The Young Dictator

by Hughes, Rhys

“Inside your shed, you mean?” they blurted.

  “No, my craft is the shed…”

  “That was a clever way of hiding it.”

  “Yes. It was too large to bring inside the house, so I painted it yellow and leaned a spade against it. Were you expecting something bigger? I don’t like large luxury spaceships. They cause too much pollution in the gaps between stars. Smaller is cleaner.”

  “Are all Vegans as ethical as you?” asked Gran.

  Boris nodded. “And so are most other races. Few of them like doing bad things. Most are extremely gentle.”

  “Is it armed?” Gran demanded. “Your spaceship?”

  “Armed?” Boris was bewildered. His tentacles waved in the air and he studied them. “Tentacles, you mean?”

  “I mean does it carry its own weapons? Ray guns and stuff like that? I want to know what kinds of firepower your vessels are packing.” Gran’s nostrils flared wide and her eyes shone.

  “We don’t use weapons now,” Boris admitted.

  “Evolved beyond their use, have you?” sneered Gran as she narrowed her mouth into a tight grin of triumph.

  “They were a part of our ancient history but—”

  Gran leaned across to Jenny. “This is going to be a pushover. The saps won’t know what has hit them!” she whispered. She straightened up and smiled insincerely at Boris. “More tea?”

  He declined the offer with a complicated wave.

  A clock ticked loudly on the wall.

  “Why does your breath smell of pineapples?” Gran asked.

  “Don’t look at me like that!” growled Boris. “What do you think your breath smells like? Earwigs and toenails!”

  Jenny cast a disappointed look at Gran. “I noticed that too. I thought it was the mothballs on your clothes.”

  “When I was a young girl,” said Gran defensively, “earwigs were real earwigs: they were wigs you wore over your ears. Of course I didn’t feast on that kind. What do you think I am?”

  “And what about the toenails?”

  “Essential to hang your toes up every night before bed. A row of nails in the wall was the best place for them.”

  “Didn’t they twitch all night long?” asked Boris.

  There was no reply to that. Jenny finished her tea and said, “Let’s take a look at the inside of your vessel…”

  They went out and tramped with difficulty through the uncut grass to the far end of the garden. As they approached the shed, Jenny saw that it was obviously not a proper shed. Until this moment she hadn’t realised there was anything odd about it, but now it looked just like a spaceship with a few coats of paint on it. How peculiar!

  Gran said to her, “It’s an old camouflage trick. To disguise something, you don’t need elaborate preparations. Just altering a few details is often enough to confuse anyone looking at it. The fact of the matter is that none of us expected a spaceship to be here.”

  Jenny grasped this idea immediately. “So when we looked at the shed we saw only a shed. We were psychologically unprepared to see anything different. We saw what we expected to see, rather than the truth? That’s a valuable lesson to remember, I reckon.”

  Boris removed the spade that was leaning on the front door. He pushed a hidden button and the door opened…

  They stepped inside. The interior of the shed sparkled.

  Crystal and metal surfaces glittered.

  “This reminds me of the future!” cried Jenny.

  “Like something out of a science-fiction book,” spat Gran. She turned to Boris and asked, “How are decisions that concern the entire Federation made? If a gravity whirlpool or anti-matter monster or something similar that was a threat to all the member planets suddenly appeared, how would it be dealt with? What’s the procedure?”

  “An emergency council would be called,” said Boris, “but that’s a rare event indeed. I can’t remember such a council happening in my lifetime. I think one of my fathers attended one once.”

  “One of your fathers? You had several?” cried Jenny.

  “Of course. All Vegans have nine fathers and seven mothers. Believe me, humans are the odd ones out, not us.”

  “On what planet do these emergency councils take place?” asked Gran as she explored the interior of the shed.

  “Bellatrix Three. It’s uninhabited, you see.”

  “When we are in space, will you be able to send a message asking for an emergency council to be convened?”

  “I suppose I could do that, but it’s irregular.”

