by Linda Jaivin
‘I see,’ said Baby, taking another bite of cookie. ‘Ergh. Don’t know how you palate this stuff. Spewin’. Do you have anything to take the edge off?’ Jake pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered her the foil. ‘Thanks,’ she said gratefully. Her antennae suddenly lit up like sparklers.
‘Nice place, Byron Bay,’ said Baby, looking dreamily at the sky, where the clouds were metamorphosing into while lilies and freesia. ‘What were we talking about?’
‘Can’t remember,’ said Jake, watching daisies sprout from between his toes. He was suddenly possessed by the urgent need to figure out how the alphabet was spelt. ‘A’ wasn’t too hard—A-I-Y would do—and ‘B’—B-E-E—was easy, but what about ‘C’? S-E-E? It didn’t actually have the letter ‘c’ in it. Was that okay? Really okay?
Jake was still occupied by this problem as they hiked up the dunes to where the trees met the sand, and stretched their limbs across the fine white powder. Jake considered doing a line of sand. He concluded that this was probably not a good idea, rolled a joint instead, and passed it to Baby along with the bag of mushrooms.
As they sat there quietly enjoying the rush of heightened sensation, an insect debranched from one of the trees and fell with a little plop onto the sand beside them. Its head was bulbous and gold, with delicate antennae and a single, large black eye dead-centre. Its six spindly legs worked hard at hauling its wormy green body along behind it. Lest any other creature be tempted to laugh at its cycloptic head or laboured gait, it brandished a menacing spike on its arse. The contractions and expansions of its ridged exoskeleton made it look like it was pulsing with electricity. With each pulse, it grew in size until its body had expanded to the size of Jake’s leg. Baby’s heart skipped a beat. She looked at Jake, but he hadn’t seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary. Sunbathers strolled by, glancing up at them but registering no particular surprise. Baby was thinking this drugs thing could get a little freaky when the creature tapped her with its antennae. ‘Pssst,’ it said. ‘It’s me. Your cousin Zyggo.’
Baby did a double take. ‘Zyg! I didn’t recognise you. Then, how could I? What are you doing here? Why are you dressed like that? How did you get here?’
She glanced nervously at Jake. He was smiling placidly at the sky, his eyes hidden by his sunnies. ‘“H”,’ he was thinking, ‘how do you spell “H”?’
‘Whoa whoa whoa,’ laughed Zyggo. ‘One thing at a time. Doesn’t that stuff mellow you out at all? First of all, I’m not actually here. Not in the physical sense, like you are. It’s a parallel yooniverz shtick. As far as the rellies are concerned I’m still at Uncle Oyszty’s birthday barbie chowing down on a uranium-burger and paying out on a couple of Vogons who’d invited themselves over.’
‘Oh, yum.’ Baby’s mouth watered. ‘I’ve had such a craving for uranium since we got here, I can’t tell you. There’s supposed to be heaps of it up north. Maybe we’ can go there together. How long you here for?’
Zyggo tried to sit up. His new body was not built for vertical mobility. He only succeeded in falling over, and lay on his back flailing the air with all six of his legs until Baby reached over and flipped him onto his stomach. ‘Ta,’ he said. ‘Not long. I’ve got to get back before anyone notices that I’m just a hologram of my former self. But I’m not here on a joyride, as joyous as it is to see you, my dear. Did you get any of my messages?’
‘Messages? Where did you leave them?’
‘Where else?’ Zyggo rolled his one eye, not a pretty sight. ‘On the ether. Don’t you ever check your e-mail?’
Baby answered in an abashed tone, ‘Nup. Never even occurred to me. I’m having too much fun, Zyg. Who wants to spend all their time in front of a compu-tron anyway? I’m over compu-trons. Goodbye, geek girl. Reject the virtual, embrace the real. Besides, I never actually learned how to log on. What? What are you doing now?’
Zyggo was clawing the air with his front feet. ‘Trying to put my head in my hands to emphasise my shock and dismay. Communications is the first thing they teach you in interstellar piloting.’
‘Zyg. They didn’t exactly give us training and hand over the manual. We stole the spaceship.’
‘So you did. Which brings me to the point. Why I’m here. It’s not for my health you know.’ With his one protuberant eye, Zyggo looked himself up and down with distaste. ‘This particular hallucination is giving me the shits. Why couldn’t you have dreamed up some giant flower or something? I just needed one good image hook to facilitate somatisation. You know how it works. A nice little goblin would have done me fine, or a sequinned kangaroo or even a bagel.’
