Sister Ships and Alastair - Chapter 2

2. The Story of Skyboy

"How you doing?" said Ant's dad, spinning the wheel with an airy unconcern Ant wished he shared. On past performance, somewhere at the back of the truck, concrete bollards were probably being wrenched from the pavement.
"Fine", said Ant. This was the normal limit of his communication with his dad.
"All set for the trip?"
"All set."
Ant's dad slapped Ant's leg jovially. "Excited?"
"Very much so", said Ant unconvincingly.
"They've got a Chill-Out Zone and a bungee-jumping high wire act telling the story of Skyboy", said his dad. "That's what it says in the programme."
"The story of who?"
"Skyboy. Like in Star Wars, I reckon. Luke Skyboy, that was his name. Probably have a load of stormtroopers catching aquaphibians on the flying trapeze."
Ant's imagination balked at the thought of hordes of bungee-jumping jawas. "That's Luke Skywalker, dad. And they're not aquaphibians, they're gungans. It sounds really, really lame. Why couldn't we go to the National Space Centre? I've, er, got a school project to do on space travel."
"Because Shawna wanted to go to the Millennium Dome. It's got to be a great day out. They've spent millions on it. It'll be like the Great Exhibition in 1951." Ant's dad frowned into the windscreen. "They looked like aquaphibians to me."
"Dad, aquaphibians are wooden puppets from a TV show made when you were young and dinosaurs ruled the Earth. They look awful. Gungans, meanwhile, are highly complex 1990's CGI creations rendered using gigabytes of computing power."
"That still look awful", said Ant's dad, a smile plastered across his face.
"That still look awful", parrotted Ant, grinning despite himself.
"Shawna wants you to come. She's looking forward to meeting you. And so is Jordan."
"Jordan?" Ant's voice stiffened in alarm.
"Her little lad. Well, I say little, he's a bit taller than you are, actually. It'll be like having a big brother."
"WHAT?"
"Nothing. Er. Did I say something?"
"You did. You said it'd be like having a big brother. You did."
Mr. Stevens backtracked with delicate crablike grace. In the distant world out beyond the windscreen, he narrowly missed a Keep Left sign and a herd of cyclists. "I didn't really say anything -"
"They're moving in with us. Aren't they."
"Well, we thought, I'm not earning as much from the truck as I did, the mortgage is going up, the rent on Shawna's flat is going up too, it'll do us good to have a woman round the house -"
"Dad, just you nearly hit a woman in a wheelchair."
"How many times have I taught you the Highway Code? The ones with wheels aren't pedestrians, they're traffic."
***
"I thought you were already at war."
"Cold war", whispered Lieutenant Farthing. "We stare at them across a few light years of space, they stare back. They send in their reconnaissance ships to photograph our installations, we send ours in to photograph theirs. Occasionally we knock one out, capture the pilot and exchange him for one of ours the enemy have captured."
"But you think the war might turn hot", whispered Cleo. Someone hissed at her to be quiet from the pew in front.
"WHY DO I SEE SO MANY UNHAPPY FACES IN THIS CONGREGATION HERE TODAY?" yelled the minister from the pulpit. Cleo, Turpin and Farthing were jammed into the last pew at the back.
"One of our reconnaissance flights made a pass over the US colony at Newer England, Alpha Centauri Four", whispered Farthing. "That's the closest base they have to our main industrial centres at Hertzsprung-Russell 4523 and Delta Pavonis. A whole squadron of deep space attack ships looked like they were loading cobalt bombs."
"HAVE YOU NOT HEARD THE GOOD NEWS OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST? LET ME HEAR YOU SAY HALLELUJAH!"
"HALLELUJAH!"
"What's a cobalt bomb?" whispered Cleo.
"Well", whispered Lieutenant Farthing, "if you take an ordinary two-stage fusion-boosted fission device and equip it with a cobalt tamper -"
"Okay, okay. It's a bomb and it has cobalt in it."
"Broadly accurate."
"Do you have cobalt bombs?"
"No. We've never built any due to the Morgan Doctrine. Levi Morgan, the USZ's first president, declared that we would rely on threatening to expose the American and Russian governments' secret colonies in space, rather than build cobalt weapons ourselves -"
"WILL YOU BE QUIET!" hissed a huge lady in a huge fuchsia frock from the pew in front.