  “So is a scalene triangle, you fool! Just do it when the time comes! In the meantime, I don’t like this spaceship. It’s poky and unimpressive. We can’t conquer the galaxy in a garden shed.”

  Boris shrugged. “Tough. It’s the only one I’ve got.”

  “We might have to improvise,” thought Gran aloud. She snapped, “Do you have access to the propulsion unit?”

  “Yes, it’s through this hatch. But there’s nothing wrong with it and the technology is beyond your understanding…”

  Gran snorted and got down on her hands and knees.

  “You won’t fit in there!” said Jenny.

  But Gran was more agile than she looked and was already wriggling through the narrow hatch. Her voice was muffled when she next spoke and it seemed she was very far away, though her feet still poked out of the entrance. “Ah yes, here is it, held in place just by four nuts. I reckon I can get it out in less than ten minutes.”

  Jenny licked her lips. “Nuts? Like almonds?”

  “Metal ones,” came the answer. “Pass me a spanner, will you? Slide it along the service duct. Thanks, Jenny!”

  Boris waved a tentacle in agitation. “Why do you want to remove the propulsion unit from its rightful place?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough,” replied Gran.

  She puffed and panted and Jenny and Boris exchanged glances and it was clear that Boris was feeling very depressed now, but he had given his word and Vegans always keep a promise.

  “Which is their main weakness,” said Jenny to herself.

  “I beg your pardon?” asked Boris.

  “Nothing.” Jenny gave him an innocent smile.

  Now Gran backed out of the hatch and in her hands was a glowing box with eight sides that was about the size of a football. “I never thought any spaceship engine could be so small!”

  They all admired it together.

  “That shape is called an octahedron,” said Boris.

  “I’m already a fan,” said Jenny.

  “We didn’t have fans when I was young,” sighed Gran, “and it got so hot everywhere that the world melted.”

  “The world melted?” shrieked Jenny.

  “Yes, but melting hadn’t been tried before and the world didn’t know how to do it and got it wrong.”

  “And that’s why it’s still intact, is it?”

  “That’s quite right, my girl.”

  “Your anecdotes are so instructive!” gasped Jenny.

  “Glad you think so,” said Gran.

  She stood and held the octahedron out at arm’s length and it washed Jenny’s face in an eerie blue light, but when Boris came closer to peer at it, Gran pulled it away from him. A weird blue glow on his weird purple skin was just too sickly a combination.

  Then Gran laughed and cried, “Guess what? I plan to install it in a new spaceship of my own design. Oh yes!”

  “You have a spaceship?” Boris was astounded.

  “Not yet, but I will. And once I’ve fitted this engine to it and made lots of other preparations, we can set off for Bellatrix Three and conquer the galaxy and have lots of selfish fun!”

  “Hurrah! I can’t wait!” bellowed Jenny.

  “We will crush entire planetary civilisations like ripe fruits! The juices of entire solar systems will run between our fingers while we laugh at the unlimited opportunities at our disposal!”

  “Ha ha ha!” laughed Jenny.

  “He he he!” joined in Gran.

&nb
sp; But Boris made a worried face and clutched his frowning head in three of his tentacles and his sulking mouth fell off and swung like a pendulum on its string, brushing away the tears that ran down his cheeks. And both his hearts pounded in his chest. Neither Gran nor Jenny knew it, but those hearts were also shaped like octahedrons.

  The following days were very busy ones and Jenny devoted all her spare time to helping Gran with her tasks, the hardest of which was turning the abandoned house of Mr Zosimus into a spaceship. They couldn’t be seen dead in a shed, Gran reminded her, but to land on Bellatrix Three in such a big house would be really impressive.

  “I did the calculations on the back of this envelope,” Gran said, “and the propulsion unit is powerful enough to lift the entire house without any danger of it conking out. That Vegan engineering is really something! It’s a shame they don’t make record players.”

  “On the back of an envelope?” cried Jenny.

  “Best place for calculations…”

  “But what’s a record player? You’re such a riddle.”

  “I’m just old fashioned. When I was a hatchling, music was stored on big flat discs and played by a needle. Those discs were as big and flat as the hands we had. Everything was fine and no one complained. But times do change and look where we are now!”

