Future Tense

by Frank Almond

  “Typical,” nodded the Duck, rubbing his throat. “I’ve told you before—a true Duckworth never runs. You might be able to turn a blind eye, mate—but I expect to do my duty this day.”

  “Oh, don’t start all that,” I said. “You won’t run because there’s still a chance of getting your hands on that machine.”

  “I am not leaving that brave creature out there—who saved our lives not ten minutes ago—to face the enemy alone. It is not in me, sir!”

  “She’s a giant squid for heaven’s sake—she can take care of herself!”

  “She is a sensitive, fellow—whatsit of the universe,” said the Duck.

  “She’s a dangerous alien shape-changer!”

  “Well,” said the Duck, “wouldn’t you change your shape if you looked like a squid?”

  “Emma, tell him,” I said.

  “He’s got a point, Steve,” said Emma. “Besides, I can’t leave Roger—I think he’s concussed. Is there a first aid kit on this ship?”

  “First aid kit?” said the Duck. “There’s a bleeding hospital down below with a fully equipped operating theatre.”

  “Have you forgotten what my father and that thing out there put us through?” I said. “He tried to marry us both off to the same alien—and it was a squid!”

  “That’s just the kind of planetal small-mindedness that’s going to put the kybosh on humankind’s colonisation of the cosmos,” said the Duck, sticking one hand inside his biggles and gazing heroically out into space. “How can we boldly go where no man has gone before if we turn our noses up at the first sign of a tentacle?”

  “You can boldly go there if you like, mate—leave me out!”

  “Steve—see if you can find me some bandages and an aspirin—he’s going to have the mother of all headaches when he wakes up,” said Emma, cradling Jemmons’s head in her lap. He was right where I wanted to be.

  I looked to the Duck, but he was already twiddling dials and sussing out the controls of the vessel, something I, I have to admit, would have been of absolutely no help to him in whatsoever.

  “Duck, I’m going below—do the lift for me.”

  “You got it, man.”

  I stepped under the chute. The Duck hit a button and I shot up out of the hovercraft like a pea out of a peashooter—high into the freezing night air, screaming my head off all the way. And then I stopped in mid air high above the ice. I stopped screaming and looked round. All seemed still and calm for a moment. And then I was falling through the rushing air—towards the ice! I started screaming again. Suddenly, something soft and slimy splatted against my bottom and I began moving sideways, back towards the ship. I looked round and saw two enormous black eyes staring at me. I was on my former fiancée’s tentacle again. It lowered me gently onto the second tier deck. I jumped off, gave her a quick salute, opened the first door I came to, and darted inside.

  This time I decided to take the emergency stairs. I remembered the coloured line system painted on the floors of the passageways and followed the green one, because I just thought it might lead me to the ship’s infirmary. I knew the white one led out on deck, because it was the first one I saw when I got inside the door. Then I changed my mind to the red one—red for red crosses, blood and hospitals, I thought. I opened a strongroom-type door somewhere in the bowels of level one and found hundreds of bombs. That wasn’t it. I tracked the blue line and found myself in a dormitory, full of hundreds of hammocks, couchettes, and bunks. I followed the green one, which I should have stuck to in the first place—green crosses—and that brought me to a surgery. The doctor, or whoever he was, was slumped over his desk, out cold. I rifled through his cabinet and helped myself to as many bottles of tablets as I could carry and a box of bandages.

  * * *

  “Where have you been?” sighed Emma. “Roger’s been bleeding.”

  “Didn’t you see me shoot up?”

  “You’ve been shooting up?” she exclaimed.

  “No—in the air—oh, forget it. Here.” I handed her the box and all the bottles from my pockets.

  Roger was sitting up but still leaning against my girlfriend in a way that made me jealous—no, I mean, envious.

  “How you doing, Rog?” I said. “Killed any ducks lately?”

  Jemmons looked a bit sorry for himself and didn’t answer

  “Don’t tease him,” said Emma, unrolling a bandage around his head.

