Sputnik's Guide to Life on Earth

by Frank Cottrell Boyce

  ‘Sput-nik!’ howled Jessie. People were laughing now. She was going red. Tears sparked in her eyes.

  One other dog wasn’t fetching properly, some kind of mini sausage dog. Is there such a thing as a cocktail-sausage dog? Basically it was too little to carry its stick, but its owners weren’t having that. They were two massive stubble-headed lads in Queen of the South tops. One of them put his fingers in his mouth and whistled so loudly that it drilled my eardrums. It impressed everyone except the cocktail-sausage dog, which just lay down and rolled over.

  ‘How is he doing that noise?’ asked Sputnik, looking up at Jessie.

  ‘Come. On. Sputnik. PLEASE,’ pleaded Jessie.

  I suppose when the people looked at Sputnik all they saw was a very disobedient dog, but I don’t know what they saw when he did what he did next. They were definitely impressed though.

  Sputnik put his fingers in his mouth, stretched his lips and whistled loud and long. I don’t know what anyone else saw, but I know what they heard. They heard a dog whistle.

  The other dogs stopped fetching.

  The owners stopped throwing.

  Everyone just stared at Sputnik.

  He whistled again.

  ‘Love it,’ he said.

  ‘Amazing,’ said the judge. Then he asked Jessie how she had taught him to do that.

  Jessie shrugged. ‘He’s a clever dog.’

  ‘I just love to learn new skills,’ said Sputnik.

  ‘Extremely impressive,’ said the judge. ‘But he failed to fetch any sticks, so he has lost this round.’

  Figaro won the stick fetching. He had fetched ten times in one minute.

  ‘You disappoint me greatly, Figaro,’ said Sputnik. ‘You have a servile attitude.’

  Figaro whimpered.

  ‘Don’t whimper. I know you know what I’m saying.’

  After that it was the obstacle race. The dogs were supposed to run up a short ramp, jump through a hoop and then through a little tunnel, pick up a beanbag and run back to their owners.

  They used a starting pistol for this one. Sputnik was interested in the pistol but not in starting. He had got a taste for applause though, and when he saw the hoop on the obstacle course . . . well, I’ll just say . . .

  Hula-hooping.

  Everyone went crazy. Even the competing dogs seemed impressed.

  ‘That is no way a dog,’ said the Really Big Lad. ‘How can that be a dog?’

  It was the first time I’d ever heard anyone else guess that Sputnik wasn’t a dog. So I was interested.

  ‘Of course he’s a dog,’ said his mate.

  ‘Dogs can’t hula, so he can’t be a dog.’

  ‘What else could he be?’

  ‘A robot?’

  ‘Of course he’s not a robot. Look, he’s wearing nail varnish.’

  ‘I don’t know what he is, but I do know the owner’s a cheat.’

  ‘Sputnik here is very talented,’ said the judge in the jumper, ‘but sadly we must disqualify him, as he did not complete the course. Also, he’s distracted the other dogs. Which was not very sportsdog-like.’

  ‘Because it’s an evil robot,’ agreed the Really Big Lad.

  So Sputnik didn’t win.

  ‘The winner is the delightful little sausage dog of Mr Jez and Mr Ed Armstrong.’

  ‘YEEESSSSSS!’ screamed the Really Big Lad (who turned out to be Jez) as the judge handed them their prize – a tiny silver egg cup and a massive haggis.

  ‘YESSSS!’ screamed the other one, holding the haggis in the air like it was the World Cup. Then they both started chanting, ‘Champions!’ and running round, each of them holding one handle of the tiny cup.

  I looked over at the dad. He was talking to Mr McCrimmin. I knew in my heart that whistling and hula-hooping were not going to keep Sputnik at Stramoddie. I went back to the Leaning Castle of Hay.

  I drifted round the top of the tower on the floating bale, watching all the fun. I could see a lot of people fussing around Sputnik and Jessie. But really I was watching the dad talking to Mr McCrimmin. Mr McCrimmin kept nodding his head. He shook hands with the dad. Then he did this terrible thing. He bent down and he scooped up Sputnik, stuffed him under his arm and walked off with him.

