by Brian Hughes
A round head that resembled a speckled thumb with cheerful features stuck itself over the edge of the well and a podgy, nervous hand reached down in assistance.
“I’ve put the kettle on, Mr. Robot. Would you care to join me for tea?”
The narrow passage of Patternoster Row. Two dark silhouettes jog between the overhanging buildings. The taller of the two wears a trench coat. He scans the cobbles beneath his sneakers with the antenna from his bracelet. The shorter figure is still dragging the bent bazooka behind her. It looks as though she’s got her own private chimney stack between her shoulder blades.
“Is she here?”
“Oh yes. She’s here somewhere.” The words came out in a cloud of condensing steam. “But I’ve no idea where.”
Hogan looked around, the mist evaporating to reveal an expression of concern.
“Something’s happened, Cissy. She’s lying dormant!” He turned to his companion. “She must have coupled. They’re all one now...”
“What, all of them?” Cissy’s bottom lip trembled, a nervous twitch taking control of one of her eyelids. It appeared for a moment that she was trying to wink out a message in Morse code.
“No, not all of them. There’s still one or two missing,” Hogan continued.
“How do you know?”
“Because Greyminster’s still standing upright!”
Enough said! He made another intensive sweep of the immediate ground before straining his vision into the darkest corners of the street. Nothing out of the ordinary. “She must have taken refuge inside one of the buildings!”
“Which one?”
It was on the tip of Marshal’s tongue to say, ‘How the bloody Hell should I know? If I knew that I wouldn’t be bloody asking, would I?’ But the situation was looking grimmer with every passing moment. There was no time for bickering.
“I’ve no idea!” he said instead, adding, “I’ll take the four on the left. You take the four on the right.”
The couple broke ranks and took their separate directions determinedly. Two steps further and Cissy stopped.
“No!” She shook her head, mulling over a nasty idea that sat uncomfortably amongst the other mental conundrums. It was laughing at her sarcastically. “No! There’s only seven buildings down Patternoster Row.”
“What?” Hogan’s voice sounded worried. He took a step back towards her.
“There’s only seven buildings down Patternoster Row!” Cissy nodded in confirmation, then turned to stare him straight in the eye. “When I was a child we used to play on the patch of waste ground where...”
She caught sight of the inconspicuous building sandwiched between numbers two and four. It was much like all the others around it, dark and austere. But try as it might, it didn’t somehow quite belong there.
“Where number three is...” Cissy concluded.
There followed a few reflective seconds. The darkness seemed to close about the taciturn figures with the heavy constriction of a prison’s doors. At length Hogan took a few brave steps forward.
The pale street lamp cast a dim yellow glow across the pallid front door. Street lamps drain the colour from objects at night, making it difficult to determine whether something is red, blue or green. But this front door looked as though it had never had any colour to start off with. What it did have, however, was a circular impression of something vaguely familiar. Especially when viewed with the head on one side and with a squint.
“Oh my God!” Cissy brought her fingertips up to her teeth in the fashion that she always adopted when something awful was about to happen. “It’s Amanda Duck! Amanda Duck is Patternoster Row!”
Chapter Fourteen: Mountains out of Molehills
“Hob Nob, Mr. Robot? They’re very tasty.”
Three-Nine-Five stared blankly at the plate of chocolate biscuits. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do next. Was he supposed to take the saucer and put it in his pocket? Was he supposed to sniff the biscuits first and then perform some weird Earthen greeting ceremony? Whatever it was it never crossed his mind to actually stuff them into his mouth or dunk them in the steaming mug of coffee at his elbow.
Three-Nine-Five’s main diet more normally consisted of plugging himself into the mains onboard the mother ship whenever his water-based batteries dropped below the entropy limit. Regardless of water having the unique properties of being able to produce more energy output than was actually put in, time had a habit of breaking every substance in the universe down. It wasn’t the most common of events but the recharge was the closest that Three-Nine-Five actually came to a sociable meal.
He stared at the saucer, blinked uncertainly, and stared some more.