  I went over to the Duck, who was sitting in the captain’s swivel chair, stroking his wispy goatee beard thoughtfully. We were moving slowly over the ice. It was like being in a skybox—only we were in the game.

  “Where’s everyone gone?” I said, peering around the panoramic window at all the empty ice.

  “The fleet are on the other side of the island,” said the Duck. “Regrouping.”

  I scanned the horizon and spotted a plume of smoke in the distance, drifting from the top of the white knoll.

  “Where’s you know who then?” I said.

  The Duck lifted his bottom off his chair and jabbed a finger downwards.

  “Under the desk?” I said.

  He gave me a lopsided smile. And pointed again. I stared down at the lower deck, but couldn’t see what he meant.

  “No, I’m not with you,” I said.

  “Can’t you see the tentacles?” he said, in exasperation.

  I spotted the end of a tentacle gripping a lower rail, directly below us—and then another a few yards farther around—and then another—and then another! They were all the way around.

  “What’s she doing—is she underneath us?”

  “No—she’s clinging on the side—like a buffer,” said the Duck.

  “What’s she doing that for?”

  “Well, I don’t know, do I? Go and ask her.”

  “Ask who?” said a turbaned Jemmons, coming to join us.

  The Duck looked round and up at him and jumped.

  “Keep that maniac away from me!” he quacked, feeling his throat and laying on the croak in his voice a bit.

  “I’m sorry I attacked you, Duck—I don’t know what came over me,” said Jemmons. “I heard a voice telling me to do it.”

  “Yeah,” sneered the Duck. “That’s what all the psychos say.”

  Emma came and stood next to me and we held hands down by our sides.

  “It wasn’t Roger’s fault, Dad—someone brainwashed him,” I said, giving Emma’s hand a squeeze, and exchanging a loving look with her.

  “Aye and I’d like to know who,” said Jemmons.

  “Well,” said the Duck, “I don’t think we have to look a million miles, do we?”

  One of the tentacles unfurled itself from the rail and poked straight up in the air three or four times and then resumed its grip.

  “I think she just gave you the bird,” I said. “So, what are all those coloured lines of light under the ice for?”

  “They’re strategy vectors,” said the Duck.

  “Come again.”

  “They’re for auto-battle mode. You vector in a colour and the ship follows that line only,” explained the Duck.

  “What’s the point of that?”

  “Well, it’s complicated—it’s for doing complex manoeuvres at full speed. Be too fast to steer. Think of it as speed chess for battleships.”

  “And you know how to do all this?” I said.

  “I think I’ve got it sussed.” The Duck took out his tin and started rolling a spliff.

  “My confidence in you runneth over,” I said.

  “I’m sure your father knows what he’s doing,” said Emma.

  “Yeah, well, he’s not my idea of Captain Kirk.”

  “Fireships—that’s the way to deal with a superior force,” said Jemmons. “Why, when I had the honour to sail under Lord Horatio Nelson at the Battle of Copenhagen in—”

  “Yeah, well, this ain’t no Napoleonic War—this is high tech stuff, mate,” said the Duck, sealing his spliff with one long lick. He lit up. “Gotta know what you�
��re doing with this lot.” He waved at all the winking lights, knobs and monitors.

  “What does that pink one do?” I said.

  “That one?” The Duck expelled a thick stream of aromatic smoke. “I think I know what that one is. Don’t worry, I know enough to take on this lot.”

  “What lot?” I said.

  “That lot,” said the Duck.

  The squadron had split into two groups and was coming around both sides of the island, heading directly for us. I took the spliff off him and inhaled.

  “Do something,” I spluttered.

  Emma relieved me of the joint, took a quick drag, and handed it back to the Duck.

  “Watch this,” said the Duck. He chose a red button. “This is what you call smart warfare.” And pressed.

  Suddenly, we flashed to what seemed like twenty places at once and spun round to find ourselves facing three enemy wedding cakes.

  “Oops!” said Emma.

  All three vessels slowly started turning on the spot. The candle-like pom-pom guns mounted around their rails dropped a few degrees and commenced firing. About two hundred fiery brimstone bombs blasted over at us, from every tier.

