The Truth Spinner

by Rhys Hughes

  Chuckleberry nodded sadly. “It wasn’t like that for me. I didn’t have a beautiful girl to twang me aloft.”

  “I suppose it was the administrative staff at your embassy who fired you across the world?” I asked.

  “Oh no, my staff are a bunch of useless layabouts. Most of them don’t even realise they are my staff.”

  “Not them!” I cried. “Then who?”

  “I fired myself. I fitted myself to my own bow and released the string myself. I’m expected to operate in neglect, you see, and that’s why I was chosen, because I am self-reliant.”

  “You fired yourself? And left the bow behind?”

  “Indeed not. It’s a portable bow and I held onto it as I shot out of the embassy window. It’s too valuable just to abandon. I folded it up as soon as I was aloft and stored it safely.”

  I jumped up. “So you have it with you now?”

  He fumbled in the inner pocket of his jacket and took out a collapsible longbow. He unfolded it and nodded.

  “Why the hell didn’t you…” I began, but I decided to hold my tongue, for the fact he was daft didn’t mean he couldn’t be my saviour and thus it was more tactical not to offend him.

  “A fine piece of work,” he said, blinking at it.

  “Can we use it to escape?”

  “Of course, but only one human arrow can be nocked at a time. That’s why I didn’t mention it before.”

  I blushed, realising that I had attributed the wrong motives to him. He was actually a perfect gentleman.

  Then he brightened. “But I see no reason why we can’t trail you behind me. If we connect each other with a length of rope, I can shoot myself off and you’ll inevitably come after.”

  “Let’s do it now!” I roared.

  “In which direction should I aim?”

  “Certainly not in the direction from whence I came. I have no desire to return to the dark bosom of Lowri’s hospitality. My home is Porthcawl. If I had a choice, that’s where I’d like to be aimed at; but I don’t know where that town is relative to this island.”

  “No problem. One of my duties in the embassy was to memorise maps of planet Earth. I was very good at it and I do know where Porthcawl is. I suggest we head in that direction.”

  “You wish to go there too? You are welcome to stay at my house. I’ll enjoy introducing you to my friends.”

  He shook his head. “No, no, I think I’ll continue my tour; but once we are over Porthcawl, I’ll loosen the rope that binds us together and you can drop down on your own. Agreed? However, one day in the far future I’ll pay you a friendly visit, I promise.”

  I nodded and we went to work, using a length of the rope that had tied my arms to attach myself to him. Then he drew back the string of the bow and nocked his feet to it, while I stood waiting. He aimed carefully and I was amazed to see that he was intending to fire us in the direction which I was already flying in prior to the collision: the same compass point from whence he had come. I pondered.

  Then he released the string. Up into the sky we thrummed. The rush of the wind smoothed the creases in my brow as I continued to frown. Three days later we reached Porthcawl, and while cruising high over the town, I felt Chuckleberry loosen the knot that held us together. Down I fell while he called a hasty farewell; I landed in the sea, close enough to shore, and spluttered onto dry land. Then I went back to my house and changed into dry clothes and when I was ready I went to the pub to see my best friends, Paddy Deluxe and Frothing Harris.

  I sat on the empty chair at the table next to them and begged a drink of dark beer; in return I told them all about my recent adventures. Yes, they had been worried about me; my absence was abnormally long. I shared with them the theory I had devised while flying directly behind Mr Grin. They listened and were sceptical.

  “Think about it carefully!” I persisted. “Could it not be that Porthcawl is located smack on the Unclepodes; that this town is the official embassy of Antichthon? That none of us are true Earthlings? Wouldn’t this explain our maladjustment to the world?”

  “It seems too far-fetched,” they answered.

  “If Chuckleberry Grin ever does turn up again, I’ll ask him openly and he’ll be sure to tell me the truth.”