“Right...” The biscuits were beginning to wilt beneath his intense gaze. Allison placed the saucer down on a doily-covered table, then drew his attention to an outstretched digit on her right hand. The finger moved in a semicircle until the tip was pointing at her ample bosom. “Allison...”
She pronounced her name carefully, emphasising the movement of her lips. Then she pointed at her robotic companion, sitting in the armchair opposite with his tight gripping hands nervously pulling the antimacassars into volcanoes of lace. And, encouragingly, she nodded her head.
“Chirrupchicachic...” Something inside Three-Nine-Five’s brain made a connection. The Earther was attempting to communicate with him. ‘Allison’ was obviously an Earth word for ‘Corpulent Bolus of Flesh.’ His instructor watched the cognitive processes produce the tiniest grin about his features.
After a moment’s thought the ‘Corpulent Bolus of Flesh’ launched herself from the chair and headed off towards the kitchen. Three-Nine-Five made to follow.
“No, no. You stay there a moment. I won’t be long.”
Amanda Duck was now comprised of forty-something parts, growing exponentially every time an Altarian Beast merged with her glutinous body.
Commander Hogan and Cecilia Doyle stood enwrapped before the towering creature. Or rather they stood enwrapped before the slumbering building she had become. The ground fog curled up from the damp, autumn pavements, probing the lock on her front door as though she was French smoking the gutter. It was reminiscent of the advertising poster for ‘The Exorcist,’ all black and white and grainy, full of expectant atmosphere and gothically lit for maximum menace. And it was incredibly stationary!
“Well!” Hogan drew the DNA reconstructer from his pocket, biting his bottom lip for Dutch courage. “It’s now or never!”
And for a moment it seemed that ‘Never’ was his chosen option.
He took a cautious step forwards towards the face with its slanted eyes.
His sneakers creaked on the moist flagstones.
“WHAT’S ’EE UP TO NOW THEN?” shrieked Cissy’s mother emerging from the door of number two and catching sight of him. The high pitched words echoed off the walls of the street.
“Bollocks...” The eyes slowly opened, blinked in a tired fashion and focused steadily on the frozen figure before them. Then the wrinkled mound of Amanda’s mouth split horizontally, parted into the shape of a hollow lemon and screamed.
Hogan seized the opportunity and dodged in. The DNA reconstructer punched a hole in the filmy surface of the implausible letterbox. With a release of steam the needle was forced into the unctuous mass. It reached its girth, Hogan’s full weight pressing behind it, wouldn’t go any further and stayed put where it was.
Hogan staggered backwards, his arms outstretched for balance and his sneakers digging into the pavement. The features screamed, sending several pigeons fluttering wildly from the rafters. The plaintive howl rattled through the iron gibbet suspended above their heads.
Behind him Marshal could hear a repetitive clang as Cissy jumped up and down clapping her hands together in delight, forgetting about the bent bazooka over her shoulder. Seconds later he hurtled towards her across the cobbles, an expression of worry coarsely drawn across his unshaven features.
“RRRRUN!”
“W
hat?”
“RRRUNNNNNN!” He grabbed Mrs. Doyle by the wrist, yanking her with such determination that her boots left the ground. Cissy gawked as the figures sped past her in a blur.
“But I thought that you’d...”
“It takes a good half an hour to work! And now she’s really pissed off!” Hogan’s body disappeared into the shadows, dragging the complaining old dear behind him. “SO BLOODY RUNNN!”
Dr. Waldorf eyed the dismembered circuitry strewn across floor of the medical bay. At length he stood upright and removed his thick round glasses, wiping the lenses with a pink spotted handkerchief. The action appeared to shrink his previously magnified eyes to the size of two currants poked into the broad fleshy bulb of his forehead.
“What’s your verdict?” The drawling tones of Colonel Vosh vibrated through the air beside him. Waldorf replaced his spectacles, tutted and shook his over-large cranium. The sprout of hair on the top seemed to dance.
