by Adam Roberts
What to do?
What happened next surprised me. A rope dropped from the open mouth of the huge rubber object above me. It trailed down like the first tendril of water from a giant black rubber bath-tap, silvery and glinting.
A moment later a figure came shinning down the rope - the figure, in point of fact, of a beautiful young female. She was dressed in a silvery top that was large enough to cover her upper body; and also in tiny green shorts that seemed to be made of some silky material which were quite inadequate to cover her lower body. When I say ‘shorts’, I could perhaps qualify the phrase and note that they were, in point of fact, knickers. As I later discovered. Her legs were long, lithe, lovely, and possessed several other alliteratively legsy ‘l’ qualities. They were wrapped tightly about the rope. She slithered down and came to a halt standing upon the floor facing me. For a while she did nothing but blink in the light. Then she said ‘Why didn’t you wake me up?’
This was a puzzler.
I said: ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know I was supposed to.’ That looks a bit ridiculous written down, I know. It sounded pretty ridiculous coming out of my mouth. But when a beautiful woman abseils down a silver rope in her knickers from the cavernous entrance to a fifty-metre-wide rubber mouthpiece suspended five metres in the air and demands to know why you didn’t wake her up, it’s hard to think of anything to say that wouldn’t sound ridiculous. In fact, ridiculousness-sounding was the appropriate response, I feel.
‘I can’t believe I slept through it!’ she cried in rank frustration. ‘Whom was it who lifted the helmet? Was it you?’
‘It—I—er, yes.’
Her next question was: ‘whom are you?’ But before I could answer her eyes left me and stared at the cavernous space in which we were both standing. Her jaw fell, leaving her mouth completely open in astonishment. She gawped as if seeing her environment for the first time. ‘It’s so huge!’ she gasped. ‘Oh it’s been so long since I saw it! So very long! I had forgotten - no matter how many times I felt my way around the perimeter with my fingers’-ends, it’s not the same as actually seeing it like this. It’s astounding!’
‘Who are you?’ I asked. I was ravished by her beauty. Her beauty was like an anchor, fixing me to that spot. She, in other words, was a ravish-anchor.
‘It’s so good to see another living being!’ she cried, throwing her arms around me. ‘It’s been so long . . .’
‘Nice to meet you too,’ I said, politely, in a squeaky voice. I could feel the soft and lovely warmth of her body in close proximity to mine. It had been a very long time since any woman, of whatever physical disposition (let alone one as beautiful as this one) had been in close proximity to me. Or middling proximity. Or far proximity, come to that. I was gobsmacked.
‘Forgive me for my rudeness,’ she said, stepping back and facing me squarely. ‘And allow me to introduce myself. I am Lexanco, daughter of Panzpipl, from the planet Tapov. I am from the country of Lithe.’
‘I am delighted to meet you, Lexanco,’ I said. ‘From the planet of . . .?’
‘Tapov.’
‘I see. You are not human, then?’
‘I am Lither.’
‘I’m delighted to make your acquaintance,’ I said. ‘My name is Prose Tailor. I’m a tailor of prose - a human, from the twenty-third century. Might I ask about how you came to be here? This,’ I added, gesturing to the relevant area, ‘is my helmet.’
She looked amazed.
‘Surely not!’ she cried. ‘How can it be yours? You seem so young! For I have been here for many years - too many years to count easily upon the fingers of my hands and my feet.’
‘More than twenty years?’ I gasped.
‘More than thirty-one years,’ she corrected. When I looked a little startled, she added: ‘I am not human, after all.’
I glanced at her hands - each of which contained exactly five digits - and boggled briefly. But, I reflected, the ways of alienkind are generally strange. And in all other respects this figure was gorgeously and alluringly feminine. Now, I would like to describe her to you (I am, after all, a tailor of prose) but I’m afeared that my words would be inadequate - that they would merely skate over her figure; that they could not stay abreast of her breasts, would pip her hips, that I would, to put it in plain words, be telling lies about her eyes, being unfair to her hair. For my words could never capture the rapture of her stature. Which wasn’t flature. I mean, flat. I mean it was curvy . The truth of the matter is that her figure was in all respects shapely.
