A Year Near Proxima Centauri

by Michael Martin

  We reached a lightly wooded area of hill and stopped suddenly, There, under a dense bush, legs were visible sprawled on the moist grounds We initially thought something was dead but as we approached to investigate the creature cried, “Aha,” shot upright and backed out of the bush carrying a large, long white fleshy thing. He was shocked when he turned and saw us and we realized that he was an old Drisk.

  “You’ve got to be early to get these beauties fresh,” he croaked. We asked him what it was.

  “This one? It’s a Nullion Podge, that’s what we calls ’em anyways. Looks just loike one, doesn’t it?” He laughed dirtily. “Acterly, all these are Glandaloops, all different shapes and sizes. You’re touring, are you?”

  “Certainly not,” I said, “we live here.”

  “Oh. I’d have thought you knew what they was then. This time o’ year, in the early morning they pops up everywhere, but if you don’t pick ’em then, they shrivels up again by midday, no flavour then.” He walked on through the trees and bushes, then stopped. A heap of leaves was twitching. “There,” he said, handing us the Glandaloop, “that’s what you look for.” He knelt down by the leaves. We heard a sort of grunting sound. Something was making a big effort. Then there was a most unpleasant smell and a Glandaloop slightly smaller and darker than the one in my hand burst through the leaves, almost hitting the old Drisk on the head. He plucked it straight up.

  “Oh, these are tasty, these darker ones. Mind, those are not so bad neither. You take him, you try him,” he said, pointing to the one we were holding.

  “You can eat them raw, but I prefers them grilled both sides in a dab of smolene for ten minutes. The sooner you pick ’em, the better they taste. You can’t get no fresher than these.”

  We were fascinated. We thanked the old Drisk and walked home, carrying our breakfast. We followed his recommendations but he should have warned us. Once well chewed and swallowed and the marvellous taste savoured, all is not over. It seems to rise slowly back up to the mouth of its own volition, then it tastes quite different, but still delicious as you swallow it again. Then the process repeats itself, and again and again, each time tasting different but delightful. After an hour or so of unrelenting delight we were still without nutrition and feeling extremely hungry despite our temporarily full stomachs. We decided there was only one solution, we had to spit it out. This, I later learned, was the correct procedure. With Glandaloops in season, stalls on the market were soon stocked with them and restaurants were serving them, with spitoons available.

  We had a rather battered set of the Encyclopedia Galactica, We punched in for the Glandaloop to see just what it was. Apparently, the Cthon, a slow boring, or possibly slow, boring, creature lives just below the surface consuming microscopic pocrobes all year long. It then excretes Glandaloops once a year. Once again, we should have resisted the temptation to enquire more closely. The Encyclopedia is rather too sketchy on Provender in general, It was then, as now, considered of little importance in the Galaxy. All these things are relative: I have been told by those who have visited the great library of Knoall which occupies its entire planet, that they possess the Galaxy’s only copy of the prohibitively expensive Encyclopedia Universalis, which spins around the planet separately twice a day in the form of an artificial satellite. This rates our Galaxy as scarcely worth a mention. It never hurts to keep things in proportion. Such a massive store of knowledge can be rather daunting. Only the longest living creatures could read even a fraction of the “A” entries. Dinner parties the galaxy over are littered with small groups of creatures arguing heatedly and knowledgeably over a broad range of topics. It is only if you listen closely that you realize that they all begin with “A”. There are a few dissident groups of intellectuals but you will find that all their discussions boil down to “Z”.

  We have recently found a secondhand copy of the Galatony Guide to Provender restaurants on a market stall. There-are few highly recommended establishments in our vicinity; none the less, there are copious notes on less formal institutions of the sort which we visit regularly.

