by Mitch Benn
‘So . . . why did she . . . what was she doing?’ Billy sat down on the rooftop. The concrete was damp. He didn’t care.
‘She was draining your memory. I think she was going to become you.’
‘Become me?’
‘Yes. She could adjust the camouflage to look like you, and use your memories to convince me that she was you. Then she could get as close to me as she wanted. Ah! There you are,’ said Terra with a triumphant smile. She strode across the roof. Billy stumbled to his feet and followed her.
‘And once she’d become me, what would have happened to the actual me?’ Terra did not reply but shot Billy a look that answered his question succinctly. He fell silent, his guts now in almost as much turmoil as his head.
Billy looked up to see Terra gesturing with her left hand. She moved it smoothly through the air, as if she were feeling something that wasn’t there. Her fingers curled around an invisible shape, and she pulled on it.
A crack of bright light appeared in mid-air in front of her. Billy shielded his eyes. Terra turned to him. ‘Are you coming?’
Billy stared at the light. Within it he could see walls, surfaces, controls? ‘Is that . . . ?’ he whispered.
‘It’s a spaceship, yes. An invisible spaceship, and I’m stealing it. Or trying to, anyway. Are you coming?’
1.6
Mr Bradbury – or Chris Clarke, as his current crop of friends and neighbours knew him – picked up the phone.
‘Dad?’ came the voice. Two years, and he still got a little jolt of happiness whenever she called him that.
‘Are you okay, Lydia?’ he asked.
‘Actually’ – a hesitant tone – ‘I think it’s Terra again, Dad.’
Mr Bradbury caught his breath. ‘Has there been another one? Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine, Dad, it’s taken care of. But I can’t stay here.’
Mr Bradbury sighed. He’d quite enjoyed being Chris Clarke. He liked the name, for starters. As his wife occasionally pointed out, ‘Chris Clarke’ sounded a bit like a super-hero’s secret identity. Which it sort of was, except for the super-hero part.
They’d been living as quietly as possible, six months after Terra’s return to Earth, when the first incident had occurred. One evening, with Terra asleep upstairs and his wife working on her laptop, he’d answered the door to find the house surrounded by black vans and a grim-faced government agent (whom Mr Bradbury had remembered from one of the many ‘debriefings’ he’d had to sit through shortly after Terra’s return) informing him of ‘credible intel’ they’d received about an imminent attempt on Terra’s life.
He’d had to scoop her, drowsy, from her bed and bundle her into her clothes. They were out of the house within twenty minutes. They never returned. From that moment on, for official purposes, the Bradbury family ceased to exist.
Just what the ‘credible intel’ had been, and how the authorities had intercepted it, Mr Bradbury did not know, nor did he expect he ever would. But from the haste of the evacuation – and the presence of white-coated scientists among the black-clad soldiers in the team that had evacuated them – Mr Bradbury suspected that whatever had been coming for Terra, had been coming from a very, very long way away.
They’d got even closer the next time.
Terra – or Susie Adams, as she’d been then – had just about settled into her new school, when a hooded figure had made his (its?) way into the grounds and detonated some sort of percussion device which had rendered everyone in the building unconscious.
The figure had zeroed in on Terra/Susie, picking her out from among the prone bodies littering the halls and classrooms. He had tossed her over his shoulder and was about to make off with her when he was apprehended by impressive numbers of exceedingly well-armed police officers (or similar) who’d turned up surprisingly quickly.
A quick bit of news management later, and the school had been the location of a dangerous, but non-lethal and swiftly contained, gas leak. No mention was ever made of any mysterious hooded figure. What had become of him, no one knew. Well, Mr Bradbury imagined SOMEONE knew, but they weren’t about to let him know.
Something Mr Bradbury had figured out for himself was this: the use of the percussion device, the attempted abduction – whoever or WHATever wanted Terra, wanted her alive. Mr Bradbury wasn’t sure if he found this thought encouraging or terrifying, so he tried not to think it too often.