"NO MATTER WHAT SIN YOU HAVE COMMITTED! NO MATTER WHAT EVIL OR INIQUITOUS ACTS YOU HAVE PERPETRATED! NO MATTER WHAT DRUG YOU HAVE TAKEN, NO MATTER WHAT BLOOD YOU HAVE SPILT! YOU ARE FORGIVEN BY THE EVER-LOVING LORD!"
"Looks like your first President pretty much stuffed you up", whispered Cleo.
"He was a great and wonderful man", said Farthing. "But a few nukes would have solved our immediate short term problems, yes."
"LET ME HEAR YOU SAY PRAISE THE LORD!"
"PRAISE THE LORD!"
"So what do you propose to do?"
"Find a newspaper we can tell American colonies exist in space", said Lieutenant Turpin eagerly, producing and unfolding an entire tabloid unashamedly in a mass of rustling newsprint. "We found this American one; it has a wide circulation, and many of its stories concern extraterrestrial life -"
Cleo glanced briefly downward. "It's the National Enquirer."
"Is that bad?"
"The front page headline says Celine Dion is a killer robot programmed by aliens."
Turpin shrugged. "We don't have the Celine Dion background to make an informed judgement."
Cleo looked at Lieutenant Turpin sharply. "Are you saying Celine Dion might be an alien?"
"Well, aliens certainly exist." Turpin looked at the front page photograph again. "Though I doubt they'd design a robot that looked quite so obviously alien."
"She isn't alien. Only Canadian."
"Gosh." Turpin showed the paper to Farthing. "Look, Pen, that's what Canadians look like."
"Oh, the poor things."
The lady in the pew in front now had her hand up, like a tell-tale at school, and the other finger pointing indignantly down at Cleo, Farthing and Turpin.
"I BELIEVE THERE ARE PEOPLE IN OUR MIDST TODAY WHO ARE NOT HEARKENING TO THE WORD OF THE LORD! YOU ARE FORGIVEN! YOU ARE FORGIVEN! COME FORWARD!"
"What?" said Cleo out loud.
"YOU, CHILD! YOU!" Reverend Adebayo's finger was jabbing not down towards Cleo, but towards Lieutenant Turpin.
"Me?" said Turpin, pointing to himself for emphasis.
"YOU!" said Reverend Adebayo triumphantly. "YOU! THE LOST WHITE SHEEP OF THE FLOCK!" This drew a nervous titter from the congregation; Turpin and Farthing were clearly the only white faces in the church. However, to his credit, the preacher pounced on the churchgoers with his finger in turn. "DO NOT LAUGH! FOR I AM SAVING THIS POOR SINNER! WHAT IS YOUR NAME, CHILD?"
"Richard", said Turpin.
"RICHARD! RICHARD THE LION-HEARTED?"
Lieutenant Farthing snickered.
"Actually, I'm a bit of a cowardy custard", admitted Turpin.
"ARE YOU NOT GOING TO COMMAND A GLORIOUS CRUSADE TO SMITE THE HEATHEN?"
"Well, no", said Turpin. "I quite like Mr. Singh, actually."
"ARE YOU AWARE OF THE LOVE OF JESUS?"
"I am." Lieutenant Turpin licked his finger and dived into his newspaper with suspicious speed. "Here on page five, he is described as being alive and well and living in Cleanspot, New Jersey. Look, there's a picture, he's burning holes in a pagan idol with bolts of laser light coming from his eyes -"
Cleo leaned sideways and whispered out of the corner of her mouth. "He's enjoying this."
Farthing's hands gripped her Book Of One Hundred Songs Of Praise For Voice And Acoustic Guitar so hard that the cover squeaked. "I am only just beginning to realize as much. I suspect he has also quite deliberately, on the very first time I've ever visited Earth, walked me down a High Street in an outfit every single person was staring at as if I was mentally defective. He will pay. The next time I maintain his in-flight toilet, oh yes, he will pay."
***
Cleo and Lieutenant Farthing stood at a discreet distance on the large traffic island occupied by the Ecumenical Rainbow Faith Church of the Army of Jesus. Sunday morning traffic zoomed around them. Twenty yards away, Lieutenant Turpin was still standing talking to Reverend Adebayo, beatific smiles etched into both their faces. Occasionally Reverend Adebayo would tap the copy of the Good News Bible he was holding for emphasis; occasionally Turpin would tap his National Enquirer in answer.
