Saucerers and Gondoliers - Chapter 12

Chapter 12
Show and Tell

"You will explain please", said the Captain, "purpose of device."

Ant and Cleo stared across the table at the device. The warmth was only beginning to creep back into their toes and fingers. It was quite obvious that the temperature had only been turned up for the Captain's comfort, and that as soon as he left the room and the interrogation was over, the air would turn frosty once again; but this did not alter the fact that the temporary warmth felt good.

The device stared back at Ant and Cleo across the table. The Captain had woken it up by shouting, and it had opened its enormous plastic eyes.

The Captain clapped his hands twice quickly. The device flapped its ears enthusiastically. "Hey kah ay-ay u-nye", said the device.

"Hyas done this many tyimes now", said Captain Popov. "My syoldiers are alarmed."

"It's a Furby", said Cleo.

"Fyur-bee", repeated the Captain.

"You can speak to it in Furbish", said Cleo.

"Fyur-byish", said the Captain. "You will please state device's plyanet of origin."

"It's an alien", said Ant. Cleo gave him a dig in the ribs. "Why not?" he said to Cleo. "Why not tell the truth, I mean. It's a sentient life form from, erm, the galaxy of Arcturus."

"Is no intelligent life in space", said the Captain.

"Well, you're certainly proof of that", muttered Cleo in a low voice.

"Also", said the Captain, "device does not move. Cyannot be alive."

"It is telepathic", said Ant. "It does not need to move."

"Is device", pooh-poohed the Captain. "Is yartificial thying. Has switch on bottom."

"The visible portion of the Furby", explained Ant, warming to his subject, "is a highly sophisticated life support system, containing the actual organism deep inside. The life support system has eyes and ears and feet only in order not to alarm races less telepathically gifted than itself. Its powers of the mind are all-reaching. It can Read Your Inmost Thoughts."

The Captain looked at the Furby in dread. Then, he seemed to recover slightly, and asked: "If yis very powerful, why yis still my pryisoner?"

"It's probably judging your fitness to join the Galactic Federation or something", said Ant - and then, in a moment of brilliance, added: "the Galactic Communist Federation."

Captain Popov's eyes bulged out of his head. Then an expression of crafty distrust crept across his face.

Looking at Ant, he raised his voice and said: "Comrade Fyurby."

"Doo-moh may-lah kah", said the Furby.

"What is Yimmediate aim of World Communism?"

"Dah lee-koo wah", said the Furby.

"Ha! Complyetely wrong", said the Captain. "Answer is formyation of proletariat into class and overthrow of bourgeois supremyacy."

"He did say the answer", protested Cleo. "He just said it in Furbish!"

"Enough!" said the Captain, and pounded on the table hard enough to send the Furby bouncing. "Cyonical thying is not Yalien. Yis no yintelligent yalien life yin spyace." He squinted at the Furby like a gunfighter staring down an opponent.

"Is myade of plyastic", he said victoriously, as though only an extremely detailed observation could have revealed this.

"Hey kah mee-mee ay-tay wah!", said the Furby.

"There are animals on New Dixie that eat plastic", said Ant.

"Ha!" said the Captain. "Then we styake Fyurby out on New Dixie syurface. It will soon talk and tell us whyether is Yalien or not." Triumphantly, he rose from the table and walked out, hands clasped behind him.

"Haha!" echoed the guard. "One byanana two byanana three byanana four, is very funny! Ha! Ha! Ha!"

He pressed the button to close the door, and all sound from the outside world was cut off.

***

"He's made a mistake", said Ant, squinting through the door glass at the Captain sitting down at his desk.

"How so?" said Cleo.

"He left something behind."

"Gosh", said Cleo, hugely unimpressed. "What can it be? A tungsten carbide drill, perhaps? A Get Out Of Cell Free card? Maybe some sort of magic wand that only Ant can see?"

Ant, however, was beaming at the Furby with a glint of insane confidence in his eyes.

