Tiger- Crusade

by David Smith

  ‘Oh. Well that too, of course. If there’s time.’

  Crash couldn’t help but smile. He’d had similar dreams . . . when he was about fifteen.

  Jonny gave in to the inevitable. ‘So what song are you planning to do?’

  Crash scratched his head. ‘Selassie says I should go for something that tugs at the heart-strings. I figured I’d go with “It’s Tough Being a Woman”. That’s a proper tear jerker.’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘Oh the standard sort of Country and Western themes: Love, infidelity and domestic violence’ nodded Crash, sagely, ‘If it goes down well, there’s a load more such songs. If I need to wind it up down the line, Cassie wrote a whole passel of songs about child abuse, alcoholism and suicide.’

  --------------------

  The show’s theme music faded away to be replaced by the twang of bass and steel guitars.

  A heavily made up Crash strummed his guitar and began singing his selected Cassie Wright song:

  ‘It’s hard keeping eight kids safe from harm

  When you live on your own and work on a farm

  And your man’s job takes him far from home

  There’s nothing as tough as being alone.

  I know he ain’t perfect, I guess no man can be

  And that just makes things harder for me.

  He’s supposed to be working, but I ain’t so sure

  Friends tell me he’s drinking, when he ain’t shagging whores.

  Every day is a struggle, he’s never around

  It’s tough being a woman . . . but I love him

  It’s tough being a woman . . . but I love him

  My friends they don’t like him, but I think he’s fine

  It’s great when he comes home after doing his time

  I do wish he wouldn’t screw that bitch next door

  I can’t take that smug smile of hers any more.

  His friends are OK, just a little bit rough

  They’re good with their booze and their drugs and that stuff

  They don’t let my kids go near all that shit

  Though that maybe ‘cos kids can’t afford it

  Every day is a struggle, he’s never around

  It’s tough being a woman . . . but I love him

  It’s tough being a woman . . . but I love him

  He don’t beat me as much as he used to before

  The kids hide from him, they don’t like him no more

  But he’s good to us, even held up a store

  For the money that kept the wolf from the door

  Yeah, he beat up my Dad and he shot my brother

  And I still can’t believe he had sex with my mother

  My friends ask me why I continue to suffer

  But I wouldn’t change a thing in my husband and lover.

  Every day is a struggle, he’s never around

  It’s tough being a woman . . . but I love him

  It’s tough being a woman . . . but I love him

  Every day is a struggle, even when he’s around

  It’s tough being a woman . . . but I love him

  It’s tough being a wife . . . I still love him

  The music faded and Crash waited in anticipation. To his horror he wasn’t greeted by the thunderous applause he’d hoped for. Instead all he could hear was wailing and howls of anguish from the studio audience.

  --------------------

  The theme music faded away and an image of the living room of the Big Sibling House appeared with a voice-over from a narrator.

  ‘Oh. Hello. Only me. It’s day two in the Big Sibling Household. Out of our twelve contestants, five have already walked out after finding they can’t live in the same house as Han A’ryt. Today the remaining house-mates have been given the task of producing a mural that depicts how they feel about being isolated in the Big Sibling House.’

  The picture cut to the living room of the main Big Sibling House. As was the norm for the Tana, the entire room was painted in shades of grey, and if the contestants sat still too long they became lost in the background.

  The only obvious difference from the previous day was a huge canvas on one wall on which the various contestants had begun to paint images of themselves in varying shades of grey. The pictures were child-like at best and bore little resemblance to their actual appearance other than being grey. The arguments had already started.

  ‘Look, I’m not saying that your idea is a stupid idea. That presumes some thought has gone into it, which it evidently hasn’t.’

  As coached by her support team, Hannah Wright from Tiger’s Relief Phaser Crew was just being herself, but it wasn’t going down well with the rest of the house-mates.

  The unfortunate victim of Hannah’s attention was clearly unhappy. ‘Han, please leave me alone. I’m only trying to do what Big Sibling has told us to do.’

