A Year Near Proxima Centauri

by Michael Martin

  Our guest arrived at the table, washed and changed and evidently in better temper when he saw the food. He gulped it all down, scarcely pausing for breath, then, as we finished our meals with less haste, he amused himself by walking around the room, snapping up everything that moved. My wife and I looked at each other.

  “Don’t let him near the Robusta,” I whispered and she cleared away the plates and made sure the cupboard under the kitchen sink was firmly shut.

  “I’m an Image Transmuter,” our guest confided as we showed him round the house. We had guessed as much. “Remember that business with Pontius B?” We nodded. “Shocking, shocking business, but who put it on the map? Just another boring outer planet until they secured our services. And then afterwards, who cottoned on to the business potential of franchising the idea? Opened up a whole new set of galaxies for development. Sent my Credit Rating off the register. So. That’s why I’m here. Want a little place for the odd weekend. Not as little as this, you understand. But cosy. I’ve arranged to meet an agent this afternoon. Look around a few. Trouble is, they only speak Spheraglese, would you believe it? So I’ll need your help.”

  “Ah.” I fought for composure, “if only I’d known. We have an appointment straight after lunch.” In fact, we had promised ourselves to have another good search for Mink and Pixie. We knew they would never starve on Provender but we wanted them back, and all the fresh air must have helped reduce their smell.

  “Oh.” He seemed put out. “If you’re sure then. I’m sure I can make myself understood if necessary.”

  “Oh, I’m sure they’ll understand you completely,” I said, catching my wife’s eye.

  “Right. Mind if I use your ’screen?” I said no and we did not see him for the next hour. He emerged when he smelt a snack on the way.

  “Oh, jolly good. I’m famished,” he said, and downed the lot, including ours. My wife went off to prepare some more and he confided to me in hushed tones, “Doing the big one at the moment.”

  “Oh, what’s that?” I asked.

  “You know, this IDS business, intellectual Deficiency Syndrome, they’re all so scared about. Got to eliminate the myths, put it in context.”

  IDS had been the main topic of conversation at every dinner party just before we left Conima. Threatening as it did only Conimunculi of higher intellect, it was chic to be considered at risk. Rumours abounded as to exactly how one could contract it. Some said a full and frank mutual exchange of ideas with an infected person, others claimed to have caught it from a laboratory seat, but the truth was, no-one was quite sure. In the meantime, it was incurable, reducing intelligent influential Conimunculi in their prime to little more than weavers, thatchers and upholsterers, common obsessions amongst the terminally sick. A close friend of ours was struck with awful suddenness. One day he was running a Halmatrope-importing warehouse, the next day his wife woke up to discover him folk dancing. Tragic.

  “The big one,” our guest repeated, nodding ominously.

  “You’re quite safe then,” I thought.

  When our guest had departed reluctantly, borrowing our Stromba, we set off in search of the Pallions. As we wound our way up through the Putrage I spotted Mr Dobson in the distance, bent double. We fought against the jostling foliage to reach him.

  He looked up as we approached. Apparently he was pruning back the poorer shoots with low motility. He warned us that he was expecting a poor year this year and any reports we might have heard from neighbours that his crop yielded exceptional quantities of high quality Halmatrope year after year were exaggerated. We said we had heard no such thing and he seemed relieved. We said that we should not be disappointed; “On the contrary any bottles at all will be a bonus since we had not expected any at all when we bought the house.”

  He seemed genuinely cheered and snipped away with renewed vigour. We asked him if he had seen our Pallions at all. He asked us if they smelt awful, we nodded. He had seen them heading towards Mr Skeg’s house. We left him to his labours and decided that now was the time to introduce ourselves to the reclusive Mr Skeg. We followed a path back downhill, past our house, and on to Mr Skeg’s cabin. It was surrounded by a high fence and it was some time before we discovered a section that opened. He obviously intended to deter uninvited visitors. We beat our way to the cabin door and tapped lightly. The whole cabin appeared to be constructed of Trake, a poor timber, generally deemed suitable only for firewood. Little attempt had been made to remove bark and branches. The trunks had been heaped together clumsily and yet it was not possible to see anything through the gaps and cracks, nor through the tiny, smoky windows. I spotted Pallion tracks in the soft ground outside. The door opened a little and an eye was just visible, twinkling.

