Arnold droned on, while Luke, his face pale and tense moved towards the back of the room. There was a cupboard lining the wall, filled with textbooks, and he sat cross-legged in front of it.
Arnold took a look at the angles and deemed him probably okay as Evelyn came in bearing a large washing-up basin full of ice.
‘I took the rat out,’ she said helpfully. ‘That girl really does like me.’
Arnold kept up a plethora of drivel about washing-up liquid as Luke sat next to the basin and plunged his hand into it.
For a long time nothing happened, just Arnold reading out a long list of ingredients from a box of laundry detergent he’d found.
‘So, right. Modern detergent formulations – the entire product versus just the surfactant – contain several components. Three main ingredients are builders (fifty per cent by weight, approximately), the alkylbenzene sulfonate surfactant (fifteen per cent) and bleaches (seven per cent).’
Time seemed to slow. Connie looked on, her heart full of confusion. What if it was a trick or a mistake or simply not true? What if she had been wrong; that she had been taken in by his odd charm, and by the strange things that appeared to be happening; that were undeniably happening all around them? That they were all having some kind of collective hysterical breakdown brought on by the death of their boss and the alien signal? Sé was leaning against the far wall with his arms folded. Ranjit was jiggling, saying, ‘I don’t see anything. What’s happening? Why isn’t anything happening? Is this a joke?’
‘Now one thing you don’t want to do when you’re building a cleaning product,’ Arnold droned on, ‘is get one with too much – or too little – surfactant. The exact correct percentage in fact is slightly less than fifteen per cent, which reacts perfectly with imbedded grease.’
‘Oh my God,’ said Ranjit.
‘I know, that’s right,’ said Arnold quickly. ‘Thank you for having a proportionate response to the importance of our cleaning rota.’
Connie crept a little closer and took a sharp intake of breath.
Luke’s right hand – still wearing the old-fashioned gold watch that didn’t work – was changing. The fingers were lengthening, unfurling from the hand, the forearm growing wider and stronger-looking as the colour came and went, fading in and out: in its place there was a startling clear phosphorescence, glistening, the long, long fingers – there were three, and one very long thumb – sparkling; they were, as he had said, not unlike a jellyfish, but the flesh was illuminated, glowing underneath, with an odd, colourless sparkling flickering up and down.
They all stared. Arnold’s recitation faded away. Sé came over from his standpoint, looked and cursed softly and long under his breath in his own language. Evelyn swallowed. Ranjit turned away and quietly threw up in the wastepaper bin again.
‘Fuck the fuck-fuck,’ said Arnold. ‘And, erm, don’t forget to use a finishing glass polish.’
Connie gazed, hypnotised.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said. Luke lifted his head, his eyes full of pain, and held her gaze.
‘Have you got a tail?’ said Ranjit excitedly, seemingly entirely recovered. ‘Have you got a tail though? How many legs have you got? Eight? I bet it’s eight. And a tail!’
Luke lifted his hand out of the water and clutched it, in obvious pain, to his chest. Gradually the lights began to fade, the fingers began to furl themselves up; the colour gradually returned. He winced, his face creasing.
‘Does it hurt?’ said Connie.
He nodded.
‘All the time,’ he said quietly.
‘Your tail must really hurt,’ said Ranjit.
‘I don’t have a tail, Ranjit.’
‘Hmm,’ said Ranjit. ‘Have you got fins?’
‘So I believe we’re coming to the end of our cleaning seminar for today,’ said Arnold, a hiccup in his voice. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from Luke’s body. ‘Please just remember: be safe out there in Cleaning World.’
Evelyn was the most surprising of all. Having sat watching the display in total silence, she got up suddenly, her little solid body moving swiftly across the tiled floor, put her arms round Luke’s neck and, in a completely uncharacteristic display, gave him a swift hug.
‘Welcome,’ she said quietly. Luke looked completely surprised.
‘You are totally like X-Men!’ said Ranji. ‘This is amazing. What can you do?’
Luke shrugged.
‘Well, mostly mathematics.’
‘No way! You must have superpowers.’
‘Well, if you call sitting with your arm in a bucket of ice water for half an hour a superpower, then I suppose so.’
‘Really, dude? You don’t have superstrength or anything?’ said Arnold, having put Justin Bieber back next to the microphone the expectation that their watchers would once more see five not terribly well-dressed mathematicians sitting doodling on pieces of paper.
‘You can move a piano!’ remembered Connie suddenly.
‘Um, yes,’ said Luke. ‘There were a lot of complaints about that, I remember.’
‘But most people would find that too heavy to move.’
‘Yes, I have some muscularity advantages, I think,’ said Luke. ‘Although everything on your planet is heavy to me.’
‘Pick me up,’ said Ranjit. ‘Pick me up and throw me across the room! No, hang on, don’t pick me up. Or pick me up and gently put me down again.’
