Ticklers

by David Fletcher

  Better not to think about it now. It was beginning to ruin his anticipation, beginning to interfere with the “buzz” he was still enjoying. Much better to concentrate on the clothes again. Which shirt to wear with his jeans. A light blue one or a slightly less light blue one? And then a sharp voice from the intercom shattered the silence of the monoflight's cockpit.

  'Tenting, Renton Tenting. This is For-bin-Ah from the Pandiloop office. Please acknowledge!'

  Renton shot two inches out of his moulded hammock. And when he came down he had turned into a fish, a fish that was gulping for air. He was on the edge of hyperventilation. His penchant for being taken off guard was still, it seemed, exceptionally good. It may even have got slightly better.

  'Tenting, Renton Tenting. Please acknowledge. Please acknowledge.'

  His mind groped its way through its turmoil, desperately trying to overcome the shock of that blasted intercom thing. He was never ever prepared for it. And when a disembodied voice addressed him personally, forename as well as surname, and with a dreadful urgency… well, it was just too much. And it came again before he could assemble anything like a reasonable response.

  'Tenting, Renton Tenting. Come in please. This is For-bin-Ah. Knight of the League. Respond now. This is an emergency.'

  He relapsed even before he'd half recovered. This was his new boss - the Tickler in charge of the Pandiloop office. He hadn't even waited until he'd arrived in Pandiloop. Holy Henry, he was already on duty and they wanted him to do something now! Without seeing what he was wearing or whether he had a hard-set jaw, or whether he was smiling cheerily. It was just too much.

  He fell through the basement of his fright and his vocal chords took over from his brain. All on their own.

  'Tenting here,' they said firmly, 'reporting for duty. What is it you want, sir?'

  'God,' thought Renton, 'my voice sounds just like me.' And he began to smile.

  'Ah, Renton, welcome to Pandiloop. Sorry for the rude awakening, but we've got some business for you, business that won't keep. You see, you're perfectly placed to help us - to help us catch someone - an irritating little bastard we've been after for weeks now. We need you to track him. He's entering one of our blind spots. But if you come out of hyper, you'll be able to pick him up and tail him - until he's back in sight. Understand?'

  'Not exactly,' thought Renton.

  'Yes,' replied his vocal chords.

  'Ah yes! Yes!' he thought. 'I do understand. The tracking device! We had a module on it! And I've got one. Just here. By the Coke fountain!’

  'His alpha frequency is 002.154.773. Have you got that, Renton? Can you repeat?'

  '002.154.773' responded his vocal chords crisply.

  'What!?' thought Renton. 'Did you say 002.154.733? Or was it 002.145.733? Oh Christ, I'd better get involved in this myself, or I'm going to make a complete cock of it.'

  He cleared his throat and wrenched back the controls of his vocal chords. Too firmly as it transpired, so that when he requested 'sender please confirm alpha frequency' it was in a trembling falsetto. But the sender ignored the aberration and provided the required confirmation, calmly and slowly. '002.154.733', he said.

  Renton tapped it out immediately on the tracker keyboard: 002.157.433.

  'Thank God I've got that sorted,' he whispered to himself. And feeling now just like a real Tickler, he proceeded to disengage with his control. 'Initiating command,' he announced. And For-bin-Ah responded immediately with the obligatory: 'Up Gwinivere', the Knights' sign-off signal - incomprehensible, but traditional and essential.

  The intercom clicked into silence as Renton engaged the tracker by punching two buttons on its small console. '002.157.433' pulsated on its display. And then a physically painful shriek exploded from its innards.

  'Ah! Sorry! sorry! sorry!' screamed Renton against the shriek. And he hurriedly stabbed at the console buttons. He'd forgotten to come out of hyper before engaging tracking. And the tracking technology didn't like that. It made it shriek. It was much better when he did everything in the right order. And the tracker, freed from the searing blast of hyperspeed, started to work as its designers intended, its scanning indicator ticking like a metronome without the slightest hint of high-pitched displeasure.

