by Rhys Hughes
“Then it dropped into the lake and sank…
“I told him that I had expected it to float, but Sunstew was too ecstatic to care about that. ‘Did you see? The ducks misunderstood! They simply didn’t know what to make of it! They didn’t recognise it as food and why should they? That proves my point!’
“I quickly asked him to elaborate on this aspect.
“He said, ‘Think, Harris, think! Flying saucers are scraps of food that are being thrown to us by aliens from outer space. It’s obvious! Why has no one thought of this before? We throw food for ducks; the aliens throw food for us. It’s a perfect analogy!’
“I didn’t believe him and told him so; but I’m wondering if I should be at home right now, waiting in a garden chair with a knife and fork, rather than sitting in this pub with you two. That’s the crux of it. Incidentally the type of pizza I like best is a four-cheese variety I sampled in a Hungarian restaurant in old Czechoslovakia—”
Castor Jenkins snorted, “I don’t believe you.”
“What! You don’t concede there were any Hungarian restaurants in old Czechoslovakia? Foolhardy fellow!”
“My dear friend, you don’t drink water; how then are we supposed to accept that you would ever convey a glass of the stuff to any beside that can be imagined? That’s the one detail we can’t swallow: the lie that you would swallow such a bland liquid.”
Harris pouted without much grace. “Fair enough.”
* * * *
Castor signalled the barman to bring three pints of stout directly over; it’s not a typical Welsh custom to do that and can’t be recommended, but it is what he did on that particular occasion.
The barman responded grumpily and demanded payment on delivery. Castor rummaged in all his pockets thoroughly, with such care that Paddy and Harris both managed to access their own money before him, despite the deliberate slowness of their own searches, and the barman went away, still grumbling but less loudly, thanks to the laws of physics and the rules of temper, which decree that distance is an important modifying factor for the register of audibility on eardrums.
Castor sipped his fresh pint just long enough to grow a thin moustache of foam and said, “The truth is, my comrades, that I’ve been circumspect in my reaction to your tales; but I don’t feel I can hold back any longer. It wouldn’t serve the sacred pursuit of knowledge to keep my secret entirely to myself. It’s too crucial and vital.”
“Crucial and vital to what?” asked Paddy.
“To homo sapiens,” said Castor.
“But that’s us, isn’t it?” gasped Harris.
Castor nodded. “I’m afraid so. Let me commence my tale by denying it took place in Porthcawl. In fact it happened a dozen miles to the east, not far from Southerndown. It is a wild stretch of coastline between there and Nash Point and geologically the cliffs are bizarre. I sincerely doubt either of you have been there, because chips are not for sale, nor beer, but that’s not a crippling disadvantage. Just picture to yourself a remote long beach with access at both ends but nowhere else; when the tide comes in, there’s no escape and to get cut off is easy. Even dinosaurs did so: fossils of their frantic footprints are everywhere.”
“I do know the place; from postcards,” said Paddy.
“Me too, same way,” agreed Harris.
Castor chuckled. “Yes, and those postcards were sent by me; and they were posted from another world, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself, so I’ll simply state that I was walking that beach one day and I had got the tide times wrong. I thought drowning would be my fate, but I was briefly distracted from thoughts of glubby doom by the presence of a man sitting on a black rock; he was watching the waves wash his feet and perhaps he assumed the state of those feet would repel the waves, for they were filthy indeed. Then I saw something else.”
“A ship? An old barquentine?” suggested Paddy.
“A rainbow bridge?” blurted Harris.
Castor shook his head. “No use guessing. It was something much more ordinary than those; I saw that the man was plucking a harp. The sound of his strings was odd: discordant and unique but also predictable and bland, if you can imagine such a paradox. I couldn’t and still can’t; and yet I was forced to listen to it. I approached him casually and cleared my throat, for I planned to ask him politely to desist.
“He turned to look at me but continued plucking with blistered fingers and said, ‘Frog in the gullet, you seem to have, boyo! Should have sucked a mint, see, before you left the house.’