"They seem to be getting on well together", said Mrs. Shakespeare.
Cleo shook her head. "They hate each other. Reverend Adebayo makes a big show of making friends with everyone he can't bully."
"Cleopatra!" said Cleo's mother, slapping her lightly on the shoulder, but hiding a guilty smirk with her other hand.
"They're smiling", agreed Farthing, "but their teeth are gritted."
"Do you have Reverends where you come from?" said Cleo.
Lieutenant Farthing shook her head. "Not like this. There aren't enough of us. We have Father Serafino, but he doubles as a Flight Systems mechanic and hydroponics engineer. It's very easy to sidetrack him off the Miracle of the Virgin Birth and onto the gravity braking system on a Hawker Harridan."
"Hydroponics!" said Mr. Shakespeare. "Is there a lot of that in the Orkneys?"
"In our part of the Orkneys", said Farthing.
"Funny", said Mr. Shakespeare. "I'd always imagined crofting was the main form of agriculture in the Orkneys."
"Hydroponic crofting", said Lieutenant Farthing, with such grey-eyed sincerity that Mr. Shakespeare found himself nodding earnestly in agreement.
"So you have a problem", said Cleo. "And you need us to solve it. Or you wouldn't be here."
"Captain Yancy insisted that we enlist trustworthy local assistance", said Lieutenant Farthing.
"That wasn't exactly what he said, was it?" said Cleo.
Lieutenant Farthing pursed her lips. "I believe what he actually said was 'You dumb space monkeys are only one step up from walking up to gas pumps and asking them to take you to their leader'."
Cleo grinned. "So what's the problem?"
"We have no real way of knowing whether planetkillers are being loaded up at Alpha Four or not. All we have are some very blurry photos taken during a pass at point nine lightspeed that seem to show rather bigger stand-off missiles on the loading rails than usual. Now, those stand-off units could be made of cobalt and uranium, or they could be made of plywood. All this might just be an attempt to frighten us. The whole of Alpha Four, you see, is a military district. Any of our ships travelling much slower than lightspeed wouldn't get with a hundred kilometres of the strat-attack bases. But the U.S. and the U.K. military are very methodical people. Every time they load a planetkiller up at Alpha, they ship a replacement up from weapons assembly on the far side of Earth's moon. They store planetkillers on the far side in case of accident, in case one of them goes off on the side facing Earth. Unfortunately, the lunar far side is also a military district. But every time they ship a planetkiller off the Moon, they replace that too, and they do that by sending up transports from Earth, from where the warheads are made in Bedfordshire. And we can land anywhere we want in Bedfordshire."
"Back up here a moment", said Cleo. "You have now said the word 'planetkillers' four times. When you say 'planetkiller', do you by any chance mean a thing that -"
"Kills planets, yes." Farthing nodded. "If a suitably-sized cobalt weapon goes off on a world with surface life, Cobalt-60 fallout will sterilize that world to a depth of a metre or so into the bedrock, making it uninhabitable by most life forms for between fifteen and twenty standard years."
Cleo's face had gone ash-grey with shock.
"Missiles", said Mr. Shakespeare, who had been listening intently.
"Not real missiles", said Cleo hastily. "It's all a big, uh, role-playing game. Yes, a role-playing game is what it is. Penelope here is a Royal Princess of the Planet Galactia. She's searching for the Lost Crystal of Argh, which is the only thing that can restore peace to the galaxy."
Lieutenant Farthing's pupils bounced big and small in her head. Otherwise, she did not react.
"That is absolutely true", she said.
"To be quite honest, she's quite unnaturally obsessed with it", confided Cleo.
"It sounds that way", said Lieutenant Farthing.
"Well, are we ready to go?"
Cleo turned. Lieutenant Turpin was standing behind her, all smiles. Cleo looked from her mother to her father.
"Erm", she said, "normally I'd love to go. It's just that it's the beginning of the summer holidays, and -"
"And Cleo has Christian Adventure Retreat to go on", interposed Mrs. Shakespeare firmly.
Cleo's face went from ashen to whiter-than-Ant. "What?"
"It never did me any harm", said Mrs. Shakespeare, folding her arms with pre-emptive finality.
