by Dave Barsby
“So, you really claim to know everything?” I ask, desperate to milk out even just a gobbet of knowledge.
“I do, yes. All those big, taxing questions.”
“Do you know the meaning of life? If there is a God?”
“I do,” he answers proudly. “And-”
Just then, just at the very moment he is about to tell me the secrets to life, the universe and everything, Bob I is distracted.
“Ah, here comes your friend,” he says, spying an advancing Drift. “Maybe he would like to join in this conversation.”
“Umm, Drift?” I say, rising from my chair in panic. “Could you give us a moment?”
“’Fraid not, time’s running out.”
“Oh, what a pity!” Bob I exclaims to Drift. “I was just about to inform your colleague of the true meaning of life.”
“Let me tell you of the true meaning of death,” Drift says.
“Oh, please, the afterlife debate? We had that one figured out aeons ago.”
I fire my mind into overdrive, hastily reviewing options in an attempt to choose the most suitable before it is too late. Should I try to persuade Drift, or warn Bob I? Maybe I could attack Drift or physically pick Bob I up and run off with him. Whatever option I choose I must do it as quick as I-
Thunk!
I am too late. Drift has used a dinner fork to spear Bob I’s neck.
“No!” I scream. Bob I is still alive, mortally wounded but alive. “Why?!?” I shout at Drift. “Why did you do it?!?”
Drift is taken aback by my heated response. “He…we need…ship.”
“They knew! Don’t you realise?” I push Drift back with all the force I can muster. “They knew!” I scream at the top of my voice.
I quickly kneel and cup Bob I’s head in my hands. He is fading fast, a thick dark fluid spilling from his torn throat.
“That explains a few things,” he croaks.
“Bob I, talk to me,” I wail. “Please, tell me. Tell me what you know.”
Bob I turns his heavy-lidded gaze to me, manages a feeble smile. “Ironic, isn’t it,” he whispers. “To think I know the secret to immortality.” One final breath of ragged air passes through his lipless mouth, and his lids slowly close. Bob I is dead.
Standing, I stare at Drift with as much hatred I can muster. After a moment of shock, he composes himself, shrugs and picks Bob I up.
“What’s up with you?” Rogdo asks, coming to see what all the screaming and pushing is about.
“Damn you, Flavian!” I hiss.
Rogdo glances at Drift, who again shrugs and mouths “Dunno.”
“What have I done this time?”
I take time, picking my words carefully and ensuring as much venom as possible is loaded into them. “You have just exterminated the most intelligent species in the universe!”
“Oh,” Rogdo answers. “Really?”
“They knew how to travel millions of light years in a split second. They knew how to live forever. They knew the meaning of life. And you killed them all.”
“Well,” Rogdo shrugs. “It’s your planet. You should have invoked some rules to protect the indigenous life. At least now we can leave and start tracking Vitari again.”
“Vitari,” I whisper. “Who cares about that?”
“Me,” Rogdo answers. He joins Drift and together they walk off to ‘process’ Bob I.
I again fall to my knees, I stare at the blood staining the pebbles black, and I cry.
I successfully avoid contact with everyone over the next two weeks – no mean feat when our accommodation module has been jettisoned. I am inconsolable. The answers, all those answers were within my reach. One rusty fork took them away from me. It never occurs to me that Bob I may have been lying, the creature seemed incapable of it. They knew; I can feel it in my gut that they knew.
During my self-imposed exile in Food Locker #4, the Diablo IV is repaired, the planet Bob left far behind, supplies are stolen from a small mining community seventeen light years away and the hunt for Vitari is renewed. I care little about any of it. I slowly re-integrate myself into the crew, but I am just going through the motions. They are all inferior, reckless and self-destructive. They will die soon, justice for their part in the extinction of species Bob.
It is a further four weeks before Vitari’s location has been pinpointed. By now I have successfully created the mask of being back to normal. Inside I am hollow, my life force torn from my spirit. But externally, I am as calm and talkative as before. That is, not very.