  Hannah was having none of it. ‘But you’re just painting a stick-figure of yourself. And it’s a really rubbish stick-figure at that. It’s supposed to show how you feel, not how you think you look. It should be an impressionist piece, or possibly even a surreal piece!’

  ‘But I’m only doing what the rest of the house-mates are doing Han!’ bleated the little Tana.

  ‘Just because they’re all wrong doesn’t mean you have to be as well! Think outside the box. Be a little different’ goaded Hannah.

  ‘But I’m not different! I’m just an ordinary person drawing an ordinary Tana figure!’ cried the Tana with tears of frustration forming in her eyes.

  The camera panned down the line of five other Tana, all hard at work, painting variations of the same basic grey stick-figure. In the very centre of the canvas was a huge Jackson-Pollack-esque explosion of bright colours, many of which had spilled over onto the neighbouring segments with their orderly, but badly drawn stick-figures.

  The Tana tried to ignore Hannah and carry on with her little grey auto-icon, but Hannah was having none of it and took a big dollop of red paint and splashed it all over the little grey stick-figure.

  ‘There!’ said Hannah smugly, ‘Now it looks angry.’

  The Tana stood up, hands balled into hard fists, and turned to Hannah with murderous intent in her eyes.

  The picture cut to a blank screen with the words ‘This scene has been edited due to the excessive violence that followed.’

  --------------------

  Lyndsey Stiles had been training animals all her life as a hobby, starting as a precocious five year old on her parent’s farm back in New South Wales, Australia. She’d been hugely honoured to be entrusted with this unusual and dangerous mission.

  The four judges sat in a neat, grey, unsmiling row as Lyndsey trotted onto the stage in her skimpy diamante spangled leotard. Draped around her shoulders she carried Wobbles, PO Esther Milano’s 1.5m long pet Argelian sandworm.

  The Head Judge greeted her. ‘Er . . . Hello. Who are you then?’

  Lyndsey smiled ‘My name is Lin Styalz, and my act is training animals to do special things. This is Wobbles, an Argelian Sandworm, and he does impressions.’

  Music began to play and Lyndsey sat in front of Wobbles facing the judges, placing Wobbles between her and the audience. She placed her hands together, hooked her thumbs together and then spread her fingers outwards.

  Wobbles reared up, then began to sway and bend, mimicking the outline of Lyndsey’s hand. When it had reached the desired shape, Lyndsey shouted ‘Bird!’ and the audience nodded in recognition and began to applaud politely.

  Lyndsey moved her hands into two touching right angles, and Wobbles formed a series of rising right angles. Lyndsey shouted ‘Stairs!’ and there were laughs and more spontaneous applause.

  The act went on, Lyndsey creating a shape that Wobbles would impersonate, each increasingly random, but each bringing a degree of amusement.

  At the end of the act, the judges passed their verdict.

  ‘That was very nice’ said the first grey judge.

  The second judg
e agreed, adding ‘Very amusing. I nearly laughed!’

  ‘Oh ok. I think we should all vote then’ added the first judge. ‘It’s a yes from me.’

  ‘And me’ added the second judge.

  The third judge looked quite startled to be put on the spot so quickly and squeaked uncertainly, ‘And me?’

  The fourth judge had actually nodded off, so the first judge said ‘Congratulations, that’s three yeses and some snoring. You’re through to the next round.’

  --------------------

  Chief Belle stood at one end of the ‘Tana Warrior’ arena.

  In her mind she ran through the points her coach had made before she entered the arena. This was supposed to be entertainment. He reckoned that killing anyone would probably count against her.

  She pushed the comment to the back of her mind. What kind of maniac did the coach think she was?? Admittedly there was that incident with the Tana make-up artist, but the damned woman had sneaked up on her so quietly. And she could have had anything hidden in that powder puff.

  Still, it was done now. Apparently the Tana kept growing teeth right through their lives so the make-up artist probably wouldn’t miss the odd four. Once her broken jaw healed.