‘Yeah, guys, don’t forget the cameras,’ said Arnold. ‘Maybe just pick up a four-poster bed later.’
They sat in silence. Evelyn took out some delicious-looking chicken mayonnaise sandwiches and handed them round. Then it was slightly awkward as everyone watched Luke to see if he ate anything.
‘I don’t… I mean, I can eat,’ said Luke. ‘But I couldn’t eat another animal. There’s an animal in there, yes?’
‘Yes, but only a little one,’ said Ranjit.
‘What have you been eating?’
Luke showed her a sachet of Soylent.
‘It seemed safer. I don’t know what I’m doing otherwise,’ he said. ‘Plus, your cookies. Your cookies have been very helpful. Thank you for those. The other stuff tastes like…’
He shook his head.
‘Well. I could not eat a living thing: I am a living thing.’
Nobody felt much like the sandwiches after that.
‘So, tell us about your world, man,’ said Arnold. ‘Have you got, like, three moons?’
‘No, just the one moon,’ said Luke. ‘A lot like this one. Having a single moon is very, very useful if you want to sustain life. Tides, and so on.’
‘And you live in the sea?’
‘We’re amphibians,’ said Luke. ‘Me, personally, I’m mixed, which is, um, unusual, so I don’t mind really. But I like to sleep in the water if I can. I don’t like being so dry all the time.’
‘Do you have houses? And the internet? And families? And chocolate? And Sellotape? And war?’
Luke blinked. ‘Thanks, Ranjit. Can I answer those later? But we have society. Not family in quite the same way.’
‘Oh my God, do you spawn?’
‘That’s a very personal question,’ said Evelyn, batting him down. There was a pause. ‘Do you spawn though?’
‘I don’t… One doesn’t really talk about spawn,’ said Luke.
‘Well, I’m taking that as a definite yes,’ said Arnold, and Ranjit nodded his head.
‘What does it say?’ said Sé, who was still leaning against the wall, unwilling to join their group. He had, though, eaten the sandwich. ‘The message. They’re after you. Why?’
‘We have a problem,’ said Luke. ‘It is a struggle. There are those who think we should be only water-based, and those who want to spend more time on land. And those who want to be free to go wherever the hell we damn well choose. Some propose partition. Some want to build a great big wall between the land and the sea.’
‘Good luck with that,’ said Evelyn.
‘So we tried,’
he went on. ‘Tried to find a way to keep the two sides together, talking, rather than apart, consolidating their differences. I’m a genuine…’
There was a pause.
‘What?’ prompted Arnold. ‘And what are you anyway? Like, Klingon? Or Gallifreyan?’
Luke shook his head. ‘I’m just a mix.’
Sé shook his head. ‘I don’t understand. How many people live in this civilisation?’
Luke shrugged. ‘On the planet? Ninety billion, give or take.’
‘And they came after you? What’s so special about you?’
‘Are you, like, a really terrifying warlord in your own culture?’ said Ranjit. ‘OOO – or a goodie? Are you Optimus Prime?’
Luke shook his head.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m just a mathematical engineer.’
‘So what’s so special about you?’ said Sé.
Luke sighed. He waited a little and then began.
‘I don’t believe in walls and I don’t believe in enforced separation. But I was working on the project. The land–sea project. So I sabotaged it.’
‘Just like you tried to sabotage us,’ said Connie. Luke nodded. He looked at her. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I genuinely didn’t think you’d figure it out. The astrophysicists got nowhere near. Engineers neither. I reckoned without you.’
‘Hang on, they asked us third?’ said Arnold. Luke ignored him.
‘What did you do?’ said Sé. ‘Did you kill a bunch of people?’
Luke frowned.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Why would I do that?’
‘Well, I think there’s quite a lot we don’t know about you,’ said Sé. ‘So it seems like a reasonable question.’
Luke paused. ‘Caused a bit of fuss of course.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘Well, I have a friend who’s a space engineer… local stuff, of course, just mining and a bit of star power exploitation. Ninety billion is quite a large energy ask.’
‘He gave you a rocket?’
‘Yes,’ said Luke. ‘I don’t know when he’s going to get it back…’
‘But that’s not possible,’ said Arnold. ‘How long did it take you to get here?’
‘Forty years,’ said Luke.
‘It took you forty years sitting in a rocket to get here?’
Luke shrugged. ‘I’m a patient man.’
‘Hang on, doesn’t that mean they’ll be following you?’ said Ranjit. ‘I mean, why are we hearing from them now?’
Luke nodded.
‘Because they are close at hand,’ he said simply. ‘And at least one of them is here.’
Chapter Twelve
MI5 field agent Nigel Cardon’s alarm went off at 5.30 a.m. every morning, but he didn’t need it this morning. Hadn’t needed it in the last two days, ever since the young technician had grabbed him and taken him into the Mullard SCIF suggesting there was something he needed to see.
