Muggles Bereaved

by Vernon C Moyse

  “That is settled then, Headmaster Sledge will be our channel of communication and we will act swiftly I assure you. You shall have tenure with him as trainee teachers for the duration of the holiday and you shall be paid, eh Carnegie, paid a weekly sum sufficient to offset any loss of holiday employments.”

  Carnegie reached out his wallet and dispensed six fifty pound notes, “The headmaster shall have the same amount for you each week and will also be able to obtain more should expenses present.”

  “Now,” said Newton, “Let us go forth and dishonour Robert Hooke, alumni. But do not worry Headmaster, I shall only damn him with faint praise, the old fool. He is deader than the dodo and beyond suffering or causing more harm. And you three must come and listen, it will be an entertainment, I promise you.”

  And entertainment it was. And an education too. Hooke was introduced as an ‘alleged scientist and polymath’ with the added comment;

  “A Polly certainly, but can parrots do maths?”

  Hooke was also described as a master of simple mechanical devices ranging from pumps to barometers and a man who could direct Portland stone to be piled up in the shape of a mansion, though time would reveal with what longevity. His achievements were somewhat elastic in the words of Newton and he even developed that elasticity into a law, it seemed. Despite his own faltering ticker, continued Newton, he was an adept clock repairer. He discovered red spots on giant planets, invented diving bells, respirators, keels for ships, and more besides. Elements of the jet engine were provided by him and some alloys based on titanium and beryllium were proving useful. This was all accomplished in his youth and in his later years he sadly felt it necessary to challenge his betters who had long surpassed his simple achievements in the age of the Sabre engine.

  Much of this will be bizarre to those of you living in what you believe to be a unique universe. There, where you think you live, Hooke is one of those giants upon whose shoulders the exponents of modern science perforce proudly stand. The juxtaposition of barometers and jet engines will be equally bizarre and the contemporaneous existence of Skylon space shuttles will astound. But warps in the Space-Time fabric can cause localised ruffles which jumble inventions out of time. That these can be explained by those living in the area of rumpled space-time is a tribute to the ability of the mind to rationalise and reconcile the irrational and irreconcilable. You’ll need a Newton to explain that or Archbishop Thomas Becket, the current resident in Lambeth Palace. Becket is also, surprisingly, a polymath.

  At the end of Newton’s presentation, Andrew Carnegie spoke. He praised Hooke’s work on surveying London after the great anarchist thermite firebombs of 1966 and on the resulting fire planning regulations still in force. Though Hooke was irascible in the extreme he was also a staunch friend to fellow scientists and to family and acquaintances. He showed great compassion to a niece and a cousin, taking both into his home and providing them with a strong foundation in mathematics. Not a lot of food, but plenty of maths. Teenagers will understand how that feels. Hooke’s scientific legacy was, said Carnegie, prodigious, producing loud ‘harrumphing’ from quarters adjacent, ie Newton, who loudly excused himself on account of an alleged gobbet of beef lodged in his throat. He loped off stage with a vigour that almost caused his sprung stilts to throw him into a somersault.

  After the presentations were ended, the Companions of the Spectacles found themselves alone in the throng surrounding the speakers. The Headmaster led them away and promised to contact them as soon as Carnegie and Newton had opened the way for them to study the RAF’s acquisitions.

  As they walked away from the school, Jim said proudly; “Isaac bloody Newton. He addressed me personally.”

  “He undressed me with his eyes,” growled Tracy.

  “And he sprang a near somersault because of the kids stilts he was wearing. What was that all about? He was taller than average before.” Said Lim.

  Tracy had the answer, “He first wore them with hydrazine jets attached and was planning to fly about the world instead of using his drone. But the stop-start mechanism on the jets failed and his test pilot was rather unlucky. And hydrazine jets have hardly any range to speak of.”

  “Well, pray The Quintessence that he has retained sufficient of his marbles to come up with a plan for confronting The Needful One. Right now, he has put you in the firing line, Jim,” said Lim. “he wants you to net The Prince of Darkness like a butterfly and keep him shut in your cloak for as long as it takes.”

  “takes to do what,” asked Jim, visualising himself holding on to a bulging cloak. It was not exactly holding a tiger by the tail, it was much, much worse. It was a Satan-to-go!

  “You may have to be like that Grail Knight in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”,” mused Tracy, “Can you hold on to the Devil’s tail for all millennia? Or at least until Indiana turns up with a bunch of Nazis.”

  Jim acknowledged the jest with his best lop-sided grin and sideways look.

  “Give you a beret and you’d be just like a ginger Michael Crawford in “Some Mothers do ‘ave ‘em”.” Crowed Tracy.

  Jim quite enjoyed basking in the reflected glory of the stunt comedian.