Following weeks of analysis, Drift calls a meeting so we can all hear the results of his search for Vitari.
“It seems he’s gone into hiding,” he tells us. “Ditched the gauntlet with the tracker in it. That is why he’s been so hard to track. Evidently he has panicked, believing that as we know the truth the rest of the galaxy does too.”
“How do you know this?” the Princess asks, now seeming almost comfortable with the situation, the crew and her clothing.
“I have contacts who have contacts who beat people up for a living,” Rogdo answers.
“Then it is over?”
“Well, not quite. We still need to take care of him. The problem is, the rest of the galaxy doesn’t know what he’s done. As soon as Vitari discovers this, the game is once more afoot.”
“But I could return home and take up my position in the meantime?”
“No, Princess, that would be too risky. Vitari will still have contacts in high places on Almudena. There is no guarantee we can get to him before he realises the mistake he’s made. If that happens, you will be vulnerable.”
“So what do we do?” I ask wearily.
“We need a confession,” Tima takes up the baton. “Killing him won’t be enough anymore. His friends will still carry out his orders after his death. We need to fully expose his duplicity, we need him to confess his crimes and send it into the public domain. After that, his friends won’t dare move against any of us.”
“It’s been difficult enough trying to kill him,” I point out. “Now we need him to confess live on a major news channel?”
“No, there’s an easier way than that,” Rogdo answers, smiling at me.
“We have the perfect plan,” Tima continues. I groan – their idea of a perfect plan usually involves some bloodshed and a good degree of consternation. “We have acquired the rights to the galactanet domain name gww.hotsexxx.com. We can broadcast the confession on there. With a name like that it will attract far more people than a silly news channel.”
“And how do we get a confession to broadcast in the first place?” I ask.
“We’ll make him talk.”
“Senator Vitari does like a good chat,” Larisa points out.
“And then we just record it and download it,” Rogdo finishes. “By the way, how is your memory implant faring?”
“Oh for…” I mutter, placing my head in my hands. By rights I should have left this crew far behind several months ago. Instead I keep getting roped into their nefarious activities.
“Good,” Rogdo says. “That’s settled then. Now, just one more thing. Where are we heading?”
“We’ve finally tracked Vitari down,” Drift answers. “He’s hiding out on a planet called SARP.”
17. SARP
It takes a nanosecond for Rogdo to become upset. SARP, it seems, holds great significance for him. Quite why would be a pure guess at this point, but as SARP is an abbreviation for Sunny Autumn Retirement Planet, I suspect the place holds a grumpy relative of his.
SARP has been specially engineered to accommodate those expecting the Grim Reaper for tea and biscuits. It is a pleasant, leafy place for the most part. Some areas, such as the poles or mountain ranges have been cordoned off to avoid any unnecessary shortening of the local populace’s lifespan. A fairly bright, pleasantly warm star fuels the planet with occasional rainy showers sprinkling across vast manicured lawns and pattering on the rooftops of endless parades of bungalows.
The planet
consists of five ‘cities’ that are more like massive suburbs than cities. Each one ends with the suffix By-The-Sea, though ironically none of them come within 500 miles of a large body of water. Low to the ground, rather sleepy and catering purely for those in their twilight years, the cities are a far cry from the usual vibrant, culturally nourished metropolises. One fifth of non-residential buildings are hospitals, while two thirds of the planet’s land mass is covered with ever-expanding cemeteries.
Against this pleasant, if somewhat morbid, backdrop lies a conflict (no good planet should be without one). SARP’s conflict is an especially bizarre one, and it involves the fight for control between two industry giants – Meals On Wheels and Stannah. The conflict, which has been raging for over a century, is never too violent, and the death toll is kept at an acceptably low level (around 700 a year). The reason for this is both sides’ insistence on fighting only with tools of the trade. This means the worst injury you can expect from a battle-hardened Meals On Wheels platoon is a burning-hot meat pie in the face, whereas the Stannah soldiers use mobile stairlifts to drop whatever they can find on the opposition from a height of around five metres, giving the enemy plenty of time to simply sidestep out of the way.
