Resistance is Futile

by Jenny T. Colgan

The churches of the city – Great St Mary’s, St Bene’t’s, St Andrew’s – chimed their bells, ding-donging the new day.

  Evelyn stood up with her cup and banged on the heavy, locked door as hard as she could. And then when he heard, Arnold too started banging and shouting. Ranjit woke up, slightly confused, but when he remembered where he was, he jumped up too and hollered along, even slightly daringly trying some swear words in Hindi. And they all yelled their heads off.

  Francis the PhD guard was first on the scene.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘We’re ready,’ said Arnold. ‘We’re ready. Get us out of here. Where’s Sé?’

  Francis took the good news to Nigel, who tried not to betray his delight and keep his cool head. He nodded to the American soldiers to untie Sé immediately. Sé continued to vomit and vomit on the floor and could not stand up without help. Nigel waited patiently for him, then indicated to one of the soldiers to carry him down to the conference room, and for the others to join him there.

  Arnold couldn’t believe it when he saw what they had done to Sé. Evelyn could. All three rushed towards him as he was brought in. Arnold had to try very hard not to cry. Evelyn took Sé in her arms, sat him down and rocked him back and forth like a child.

  ‘What did they do to you?’ Ranjit kept saying. ‘You were amazing, man. I bet you didn’t tell them anything! I bet you were, like, as tough as it is possible to be. You’re, like, the best. I would also have been totally okay.’

  ‘Ahem,’ said Nigel quietly. ‘Can we begin?’

  Luke splayed his fingers over the surface of the device. Connie was reminded how as a child she would run her fingers around the top of a glass to make it sing. It hummed into life, then suddenly crackled. It was not especially loud, but it had the noise of a hundred – a thousand, more – frequencies on it, as if every broadcaster on Earth was suddenly coming through on the same time. This was exactly what was happening. ‘Ow,’ said Connie. ‘Tune it out, tune it out.’

  He looked at her bemused ‘Oh, I think it sounds nice…’

  ‘TUNE IT OUT.’

  ‘Earth frequencies are alarmingly close together,’ he grumbled. ‘And you all talk SO MUCH. And I can’t work it with these stupid sausage things.’

  ‘Stop complaining about fingers,’ said Connie. ‘Fingers are great.’

  She was bouncing up and down with nerves and anticipation now, staring at the faintly glowing pebble he had in his hands. Luke moved it on through crackle and hiss, glancing up from time to time, searching out areas in the sky. Finally, there came a sharp crunching noise that sounded like a car crash, a loud thump. Then another. It was ominous and jangled, like a horrible alarm.

  Arnold wrote out the details he’d memorised on a piece of paper and handed them over.

  ‘This is how to contact them,’ he said gruffly.

  Nigel stared at them in disbelief.

  ‘You’ve had this for three days?’

  They hesitated, then nodded.

  ‘This is treason,’ said Nigel.

  ‘Yeah, we know,’ said Arnold. ‘Can I linger and die in Britain, please? US prisons are really, really, really nasty places.’

  ‘But why, WHY? Why didn’t you just tell us? Why are the other two on the run?’

  ‘There is a message,’ said Evelyn. ‘You might want to sit down.’

  Nigel did so, trying not to let his hands shake. He glanced at Sé, who had his head now in Evelyn’s lap, and whose alarmingly bloodshot eyes were focusing on nothing at all.

  ‘The aliens are looking for an escapee from their planet, who is hiding here.’

  ‘She was right,’ said Nigel wonderingly, shaking his head. He leaned back.

  ‘It’s not Godzilla, is it?’ he said in a low voice.

  ‘Ooh,’ said Ranjit.

  ‘No,’ said Evelyn. ‘It’s Luke.’

  There was a long silence, as Nigel tried to take this in. To finally hear it said out loud.

  ‘All this time,’ he said finally. ‘That nerdy guy in the spectacles…’

  He paused.

  ‘Of course. Of course it is. And he killed the professor when he found out. Who else could possibly do that? And then he went on the run. Christ.’

  ‘He says he didn’t do it,’ said Evelyn.

  ‘Did he…? I mean, did he just say he was the alien?’

  They shook their heads.

  ‘We saw it! He’s all jellyfish,’ said Ranjit. ‘Like a shiny jellyfish!’

  Nigel shook his head. Then he banged his fist on the table.

  ‘And you let him escape and didn’t tell us?! What on EARTH where you thinking?’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Evelyn. ‘We should have trusted him to you, and how you treat people.’

  She stroked Sé’s head possessively.

  ‘What’s with the girl? Is he holding her? That’s it, isn’t it? She’s his hostage. But still, you come to us; we have ways of dealing with these situations.’

  The three looked at one another.

  ‘Uh,’ said Arnold. ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘That’s a bit personal,’ said Evelyn.

  ‘She knew and she still chose to go with a murderous alien? Oh God. Oh God. Where the HELL are they?’