“I was flabbergasted by his clichéd Welsh accent and idiom and I took a step back, slipping on a mossy rock and crashing down onto my buttock cheeks. Something tinkled in my trouser pocket and I wailed, ‘I hope they haven’t been broken by the impact!’
“The harpist paused his din and raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh yes, and what do you have in them, then? Jewels?’
“I told him not to be silly; gemstones wouldn’t shatter so easily. It was a set of vacuum tubes I was carrying; and before you press me on exactly why I was carrying them, I’ll just state that it’s still a free country, to some extent, and I’m within my rights to do so; and if that reply doesn’t satisfy, I’ll pretend it was the birthday of Heinrich Geissler, the very first inventor of the cathode ray tube, and that I wanted to honour him by bearing them with me all day; and if that answer still doesn’t convince you, I’ll confess that I’m one of those men who like casting messages in bottles out to sea, yet I don’t do it the standard way, with pen and paper, but with neon signs that express some insolvable riddle.
“Yes, to make the neon signs light up, I also carry waterproof batteries and a miniature transformer, also waterproof, and insulated wires and any other essential electrical component.
“That’s the sort of man I am; when a tale requires it!
“Anyway, I stood up and checked the contents of my pocket and found to my relief that the vacuum tubes were still intact. Then I said to the man with the harp, ‘The tide is already up around your knees and soon you will be under water. How can you just remain there and wait for death without even futilely struggling to escape?’
“He smiled wistfully and replied, ‘Trying to mimic the mating call of a flying saucer, I am, for I believe they are living beasts like aerial jellyfish, and if I can attract one of them down here, I will jump on its back and end up saving my life. It’s what I recommend, boyo! Help me now, why don’t you? Whistle and hum at the same time while I resonate all harp strings in an eerie style. Time is running out!’
“I concurred with this latter observation and remarked that maybe time was even too short for absurd games, but he wouldn’t hear of any solution to our joint dilemma other than to make the sound of a flying saucer. Five minutes of wasted effort later, the tide was up against his chest and I had prudently retreated to the very base of the towering cliffs, which the first waves had only just reached. Scratching his head, the harpist said, ‘Maybe it’s not the mating season after all?’
“I wanted to laugh at his naivety but it didn’t seem appropriate; indeed I felt so sorry for him I decided to play along with his delusion. At least it would help to pass my final moments amusingly. I said, ‘It’s impossible to replicate the sound of a flying saucer with a harp and a human mouth. We need a theremin for an accurate match. We don’t have one of those but an alternative is available. We can construct an ondes Martenot! Why not? I have the vacuum tubes and other electrical bits; and you have a substitute palme, the lyre-shaped speaker that utilises strings to develop sympathetic resonances. It’s an ingenious idea!’
“To be honest he didn’t seem very happy with my solution, but without a better alternative, and with the water now lapping his neck, he declined to object, so I went ahead. I constructed the frame of the instrument from driftwood, inserted the components, wired them to the harp, powered the unit up with an elasticised suspension of disbelief and pressed the touche d’intensité to its maximum dynamic.
“At this point I ought to explain exactly
how an ondes Martenot works and give you some historical background about the instrument, and stress that it’s capable of mimicking a theremin if played a certain way, but you can easily do that research yourself.
“The note that emerged from the improvised palme was very eerie and very loud, and it also turned out to be extremely effective, which was just as well for my new friend, for by this time the tide was at a point midway between his nose and mouth; but it didn’t lure a randy flying saucer down from the sky. Oh no, not that at all!
“What happened was that a rather large section of the cliff face behind us slid open like an automatic garage door… It was brightly illuminated on the other side too, so I had no hesitation in stumbling through the gap to safety, and when I turned I saw the harpist emerging from the sea with the same idea. He crossed the threshold just in time, for the cliff suddenly closed on itself and the battering of waves on the other side was muffled, but had we merely lurched from the drowning pan into the dire? That was the contrived question on our lips.