  Our squid figurehead reached up six or seven tentacles—it was too quick to count—and smacked them all back.

  “Wonder what her batting average is,” I said.

  “Time to split,” said the Duck, pressing another button. We shot away, made dozens of abrupt turns and straight sprints and came to a sudden halt. The ice was clear.

  “Where’d they go?” said the Duck.

  “I feel sick,” said Jemmons.

  We started moving very slowly over the ice again.

  “They must be around here somewhere,” I said.

  “Perhaps we’ve won,” said Emma.

  We all turned and looked at her. I caught something out of the corner of my eye—right behind us—a line of huge battleships was following in our wake at a sedate pace, like gigantic carnival floats.

  “We’ve got company,” I said, in a sing-songy voice.

  The Duck looked round and did a double take. “So, they wanna play follow the leader, do they?” he said. “Well, follow this!”

  We accelerated and left them for dead. But they quickly fanned out and came after us. The Duck reached inside his biggles and pulled out a mini disc.

  “Here, see if that Holy Roller jukebox over there’ll play this,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “See Emily Play—classic Floyd, man.”

  “How do you switch this thing on?” I said, inserting the disc in the multi-player tray.

  “The pink button, of course,” laughed the Duck.

  The throbbing strains of “See Emily Play” poured out of the P.A. system in a psychedelic swirl of sound. The Duck headbanged and steered one-handed, while he smoked his spliff with the other. We swerved and zigzagged all over the ice, dodging and weaving his way through and around our bewildered pursuers. Our course must have been so wild and unpredictable that they couldn’t work it out. The Duck was laughing and rocking—he was as relaxed as some kid driving a dodgem car at the fair. Round and round the island we drove, until we met one coming the other way! But the Duck merely bumped into it and it rebounded off the squid clinging to our rail and was sent careering across the ice. And every time they fired their brimstone bombs at us, the squid batted them straight back and set them on fire. One by one, the Duck eliminated every enemy ship from the game. And then he span off across the empty playground of the ice doing crazy victory spins and slides, and laughing and quacking at the top of his voice. Until we were brought to an abrupt halt and everyone lurched forward and rocked backwards and fell down on the floor.

  “What was that?” I said.

  “That,” said the Duck, “was our new braking system—we’ve been suckered—to the bleeding ice!”

  We all scrambled to our feet and rushed to look out the forward observation window—the squid was gone.

  “Damn it!” quacked the Duck. “She’s lit out.”

  “Well, at least we’re still alive,” I said.

  “I am not living in a bloody refrigerator!” said the Duck. “Where’d she go?” He ran around the panoramic window, looking for her. “There she goes—she’s changed back! We’re too late. Hang about—she’s stopping.”

  I took the cranberry glass time machine key out of my inside pocket and held it up.

  “She won’t get far without this,” I said.

  The Duck leapt up in the air and jumped on me, kissing me all over. “When did you nick that? Oh, you little genius—you are so like me—it’s uncanny! A true Duckworth through and through!”

  I shoved him off me. “I took it when we were on the skateboard—she’ll kill me,” I said, suddenly realising that I could be in big trouble with the Princess. I handed it quickly to the Duck.

  Suddenly, the lift chute hissed up and the Princess appeared inside the tube. When it didn’t open for her, she simply punched it and it shattered. She stepped into the conning tower. This time I had learnt and kept my eye on that key—and I saw the Duck slip it into Jemmons’s pocket.

  “All breakages must be paid for,” smiled the Duck.

  “Have you got it, Sir Julian?”

  “Got what, Your High—”

  A tentacle shot out of the Princess’ sleeve and hung him up by the neck, cutting off his air.

  “I was going to leave this miserable ball of dung you call a world and return to civilisation,” said the Princess. “I even helped you to defeat your pathetic little enemies—and in return, you steal my front door key—what kind of a people are you?”

  She released the Duck and dumped him on the floor. Emma rushed to help him, bumping into Jemmons on the way.

  “Oops, sorry, Roger.”

  Jemmons stepped aside for Emma but kept his eyes fixed on the Princess.