Not that there had been much time to think. No sooner was Terra returned to the bosom of her family, than they were once again uprooted. A move of a good few thousand miles this time, and the Adamses became the Clarkes, and Terra became Lydia, who cut her hair, dyed it purple, went to Latimer Lane Comprehensive, and, in her attempts to keep a low profile, found herself gravitating towards the school’s other principal misfit, a chubby sci-fi nerd called Billy.
Now, it seemed, they – whoever they were – had found Terra again. Time to move. ‘Okay,’ Mr Bradbury said grimly, ‘I’ll call the Agency.’
‘No, Dad, not this time,’ said Terra, with a maturity he’d never heard before.
Mr Bradbury got to his feet. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
‘I’ve found its ship, Dad. I’ve found its ship, and I think I can fly it.’
* * *
Terra wriggled uncomfortably in the ship’s command chair. It was designed for someone much taller and thinner (and with four arms, judging by the arrangement of the controls). She held her slate in one hand, waving it over the console and letting its optical translation program decipher the markings and readouts. Her other hand held her phone – or rather, her infralight comm, which while on Earth also worked as a phone – to her ear.
‘What?’ Terra’s father’s voice, though amplified only by the comm’s tinny little speaker, was audible throughout the ship. Billy, who was sat on another equally uncomfortable chair across the poky cabin from Terra, flinched at the squeak of alarm.
‘Listen, Dad. Those things are just going to keep coming unless I can figure out what they’re after. We’ll be running for the rest of our lives. You and Mum will never get any peace. And it’s me they want. You’ll be safer with me out of the way.’
‘That’s not the whole reason, though, is it?’ Mr Bradbury’s voice was calm. ‘It’s not like I don’t know where you’re thinking of going.’
Terra paused, then said quietly, ‘I’m sorry, Dad. But you understand. Of all people, you must understand. I have to find out what’s happened. I have to see if he’s all right.’
There was a pause. The only sound was the hum of the ship’s gravity engines starting up.
‘I’ll come back,’ said Terra at last. ‘As soon as I know what’s going on, I promise I’ll come back.’
‘It may not be up to you,’ said Mr Bradbury quietly.
‘Then we’ll just be back where we started, won’t we?’ said Terra.
Another pause. The hum was building. Billy was pretending not to listen. Terra wasn’t paying attention to him, anyway.
‘I’ll call,’ said Terra.
‘You’d better,’ said Mr Bradbury.
‘I love you,’ said Terra.
‘What am I going to tell your mother?’
‘Tell her I love her too.’
Neither Terra nor her father said anything else. There was nothing else to say. After a few seconds Terra switched off the comm and exhaled heavily. She slumped back in the command chair and regretted it instantly as the ridged back support dug into her ribs.
Billy spoke at last. ‘You didn’t say goodbye.’
‘And I never will,’ said Terra.
Billy pointed at the comm. ‘Can I call my dad before we leave?’
‘We left about three minutes ago,’ said Terra, turning to the control console.
‘What?’ yelped Billy. He scampered across to the only porthole he could see in
the ship’s walls. Earth, a half-lit crescent, was receding from view already.
‘That’s the thing about gravity engines,’ mused Terra. ‘You don’t really notice you’re moving.’
‘But I wanted to call my dad,’ muttered Billy.
Terra glanced at her comm. ‘I’ve still got signal.’
‘Up here? What sort of phone is that?’
Terra handed it to Billy, and he turned it over in his hands.
‘An alien one, obviously. Make it quick, we’ll be out of range soon.’ Terra turned back to the console.
As Billy examined the comm, its screen configured itself into a keypad, with familiar Earth digits. He tapped in his home number, adding the international dialling prefix. (He thought this was probably a good idea.)
‘Hello?’ His mum’s voice.
‘It’s Billy, Mum. Is Dad there? Could you put him on?’