  I could see Sputnik’s feet kicking as though he was trying to swim out of it. I could hear him shouting, but I couldn’t hear all the words. But I could clearly make out one: ‘PREZ!!!’

  The moment he shouted, my floating bale stopped floating. I hit the floor in a shower of straw. When I looked up, Annabel was looking down at me, pulling my shirt and shouting, ‘Sputnik gone! Sputnik gone!’ Ray came running over. He picked her up, but she just yelled, ‘Want Sputnik! Want Sputnik back now!’

  ‘You’re all right. All right. You’re not cut. Just a fall. Are you all right, Prez?’

  I didn’t move.

  ‘Want SPUTNIK!’

  ‘Shush, Annabel. Prez, are you all right?’

  I lay among the ruins of the bale, like a shattered bird’s nest. All I could picture was Sputnik’s legs frantically kicking the air as the man carried him away. I’d never fly on a bale of straw or use my backpack to skim across the sea, ever again.

  When everything was tidied away, the mum and the dad counted all the money into a shortbread tin. The dad said, ‘Give yourselves a big pat on the back. You’ve helped raise more than two thousand pounds for SCIAF.’

  No one patted themselves on the back.

  ‘You’re helping to make a better world. Leftover pies and sausages from the sausage-and-pie stall for tea.’

  The world! I was so sad about Sputnik I’d forgotten to be worried about the world. How was I going to help him save it now?

  I tried to make my thoughts go loud inside my head, hoping that he could hear them even though he was on the far side of two big hills and a river. I listened out for some sign from him.

  There was nothing but the chink of knives and forks on the plates. Nobody spoke. It was like a whole family of Prezes was sitting round the table.

  Suddenly Jessie slammed her fork down and said, ‘I don’t think Prez should go away.’

  Everyone stared at her but I stared the most. I’d thought she was upset about Sputnik, not about me.

  ‘Jessie . . .’ said the mum.

  ‘It’s not fair! Prez has got nowhere to go away to. Just the Temporary. He can’t be temporary forever. He has to be permanent somewhere. Can’t he be permanent here?’

  ‘Now, Jess, you know that’s not what we do. People come for the summer. They have a good time. Then hopefully they find somewhere. You know that.’

  I smiled at Jessie to make sure she knew I wasn’t worried about being the Temporary Kid. I couldn’t tell her the truth . . . that I was more worried about living on the Temporary Planet.

  15.

  TV Remote Control

  The whistle was so shrill it pierced the thick farmhouse walls, and the bedroom door, and the duvet I had pulled over my head. I knew it was Sputnik.

  When I slipped downstairs and opened the kitchen door, he was standing there, waiting for me, with his fingers in his mouth, about to whistle again.

  – Don’t! You’ll wake the whole house up.

  He tried to push past me into the kitchen.

  – You’re not supposed to be here. You’re supposed to be in Kirkcudbright. What are you doing here?

  He took two warm brown eggs out of his sporran and grinned. ‘Look at these bad boys. Midnight feast, I think.’

  Obviously he wasn’t going to fry the eggs himself. That was my job. He curled up on the couch and turned on the telly, only it wasn’t tuned in, just a blizzard of hissing interference. ‘You know what this is?’ asked Sputnik.

  – Loud. Very loud.

  I rummaged around for the remote.

  ‘That is the sound of background radiation. That is the sound of the beginning of the universe, coming through your telly. It reminds me of the old days when the whole universe was just a little thing the s
ize of a pea. You could pop it in your pocket and cherish it. Then we had that Big Bang nonsense and it kept getting bigger and bigger and now it takes all your strength to get from one side to the other. What are you doing?’

  – Pressing the mute button. It’s going to wake everyone up. Do you want toast with the egg?

  ‘I thought I’d gone deaf for a minute there, when the sound went. Let me see that. Yes, Sputnik wants toast.’

  – We haven’t got much time. They’re going to send you away in the morning. We’ve only got tonight to save the world.

  ‘So we need to fuel our brains. I want toast.’

  You might think that telling someone he only had one night to save the world would make them listen, but Sputnik just carried on playing with the remote – whizzing through channels – flicking past cops chasing robbers, robbers chasing cops, someone selling a running machine, a ship sailing through ice. ‘I love this. What else does it do?’

  – Never mind that now. Think about the list.

