by Moody, David
Tom tentatively moved forward, keen to get past but not wanting to piss Ken off and risk his notorious booze-addled wrath. Tonight, however, the old drunk simply moved to one side.
‘You okay?’ Tom asked, momentarily surprised, almost concerned.
‘Makes you think.’
‘What does?’
‘All this business.’
‘Suppose.’
‘Never known anything like it.’
‘None of us have.’
‘Frightening, innit.’
‘It is. Look, Ken, I need to get back to my—’
‘You think this is a good thing?’
Tom thought before answering. ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure yet. You?’
‘Me neither. Never trust nobody until I’ve looked into their eyes, I don’t.’
‘Good advice,’ Tom said, sliding past and holding his breath to avoid getting a nose-full of the stench of liquor, stale sweat and piss stains.
‘Remember the eyes,’ Ken warned.
When another unsuspecting punter crashed into the bathroom, Tom seized the opportunity to get out.
‘You took your time,’ Siobhan said when he finally returned to the table. ‘What were you doing in there?’
‘I’ve heard about blokes like you,’ Rob sniggered.
‘I got caught.’
‘Caught by what?’ Siobhan said. ‘Or shouldn’t I ask.’
‘Caught by Ken Trentham.’
‘Ken Trentham! That pickled old bastard. He wasn’t causing trouble again, was he?’
Tom shook his head. ‘No, he was fine. He was talking about the aliens, that’s all. Same as everyone else.’
‘He’s been talking about aliens for years,’ James said. ‘Remember that, Siobhan? That night he came in here ranting about being abducted.’
‘And John threatened to give him an anal probe with a pool cue!’
‘Maybe this is how it starts,’ Tom suggested. ‘Maybe he’s their first victim.’
‘What are you on about?’ asked Siobhan.
‘These aliens. You always have to watch out when people have sudden personality changes like Ken. It’s mind control, you know, just like in the films. They always start with the easiest people to manipulate, and since Ken’s only got half a mind—’
‘If that,’ James interrupted.
‘—then they wouldn’t have any problems controlling him.’
‘You think?’ Siobhan said, suddenly deadly serious.
Tom laughed. ‘Of course I don’t, you silly sod. He’s just scared like everyone else.’
‘I’m not scared.’
‘Uneasy, then. You know what I’m saying.’
There was a momentary pause in the conversation as each of them considered how they were feeling. Was it fear? James cleared his throat, the way he always did when he thought he had something important to say. ‘That Stephen Hawking, he said we’d all be fucked if any aliens turned up here.’
‘His language is appalling,’ Rob sighed.
James continued, unimpressed, ‘He says if they’ve managed to get here, then they’re obviously more intelligent than us, so they’ll inevitably end up wiping us out.’
‘Who rattled your cage?’ Tom asked.
‘Fuck me, Jim,’ Rob added, ‘most people get more stupid when they’re pissed. You’re the first person I’ve met who smartens up.’
‘Piss off,’ James said, hiding his embarrassment by drinking more beer, the bottom of his pint glass covering his face.
‘No disrespect, Jim,’ Tom continued, ‘but since when did you start following Stephen Hawking’s work?’
‘I don’t,’ he admitted. ‘Steph was watching this programme on TV when I got home, and they were talking about it. They were saying how we should all just keep calm and carry on.’
‘So let me get this straight,’ Tom said, ‘they’re asking people to keep calm and carry on, but at the same time just happening to mention that Stephen Hawking thinks we’re all screwed?’
‘I guess.’
‘I saw some of that programme,’ Siobhan said.
‘I thought you were at work?’ Tom sounded surprised.
‘I was, but do you think we took many phone calls after what happened this afternoon? The place was dead. Me and Mo were watching TV online to try and find the news. As usual Jim, you’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick. They were disputing what Stephen Hawking said, trying to put people at ease and not wind them up.’