Billy sank back into his chair. Terra noticed that Billy’s chair, unlike her own, had sturdy-looking restraints built into the armrests and base. Those will have been for me, she thought.
After a few seconds. ‘You all right, Bill? How was the movie?’
‘Dad. You know you always told me to think of life as an adventure?’
‘Yes?’ A note of trepidation.
‘Well, I think the adventure’s starting, Dad. I can’t quite explain, but I won’t be home for a while.’
‘Are you okay, Bill? You’re not in trouble, are you?’
‘No. No, I’m not in trouble, Dad. But I’m off on a journey, and I know you’d be okay about it if you knew where I was going.’
‘You can’t tell me? You can’t tell me where you’re going?’ Not panic, just intense curiosity.
Billy swallowed hard. He stood up and went to the porthole. Earth was a tiny blue sliver of light. ‘Look up, Dad. Just . . . look up.’
Silence, except the gentle hum of the gravity engines.
‘I’m losing signal, Dad. I love you.’
Billy wasn’t sure he’d actually ever said that before.
‘I love you too, Bill.’
The comm beeped. The keypad disappeared, replaced by a jumble of strange symbols. Billy looked through the porthole. Earth was a blue dot.
‘You’d better sit back down,’ said Terra, as a high-pitched whirring sound started to come up through the floor. ‘That’s the neutrino shunt kicking in – we’re about to go infra-light.’
‘Like in Star Wars?’
‘Bit of a confession, Billy – I still haven’t seen Star Wars.’
Billy scrambled into his chair. ‘Don’t bother with the prequels,’ he said.
1.7
Phil ‘Sparky’ Sparks was in pain, and annoyed. Annoyed with himself at forgetting one of his own golden rules (ALWAYS pay one last visit to the gents’ before the pub closes; even if you don’t feel like you need it now, you will the minute the door shuts behind you). Annoyed with the Duke’s Arms for selling such weak lager so cheaply. Annoyed with his friends for having bought him quite so much of it, and just annoyed in general that there didn’t seem to be any public toilets in this country any more.
With a mounting sense of urgency, Sparky surveyed his surroundings. His bleary eyes darted left and right, desperate to see an open late-night café, kebab shop, 24-hour garage, anywhere he might be able to empty his straining bladder in warmth and comfort and without fear of arrest. No such refuge was to be found. Sighing, and wincing, Sparky abandoned all thoughts of propriety and dignity and hobble-shuffle-scampered into the back entry behind the cinema.
Having looked over his shoulder to check that he had put enough distance and darkness between himself and the street, Sparky now peered into the gloom of the alley in order to pick the least appalling spot in which to perform the necessary. He spied a pile of bin bags, split, teetering, disgorging their fetid contents onto the concrete. Ah, well, he thought, that corner already stinks.
Sparky put one hand out to steady himself against the wall and set the other to work fiddling with his zip. His foot shifted, nudging the bin bags. The bin bags nudged back.
Sparky paused with his zip-fiddling, the pain in his bladder suddenly overruled by curiosity. His eyes struggled to pierce the darkness. Was there someone under the bin bags?
He reached out. His hand touched cold plastic, searched below, found . . . bone? . . . shell?
The pile of bin bags exploded outwards. He saw something – alive, man-sized, but very definitely NOT human. He glimpsed claws, shiny, segmented limbs, eyes. A glimpse was all he needed. Sparky fled, wailing, into the street, having forgotten all about why he went into the alley in the first place, and only dimly aware of a spreading warmth that told him it was too late to worry about that now, anyway.
* * *
David Crew was a kindly but serious-minded individual. In particular, he took his responsibilities as a police officer extremely seriously. Even when off duty, he maintained an instinctive level of vigilance. He was ‘never off ’, as Karen would remark to her friends, but then, she would remind them (and herself), that was one of the reasons she’d married him.
