The Planet Dweller

by Palmer, Jane;

  ‘Don’t do that. It’s unbelievably uncomfortable.’

  ‘Why do we have to sit here like this anyway? It was far more agreeable as we were.’

  ‘Because we have to find out what’s going on without them suspecting,’ replied the rock irritably. ‘If we used those other shapes, they would probably forget what they were doing to try and kill us.’

  ‘It makes you realise how fortunate we are not to be mortal, though I would prefer the fur coat again. The mental capacity of this material is somewhat restricting.’

  ‘Forget the fur coat. I just told you one of those creatures would try to assassinate it on sight. You’ve got to access the Torran’s memory? Why won’t you use it?’

  ‘Not now. I’d much rather roll down that cliff-face and see what their reaction is.’

  ‘Don’t forget I’m underneath here,’ the rock reminded it. ‘You’ll have to learn to be a little more patient. None of us has had to do anything like this for aeons. It’s bound to be frustrating.’

  ‘Oh, just a little pitch and tumble won’t ruin everything. Tuck yourself in. Here I go!’ And away went the boulder with a reverberating crash.

  Where the hell did that come from?’ yelped Tolt as he leapt out of the path of an unusually large animated rock that seemed to be chasing his heels.

  ‘The planet dweller probably threw it at us,’ Kulp commented dryly from a safe distance.

  ‘You can hardly blame her,’ said Jannu. ‘If someone was trying to distort me from my cosy little shell, I’d get a bit touchy as well.’

  ‘Will you two stop being so damned reasonable,’ snapped Kulp. ‘It’s beginning to make me nervous.’ He opened the casing of the beacon to reach inside it with a torch, then changed his mind. ‘I’m not going to arm this terminal until the others are in sequence. It’d be too risky with all this turbulence.’

  ‘The atmosphere seems reasonably stable, though.’ observed Tolt innocently, not realising Kulp was perfectly aware of what he was driving at.

  ‘Seems very balmy,’ added Jannu.

  ‘You two can go for a stroll if you like. Don’t count on there being a shuttle waiting to take you off when I start triggering the net.’

  As the idea of ditching them had crossed Kulp’s mind, he would undoubtedly take the first opportunity to do it. ‘In that case I don’t think I’ll bother,’ Tolt decided.

  With the beacon aligned and only waiting to be armed in readiness to twist the planet through every distortion that matched its inventor’s moral sense, Tolt and Jannu followed him back to the shuttle, disappointed that they hadn’t thought of some way to make him remove his helmet.

  The Mott commander was doing a brisk trot around his observation chamber when the three of them entered to report their progress.

  ‘Why are you taking so much time?’ he demanded with a tantrum well into third gear. ‘I’ve got to make a report soon.’

  ‘Report away,’ Kulp told him off-handedly. ‘I’ll do things in my own good time and not be rushed by any little ringlet-covered egotist with a personal hygiene problem,’ and strode out of the chamber without apparently realising the danger in accurately describing a Mott to his face.

  Jannu and Tolt remained, not sure whether it was better to keep company with Kulp while he was in that sort of mood, or wait and see what the reaction of the Mott would be. The Mott valued their ringlets above all else, or perhaps almost all else. They were an indicator of a male’s virility and valour, next to the first best appendage. Such a comment coming from a hairless, green, toad thing without either, made the Mott growl and stamp with rage until the other two thought he was going to gallop up the wall and across the ceiling. Only taking the precaution of not being in his path when he decided to do it, Jannu and Tolt waited patiently until the Mott became more rational.

  ‘He’s always been like that,’ commented Tolt. ‘Don’t pay any attention.’

  ‘Somebody gave his jar a vigorous shake when he was still an embryo and it must have affected him,’ Jannu added.

  ‘I don’t like that creature...’ gurgled the Mott.

  This hardly surprised the other two, because, like the Olmuke, the Mott had never been known to like anyone else.

  ‘He can be a little trying,’ agreed Jannu. ‘As long as you keep your eye on him, he’s not liable to get up to much.’

  The Mott was silent for a moment, sensing that there was something pertinent in Jannu’s angling comment.