  Colpoise Galatony was himself a chef of outstanding accomplishment before his tragic premature death in a “Fresh House” with a party of Doris. He had several establishments in Palissandria but he was not afraid to venture out in search of inspiration; each time he did he made notes, thus his guide began. He is amusing and complimentary about Bepommel, but he does not name any establishments actually in the town. We found references to the converted Drib Mill and the Copuli’s establishment, which does not in fact mention that it is run by Copuli, an oversight I thought. There is also mention of a floating restaurant downstream from Bepommel. We had not heard of it. It specializes in cooking whatever its nets catch from the river as it rushes past. There is never a fixed menu, sometimes you get a treat, sometimes nothing special, but the well-stocked river always yields something up. We decided to pay it a visit.

  We followed the directions in the guide and discovered a little track down by the river where a broad bend allowed the restaurant to float on relatively still water on the outer side while the rest of the river rushed through its nets on the inner side. The restaurant was built on the hull of an old Splandrite barge. In the early days, the split Splandrite would be brought as far inland as possible before being unloaded for local building works. We walked down the gangplank and were greeted by a Razmoth called Justin who wore some kind of old seafaring gear. He gripped us both firmly in welcome one after the other with his gripper and then showed us to our table. It was formed from the remains of a gigantic shell crimplet. Justin told us that it had been caught in the nets years ago and had been too bitter for most people’s taste. Quite a few species tend to become a little bitter as they grow older. Other tables were formed from the residue of other meals: piles of Zoab ribs sewn together with gut; the skin of a Gaspa stretched over its lower mandibles; the knee cap of a fossilized MegaMega which had twirled by in a storm, washed down from some upriver deposits. Justin left to raise the net. He returned with a transparent tank on a trolley. This was to be our meal. We looked at it. It was full of creatures squirming and writhing in the cloudy water. If we could make our selection, Justin said, they would return the rest into the river.

  “Selection?” we said. “Just grill the lot.”

  He wheeled the trolley out and shortly after a young Drool brought us mulled Halmatrope in a jug with tiny slices of Water Grudge. The waiter assured us it was the real thing. They had chanced to catch it the day before and removed it for general consumption.

  Our plates arrived. The food was beautifully prepared and arranged. We had only been eating for half an hour when I saw my wife wince with pain. She told me it was her arm again, an old repetitive stress disorder. The amount of strain a particularly good meal can place on the body is often underestimated. In Conima, Restaurant Rescue Services used to be kept on standby to massage away mid-meal aches and pains, firmly pop back dislocated jaws and release the blockages that can so spoil a good meal out. I called Justin over. He was apologetic. There was nothing to be done. He had taken his Emeticist Certificate, compulsory for Provender restaurant managers, but he had never attended the advanced course. This cast a slight shadow on the evening, but my wife valiantly fought on and finished only an hour after me and never complained once about the pain. Justin offered us both a Dribui on the house. This remarkable drink is formed by leaving Algarglanon in vats of Drib for ten years then bottling it immediately. After a further ten years it is released from the bottle and it generally hits the ceiling with enough force to knock itself out and tenderize itself in one go. The taste is sublime.

  When I heard a tap at the door one morning my first thought was “Ah, the workmen at last,” but then I remembered that they had long since given up knocking. I opened the door and was confronted by a Spansule. He asked after my health and my family. I assured him that my wife was in fine health, save the odd twinge during mealtimes. Then he asked me if I realized that the planet was g
oing to end. I said yes, I had grasped that it would not last for ever. “Oh, no,” he said, did I realize that it was going to end on the last day of the year?

  “Good gracious,” I said, “as soon as that? How sad.”

  Then he asked me if I wanted to be saved. I said not to bother and tried to shut the door, but his tail was wedged firmly in it. He said he had the answer, he had been told it and it was his duty to tell me. I asked him if it involved food and deftly kicked his tail aside. He said no, and thrust a foot in its place. “How about drink then?” I asked, stamping on his foot. “No,” he said, retracting his foot by reflex. “I’m not interested then, thank you,” I said, managing to get the door shut. We were well used to prophecies of doom on Conima. Most of them were right. One week they would be saying “Change your ways or the sea will die”, the next week it was dead. One week they would tell us our soil would be sterile, the next week it was. No doubt the doors of Guspage were being hammered on repeatedly the evening before the asteroid hit it, but somehow I felt Provender had a good deal of life left in it yet.

