The Only War

by Jason Wray Stevensson

  “What would be the emphasis of the phrase?”

  “Not with you, Emmy.”

  “Well, is it the Big Cock Fayre, which would be a cock fayre which is big, or is it Big Cock Fayre, being more a fayre of big cocks?”

  “Oh, one should always emphasise the cock. There will be cocks, hens too I shouldn’t wonder, but they won’t all be enormous.”

  “That’s good to hear; size isn’t everything.”

  Besides being the one of the largest annual livestock markets in Britain, the Big Cock Fayre hosts the English Sporting Clay Shooting Championships. English Sporting is a variety of trap shooting, employing twelve gauge shotguns; there are no fixed targets, just heavy powder filled terracotta Frisbees wanging through the air at fifty five miles an hour from opposite directions. Intended to mimic the characteristics of common British game, a lot of which can indeed move that fast, the rounds launch from any angle and trap operatives are encouraged to be imaginative. Use of live pigeons has been banned since 1912, but the rounds are often referred to as birds, and a kill is still a kill. Marc has made a name for himself in competitive circles and Emmy had been no slouch herself over the last few years; while nowhere near elite levels she has a respectable record. The regular scheduled broadcast Maximum Acid Vlog was initially a side project, but has grown enough to warrant sending Emmy, Miles and a cameraman to Earth for a few weeks.

  This Fayre was set to be the biggest in the history of the event. The people of Nightride, Brae Crag and Rainbow Village have been conspicuous by their absence these past two years; with the war now over, the survivors would return.

  Reb and Charlie arrive with the London chapter of their motorcycle club, attracted by a ‘run what ya brung’ drag strip where literally any vehicle capable of forward motion was permitted to take a turn. Charlie was riding a trike built from a rear-engined pod, and their children occupied the back seat. From behind it looked like a bog standard Atlantic Motors Beachcomber, until you drew up alongside; then you’d see the overlong front forks, the single Bates headlight, the apehanger handlebars and the fat old fuel tank with a big chunky speedometer on top. In her childhood Emmy would have arrived with them, and she felt a pang. She remembered how people stopped to watch as they rode through a town like the Presidential motorcade. She remembered Reb’s rigid framed lowrider, the tiny back seat just a pad atop a fender with a wide rear tyre spinning away inches from her butt; holding on while trying to look as if she wasn’t holding on.

  Reb knew her ultra modern Buell Orion was out of keeping with the noisy spirit of club runs but the lowrider is poorly, leaving Charlie’s U.S. Diesel the only option. She hasn’t entirely grown to love it on the two hundred mile journey, but can kind of understand what he sees in it. In the campsite as he fusses around the bike and Reb fusses around their children, he is approached by a stranger who finds both Charlie and his motorcycle strangely familiar.

  “Sorry to interrupt, but are you Kit Murphy’s boy?”

  “Yes I am Sir.” They shake hands and Miles Ravenscroft introduces himself.

  “I sold your father that bike, it’s good to see it up and running; I never had the time for it back then.”

  “Dad thought you’d died; he’ll be pleased to hear otherwise.”

  “It was well known at one time, but I’m better now. Is that an electric pre-heater on the engine?”

  “Ah, you know how it is; I soon got tired of firing up an oxy-acetylene torch every time it needed a cold start.” Miles is introduced to Reb and the boys, which is when he encounters two further familiar things.

  “Do you by any chance know a young woman called Emmy Sunbury?”

  “Yes I do; she’s my sister-in-law. How do you know Emmy?”

  “We share a desk at the magazine, and she’s got like twelve photos of your boys all around it. She brings in cakes every Auntieday, twice a year now since your second; there were special balloons last time!”

  The Competitors Village is a large marquee populated by firearms enthusiasts, English Sporting officials and members of the general public mistaking it for the beer tent; it is alive with old friendships and rivalries rekindled. Ted Dolan is a Royal Navy Space Fleet officer by occupation, and it wasn’t so very long ago he’d topped this game himself; increasing work and family commitments eased him from participant to active supporter, but for a few years there was just him and Jack Stirrups to beat. Jack was a woodsman, as off grid as you can get without weaving your own cartridge shells but knocking on even in Ted’s day. They’d present one other with a serious challenge, whoever won come the end. Ted catches up with his son at registration.