  “Still in Carrington,” replied Jenny with a shrug.

  “Yes, yes, that’s literally true!”

  “What’s a hatchling?” asked Jenny.

  “Didn’t I ever tell you that I hatched from an egg? I wasn’t born like most other human beings. The egg was spat out of an active volcano like a cannonball and landed in a nest and when the dinosaur mother returned and sat on it, I was the only egg that hatched, because all the others were broken. That dinosaur did a fine job of raising me, but I was an only child and that’s why I’m not like other Grans. Having said that, many ordinary Grans are far more barmy than me, especially those that sit in chairs with drool pouring down their hairy chins.”

  “Huh? You told me that a lunatic scientist made you from spare parts shortly after the sinking of Atlantis!”

  “That was after my first body wore out.”

  “Oh, I see!” said Jenny.

  Gran installed the octahedron in a cupboard under the stairs and soon it was pulsing in its new home. It was essential to repair the windows that had shattered when Mr Zosimus set off the explosion that helped Jenny to win the Carrington by-election all those months earlier. The house had to be airtight when they reached outer space.

  “And we’ll need to seal all the cracks in the floorboards and walls with care. This is vitally important,” said Gran.

  “I’ve already done that upstairs.”

  “Good. If there’s the tiniest leak anywhere, all our oxygen will be lost and we’ll suffocate slowly and horribly.”

  “Don’t worry. I used parcel tape,” said Jenny.

  “We can’t leave Earth in an unarmed house. I’ll set up some rifles and other guns on tripods in various rooms.”

  Jenny asked, “Shall I fetch a few more of the control systems from the shed?” She had a wheelbarrow to transport the heaviest equipment. Even though the propulsion unit was small, the navigation machines were large and awkward to carry. Gran nodded.

  Jenny wheeled the wheelbarrow outside.

  It was difficult concealing so much activity from Mum and Dad and as she reached the pavement, she saw the curtain in the front window of her own house suddenly twitch. She was being spied on. No matter. Within a week, she would be off the planet and no matter how loud Mum and Dad shouted at her, they wouldn’t be heard.

  Jenny pushed the wheelbarrow up Boris’ drive.

  When she returned home in the early evening after a hard day’s work, she went up the stairs to her bedroom but Mum and Dad were waiting on the landing. “Jenny?” growled Mum.

  “Yes Mum,” answered Jenny, playing it cool.

  “What are you and Gran up to in the house across the street?”

  “We’re doing it up,” said Jenny.

  “Decorating, you mean?”

  “Yes, just that,” fibbed Jenny.

  Mum frowned and asked, “But why?”

  “Just in case Mr Zosimus returns to Carrington to live in it. We want it to be nice for him if he ever returns.”

  Dad cleared his throat. “Jenny, you know that Mr Zosimus won’t ever be coming back here. They hung him.”

  “By the neck,” added Mum, “for war crimes.”

  Dad nodded and said gently, “He swung slowly in the sun, in the wind and the rain, his neck getting longer and longer as it stretched, and after a few days it snapped, and his headless corpse fell to the ground and after a short time it went off. He putrefied like an old rubbish bag. So he doesn’t really need a decorated house anymore.”

  “Or any kind of house,” pointed out Mum.

  “Jenny,” said Dad, “we’ve been having a bit of a think, your Mum and I, and we’ve decided it’s time to send you back to school. Next Monday we want you to start attending lessons.”

  “Next Monday?” Jenny did the counting on her fingers. “Fine. I agree to that. No problem. Anything else?”

  Mum and Dad looked at each other. “No.”

  Jenny pushed past them. “Thanks for informing me.” She entered her bedroom and closed the door behind her. Mum and Dad blinked and then went down the stairs and into the lounge.

  That night, Jenny slept so deeply that she felt she was right at the bottom of her dreams, like a diver on the seabed, and she gazed up at all the dreams drifting above her head. One of these dreams was of the American girl she had seen in the mirror in the market of the skargills and now she learned the name of this girl. Maya. But why did Jenny have an uneasy feeling about her?