  ‘What do you mean? What would he get up to if he wasn’t being watched?’

  ‘Oh,’ Tolt pretended to reassure, ‘Don’t worry about it. We’re honest enough, and aren’t likely to go along with him.’

  ‘After all,’ Jannu laughed, ‘who with any sense of self-preservation would want to cross the Mott?’

  ‘Kulp would,’ said the Mott with accuracy unusual for his dull reasoning. ‘And how do I know I can trust either of you two?’

  ‘Look,’ Tolt started carefully, ‘if Kulp double-crossed you, then it stands to reason he would be double-crossing us as well.’

  ‘For instance?’

  ‘For instance,’ said Jannu, ‘just assuming this space-distort net isn’t successful: he’s got the down payment on the scheme. You can easily check to see if anything was paid to us.’

  ‘Not an atom, I assure you,’ Tolt agreed. ‘He has the fastest ship. We’ve only freighter-class and would never be able to outrun the Mott fleet.’

  Despite the Mott’s suspicion, he wanted to believe them, even though it would mean trusting members of a different species, and that was as impossible as trusting a Mott female. He clip-clopped about the chamber for a short while, weighing up Kulp’s total disregard for a member of the most superior species in the galaxy, with what his seniors would say if they discovered they couldn’t operate the net without its inventor.

  Tolt had anticipated that difficulty. ‘We know how to operate the net. He’s ironed out most of the awkward problems so it won’t be that difficult. All we want him to do now is arm the terminal on the planet, then we won’t need him any more.’

  ‘What about Mott engineers?’ the commander demanded.

  ‘Well,’ mused Jannu carefully, ‘they did have trouble operating the one they designed themselves.’

  ‘We couldn’t guarantee to simplify it to that extent,’ added Tolt. ‘After all, we weren’t the inventors, remember. It would be asking a lot of us.’

  ‘So what do you think Kulp will do?’

  ‘Do?’ laughed Jannu. ‘He may decide to keep to the bargain exactly as made.’

  ‘Then again he might not,’ said Tolt, ‘and we could never do anything unless he showed himself to be totally untrustworthy.’

  That was what the Mott commander was hoping. Nothing would please him more than to have the distort-net system and the head of the creature who invented it.

  ‘What would you do if he didn’t prove trustworthy?’ he asked.

  Jannu and Tolt looked at each other and shrugged.

  Tolt grinned. ‘What else could we do but keep to our side of the bargain?’

  ‘As long as we get his percentage, of course,’ added Jannu quickly.

  ‘What? All of it?’

  ‘What else?’ said Jannu firmly, and the Mott could see he wasn’t going to budge on that point.

  ‘Something tells me we might be doing business without a certain fourth party very shortly.’ The Mott’s mouth moistened at the prospect of knowing Kulp was fatally wounded if not dead. ‘Isn’t it strange how allies find each other?’

  No longer aggravated by the blasting and probing of the three intruders, Moosevan soon lost interest in them. Had she not been so concerned about finding the object of her fascination, she might have given more of her colossal thought to the problem of what the three Olmuke were about to do. Even if she had, though, there was nothing she could do to stop it.

  So once again she reached out through the gate. This time her touch was gentle and didn’t try to frantically gra
sp at the mechanism that she knew to be there. She wafted strange caressing sensations that were part of her into the pathway the Old Ones had made for her into another region of the Universe.

  CHAPTER 8

  ‘Of course,’ said John, as he scratched the chin that was concealed beneath the forest growing from it, ‘we could always trap the foxes ourselves and release them somewhere else?’

  ‘No good,’ argued Fran. ‘The chances are they would make their way back here, or be killed by some other hunt or gamekeeper. The real problem as I see it, is that hunting must be banned once and for all.’

  ‘Fine chance while the ones in power are the ones who go in for that sort of carnage.’

  ‘Reasonable argument is the only way this problem can be tackled. If we resort to violence then we become the same as them.’

  ‘I still think shoving a few volts through the telescope tracks is a good idea.’ John grinned to himself beneath the privacy of his undergrowth. ‘Never thought I’d ever have anything in common with a scientist.’