  “Dad! That beardy bloke who keeps beating you is here.”

  “Jack Stirrups does not keep beating me. It’s four three in my favour, so if anything I keep beating him.”

  “Until he makes it four all; he’s still competing” infers Marc heavily. From across the marquee, they catch the strains of West Country accents as broad as the Somerset Levels raised in disagreement.

  “It’s not a mountain, it’s an ‘ill, and I should know! My Great Great Grandmother was from Brae Crag!”

  “Get to fuck! You’m no more genetically diverse than I am!” The rustic newcomer catches sight of Ted and breaks off from his conversation.

  “Do I see a Navy boy in the runnin’? Why, you already got a boat full o’ men! What else you after?”

  “Jack, you old sheep worrier!” Jack raises a gnarled finger but looks pleased enough.

  “Don’t you be racist towards my people!”

  “We’ve been through this; Somerset isn’t a race.”

  “Mate; we wuz int’breedin’ so long we’m prac’ly a species! Me eldest girl Yvette just got ‘erself married off to a foreigner though!”

  “How foreign? Surely you don’t mean Devon?”

  “Not far off. ‘Ee’s a Taunton lad so I reckon they can’t be closer’n fifth cousins; bein’ in your line o’ work you may ‘ave run across Dan Delacroix.” Ted has, and is surprised.

  “I never knew Dan was from your neck of the woods! I always had him down as Home Counties born and bred.”

  “Tha’s ‘is work voice; sez they won’t let ‘im near a boat if ‘ee sounds like a pirate.” Jack nods to Marc “See you got yer own custom shells this season.”

  “Yes Sir! They took the colours straight off my guitar and wrapped them ‘round a cartridge; I’m still a bit in awe of that so I haven’t actually fired any. I’ve a few of yours on a shelf at home; the regular ones and the big three and a half inchers.”

  “Sounds like a fair ol’ collection you got goin’ there.”

  “Only yours and Dad’s, Sir; I only collect the best!” Jack turns to Ted, grinning somewhere under a beard which could hide a ferret.

  “I like this ‘un; ‘e’ll go far. Reckon we’ll both ‘ave our work cut out this year.”

  ”How’ve you been doing recently?” Jack sighs.

  “Waaal, you know ‘ow it is when you gets older; a lucky streak’ll keep you in a while but there’s always summun’ younger an’ sharper these days, an’ thank God for that!” Ted nods solemnly.

  “People don’t realise; they’d be knee deep in clay rounds if we didn’t keep the numbers down.”

  “Oh ah, folk’d soon miss us when there’s a pigeon on the throne!”

  Come the evening, it’s just Jack and Marc; with nothing to choose between them it’s down to a shoot off, and the first man to miss loses. Jack wins the toss and goes first; his rounds explode in a cloud of dust, as do Marc’s. Again and again the pigeons are annihilated, and it looks like this could go on all night.

  To Marc the shotgun is beyond part of him; it doesn’t even exist anymore. He’s standing alone, high on a deserted hill; he points to the sky and says quietly to himself ‘that one’ as it disintegrates. He points to another; that one. Everything slows down when he’s shooting; it’s peaceful here. If he tries he can see his father, not so very far away but somewhere other than this
solitary place. A dark disc rises in the sky and Marc wonders where he’s seen something like it before. He remembers now and points; that one. Back to reality he reloads, but before the zone absorbs him again he sees Jack, back in the final pair after all this time. He couldn’t beat Jack; not when a fourth win this late into his career would be legendary for decades to come. Marc couldn’t tear that page from the history books; he wanted it to be there. He catches sight of his father and raises an eyebrow. Ted nods in understanding; it’s your choice Son, and it’s not like there won’t be other years for you. Jack catches on and shouts over.

  “Don’t you even bloody think of it boy!”

  “Pull!” Marc grazes the round as it hurtles skyward, the blast sends it off on a tangent but the pigeon holds together; bird away and Jack Stirrups has equalled Ted Dolan’s record. As he and Marc shake hands, he has a quiet word.