‘I didn’t know you were coming.’
‘Never mind. Anyway, it seems the whole incident has caused quite a stir in the Leading Qohort. A mate of mine, Exl, works as a metallurgist in the Qohort kitchens. He was hanging out after hours hoping to flog a few aluminium ingots and these two bigsters came in, Qwerk and this other guy. Exl did a quick shapeshift and pretended he was a smelting pot till they left, praying that no one would light a fire under him. As a pot his hearing wasn’t brilliant, so he couldn’t quite make out everything they were saying, but it had to do with “neutralising” you and your two pals. They said you had defective genes.’
‘Defective jeans? My Levis? I just abducted them a few days ago.’
‘Genes, Einsteinette. As in chromosomes? The point is, you’re in what I believe Earthlings call “the ship”.’
Jake slowly rotated his head around, removed his sunnies, fixed his dilated pupils on Zyggo and drawled, ‘The shit, man, the shit.’ Then, with a dignified and deliberate gesture, he put his sunnies back on and passed out on the sand.
Zyggo looked at Baby in puzzlement. ‘Who’s the wasteoid?’
‘Don’t worry about him,’ said Baby. ‘He’ll be right.’
‘The point is, will you? They’re after you, Baby. If I were you I’d pack up and kiss your sweet Earth goodbye. Oh, don’t look so sad. I can’t bear it. There’s plenty of other planets in the yoon. New ones are coming into existence every day.’
‘Yeah, but.’ Baby’s eyes misted over.
‘But what? You saw what they did to Michelle Mabelle. And she never even stole a spaceship. Or ran away to Earth. Or, bloody Betelgeuse, formed a rock band. Really, Baby! Don’t you know rock n roll is dead? Ambient, trance, jungle, even dream pop or lounge I could understand—but rock? It’s so, so, I don’t know, passe or something. Darling, if you weren’t my cousin, I’d consider prosecuting you for fashion crimes. Oh, c’mon, I’m only joking. Look at me, Baby.’
‘Rock n roll will never die,’ Baby replied, her bottom lip quivering. ‘And I’m staying.’ She laid a hand on Jake’s leg.
Zyggo looked at Jake as though seeing him for the first time. ‘Don’t tell me you’re—’
‘No.’
‘In love.’
‘Love? What’s that got to do with it,’ she snapped. ‘Sorry, Zyg,’ she apologised, abashed, ‘it’s all a bit emotional.’ She looked up into the sky, where a lenticular cloud hovered, honking its horn. ‘Is that your ride?’
Zyggo tried to wave at it. ‘Coming!’ he shouted.
Beep beep. The cloud, a saucer in disguise, was double parked. And everyone knew God’s attitude towards double parking. Beep beep.
‘Zyg, I thought you were parallel yooning. What’s with the saucer?’
‘Some blokes I met from Planet X. They’re just gonna take me to a higher ground. I’ll zip off from there. Great guys, by the way. They didn’t even bat an eye at my present, uh, configuration. You should meet them Baby. Get your mind off.’
‘I’m not interested in other ayles,’ she sniffed.
Zyg was about to say something when the saucer honked again. He decided to let it rest. ‘Well, cousin, it’s been real. Chip chip.’
‘Chip chip. Oh, and thanks, Zyggo. Thanks a lot.’
Zyggo flew into the sky like a Chinese dragon kite. A door opened in the cloud, and he disappeared into it. The cloud hun
g a u-ee, zoomed east, shot out over Cape Byron and was gone.
There once was a captain called Qwerk
The yoon’s most silliest jerk
There’s no hair on a grey
But he’d brush every day
Fifty strokes, up and down, the big berk.
Qwerk compressed his expressionless little slit of a mouth into an even tighter slit as he scrubbed the latest graffito off the fathership’s bathroom wall. Why did they torment him like this? Was it necessary? He honestly didn’t understand why anyone did anything that did not have a safe and predictable, not to mention a sensible and constructive outcome. Besides, what was so funny about brushing? So what if he didn’t have hair? What was so good about hair?