I seem to be losing the thread a little.
Let me put this in as simple a manner as I can: I fell instantly in love with Miss Lexanco. Have you heard the phrase love at first sight? Have you ever experienced love at first sight? - or, I should say, have you ever experienced sight? Because until you have fallen in love at first sight you don’t know what sight, in its fullest possibility, is. Unless you have fallen in love yourself then you can have no sense as to how I felt, at that moment, inside that aircraft-hangar-sized helmet, standing before that gorgeous, curvaceous and twenty-one-toed woman.
‘You are staring,’ she observed.
‘I—I—apologise,’ I stammered. ‘It’s just that I have never before seen so beautiful a woman!’
‘How old are you?’ she asked.
‘Twenty-nine.’
‘Then you and I have something in common,’ she said, smiling kindly. ‘For as I stand here before you, I can comment that I have never seen so handsome a man. At least not for the same period of time to which you alluded.’
‘You’ve never seen a better looking man than me?’ I asked in frank disbelief.
‘Not in the last twenty-nine years at any rate.’
‘But you’ve been inside this helmet for . . . oh I see what you mean.’ I was momentarily a little discouraged; but then the enormity of Lexanco’s fate finally sank in. Three decades alone inside a gigantic helmet! It was beyond belief. It was so far beyond belief that it circled the planet of incredulity and arrived at the back of the head of the same belief of which it was beyond. I mean that I believed her. You see? That was the point of my metaphor.
’Three decades inside this prison?’ I gasped. ‘Without a single other sentient creature to keep you company? How terrible!’
‘Indeed.’
My chivalrous instincts were aroused. I was, as it happens, aroused in other ways too, but let me not dwell upon those in what is, after all, a memoir designed for family reading. ‘I shall rescue you!’ I cried.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘How?’
‘Well—’ I said. ‘In a couple of hours I’m pretty sure that somebody outside will lift this helmet up.’
‘You’re pretty sure?’
‘Pretty sure, yes.’
‘It doesn’t - forgive me for saying this - it doesn’t sound like a plan, exactly. More a sort-of wait-and-hope strategy.’
My chivalrous instincts, formerly aroused, were now piqued. ‘In that case,’ I said, boldly, ‘I shall rescue you straight away! We need not wait on the vagaries of fate. We shall make our way out of this prison without delay.’
‘I am impressed,’ she said. ‘What will you do?’
I had no idea. To give myself time to think I asked. ‘How have you survived for so long in here? Is your race of aliens one that has no need for sustenance?’
‘On the contrary, I must eat all the time. My race of aliens, dear Prose, is not so very different to humanity. In my former travels I encountered humans many times, and I am very familiar with them. My people and yours are close enough genetically to permit friendship, marriage and even divorce.’
‘So,’ I said, trying to swing my arms in an insouciant manner and thereby express my eminent suitability for a session of experimental interbreeding, should she wish to test the possibility. ‘So how did you manage to survive for thirty-two years inside this helmet? What did you eat?’
‘I ate pap. There is a supply - it can be accessed by climbing up the mou
thpiece tube. There is water there too.’
‘Enough for thirty-two years?’
‘Yes indeed. The portions, you see, are considerably magnified. The food is coarse and without flavour, but it contains enough nutrient to maintain life.’
‘It doesn’t sound very pleasant.’
‘It is not. But it is preferable to the alternative.’
‘What’s the alternative? Some sort of food even worse-tasting? You know, like, like,’ I couldn’t for a moment recall the phrase I wanted, and then it came to me: ‘—like airline food, ha-ha?’
‘When I said preferable to the alternative,’ she replied in her flat, slightly puzzled tones, ‘I meant that the alternative would be death by starvation.’
‘Oh,’ I said.
There was a silence.
‘Still,’ I said. ‘I’m terribly impressed that you managed to get up into the mouthpiece at all. Terribly impressed.’
‘I unthreaded my trousers,’ she explained, in her level voice, ‘and wound the twine into a rope, and this I used to get up to the opening of the mouthpiece. Of course this has had the consequence of leaving my legs bare, and of forcing me to walk around in nothing but my knickers for three decades. But, once again, I preferred that to the alternative.’
