‘Everything! Everything! Mrs Daphne, little Julia, big Diana, radio telescopes, Dr Eva, me, Sydney Harbour Bridge, Albert Hall, Siberia, all the camels in Egypt, and the pyramids…’
‘Stop it, Yuri,’ Eva warned.
He carried on regardless. ‘All the whisky in Scotland, Royal family, all the foxes they chase, Ukrainian wheat harvest, Big Wheel in Vienna, all the reindeer in Lapland, the Sahara Desert, English Channel, Chinese take-away shop, all the igloos in Greenland…’ At this point Eva rose to go to him. ‘…All the pretty dresses in Paris; fountains in Rome…’
She slapped his face with enough force to convince him she had meant what she said.
‘Eva!’ Diana protested.
Hardly surprised at her sudden appearance, Eva calmly told her, ‘He’ll only get worse if I let him go on.’
Yuri collapsed back into the chair still clutching the exercise books and looking as though he was likely to topple to the floor at any moment.
‘He doesn’t get like this very often. He should have the chance to sleep it off.’
‘When I arrived he’d been using most of the time to drink it off.’
‘He was all right when I left him. Did you know he collapsed earlier on?’
‘No. It doesn’t surprise me after what he’s been ranting on about, though.’
‘Apparitions in fairy rings?’ inquired Diana.
‘That’s the latest. At least it makes a change from accreting planetoids, I suppose. Getting a message from the switchboard to say he wants to see me about apparitions in fairy rings does not exactly work wonders for your prestige when you know it’s been passed round to everyone else before you see it.’
‘He phoned you about it?’
‘Partly my fault, I suppose. It was my idea to have the phone installed.’ Eva looked straight at her friend. ‘I had to marry him.’
Amazement that her logical friend could have made such a miscalculation showed in Diana’s expression.
‘To save him from being deported.’ Eva explained.
‘What, you?’ Diana gasped in disbelief at the thought she was capable of such tender emotions.
‘Nobody else would. Three of us agreed to draw straws. The other two chickened out when they discovered his brain was as soft as his looks. He came over with a group of scientists years ago. They all decided to ask for political asylum and it was granted, all barring Yuri’s. He didn’t know anything strategic enough to make him worth the while, you see. The only thing he had to worry about in going back was spending the rest of his life in an asylum. He was a bit eccentric even then. Had some strange ideas in those days as well. You got strange ideas where he came from and they put you away for it.’ Eva shrugged. ‘He’s always been totally harmless, though. Only wanted his reflector and somewhere to watch the sky. Barring a few minor outbursts he’s always been well behaved … until recently. Now he’s developing into a right headache.’
‘Eva ... there couldn’t be anything in what he says, could there?’
‘No, no, no,’ groaned Eva. ‘It’s you and your voice next is it?’
‘It was just a thought.’
‘For pity’s sake leave them to Yuri. One day he might find a real use for them. If I spend the night here, will you call in some time tomorrow morning?’
‘Of course. He’ll have calmed down by then, though.’
Eva sighed. ‘I don’t know. This time he really believes it’s the end of the world. As if that Trotter woman wasn’t enough already.’
‘What was she up to then?’ asked Diana, not wanting to admit she had heard their reverberating conversation.
‘Because her horse dumped her in our stinging nettles, she thought she would try some underhand dealings with my solicitor to get the lease on this property. I bought it years ago for Yuri so I could keep an eye on him and he could have a clear view of the sky. My solicitor is straight, though. I thought it was about time that Trotter woman stopped terrorising Yuri, so he told her to come here, only she didn’t expect to see me.’
‘Oh?’ asked Diana innocently.
‘It’s unlikely she’ll be bothering us again. Now all we have to do is exorcise his fairy apparitions.’ Eva thought carefully for a few seconds as a wicked idea crossed her mind. ‘You wouldn’t like to marry him, would you Mog?’