  “Is everything on Antichthon a mirror image of things on Earth?” they wanted to know. I shook my head, for I had already asked this question of my fellow castaway and he had explained that most items were variations rather than reversals. For example, a woman is not the opposite of a man, and in the same way the Counter Earth was a complement to our planet, a reciprocal, a different kind of reflection. There might be another Lladloh there and another Lowri trying to hit seven other seas, but maybe she (or he) would use a catapult or cannon.

  Then I frowned very deep, one of the deepest of all my frowns. “It has just occurred to me that there must be an Earth embassy on Antichthon. I wonder who the ambassador is?”

  “Now you have gone beyond the frontier of our tolerance!” exclaimed my friends. “There’s no space program in the world that can send manned missions to the far side of the sun.”

  I sighed and drained my pint, for I couldn’t dispute that.

  * * * *

  The pub door opened and a jaunty figure entered. Jastor Cenkins, Daddy Peluxe and Hrothing Farris looked up. The newcomer held a folded bow in one hand and waved with the other. Jastor instantly jumped to his feet and cried, “He has come at last!”

  “Sorry it has taken so long,” said the newcomer.

  Jastor introduced him to his friends. “This is Gruckleberry Chin, the official ambassador from Earth.”

  Daddy and Farris shook his hand politely.

  “In other words, our boss,” added Jastor. He finished his drink and wiped his lips with his sleeve.

  “Does it always rain in this town?” asked Gruckleberry, shaking the oily droplets from his long hair.

  Jastor laughed. “Yes, Lwachtrop isn’t blessed with the finest climate on Antichthon. Sit down please.”

  The ambassador did so. Jastor sent his friends to fetch a pint for him and a packet of crisps. They grumbled but went to do his bidding. “How has life been treating you?” he asked.

  Gruckleberry shrugged. “Not bad. And you?”

  “Many adventures. I can’t seem to stop having them. Embassy work is so light and easy that it leaves too much time for other activities. I’m not complaining, though! Shall I tell you about the time I swallowed a storm cloud, or about the time I went hunting fossils with a bazooka and bagged a set of tyrannosaur footprints?”

  “No thanks,” said the ambassador.

  “Well then, what about the consequences of entering myself in a show for bankrupt dogs, Bankcrufts?”

  “Yes, that one will do nicely. Thanks.”

  Penal Colony

  Land had been sighted at last. The captain hissed a sigh of relief. His fear that the tempest had blown them into uncharted waters was unfounded. It seemed the main danger was over; but he couldn’t relax just yet. The very hazardous cargo needed to be unloaded without injury before the mission was truly completed. He consulted his charts and nodded to himself. Just a few more leagues to the east there should be an oddly shaped headland. Yes, there it was. A welcome sight!

  Around this headland was the entrance to a shallow bay. The southern shore of the bay had been chosen as the location of the penal colony. The captain had been instructed to liberate the convicts and leave them to their own devices. There would be no need for walls, wire, guards; the hostility of the terrain, its remoteness and inaccessibility, made this site as secure as the most sophisticated prison. The captain issued relevant orders and the vessel approached the headland.

  The criminals in the hold were hardened cases. Later shipments might bring political or religious offenders, but the members of this first batch were all vicious killers. The civilised sectors of the world could no longer contain them, no longer tolerate their presence; involuntary exile was the only solution. The responsibility fo
r facilitating this strategy was intense and the captain daily felt an immense weight on his poor spirit. But now the ordeal was coming to a conclusion.

  Within hours his duty would be discharged and he would be free. Yes, free to turn the ship around and sail back to his home and family! Such a joyous moment that would be; he could hardly contain his excitement! He forced himself to remain calm, for to lose focus at this crucial stage might be a most fatal error, one he would never have the luxury of repeating. A terrible irony, to come to grief with success almost within his grasp! Best to maintain a rigid, iron self-discipline…

  The headland was rounded, the bay entered. The ship dropped anchor half a league offshore. Then the officers and sailors gathered on the deck to hear the captain’s orders. He stood before them and raised himself up, gazing beyond the crew at the waves that broke on the reefs and the shore itself. His face twisted into a grimace.

  “It is imperative that we maintain our concentration at all times during this part of the process,” he began.