  I told Mr Dobson about our visitor when I saw him on the hill the next day. He said there was a simple way to discourage them, keep a sharpened Cutling Trake by the door. I asked him how the Halmatrope were growing. He fluttered his arms at waist level, “So, so.” I asked if we could have a look. “Not a good idea,” he said. “Mustn’t disturb them, later maybe, later.” Then he changed the subject. He said his wife’s father was buried under our putrage which was why it had such a special significance to them. I was surprised, ground burial having long since died out on most planets. The case of Xin 16 was often cited in debates. The inhabitants all insisted on being buried in a modest plot of land. As millennia went by the population grew, less and less land was available to live on and more and more required for the dead. In the final years several tragic stampedes of the panicky population in their confined space killed enough of them to require the final land mass for graves. The residue was flown off to a small moon and only allowed back now and then to leave flowers. I mentioned Xin 16 to Mr Dobson.

  “Birth control,” he said, “that solves the burial problem. Sound birth control and you can have a decent burial.”

  That reminded me of the planet Almarmara whose Supreme Leader the Worshipful Grand Polyp was an amorphous asexual voluble vegetable which discovered it could emit a mind-numbing vapour when stimulated by enormous crowds of Almarmarons. It had fallen off the back of a pan-galactic food transporter and was surrounded by crowds of Almarmarons as soon as it hit the ground. Then, to its surprise, it emitted the vapour which seemed to numb the crowds into submission and obedience. Sadly, the power soon went to its nuclei and it began assembling enormous crowds of Almarmarons, emitting its vapour and dictating edicts. It wanted greater and greater crowds to stimulate it, over and over, to produce more and more mind-numbing gas. It told them to multiply and that no means should be sought to inhibit their multiplication. They obeyed, but cried out for food, they were starving. “Don’t die,” it said, “just breed.” Other neighbouring planets gave them food and they bred and bred and could not disobey it by dying. Soon the planet’s surface was covered 10,000 deep in breeding Almarmarons, but still the Worshipful Grand Polyp urged them to breed and still it emitted more and more mind-numbing gas until, one day, it died peacefully in its sleep after a long and happy life. The gas was no longer emitted, the Almarmarons’ brains began to function again and they looked around and asked, “How, how could we allow an asexual vegetable to influence us in this way?” But it was too late. Suddenly the planet imploded under the enormous weight of Almarmarons and shrank to the size of a pill.

  “Where did you hear all that?” Mr Dobson asked.

  “I used to travel,” I said. “You pick up an enormous amount of information travelling.”

  “Yes,” said Mr Dobson. “The knack is to know when to put it down again.”

  George was the first of our missing artisans to return. He worked hard for two days bringing in the great heat emitters and connecting them up in each room. They were more intrusive than we had expected and George warned us not to put anything too close to them when they were working. On the third day he worked for a few hours and then told us that it was time to start the burner, but the gas tank had still not been filled. We had been waiting weeks for the tanker to visit. George shrugged and left.

  We fought back our mounting frustration with a snack. In the kitchen the Hully flies had been taking great interest in our Trake bark. Several lumps had fallen from the ceiling under their weight. Mr Skeg had not warned us of their intensity and we wondered how the Robusta would ever get close enough to eat the eggs, if indeed there were any under the thick mat of flies.

