by Iain Benson
London decided that out of all the places in the large circular room, that where the other two bipeds were was quite possibly the most interesting.
As he walked towards them, it was obvious that the two bipeds had seen him. They had stopped their conversation to watch him approach. The human leaned nonchalantly against a wall. London realised she was in her mid to late twenties and Oriental. She was in a pale yellow one piece with white patches on her joints. Her long black hair was up in a pony-tail. Her companion was two and a half metres in height, broad, in a dark blue jumpsuit that complimented its fuzzy blue fur. It had a mane and a square boxy face with two eyes, a square nose and a mouth all in roughly the right places, though it would have been hard to see through if it was a mask.
London finally reached them.
“It’s a long shot,” London said to the girl, who was about thirty centimetres shorter than London, “but do you speak English?”
“Some,” said the girl. “I am Xia.”
“Thank-god,” said London. “I’m James.”
Xia gave a smile. “This is Vera, he is my friend.”
“Vera?”
“You know him?”
“I know ‘a’ Vera. I don’t think I’ve ever met this one though. I guess it’s a fairly common name.”
Vera heard his name and rolled his top lip into his nose. London assumed it was a smile. Vera made a series of guttural noises that sounded like somebody clearing a plughole using a live frog. Xia laughed; it was a sound like music to London’s ears.
“What did he say?”
“Vera say me and you are same,” Xia replied.
“Yes, we’re humans,” London said, wondering why that was funny.
“No: much same, all same.”
The light dawned, and London also laughed. “He can’t tell us apart?”
“No.” They both laughed. London finally felt that something had gone right.
Xia’s English was far better than London’s Chinese, but even so, it took some hours to work out that Xia had been abducted as a small girl. Milk was big business in the Milky Way, which London found a little ironic. To seven of the main species, milk was as addictive as crack cocaine to humans, and gave a blissful high. Xia had been kidnapped to basically become a milking cow when she got older. She haltingly told London about her rescue by Vera and his crew when the milk raiders had discovered she was too young to be made to produce milk and would have killed her.
She’d been with the big blue lion ever since.
“We go all over, look for Vera enemy, last week stop,” she said, pointing around. “Put here.”
London was getting used to the way she spoke. They’d been all over the galaxy presumably, looking for Vera’s enemy, until they were arrested.
“Why were you put here?” London asked.
“We get boat,” Xia replied. “I help. We here. Why you here?”
London shrugged. “I have no idea.”
It took a couple of goes to explain how he’d arrived.
“Ah, brought milk.”
“Well, I didn’t,” said London. “Warsnitz did.”
“He say it was you.”
“I guess so,” said London. “That little, fuzzy-haired, tic-tac bastard.”
“Not understand.”
London shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
Banged up far from home for a crime he didn’t commit, London knew it was now only a matter of time before he escaped.
“We escape,” London said.
“How?”
“I’m not sure yet,” London. “I’ll think of something.”
Without any warning, all the lights went out. Vera grunted something, and a small illumination appeared from his bangle. London took out his otherwise defunct mobile phone and found the torch.
“What’s happened?” London asked.
“Sleep now,” Xia said.
“I’m not tired.” London had only woken up a few hours previously. Instead of sleep he was more concerned with grabbing something to eat, drink and a visit to the little terrestrial’s room.
“Sleep now,” Xia insisted.
London shrugged and lay on the floor. An insect guard came patrolling past. It shoved London with its foot. These guards were the biggest insects London had ever seen, beating his previous best of the beetle in Peru that had run off with his sleeping bag. The guard moved away.
“They can see in the dark?” London whispered.
“See hot,” Xia explained.
London thought he understood. The guards saw infrared. The start of a plan was starting to form. It would help enormously if he could actually speak the same language as Xia and everybody else. He resolved to learn Mandarin at the earliest opportunity. It couldn’t be that hard, a sixth of the world’s population learned it by the age of three.
But then, a sixth learned Urdu by the same age and he’d struggled with phrases more complicated than “Yes”, “No” and “Where is the bathroom” when he tried to learn that.
London remained on his back for a couple of hours. Next, he tried lying on his side for an hour. Scientists have many theories as to why people can’t fall asleep that are all deeply psychological and boil down to an inability to calm thoughts, unable to get comfortable or, as was the case with London, not being tired.
Eventually, the lights came back on. There wasn’t a slow rising of the light with vague bird song. There wasn’t a crack of light through nearly drawn curtains. The light was off then it was on.
“Is there a toilet?” London asked Xia, his bladder once again occupying much of his attention.
“Not understand.”
“Loo? Lav? Wee?” London tried.
“Sorry?”
“Dove il sono I gabinetti!” London tried Italian out of desperation.
“Parla Italiano?” Xia said.
“Si, cosi cosi.”
It turned out Xia’s Italian was better than her English. London gave a big grin then nearly wet himself.
“Where are the toilets?” he asked again, this time in Italian.