He lay wide awake, looking at the dawn starting to push its way into the room. Beside him was his wife, fast asleep. She slept daintily, a single, perfectly highlighted blonde lock strewn across the pillow. He looked at her and sighed. She was gorgeous, Annabel. Beautiful and classy and elegant; kept a lovely house. His mates all envied him. They would never know how much of an animal he felt next to her; too masculine and hairy and unworthy of her delicate attentions.
In his turn, he would never know how much of the beast she had wanted when she had agreed to marry him; how much his delicate, polite enquiries and the way he treated her like a princess bored her halfway to tears. They had no children.
Nigel rolled out of bed. Normally he would hit a power circuit now, as much to clear his head as to keep himself fit – he found being intimidatingly fit a useful psychological tool in his job. But there was no time for that now. Even though his phone had been on silent throughout the night, he had never hit a level of sleep deep enough that the blink-blink-blink of the tiny red light hadn’t haunted his dreams.
He showered downstairs; Annabel, bless her, had laid out his clothes the night before. She was a dab hand with the iron. ‘I like doing it,’ she always insisted as she stood in front of her soaps, ironing away while he worked late again, night after night; she would fall asleep under a perfectly uncreased coverlet and he would watch her in the darkened hallway when he finally got in, shoes off at the door.
He took his coffee outside. It was going to be a beautiful day, astonishingly lovely for so early in the year. Their little chunk of English paradise, Nigel thought to himself briefly, and somewhat wistfully. Then he glanced down at the phone which was going crazy underneath his big hand; blinking, vibrating and twisting like it was alive: his day had begun.
In the car, Nigel laboriously stabbed his way through the four layers of security on his large, chunky, non-standard-issue telephone, checked his newsfeed – it was fine, though the fact that run-of-the-mill coups and murders were his new idea of ‘fine’ struck him rather forcibly – then hit the A46 with other men whose jackets were hanging on the hooks behind the driving seat. He put on his ridiculous Bluetooth earpiece, about which he had long ceased to feel self-conscious, and took his calls in order of importance. First, the Cabinet Office.
He disliked the silky tones of the Prime Minister’s chief of staff: she sounded constantly rather fed up and condescending. That the most astonishing of events was upon them and she still refused to drop the froideur he had found counterintuitively reassuring. She was undoubtedly shitting it just as much as the rest of them; you wouldn’t be human if you weren’t. The fact that she still couldn’t let it show meant it was all an act after all, so he could almost certainly get behind it.
‘Anyali.’
‘Mr Cardon.’
He half smiled.
‘How is he this morning?’
Anyali sounded impatient.
‘He’s fine.’
‘Come on, darling,’ said Nigel, knowing how much this riled her. ‘You’re talking to me, and I’m talking to them, and I need to know. I’m not the fucking News of the World, am I? So, can I ask again? Because the calmer and quieter he is, the more time I have and the less we all turn into chickens chasing our own fucking tails. How. Is. He?’
‘Chickens don’t have tails.’
‘Yeah, they do. Big feathery tails. I’ve seen ’em.’
There was a slightly exasperated noise on the other end, and the sound of a door slamming and background noise being cut off. Then a pause before she spoke.
‘He’s… he’s still delighted.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ swore Nigel. ‘What is WRONG with him?’
‘He’s over the moon. Polls are absolutely desperate, people are out of work, nothing good is happening overseas, we don’t even have a nice, distracting war. This really couldn’t have come at a better time.’
‘Fuck’s sake. Tell me he hasn’t spoken to the Americans.’
‘It’s all we can do to stop him speaking to anyone.’
‘And you’re lecturing us about containment,’ said Nigel, exasperated.
‘How are you doing at your end?’ said Anyali, changing the subject.
‘We’re fine,’ said Nigel. ‘But my lot are all nerds. They’ve got no mates. Who are they going to tell? Your lot get taken out to lunch with journalists all the fricking time. How far has it spread?’
‘We managed to persuade him not to tell his kids.’
‘Oh, thank God for that.’
The Prime Minister’s kids were famous in certain circles for behaving so appallingly their security detail spent most of the time apologising to Topshop. At the moment there was a standoff between the PM’s office and The X Factor, to which the eldest daughter had applied in secret and who were understandably anxious to have her appear. The PM was pretty happy with his life, on the whole, but he would have preferred Barack Obama’s daughters.
‘But I believe his mood could be characterised as positive.’
Her voice lowered a little, became uncharact
eristically confiding.
‘You know what he said?’
‘Oh God,’ said Nigel. ‘Tell me.’
‘He said, “If it was between this and the zombie apocalypse, I’m so glad we got this one.”’
There was a long silence.
‘Zombie fucking apocalypse?’ said Nigel eventually. ‘Zombie fucking apocalypse? God, Anyali, I think I want these aliens to come and take us over. Save us from the bunch of utter fucking idiots we all apparently are.’
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