by A M Kirk
“Naked?”
“Yep. Naked. Well, I got him inside, and it was like he’d been drugged. He was very thin, like he’d been starved. I took samples of his blood, but there was nothing. And he had no idea where he’d been. He didn’t even know what day of the week it was. It was a mystery. So things settled down for a while and seemed to go back to normal, but he still couldn’t explain where he’d been. And I believed he was telling the truth when he said that. But then the nightmares started. Oh my God, they were terrible. He’d wake screaming – and I mean screaming – and he’d run around the flat banging on the walls as if they were a prison and holding his head. It went on for about three months. He said he kept seeing things, like visions, or waking dreams. Then, eventually, he said he thought he had been abducted by aliens. Of course, he did not call them the Soros. Like you said earlier, he couldn’t have known about them, but you know – as soon as they landed I wondered. I wondered if they’d been here, somewhere, around us, for years. It crossed my mind they might have been scouting around long before they made themselves known to us. Anyway, John used to spend hours on the Internet, as it was called then, searching for some explanation as to what had happened to him, and trying to find reason in accounts of others who had shared a similar experience. There were plenty of them! I didn’t really believe them, and I’m sorry to say I didn’t really believe your dad at that point either.
“Then, about a year after John’s abduction, he told me he thought the aliens had implanted something. Something in his head. He thought it was some kind of metallic bug that could read his mind and control his actions.”
“Did you ever do any tests on him?”
“Me? No, apart from the blood samples and they were pretty straightforward. I was just a junior doctor then. Despite what you see in films, doctors can’t just waltz into a hospital and start firing up the X-ray machines. But he did go for an X-ray. Nothing showed up. I really began to think he was going out of his mind, I really did.”
“But that wasn’t the end of it,” said Mark.
“Well no. Just before you were born, John was driving us all to see his parents in Ayrshire. Granma and Granpa Daniels. You were almost nine months grown and usually kicking like mad to get out, I remember. Anyway, it started out a stormy night and got worse as we drove. Rain was absolutely battering off the roof of the car. We should never have made that journey, but John, well, John had insisted. I’d not been getting much sleep, because of you kicking and performing your acrobatics inside me, and I was getting more and more worn out. He thought his parents would help to look after me better than he could. He was going to pieces himself – not sleeping, not eating properly… Anyway, I’d been asleep in the passenger seat and then woke up. He started to bleed from the nose. I hardly knew what was happening and this all happened so fast. The blood was very bad, and I was so scared I could hardly think straight.”
Janette was finding it hard to speak. Longer pauses separated her sentences as if she were examining each memory before telling of it.
“He was screaming and he must have been in terrible pain, but he’d had the presence of mind to try to slow and stop the car. But you know, Mark, I’d swear the car didn’t slow down. I seem to remember John banging the brake pedal with his foot in the seconds before… but nothing happened. He managed to say something about a pain in his eyes, and he – and he – “
“The car went off the road,” said Mark.
Janette pulled into a lay-by. Tears, even after all this time, still came, silent and unbidden. “I can still see his poor face, and his eyes, they… they seemed to be looking right at me, as if…”
Mark put his arm around his mother, who rested her head on his shoulder and wept as she had not wept in fifteen years.
**********
A coffee bar in Crieff High Street. The window looked to the north so the room was in shadow. The menu was simple, traditional: tea, coffee, scones, cakes, filled rolls. The waitress was in her mid-forties and couldn’t really be bothered working on a Sunday morning. Mark and Janette were the only customers.
“It’s funny,” Mark remarked.
“I don’t see anything funny right now, given our situation.” Janette held her coffee cup in both hands as if the warmth could somehow impart a sense of security.
Mark went on: “Here we are, the human race, in the third millenium, or after four million years or so of evolution. We can fly in space, we can cure most diseases, we understand almost completely how life works, we have the most amazing, magical gadgets, we work miracles every day: we do all this and yet there always have to be people who work in coffee bars.”
Janette looked at her son curiously. “John used to say similar things. ‘The poor are always with us’.”
“But have you noticed how much we take all these things for granted?”
Janette nodded. “I’ve had all this conversation with your father, Mark. A hundred years ago the majority of the world lived in the most appalling squalor. Measles, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, polio were all serious killing diseases. If someone had said back then ‘Hey everybody, I can rid the world of these things’, he would have been hailed as a saviour. Well, hey everybody, we damn near did, and no one really thinks anything about it. No one really gives it a second thought.”
The waitress approached. “Is everything all right?” She was only making polite enquiries, part of the shop’s customer service plan.
“Everything’s fine,” Janette replied, and then was conscious of the enormity of her lie.
The waitress smiled. Her overall tag identified her as Laura. “Some more coffee? Second cup’s free.”
Mark and Janette nodded and Laura refilled their cups. Laura returned to the counter and busied herself with restocking some shelves.
Mark looked at the window displays. Pictures of the Soros space ship were on nearly everything. “Look at that,” he said. “I’ve never really noticed it before, but the Soros have even entered our Scottish culture. Someone is making money out of them.”