The most bizarre aspect of the conflict is Stannah’s contribution. There is not a single multi-storey building on the planet, and therefore no stairs to attach Stannah products to. What they hope to gain from victory is a complete mystery.
As with every culture, SARP balances its import / export business carefully. Top of the export list is knitted products (nicely offset by the importing of flannel and corduroy), with the Motor Buggy Derby races drawing in strong crowds from across the galaxy (as umbrellas and walking canes are classed as legal weapons, the races can sometimes become exceptionally violent). The import business thrives on blue rinse hair dye, replacement teeth and hips, hearing aids and, naturally, marble headstones. But by far the biggest import item is damaged goods. Once, long ago, supermarkets stocked damaged or out-of-date goods in a special area at reduced prices. It was easy to calculate that over 90% of those goods were bought by the elderly. Having spied this lucrative market, manufacturers now ship defective, damaged or stale goods direct to SARP, bypassing the galaxy’s general populace who aren’t quite so dependent on grabbing the nearest unnecessary bargain. Naturally, this system gives the OAPs their inalienable right to offload as much small change as they can carry (counted one by one at the counter, of course). This has led to a surge in employment for sullen teenage cashiers to such an extent that the rest of the galaxy has found itself with a huge deficit of cheap teen labour – the fast food industry, for example, has been thrown into chaos. The only as yet unsolved problem with this system on SARP is that the goods are now readily available to all, cutting out the citizens’ favourite pastime – queuing. However, the citizens have realised this defect themselves and regularly form long queues for no apparent reason. One infamous pair of queues actually loop back upon themselves and are known as the Death Queues. To the casual observer, it seems like a laborious contest to see which queue will be the last to be diminished via fatalities. It is the only time in the history of the universe when the comment “That queue’s going faster than mine” is not spoken in a jealous tone.
Naturally, shopping for bargains and collapsing while queuing are not the only pastimes embraced by this culture. Weekdays are often taken up with discussions – the two most popular topics being The War (with 11,762 to choose from in their lifetime this keeps them going for quite a while) and that everything is too loud these days. Saturdays are days spent in anticipation of a visit from relatives. The citizens are often disappointed. It used to be the case that most relatives couldn’t be bothered to visit, but there is now an added element of danger because of late the OAPs have been so desperate to see a grandson or the like that new arrivals to the planet are immediately besieged by a slow-moving mob of baying, boiled sweet-offering geriatrics. When the crowd realises the visitor is not for them, things can get ugly, and the survival rate of relatives visiting on a Saturday is just 40%. Sundays are, of course, spent worshipping the god of the elderly, the Zimmer walker-manufacturing company, and watching the galaxy’s longest running TV show Last Of The Summer Sherry.
Timing it just right, Rogdo has ensured that we will enter the upper atmosphere of SARP at ten am on a Sunday, negating the possibility of being cooed to death by the wrinkled masses. The planet is rather bleak in its manufactured pleasantness. The grass is carefully trimmed and bright green, the roads are straight and of a light grey concrete, the bungalows made of sandstone with deep red roofs. It looks rather quaint at first glance, but it doesn’t take long before you realise that every single inhabited area of this world looks exactly like this. For people who don’t like change, this place is bliss.
It is a clear sunny day when we depart the somewhat small landing pad and step out onto a clean sidewalk. Ageing buses tootle along the road at regular intervals, but pedestrian traffic is sparse. There is a refreshing breeze in the air, bringing with it the faint scent of lavender, honey and cough drops. Compared to the sparseness of Bob, this is an idyll.
“Any chance we can get some different clothes?” Larisa asks, breaking the peaceful song of chirruping birds. “I only ask because we originally wore these clothes to be inconspicuous, and I do not believe fishnets and a leather corset helps me blend in with all this flannel.”
“If we had any money,” Rogdo answers, “I’d let you buy all the cardigans you want. Here, take my coat.”