  Trying to keep focus as she waited she looked down and saw her grey arms and grey legs. It had been something of a stretch to get her to pass for a Tana, as she was tall even by the standards of human females. She towered over the female Tana contestants and most of the male ones, too.

  Her task was simple: she had to fight her way past four defenders of a padded alleyway as quickly as possible. They would use large padded implements to try to slow her down or stop her altogether.

  She could sense their trepidation and as the umpire counted down, she could feel the familiar surge of adrenaline course through her veins.

  ‘ . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . GO!!’

  The Chief was built like a line-backer. She sprinted out of the blocks like an express train and hit the first defender so low and so hard she sailed clean over the metre-high alley wall without touching it. The Chief barely slowed, and ran straight over the next defender like a stampeding elephant.

  The third defender moved forward to try and catch the Chief before she could build up more momentum, but the Chief’s straight-arm caught her jaw like a battering-ram and dropped her where she stood.

  The fourth defender saw all of this in a matter of four seconds and simply threw herself out of the way.

  The Chief reached the end of the alley in 5.2 seconds, or 6 kells by Tana reckoning, breaking the previous record for the event by 24 Kells.

  --------------------

  Dave was aghast. ‘How can we possibly by out of five competitions already?? The competitions have only been open for a week!’

  Selassie looked at Petrakova and Panesar, who could only shrug sheepishly. The Steward saw this and answered on their behalf.

  ‘Things haven’t gone quite to plan, sir. We couldn’t have known that Lieutenant Stallworth’s act would have gone down like it did. I think the Tana generally acknowledged his ability and their news sites have been full of talk of him being the first true Tana super-star.’

  ‘But he went out of the competition!’ groaned Dave.

  ‘Yes sir, unfortunately, his song seems to have so traumatised the Tana public that they couldn’t actually motivate themselves to vote. Ironically, the switchboard for the Tana equivalent of the Samaritans was jammed solid for two days after his performance.’

  Dave could only shake his head in amazement.

  Panesar felt obliged to help explain. ‘Billy Yau was just unlucky. We loaded him up with everything we could find on Tana history, society, science, geography, the lot. We were holding pop quizzes every hour and we couldn’t believe how much stuff he could remember. Unfortunately, come the day of his turn on “The Meekest Link”, all of the questions were based on what had happened in Tana soap operas and reality TV shows over the last few months. We hadn’t even considered anything like that. Half a dozen questions and he was out.’

  The Steward continued in his usual calm and measured manner. ‘I suppose it was always risky putting Chief Belle in the “Tana Warrior” show. To be fair to her, she’s not actually out of the competition, it’s just been suspended for six weeks while the defenders that she faced on the first show recover from their injuries. And of course the resumption of the competition assumes that they’re willing to go up against her again.’

  Dave rubbed his temples. He could feel a headache coming on and was already wondering how Chamberlain could explain the abduction of the Sha T’Al First Minister if Tiger didn’t fulfil her half of the mission.

  The Steward pretended not to notice and carried on. ‘I suppose having Hannah Wright ejected from the Big Sibling House shouldn’t have come as a surprise, either. Her crew-mates have often said she could start a fight in a broom-closet even if she was on her own. We just assumed that would make her an interesting competitor.’

  ‘So how did she get kicked out?’

  ‘Actually, she didn’t sir, but within two days of the start of the competition all of the other eleven competitors had had enough of her and walked out. They couldn’t really declare Wright the winner as the public hadn’t voted at all by that stage, so they just cancelled the show.

  ‘And what happened to our entrant in MasterCook?’

  ‘Chef Jana Nastasic was unlucky to be thrown off the show on a technicality, sir.’

  ‘Technicality?’

  ‘Yes. Apparently there’s something in the small print of the rules about not poisoning the judges.’

  Dave’s head thumped down onto the desk. ‘We are so screwed.’