‘Interesting though, isn’t it,’ Rob said, watching the ship on TV again. The sky was even darker now, and there seemed to be no let up in the levels of activity around the massive craft. Its vast underbelly was illuminated from below in places, but very little of the machine was visible now.
‘What’s interesting?’ Tom asked.
‘How it’s already changing everything. You know something’s up when you’ve got Jim quoting eminent scientists and an anti-social wino like Ken Trentham suddenly feeling the need to talk.’
‘So what are you saying?’ Siobhan wondered.
‘That the rules changed today, that’s all,’ Rob replied. ‘All the boundaries and demarcation lines we used to know were rubbed out and redrawn.’
‘I must be pissed,’ James sighed, ‘because I don’t have a bloody clue what you’re talking about now.’
‘There’s a new player in the game,’ Rob explained, ‘and that makes everyone else consider their own position differently.’
One of the most notable differences Tom had found since moving to Thatcham was the lack of ethnic diversity here. Like most of the country, Birmingham was a richly diverse place. Thatcham, in comparison, was not. Eddie Williams was the only black man in the village, and he was in the pub with a couple of friends, leaning up the wall next to Tom’s table.
‘Takes the pressure off you, don’t it, Ed?’ Tom heard one of Eddie’s frighteningly bigoted friends joke.
‘So what is it you’re studying?’ James asked Rob.
‘Social sciences and the adaptation of social policy in deprived urban areas, why?’
‘Because it sounds like a load of old bollocks to me, that’s why.’
‘It’s not,’ Rob replied, indignant. ‘Remember when Tom first bought the bungalow? Remember the grief he was getting from the neighbours? Remember all the crap Ray Mercer gave him when he cut down that tree?’
‘What about it?’
‘Well, he was the alien back then, wasn’t he? Just for a while, until someone else turned up to take the flack. As soon as the summer season started and hundreds of bloody tourists started filling the streets, all that was forgotten. He stopped being one of them and became one of us. Isn’t that right, Siobhan?’
‘It does sound like a load of old bollocks, Jim, I’ll give you that,’ she said, ‘but Rob is right.’
‘So are you saying these aliens are neighbours or tourists? And is this what you’d call a deprived area?’
Rob looked at James with despair. ‘I’m not saying Thatcham’s deprived, but if I’d just come halfway across the universe in a bloody huge spaceship like that, I think I’d be well within my rights to turn my nose up.’
‘Do you think they’ve got noses?’ Jim asked, confirming beyond doubt to the others that his earlier demonstration of intelligence had indeed been a fluke. No one bothered to answer.
‘They can’t be that intelligent,’ a shrill voice said from an adjacent table. Tom looked around. It was Wendy Grayson. She worked in Thatcham’s small supermarket, and she was a bloody gossip. When she realised how many people had heard her she continued talking, always happy to have an audience. ‘I mean, all that space... the whole of the bloody universe to choose from and those soft buggers end up here at the back-end of nowhere!’
‘Imagine the odds,’ Tom said to no one in particular. ‘Can you imagine what the chances of them ending up here were?’
None of them could, though each of them did find themselves thinking about the impossible scales and
measures of the day now ending. Siobhan moved closer to Tom, and took hold of his hand under the table.
‘Hard to believe, isn’t it? The whole world’s watching this. Millions of people – billions, even – all watching what’s happening just a few miles from here.’
‘Most things that get this much news coverage only affect part of the world,’ Rob said, pausing to knock back the dregs of another pint. ‘This is different. This has implications for everybody.’
Tom gripped Siobhan’s hand even tighter. ‘I just want to know what they’re here for,’ he said. ‘I mean, I just want to know whether it’s ET or Independence Day, you know? Are they here because they want to be friends, or are they going to blow the shit out of us then...’
He let his words trail away, suddenly aware that the rest of the pub had fallen silent. He looked around and saw that every face was fixed on one of the various screens around the bar. Then he looked up himself, and felt his pulse start to quicken. Something was happening.