  ‘They were heading for Belarus,’ said Evelyn, feeling the weight of betrayal as she did so, and speaking quietly and quickly. ‘We don’t know if they got there. We haven’t heard from them. They promised to contact us if they got there and we promised that after three days we were going to turn everything over to you.’

  Something clicked over in Nigel’s mind. Malik’s sighting. Warsaw. He glanced down at the new messages on his phone. Mazyr. Mazyr? Something about a train. Where the hell was that?

  He blinked grimly.

  ‘I believe they did.’

  ‘YAY!’ said Ranjit.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Luke’s ship is there,’ said Arnold. ‘His spaceship. He has a spaceship. My buddy Luke, right. He has his own spaceship. Wow. I liked saying that.’

  ‘So he’s going to escape again?’ said Nigel. ‘Thanks to you. When an alien civilisation is looking for him. And you put the entire Earth at risk to do so?’

  He looked at them all and shook his head. Ranjit’s ears flamed bright pink.

  ‘Give me the details. Give them to me now.’

  He picked up his phone.

  ‘Dahlia?’ He listened for a moment. ‘No, listen, I don’t care about your annual leave plans right now. No. Not now, no. Listen. Just get me Vauxhall and Number 10 please. It’s Code N. Double N. Fuck it, triple N. All the fucking Ns.’

  Evelyn had never been in the telescope control room before. It was impressive. Even after midnight it was buzzing with serious-looking staff looking harassed – as well they might be, given the amount of data they were dealing with and their inability to understand any of it, not to mention a switchboard entirely jammed up with people wanting to ask them what had just happened on the moon.

  Everyone looked nervous but excited at the same time. She had wanted to take Sé back to his rooms, but there was no question of that. They were all to stay together where people could see them. Someone found him a seat at the back of the room and he slumped in it, oblivious.

  ‘Who works the audio comms?’ demanded Nigel. ‘Communications manager?’

  An incredibly thin, young-looking man wearing a bow-tie stepped forwards.

  ‘Can you ask your dad to come and assist us please?’ snapped Nigel as the boy fumbled with his white coat and nervously cleared his throat.

  ‘I think you’ll find I can assist you.’

  Nigel turned to Arnold. ‘Now what the hell do we have to do?’

  Arnold took a piece of paper and wrote down the galactic coordinates derived from the frequency sequence he’d memorised and, glancing at the others, who nodded, passed it over. Nigel glanced at it, but it was gobbledegook to him.

  The young man, whose name was Pol, looked at it.

  ‘This can’t w
ork,’ he said crossly. ‘This is dust clouds and space between stars. It’s nothing. There’s nothing in that quadrant.’

  ‘Well, can your instruments detect where it’s meant to be?’ said Arnold. ‘Or are they just for trying to look up girls’ skirts five miles away?’

  Pol bristled.

  ‘Of course we can’t detect it,’ he said. ‘We could if there was anything there. I’m just telling you: we scan it every day. There’s nothing there. There’s no way it could reach out across space. It’s physically impossible.’

  Arnold folded his arms and stood in a line with Evelyn and Ranjit.

  ‘Well, we’re mathematicians,’ he said. ‘So physically impossible to us just sounds like this: “yah yah yah boo hoo”.’

  Pol scowled.

  ‘Please, can we just get this fixed up and see?’ said Nigel, struggling to keep his temper. ‘Let’s just pretend for a moment that there’s more at stake than a little bit of territorial arseholeness.’

  Pol took it from him and moved a young woman off a huge computer bank with three screens.

  ‘THAT’S your amazing advanced space-scanning equipment?’ said Arnold, who had found three days locked in a cell being quiet extraordinarily difficult. ‘I’ve got better kit for World of Warcraft. AND a panini maker.’

  The others looked at him as Pol fired up the machine. The three screens sprung into life, showing graphs of peaks and troughs on one, and a scanning star system on another.

  ‘What? You get hungry.’

  Pol put on his headphones in a very deliberate fashion, looking at Arnold all the while. He moved a mike in near his mouth.

  ‘Oh look, it’s Madonna,’ said Arnold.

  ‘Ssh,’ said Evelyn.

  ‘I won’t shoosh,’ said Arnold. ‘I’m holding the secrets of the universe in my hand and Prince George here wants to pull fucking rank.’

  Pol ignored him, saying into the computer’s mike in a low voice, ‘Fifty-five phased array one hundred and fifty-five gigahertz.’

  There was a perceptible creaking and Evelyn looked out of the window. Against the dark of night, the great satellite dishes gradually started to turn on their hydraulics. All of them moving together was faintly sinister: they resembled large heads which had been resting, all suddenly turning, as if cocking an ear towards something they had heard, then gazing at it implacably.

  She shivered and looked back at Sé. He was slumped in his seat staring at nothing. She wanted to move, but Nigel glanced at her and made it clear with a quick shake of his head that she must not. She tutted sharply.