“Just about everybody seems to be making money out of them!”
Alongside gift ideas like shortbread tins, tartan dolls and miniatures of whisky, the shop sold models of the Museum, maps showing how to get to McIntyre’s Field, books and DVD discs on the aliens and the impact their arrival had made on the world.
“I wonder what they really look like,” mused Janette. “Do you know?”
In recent communications from the Soros space ship, it had emerged that Earth’s air was unsuitable for them, and they did not want to take any chances on being contaminated by the many microbes that hover in our air. They were familiar with H.G. Wells and the War of the Worlds. This comment was interpreted by many as a sign that the aliens had a sense of ironic humour, and were therefore like us and were therefore good.
World leaders had been invited to meet with the Soros, to come aboard their space ship, but always the Soros wore protective space suits that made them look stocky and clumsy. Experts had made a lot of money analysing the shapes and bulges of the Soros suits, and many of the details looked similar to human space suits. But no one really knew what the bulges signified, if anything. They may have been merely decorative.
Some people thought they were the spindly almond-headed, large-eyed aliens of popular fiction, and the suits were to make them look stronger.
“No,” replied Mark. “But I have the feeling that the Soros are certainly not weak, gangly creatures,” replied Mark after a thoughtful pause. Then, slowly, he added, “I have the feeling that we… know them.” He frowned. “ And I have a feeling that they… how can I explain this? They like to play.”
“Play?”
“Play games.”
“What sort of games?”
“Ah. I’m not sure. Yet.”
Janette shivered. “God, I still can’t believe what’s happening to us. My house, our home. All our things… just like that. And now it looks like these thing
s were responsible for your father’s death? That’s no game.” She shivered, although the day was not cold. “Let’s get out of here. Let’s go for a walk.”
Janette paid at the counter and smiled weakly in return when Laura wished her a nice day.
9Crieff
Church bells were summoning the faithful. The High Street was beginning to fill with tourists. The Woollen Mills and Souvenir Shops displayed their goods. The Soros items were becoming very popular. One shop advertised a new brand of whisky, the Soros Single Malt.
Janette said, “We are going to go into shock in a little while, I think. I’m amazed we haven’t already.”
Mark understood. People as a general rule need time to adapt to traumatic experience. Three hours ago their lives had seemed to be as normal as anyone else’s, whatever “normal” meant. Now it seemed they were on the run, hunted by aliens intent on killing them, for reasons unclear.
They found a little park and sat down.
“It was the magnetic imaging that helped to start all this going,” said Mark. “I think this thing in my head connects me to the Soros. When you used the magnetic imager it somehow jump-started it. I think we’re right about them being around a lot longer than it seemed. They were experimenting long before they made themselves known. This “thing” is like the thing they inserted into dad’s head, only… “
“But you’ve never been abducted,” Janette pointed out.
“No, but… I got this from dad.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m sorry. This is like looking at something through a cloud. You know those satellite images the weather forecasters use? Sometimes you can’t make out if you’re looking at the coast of America or Europe or whatever? Then other times the cloud is gone and it’s perfectly clear? Well, what I’m feeling is that my mind’s eye is a bit like that. The cloud is not as thick as it was, but I’m still not getting a good picture.”
“But it’s getting clearer, you mean?”
“Definitely.”
“Then we must keep you safe until the cloud clears.”
Suddenly Janette yawned, a huge jaw-cracker. “Oh my God! I need a sleep. I can’t drive any more just yet. This is the reaction setting in.”
Mark nodded. He had read about people in intensely stressful situations, how they need sleep and can pass out with swift suddenness.
Janette looked around her. “This place is bursting with bed and breakfast places. Let’s see if we can find one.”
“Okay. But I have to brush my teeth after that coffee.”
And that reminded them that they had come away with nothing but the clothes they stood up in. The joined the tourist throng of shoppers.
10Logan #2
Logan powers down his interface into standby mode. His face glows with inner satisfaction as the light of the screen blanks out. He stands, stretches, tightens his buttocks and legs to increase blood flow and as he rolls his head the ligaments in his neck click and crack. He breathes deep; his purpose in renewed. At last!
Underpants, a couple of pairs of old socks, one of his favourite black t-shirts, a change of jeans and running shoes, and finally his toiletry assortment are flung into a small black overnight bag. Into one of the side pockets he stuffs a small atlas and his G5 phone. This will enable him to access his home interface should the need arise. He unwraps some gum to take away the taste cold coffee always leaves in his mouth. He sits on the bed and pulls on his ultra-lightweight Scarpa walking boots, a kilogram a piece, to enable fast coverage of difficult terrain. His dark blue blue knee-length trail jacket he folds over his arm and takes his bag down to his battered 08 Jeep to throw the items in the boot. This had been pre-owned so many times he had picked it up for next to nothing at a car auction, using knowledge gained from the interface of course. There was virtually nothing members of the League could not find access to. The Chairman, whoever he was, had certainly performed miracles in data assembly, organisation and dissemination techniques.