“I’ll show you,” Xia replied. She spoke to Vera, presumably telling him where they were going and led London off.
“What are the days like here?”
“There’s food brought out. About an hour after the lights get turned on. After that it’s pretty much do what you like.”
“How long for?”
“Daylight is about ten hours,” Xia replied.
“No,” London corrected himself. “How long do you have to stay in prison?”
“Well,” Xia said, thinking, “After a few hours, you’re supposed to be brought up in front of the tribunal, who decide if you’re guilty. They usually do. This whole thing’s is a formality really.”
“It’s only supposed to be a few hours?” London asked. “How long have you been waiting?”
“Vera and I have been waiting over a week,” Xia told him.
“What did you do?”
“We stole a ship, breached the atmosphere lock and littered.”
“Littered?”
“We left the lock on the dock.”
“Ah,” London said. “What’s the punishment for that?”
“Expulsion,” Xia said. “It’s the same punishment for every crime unless you can afford to pay your way out.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” London said.
“We’re on a space station, orbiting a dead star they’re mining for rare elements,” Xia reminded him. “Expulsion is basically a death penalty.”
“Ah, yes, of course.”
They had arrived at the wall. It was a smooth very dark purple plastic smelling vaguely of oranges; London could just make out the lines around various openings. Xia waved a hand over one corner, the door slid open. There was the toilet room. London tried the one next to it, another identical room appeared.
“See you in a moment,” Xia said.
When they both emerged, they headed back towards Vera. London
kept learning about his new environment, he wanted to know as much as possible.
“So, why the long wait for you and Vera?” London asked Xia.
“No idea,” Xia said. “Vera thinks it’s something to do with him being from another galaxy.”
“Is that rare?” London felt that everybody looked like they were form another galaxy.
“Oh, yes,” Xia replied, looking shocked. “The current theory is that crossing the gulf between galaxies isn’t possible.”
“To be fair,” London pointed out, “on Earth, travelling between stars isn’t possible.”
“True,” Xia admitted. “But it still takes a few days to travel between stars, getting across the galactic gulf, you’re talking centuries.”
“Maybe it took Vera centuries,” London said. “He might live a long time.”
“He has a special ship,” Xia said. “Correction: had a special ship.”
“What happened to it?”
“It was stolen,” Xia sat down next to Vera. “The reason we stole a ship was to try and get to somebody who might know where it is now.”
London pursed his lips. He currently had no way of getting back to Earth. Helping Xia and Vera could be a good way of hitching a ride home.
First he had to get out of prison.
That was easier said than done. As prisons went, it was singularly lacking in anything approaching an escape route. There was one door in and out, that led to a long sweeping corridor to the guard’s desk. Even if he could match the hundred metre record, they’d still be ready for him. The rest of the room seemed to be hermetically sealed. All of which suggested that this was not the place to be escaping from. Suddenly, he had a plan. It was a plan with more danger than escaping a flying office using stapled together office supplies, but then, he’d already done that one.
“I’m going to need to be judged if I’m going to escape,” said London. “I could do with it happening soon.”
“That sounds insane,” said Xia. “They judge you and throw you into space.”
London outlined his plan. “On the way to being judged,” he said. “I’ll break off one way; you and Vera go the other. Teach me the signs for the elevators and how to say ground and space dock so I can use them. I’ll try and keep them occupied for a couple of hours while you and Vera steal a ship, then you come and get me from a space dock.”
After he’d finished, Xia looked at him. “I would like to change my opinion. That is insane.”
“Can you see a flaw though?”
“I can see about a hundred,” Xia said. “Including the fact we could simply leave you to die.”
“They’re going to throw me out of an air-lock,” said London. “I’m willing to take the slight risk you’ll abandon me. They don’t call me Slippery Jim for nothing.”
“Fair enough,” Xia said.
“You won’t abandon me will you?” London was suddenly worried. He realised he was placing a lot of trust in Xia because she was human.
“Of course not,” Xia reassured him. “We humans have to stick together. I fail to see how you are going to evade capture long enough for Vera and me to also evade capture and steal a ship. Abandoning you is the least of your concerns.”
Somehow, London was not reassured. He checked his pockets for anything else he might have that was even slightly useful in his situation. He had a packet of mints with a hole, a yo-yo with a dynamo and little lights that lit up, his car-keys, his phone, a spare clip of ammunition and his gun. Bit of a surprise that they’d not taken that off him really, but then he’d not even been searched. Even so, it didn’t really seem all that useful. London remembered that aliens are generally bulletproof. Admittedly, he’d got his entire education on aliens from Doctor Who.
With a lack of anything better to do, London brought up the games option on his phone. Unsurprisingly there were no Pokémon on board and there were no Uber taxis around, so he played Tetris.
The Middle East had been boiling over so long, it was no surprise it was the driest region on Earth. Today, the fighting had stopped.
