A Year Near Proxima Centauri

by Michael Martin

  We had promised to take them out for a meal that evening and show them some of the life of Bepommel. When they woke up, they did not seem to have benefited much from their sleep and Constance’s complexion appeared a little blotchy. We gave them some Trake bark infusion. They had never had any before and were polite but not over-enthusiastic. It seemed to do the trick though: Constance’s complexion coloured and her eyes seemed to sparkle a little. They took us into Bepommel in their Ferenziculo. I sank back into it and it held me firmly yet tenderly, as only a Ferenziculo can, with just that hint that only you and no-one else receives such special treatment. We went to the old Drib mill again. Constance and Deverell were a little dismayed at the singing Drools but we knew they loved shell crimplets. When they saw how large they were, they decided to share one.

  The cooks carried out their carefully choreographed display, marching past with snapping shell crimplets held aloft and throwing them to their noisy death in the scalding water. Constance and Deverell were unperturbed by the screams. They were accustomed to the “Fresh Houses” of Palissandria where gastronomes ate creatures alive, believing that any form of preparation, including a painless death, compromised the pure flavours unacceptably. The meals arrived and Constance found it difficult to wield the batterer but I assisted her. My wife and I had several more courses while they rested at intervals and worked their way through the first. When they had finished it they said that it had been exquisite but they were quite full.

  As we relaxed with our Algarglanon, Deverell brought up the old Palissandrian dinner party debate—was Provender alive? We had heard similar debates on Conima, although there was never any doubt there that, were it possible for a planet to be alive, Conima was most certainly dead, and had been dead for quite some time. Various planets in our galaxy are credited with being alive by groups of scientists. Provender is one of them. The signs of life are deemed to be scarcely detectable on a daily basis, but are discernible by studying past records. The apparently random behaviour of the Incontinent Continental Drift seemed to be linked to any attempts at remapping the planet’s surface. It takes many years to get anything to happen on Provender and on four previous occasions, just as soon as the complex procedure of precisely measuring and mapping the planet’s surface was completed and the maps published, the continents would start their drift again and clusters of crustal vents would appear, disrupting the topography. A team of Drisks had also monitored the behaviour of foam. There had been talk of attempting to sue the planet for discrimination if it could be proved to be alive, but all their experiments had been washed away and the team leader drowned in a spectacular foam burst. We liked to think that perhaps there was a glimmer of intelligence and personality in the planet, and that it accepted us as warmly as we accepted it. Constance and Deverell refused to believe such nonsense. I could have cited the constant problems afflicting their Crystal Tower as classic evidence of a planet trying, as best it could, to rid itself of a tiresome thorn whose foundations pierced deep into its crust, but I did not. I could understand that they might be dismayed by such a thought. We decided to return home. The meal had been a great success. Constance was positively glowing when we reached home, and Deverell started singing, which was most unusual.

  My wife and I slept soundly, as usual, and I was surprised to find in the morning that Constance and Deverell were slumped together in the ablution suite. They had not slept a wink they said. They had both been very ill. In spite of our entreaties, they got changed and we helped them down to the Ferenziculo. I reprogrammed it for the return route as Deverell seemed too groggy. They apologized for cutting short their holiday but they wanted their personal physician to scan them as soon as possible. We understood and felt so sorry for them, ft was such bad luck, probably a bug they had brought with them from Palissandria. We felt grateful that we had such robust health and cast-Drib constitutions.

  That evening, as we tacked back to the patio pontoon in our Flasted 49, we talked about Mink and Pixie. We had walked in the hills calling for them many times but still there was no sign of them. It was the one thing that marred our enjoyment of Provender.