  And it went on scanning and ticking and then scanned and ticked some more. Then, after precisely five minutes, it stopped. And Renton's cardio vascular plumbing threatened to do likewise. His saliva emigrated and his head swirled.

  He remembered enough from his tracker operation module to know that the abrupt end to the scanning process meant that the target craft could not be found. And that meant that any craft with an alpha frequency of 002.157.433 wasn't in the tracker's range - and that meant it must be more than a hundred light years away. And from his deduction module, Renton deduced instantaneously that he'd keyed in the wrong number. There was no way his quarry had gotten that far away that quickly.

  'Bugger, bugger, bugger,' was all he could think to say.

  But what do to now? How to pick up the pieces of his first dropped clanger on official duty?

  Then he remembered the search facility. Another button on the tracker console. It worked by moving the alpha frequency a digit at a time, field by field, backwards and forwards from the original number, patch-scanning all the time until it locked onto the first thing it found with a new, nearby frequency. He pushed the button and began to massage his chest - just in case the cardio vascular plumbing began to get edgy again.

  002.157.434.432… 158.434.432… 159… and so on and so on. But nothing, absolutely nothing.

  He began to thump his chest at what he thought was heartbeat pace. Still nothing.

  He pressed the search button again. Just for something to do. Nothing.

  He started to whistle and beat his chest more firmly. Still nothing.

  Then he pounded his chest with both hands drawn into fists. Like a gorilla.

  Then something!

  002.186.432. The tracker was locked. He'd found his quarry. He had the little bastard. He'd done it. Mission accomplished! Brilliant! What a start to his career as a Tickler!

  He sat smiling, imagining how he might paint a small spacecraft with a stroke through it on the side of his monoflight. The first of many!

  He felt elated in a way he hadn't since his excursion to Dumpiter. And this boundless elation, something quite different to his graduation high, lasted right up to the moment the pilot of the craft he was tracking introduced himself through the intercom. 'This is Kent. Knight Kent. I am piloting craft II Omega Plaza of the Intergalactic Chivalrous Knights' League, alpha frequency 002.186.432. Please identify yourself and explain why you are tracking this vehicle. Please respond directly.'

  There wasn't much warmth in Kent's voice. He sounded almost angry. And Renton was mortified. So deeply mortified that his brain had to defer to his vocal chords again. Then there was a period of garbled apology as his brain tried to take part in the proceedings. And then his brief exchange with his fellow knight was at an end and Renton felt like shit.

  A little while later he felt like more excrement as he reported back to For-bin-Ah that he hadn't been able to find their villain for them. But his report wasn't the most comprehensive of reports, and it was a little light on the matter of locking onto another Knight of the League.

  For-bin-Ah sounded mildly surprised and mildly disappointed, but didn't press Renton on the matter. Instead he just chatted about the little scoundrel they had missed yet again, a nasty little conman who masqueraded (very successfully) as a lawyer. And then he assured Renton that they would catch him sooner or later. And that, anyway, he was small news compared to Renton's awaited arrival on Pandiloop. And that everybody was really looking forward to meeting him. And with a warmth that was certainly absent in the Kent exchange, he wished him a safe end to his journey and a happy landing in his new home.

  As the intercom went silent, Renton's feeling like excrement factor went up two more notches.

  Then
his heart sank. He hadn't reported tracking Kent. But sure as sure, Kent would report being tracked by Renton. How could he be so stupid!? What a start to a new career. A little distillation of the facts was just about in order, but only if the distillery wasn't located. And in this instance it would be. And the identity of the distiller.

  But Renton need not have worried. Ten minutes after talking with For-bin-Ah, these worries were put to rest. Completely. By a screen message on the League's comms channel. A news item for Tickler forces everywhere. It was to the effect that Grader had stolen a League monoflight and was cruising around under the identity of one Knight Kent.

  So Renton hadn't tracked a knight after all. And he wouldn't be reported by Kent, because Kent wasn't Kent, he was Grader. And Renton knew who Grader was.