  We introduced ourselves. Mr Skeg opened the door wide and stood before us, short, stooped, but apparently all in one piece.

  “Come in,” he croaked in Spheraglese with a peculiar accent. “First guests of the year. I’ve regenerated earlier than usual this year. Food turned up on the doorstep yesterday, quite unexpected. Tasted foul, but you can’t complain at my age, can you?”

  We followed him in and marvelled at the interior. The Trake exterior was obviously a deliberate concealing device, for inside the walls were thin, polished slices of Late Couth and the ceilings were of heavily moulded plaster depicting the tastiest animals of Provender. Mr Skeg noticed our admiration.

  “You don’t see work like that any more,” he croaked. “My grandfather had it done, got one of your real plasterers over, a sixth generation artisan, genuine Ochran. Came to settle in the village. His family’s still there.”

  I looked closely at the detail, It had withstood the years well, with just a little staining from the open fire.

  “Mind you, trouble to work with, Ochrans.”

  “Oh?” I said, unfamiliar with the species.

  “Temperamental, alternate sex from day to day. One day nice as pie, the next, argumentative, pugnacious…”

  This seemed a timely warning as we were about to have the builders in, but if we could coax one ceiling like this one from a plasterer it would be worth a great deal of tolerance and persuasion. However, we had no idea what Henry’s work force consisted of.

  Mr Skeg offered us a drink. He prepared an infusion of Trake bark and left it to soak.

  “I get my own bark,” he explained. “You’ve got to select it all before the end of September, the thickest bits down near the ground. Then you hang it up to dry out and hope the Hully flies will take to it. If you’ve picked well they’ll lay their eggs all over it.”

  “Ah, I see, it’s the eggs that give it the flavour,” I said.

  “No, no. Then your Robusta eat the eggs, and they have an emetic effect. The Robusta disgorges its stomach contents on to the bark and the acids break down the cell walls.” He poured us all out a cup.

  “So that’s how you do it,” I said, swirling the hot, dark liquid around, with reservations about consuming it.

  “That’s just the beginning.” He settled back down in his chair and was evidently warming to the subject so, as he drew breath ready to continue, I swiftly broached the subject of Mink and Pixie.

  “Two Pallions, you say?” he repeated after me. “No, no, don’t see many of them hereabouts.”

  I was going to remark upon the footprints outside his door, but instead I said, “We’ve just had them marinaded, for their own sake, of course.”

  “Oh,” he said and was pensive for a few moments. “Does it do any harm, this marinading?”

  “Just makes them unpalatable, they seemed in fine health.”

  “No, I mean if, er, anything eats them?”

  “Oh, I don’t think anything would be that desperate,” I laughed, and he nodded. But I did think, fleetingly, later, that you would also have to be pretty desperate to start eating yourself, as Colwigs are rumoured to do in the winter. Mr Skeg assured us that if he saw the Pallions we would be the first to know.

  He sipped his infusion and we did
likewise. My wife and I agreed later that it was not worth all the trouble Mr Skeg had been to to produce it, but we complimented him warmly on it at the time.

  “Never had it before?” he grinned. We nodded. “Acquired taste. You’ll see. You’ll want it again. You’ll see. Be making your own one day. You’ll see.” He was most insistent. We thanked him and set off back home, feeling slightly disorientated, but the feeling soon passed. When we reached our house we stopped and looked up at the hills beyond and imagined Mink and Pixie cavorting among all the exciting new scents and flavours.

  “They’ll be fine,” I told my wife. “They’ll turn up when they’re ready. We shouldn’t worry.”

  I noticed that the garage door was shut. The Stromba was back and our guest was in the kitchen gorging himself. The cupboard door under the sink was ajar and he greeted us with a full mouth, which he emptied in one great gulp.