Squeezing out the sponge, Qwerk checked his chronometer. ETA was, let’s see, about two Earth-months away. He mentally reviewed his plan for the hundredth time. First, offload the other ayles. Aliens. God, now he was even talking like them. Second, locate and capture the feral hybrids Ms Baby, Ms Parts and Ms Dohdidohdoh before they could further insanitise the planet. A rock band. Really. He’d found out about it when one of the many bots, er, robots that Nufonians planted around the world to keep an eye on Earthling affairs beamed up an excited report on their Annandale gig. Over-excited, if you asked Qwerk. Were not even robots safe from these girls’ pernicious influence? Clearly not.
Never mind. Once the girls were out of the way and they could begin to implement the Hidden Agenda, everything would straighten itself out.
Back in Parkes, Professor Luella Skye-Walker rubbed her bleary eyes and checked her screen for the hundredth time. ‘Getting anything, Aaron?’
‘Not a thing. How ‘bout you, Jason?’
‘Nothing. No thing. No Thing,’ Jason said. He got up to put some music on. ‘The Cult of Ray okay with everyone?’
‘Oh, why not?’ Aaron said. They’d been listening fairly nonstop to Pee Shy’s Who Let All the Monkeys Out? They liked singing along to the track, ‘Jason, I Thought I Saw a UFO’.
‘Damn, damn, damn,’ cursed Luella. ‘We were this close just two months ago. I’m sure of it. They said “Hello, Mum” and then they went silent. Are they out there, or not?’
‘What if we sent out a message?’ Aaron proposed. ‘I know it’s not in the brief.’
‘It’s definitely not in the brief,’ Luella affirmed.
‘Oh well,’ sighed Aaron.
Luella shook her head. ‘Don’t give up that easily. What were you thinking? Message-wise.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he replied thoughtfully. ‘Something like “Hello Pop”?’
Jason laughed. ‘“Hello Pop”. I like it.’
‘Can’t hurt,’ shrugged Luella. ‘Let’s do it, rocket man.’
Baby checked Jake’s watch. She tapped him on the shoulder. He opened his eyes, sat up and shook the sand out of his dreads. ‘Wozza time?’ he asked.
‘Four.’
Where’d the day gone? It was already time to meet the gang at the pub for their soundcheck.
Jake and Baby pulled up just as a bouncer was evicting a pair of quarrelling drunks. The bouncer, Big Brian, was built like a brick shithouse, which is Australian for ‘he had no neck’. He held the sobriety-challenged duo by the scruff of their necks and tossed them onto the street as though they were chooks. Wiping his hands on his jeans, he sneered righteously, and disappeared back inside.
Baby looked at Jake. ‘Rough-o-rama!’ she exclaimed.
The two drunks had already forgotten what they’d been fighting about and were now sitting on the pavement and lighting each other’s cigarettes. When they clapped eyes on Baby, they fell over and kissed the pathway.
‘Hey, Baby! Jake!’ The surfie van pulled up just behind Kate, and Lati jumped out. ‘See you dudes later tonight, hey?’ She waved them off, straightening her clothing. Doll was padding down the street from the beach, still in her wetsuit. When she caught up with the others, they sauntered into the pub together.
‘HOOHOOHOOHOOHOO!’ yelled out a representative of Byron’s least celebrated subculture, one in which the men sported non-Celtic tattoos, moustaches and non-ironic bad haircuts, and the women answered to names like Janelle and Shareen—specifically, what they answered was, ‘Oi? Youse talkin’ to ME?’
‘PHWOAH! OVER HERE, BABY!’ Several of the men around the bar grabbed their crotch in greeting.
‘Now, how do you fellas know my name?’ Baby asked, sincerely mystified, grabbing her crotch back. For some reason, this only seemed to set them off even more. ‘WHYT-WHYOO,’ wolfwhistled one, and then another, and then another.
To the catcalls and whistles and general testosteronal yodelling, Lati predictably replied, ‘Wanna suck my cock?’
Well, predictably for her, anyway. The rough-heads clearly were fairly stunned by this. Several opened their mouths and curled their upper lips, which was an Earthling gestural abbreviation for, ‘Are youse cruisin’ fer a bruisin’?’