Never having regarded Yuri as anything but amiably crazy, the invitation took Diana by surprise. ‘But there wouldn’t be any point, would there?’ she stammered. ‘It’s not as if...’
‘No, you’re right there. I’ve never had any passionate encounters with him over the past fifteen years. He’s always been too busy wondering about close encounters, when the stars were going to collide and the end of the world.’
‘Then why didn’t you divorce him?’
‘Because I’m not so passionate myself and the Mrs Trotters of this world would have put him in an asylum long before now if I had stopped supporting him. He can’t be left to his own devices for long. You know what happens if he is.’
‘Fancy not saying anything about this to me for all these years, though. How on earth did you manage to look after him without me seeing you?’
‘Practised stealth. I didn’t want anyone to know I was married to him. I’ve got a career to think about, you know.’
‘I didn’t believe you thought about anything else.’ Diana laughed. ‘Fancy you being married.’
Eva was obviously not as overjoyed at the arrangement as her friend. ‘Shut up, Mog, and help me put him to bed.’
‘Though come to think of it, it isn’t all that surprising after all. You’re both right little scruffs.’
‘That’s as may be. But we’re clean. I make sure his clothes are washed and dry before he puts them on, and you wash them again when he’s wearing them.’
Unable to deny that, Diana helped to humour and put to bed their mutual problem. When that was done, she would have left Eva drinking the rest of the gin out of the enamel mug, but retreat wasn’t that easy.
‘Put the cover over the reflector as you go out, will you, Mog?’ Eva called after her,
‘All right,’ sighed Diana, anxious to escape before she stumbled on something else that would keep her awake all night. She spent the next twenty minutes looking for the tarpaulin in the twilight garden, unravelling it into submission and hurling it over the telescope with the expertise she used to make beds.
The revelation of Eva’s unlikely marriage quite usurped the concern for Yuri’s condition from Diana’s mind. It wasn’t until she was lying in bed that night that she realised how fragile the balance of anyone’s mind could be. In the warm midsummer night air she suddenly felt the surge of another flush which she knew would leave her with a wringing wet nightdress. Unable to ignore it by lapsing into sleep and too tired to get up and wash it away with the half-bottle of sherry left over from a cake she had baked, Diana fixed her gaze on the darkened ceiling. The pretty pastel posies about her were still visible, though withered into shades of grey. The creams, sprays, and make-up on the dressing table created a sinister outline, and the bedclothes became an aggravating encumbrance. Then came the flashes of kaleidoscopic colours, followed closely by a buzzing more aggressive than a hive of enraged bees. As though those symptoms weren’t enough, there followed the inevitable, ‘This is Moosevan … Why won’t you answer?’
Suddenly Diana was sitting bolt upright. In the unfamiliarity her bedroom had assumed, the message was chilling and real.
‘I am ready now...’ it went on inside her mind. ‘This is Moosevan... There is little time left... You must respond...’
‘Why? Why? Why?’ Diana suddenly found herself calling out in exasperation, then clamped her hand over her mouth for fear of waking Julia. As she did so, she realised that the words weren’t coming from her throat. ‘What do you want?’ her mind was calling back to the intruder. ‘Who are you?’
That took the intruder by surprise. She could sense the faint crackle of its presence before the voice eventually ca
me back.
‘My name is Moosevan,’ it said, as though she should have known that already. ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m Diana,’ she replied with a part of her brain she never realised she had before. ‘What do you want?’
‘I must have my world very soon, or it will be too late,’ was the strange answer.
‘I haven’t got your world.’
‘Something is stopping it from coming together.’
‘What could that be?’
‘You must tell me. I will perish without it.’
‘If there is something stopping it from coming together, there must be a reason. But I don’t know it.’ Diana began to think hard, despite the absurdity of the conversation. ‘Or do I?’
‘Think, Diana,’ Moosevan purred persuasively.
‘Yuri told me - but I didn’t understand.’
‘Sleep. I will take it from your mind.’