  The following morning, Jenny rushed out of the house and across the street. Gran was already inside Mr Zosimus’s house and was arranging a few guns at strategic points in the living room. “Where did you get those? Some of them look ancient!” Jenny cried.

  Gran smiled nostalgically at the firearms and nodded.

  “These weapons were given to me when I fought in certain campaigns in history and other campaigns outside history. See this one? It’s called a blunderbuss and is one of my favourites. It’s only effective at short range but it’s difficult to miss when a hussar is bearing down on you with his cavalry sabre uplifted to split your head open and you are crouching on one knee and counting down the distance separating him from you, four yards, three yards, two yards, fire!”

  “Listen Gran,” said Jenny. “Mum and Dad are planning to send me to school on Monday. Will the spaceship be ready by then? It must be! This is important! I don’t want to go back to school. I can’t go back! What if they try to teach me basic morality?”

  Gran patted her head. “Don’t worry. We’ll put in extra shifts and with luck it’ll be ready by Sunday afternoon. But now I have to leave you all alone here, because I have other work to do. Remember to finish taping the cracks in the downstairs rooms.”

  “What other work?” Jenny wanted to know.

  “Boris said that navigating a Vegan spaceship required faster reflexes than a human being has, didn’t he?”

  “Yes he did. It has been bothering me ever since.”

  “I think I have a solution!”

  And Gran did have a solution and it was an ingenious one and it worked. She turned up with a giant spider that followed her like an obedient dog. In fact, to avoid drawing attention to herself on the street, she had dressed it like a dog with false ears and a tail.

  Boris was also present in Mr Zosimus’s house on this occasion and he had taken off his own disguise and was stretching his tentacles. When he saw the spider, he jumped onto a stool in fright. “Where did you get that monster from?” his mouth screeched.

  “From the basement of the Town Hall, which is infested with them. I went down the tunnel I dug earlier and captured one. Then I took it home and began training it,” answered Gran. “If I can t
rain rooks then I’m sure I can train a spider or any other beast.”

  “You are covered in bite marks!” cried Jenny.

  Gran held up her wounded arms. “Yes, it wasn’t easy persuading it to do what I wanted it to, but I persisted.”

  “The spider is covered in bite marks too!” gasped Boris.

  Gran grinned. “Of course…”

  Boris shuddered and asked, “Is it safe?”

  “Perfectly safe now,” said Gran. “But I guess you want to know why I have trained a giant spider and brought it here? The answer is simple! To navigate this spaceship it is necessary for eight controls to be operated at the same time. A spider not only has eight legs but it also has reflexes that are much faster than a human being’s.”

  “So this spider is going to be our pilot?” cried Jenny.

  “That’s it exactly!” smiled Gran.

  Boris whistled. “That’s really rather clever.”

  Gran said, “There’s no reason why we can’t take off right now. All the cracks have been sealed, have they?”

  “Yes. And the windows are double glazed.”

  “There’s enough food in the kitchen for a long interstellar voyage? It’s essential that we have plenty of chocolate and other high-energy foods. I hope you filled the bath with water for drinking? And there are candles in all the candle holders in every room?”

  “All present and correct!” bellowed Jenny.

  Boris had got used to the presence of the spider. Even he was happy to be leaving the Earth. “I can’t wait to get back to my own planet. I’m sorry to leave your Mum without any explanation but I’m sure she’ll find other lovers to replace me soon enough.”

  “That’s highly likely,” said Jenny truthfully.

  Boris suddenly looked worried. “You will let me return home after we visit Bellatrix Three?” he pleaded.

  “Put your mind at rest,” crooned Jenny.

  Gran hissed at the spider, “Skreek keek kleek!” And it scuttled across the floor and took up position near the navigator console. Then it fixed a foot of each leg to one of the controls.

  “I didn’t know you spoke Spider,” blinked Jenny.

  “I’m good at languages,” said Gran.

  “That’s very impressive!”