“Can I hide it under my greatcoat?”
“Nothing easier, sir. And we’ll wire you with a transmitter. He’s only jamming long-distance stuff. You can tell us your life story. Oh, and one more important thing.”
“What’s that?”
“We have to give him a nickname, general.”
I stare at the colonel. ‘Why?” I say at last.
“Because that’s what we’re good at. We always give the enemy a nickname. It demeans them. Makes them feel self-conscious and inferior. It’s our way of telling them that they’re the lowest form of human life.”
“Or, in this case, alien life.”
“Right, general. So we have to give him a humiliating nickname— like Kraut, Slopehead, Raghead, Fritz, Dink or Charlie...”
“We can’t nickname him Charlie, he’s already called Charlie.”
“Okay, I take that on board. How about we call him Chuck?”
‘Doesn’t sound very demeaning to me. My brother was called Chuck.”
“Depends on how you say it, general. If we’re talking about your brother, we say “Chuck” in a warm kind of tone. But if we’re talking about Chuck, we use a sort of fat, chickeny sound—Chuck—like that.”
“I think I understand, colonel. Well, let’s get me armed and wired. It’s time I taught Chuck a lesson.”
Stardom here I come. A part with lines. My part. A lone, courageous part, if they let me play myself in the movie—providing I live to rejoice in it, of course.
~ * ~
SCENE 2
Somewhere out on the plains of Nebraska. A man is walking down towards the River Platte. The night is dark but studded with bright stars, giving the impression of vast distances and emphasising the insignificance of the brave lonely figure. The brave lonely figure is apparently talking to himself.
Are you listening back there in the base? The moon is gleaming on my path as I reach the banks. Here in the humid Nebraskan night I wait for my adversary. Single combat. Mano a mano. The old way of settling differences in the American West.
Hell, what am I saying, we didn’t invent it. The old, old way. The chivalric code of the knights. A tourney. A duel. An affair of honour. Rapiers at dawn. Pistols for two, coffee for one.
[Aside: We’re kind of mixing our genres here with Westerns and Science Fiction, but I think we can get away with it since the two have always had a close relationship, being drawn from the same source—the conquest of frontiers by American pioneers.]
~ * ~
And I am ready. You didn’t send me out unprimed, colonel. You made me submit to brainstorming. Masses of data has been blasted into my brain in the form of an electron blizzard. Every extraterrestrial invasion movie ever filmed is now lodged somewhere inside my cerebrum, waiting to be tapped. Any move this creature makes, I’ll have it covered. Hollywood, under secret Army supervision, has foreseen every eventuality, every type of Otherworlder intent on invading and subduing us Earthlings. They’re all in my head.
[A solitary charred and wounded chicken crawls silently across the landscape.]
Swines! Uh-huh. More movement up there.
Chuck’s coming up over the ridge! Thousands of him doing that silly walk with the cane and twitching his ratty moustache. This is really weird. A swarm of Charlie Chaplins. Did he lie? Is he going to come at me in hordes? Boy, can he move fast. They’re all doing different things. One’s swinging his cane and grinning, another flexing his bow legs, yet another pretending to be a ballet dancer. Multitudes of him, pouring over the ridge now, like rats being driven by beaters.
“Don’t let him get to you with the pathetic routine,” you warned me, colonel. ‘You know how Chuck can melt the strongest heart with that schmaltzy hangdog expression. Don’t look at him when he puts his hands in his pockets, purses his lips, and wriggles from side to side.” Well, don’t worry, I hate Charlie Chaplin. That pathos act makes me want to puke, always did. If he tries that stuff, I’ll shred him before he can blink.
He’s getting closer now, moving very slowly. He’s suddenly become only one, a single Charlie Chaplin. I can see the white of his teeth as he curls his top lip back.
My fingers are closing around the butt of the shredder. I’m ready to draw in an instant. The bastard won’t stand a chance. Wait, he’s changing shape again. Now he’s Buster Keaton. I never liked Buster Keaton. And yet again. Fatty Arbuckle this time. I detest Fatty Arbuckle. Someone I don’t recognise. Now Abbot and Costello. Both of them. The Marx Brothers.
Shit, he’s only eleven feet away, and he’s changing again. He’s gone all fuzzy. He’s solidifying. Oh. Oh, no. Oh my golly gosh. God almighty. It’s...it’s dear old Stan Laurel. He’s got one hand behind his back. I guess he’s holding a deadly weapon in that hand.
“Hello, Oily.”
Did you hear that, colonel? Just like the original. He.. .he’s beaming at me now, the way Laurel always beams at Hardy. And I.. .1 can’t do it. I can’t shoot. He’s scratching his head in that funny way of his. Of all the comic actors to choose. I loved Stan Laurel. I mean, how can you shoot Stan Laurel when he’s beaming at you? It’s like crushing a kitten beneath the heel of your boot. I can’t do it. The flesh may be steel, but the spirit’s runny butter.