  But he’d found the pause button and apparently pausing a picture of a woman eating breakfast cereal is hilarious.

  – Please. We’ve got to get thinking.

  ‘This one makes it all go faster, look!’ Fast-forwarding someone hoovering a carpet is even more hilarious than pausing a woman mid-breakfast.

  I can’t even describe how he reacted to the rewind button. I thought he was going to die.

  ‘What else does it work on?’

  – Just the telly.

  ‘As if. As if anyone would go to the trouble of making something as brilliant as this just for the telly. Don’t touch that egg!’

  I had the second egg in my hand. He pointed the remote at it and pressed fast forward. I almost dropped the egg. It shivered in my hand. It cracked at the top. Then there were loads of cracks scribbled all over it. Then one of the cracks lifted like a tiny door and the beak of a chicken pecked out. The chick lifted the top of the shell with the back of its head and looked all around. It was fluffy and yellow as a yolk. It squeaked the highest, weediest cheep I’d ever heard. It really did say, ‘Cheep!’ just like chicks in picture books. I can’t believe I was going to cook it.

  ‘Ha! Brilliant!’ Sputnik laughed. Then he pressed rewind and the chick tucked itself back into the egg, pulling the shell after it like a trap door. The scribble of cracks on the shell was erased. Within seconds the egg was whole again. Not a crack. Not a shiver.

  ‘Go on,’ said Sputnik. ‘Fry it then.’

  – I can’t fry it now. It’s a miracle of fluffy yellow engineering. I’ve got too much respect to put it in my mouth.

  ‘You told me they had a chicken inside.’

  – Yeah, but not a chicken that I’ve seen. Not a chicken I’ve heard going cheep cheep.

  Sputnik was too thrilled with the possibilities of the TV remote to care about the egg. The next thing he pointed it at was the jam jar of tadpoles on the kitchen windowsill.

  – No, no, don’t! Don’t. They’re Annabel’s.

  But he did. There was a little cloud of tadpoles flickering around in water in the jam jar. When Sputnik pressed fast forward, their tails were sucked into their bodies and little arms and legs sprouted, toes spread, bodies plumped up. Full-grown frogs clambered into the room, plopping on to the carpet. Their croaking sounded like a wet giant belching.

  ‘Whoa! I wasn’t expecting that,’ whooped Sputnik. ‘I thought they’d just swim a bit faster. I never thought they’d change into something else! That’s amazing. Does everything round here do that? If I fast forward you, will you turn into a zebra or something?’

  He was pointing the remote at me.

  – Don’t! You’re going to wake everyone. You’re not even supposed to be here, let alone doing . . . this.

  ‘Stop worrying. All I have to do is press the mute button.’ The croaking stopped. It was pretty funny, to be honest, this crowd of frogs squatting on the kitchen rug, their mouths opening and closing but no sound coming out.

  ‘Let’s go outside. I want to try rewinding a cow.’

  – No, no. It definitely won’t work on cows.

  But it did.

  Frogs on mute is funny, but cows going backwards very fast in the moonlight is completely distracting. I forgot about everything else and just laughed. I even forgot about the forthcoming destruction of the Earth.

  – Shall we put the TV remote on the list?

  ‘Put it down as number one, the star attraction,’ whooped Sputnik. Then he shushed me. ‘Hush. Hush or I’ll mute you. Look.’ There was a light moving inside the kitchen. Someone was in there.

  Now we’re in trouble, I thought.

  – Sputnik, go and hide in the shed or something.

  But he didn’t go and hide in the shed. He went straight back to the house.

  – Don’t, Sputnik. If they find you . . .

  He eased open the kitchen door.

  – Don’t go in. You’ve got really muddy feet.

  He slipped inside and waved to me to follow him.

  ‘Shush!’

  – I’m not actually talking.

  But somebody was. Or muttering. And shuffling. With the lights off.

  ‘Torch?’ whispered Sputnik as I slid in after him.

  – There’s one hanging on the back of the door.

  ‘Get it.’

  I reached for the torch. Someone hissed, ‘What’s that noise?’

  Someone else answered – very quietly – that they didn’t know. ‘Just get a move on and we can get out of here.’

  Sputnik said, ‘Light them up, Prez.’