The pictures now being broadcast were coming from the same general location as the footage they’d already seen. As they watched, however, the camera panned right then zoomed into close-up on one particular section of the vessel’s endless underbelly, near the front of the ship. It was difficult to see at first, but Tom was eventually able to make out a long rectangular opening appearing, some kind of hatch. Siobhan nudged him as he continued to tighten his grip on her hand, hurting her. He let go and reached for his pint.
‘This is it,’ Rob whispered ominously. ‘Make or break. Handshake or heat-ray.’
Nothing happened for what felt like forever. No one moved. No one spoke. It was as if someone had pressed the pause button but rather than the pictures on the screen, everything else had frozen instead. And then, just when the first whispered conversations were on the verge of striking up again, an intense beam of searing white light spilled down through the opening in the ship’s belly.
There was something in the light. Tom squinted, unsure what he was seeing. Hard to distinguish at first, its movements were slow, graceful and precise. It drifted down until it was midway between the ship and the ocean, then it stopped and held its position with the same unnatural ease as the craft from which it had just emerged. No juddering. Not being blown by the wind. Completely motionless.
‘What the hell is that thing?’ James asked.
Tom could taste fear in the air now, a definite change. People had begun to relax throughout the course of the evening and now, almost instantly, their earlier anxiety had returned, amplified ten-fold. Still no one moved. No one reacted. The entire pub remained silent. The TV volume was up, but no one was saying anything.
The thing which had descended from the alien ship dropped down again, swooping towards the water. As its distance from the source of the light above increased, it became possible to make out more detail. It was a small, dart-shaped object, as black as its parent and similarly featureless. Without warning, the light from the first ship was shut off as the hatch closed.
The camera tracked the smaller machine as it came to rest in a space above the waves, surrounded by frigates and gunships of different nationalities, hovering a metre above the water.
3
For a long time nothing happened. The uneasy silence in the pub continued, punctuated only by occasional noise from the fruit machines. Barely anyone moved. John Tipper stood with his wife and watched the nearest screen, arms folded defiantly. Even Darren Braithwaite, the long-haired lad who worked in the petrol station, and his gang of mates were quiet. This time last week John had threatened to bar them because of the way they’d been taunting a group of blokes from out of town. Today they were subdued, clearly as nervous as everyone else.
‘I need to go,’ James whispered to the others. ‘Have you seen the time? I said I wasn’t going to be out late.’
‘It’s been a strange day,’ Rob whispered back. ‘Steph will understand.’
‘I should be back home with her and the kids. She’ll have my balls.’
‘She’s already had them, mate.’
‘She’ll be okay,’ Siobhan reassured him.
‘You think?’
‘She’d have phoned if she needed you home. Tell her you just lost track of time. She’ll be fine about it. Anyway, she’ll only be sat watching this.’
‘No, I should be there,’ he said, pulling on his fleece. ‘I probably shouldn’t have come out. What happens if...?’
James didn’t finish asking his question. An audible collective gasp from around the pub silenced him. He turned back to the TV and saw that the smaller alien machine on the screen was moving again. It climbed to a slightly higher altitude, almost as if it wanted to be seen. Or was it being aimed?
‘Shit,’ Rob said quietly, ‘is that some kind of missile?’
The camera angle and the lack of visible references made it difficult to gauge the machine’s precise size and height. Tom was trying to estimate its proportions and guess its intent when, without warning, a series of lights appeared on the surface of the ship, all around its perimeter, all pointing upwards.
‘What’s happening?’ James asked pointlessly. He knew no one could answer, but it helped him just to ask. The relative silence in the pub was replaced with a low buzz of nervous voices when a hatch slid open on the top of the machine. And then, slowly – cautiously – a lone figure appeared, lifted gracefully into view on some kind of platform. There was a heart-stopping moment of confusion as the picture shifted and blurred, but it was only the camera operator struggling to keep up with events. As the picture came back into focus, they watched the figure step off the platform and take a few steps out onto the hull of its vessel.