Tell you what I’m going to do—I’ll threaten him with the shredder. That ought to be enough for Stan Laurel.
Oh my gosh, he’s burst into tears.
“Don’t point that thing at me, Oily. I don’t want to hurt you. I just want to be your chum.”
I’ve put the weapon away. He’s smiling again. He’s offering me a cigar. Hey, you should see this, colonel. He’s done that trick, you know, flicking his thumb out of his fist like a lighter? There’s a flame coming from his thumbnail.
He’s still smiling. He’s friendly after all, though he’s still got one hand hidden from me. Maybe he’s realised he’s made a mistake? I have to show willing. I’m taking a light for the cigar. Hell, he could be a really nice guy.
I don’t know what this thing is, but it’s not a Havana cigar. Tastes kinda ropey, like the cigar that producer of a low-budget B movie once gave me, when I played Young Ike. What was his name? Ricky Hernandez, yeah. Good movie that. Pity it was never released.
Jesus, this thing is playing havoc with my throat. Can you still hear me? It has a familiar smell—now where did I—oh yes, in the Gulf. Shit, it’s nerve gas! The bastard has given me a cigar which releases nerve gas into the lungs.
Oh fuck, oh fuck—I’m getting dizzy. I feel like vomiting. There’s blood coming from my mouth, ears and nostrils. He’s reaching forward. He’s taken my weapon. I’m... I’m falling.. .falling. Oh God, my legs are twitching, my arms, my torso, my head. I’m going into a fit spasm. I’m dying, colonel. I’m a dead man.
Wait, he’s standing over me. I think he’s going to speak. Are you listening, colonel?
“You’re supposed to say, “Another fine mess you’ve gotten me into, Stanley,” and play with your tie.”
Hollywood, damn them. He’s speaking again. Listen.
“I suppose you think I lied to you, Oily?”
Yes I do, you freak, you murdering shape-changing bastard. I do think you lied to me.
He’s giving me one of those smug Stan Laurel smiles, showing me his other hand, the one he’s had behind his back all the time. He’s...he’s got his fingers crossed.
“Sorry, Oily.”
Hollywood covered every contingency except one. In all the alien invasion movies they ever made, the attacking monsters are always as grim as Michigan in January. As I lie here dying, the joke is on you and me, colonel. There’s one type of extraterrestrial we didn’t plan on. An offworlder just like our own soldiers.
An alien with a sense of humour.
FADE OUT
<
~ * ~
FOR LIFE
BY CHRISTINE MANBY
“So are you going to buy anything for me when you go shopping, Sugar Mummy?” came a babyish voice from the
shadows of the bedroom.
“What do you think you deserve?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Surprise me. I’ll be pleased with anything.”
Persephone Rayfield smiled. Money could buy you just about everything except, as ever, love. This was something she knew only too well as she sat on the balcony of her Malibu home and pondered the fate of a forty-million-dollar bonus from another great year on Wall Street.
Before her on the table was a neatly written list of options to blow the lot. The latest New Generation Ferrari? No. They’d lost all their grunt since the emission laws restricted so much as a public fart. An entire wardrobe of antique Armani? She would only ever be able to wear two hundred thousand dollars’ worth at a time. Perhaps a fabulous diamond necklace that would cover her entire breastplate? And get her head severed from her neck as she made the short journey from the night-club to the car.
Persephone put a single straight line through each of the glittering options and tried to start again. Had shopping always been this difficult? she asked herself. She looked down at the surfers riding the waves near the beach below. Simple pleasures. Though only experts and idiots would tackle surfing since French nuclear testing on the moon had messed up all the tides.
“How about a new car?” asked her companion. “A Ferrari?”
“Already persuaded myself against that.”
“A new home cinema system? You could get a 3D screen.”
“There’s more to watch from my window.”
Persephone picked up her antique binoculars to get a closer look at one surfer who was doing particularly well. He reminded her of the Roman statues that had been washed into the sea from the Getty Museum when it finally fell from its cliff. As she watched, the surfer ducked into a tube and disappeared for what seemed like an eternity until the ocean spat him out again at the other end in a splutter of sea foam.
“You’re so difficult to please. You don’t know what you want.”
“Oh no,” replied Persephone. “I’ll know exactly what I want when I see it.”
For example, she wouldn’t have said “no” to the surfing boy. Persephone already knew that his name was Peter and he belonged to her friend Serena Strane. She could see Serena walking up to him now, holding out a fluffy towel to wrap him in when he finally gave up on the waves. Peter was gorgeous. Tall, blond, bronzed in that old-fashioned way. (Though not from the sun of course. No one ever went out in the Californian sunshine without a total zinc body block anymore. It was all done with extract of carrot now, as it had been in the 1970s. Funny to think that all the self-tanning technology of the late twentieth century had been proven to be more harmful than the sun itself.)