  We were accordingly overjoyed one morning to find a Riticule nesting on the sundial. The Riticule, a small winged creature covered in pink fluff, is possibly an archetype for the development of a whole new set of evolutionary criteria. Originally mutant, a Riticule must have been born which flew so slowly anything could catch it but, as it looked so appealing with its wide blue eyes and pink fluffy coat, nothing had the heart to eat it. More aggressive creatures probably flicked it aside with disgust. It had no idea of danger and therefore no thoughts of nesting in safe places. The early Riticule probably nested in foolish places, such as in the hover fin of a Stromba. When the owner found his Stromba would not start he would inspect underneath, see the adorable little creature and vow not to touch his Stromba until after the breeding season. Successive generations of Riticule nested in increasingly foolish places, halting transplanetary links by nesting on the heavy plant, disrupting Parliament by nesting on the Premier’s podium and in a whole range of awkward locations for the rest of the creatures of Provender, most of whom resisted eating it. Ours had chosen our sundial which was fortunate. He was obviously not breaking new ground for his species. Had he been a Grade A Riticule he would have nested somewhere like on our Gaga and no amount of pink fluff or deep appealing eyes would have saved him there.

  The Riticule is fortunately an isolated species on Provender, but it brought to mind the fate of other planets where excessive conservation zeal had more serious consequences. One remembers Guspage, a tiny little planet, crammed full of delightful species, each valued and treasured by the ruling Zealfin. When their advanced tracking system spotted the approach of a giant asteroid and predicted imminent collision, the powerful conservation on lobby, noting that a rare creature, scarcely visible to the naked eye, was breeding on the Asteroid Deflector launch pad, forbade the use of the pad until the creature’s breeding season was over. This was unfortunately two days after the asteroid was due to hit. The matter was still before the committee when Guspage was smashed to oblivion. Then there was Illminon. Four hundred millennia of mistaken selective breeding totally upset the planet’s evolutionary balance and a small family of dinosaurs became the first totally outmoded species to return to power. I believe there has recently been a takeover by a small faction of Trilobites.

  With our guests making an unexpectedly early departure and our builders still immersed in some emergency job, we decided to pay a neighbourly visit to the Montalbans and introduce ourselves. They lived further down the valley beyond Mr Skeg.

  We had breakfast and then later a snack. We did not want to turn up embarrassingly at a meal time and invite ourselves. Nor did we wish to go hungry. As we strode down the hill, tiny vortices of hot air zigzagged around us, whirling dust at our feet. When we could see the Montalbans’ house, with its corrugated Drib roof and Couth walls of the same style as ours, we heard a shrill scream and one Montalban flew out of an upstairs window and landed rather heavily on an unsightly heap of Nullion bones. We stopped. The Montalban got up and limped back in the house through the open door. We heard it make an unintelligible statement in some kind of childish Spheraglese patois. There were several giggly sorts of noises from various of the inhabitants then a door slammed and we heard loud purring noises through the open upstairs window. They were obviously unaware of our presence. We decided to postpone our visit.

  We had heard that the Life Force Donor Unit would be visiting Bepommel and we knew we would have to do our duty. Conimunculi have a very powerful emission, indeed it apparently has to be diluted for use on most other species. In the early days of Auraesthenics only crude measurements were possible and overdoses of Life Force to ailing patients were frequent and disastrous if unchecked, since Acute Charisma resulted. In those days an escaped Charismatic with access to multi-media could captivate a nation in next to no time, converting whole races to follow his or
her pet foibles. Worse still, if these escaped before treatment was modified, and chanced to land on an unexplored planet, they could interbreed and change the whole course of the planet’s history.

  There is a well-documented record of Strepsle 3, a blue planet in a distant system with a few splashes of green. A Medicapsule of heavily sedated Charismatics bound for Misp 14 had crashed on Strepsle 3. They had all been passengers on a galacto-cruiser which was involved in a pile-up in dense nebula and had been inadvertently overdosed with Life Force to revive them. The Medicapsule had been taking them to Misp 14 for treatment of their Acute Charisma. The second accident left them unharmed but loose on the surface of Strepsle 3 for three days. Before the sedation wore off they had interbred with the dominant race who were rather undemonstrative materialistically but had a deep intuitive grasp of philosophy. In a few millennia the offspring had driven out their forebears and taken control. Now the planet periodically broadcasts pompous little messages in simple codes describing its inhabitants and asking if there is anyone out there? The rest of the time the galaxy has to put up with such a barrage of broadcast trivia that it pointedly ignores the place, except for a few joyriders in stolen Elipticons swooping over its surface, sometimes leaving graffiti in the fields.