  Fran wasn’t so impressed. ‘They’re just as pernicious as the mistakes they make. They are the lackeys of the very people who should be removed from power.’

  ‘That small grey-haired woman wouldn’t go much on hearing you talk like that. From what I heard, she put a flea in the ear of one of the establishment the other night.’

  ‘Apparently most of the village heard her putting more than a flea in the woman’s ear,’ Fran commented with the distaste of an incurable pacifist. ‘They were only arguing over property.’

  ‘I think it was something to do with her trying to run all the foreigners out of the village as well. Everyone I’ve spoken to says Mrs Trotter and her family always have been anti-Semitic, anti-socialist, and racist. I don’t think they like those telescopes spoiling the local view either. They tried to block the project when the observatory first came. They preferred the museum which reminded them of the old days when the serfs were starving and they occasionally let them have a bushel of their own wheat to survive on.’

  At any other time this could have led to a deadly serious philosophical discussion that would have lasted until the students reached the museum and probably after, but Fran suddenly stopped and stared at the meadow at the back of Diana’s cottage. In the rays of the early morning sunlight something was glimmering and dancing like a delicate curtain of dust.

  ‘What on earth is that?’ Fran asked.

  John peered towards where his friend’s finger pointed, and commented off-handedly, ‘Just a light effect. Could be marsh gas.’

  ‘It doesn’t look like that to me.’

  ‘Look-’ John said earnestly, ‘-didn’t we swear off that stuff?’

  ‘I haven’t touched it. You’ve been with me all the time, so how could I? There seems to be something down there, I tell you. It’s moving about like a slowly revolving top, full of shapes and things.’

  John took a longer, harder look just to satisfy his companion. Either because he thought Fran was hallucinating or because there was too much hair obscuring his view, he insisted, ‘It’s just a light effect. You’re getting like that crazy Russian.’

  This immediately took Fran’s attention away from the meadow and raised more political sentiments.

  ‘Does he have to be crazy because he’s a Russian?’ Fran complained.

  ‘The way they had to live must have been enough to drive anyone crazy,’ John added against his better judgement.

  ‘How do you know he isn’t crazy because he spent half his life in a labour camp?’ came the instant response, it somehow not occurring to Fran that the Russian might not be crazy, just maligned by enough people to make it seem fact. ‘They said that student was crazy because he insisted he’d seen the Loch Ness monster. And look what happened there.’

  ‘So it rained frogs on him while he was walking across the campus. What’s that got to do with the Loch Ness monster?’

  ‘It proves that just because somebody claims something apparently impossible, it doesn’t mean they are lying,’ Fran pointed out.

  ‘But we all saw the frogs. We never saw the Loch Ness monster. Anyway, if whatever this Russian fellow keeps going on about is right, it must mean he’s sane.’

  ‘Didn’t I say that?’

  ‘No,’ and the argument went on as they passed by the meadow and into the grounds of the museum.

  ***

  Diana was still in carpet slippers and dressing gown at a time she would usually be hard at work in the museum filing something or checking the older wood for rot and beetle. She slopped some milk onto a pile of cornflakes and automatically shovelled them down. Only after dropping the bowl into the sink and scratching her disorganised head through a mop of unbrushed hair did she try to remember what had hit her in the early hours of that morning. Just as some semblance of order returned to her thoughts, the front doorbell rang. Only stopping off at the mantelpiece to snatch up her brush and push the hair out of her face, she swung the door open to see the small twins’ mother.

  ‘Why hello, Cherry.’ She smiled, ‘Are you about early or did I get up late?’ and ushered her through to the living room.

  ‘I think you are a little late, it’s nearly ten past nine.’

  ‘That’s late for you maybe. I’ve got the day off, though. Have a cup of tea.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Cherry said, practised in the art of suffering the way the English brewed tea. ‘I hope I haven’t disturbed you from anything?’

  ‘Only wondering where the rest of me is. Now’s the time I wish I never gave up smoking.’ Diana handed her friend a cup of lukewarm tea.