Overhead the Sunday afternoon sky is blue and clear. Contrails cross the sky. He stretches languidly, muscles still tight from hours in one position at the interface screen. Mrs Hartley is waddling up the road, a bag of shopping in her hand. She is one of those old souls who stoutly refuse to let an interface into their lives and stick to the old-fashioned way of actually walking to the shops for provisions instead of simply ordering them from a computer. Hardly a day goes by without her needing to make a trip to the New Galleries market in the Thistle Centre. Well, Logan has often mused, if that gives her a purpose in life… Old fool. Logan does not see himself ever being old.
Madge Hartley slows her steps a little, partly to get her breath, for it’s a long trudge for her from the Thistle Centre up the hill to her little flat; but also partly in the hope that the strange young man from downstairs will drive off before she reaches the tenement door and so she won’t have to speak to him. His flat is the top flat, directly above hers. Some weeks ago she had to complain about the constant drilling and tapping and banging that had carried on into the early hours on several occasions. He had listened to her complaint with obvious – what’s the word? – disdain. Yes, that’s it – disdain. Oh, he was polite enough, and had said he was sorry, but his eyes told a different story.
She sees Logan turn and go back into the building. She hurries on, now, the shopping bag awkward in her hand. She will try to get inside her flat before he comes out again. It’s not that she’s in any way afraid of him. She’s had too much experience for that. It’s just that… well… it’s nearly time for the Sunday afternoon wrestling on the home-cine, and Madge never misses that.
Logan returns to his flat. The padlock key is on a chain round his neck. He takes out and disconnects the padlock from the door. He opens the door carefully just a little and unhooks the booby-trap wire by reaching a finger round the edge of the door. The wire falls free, harmlessly, and he opens the door wide.
Inside sit two plastic boxes bought from B&Q, one larger than the other. The smaller box is what Logan wants now. It is the size of a shoe box. He takes it out and opens it. He has cut and shaped a section of foam so that the pistol’s components fit snugly into their places and will not be jostled or rattle in transit. It is a work of art, the product of drilling, tapping and banging in the early hours of several mornings, following instructions from another interface site supplied by the Chairman. It fires 9mm ammunition from a magazine containing 10 rounds and its 17cm long barrel gives it an accuracy of four hundred metres. A work of art, which he quickly assembles. Logan puts on a specially made shoulder holster and inserts the completed loaded pistol. It feels snug, comfortable, reassuring. Ammunition he stashes in a belt pouch and then conceals everything with a dark, breathable waterproof jacket. He checks his appearance in the mirror.
He closes and locks up the wardrobe, having reset the booby-trap. He lifts a pair of dark glasses from the desk to complete his look. At last! The League is about to go into action!
With a last glance at the wardrobe door he leaves and locks his flat. He feels strong.
Logan does not like to think too closely about what the second, larger box in the wardrobe contains.
11The Museum
Evening light subdued the colours in their little bed and breakfast room when Janette awoke. The sense of catastrophe immediately overwhelmed her. She knew now that her old safe life had gone for good. There could be no going back. No returning to her home and the surgery and saying “I’m back, it’s okay, it was just a gas explosion, I left the cooker on and overcooked the Sunday roast. Sorry folks.” All that had changed.
Now she realised that she had been preparing on some unconscious level for this moment for a long time, certainly since the Soros had landed; but even before that her life with John had been a mental gearing up for disaster. His convictions that the world would change in some immensely significant way, his complete belief in his abduction experience, even all the media hype about the turn of th
e Millenium – all contributed to shape her feeling that her life had been heading towards this moment.
“What rough beast is this that slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” she spoke to herself as she lay looking at the ceiling with her hands linked on the pillow behind her head. Yeats’ words came to her, a distant memory from a distant sunny schoolroom long ago.
Mark was already awake. He had always been an early riser. He was fiddling with the kettle on the dressing table. “I’m trying to make you a cup of tea, madam,” he said.
He smiled at her and Janette smiled back and their resilience was guaranteed. “I have to brush my teeth,” she said, swinging her legs off the bed. Earlier, she had bought two small bags, of the most subdued tartan she could find from a gift shop, and filled them with some still-wrapped underwear, changes of clothes, toiletries.
“We cannot be beaten as long as we have dental hygiene,” said Mark.
“Humour in times of stress – a human characteristic, I suppose,” mused Janette. “Our world falls apart and we make jokes.”
Later they sat in two easy chairs by the window and sipped extremely strong and foul cups of tea. The view looked on to a small car park and some gardens beyond, and past the compact traditional houses the gentle wooded hills of Perthshire rolled away to the south.
“You left the tea bags in the cups too long,” observed Janette. “And these chairs are specially designed to create back problems, you realise that, don’t you?”
“We need help, mum,” Mark said, “and I’m not talking about tea and back-rests.”
“Are your feelings any clearer?”
“Yes. I saw things in my dreams, but things that make sense, unlike most of the stuff you see in dreams.”