“We explored our surroundings, just like heroes in pulp novels do, and it didn’t take long to work out that we were in a wide corridor that sloped steeply into the bowels of the Earth.
“Incidentally, that’s an expression I’ve always regarded with suspicion. If the Earth has bowels does it also have kidneys? Does it have a working appendix or just a residual one? What does it eat for supper? Where does it keep its ears? Does it have a belly button? That’s the clincher for me. A planet with a navel: ramifications!
“Together we began descending the corridor.
“On the way, he told me more about himself. His name was Tin Dylan and he was a wandering bard who specialised in the old songs that no one wanted to hear; he was travelling eastwards from Lladloh and wasn’t sure of his ultimate destination; he joked it might be in continental Europe, up in the Alps somewhere, maybe the city-state of Chaud-Mellé. His exploits so far had been uniformly uncanny.
“I let him babble on for as long as he desired
“Abruptly we reached a balcony that overlooked an auditorium. That’s the only word that even remotely describes the sheer vastness of the space below us. We clung to the railings and gasped. So the inside of Earth was hollow! Theorists had long speculated on the possibility; speculators had theorised on it. Hollow but not empty. Miniature worlds revolved about a tiny sun; and there were hundreds of these model planets, each the size of a small mountain. I was speechless!
“A breeze behind us ruffled the hair of our scalps; evidently the sliding door in the cliff had opened again. There was a sound like a theremin and a flying saucer appeared directly behind us, floating down the corridor. It reached us and cleared our heads by a few inches as it passed. The breeze dropped and I realised it was the sound of those discs that caused the door in the unbroken coastline to open.
“The saucer dropped down into the central void. I turned to Tin Dylan and blared, ‘Without doubt it is headed for one of those miniature planets. This is our opportunity to hitch a ride!’ He didn’t understand why I was so keen to do such a thing, but after I climbed the railings and dangled down on the other side by one hand, he followed my example. Perhaps he didn’t want to be left alone on the balcony.
“We let go at the same moment and plummeted just a few feet onto the convex roof of the saucer. The top of the vehicle looked smooth, but that was an illusion; and to our disgust, there was a deep depression on the top full of seawater and the convex shape was merely the shiny meniscus. So we sat in a pool of brine while the saucer floated down to one of the small globes. The saucer must have been for a dip in the Bristol Channel, which is the main sea between Wales and England, for the pool was full of local seaweed, but not the tastiest variety.
“I said to my companion, ‘’Never before have any human beings had a good chance to explore inner space.’
“To which he responded, ‘Don’t be daft, mun, psychiatrists go there all the time. And not with the benefit of a flying saucer, neither; but just with a couch, lunatic and relaxed manner.’
“I sighed, ‘I don’t mean metaphoric inner space, but the literal kind: the microcosmos, the mini solar-system.’
“He sneered, ‘Don’t care for them, boyo.’
“I didn’t bother to argue with him; the water sloshed around us, and in a matter of minutes we sloshed with it, as the saucer revolved. Soon I was very giddy and sick, but before I felt the need to vomit over the rim of the disc, we had landed on firm ground.
“We eased ourselves out of the pool and slid down the saucer’s side to the surface of the planet. The balcony we had previously stood on was far above us; in the sky in all other directions were other miniature worlds. I still felt dizzy and promptly sat down.
“Tin Dylan sat next to me and hugged his knees.
“Instantly some manholes in the bare rock opened and aliens came up and surrounded us. They were perfect dwarves, all of them, but one was a little more regal than his companions. He shouted, ‘What the hell are you pair doing on my orb without visas?’
“I was amazed that he knew we didn’t have the correct paperwork, but I decided to play for time and I said, ‘We’re from the topside and can’t talk to you because we don’t know your language, so it’s pointless giving us a hard time with official bureaucracy.’
“He stamped his foot and hissed, ‘That’s the corniest trick in the book! I’m going to order you hurled back into space immediately. I’ve had a bad week and your presence doesn’t help.’