  I turned on the torch, and there they were, squinting into the light, Jez and Ed, the Big Lads from the Hayfield treat. This time they didn’t have their little dog with them. What they did have was the shortbread tin with all the cash in it.

  Jez moved out of the light, looked straight at me and said, ‘Shut your mouth.’

  No one tells me to shut my mouth.

  Because I never open it.

  ‘Jez,’ hissed Ed, ‘look at the floor.’

  I shone the torch at the floor. It seemed like the most polite thing to do. Beady gold frog eyes glittered like a carpet of tiny searchlights. Their mouths opened and closed, closed and opened, but no sound came out of the frogs, or – at first – from the Big Lads.

  ‘What is it?!’

  ‘It’s frogs.’

  ‘What’s going on with their mouths? Make them stop. It’s scaring me.’

  ‘Sure. One touch of a button and . . .’ Sputnik pointed the remote at the frogs, pressed unmute and the room creaked with the croaking of a hundred confused frogs.

  ‘You’re going to wake the whole farm. Let’s move.’

  ‘How can we? We’re surrounded.’

  ‘Just step on them. They’re only frogs.’

  ‘I can’t. They’ll be too squishy.’ Ed looked as if he was about to cry.

  ‘We’ve got the money. Let’s go.’

  ‘This,’ said Sputnik, jumping up on the couch and cosying down among the cushions, ‘is way better than television.’

  It was pretty funny watching the Big Lads try to pick their way through the little frogs.

  ‘Are you laughing at me, wee man?’

  Maybe I was. I can’t remember now. What I can remember is seeing the face of Big Jez pucker with fury. He launched himself across the room at me. He had the tin in his fist. He was going to brain me with it.

  I put my hands up to protect my face.

  I tried to duck.

  I tried to call for help.

  Nothing happened.

  When I finally got the courage to peep, he was still almost on top of me. But not moving. Not blinking. Not breathing. Still as a statue. No, not like a statue because he seemed to glitter and shimmer like paused pixels. I went to touch him. I thought my hand might go right through him. But . . .

  ‘What’ve you done to Jez?! What have you done to him?’ yelled Ed. He jumped at me too.

  Out of the cor
ner of my eye I saw Sputnik’s hand go up and he was holding the remote. And then Ed was on pause too. He looked even stranger. He only had one foot on the ground and he was leaning towards me.

  – Sputnik! You looked after me! He was going to hurt me and you stopped him. You finally did look after me!

  The paused burglars really were better than television. We sat on the couch and just watched them for about ten minutes. Then we stood for a while, enjoying the frogs hopping over the farmyard cobbles, all heading the same way. Maybe they could smell water or maybe they were just so confused they all just followed the one in front.

  I did try and get the money tin out of Jez’s hands, but even when he was paused he wasn’t going to let go. So we just locked the kitchen door to make sure they didn’t escape.

  There was a clatter on the stairs.

  ‘More burglars!’ whooped Sputnik, spinning round and pointing the remote control. But it wasn’t burglars. It was the mum.

  ‘Oh, Sputnik, how did you get back here?! I’ll get my coat. We’ll have to take him . . .’ She stopped. She’d seen the two Big Lads, standing by the door. For a second I thought that Sputnik had freeze-framed her. Then she yelled for help. Jessie, Ray, the dad and even Annabel came running. It all happened so quickly that no one seemed to notice that the two Big Lads were completely still and slightly pixelated. Sputnik pressed play and Big Jez swung the tin of money at where my head had been. Only my head wasn’t there any more, so he ended up pirouetting like a bulky ballerina, showering notes and coins all over the kitchen.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ said Jessie.

  ‘Yeah, what are you doing?’ said Ed.

  Jez stared at the floor, then stared at the Blythes, then stared at me, then pointed. ‘Him. He did something to us. What did you do to us?’

  I shrugged.

  Jessie said, ‘The door’s locked. Prez must’ve locked them in.’

  ‘You heard the burglars, didn’t you? You came down here and locked them in,’ said the dad, looking pleased and puzzled.

  ‘We’re not burglars,’ said one of the burglars. ‘Not really.’

  ‘That was brave, Prez,’ said Jessie, looking at the mum and dad.

  Everyone applauded me.