So when, on their way home from their favourite Indian restaurant, they heard the sound of a man screaming in pain and/or terror, and David immediately ran across the street to investigate, Karen felt neither alarmed nor abandoned, just proud. That’s my Dave, she thought as she watched him go.
The man who emerged wild-eyed and babbling from the alley behind the cinema cannoned into David and yelled something which sounded like ‘It’s not human’ before pushing past him and running away into the night. David Crew let him go; he wasn’t making much sense and he smelled terrible. Besides, David now heard the screams of a young girl coming from the darkness. He ran, undaunted, towards the sound.
David’s keen eyes adjusted to the gloom; there was a teenage girl, maybe fourteen or fifteen years old, long blonde hair, standing next to a pile of bin bags. Her face was set with terror. ‘What happened?’ he asked.
The girl pointed upwards. ‘Up there,’ she said in a quavering voice. ‘It climbed up there. It was like . . . Like a huge . . . I don’t know what it was.’
David looked in the direction the girl was pointing. A blank wall; no signs of anyone or anything alive. ‘It’s okay,’ he said to the girl, ‘come with me and I’ll get you some help.’
He turned. The girl was gone.
* * *
Throx of the Morbis Guild, once again wearing his human girl disguise, slipped quietly through the alley. The helpful human male hadn’t seen him leave. His optical camouflage system had taken a second to reinitialise. The fool who’d glimpsed him undisguised had been intoxicated; he wouldn’t be believed.
None of this altered the fact that this had NOT been a good evening.
Throx of the Morbis Guild had allowed his mark to escape. She’d incapacitated him and left him helpless on a potentially hostile world. And as he activated his gravity bubble and ascended to the roof of the building, Throx realised that his evening had just got worse.
She’d taken the ship.
Throx made a mental note to convey his displeasure to his clients with regard to the extent to which they’d underestimated the Terra girl’s intelligence and resourcefulness. Just a dumb Ymn, he’d been told. A simple job for a member of the esteemed Guild. He should have charged double what he had.
He’d had to purchase the extremely advanced optical camouflage system at his own expense, and spend many uncomfortable sessions with his cranium jammed into an ill-fitting interface in order to absorb enough of the Ymns’ puerile culture to pass himself off as one of them. He’d thought of everything and yet somehow the Ymn girl had seen him coming.
Throx was the first Tastak – the first insectoid of any species – to gain entry to the Morbis Guild, the most feared and respected society of assassins, thieves and mercenar
ies in the galaxy. His own reputation – and that of the Guild – was at stake. He wasn’t about to let it be tarnished by some nasty little pink mammal. This job was far from over.
His ship was gone and there was no way to procure a replacement on this primitive rock. Very well; if he couldn’t go after her he’d have to persuade her to come back. What he needed was leverage.
Throx activated his mini-slate and accessed ‘Lydia’s’ home address. ‘Tracey’ was going to call on her classmate’s parents tomorrow.
1.8
‘Where are we going?’ asked Billy. ‘And don’t say “space”. Way too vague.’
‘The ship’s navs were already set. We’re going back to wherever its last stop was before it came to Earth,’ said Terra, waving at a readout which looked to Billy like a crazed screed of pictograms. Billy had no idea if it meant anything; occasionally Terra would peer at it through that (extremely cool) translucent computer tablet-thing of hers, but all that this achieved was to translate one lot of weird alien symbols into another lot of weird alien symbols. Of course, thought Billy, that must be Fnrrn. The language of her adopted homeworld.
‘Is that good?’ Billy wondered.
Terra turned to face him. ‘For the last two years I’ve been pestered by alien bounty hunters. Your little girlfriend back there was just the latest. I want to find out why, and at that rendezvous point’ – she gestured towards the readout – ‘there may be someone who knows.’
‘And I suppose you have a plan for what to do when we get there?’
‘We’ve got a few hours,’ said Terra, getting as comfortable as possible in the command chair. ‘I will have by the time we arrive.’
‘Can I ask a question?’ asked Billy.