  The audience before him shuffled its feet.

  “This is probably the most perilous moment of the entire voyage, more risky even than the recent typhoon,” he continued. “I want all of you to be on your guard at every single instant. No prisoner should be accompanied by less than three sailors for a fraction of a second. This means the task of transferring them from the ship to the longboats will be quite a protracted one, but that is preferable to gambling with your lives. Operate with great caution. Be vigilant and stay alive!”

  He raised a hand to dismiss them, then a thought occurred to him and he added, “Needless to say, it’s not necessary to ferry all the convicts into the shallows. Every blue ring octopus, scorpion fish and stonefish should be deposited close to the reefs or the shore, but box jellyfish, crocodiles and sharks may be cast into deeper water; as for snakes and spiders, they must be taken onto the actual beach.”

  He allowed himself a wistful smile as his crew set to work. Maybe the penal colony would die out, maybe it would flourish. Who knew for sure? One day in the far future someone might wonder why Australia happened to have more than its fair share of venomous animals. That was assuming that the origin of the penal colony was forgotten, which wasn’t beyond the bounds of feasibility. Such a futuristic questioner would probably assume it was merely an evil trick of nature.

  As the captain watched the parade of funnel-web, Redback and white-tailed spiders, three varieties of taipan serpents, cone snails and irukandji jellyfish, he suppressed his mounting glee. Only when the final criminal had been marooned on the shore did he rub four of his eight legs together in satisfaction. But it was still unsafe to remain at anchor all night. Better to sail into the open ocean. Only there would he grant himself the luxury of the hammock he had spun himself.

  * * * *

  “And that,” said Castor Jenkins as he drained his pint, “was the very last time I ever worked as a sea captain.”

  Paddy Deluxe and Frothing Harris blinked at him.

  “It was also the very last time I was ever a spider. I haven’t been one since, not for a moment,” he added.

  Flying Saucer Harmonies

  “I know what flying saucers are,” announced Paddy Deluxe one evening as he slurped his pint of stout, “and they have nothing to do with surplus terrestrials from interstellar space.”

  “Extra-terrestrials,” said Castor Jenkins.

  Paddy began nodding. “Yes, those ones. Your average flying saucer is a hoax or misunderstood meteorological phenomenon, but a minority of reports are genuine; they refer to the saucers I’m talking about and I know what they are. I learned yesterday.”

  “You are willing to tell us?” asked Castor.

  Paddy hadn’t stopped nodding, so in effect he answered this question in the affirmative without effort. Frothing Harris shook his own head but he leaned closer anyway, to listen.

  “I went to play tennis on the beach with Collective Will and I returned one of his serves with excessive force and the ball flew over his head and landed in the sea; then it floated away and we never saw it again. Because we had no spare, we decided to—”

  Castor held up his hand and made a wry face. “Wait a moment, Paddy! I don’t believe a word of it. You’re too unfit for tennis or any physical sort of game. Look at the size of your paunch! The consumption of chips and beer doesn’t count as an official sporting activity; I speak from experience and without contempt, trust me.”

  Paddy nodded and took another gulp of his drink. “I don’t dispute what you say. Nonetheless, after the premature climax to our tennis session, we decided to skim our spare change into the waves instead. Collective Will is a highly skilled skimmer indeed; he managed to bounce one small coin nine times before it sank, whereas my best effort was six skips. When this pastime was finished, we relaxed.”

  Castor clapped his hands. “Your speciality!”

  Paddy sighed. “Not this time. We sat on deckchairs and smoked cigars but frankly that’s a pleasure more symbolic than real. After a dozen puffs we were obliged to discard them and inaugurate a coughing and wheezing tournament that ended in a draw…”

  “You pitched lighted cigars onto the beach?”

  “No, into the waves. By this point, the tide had risen to the edge of the Canute Threshold and lapped us.”

  “And how is this connected to flying saucers?” wondered Castor. “You have irritated me somewhat rather than intrigued me; the only apology I’ll accept is a drink at your expense.”