‘I can’t. I have trouble sleeping.’
‘You are hot, Diana. This is not right.’
Unable to give the reply her tongue might have used, Diana’s mind replied, ‘I’m not well.’
‘Why are you a living entity?’ The voice sounded confused. ‘And this language is alien to me.’
‘Am I still living?’ Diana asked.
There was a ponderous pause again before the voice came back, ‘May I reach into your mind?’
‘Yes,’ replied Diana, ‘I want to sleep.’ No sooner had she thought the words than her eyelids closed and she sank onto the feather pillow.
CHAPTER 7
With a clunk and a squeaking, screeching sound that set the Mott’s tusks on edge, Kulp released the robot carrying the hundred and tenth beacon. As the Mott commander had shown little trust in Kulp by demanding to watch the vital exercise, Kulp was getting his own back by bringing the squeaking down to such a fine pitch that the Mott sensed he would soon become a dentist’s nightmare.
‘Do you have to do that?’ he snapped in exasperation after the one hundred and twentieth beacon had been released. ‘I’m pretty sure you could have eliminated that noise long before now,’ knowing that there were 880 to go.
‘Time to adjust such a minor problem would be money,’ Kulp reminded him, ‘and I’m sure a little thing like that is not going to distress a Mott commander who has been in the thick of the most bloody confrontations seen on this side of the galaxy.’
There was no reply to that, so the Mott just squinted his eye in pique and backed away from the infernal equipment emitting the tooth-shattering sound. He also began to feel nauseous because of the rich atmosphere Jannu, Kulp and Tolt had saturated their ship with. Although all life forms had been compelled to adapt to one standard atmosphere, the many variations on it could cause great discomfort to those unused to them. The Mott stamped each of his four feet in turn as he realised it would be some while before he was released from their doleful company. If he had the choice, he would have preferred chasing the backward tribes on some dingy little planet on the edge of nowhere with a flash blaster. Unfortunately for him, those balmy days of carefree pleasures were over. Most of the evolving tribes stopped evolving to have flash blasters of their own.
The robot carrying the two hundred and twenty-fifth beacon juddered into its prearranged piece of space from the faulty evacuation chute below them.
Kulp announced with a degree of disappointment in his voice, ‘That’s all for this quarter. We’ll have to go down to the planet to install the next terminal.’
‘Need any help?’ Jannu asked innocently.
He nearly fell through the floor when Kulp replied, ‘Yes. You and Tolt as well. I don’t see why I should do all the work,’ then marched out of the control room.
Jannu flashed Tolt a quick shrug of the shoulders. Tolt was just as mystified. Could it be that there was a cure for the pink dye after all, or that the story about Kulp’s dealing with the Torran, Dax, had been exaggerated? They had their reply as the intercom snapped on from the dispatch bays.
‘She’s liable to be unstable. Put some suits on,’ ordered Kulp.
‘Damn,’ hissed Jannu, much to the bewilderment of the Mott, whose misgivings, having peeped over the parapet, were now putting on battle armour.
As it was in a gravitational field, a robot was not thought necessary to hold the beacon still on the planet’s surface, though blasting a hole for it to sit in was more difficult than they had anticipated. The planet was sensitive to every pinprick and immediately filled in the gaps with as much speed as they could be made. Kulp decided to line the next hole with a force field. This seemed to do the trick. Sliding the beacon down a beam from the freighter’s evacuation chute was by comparison a simple matter. That only left them to arm it to transmit its devastating signal.
‘You sure it’s not going to be too much for the planet’s crust?’ Jannu asked cautiously.
‘Of course not,’ snapped Kulp. ‘Don’t you think I know what I’m doing?’
‘Of course I do. It’s just that we’d like to know once in a while. How can you be so sure your space-distort net won’t kill the atmosphere and everything growing here?’
‘I want the Mott to think that’s the danger, you idiot. What do you think they would do if they believed the system was foolproof? What would our lives be worth if they could operate it without us?’