  “There you are. Felt peckish. Helped myself. You don’t mind?” We told him to make himself at home. He needed no encouragement. We sat down in the sitting room and he told us how his afternoon had gone.

  “Fiasco. Showed me a grubby little shack, no lagoon, no ablution suite, Noxule gas tanks the size of a house, burner manifolds the size of a room, heat distributor the size of a wall. I snatched away their details and looked through until I saw that what I was after was on the cover of their lists. Then I pointed to it. They laughed. Fancy having a picture of the Parliament Building on the front of their details.”

  “They are called ‘Parliament Properties’,” I noted, seeing their details on the table.

  “Anyway. Cut a long story short. Saw just the place. Made an offer. Getting it. Bit of a way from here though so I probably won’t get down here much.”

  “Never mind,” I consoled.

  “So, I’ll be off first thing. Be in touch though.”

  “Oh, good,” I lied.

  Early the next morning a taxi collected him for the Cosmodrome, just as Henry turned up to start work in a heavy duty transporter, loaded up with equipment. He parked by the spot we had cleared.

  “Fine vehicle, Henry,” I remarked.

  “These Julex never let you down. Hasn’t let me down once, this one. They just go on and on.” Two helpers of similar build to Henry got out and were introduced as Alf and Don, cousins of Henry’s. I went inside for breakfast and when we had finished a few hours later we found their vehicle empty and the three of them hard at work digging out the foundations. I remarked that they appeared to have made no measurements or markings and Henry took me to one side as his cousins laboured on.

  “You want it to match, don’t you?” I nodded. “Well, I got to stick to the old methods, like my father and my father’s father.”

  Hoping my Spheraglese would see me through the coming months I endeavoured to explain that we had ordered various suites of specific sizes to be accommodated in new rooms of specific minimum sizes and he assured me that he understood. The surface of our land is covered by a thin layer of creature droppings and shed foliage. This was easy to dig through. Below lay a harder layer of long discarded bones and dwelling remnants mixed in with older compacted sediments like the top layer. This proved hard work, even for this muscular trio. Just before lunch they paused for a snack and within minutes all three were fast asleep in the sun. I took this opportunity to check the measurements of their trenches. They bore no relation to the plan. I tried to shake Henry awake, but he remained fast asleep all the rest of the day. I just caught him before they tried to slip away at twilight, thinking we were immersed in a meal. We were, but I was ready.

  “First day,” he assured me, “always the hardest.” Next day they would double-check and make any corrections.

  Nobody turned up the next day, or the day after, and Henry’s ’screen remained unconnected. I was prepared to pay a visit to Henry on the third day when he turned up with his cousins, apologizing profusely that his Julex had let him down, for the first time ever.

  I remarked that it seemed in perfect running order now and he grinned and agreed. They spent all morning filling in the erroneous trenches of their previous effort with the spoil from the fresh attempt. My wife gave them each a Robusta and I checked the layout, it seemed to be accurate enough this time, it was certainly within the margin of error we had understood was only to be expected by Provender artisans. By the evening the trenches were finished. Henry and his cousins had vindicated themselves.

  Sadly they did not turn up again for three days. When they finally arrived I asked Henry how his Julex was. He seemed surprised. “Why, it’s in perfect running order, no, the delay was the Moostrin.” I asked him why he had not anticipated the need for the Moostrin and ordered it earlier to guarantee its prompt delivery. He laughed and I had the idea that Henry’s supplies of Moostrin, through, I believe, another cousin, were not ordered through the usual channels and might turn up at odd, unexpected times in inappropriate vehicles. Henry and his cousins sat in the shade all day waiting for the Moostrin. I offered to let him use the ’screen to chase it up but he said it would come in its own time.

  My wife and I decided to go out for an evening meal and when we returned Henry and his cousins were just finishing smoothing off the Moostrin in the dark. We noticed enormous tracks all round the house picked out by the Stromba’s lights, and that one of our gateposts was on its side in a ditch. Henry assured us that everything was going to plan and that the Moostrin would now require several weeks to cure before they proceeded further. My wife and I looked at each other in the light of our front doorway and back at Henry’s broad, grinning, unflustered face. This was the way things were done on Provender. We shrugged and said we would see him when we saw him and they drove off into the night singing.