“Well, it’s knackered.” There followed a short silence whilst he wiped his hands.
“I can see that, Waldorf.” Vosh’s languid voice was bedecked with that sort of infinite patience that only a really evil mind could command. It threatened to break at any moment and result in the vivisection of somebody’s head. Waldorf swallowed and tried again.
“Well, your Majesty, the er…the Tachyon Initiator has been (gulp) torn from its wall mounting...er…and…”
There was a ping as Colonel Vosh removed the tiniest bit of grit from beneath his manicured fingernail.
“Can you mend it?” He didn’t even stoop to look the Doctor in the eyes.
“Well, er, having, er...” Waldorf felt his neck swell. A small bead of perspiration trickled down his left temple, undulating as it crossed a throbbing blue vein. He stuck one finger down the collar of his shirt and gave a tug... “It...er...the thing is that...er...no.”
The resolve to be honest came as a final blunt relief. Waldorf wrinkled his slashed mouth into a series of bizarre shapes, cocked his head on one side and surveyed the broken Tachyon bomb somewhat vacantly.
“No!” He’d admitted it was beyond him, so if he was going to go down he might as well do so with commitment. “I’m afraid your highness, it’s completely buggered!”
Vosh signalled to the guard standing behind him, who sidled up and awaited his orders obediently.
“Signal Empire Command.”
“Knackered, that’s what it is. Totally shagged!” Waldorf was now drivelling despite himself. It was almost as though his mouth had become wedged in sixth gear and the brakes had failed.
“Tell them to prepare the 800lb bomb. And have it ready in fifteen minutes. We’ll have to use the Hyperdrive to collect it in time.”
The guard saluted, clicked his heels and marched solemnly away.
“Totally fu...the 800lb bomb?” Waldorf was suddenly brought out of his personal reverie. “But that’s ridiculous!”
Catching the expression in Vosh’s eyes he shrank to the size of an atom.
“I...I...I mean, that’s massive your majesty. Such a bomb would surely split the planet in two...?” By now he was virtually beneath his superior’s upturned nostrils, cringing and fawning and rubbing his hands together pleadingly. “Think of the potential for such a water bearing planet as this one, sire…”
The Colonel waved him aside with a dismissive gesture, returning to the perusal of his fingertips. “What is water, Waldorf?”
“Very bloody expensive...your honour...”
“Mere piss! We must not allow the New Empire to gain control of the creatures! This is a time of war, my grovelling friend. And we must all make certain sacrifices.”
His stare could have melted diamonds. Waldorf buckled at the subtle emphasis on the word ‘sacrifices,’ automatically shying away. Vosh pressed a button on the wall-mounted communicator housed at his side.
“Set course for Hyper-Jump. There is no time for further delays!”
Number thirty-four, Ashbourne Road, flat two. Or, as those readers with a good memory will recall, the address of Cissy’s friend, Allison Moore. Whilst various events were occurring in unison around Greyminster, Allison herself was having the time of her life.
Having Three-Nine-Five over for dinner was how she’d always imagined entertaining one of her pen pals to be. Only instead of trying to understand all that mixed up grammar and backward speech, this was real life. To Allison’s mind the difficulties in communication were an opportunity to expand her own narrow horizons.
“Thank you?” Allison nodded, grinning widely, as Three-Nine-Five took his fifteenth Hob Nob from her.
He sniffed it gingerly, as he had done the previous fourteen, then took a gargantuan bite, munching gleefully as though he’d never tasted food before. Which, of course, he hadn’t.
“Thank you...” The crumbs scattered from his mouth as he spoke. “Thank you...” His head nodded dutifully in a similar manner to that of an extremely polite Chinese man. “Thank you...”
“Yes, yes...” Allison withdrew the plate and held up a finger. “Only once...”
The Old Guard copied her, the crumbs flying out across the scatter cushions and flowery rugs. The nozzle of the vacuum cleaner would be rattling in the morning with that lot.
“Only once...” said Three-Nine-Five and broke out into a metallic grin.