Tom stared at an alien.
It was an undeniably unsettling and yet strangely inspiring sight. Standing somewhere between six and seven feet tall, Tom thought, it looked to him to be distinctly male, not that he had any reason to assume these creatures had human-like sexes. It had smooth, dark pink skin and he thought it looked burned, as if it had spent too long unprotected under the strong summer sun. Its head was unexpectedly disproportionate, and looked too large and heavy to be supported by such a gaunt frame. It had a light covering of grey, almost silver hair which was swept back at the temples, giving it a distinguished appearance. The alien wore a simple yet formal-looking uniform made of dark material with little in the way of decoration.
The creature stood still for the longest thirty seconds in history, its large eyes fixed straight ahead, apparently unfazed both by its exposed position and the fact it must have known it was now the sole focus of attention of the entire planet. Tom wondered what thoughts were running through its head. Whatever it felt, the creature (and that suddenly felt like too derogatory a term given its dignified appearance), remained regimentally stood to alert as it was scanned, scrutinised and inspected by the population of the planet.
‘Is that thing really an alien?’ Tom asked the question without thinking.
‘What else could it be?’ Rob replied.
In the hours since he’d witnessed the ship’s descent through the storm clouds, Tom had almost begun to get used to the fact that it was here. But this new development – this first confirmed and indisputable visible contact with an alien life-form – had made all the nervousness he’d felt out on his cliff-top run immediately return. Back to square one again in a heartbeat.
The alien on the screen continued to stand its ground, unperturbed by the chaos of movement and light which was now beginning to unfold all around it. What was it waiting for, Tom wondered? Was it going to surrender, or give the signal to attack? Neither option seemed more likely than the other. As he watched, it seemed to take in a long, deep breath, then tilted its oversized head back on its relatively slight shoulders and looked up at the mother-ship above. The TV coverage abruptly switched to a close-up of the alien’s head from another angle, and the similarities with a human face caught Tom off-guard. Other than an unusually pronounced forehead (which g
ave the alien an unfortunate Neanderthal-like profile from this angle), its basic facial features were instantly familiar. It had a wide, thin-lipped mouth, a small nose (too small, Tom thought), two ears which were quite flat and smooth and which were tilted back at a more obtuse angle than a human’s, and a pair of sharp, crystal-blue eyes. As still as the rest of its body remained, its eyes moved constantly, alert and intense, absorbing every detail.
When the camera angle switched again, the picture revealed that a boat had come alongside the shuttle craft. Filled with at least twenty heavily-armed soldiers, it bobbed and rolled with the waves, looking increasingly precarious in comparison to the unnaturally steady alien vehicle. The alien finally looked down from the mother-ship, took another deep breath of salty sea air (was it nervous, Tom wondered?), then raised its hands and struck an unmistakably passive pose. For a few seconds Tom was preoccupied with the unnatural length of the alien’s limbs – its elbows were lower down than expected, and it’s wrists higher – and he cursed himself for allowing himself to be distracted by trivialities at such a monumental, historic moment. The alien then began to move. It walked to the end of its ship, then stepped down onto the military boat. The soldiers all edged back slightly, leaving the new arrival standing alone in a small bubble of space on the deck. It continued to hold its hands up, keen to demonstrate that it was unarmed and had nothing to hide. The soldiers retook their original positions. For a few seconds longer the alien’s bulbous head remained visible in the midst of the crowd, then it disappeared as it was taken below deck. The small boat immediately began to move away from the scene at speed, banking hard to port. The camera operator scrambled to keep it focused and in shot as it raced towards the shore, desperate for a final few frames of alien footage.
On the TV, the news channel cut back to the studio. The anchor man whose face filled the screen looked lost for words. He was about to speak but was rudely truncated when all the TVs were switched off. John Tipper’s distinctive voice rose above the sudden noise of everyone else. ‘Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, let’s have your glasses please. I think that’s quite enough excitement for one day. I’m sure you’ve all got homes to go to.’