  We stood outside for a little while, looking up at the sky and all those faraway worlds, wondering what lay beyond. Before we had left Conima the astronomers had sent an artificially intelligent telescope into space, powerful enough to look back at the beginning of the universe. The first time it was activated they glimpsed the sole of a massive foot, just vanishing from view. Then the image blurred. Tests revealed that the telescope had become short-sighted and a special pair of corrective glasses were flown up and fitted at great expense, but the telescope was too self-conscious to be seen in them. Eventually a set of contact lenses was formulated and fitted but whatever the astronomers had hoped to see was gone. Forced, perhaps, to retreat even further back in time from scientific probing.

  APRIL

  It was already warm, even though it was still early morning. I looked across the lagoon. It seemed to be set on fire by the sun rushing up from the horizon. There was not a foam to be seen and the upper atmosphere flashed and shimmered as the sun’s rays heated it. When the more remarkable effects of the sunrise had begun to subside I noted that the surface of the lagoon was not as it should be. I raced downstairs and gulped down a Robusta. On close inspection the surface of the lagoon was solid with Grebble spawn and the overworked filterhouse was beginning to emit a thin plume of blue smoke from under the door, I rushed in and switched it off, then I called Trevor. He seemed unmoved and not at all repentant about the assurances he had given us.

  “It’s never as bad as it looks,” he soothed. “I’ll be straight over, soon have it fixed.”

  Trevor reached us, loudly, just after lunch. We had capitalized on our windfall and had been eating Grebble spawn all morning in a variety of recipes; raw, grilled with a dab of Smolene, mashed on top of devilled Nullion and even finely diced together with something I caught in the corner of the filterhouse which was obviously in its prime. This was making no inroads on the problem, however. Trevor stood on the lagoon pontoon and scratched his heads. “Well, I’ve never seen that before,” he said.

  “What can we do?” we asked desperately. Taking advantage of Henry’s absence while the Moostrin cured we had invited guests to stay. A plague of Grebble would not be their idea of a holiday, or ours.

  “I’ll spray it with an Instamo
rt maxi-canister,” Trevor suggested.

  “We don’t want a lagoon full of dead Grebble any more than we want one full of live Grebble,” I snapped.

  “Melek,” Trevor said. “Voracious, insatiable, ten of those will clear the lagoon in no time.”

  “And then we have a lethal lagoon?”

  “No, they can be recaught simply with a baited trap. When the Grebble have all gone they’ll soon get hungry again, then they throw themselves into the trap. All over.”

  It seemed the only answer. Trevor noisily departed to purchase some Melek and we prepared for our guests. The first stop was the Bepommel market. It was still busy when we got there and we realized that this was the first really hot day of the year. Nevertheless, a small foam rushed in and squeezed over a Drisk stall selling small emulsified slabs of fermented Nullion skin secretions. Our mouths watered as we passed great green sheaths of Brotch hanging up to dry and pink and purple Matchugan and Hollombrost, On the meat stalls, small hairy Ansates hung by their handles in neat rows and Pataguins lay outstretched, surrounded by endless filleted slabs and flitches of meats we could not name and whose tastes we could scarcely begin to imagine. We loaded up the Stromba and I reversed up to the front of one of the Bepommel Halmatrope warehouses. I had been there several times before and knew the proprietor was a friendly Drool, I explained that we were expecting friends from Fractin, a most discerning planet. They would appreciate a fine Halmatrope almost as much as we did. The proprietor suggested a number of suitable choices, one of which, he pointed out, was being produced quite near Bepommel by a Mr Dobson. I affected only polite interest.

  “Why, yes,” he elaborated, “an exceptionally high quality Halmatrope, produced year after year in great quantities from such a modest-sized patch.”

  I purchased three bottles, along with a dozen others, and we set off home, the Stromba lurching awkwardly round the bends and straining up the hills.