‘You really think the Mott would double-cross us then?’ Tolt asked with an innocence that didn’t escape the scheming Kulp.
‘Wouldn’t we double-cross them if we had the chance?’
‘That’s different,’ protested Tolt. ‘We’re prettier than they are.’
Quite convinced his partner’s brain was becoming too soggy to fit the skull the genetic engineers had designed, Kulp wondered whether the effort he had made a short while before to deal with his companions had been worth the trouble. He had lowered himself to repeat the use of one of his inventions, adapted and increased its strength tenfold, then programmed a minute robot with all the stealth of a common thief to install it. Now it seemed that his two victims were too dense to appreciate the beauty of the ignominy soon to be unleashed on them. Oh, how Kulp longed for an adversary worthy of his superior mettle.
Taking care not to let them wander out of the view of his polarised visor, Kulp moved off to check the signal’s bearing.
A tinkling shower of gravel and crystals cascaded down a cliff-face and onto the broad leaves of the vigorously growing trees below. The ground heaved and through the ancient trunks a whisper permeated the air.
‘Who are these creatures?’ it asked. ‘They are not the ones I touched...’
On the other side of the planet, the tide of one of the small seas suddenly flowed up its shore to flood a field of tall lilies. The one Moosevan had spoken to was kind. The other, who could only feel, disturbed her usual tranquillity. The planet dweller’s thoughts were saturated with the longing to touch him again. So she searched. She parted the forests with an invisible comb and turned over shifting sands, still unable to find the object of her fascination. Although she sensed the danger of the three companions with their pricking, irritating machine, the interest of her mighty being remained absorbed elsewhere.
Ice floes were shaken free from the poles and glaciers pushed leisurely on their ways over ground that had never seen ice before. The three intruders sensed the restless changes and still carried on with their task, trying not to be distracted by the planet’s potentially destructive power.
Moosevan did not kill. She didn’t know how to. Nor should the need ever arise, yet something was very wrong. She had called time and time again, but received no reply. The part that should have been the core of her new body was silent and still. Though she knew it was still functioning, it wouldn’t answer her command. When she reached out with her thoughts through the gate, this strange intriguing creature had extended its hand to touch them. No other sensation had ever filled her with such curiosity. From time remembered, other living things had landed on her temperate plains and c
ome and gone in their flights across the galaxy. Some Moosevan had found amusing and friendly. She had made their temporary homes shimmer with exotic mists. Others were brutal and unreasoning, so she had shifted the ground under them to make their stays as unpleasant as possible. Energy life forms had floated like phantoms through her forests and jungles of twisted vegetation and whispered the secrets of the Universe to her, but she had never encountered anything like this one brief touch before.
Since the Old Ones had left, new species had feared the might of a world that could overwhelm them. Having to respect the very ground they trod on was too much for their own self-importance. They believed entities like Moosevan could have accidentally shuddered and split the ground beneath them. She would never have done such a thing on purpose and wondered why these three strange companions were the only ones to come after such a length of time. Her other contact from the gate was the total opposite of these creatures. Even though the message taken from her mind meant the end of the planet dweller’s existence, she had a sympathetic heart, and that was something the planet had long missed.
Moosevan was ageing. She had lived half as long as the now dwindling galaxy, and could not reasonably expect to go on forever. The Old Ones had given her the means to escape, but now she realised that the cost of using it would be too high. All she could do was wait, wait and hope she would again be able to touch that strange entity before passing from her world into infinity.
The planet dweller sighed once more, and a precariously balanced boulder said to the rock outcrop it sat on, ‘What is she so restless about?’
‘It must be something to do with the beacon those three have just installed,’ said the rock.
‘Can’t we dissolve it?’
‘Wouldn’t be any point. They must operate the space-distort net, or we’ll have to go through all this again somewhere else.’
‘I’ve got a feeling things are going to get more complicated,’ said the boulder, swaying thoughtfully.
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