  The Princess transferred her slimy tentacle to me and smoothed my cheek, then reached under my chin and lifted me up on my toes.

  “Once I thought we could be an item, Stephen—but now I know that can never be—I have heard every crude, ignorant word you’ve thought and said about me.”

  “I never meant to hurt your feelings, it’s just that I love—”

  She put her tentacle to my lips. “Hush. The simple truth is you are too prejudiced to be my consort. I realize that now,” she said. “Did you steal my key, darling?”

  I shook my head and said, “Yes, yes, I did.”

  “You bloody idiot!” cried my father. “Now, we’ll be stuck here for—”

  The Princess shot out another tentacle and gagged him.

  “Where is it?” she smiled, batting her eyelids.

  “Roger’s got it,” I said.

  Jemmons never flinched. The big Plymothian seaman straightened his back and stuck his chin out defiantly.

  “Is this true, Roger?” asked the Princess, moving her tentacle slowly over to his shoulder and drawing it delicately down across his broad chest.

  “You can go to hell,” said Jemmons.

  The tentacle quivered and blurred. In a nanosecond it was gripping his manhood and squeezing the colour out of his face. She came in close and eyeballed him.

  “That’s no way to speak to a lady, Roger,” she said.

  And then Jemmons did something I still can’t believe he did to this day—he tilted his head back, as though in pain, and brought it forward with full force, like a striker rising to head a ball into the net. The veins in his neck stood out and his gnarled forehead struck her bang on the nose. Right on that sweet spot. Her eyes fluttered and she flopped to the floor—just as any human being would have—and keeled over. Her tentacles glowed Day-Glo green for a moment and slurped back inside her.

  “Aunt bloody Nora!”

  “And that, Your Lowness, was a Glasgow hello!” quacked the Duck.

  Jemmons looked stupefied, hardly able to believe what he had just done.

  “Quick—tie her up!” I said.


  “Don’t be daft,” said the Duck. “Nothing’s going to hold her when she comes round—we’d better peg it—and fast. Come on, Rog—you’ll be the one she’s after!”

  “No,” said Jemmons. “I’m not going to leave her till I know she’s all right. I’ve never hit a woman in my life.”

  “Are you stark staring mad?” cried the Duck. “That’s not a woman—that’s an alien shape-changer—she’s a vampire!”

  “Vampire?” I exclaimed. “You never told me that! You were going to marry me off to a bloody vampire?”

  “She’s not a proper one—she’s a shape-changer—they have to drink your blood to copy your DNA so they can do their shape-changing and see if you’re compatible,” explained the Duck. “That’s all.”

  “Oh, well, that’s all right then,” I said. “You really are a piece of work, Dad.”

  Emma felt her throat. “Did he—I mean, she—drink my blood, too?” she said.

  “No, of course she didn’t,” said the Duck, as though the very idea was ridiculous. “Drink your blood—what are you on about? Well, just a pint or two.”

  “Pints!” exclaimed Emma.

  Emma and I held onto each other for protection and stared down at the creature on the floor in horror.

  “Princess?” said Jemmons.

  The Princess stirred and moaned.

  “Give me that key before she wakes up!” cried the Duck. Jemmons searched his pockets. “I haven’t got the blasted key,” he said, turning his attention back to the Princess.

  “You must have! Well, who’s got it then?” he quacked.

  “Don’t look at me,” I said.

  Emma held up the key. The Duck tried to snatch it, but Emma held it out of his reach.

  “Roger’s right,” said Emma. “We should make sure she’s all right first—she saved our lives. In any case, if we steal her time machine, how is she going to get home?”

  “How is she going to get home?” said the Duck. “What about us—how are we going to get home, you mean?”

  “We are home,” I said. “At least we’re on our own planet.”

  “You’re all mad!” cried the Duck. “We can’t stay here—they’ll skin us alive after what we did.”

  “We’ll find somewhere,” I said, smiling at Emma.

  “Right, that’s it—you leave me no choice—Jemmons, you’ll have to marry her!” cried the Duck.