  ‘You had a rough night?’ Cherry inquired carefully, not insensitive to the trauma some women go through when much older than herself.

  ‘I’m still not sure when it started or when it ended. I suddenly woke up this morning not only wondering where I was, but who I was as well.’

  ‘Has Dr Spalding...?’ The frantic waving of Diana’s hand told her she was on dangerous ground. ‘Perhaps it was the heat? It was very warm last night.’

  ‘Perhaps...’ Diana suspected there was a more sinister explanation.

  ‘Is Julia up yet?’ asked Cherry, bravely taking a sip of the brown fluid.

  ‘Not her. She plays hard and sleeps long.’

  ‘Good. I think there is something I should tell you about what happened yesterday.’

  ‘Oh goodness, yes,’ remembered Diana. ‘It didn’t upset the twins did it?’

  ‘Oh no. It was because they were so excited about what happened that it made us wonder.’

  ‘Wonder? I know Yuri doesn’t usually make a habit of folding up dead drunk in the middle of the day, but...’

  ‘No, not that. It was what happened inside the ring.’

  Diana looked at her in amazement. ‘That was only some story they used to cover up for Yuri. You know what children are.’

  ‘Our children are no less mischievous than anyone else’s.’ Cherry, having to admit that the tea had defeated her, replaced the cup on the tray. ‘As they are twins, we have a way of knowing if they are lying or not.’

  A peculiar feeling of apprehension tingled Diana’s scalp. ‘Go on?’

  ‘Whenever we think they invent stories, we question them separately. If the story differs in the slightest detail we know they are lying. If they both stick to the same story, then we know they are telling the truth.’

  Diana looked at her in disbelief for a moment before replying, ‘You mean to tell me you think that the story about the fairies in the ring is true?’

  ‘We believe they saw what they described to us,’ Cherry told her carefully. ‘We do not know what it means, of course.’

  ‘If it’s true - Julia was telling the truth as well. What did they tell you?’

  ‘They said that they were dancing around inside the ring when the grass started to move. Julia pulled them away from it and they watched as this spiral box full of shapes rose from the ground like solid smoke. Yuri came
down and told them to keep away from it, then said something about switching it off. He put his hand inside the ring. The shape knocked him over and disappeared with a flash of light.’

  ‘That sounds like Julia’s story. What the hell could it have been?’

  ‘Perhaps there is a generator fault somewhere and it is affecting the electric cables?’ suggested Cherry.

  Diana shook her head. ‘No. I remember the time when that meadow was ploughed regularly. All our water, gas and electricity comes from the street. The supply to Yuri’s cottage comes in above it. ’

  ‘There must be some explanation for it. That scientist friend of yours could easily explain it.’

  Diana flinched inside as she remembered the way she and Eva had poured scorn on Yuri the night before.

  ‘I’ll have a word with Yuri first. I promised to call in and see him later,’ she said uneasily.

  ‘He is all right?’ Cherry asked.

  ‘Well, he probably slept well last night.’

  ***

  In fact, Yuri had slept so well the night before that he was up bright and early. As soon as Eva had left he was down by the fairy ring looking into the mysterious depths of the pattern inside it. The dancing spheres and diamonds entranced Yuri. The odd one would now and then break away from the spiral and flutter towards him like a smoky butterfly, gently touch his face or hand then evaporate with a faint pop. Knowing the clout these inoffensive patterns could deliver, Yuri was not so eager to accept their invitation as he had been before. These shapes marked the entrance to a very long tunnel, perhaps infinity.

  Whatever controlled those plucking parcels of mist seemed to sense both his apprehension and fascination.

  Suddenly feeling the penetration of so many painless bullets, Yuri found himself sitting in a still pool of air. Something had encompassed him like the hand of a colossal giant. It didn’t close over him; he could still see the fairy ring and the meadow about it, yet they were not part of this strange world. His body relaxed as though it had been lowered onto a mattress of down. Without needing to think, someone else’s thoughts slipped into his mind. They didn’t speak to him, just filled his body with an intensity of feeling he had never known before. It wasn’t human; it was longing. It didn’t betray its nature, but permeated his head with unearthly perfume.