  The day the Noxule gas tanker arrived we also received a long-awaited delivery from Palissandria of material for the festoon blinds. My wife had ordered it from the Flora Diraea collection, imported from Conima by Deverell. Flora had pioneered the first of many quasi-nostalgia booms in Conima. While the population struggled under the weight of a collapsing civilization, fraught with new and ever more horrifying incurable diseases, Flora evoked a gentle bright past where diseases were merely controllable colourful embroideries on the fabric of life. She developed a material that would trap hosts of tiny parasites in pleasing wriggling patterns of bright colours. Her spring Epidemic Collection spread like wildfire, so that soon at least one room in every home in the land had it. Something that had first hatched out on her kitchen table caught on everywhere. When the Conimunculi developed an immunity to it, other planets caught on and each year the potential market in the galaxy has extended exponentially. The Company slogan is indisputable: “Flora Diraea will run and run”. This confirms that nostalgia for an imaginary past which never existed is a common trait in all beings with Credit Ratings above C.

  The evenings were beginning to get noticeably cooler and we saw a Capricep turning up on our doorstep most evenings, just as it grew dark. My wife started giving it tiny leftovers from our meals and soon we felt that it had adopted us. Capriceps are as tasty as all other Provender creatures, but, somehow, they have managed to enshroud themselves in superstition. Provender Superstition has it that black Capriceps are lucky and black Capriceps with seventeen nipples are luckier still. As ours lay on its back to be tickled I counted: seventeen. Needless to say, the consumption of a seventeen-nippled Capricep was deemed to be most unlucky, not least for the Capricep. We had taken to it, just as it had taken to us. Superstition played no part in this. We would took after our Capricep as long as it wanted us to.

  NOVEMBER

  We were woken early by the ’screen. It was a rather sulky female Drisk. She said she had been given our name earlier by her employer, Coghlin Prawl. I said I had never heard of him. She said she looked after his holiday home. Something clicked. “Is he by any chance an Image Transmuter?” I asked. She thought it was possible. She had turned up to change the atmosphere as she always did once a week in empty holiday homes and found him diamond buttoning a chaise-longue. Thinking the worst she had contacted us. I had to tell her that there was really nothing we could do, nothing any of us could do. I did not want to actually mention IDS. I told her she should quietly let herself out. My mind raced back over the events of his brief stay with us but I was quite sure that neither my wife nor I had, at any point, had a free and frank exchange of views with him. But what a surprise, obviously somebody had.

  The kitchen was almost unusable now. The Hully flies seethed in masses over the disintegrating Trake bark and underneath the eggs seemed to be hatching. The process was a disaster. We would have no home-made infusion this year. Sadly, my wife and I Instamorted as many flies as we could and put them in the ice room, then we cleared up the mess and threw it outside away from the house into the bushes.

  George appeared unexpectedly. We had left a message with his wife some days earlier telling him that the first gas delivery had come. He asked us if we had checked the tank. We said we knew n
othing about it.

  “Then you will have been short gassed by the driver,” he said, “and he will probably have given you second-grade gas, full of impurities unless you asked him. Well, don’t blame me if anything goes wrong.”

  I told George that we would indeed blame him. This made the first ignition of the system a fraught affair. George lifted the burner manifold, turned on all the gas valves, clicked his flamer and… a broad flame of gas licked around the burner and scorched the new ceiling. He slammed down the manifold cover and the flame roared on underneath, now, it seemed, safely confined. George grinned. “There you are, went first time.” He said nothing about the smoking ceiling, but instead raced around the house turning all the heat emitters on. Then he said he had to be off to another job and not to touch anything. He would be back later.

  Taking him at his word, we were forced to leave the house after two hours when the heat became unbearable. We opened all the windows and moved all our furniture as far away from the heat emitters as we could. Then we sat outside and persuaded our Capricep, whom we had called “Tudor”, to join us. We waited for George to return and took it in turns to race in for snacks to keep us going. George arrived in the early evening. He said he was pleased with the system’s performance. He turned the system down and said that he would be back to check it again in a few days. We thanked him and he raced off. This left us to track down Henry and his various associates. The end of the year was approaching and we wanted everything finished.

  We visited Henry’s home the next day. His wife told us he was working on the other side of town and would be home late. Eventually we persuaded her to give us the directions there on the pretext that we had more work to offer him. This was not entirely untrue, there was the ceiling above the burner to repair.