  We drove into Bepommel and found the Donor Unit set up near the market place. We sat in the queue and were duly placed under the phosphorescent grid. We seemed to lie there for no time at all before the nurse said she had had enough of us. On the way out we were given a Halmatrope, which made a pleasant change from the Conima units where you lie for half a day for nothing and then have a few hours of self-doubt to put up with before you revive.

  JULY

  Henry and his cousins turned up unannounced. They looked tired. The job in Felstine had been demanding they said, a real headache. They promised that the Couthwork would be finished within a week and then a second cousin, Neville, a Traker, would come in and frame up the roof.

  A friend of mine from Conima ’screened me to say that he was renting an ancient fortified Coiwig winter house a few hours away near the coast, at the historic coastal town of Frenmahell. We had never been to Frenmahell before. The whole town was still largely unspoilt, built centuries earlier when local tribes of warring Colwigs would eat each other in the winter instead of themselves.

  We had become so immersed in our new-found paradise that we had not travelled much further than Bepommel since we had been in Provender. After an hour in the discomfort of the Stromba we became aware of two things: one, that we had been wise not to venture far in our Stromba before and two, that to venture much further than Bepommel in any terrain-based vehicle was unwise in the summer.

  Everywhere was packed with visiting species, all unable to converse with each other should their vehicles engage. We were stuck behind a heavy family of Dorf from the industrial planet of Manufex. Their hired Stromba was entirely unsuited to their body densities and the hover fins would spark against the hot black Moostrin on every bump. The two-hour trip had already taken us three hours. Every other species around us seemed to be Dorf, We were horrified. Their Credit Rating was currently so high that a holiday on Provender cost scarcely anything at all and with the Dorfs appetite eclipsing even Conimunculi’s we feared the Dorf tourist invasion would literally deplete the planet. They were all heading to the sea at Frenmahell, Only the high, specific gravity of the sea in Provender could support the weight of a Dorf. In a normal lagoon such as ours they would sink to the bottom immediately and drown. It was a pleasing thought as we dawdled along.

  I spotted the distinctive roof of our friend’s rented house on the outskirts of the town. The owner had had the original ornate spikework restored at great cost and it glittered in the hot sun with a Riticule nesting on the topmost spike. The old fortifications were so effective that we drove round and round the house three times, unable to see any entrance, before our friend spotted us from an upstairs aperture and released the old counterbalance which tilted back a wall section for us to enter. It always annoys us how, in these days of comfort and efficiency, creatures are drawn inexorably back to the discomfort and inefficiency of the past. We feel it too.

  The dank, musty interior of the house was fascinating. Maurice, our host, took us straight to see the Dolbury Joint in the great hall ceiling. This Joint, apparently, is known to Architectural Historians the whole galaxy over and has been replicated many times. It was first noted by Linus Dolbury who was inspecting the ceiling for a research project. The main joists had bare-faced soffit tenons with diminished haunches and two-face pegs. This was precisely the perfect joint favoured by the earlier Basilica builders of Strewth, but how had they evolved this joint and how had the technique travelled so far? We will never know. The soothsayers of Strewth foresaw a great famine. Their God was displeased, they said. They urged the builders of Strewth to construct a great Basilica, the greatest in the galaxy, and make an offering, the greatest offering any planet had ever made, to placate their God’s displeasure. The builders of Strewth used every possible material resource on the planet to construct the massive, flashing cruciform Basilica, visible far out in space. This left the planet’s population unhoused and also unclothed by the time the soft-furnishings were finished. Then they collected up all the food and drink on the planet and put it in the Basilica as the greatest offering ever made. This, unfortunately, led to the great famine which the soothsayers had foreseen and the secret of the Dolbury joint perished with them.