Earth wasn’t turning out to be such a bad place after all. He put his boots up on the coffee table and sank backwards into the cushions with a Hob Nob poised before his lips for further scrutiny. Now this really was the life. There might still have been mud caked across his face and clothes, but life without the Great Army on his back definitely had its advantages.
For one thing it was warm. Those old quarters on the Firestar had been cold and inhospitable. It wasn’t the lot of Empire Soldiers to ask for comfort.
For another thing the Earthers seemed remarkably friendly. After their unusual greeting of dropping him down a big hole they’d turned out to be incredibly generous. Far more generous than anyone, or any other thing, he’d ever known in fact.
And his taste for chocolate Hob Nobs was growing fast.
“Hob Nob!” He bowed his head again, the dismembered biscuit spraying out across his knee in a shower of pastry meteorites.
Then he heard it. That faint chirrup on the Interstellar Band. It was the sort of noise that people picked up on their wirelesses all the time. A sound that was generally put down to interference or the shipping forecast or something equally as innocuous. But to Three-Nine-Five it pierced his eardrums with a devastating blow to his growing confidence.
That was the sound of the Firestar transmitting back to their home planet. A terrible message that would bring an end to his new found freedom.
Not just his freedom but his life. In fact the life of every living thing on the planet, including the copious, red-robed suet pudding. That would be an awful shame. She was the only friend he’d ever had.
In the shadows of number seven Patternoster Row three figures concealed themselves. Only the whites of their eyes could be seen, watching the scene before them with a minute scrutiny.
Every leaf that darted across the alley had the eyeballs swivelling in their sockets, watching its abandoned progress along the gutter and down the grid.
From the muffled grunts and struggling swear words it was apparent, however, that one of the trio, most probably the shortest, had a hirsute hand wrapped firmly about its mouth. The hand, judging by its size and strength, probably belonged to the tallest.
It was the one with the biggest teeth that broke the silence.
“It’s just waiting there...” Cissy had always found whispering a difficult art to perfect. The words came out as a hissing noise because they had first to negotiate her molars. “Why doesn’t it...she...do something?”
“What would you like her to do?” Hogan’s voice had a familiar edgy sarcasm. “Dance a polka down the street using the lamppost as a walking cane? Hold a conference against the ne
o-fascism of the ice cream wars? Bite your mother’s bloody head off and do us all a bloody favour?”
There was a crunch as a set of ancient false teeth bit into a wide hairy knuckle. It was followed by a stifled whimper.
Across the road Amanda opened one eye ever so slightly. It squinted in their direction before looking at the rest of the street. Finally it closed, this time, apparently, for good.
Hogan shook away the tears of pain that were dribbling down his nose and angrily added, “She’s still dormant. She’s not quite ready yet. So long as the other Altarian Beasts don’t turn up in the next ten minutes we might actually get away with this!”
He peered out from the gloom, checking that the reconstructer was still sticking from the letterbox in the fashion of a Spaniard’s beard.
“Just supposing...” said Cissy, uncertain as to whether she wanted to know the answer or not. “Just supposing they did turn up and...”
She hesitated.
“And that they...” At this point she gestured with her shadowy head in the manner that people do when they want somebody else to read their mind. “That they...couple...” she suggested. “What exactly would happen?”
“You wouldn’t want to know!” Hogan breathed heavily down his nostrils, slackening his grip slightly on the struggling geriatric.
“No. You’re probably right.”
“Let’s only hope that it doesn’t actually come to that.”
There was a thud as Three-Nine-Five walked clumsily into the front door of Allison’s flat. He staggered backwards, his eyes crossed as though attempting to focus in on a fly on the bridge of his nose. He shook his head with the sort of noise normally only heard on Bugs Bunny cartoons.
Wooden doors that operated by spring mounted mechanisms and the use of a knob were unfamiliar to Three-Nine-Five. In his world doors opened automatically when you approached, with a grandiose ‘Swish’. They didn’t just sit there and let you walk straight into them. Perhaps this one was broken.