“Well, that was an opening that I couldn’t ignore. ‘A bad week, eh? I’m sure we can be of assistance to you. My name is Castor and I’m an expert on anything; and this is Dylan and he acts as a fine contrast to me. There’s no reason to deal with us too hastily.’
“The dwarf stroked his beard and responded, ‘Very well. For the sake of the plot, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. I’m King Crotchety and this is the planet Glissando. For the entire duration of my long reign, my dream has been to increase the number of notes in the indigenous octave. I hear that topside you have eight, but we have only ever had seven. Yes, that does make a mockery of the word ‘octave’ but an occasional dose of mock never harmed anyone, did it?’
“I nodded. ‘It didn’t harm the Tudors,’ I said.
“The king fixed me with a fierce stare. ‘The one note we are missing is Middle C. We just don’t have it. So I’ve been dispatching flying saucers, which are actually overgrown musical notes, to the outer world in order to bring back Middle C, but so far they have only imported quantities of salt water. Soon Glissando will be deluged and rendered uninhabitable for my people: what has gone wrong?’
“I was about to speak but Tin Dylan interrupted me. ‘Overgrown notes, you say? But what variety are they?’
“King Crotchety answered, ‘Quavers with their stalks snapped off. We have vast forests of giant wild quavers under the crust of our little planet, for Glissando is also a hollow world, with its own miniature solar system at its core. One of those even smaller planets is my throne, in fact, and it spins me around a sun no bigger than a burning garden shed. But none of this is very relevant to our trouble.’
“I frowned and pondered his problem for almost a minute. ‘I know the solution to your horrid situation; and I’ll tell you, but only if you promise to spare our lives. Do you agree?’
“His little face flushed with repressed rage but finally he twiddled both his orb and sceptre as if weighing up his options and nodded. I wasted no time sharing my insights with him.
“I said plainly, ‘The major problem is that Middle C is a homonym for Middle Sea, in other words for the Mediterranean, and the flying saucers are thus prone to getting confused about their exact instructions. Because they are musical notes, they can be a bit dense. They are collecting water from the Mediterranean by mistake.’
“The king was delighted with this answer. He knew it was right and he immediately issued orders to reprogram the saucers. Then he arranged for both his g
uests to be inundated with gifts, typical examples of Glissando arts and crafts. I got an iridium treble clef and Tin Dylan was given a new harp to replace the one that was turned into an ondes Martenot speaker. I was feeling cheeky so I asked the king if I might send some postcards to my friends from his planet, as proof of my adventures here. He agreed at once and I popped them in the post.
“Then King Crotchety commanded a flying saucer to carry us back to the balcony, and from there up the corridor to the main doors, which slid open at the sound of our approach.
“The saucer deposited us on the beach, but the tide had gone right out and we were perfectly safe. The doors closed again and I wondered if the king would ever regret letting us go so easily. After all, I had tricked him! The saucers weren’t collecting water from the Mediterranean but from the more mundane Bristol Channel! I shared this secret with the harpist, but he simply pouted and said, ‘But all the same, boyo, what if this sea really is the Mediterranean? It might be!’
“I stared at him in disbelief and answered, ‘If that is the case, then the Gower Peninsular must be Italy; and Porthcawl is Messíni in Greece; and if you are really heading to Chaud-Mellé from here you are going in the wrong direction!’ Then I guffawed.
“But he didn’t take the bait and he shouldered his harp and walked off towards the east, without saying a word or looking back; and I turned to the west, back to Porthcawl and walked that way. And we never saw each other again. But I don’t regret that.”
* * * *
Having finished his tale, Castor moved to the task of finishing his pint; he accomplished this latter feat in the blink of an eye, or rather it would have been in that time span if any eye trained on him had blinked; but the orbs of Paddy and Harris were wide open.
“A miniature world inhabited by a race of dwarves?” spluttered Paddy at last, and Castor wondered at his astonishment, which was excessive for such an insignificant cosmic detail.
“Of course! It was a dwarf planet like Ceres or Eris. What other kinds of beings would you expect to find there? Giants! Be sensible please! It’s an inevitable outcome of evolution.”