Wishbone was sitting in a long room at the head of a long highly polished wooden table. Wishbone was flanked by two of his Epsilon range dressed in powder blue. On either side of the table were sitting the heads of state from over a dozen countries. They were looking at Wishbone with intense hatred. Wishbone leaned back, steepled his fingers and gave a smile, the likes of which had not been seen since Steve Jobs had announced the launch of the iPhone.
“I am somewhat surprised nobody else had ever thought of this,” said Wishbone in flawless Arabic, when the murmuring in the room had died down.
Tall windows admitted light in alternating bands across the polished surface of the table. Wishbone had ensured that everybody was positioned so that they were blinded by the sunlight. One had to make use of the local environments.
“You are claiming responsibility for this atrocity?” demanded the foreign minister for Syria.
“Of course,” said Wishbone. “I sent my units in.”
“This is a diplomatic incident of the highest order!” bellowed the Prince of Dubai.
“It would be, if I represented any country on Earth,” said Wishbone. “But I don’t. So I fail to see to whom you will report me?”
“It is war!” screamed the President of Libya.
“Okay,” said Wishbone. “I can see how you’d think that. I ask you one question. With what will you fight? My soldiers have disabled all your weaponry. You have nothing left. Not a tank, a hand gun or a surface to air missile. I suppose you could attack me with spoons.”
After abuse, uproar and anger, finally one of the groups asked the important question: “Why?”
“Good question,” said Wishbone. “I would like to be in charge.”
“In charge of what? The whole Middle East?”
“No,” Wishbone replied. “The world.”
“You are a megalomaniac!”
“Yes,” said Wishbone. “I am. I also have an unbeatable army who are fighting against people who no longer have weapons.”
“We will fight you with our fists!” spat the Egyptian minister for foreign affairs.
The merest gesture of Wishbone’s head and one of his soldiers was standing behind the Egyptian. The Egyptian blanched.
“Please demonstrate,” Wishbone said. “I assure you, nothing untoward will befall you.”
The Egyptian straightened his suit and faced the soldier, coming up to the midriff of the massive man. Belying his age, he quickly tried to uppercut the soldier. It was the speed that impressed the rest of the room. Between blinks, the Egyptian foreign minister was face down on the table, his arm twisted up behind his back. Had he been handed his hand, nobody would have been surprised. However, it was still attached, although at an odd angle.
“What can we do?” asked an Iranian minister.
“You lot? Nothing. You can all carry on as before, but with a lot less shooting and fighting. Who knows, you might even get used to it. You all just sign fealty over to me so the UN will recognise it, and I’ll leave you be. Unless you have any disputes that you’d like me to sort out. The only reason I actually brought you all here is because I’ve been waiting for our latest guests, who will arrive round about…now.”
The double doors opened, and three smartly dressed people came in. At the head, in the smartest and darkest grey suit was Hank Keller, Middle Eastern diplomat for the USA. To his left Mary Curr, a lithe woman in a smart double breasted pale grey suit, flat pumps and a severe haircut. To his right, Jules Murray a larger man with grey hair matching his suit and the smallest eyes Wishbone had ever seen.
“Finally,” said Wishbone. “Come in, please. Will somebody get these lovely people some chairs?”
The soldier by the Egyptian minister made up in brawn what it lacked in intelligence, providing three chairs by tipping two people out of theirs.
“They do what they’re asked,” Wishbone said to the Iraqi and Palestinian representative
s who were now on the floor.
“Who do you think you are?” Murray asked, sitting in the proffered chair.
“I’m a megalomaniac who desires nothing less than the fealty of the world,” Wishbone replied, deciding that honesty was the best policy.
There was silence for a moment.
Mary Curr leant forward, resting her wrists on the table; she looked Wishbone in the eyes. “I have to say, as solutions to the Middle East problem go, this was particularly childish.”
“It stopped the fighting, did it not?” Wishbone replied. “Is not the first goal of peace to stop the fighting and ensuring it cannot continue?”
“No,” Mary replied. “The first goal is to get the two sides to want to stop fighting. This way, even if they have weapons, they are unneeded. What did you do with all the weapons, by the way?”
“I loaded them all in a boat, took it out to a particular deep part of the ocean, and sank it.” Wishbone gave a slight smile. “The lobsters are now armed to the teeth. Do lobsters have teeth? Probably not. They’re armed to the claw. Perhaps lobsters were a bad analogy.”
“What is to prevent us sending in our army?” Murray asked.
“There’s the look of the thing, for a start,” said Wishbone. “There are no weapons here. It would look like you are a big aggressive bully.”
“We are a big aggressive bully,” said Murray.
“True,” Wishbone replied with a tilt of his head. “In truth there is nothing I can do to stop you bringing your army in. In fact, please do. I would not want my army to get bored. Not that they have the creative intelligence to become bored.”
“You seem assured you would win,” Mary said.
“Oh I am certain I would win,” Wishbone replied with his slight smile again. “We will find out when I invade America and do the same. I might leave America until last though. You have so many weapons, as your Roy Schneider once observed: I am going to need a bigger boat.”