  Chapter Ten – The Sorcery of Saucers

  The next day, early in the morning, Griffin Sledge contacted Lim with the news they were waiting for. The RAF would welcome them at Cardington as soon as they wished. A staff car would be available to pick them up from their homes and would transport them the 78 miles to the airbase and its giant hangars originally built for airships and dirigibles. There was no time to lose and Lim alerted the other Companions and called the motor pool and asked for transport using the code word provided by Sledge. Parents briefed and entrusted with their first week’s pay, they clambered into the blue vehicle with its RAF roundels and set off for Cardington. The driver had saluted them as he held open the door and insisted on calling them ‘Sir’ and ‘Madam’. The boys were amused, but Tracy was predictably furious;

  “I am not a ‘madam’, corporal,” she announced “and we are teenagers not Wing Commanders”.

  The driver grinned at her in the mirror; “Just following orders to make you feel important,” he said.

  “We are important,” said Lim, “but purely by accident. And we do not much like it. We have A Levels to work on and friends neglected.”

  “So what’s it all about, then,” said the corporal, accelerating past a lumbering lorry, “is it all about our ‘family silver’, the saucer.”

  “You know about that, do you?” asked Jim.

  “It is a bit of an open secret,” said the corporal, “it slipped off the low loader and out from under the tarpaulins. It sat there for an hour in plain view while a crane was sent for. And picking it up was a bit like picking up an ice cube on a chrome cake slice. That darned thing is the epitome of slipperiness. An airman fell under it and was squirted out like a pip from an orange. The thing apparently weighs several tonnes and yet he was completely unhurt. Said the saucer seemed to have very little weight, and yet we needed a crane to move it. Figure that out!”

  “The RAF is good at secrecy, is it?” said Jim. It was as much a sarcastic statement as a question and the corporal ignored the comment.

  “What do you think it is,” asked Lim.

  “Well, there are many opinions about that. Some think it is an advanced aircraft produced by The British Aircraft Corporation, some think its an alien space ship and some think it is one of Ezekiel’s winged chariots. The latter are the religious nuts on the base.”

  “I don’t think you are a corporal, or ever were,” said Lim. “You don’t talk like a corporal. I think you’re a higher pay grade than that.”

  “You’ve rumbled me,” said the driver, “George Elliot, MI6 at your service. Call me Louis.”

  “A spy?” asked an astounded and delighted Jim.

  “Not really. An intelligence officer assigned to find out what you know about this saucer of ours. I think I have found that out already.”

/>   “What have you found out?” asked Tracy.

  “Well, I am pretty sure that you know nothing much about that silver tea service, certainly nothing more then we know ourselves. So I need to update you. I’ll have to kill you afterwards, of course.”

  “I suppose that is your way of telling us that you are going to reveal some top secret stuff.” Said Tracy.

  “Not really, Miss, nothing that would cause a threat to the realm. But it is thought you might help us understand our object a little better. So here is what I have to tell you. The saucer did not fly through our air space because it was not detected and tracked. It just arrived in a field off the A148, the Fakenham road. It didn’t do a belly landing for there were no skid marks and it sat for a while then moved ten yards and flipped over. As if it had landed upside down and was righting itself. It has no apparent entrances or exits and no visible means of propulsion. It is super slippery and when you attempt to touch it you feel nothing. Your hand stops over the surface but cannot feel the surface. There is no noise from it and no markings apart from some block lettering constructed from a lattice of strokes such as you would find in an old LCD display. Where the maximum of 7 strokes is used the character formed looks like an ‘8’. The surface of the craft repels water, rain, Aqua Regia and fluoric acid. A thermic lance has no effect on it, not even creating warmth or glow in whatever the thing is made of. There are occasional noises from within, noises which sound like.... groans. It is the perfect enigma. In fact, we do not call it the silver saucer and prefer the description ‘The Enigma Machine’, Nig for short.”

  “Have you x-rayed it, The Nig?” asked Jim

  “We have used x-rays to look for cracks and entry hatch lines. And when the x-rays didn't penetrate we used some fancy scanners, radars, beam particle weapons and such like. No effect at all. Enigma remains enigmatic. The sounds from within have been recorded and analysed and there are no patterns suggestive of language. It receives sound of a great range of frequency and intensity, with no response or effect. It is unaffected by radio waves and microwaves. Now tell me, how will you proceed with your investigation, given what we have already done? What apart from Sir Isaac’s and Mr Carnegie’s recommendation do you bring to the table.”

  Lim improvised. “We shall meditate and pray, before contacting the Cardington portal Harbourmaster.”

  “There isn’t one, there isn’t a portal at Cardington. The nearest is at Cotton End. Odd because that is a mere hamlet with little traffic. But I am impressed that you have been allowed to know about portals.”

  “So you also know about portals, then.”

  “I would be an unintelligent intelligence officer if I did not. And I know that “knowing about them” is by invitation only. You would not be able to show an unauthorised friend an open portal, To him you would become invisible as soon as you triggered the portal, and the park bench would be solid and useable. And he would explain your invisibility to himself by believing that you had been called away on an important errand. The portal deceives the unauthorised.”

  “Have you talked to the Cotton End Harbourmaster about The Nig, “ asked Tracy.