  He was a chap who had been a Tickler once. But some time ago he had gone seriously and permanently berserk. He had become a renegade killer, responsible for countless grisly murders. And included in his list of victims were a number of his former colleagues - about forty of them. He was a killing machine gone mad, a psychopath now being hunted the length and breadth of the universe, wanted dead or alive, but preferably dead. Public enemy number one, the League's most sought after villain, responsible for the worst outrages they had suffered in generations. A monster who'd crept out of Hell.

  And Renton had tracked him. And had spoken to him. And had not asked him for proof of his identity. And had apologised to him. Profusely. And had then let him go.

  Renton now felt like something far worse then shit. Something unspeakable.

  And the buzz of being a Tickler had fallen to a very low drone.

  7.

  The Pandiloop office of the League was predominantly a large square of concrete.

  Indeed so predominant was this unrelieved expanse of hard stuff that, as his monoflight glided in above it, Renton thought for a moment that the office had gone. That possibly his reputation had arrived there before him, and that the Pandiloop garrison had then made the smartest of moves and moved smartly away, taking with them any evidence that they'd been there before.

  But no. There were some spacecraft down there - in the shadow of a long, low building, made from what looked like… yes, concrete. And beyond that there were some concrete hangers and what could only be concrete warehouses, and yes… a couple of concrete mixers, laying more bloody concrete.

  'Blimey,' thought Renton, 'what a dump! What a great big, horrible, made-entirely-out-of-concrete sort of dump. And I'm going to live here. What the hell am I doing?'

  This really did put the lid on it. Not only had he been obliged to confront his gross incompetence in the matter of Grader. And not only was he now going to have to confront a brand new set of people, something he found intensely uncomfortable at the best of times. But it appeared he was also going to have to confront concrete. Indeed, he was going to have to live with the stuff. And he hated it. He hated its texture. He hated its colour. He hated its colour when it was new. He hated its colour when it was weathered. He hated its brutality. He hated its “deadness”. In fact, he hated everything about it. And now he was landing in a bloody desert of it. And it was just too much, too, too much. And not at all what he'd hoped for.

  Well, he was now in a state that even he found hard to stomach. And it was time to do something about it.

  'Come on, you great girl's blouse,' he told himself. 'It's only friggin' concrete. And what the bloody hell did you expect? Pastry?

  'Oh, and you're a friggin' Tickler now, remember? So just get on with it and get down there. Now. And stop acting like a prat.'

  It worked. The nadir was past. And as he stepped from his monoflight onto the concrete apron to be greeted by what looked to be the whole of the Pandiloop office, he knew things were already on the up. And when he spotted that guy at the front, the one with the black T-shirt and the pair of worn jeans, he knew it was up all the way…

  He was right. From there on in, it simply got better and better. It turned out that it wasn't just the clothes that were reassuring, so was the warmth of their owners. In fact, his reception felt more like a homecoming than a welcome. And there wasn't even any mention of his tracking - or of his losing track - or of his losing his quarry. Which was no small relief…

  And then there was the concrete. They apologised for it immediately. It was all to do with the scewerwort apparently - some sort of local bindweed with invasive habits that bordered on the manic, not to say on the total-world-domination-by-a-plant-in-the-shortest-time-possible.

  And only the concrete held it at bay. Without their acres of it, they'd be overwhelmed. And as this terrible vegetable could even grow on roofs, it helped to have the buildings made out of concrete as well. And whilst the office block might look a little bleak from here, it was very cosy inside…

  Oh, and then there was For-bin-Ah, the knight in charge of the office who had led this warmest of all welcomes. And whilst he didn't look to be particularly cosy on the inside, he did look the part.

  Like Renton, he was a regular humanoid. But with a humanoid body that Renton could only dream of. It was sinewy under that T-shirt and jeans (yes, another T-shirt 'n jeans!). And where it wasn't sinewy, it was padded with muscle - four-ply, spacecraft-grade muscle. And with all this obvious strength came equally obvious intellect. One could see it in his eyes - dark penetrating eyes set in a face that was rugged yet fine. He looked every inch a knight and every inch a knight in charge of a League office.