  Maurice had prepared us a special Conima meal. It seemed odd that he should have undergone the difficult and uncomfortable journey to Provender, famed for its own unique delicacies, only to cook us a Conima Casserole. In fact, we did enjoy the meal, and it brought back many memories of Conima, but we concluded on the way back home that one meal of Conima cookery every six months was quite enough. The recycled fibre and industrially manufactured nutritional additives are no match for natural food. It has been many years since anything could be grown on Conima. There simply is not the space. Even the old intensive methods in high pressure canisters proved too space-consuming as the population grew. We asked Maurice how he could bring himself to return to Conima after seeing Provender but he said he was homesick. The word seemed to have a whole new range of nuances when he said it. He had brought all his food with him in shrink-sealed containers, practically weightless until water and air were added. His rented accommodation seemed to be deliberately chosen to keep off any encroachment of the real Provender, something which he seemed to hate and fear. I asked him why he had chosen this for his holiday destination and he said, “To prove to myself that I could.” When we left, the wall swung noiselessly back into place, sealing Maurice safely back in his lair, until the taxi came to collect him at the end of his holiday.

  We braved the journey back home, feeling ourselves relax as we neared Bepommel and our beloved valley in the fading light. When we arrived home, Henry and his cousins were just waking up and stretching. I glanced at the extension before going indoors. I think they must have outdone themselves that day by falling asleep immediately upon arriving. None the less, by the end of the week, as they had assured us, they were ready for Neville the Traker to frame the roof. We wanted a few individual features in the interior. It was time for us to visit the Architectural Salvage Yard Henry had told us about.

  The Yard had no signs or obvious indications of its presence. We only chanced upon it by returning on our second attempt with precise written directions from Henry, in order for an Architectural Salvage Yard to achieve maximum prices, it was necessary to persuade the customers that they had chanced upon the place themselves against all odds. The proprietor also had to persuade the customers with rude, unhelpful behaviour that the last thing he wanted to do was to sell any of his vast accumulation of items.

  When we had negotiated the narrow entrance and the interminably long track which obviously had material regularly removed from it rather than added, we were faced by a vista of ancient relics and a scowlin
g Drool who seemed most annoyed to see us. I told him that we wanted to look round, he grunted with a bend of the knees. I was sure he would rather have had us leave, but we were captivated. Trapped here, in this great forest clearing, were the quintessential parts of hundreds of fine Provender buildings. We were unsure whether our rude extension could seriously accommodate such polite architectural details, but we were prepared to try.

  In one corner there were rows and rows of sundials, some even larger than ours, often with defaced numerals where the previous owners had tried to move the numbers, not the dial, to cope with Incontinent Continental Drift. In another part, enormous table tops of polished Couth rested on undressed Couth bases, left over from the age when the creatures who built the houses built in the furniture too in matching materials.

  A covered building housed enormous Gagas, capable of cooking a herd of Nullion simultaneously, and various other ranges adapted for the cooking of individual species. They dated back to the times when the dead of Provender—provided they had had no taste-impairing complaint—were cooked and eaten by the remaining family as a matter of respect. Each species would have a special cooker suitable for cooking its own kind in a specially reserved corner of the kitchen. Standing in lines were Colwig cookers, Montalban cookers, all manner of shapes and sizes of cookers. We had heard that long ago a family of Conimunculi had gone completely native and had had a Conimunculi cooker constructed especially for them by Luigi Gaga, the founder of the famous firm. Thankfully, the practice had long since ceased. Another corner of the yard was reserved for early ablution suites of every shape and size, and varying degrees of danger. It was a hazardous task keeping clean in those days with the maze of pipes and scrapers that sprouted from them. My wife spotted, tucked away in a corner, an early gratification suite with wild Putrage growing from the harness.