  Pol was listening intently to his headphones until Nigel ordered a speaker to be switched on. There was nothing but rustling and hiss; interference and static from deep within the galaxy, and Pol’s face took on a satisfied look. Arnold and Evelyn swapped glances. There was a long pause. Nigel thought – hoped, for the very last time – that this all might be some ridiculous misunderstanding; that they were wrong; that there was an easier, simpler explanation involving goodies and baddies, with the baddies ending up in jail.

  Then quickly, a split-second before they heard the noise, the graph on the screen peaked; peaked and peaked again.

  And then they all heard it. A crunching noise. Then another. Then another. And a bright light beamed in from outside the laboratory windows.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Luke rubbed his throat anxiously. Connie was thinking practically.

  ‘If you want to talk to them properly, talk to them in your language… I mean, if you go back inside your ship, isn’t it…?’

  Luke shook his head.

  ‘I don’t want to,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to speak to them as one of them. I want to speak as one of you. As us.’

  He paused.

  ‘Is that all right?’

  Connie nodded, and put her hand in his. Luke leaned forwards and very quietly spoke into the glass.

  ‘Hello.’

  The noise was louder than what was coming through the speakers. It was more of a wop wop wop. And the light…

  The room froze.

  ‘That sounds exactly like a helicopter,’ observed Evelyn as the room stood, paralysed with fright.

  Sure enough, when the light went off outside, it became obvious that a helicopter had landed in the grounds of the facility. Every head turned: from out of the helicopter came, carefully, a strong-looking woman with very curly hair, two security men wearing headsets, another tallish person and, behind them, the shambolic, besuited, instantly recognisable figure of the Prime Minister.

  ‘I thought this circus didn’t have enough rings,’ remarked Evelyn quietly.

  The Prime Minister looked excited and was beaming as Anyali brought him into the lab, shooting a filthy look at Nigel as she did so. People naturally stood up a little straighter, put their hands together.

  ‘COBRA decided this was best,’ said Anyali. ‘The Chiefs are right behind us.’

  ‘Who’s the CSC?’ said Arnold.

  ‘Combined Services Chiefs,’ said Ranjit instantly. ‘What? I wanted to join the Territorial Army. What? It’s not my fault I’m allergic to ferns.’

  ‘That’s all we need,’ said Nigel. ‘The cavalry in here. Can we possibly keep them out?’

  Anyali shook her head.

  ‘You may or may not have noticed, but we’re under attack?’

  ‘You may or may not have noticed, but we’re not?’

  ‘The moon is sovereign to the Earth.’

  Arnold watched this exchange.

  ‘Huh, so you’ll happily let the Maldives drown and the Middle East go to hell in a handbasket but someone blows up five rocks and you’re all over it?’

  ‘Shut up,’ said Nigel and Anyali simultaneously without looking at him.

  ‘Okay, good evening,’ said the Prime Minister, who had been going round the room shaking hands. ‘Now, I have here a prepared speech for our new galactic intimates. It has some Latin but not much… have we got a translator?’

  Nigel looked at the mathematicians.

  ‘Luke spoke English perfectly,’ said Evelyn. ‘I don’t know if that’ll work, but they’re certainly capable of understanding other languages.’

  ‘That’s all we know,’ said Nigel.

  ‘Fine, fine,’ said the Prime Minister.

  ‘Has he been fully briefed?’ said Nigel. Anyali nodded.

  ‘Give me two minutes.’

  Nigel dragged Anyali to the side.

  ‘What’s our play?’

  ‘Boss isn’t sure.’

  ‘What the hell do you mean, he isn’t sure?’

  ‘Well, extradition treaties and all that.’

  ‘This isn’t a person we’re talking about! This isn’t a case for Amnesty freaking International!’

  Anyali shrugged.

  ‘I know. Tell him that.’

  ‘But Christ, it’s obvious. He’s a fugitive from whatever the hell it is aliens do in alien places. We offer to give him up and ask them to leave us alone. Why isn’t that straightforward?’

  ‘Have you even got him yet?’

  ‘We’re getting closer.’

  ‘Belarus is huge.’

  ‘Yes, and their army is also huge.’

  Anyali shook her head. ‘You know the boss doesn’t want any… anything getting out, particularly involving our political theoretical allies in the east?’

  Nigel nodded. Malik’s message from Interpol had been short and to the point: they had been seen escaping from a train near Mazyr. They couldn’t have gone far. They were borrowing some special forces operatives, but had been very cagey about the reasons.

  ‘It’s really just a case of stalling them until we have him pinned down.’

  ‘Well, there you go,’ said Anyali. ‘Start the PM yacking their ears off and you’ll have all the time you need. If they have ears.’

  She looked at Pol’s station.

  ‘Do we seriously have contact?’

  Nigel nodded, his mouth dry.

&nb
sp; ‘We think so.’

  They looked at each other.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Anyali, shaking her head. ‘Contact.’

  Nigel nodded again.