I too preferred her walking around in only her knickers to the alternative. That sentence holds, actually, for pretty much any alternative you might care to name. My being crowned King of Norway, for instance. A lifetime’s supply of chocolate headwear. A new cure for Chronic Bat Syndrome. Whatever alternative you can think of, I can assert that I would prefer watching Lexanco walking around in nothing but her knickers to it. In fact - and I’ve given this matter some considerable thought - the only alternative I can be sure I would prefer to watching Lexanco walking around in nothing but her knickers, would be the alternative in which I watched Lexanco walking around in nothing not even her knickers. But that wasn’t on the cards. At least not immediately.
I decided, as tactfully as I could, not to try and put into words the thoughts expressed in that last paragraph, even though they all passed rapidly through my mind at that juncture. Instead I limited myself to saying: ‘quite’.
‘It has been a lonely time,’ she said.
‘I can imagine,’ I said. ‘And how did you come to be marooned here inside this helmet in the first place?’ I asked.
‘It is a long story,’ she said. ‘I was an assistant-stroke-companion to The Dentist.’
‘To who?’
‘To whom?’
‘I asked you that.’
‘I am not asking, but correcting. You said to who?, when the correct formulation must be to whom?’
But of course she had absorbed the passion for correct grammar and syntax from the Time Gentleman she had been accompanying. ‘Whom,’ I tried, ‘is The Dentist?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘in this case the correct formulation is who is The Dentist?’
‘I’m terribly sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s a poor thing for a prose tailor to confess, but I have to admit that I’ve never been very good on the difference between who and whom.’
Her eyes widened in shock, and I felt a sudden sickness in my stomach - for the fear had come abruptly upon me that I had alienated this beautiful creature. I’m ashamed to say that I panicked a little. More than a little. Alright, I panicked abjectly. ‘Not,’ I hurriedly added, ‘but that I wouldn’t be eager to learn the difference, from a teacher as expert and, um, alluring as yourself. You could certainly teach me the difference between who and whom - or between the two states of any nips you like. Nouns, I mean nouns. Nouns, not, ha! Ha-ha! Ha! Stupid of me. Embarrassing! I mean that sort of slip of the thong - of the tongue, the tongue, the tongue tongue. That kind of slip. Tongue. Slippery tongue!’ I tried to calm myself. I was speaking much too rapidly. And a little loudly too. Some part of my consciousness was trying to blot out the fact that I had, only minutes after meeting her, yelled ‘slippery tongue!’ directly into the face of the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I am, I concede happily, no expert on the business of chatting-up beautiful women; but I’m prepared to bet any amount of money that walking up to a woman you barely know and shouting ‘slippery tongue!’ in her face is not likely to persuade her to go home with you and crack open the bottle of baby oil. If I became fully aware of what I had just done I might well literally expire with embarrassment. I had to push on, not to lose my momentum, to try and salvage the situation. I took a deep breath, and decided not to say anything else.
She looked coolly at me for a moment. Then she said: ‘Sir Tailor: if you can free me from this monstrous helmet, which has been my prison for so many years, I promise to teach you anything you ask.’
‘Anything?’
‘Anything.’
‘Just to clarify, so as I understand. Anything?’
‘Indeed.’
‘Well, that’s a very generous offer that y—anything?’
‘It has been so long!’ she cried in despair, balling up her fists and tapping at her own temples, a gesture I assumed was made to indicate her frustration. ‘Trapped, alone, in darkness, eating pap! I waited - I waited - thinking, as you first said, that somebody would be sure to lift the helmet up and release me. Somebody! But did they? Did they? No! For a day and a night I sat in the middle of the chamber here, sitting cross-legged, until thirst and hunger forced me to explore the mouthpiece.’
‘Ah, yes,’ I said, seizing on this as a topic of conversation that would steer me free from the morass of embarrassment into which I had, against my better judgment, been striving to bury it. ‘You were explaining how you got up there. You said you unpicked the threads of your silver trousers, and wove them together again as a rope. What then?’