  “Any bugger with eyes knows you ballsed that up on purpose, and you’ve made an old man very ‘appy. You just make sure to get back ‘ere next year an’ show ‘em ‘ow it’s done!”

  Above the crowd a flying saucer sat, suspended in physics by a hollow outer rim filled with frictionless superfluids spinning at close to the classical speed of light. Invisible to the masses, she was, and wholly undetectable to ground radar, protected by her cloaking device. Below her, bathed in summer sun, the timeless hum of human interaction ticked over; children ran and chased, youngsters flirted, women scolded and men bragged. Old folks settled in folding chairs, taking in their past lives flashing before them.

  On board the hitherto concealed saucer, the cloaking device spat sparks, whirred to a halt and the fayre became suddenly dark and silent. Everyone looked up.

  “People of Earth!” boomed the saucer’s Tannoy “Remain calm; this is not an invasion. We repeat; this is not an invasion. Oh, and would Mrs. Rebel Murphy report directly below our vessel so we can beam her up and we’ll all be on our way. Sorry for the inconvenience.”

  Reb shrugs off her colours and hands them to Charlie; she trudges meekly to the centre of a clearing beneath the ship, and waves to the assembled. Her embarrassment is further compounded by one side of a conversation broadcast over the unmuted Tannoy.

  “What, the transporter’s out too?

  Well, what have we got?

  Do we still have one of those? Jolly good then; drop it down and see what shins up.”

  A rope ladder descends in front of her face, and Reb discovers climbing one is a lot less intuitive than you’d think. The motorcycle club are used to this sort of thing; many members are in the forces, and sudden call-ups were known to happen. Reb’s exit was remarkable, but you don’t maintain social capital in these circles by squealing like a tiny child every time a flying saucer appears out of nowhere, even if you are a tiny child.

  “Mummy fly again” observes the youngest, as their father stashes Reb’s jacket in the back of the Beachcomber. Emmy has returned from a morning spent reducing clay rounds to their constituent atoms, and is taking her nephews to the pig races this afternoon. Anticipation is high for this years’ racing, as students from Viscount Tull Agricultural Comprehensive are defending an unbroken three year run for Red Rocket, their prize Tamworth. Miles shields his eyes from the sun; watching the saucer until it disappears into the blue.

  “Was that the Stellar Friars’ ship?”

  “Yeah, my sister works for the Church now; she’s some kind of secret ninja nun.” Charlie sits beside them.

  “Well this is dandy of course, but how do I get the bike home?” Miles looks wistfully at his old ‘sickle; it had been decades.

  “I’m not busy; I could ride back with you then take the tele home. Don’t know how your club would feel about it though.” Charlie stares blankly for a second.

  “A member of the Igniters riding with us? I think they may be OK with that.” Miles is mystified.

  “I had no idea the band were so well liked.”

  “I mean the other Igniters man, the motorcycle club! Just about every biker under thirty grew up watching those clips. Dad’s got garages back home full of hot rods and boats; I found your bike under a tarpaulin one day when I was about ten or eleven and I knew it was Count Scion the moment I saw it. The old man dragged it outside and we got it running the same day.”

  It was surreal; the following morning Miles is introduced to the President of the club and rides back to London with an honour guard of two further U.S. Diesels, although these were not of the original twelve. The Igniters videos made the humble despatch cycles highly sought after over the years; the army was still using them, and all varieties commanded quite silly prices at military auctions. The bikes to either side of him were, appropriately enough, motorcade outrider versions; they had the same engines but came with exotic features such as headlamps, electric starters and much nicer paint. The only awkward moment came when he was asked what the P plates meant.

  The Bottom of the World

  February 2248 A.D.

  The moon is a quarter the size of Earth and 239,000 miles away, give or take; we know this, but it was not ever thus. In the dying days of the twenty-first century a group of amateur astronomers built a Mach six ballistic railgun and took aim at our satellite, which they held to be far smaller and closer than commonly accepted. Even our mighty tides, they claimed, were merely ragged ripples on the outer edges of the great Earth Conveyor ocean current, snagged and thrust inland by Mandelbrot coastlines. People initially laughed off any suggestion the moon was close enough for target practice, but space agencies worldwide quickly and quietly put their heads together. Public suspicion had long been growing regarding the moon landings and the authorities agreed among themselves that yes, this would indeed explain how twenty four people cheated radioactive death in the Van Allen belt using technologies we cannot now replicate; it was definitely less alarming than explaining how they really did it.