  Paddy snorted, “You don’t really want to learn anything, do you? Don’t you appreciate that the events of that momentous day, whether taken in or out of sequence, led me to a cosmic revelation? Don’t be so hasty in your opportunistic dismissals! For after the cessation of that coughing fit, I had a sudden inspiration; and through sheer analogy I became cognizant of an obvious, though hitherto overlooked, truth about the so-called ‘aliens’ that snarl our sky with shapes and lights.”

  “I am waiting to hear that truth,” snapped Castor.

  “Why! Can’t you work it out for yourself? There are three major kinds of UFO and my explanation will account for them all. The spherical craft are lost balls from a fifth dimensional tennis match; the flying discs are skimmed coins; the cigar-shaped objects are gigantic discarded cigars, no more or less. Makes perfect sense.”

  “Why from the fifth dimension?” frowned Castor.

  Paddy rolled his eyes. “It scarcely seems plausible that balls, coins or even cigars can be hurled from one solar system to another. Let’s look at it from a fishy point of view. Yes, imagine how they felt at the time of my actions! They were going about their usual business; then abruptly, as if from nowhere, a mysterious sphere appeared; several discs and a pair of enigmatic cylinders followed. None of these objects, if the fish recovered any, were constructed of any material known to them. So what’s the most basic explanation they can devise to account for their origin? Clearly they are artefacts from another ocean…”

  “Whereas they actually came from a closer location, from an adjacent realm, the surface world, from the universe next door.” Castor rubbed his chin and smiled. “I see your point.”

  * * * *

  Frothing Harris could contain himself no longer. He gulped his own pint with no less fury than his friends, slammed his empty glass down on the table and began a frantic monologue:

  “That’s not right, none of it. I know what flying saucers really are; but I only learned the truth this morning!

  “As you both already realise, Porthcawl is plagued with flying saucer sightings; I think our town is the Welsh Mecca of saucerous activity, so to speak, and let me say right now that coining a word may be acceptable but coining a sea isn’t. Not in my view! I don’t skim change, spare or not, and in fact I don’t even skim stones. Skimming is wrong. Flying saucers aren’t coins and they certainly aren’t tennis balls or unsmoked cigars. Do you seek to drive me utterly insane?

  “Listen carefully: the answer is strai
ghtforward.

  “Last night there was another sighting of a flying saucer overhead and I believed it because I saw it with my own eyes when I rose in the early hours to fetch a glass of water back to my bedside. Flashing lights, weird flight path, eerie low drone and no sign of any human trickery. It hovered above my garden briefly, as if waiting for something, but I didn’t run out in stripy pyjamas to investigate; the grass was wet and I couldn’t find my slippers. So I forsook the opportunity.

  “This very morning I met Sunstew Mynci in the bakery. I was buying iced buns and coincidently so was he, but to my bigger surprise he also bought a pizza with a topping of extra olives. This made me apprehensive but I wasn’t sure why, so to change the subject I asked him if he had also observed the flying saucer last night?

  “He nodded his head and went on to say that he had wondered about it for hours. It had hovered above many gardens, including his; then moved on. What purpose did it have? After more hours of pondering he suddenly realised! I was impressed to hear that.

  “He winked and whispered, ‘Yes, I know all about flying saucers, what they are and why they come here. I’m heading to the park now and if you accompany me I’ll explain everything.’

  “Well, this chance was too good to miss, so I followed Sunstew Mynci along a street that led to a nearby park. When we got there we gravitated to the lake and watched the ducks. I munched brutally on an iced bun and cast my spare crumbs into the ripples.

  “The ducks were happy to eat the morsels I offered them, but Sunstew held my arm in a powerful grip, most unlike him, and stopped me casting more pieces. ‘Watch this!’ he roared.

  “Like a discus thrower he span on the spot and cast his pizza as far as he could. It was still warm and the olives glittered like crystals and steam rose from the tomato paste as it soared over the water. I know little about the aerodynamic properties of Italian cuisine, but it seemed to hang in the air much longer than it should have!