He removes his long black leather overcoat and helps Larisa put it on. It is far too big for her and the edges drag along the ground, but the Princess seems quite content to snuggle into it.
Rogdo quickly glances at everyone else. “I guess the rest of us will have to do. Where are we, Drift?”
“Catbury-By-The-Sea. We want number 11, Oak Tree Place. Apparently there are no oak trees in the vicinity.”
“And do we know which way to head?”
“Roughly, but it all looks so similar.”
“We’re going to get lost very quickly,” I point out.
“Good point,” Rogdo answers. “Dirk, Bolland, Hiaelia, stay with the ship. The rest of you with me.”
“How does that help if we get lost?”
“Well, it doesn’t, but there’s no point all of us getting lost, is there.”
“Yeah, right,” I say disparagingly. “That makes sense.”
“Will you stop picking on the Captain?” Larisa suddenly tells me. “He’s trying his best.”
This last statement shocks me more than any event I have yet witnessed. They really are getting along well.
The journey to 11 Oak Tree Place is so peaceful and pleasant I am in a state of bliss when we arrive. The birds have been calling, the sun has been shining, the breeze has been refreshing and even the traffic has been unobtrusive. Okay, so a few of the locals have caused problems. We’ve been derided for being whippersnappers, called hooligans without provocation, and told that our generation just doesn’t know how to enjoy themselves. If Bolland wasn’t currently in his youthful period, I’m sure he’d fit in perfectly.
Clean cut lawns, meticulous flower beds and a tidy sand-and-red bungalow greets us when we arrive at our destination. It looks exactly the same as the 700 other houses we’ve passed along the 16 identical roads. It is no wonder most of the old folk can’t remember their own name – they need all available memory to recall which house is theirs.
“So what do we do?” Drift asks. “Storm the building? Boot down the door, rush him and kick him in the spuds?”
“Let’s just walk in,” Rogdo offers. “There’s no crime on this planet, therefore no locks on any of the doors.”
“But I want to boot it down!”
“Maybe on the way out.” Rogdo turns to me. “You recording?”
“Always.”
He pauses a moment. “Always?” he asks.
“Yeah, I can’t switch it off. Th
e memory implant records everything.”
“Erm…” Rogdo begins nervously. He leans in close and whispers: “Everything?”
“The book is going to be a riveting read,” I grin.
“Yes, well,” Rogdo utters, a little worried, before regaining his composure. “Let’s just get this done, shall we?”
He walks up the neatly-laid beige garden path to the mock-wood front door. Even the door looks quaint, with a small glass window, a brass knocker and an overhanging porch roof adorned with ivy.
Rogdo knocks on the door with the brass knocker. “Avon,” he calls, then opens the door. He enters quickly. Larisa follows, me next.
The house is darkened, the blinds shut. Shafts of sun highlight whorls of dust carried along on the eddies of the draft. It doesn’t look as though the house has been disturbed for quite some time.
“Drift, upstairs,” Rogdo whispers. “Tima, out the back.”
Tima immediately heads down a magnolia-painted corridor and begins inspecting the kitchen. Drift lingers awkwardly.
“Drift!” Rogdo hisses. “Upstairs!”
“It’s a bungalow, boss.”
As Drift and Rogdo argue, I take it upon myself to explore a little.
“Dammit, where is he?” Rogdo says to himself. The answer is in the living room, where I can fuzzily see a shape cowering behind the sofa.
“Here,” I call.
Larisa is first to join me, eager to confront her nemesis.
“Senator,” she calls. “Show yourself.”
“Your Highness,” a timid voice calls. Two hands slowly rise over the top of the sofa like chubby spiders stalking prey. “Before I show myself, do I have your assurance I will not be harmed?”
“No,” is Larisa’s blunt response. “Get up.”
Vitari slowly complies, to be faced with a wall of angry human flesh. True, only two of the five are big, burly men, but the sight must be imposing nevertheless.
Vitari cowers and points at Rogdo with one shaking hand. “He’s going to kill me!” he whimpers.
“Eventually,” Rogdo informs him.