  ‘Chin up, sir!’ said the Steward. ‘We still have excellent candidates in the other two shows.’

  Dave looked up. ‘And they’ve only got to get through another three weeks of competition . . . ‘

  --------------------

  Lyndsey Stiles was well aware that she was going to have to up her game. Her and Wobbles had got through in the first week, but it seemed to her that the audience had reacted far more positively to some of the other acts.

  She realised that she was up against it in that respect as the Tana psyche was a bit of a mystery. The act that was on stage at the moment consisted of a half dozen naked Tana belly-flopping or bombing into a large clear tank of water.

  It had the audience in absolute hysterics, even though they were doing exactly the same act as last week.

  The act immediately before that was theoretically a folk singer. She’d been unable to perform, as during last week’s show she’d tripped over and broken her jaw. The Tana seemed to have taken this as a form of comedy act and she’d been voted through.

  Lyndsey only had this semi-final to get through and she’d at least be in with a shot in the Grand Final two weeks down the line. She’d have two weeks to come up with an absolute barn-stormer of an act.

  To beef up her act, she’d decided to get Biff involved. Biff was PO Carver’s ‘seeing-eye’ dog, an exceptionally clever Labrador.

  Labradors are among the easiest of dogs to train, being generally placid in temperament and with a noticeable obsession with food. Biff was typical in that respect, but one of his less–attractive traits was his tendency to hump anything that moved given half a chance. If nothing was moving, some nearby inanimate object could expect to get the rogering of a life-time instead.

  Lyndsey had been on the wrong end of this tendency several times and had given in to the inevitable and switched to a white costume this week. She just hoped Biff could control himself long enough to complete his act where Wobbles would form a hoop for him to skip through.

  The Tana splash act was beginning to reach a climax, and Lyndsey caught a shout from the Producer’s assistant. Three minutes to go.

  She went back to her dressing room to collect Wobbles and Biff. She opened the door and screeched in horror when she found Biff on top of Wobbles humping the living da
ylights out of the poor worm.

  She dragged the randy dog off, but to her dismay Wobbles looked badly shaken. His normal bright pink colour was faded and washy and he was curled up into a tight, trembling, unresponsive ball. She gently put him back into his carrying box and closed the lid.

  She sighed to herself. That was her out of the competition then.

  An irritated squawk disturbed her. ‘Not now Skid . . . ‘

  Maybe she could do something just with Biff, but she didn’t have any props for him to do an agility course and they hadn’t practised anything other than the simplest obedience tricks . . .

  Another louder squawk was followed by a stabbing peck on her shin. ‘Oww!! Not now dammit, Skid!’

  She looked down at the short tempered penguin that was Tiger’s unofficial ship’s mascot. The little sod was obsessed with sardines and would do absolutely anything for one . . .

  --------------------

  The host of the show came on and in her usual polished style said ‘Er . . . Hello. Only me again. Sorry. It’s time for our next act thingy now. Which is Lin Styalz and her animal friends. Um, enjoy!’

  Some gentle back-ground music began to play and the lights came up to show Lyndsey casually sat on the edge of the big glass water-tank. She dipped a toe in the water as she calmly opened a can of sardines and took out one of the tiny fish.

  The spot-lights and lights at the front of the stage went down, and powerful lights at the rear of the stage came on to silhouette the top half of the tank.

  Lyndsey casually tossed the fish across the surface of the water. There were ‘Ooooohs!’ and ‘Ahhhhs!’ from the audience as the surface of the tank exploded in a shower of glistening, fluorescing droplets. A tiny black and white shape burst out of the water and caught the fish in mid-flight.

  The black and white shape drew a perfect arc through the air, then splashed back into the water leaving a trail of glowing bubbles as it plunged back into the depths of the tank.

  Lyndsey reached into the tank and hoped that Skid would remember what they’d practiced last time the toilets on Deck 6 had flooded. She banged the side of the tank hard once, took another fish and waited for a peak in the music before launching the fish out across the tank.