all time in its neighbourhood here. There were a million million million million other vegetables, fruits, grains and nuts to be had, and each too was unknown, mysterious and existed in solitary splendour. How should one make a stew when every ingredient was an invitation to stare down the barrel of some loaded revolver in an awful game of Russian culinary roulette?
The water from the river - from this river - was potable today, but what of tomorrow with tomorrow’s water from some more distant source?
In his depression he forgot that he was paid a premium by the company to be a French chef, and he reverted to his native Brummie accent. ‘Why though, why?’ he cried. ‘Why would God, with all the power of Creation, create something as terrible, as horrible as this world where all was as unfamiliar and as dangerous as a burger from a Bangkok street vendor?’.
Mr Darwin, he alone having some full grasp of their predicament and its true scope, answered Chef from the bottom of a second bottle of cooking Sherry and the remains of a chocolate cake from the late Rorke’s Drift’s galley.
‘Well consider the truly great human artists and their professional habit. Not even the worst among them would stoop so low as to create the same work of art over and over and over and over again, would they? A true artist creates a new and exciting piece at every turn, not some thousands of millions of virtually similar works, in some orgy of mass-production. May we not expect better of God? I think that here we must. On this planet His works also are truly unique. Look closely at your fellow man, Chef, for until such time as we may be rewarded with rescue you will surely never see another two or more of any kind.’
Bishop Jefferies, a man thoroughly broken during the night, muttered that it was indeed a fearful thing to fall into the truly Creative hands of the Living God.
‘We are undone, Mr Darwin. The children of God have stepped out of the Garden of Eden, and we are most definitely undone. We have not known fully comprehended the meaning of the term “alien” before now.’
Some little distance away the expedition guides were appraising the remaining stock of expeditionary ammunition and were considering their own best survival options, including whether they might last a little longer were they to divorce themselves from responsibility for their charges. It would afford chef a little familiarity of ingredient to work with, at least for a while.
Deep in the foliage and the trees, creatures of every nook and niche, every function and appetite were appraising the expedition, and they too were considering their manifold options.
How novel might it be, the brighter ones among them wondered, to eat the same food item more than once?
#####
Shall I be Mother?
Sir Sidney Feltham was an advertisement for expensive cigars, vintage port, eight course meals and all the exercise a man could get on a cart-horse labouring around the fields trying to keep up with a rumour of a fox. The cornerstones of his life were apoplexy, gout and manifold miscellaneous pains about his overloaded rib-cage. Had Sir Sidney been a public building of some sort he would have been scheduled for demolition.
Lady [Lavinia] Feltham’s demeanour suggested that all of her joy in life sprang from sucking lemons, chewing chocolate-covered wasps and contemplating her haemorrhoids. Her favoured pastimes were not paying tradesmen’s accounts, the faux piety that comes from barely paying the Vicar’s stipend, and waiting with not some little eagerness for Sir Sidney to kick the bucket, assume room-temperature, put on the wooden overcoat and generally fall off his stately twig. Any warmth left in Lady Feltham’s breast was of a purely sulphurous nature.
They hadn’t the makings of a complete personality between them, and neither had given the slightest credence to the scare-mongering that they had overheard about the obligations of marriage. Then one summer they added another wing to the old pile, Nata Imperare Towers, and thus unwittingly created a whole new sweeping staircase - a staircase that would need filling with the portraits of future generations. The incumbent interior designer, wary of the passing years and bothered mightily by the acres of unpunctuated plasterwork and marble, summoned the Feltham family doctors. Separately and yet over common expostulations of “ye gods, man, you can’t really be serious!” Sir Sidney and Lady Feltham had their duties in the marital matter explained to them.
Lady Feltham, once resuscitated, had to sit on the lavatory for the rest of the day, sobbing and seeking solace by bitching at the various maids who attended her. Sir Sidney simply had his favourite Destrier saddled and sat immobile in the stable yard until dusk. Then the grooms gently took him down and handed him, still pale
and unresponsive, to his evening valet.
Noblesse oblige bein’ what it is though, Sir Sidney and Lady Feltham girded their loins and gave it all a rather valiant go.
On expert examination the issue from this, their first attempt, was found to be just a daughter, whom they handed over to Nanny Nata Imperare immediately, asking that she be given some sort of name and re-presented when she was in need of a pony. Nanny, being of stout mind and uncontrollably lactating body, chose to name the unfortunate child Cecilia Francesca Doris Gertrude Sidney Lavinia Jerusalem Wet-Knickers Feltham. The necessary paperwork and baptism was completed by a very discreet mobile Vicar, and the usual five guineas and directions to the next county changed hands.
While still in disappointment over the whole daughter thing the Felthams undertook a “The Grand Tour” of Europe by way of recovery. They had visited all of the Renaissance and most of the Classical Antiquity of Abroad when an after-dinner liqueur and the vibrations attendant upon a long train journey worked some fecund magic that the previous attempt’s boot room venue and a generous swig each from a warm hip flask had not. Sir Sidney and Lady Feltham, their travelling underwear properly restored to them by maid and valet, were assured by the attending doctors that they had indeed followed the correct procedure and were probably well up the duff with male replacement toff. After repeating the Renaissance and viewing more Classical Antiquity to full term, a son and heir was born in that well-known Lloyds Registry parish of convenience; London Westminster, just outside Naples.
For the next twenty years Lady Feltham returned to being a martyr to her haemorrhoids. In the grandest of possible surroundings and while maintaining all of the privileges of womanhood and nobility, she withered a little inside every day and eventually turned into a human mollusc - mother-of-pearl on the outside, slimy, grey and an acquired taste on the inside. Having experienced what apparently made the modern world go around Lady Feltham was simply aghast, and flinched terribly at the sight of loose children or occupied trousers.