Peter was rumoured to be quite bright too. Educated in England just before the Gaian fundamentalists there decided to impose the “no education for men” law they had found in the latest good book. Serena had been incredibly lucky, getting Peter into California before the immigration laws were tightened up and the gates to the east started to close. She had got herself all that brawn and a brain and still enough change from two million bucks to retile her entire home. Her entire sprawling home. You needed a phone to talk to someone at the other end of the breakfast bar in her Santa Monica kitchen.
“What are you looking at out there?” Her lover was frustrated by the lack of attention.
The glint of the sun on the glass of Persephone’s binoculars drew Serena’s attention up to the hills. There was no way that Serena would be able to see Persephone at such a distance, unless she was wearing those incredible zoom contact lenses of hers again, but Persephone knew that Serena had guessed who was watching. She waved. But there was no malice in her wave. Serena had something that very few people could afford, and as such she felt that she was not only Peter’s keeper but his curator. It was her duty to share the joy of such rarity with the other girls. Albeit on a look-but-don’t-touch basis.
Persephone put down her binoculars with a smile and added another word to her shopping list.
“Have you made your mind up yet?” came the whiny voice from the bedroom again. “I want to go shopping with you before everything’s closed.”
“I’ve nearly finished, darling.” Persephone wrote out a cheque and rolled it into a little tube. It was a small amount, but she had written it in big letters. “Come here, you nuisance,” she said now, beckoning her young lover towards her, out in the weak afternoon sunshine. Pip appeared instantly and curled into an appealing ball at Persephone’s feet to wait for a sign of her affection.
“What have you been writing?” Pip asked. “Can I see?”
“It’s private.”
“Is it what you’re going to buy with your bonus?”
“Could be, sweetheart. If I can still get hold of one.”
“Get hold of one? What is it?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“Can I use it too? Or are you getting me a separate present?” Pip pouted in the way Persephone might have found endearing just half an hour before.
“You can choose your own present,” said Persephone. “Take this bit of money here and buy something for yourself.” She tucked the rolled-up note into the cleavage of Pip’s silky dressing-gown. Pip kissed her excitedly, not bothering to check the amount.
“You’re so generous.”
“Sssh. Hurry along,” Persephone said with a hint of embarrassment at Pip’s pathetic gratitude.
“I love you, Persephone. I’ll see you later.”
Persephone would have changed the code on the entry-gate before the girl got back.
She hoped that Pip would realise it wasn’t because of anything she had done. Pip was sweet enough. A beautiful girl. But then all the girls in Hollywood were beautiful. Popped out of the same mould. Though their bodies were perfect, they held only as much interest for Persephone as the dolls they resembled. Now Persephone had enough money to try something different. To buy something different.
She looked once more at the new word on her shopping list.
Man.
Why not?
~ * ~
“You cannot be serious,” Angela, her best friend, said later that night. “It’s immoral.”
“Why?” asked Persephone defensively.
“Because you can’t buy another human being. Even if it is only a man.”
“I won’t be buying him. I’ll be saving him from a terrible life. Can you believe that in some parts of China they actually leave baby boys to die in those dreadful cold, dark rooms? They just let them starve to death to avoid the economic burden of bringing them up.”
Angela raised an eyebrow. “Oh, so it’s a mercy mission. You’re getting a Chinese boy?”
“Well.” Persephone blushed. “Not exactly.”
“Ha.”
“The red tape in China is absolutely unbelievable,” Persephone said by way of an excuse. “Even if you get to the stage where you’re handing over the cheque, there’s still no guarantee that you’ll get the goods.”
“The goods,” Angela repeated scornfully.
“You know what I mean.”
“You could just donate all the money you’re going to spend to that charity that’s setting up homes for those poor children overseas.”
Persephone spluttered into her glass. “No way. I did that auction for the homeless hostel last year.”
“And now you’ve got compassion fatigue.”
“Give me a break. I just want to have a bit of fun. I could have got a Ferrari instead, you know. I wouldn’t have bothered asking you for advice then.”
“And what fun would you have had with an average speed of just three miles an hour in the city? I’m glad you saw ecological sense.”
“Yeah, you see,” said Persephone, seizing the opportunity to get back into Angela’s good books. “I’ve already thought about my duty to the Earth. Now I need to think about my duty to me. Besides, don’t tell me you’ve never considered it. Not even when you got that huge inheritance last year?”
; “I did think about, I admit. But, thank goodness, I realised the stupidity of it all within three seconds and bought that Real-Time Intimacy Machine instead.”
“Ah yes. The RIMMER.” Persephone smirked as she tried to suppress an image of Angela touching herself up in twenty million dollars’ worth of superfine carbon-fibre suit.
“The brochure refers to it as the ‘luxury RTF actually,” Angela replied.
“If you say so. But things are different for you, Angie. You’re in a relationship. You get everything you need from Jennifer except for the obvious; and now you’ve got the ‘luxury RTI,’ she can pretty much give you that as well.”
New Worlds Page 24