  The Great Generation of the twentieth century not only went through two world wars and a depression; they were also skilled and meticulous craftsmen and to be perfectly honest we don’t make ‘em like that anymore. The Apollo space program was not rendered in CGI, stamped out on a 3D printer and assembled on minimum wage, and if you want to know why we took so long to return there’s no mystery; the true cost of Apollo kickstarted a downward spiral in the Western economy which lasted decades. There was one other little problem; the moon, in our microdimension at least, is far from all it seems, and we had a lot of extra help without which our rockets would never have landed. This extra help did not extend to the loan of a spacecraft or much in the way of shared technology; the moon was one thing, but mankind still had nukes back then. For nigh on thirty years, everyone was happy with the idea of a small moon whizzing around a few miles above their heads.

  Of course, we know better now; people were stupid back then, weren’t they? Before first contact we even fancied the philosophy of mathematics to be some sort of universal language; for an abstract construct its usefulness had been widely overestimated, and we’d probably have noticed a lot sooner if the universe wasn’t built on coincidence.

  The nice thing about a stationary Earth at the centre of everything is it means we’re probably quite important; the nice thing about a revolving globe spinning around a star which is whipping around a galaxy which is itself hurtling through the universe is we’re definitely going somewhere, although we may be too dizzy to enjoy it when we arrive. Thank God for the Unified Theory of Anything or we’d be stuck with either/or and what a dull time we should have of it. Everything, the Theory postulates, can be anything and there is no such thing as conflicting data. If a fossil is carbon dated twice giving two wildly different results (it happens) then both dates must be accepted as true whatever the geologic record says, and you just have to deal with it; results now inform understanding rather than prop up hypotheses.

  Commander Gregory Pearson of the British Royal Navy Space Fleet is currently in Antarctica, and experiencing a crisis of conscience on this second exped
ition as the short austral summer draws to a close. He’s been inconvenienced by a fractured leg for days now, and as time runs out is sending others to do those things impossible to do himself. It’s been eleven years since Deep Planet, and former students Dan Delacroix and Matthew Lancaster have both risen to the rank of Lieutenant. They return from their latest excursion with foliage, a curious find on an icebound continent, but the media will attribute the discovery at least in part to Pearson. The famous space adventurer is the brand which attracts the sponsorship needed to acquire facilities such as Pingu, their vast Snow Cruiser. It could float if it had to, and half its weight was batteries and engines; there were laboratories doubling as medical facilities aboard. Constant blinding sunlight powered everything, as long as you kept the panels clear, including a brace of planes strapped to the roof.

  Pearson had already wrecked one of them; it was an act of obstinacy from which he’d been rescued by those who disobeyed explicit orders and came after him anyway. He’d put their lives at risk for the vain glory of being yet again the first to go somewhere nobody in their right mind would want to go, and they’d hang another bloody medal on him for it if he stood still long enough. He knew and God knew it was his own curiosity drove him, however he was fêted, and there’d be more than Hail Mary’s on the other side for his pride. He’d acquired a reputation for escaping official receptions for the company of those working the NAAFI or below stairs, which enhanced his salt of the earth public image but was borne more from embarrassment. At one soirée he was found in a nearby barn helping the swineherd with a farrowing sow; the morning vlogs contained little else but a tired if photogenic Pearson and fifteen adorable piglets. One in particular wouldn’t leave him alone, even as her siblings battled for teat rights; eventually he resorted to bottle feeding, which sent the lunchtime news into raptures all over again. One of the beasts was to forgo slaughter for a long and presumably happy life at Viscount Tull, in the care of a succession of seven to nine year old students; Pearson’s piglet was nominated, seeing as it liked people so much. He named it Blodwyn; it had been his mothers’ name, and the way the little animal fussed around him brought the great woman to mind. Two months later he was invited to accompany the freshly weaned porker to the school, where pig and Pearson are received with no small ceremony.