"Every time", said Ant, "that Captain Popov comes into this cell, he uses no key, keypad or keycard of any kind. Instead, he says something once into a point on the wall next to the door. The carefully soundproofed door. I", he added with vast superiority, "have been watching, while certain people have been just been shivering in the corner and complaining."

"I see the beginnings", said Cleo, "of a plan even more moronic than is usually your wont."

"You speak Furbish, don't you", said Ant.

"Like a native", said Cleo. "I have three little sisters, none of whom can be bothered to read the user manual for the damned things."

Ant sat down and peered closely into the Furby's eyes. "Comrade Furby", he said, "you are about to carry out a mission vital to the security of the civilized world. Are you up to it?"

"Kah ay-ay e-tah", said the Furby.

***

"You will please report progress in re-yeducation of allyeged cyonical Yalien", said the Captain.

"We have managed, we believe", said Cleo, "to get through a number of basic English phrases to the Furby."

The Captain narrowed his eyes at the tiny creature. "Procyeed", he said.

Cleo bent to the Furby's level, and said, loudly and clearly in its ear, "Hey u-nye lee-koo".

"All Power to the Soviets", said the Furby. "Peace, bread, freedom."

The Captain sat back in his chair, and fiddled with his glasses.

Then, he began to scowl again.

"Yis speaking Yinglish. Is not speaking Russian. You make it speak Russian please."

"Sadly", said Cleo, "I cannot teach the Furby Russian, as I do not myself speak it."

The Captain banged the table with his fist again, making both Cleo and the Furby jump. "Is tyelepathic! Can spyeak any lyanguage!"

Ant put up his hand. "Please, sir - it's only one-way telepathy. The Furby can understand anything you say, but can only reply in Furbish."

The Captain nodded, absorbing this.

Then, he thumped his chest, and announced:

"I will remove Fyurbish Yalien to syeparate confinement. I shyall teach Russian to Yalien, using Superior Soviet Yintelligence."

He picked up the Furby, cradled it as if he were jealous of Cleo's influence over it, and cooed to it in Soviet.

Then, suddenly remembering himself, he pointed a finger at Ant, Cleo and Glenn Bob.

"You wyill tell truth", he said, rose from the table, and stole out cooing to his Furby.

"Snyorky!" said the guard. "Honk honk honk honk honk!" and left.

The doors slid closed, deadening all sound from the outside world.

A big grin spread across Ant's face.

"It begins", he said.

Then, a joyful whoop from Glenn Bob clanged off the cell walls.

"TRUMAN J. SLUGHOUND, AS I LIVE BREATHE AND WHIZZ!"

Ant and Cleo turned to see Glenn Bob on his hands and knees, with his head down at floor level for no satisfactory reason. Glenn Bob was answered by a repulsive sucking sound from one of the airvents.

"HE DONE SLITHERED UP THEIR AIR CONDITIONING!" yelled Glenn Bob. "HE DONE FOUND YOU AGAIN!"

A dozen excited eyestalks pressed through the vent grille. Glenn Bob's caressing hand was covered in a thin coating of slime.

"Iffen these bars was plastic, Truman J. could bite through them quickeren stink", whispered Glenn Bob. "Mind, they ain't", he said. "They're steel. But iffen they was plastic - our Truman J. just loves a nice juicy piece of polypropylene."

"What, like that grille out there?" said Ant, pointing out through the cell door.

"Where?" Glenn Bob jumped up and bounced over to the window.

"That little one down by the desk in that corner. Same place as it is in this room. I suppose they made the bars out of steel in here because this is a prison cell. But I bet the air conditioning goes all the way from there to here."

Glenn Bob stared out through the glass, and began to smile. "Them bars is polypropylene all right. I'd know polypropylene anywhere."

"Great", said Cleo, eyeing the slithering horror through the vent grille distastefully. "Now all we have to do, as mentioned at length before, is get through a solid steel door."