‘I used the buckles from my stylish patent-pretending-leather shoes as a grapple.’
‘Your patent what?’ I asked.
‘Mock leather,’ she said.
I was so pathetically eager to please her, so desperate to impress her with my openness, that I took her at her word without a second thought. I should have had that second thought, so as to prevent myself from making a fool of myself; but my brain was galloping on heat. ‘Leather!’ I said, in a scornful voice. ‘It’s rubbish, isn’t it? All tough and - and leathery .’ This didn’t seem to me to be mockery enough, so I added in whiny voice, flapping my hands about for comic effect: ‘oo I’m leather, look at me aren’t I versatile,’ before resuming in my normal voice, ‘well no you’re not actually, you’re just skin, not even living skin, just dead skin, and that’s the same thing that gets sucked up in my vacuum cleaner when I do the hoovering. Leather? Don’t make me laugh.’
I stopped.
‘I meant,’ said Lexanco, ‘not that you should mock leather, but that they are mock leather. The shoes.’
I thought about this.
‘I see,’ I said. Then I said. ‘Yes, that makes more sense. I feel a little foolish.’
‘So,’ she said, neutrally.
I looked down at her bare feet. ‘So, where are they now? Your shoes?’
‘In my den.’
‘You have a den, then?’
‘Inside the mouthpiece. I use the shoes as all purpose utensils. Cups, scoops, containers, gloves. They have worn surprisingly well, really. I clambered up inside there and felt my way along the tunnel. There is a toggle just on the inside. It’s designed, I suppose, to be operated by a tongue; it releases gushes of water, or pellets of food. The first time I tried it I was almost flushed from the tube! But at least I could satisfy my thirst from the residue clinging to the inside of the container. Then I ate some food. I crawled further into the mouthpiece to explore. It was dark, and the rubber was relatively soft underneath my knees and hands - much more so than the hard floor of the main chamber. I was exhausted, and fell asleep. The next thing I knew I was being thrown about, bounced from rubber wall to rubber wall.’
‘The helmet had been picked up?’
She nodded, grimly. I grinned
noddingly. This was an inappropriate reaction to her expression of gloominess, of course, but I seemed to have lost control of my face. Some part of me was still trying to ingratiate myself with her. ‘Somebody - I know not whom - had picked up the helmet. And because I was inside the mouthpiece, rather than just standing on the floor, I was picked up too. The helmet was plunged into some dark space - perhaps the very cupboard from which you plucked it, so many years later.’
‘I don’t understand - how could your companion abandon you? You said you were with a dentist?’
‘Not a. The. The Dentist - a Time Gentleman of great distinction.’
‘What a coincidence! I too am the assistant-stroke-companion of a Time Gentleman! Mine is called The Doctor. And one thing of which I am sure is that he will not abandon me here, inside this helmet. How did your Dentist come to leave you here?’
‘I do not know,’ she said, sorrowfully. ‘For many years I fretted and worried over this very question. Perhaps he merely forgot about me, for he was a trifle absent-minded. Perhaps some tragedy befell him and he was unable to rescue me. But as I lived on in the darkness, year after year, counting the passage of time by my periods of sleep, marked as notches in the soft material of the rubber wall of my den—well, to be truthful, darker suspicions began to crowd in upon my brain.’
‘Darker suspicions?’
‘That the Dentist had abandoned me deliberately, maliciously. That he, whom I had taken to be a force for Good in the cosmos, was actually a figure of evil.’
‘But he was a Time Gentleman!’ I objected. ‘A guardian of virtue and honesty and order in the cosmos!’
‘But how much do you really know of the Time Gentlemen? ’ she pressed. ‘How much did I know? The Dentist arrived in this craft on my home world of Tapov, circling the star Thpops, and met me. Within a few hours I was whirled away, carried off in his marvellous machine to visit a succession of exotic and exciting worlds. He told me he was one of the good guys. I believed him. But should I have done?’
I was nonplussed by this, or I would have been if I had known precisely what nonplussed meant. Something to do with mathematics, I’ve always assumed.