  And then there was Meitchars… Meitchars was the other resident knight in Pandiloop, and… well, well maybe he didn't look quite the part.

  To start with, he wasn't a humanoid. His head was certainly not human at all. It was a large hairless oval tapering to a sharp point at the chin. Quite sharp enough, thought Renton, to qualify as an offensive weapon. But then the face above the chin was the complete antithesis of anything to do with offensive. It was pale and its texture was eggshell smooth. In its middle sat a small turned-up-at-the-end nose above an equally small turned-up-at-the-edges mouth - almost comic accompaniments to the main feature of his face: his eyes. They were huge round discs and they were jet black. And in some way they radiated warmth - and tranquillity, an unmistakable sense of deep calm. They were simply stunning, and quite the most remarkable eyes Renton had ever seen.

  Meitchars' body was also remarkable - but in an entirely different way. It was its proportions. His torso was only a little larger than his head, but it was supported by legs which were a foot or more longer than Renton's own. It was as though his crutch hadn't known when to stop on the way up, and had finally decided on a halt at mid-chest level. His arms had the same problem. They hadn't stopped growing until they'd nearly reached the ground. His hands dangled around his ankles.

  The overall result was a complete failure in aesthetic terms, and it certainly didn't appear to help his posture. He had all the poise of a scarecrow. But he did have those eyes…

  And Renton knew this would be the guy he'd be working with. And although he didn't look anything like a conventional knight - in the way that, for example, For-bin-Ah did - Renton knew he'd be the right guy to have at his side. It was all in those eyes, you see.

  And that made Renton very happy.

  In a very concrete sort of way…

  8.

  The planet, Caldak, earned its living from oil and gas. It was just full of the stuff. And it was this that had first caught Sereza's attention. But after his attention had been caught, it was the planet's colour that had made it irresistible for him. It was black.

  Its rocks were black. Its soils were black. Its sands were black. And then its poor old vegetation didn't help much either. It was mostly of the everblack coniferous variety, lacking colour even in its fruits and flowers. None of the species seemed to want to stand out from the crowd - as a patron of the colourful. And it was the same for its fauna. All its known representatives were either black or grey - on the inside as well as the outside. And this, incidentally, made th
em extremely unappealing as food - to the oil worker colonists who had come to their world.

  Indeed these colonists had very little to do with any aspect of Caldak that wasn't directly connected with the extraction of oil and gas. It was such an uninviting place - dark, dull and depressing. They tended instead to huddle together in the network of cities they'd built, trying to ignore the daylight night that surrounded them.

  Sereza saw things differently. It was the pervasive blackness of this place that made it something of a Mecca for him. That made it somewhere he just had to visit - to indulge himself in his hobby - the hobby that now ruled his life.

  He pressed on up the path and eventually he caught sight of the fallen tree - close to where he'd left his ship. He was nearly at the end of his climb.

  He'd landed here nearly a week ago. And since then he'd managed to visit all three cities strung out along the immense Pei valley: Pie-enna at the top of the valley, Sasala, about fifteen miles further down, and Raffa, just here below his landing spot. Not bad for someone on foot and with a sizeable rucksack to haul round - and someone intent on avoiding the attention of the locals. It had been hard work but he'd enjoyed it. And he'd enjoyed the anticipation even more, the anticipation of what was now just a few minutes away - when at last he was back at his spaceship.

  And there it was! His lovely old skipper. Might not be as flash as one of those bloody monoflights. But good enough for Sereza. And superbly drab and dreary. He couldn't have camouflaged it better if he'd tried. It simply melted into the drabness of the hillside. It was all but invisible. Just as he liked to think he was. Especially at times like these, at these “special” times.

  He trotted the last few paces to his ship. He was eager to get started now - before the evening wore on and it became the black Caldak night. He threw down his rucksack and scampered onto the top of the skipper. Then he was opening its entrance hatch. Then he disappeared inside it.