‘Uh, girls,’ Jake interjected nervously. ‘I don’t think—’
‘Shut ya poofter trap,’ a wiry man with beady little eyes, dangerously pointy boots and a missing front tooth instructed Jake curtly. Then he returned the full glory of his attention to the girls. ‘Youse dykes?’ he challenged. Both his general demeanour and the tone of his voice suggested he was not a wholehearted supporter of the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. ‘Oi reckon,’ he declared, without waiting for clarification regarding their sexual orientation, ‘all youse dykes needs is a good man.’ He scratched his balls and stood up. He was chewing gum slowly and ostentatiously. ‘That’s what oi reckon.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ Doll replied, walking straight up to him, a tiny little creature in body rubber, her horns flattened from the surf and pointing forward like those of a bull. Deliberately, she reached for his bottle of beer from the bar. Standing on tiptoe, she poured the contents of the bottle over his head, making sure most of it flowed over his face. Then, without taking her eyes off his, she took a large bite out of the bottle. ‘Is that what you reckon?’ she said, crunching glass. ‘A “good man”, eh? Then tell me. What good’s a man?’ She spat out a small shard onto the floor. ‘Don’t make me take out your other tooth, Ratface,’ she cautioned. ‘It could have tragic consequences for your lifestyle. For one thing, you wouldn’t be able to gnaw through the electrical wiring anymore.’
‘YOU—’ Ratface pulled back his right fist and shook it at Doll.
‘Rumble!’ hollered Lati, vaulting up onto the bar and voguing like Michael Jackson in the video for ‘Beat It’.
‘Oh shit,’ said Jake under his breath. Jake loved Tarantino and all, but. He looked at Baby in alarm. To his horror, she seemed a million miles away.
Baby might not have been a million miles away, but she definitely wasn’t quite all there. She was in fact in another dimension entirely, Dimension 865A, to be precise. Cavorting with a pack of singing daisies. They were so sweet. They were so cute. They were twirling and skipping and steering yellow polka-dot flying saucers around and around her head.
Lati bent over, pinched Ratface’s ears in her fingers and pulled him up. He had been staring at her and Doll as though in shock, but he was now clearly coming to his senses, and his senses were beer-soaked and furious. His mates were rising from their stools as well and doing the sort of thing that Earthlings did when they wanted to indicate that they were preparing to rearrange someone else’s facial features—breaking glasses on the bar, cussing under their breath, snarling and spitting.
Baby loved her daisies. They represented everything that was beautiful in the yooniverz. And the yooniverz was such a beautiful place. The daisies were smiling at her now. She smiled and smiled and smiled back.
ZING! The room was bathed in light more dazzling than that of the sun and softer than that of the moon. A scent like that of sun-warmed skin and sticky rice with mango infused the air. The ears of everyone in the room were filled with the sound of celestial harps and violins, overlaid, of course, with jangly guitar h
ooks and hell vocals. It was that old alien magic at work.
‘YOU, YOU—BEWDY!’ Ratface brayed. He stepped forward to give Doll a big hug as the others applauded enthusiastically, boozy eyes alight with good cheer and goodwill.
‘Oh, retch,’ scowled Doll, pushing him off her with a look of extreme distaste. ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that, Baby. I was just starting to have fun.’
Baby blinked. ‘Pardon? Do what?’
Just then, Torquil and Tristram flopped and stumbled into the pub, moaning and groaning dramatically. They were wearing sunnies and holding onto their stomachs. Sharp, oddly-shaped lumps protruded from under their matching ‘I Tina Arena’ t-shirts.
‘Yo,’ squeaked Torquil.
‘More poofs,’ noted Ratface approvingly. ‘That’s really nice to see around here. It sorta takes the macho edge off things, doncha think? Welcome, boys,’ he gushed. ‘We here at this pub respect difference.’
‘Uh, thanks,’ replied Torquil uncertainly. He looked at Jake for some help in deciphering this new and unexpected signifier in the great post-modernist landscape of life. Jake was too busy admiring you know who to notice. Lati hopped off the bar with an air of disappointment.
‘What’s going on?’ croaked Tristram.
Lati had slacker communications down to a T. She shrugged in reply, an ironic twist to her mouth.
‘Fair enough,’ nodded Tristram.
Doll was fed up with the lot of them. ‘We soundcheck-ing or what, then?’ she snapped. She went out to the van to start lugging in.
‘What’s under your shirts?’ Jake had finally managed to tear his eyes away from Baby as they shifted their gear into the venue.
‘Crystals,’ Torquil frowned.
‘Crystals?’
‘We got some wicked shit in Nimbin. Not sure how we got back to Byron, but we just kinda came to on the beach an hour ago, feeling like furballs vomited up by a very large cat. Scuzzy as. We were toxing out when Tristram remembered seeing a sign advertising crystal healing. So we got some crystals and gaffer-taped them all over our bodies.’ He lifted his t-shirt and showed Jake.