  “Yes and we drew a blank. By all accounts you find him to be a positive motor mouth compared to our experience of him. If you like, I can take you to Cotton End first.”

  “No,” Lim was firm, “we must see the, er, Nig first.”

  “Very well.”

  The rest of the journey was occupied by pleasantries, though Jim contrived to fall asleep as he always did on car journeys. He woke to find an RAF regiment airman pointing a weapon and asking for ID.

  “I don’t carry ID...” Jim yawned and stretched as he spoke.

  “No sweat,” said the soldier, “you’re with James Bond here,” he waved the gun towards the driver whose name, believe it or not, really was Louis Mountjoy Elliot, George to his family.

  “Oh boy,” said Louis, “you blew my cover so you’re dead.”

  “OK,” said the airman, “Kill me in the Kings Arms later.”

  “Wilco,” said Louis, “Silvery Saucer permitting.”

  Security was clearly very relaxed. Probably because High Command didn’t take the silver saucer very seriously. They were of the same mind set as the British Astronomer Royal who once said “Space travel is utter bilge.” Richard van der Riet Woolley, said this in 1956 – the year before the first Sputnik. This proved Arthur C Clarke’s dictum of 1962: ‘When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is almost certainly wrong.’ These dates all relate to planet Earth of course, not to planet Rowling. Odd that flip-flacking does not duplicate every worldly event.

  The gigantic airship hangers that had seen the birth of the ill-fated, hydrogen filled R101 and the last airship range, the successful Helium filled HAV304 soon hove into view. The 300 foot long HAV304 was colloquially named the “Flying Bum”. If you have seen one, you’ll know why. Oogle it, though you will see one at any air show. At the hangar they had to go through security checks and several scans. Then they were ushered into the vast interior.

  In front of them sat the silvery saucer, another silver cylindrical craft and two spherical craft about 12 feet in diameter. They were surrounded by scaffolding and cables.

  “Behold,” said Louis, “Notre Soucoupe et Notre Services Trois Pièces!” He then caught himself and raised a hand to his mouth, “sorry, I forgot, ladies present!”

  “This lady is a woman,” said Tracy, “the only French linguist here present and one who knows the slang expression you used.”

  “Tell us,” said Jim, “we haven’t a clue.”

  “Odd that you don’t know said Tracy, you boys who are uniquely equipped to understand it. It is French slang for the male undercarriage”

  Louis was blushing furiously and changed the subject, “if we go to the far end of the hangar there’s our café and we should get some food into you.”

  “De la viande pour les pneus, peut-être. Si vous avez une dépendance à l'argot,” said Tracy impishly, which threw Louis completely, though he was alert enough to note that she might be a candidate for entry to the security services at some future date, French language branch.

  “What are you suggesting we eat?” asked an ever-hungry Jim. I know ‘viande’ is meat, but what’s viande pour les pneus?”

  “Road kill,” said Tracy, drying every salivary gland in hearing range.

  “Food later,” said Lim, “We should examine these craft first. I say that because the Harbourmaster in Lynn reckoned that our presence meant something or had some effect. We also have to drop into the portal at Cotton End, so we can do that after lunch.”

  They walked over to the silvery vehicles and looked at the strange characters to base 7, touched, or tried to touch the surfaces and wondered what to do next. It was Tracy who noted that the characters on the saucer changed as they approached. She took a photo of the new character set before alerting Louis to the change. Ground staff organised official recordings of the new ‘phrasing’.

  Lim was wondering how the great silvery saucer could be opened and entered. And then he recalled what Newton had said, ‘And prayer I commend to you as a way of opening what Hindus call the Chakras and enervating the inner mind’. Was there a key in that phrasing, a religious one? A bit self-conscious he nonetheless dropped to his knees. His hands, almost independent of self moved together over his forehead in the namaste sign and dropped to his chest where lay the heart Chakra. His companions watched in amazement as Lim prayed vocally for a solution.

  “Dear God our Father, we thank Thee for all the blessings of our lives and we ask Thee for guidance at this time,” he paused here, thinking for a moment, “We do so in the name of our Saviour Jesus Christ.”

  “Opening a chakra with a Christian plea?” asked Tracy loudly, already a critic of ecumenicalism and every religion it embraced.

  Lim continued to kneel in reverent silence.
Jim shifted from foot to foot in some embarrassment and even Tracy evinced a kind of surprise mixed with her sceptical distaste. But they said nothing more and watched. Louis looked on impassively with folded arms. It must be said that he was thinking;

  “So these kids have all the answers do they? They wish! All that is missing is teddy bears and jim-jams!”

  After what seemed like an eternity, a meaningless phrase in the light of all that was known about Space-Time and Time-Space. Lim stood up;

  “Does anyone have a bible?” he said

  ‘Oh please’, thought Jim, ‘Not Prophetic theatrics, O My Leader!’

  No one had a book and Lim looked impatient. Tracy reached for her iPhone. There was no signal and she turned towards the hangar door;