"But we talked about this!" said Cleo. "We have to sleep in dormitories. They make us sing songs. Happy songs. About Jesus."
"You haven't anything else to do for the whole of the summer", said Mrs. Shakespeare. "You'll only get under my feet. Besides, someone's got to look after your sister."
"I do not need to be looked after", said Tamora.
"Excuse me a moment", said Cleo, flipping out a highly expensive pink mobile phone.
Lieutenant Farthing leaned close. "What are you doing?" she whispered. "Is that a pocket calculator?"
"We're in trouble", said Cleo, dialling furiously. "It's time for the Antphone."
***
Ant's phone, a massive bargain-basement device only marginally smaller than a laptop computer, rang in his bag. It would, after all, not fit in his pocket. He struggled it out of the bag and up to his ear. "Hello?"
"Ant. We have a problem. I am going to be forced to sing happy songs with Christians."
Ant paused to assimilate this. "How is that a we problem?"
"Because it will make me HIGHLY DISAGREEABLE TO BE WITH, Ant."
"Okay, okay, you sold me on the we. I am going to the Millennium Dome."
There was a shocked intake of breath at the other end of the phone. "Oh, Ant, the sadists. Have you thought of checking in at a police station and telling them you're being abused?"
"Believe me, I have. We are spending a lovely day at the Dome, and then nipping down to Shawna's mum's caravan on the Isle of Grain. I will be sharing that caravan with my dad, Shawna, and my New Big Brother, Jordan. There will be ample opportunity for enjoying myself birdwatching, beachcombing, and playing healthy games of British Bulldog with all of Jordan's friends -"
In the seat next to Ant, Ant's dad sat smiling serenely into the distance, gazing out at a clear mental picture of Paradise.
"It's all right, Ant, don't panic. Deep breaths. We will get you through this. I have a plan. It involves Mr. Turpin and Miss Farthing and will solve all our problems in one bold stroke. There is only one small unpleasant detail. Listen carefully..."
Cleo's voice dropped to a whisper, which was good, as the speaker on Ant's brickphone could be clearly heard six feet away.
"Ant? Ant, are you still there? Stop making that strangling noise. It is not that bad. If I were a thin-skinned person I might feel quite insulted. Ant?"
***
"Dad, you were right all along. Cleo and I are going out. We are a couple. An item. She is my girlfriend."
Ant's face was fixed on the speeding traffic in case his father tried to read it. His father, meanwhile, turned round enthusiastically in his seat.
"WOO-HOO! I knew it! Oh, it's going to be so romantic! An autumn wedding!"
"We're not getting married, dad", said Ant through gritted teeth. "We are thirteen years old."
"She's a looker, though! You rascal! And her dad must have a few bob!"
"I can't say I've ever noticed. Dad, the roadblock."
Ant's dad whipped his eyes front. There was no roadblock. "There's no roadblock", he said.
"Made you look, made you stare", said Ant, looking in the truck's side mirrors. "Hey, is that the same Renault as five minutes ago?"
"Yes", nodded his dad. "Been following us the last half mile. Same registration."
Ant was amazed. "How do you know that? You hardly look at the road."
Mr. Stevens shrugged. "I drive this thing around all day, old son. We'll be parking up behind the Super Sausage and switching to the car in a minute. Then we'll see if he's got the guts to keep following."
"You think he's following us?"
"Oh, yeah. He's been doing it all week."
Ant's stomach did a flip inside him. "What's he look like?"
"Little guy, fat, white, bad moustache. Nothing like the Man With The Van, if that's what you're worried about."
That was something at least. The Man With The Van had been chased away by Cleo's and Ant's combined dads when they'd found Ant and Cleo in the woods over a year ago. This had happened only minutes after Ant and Cleo had returned from their trip into space. To explain their absence, they had prepared an elaborate lie in which they had been kidnapped by a desperate criminal who drove a white van. This fictitious man had kept them prisoner for over a month for no apparent reason, then inexplicably released them. On returning to Earth, they had had the good luck to run into just such a man, who had actually been scouring the woods for them. Although this had helped their parents and the police to believe their story, the fact that the man, by sheer coincidence, actually existed was worrying. The British government had been hunting Lieutenant Turpin in those same woods when Turpin had kidnapped Ant and Cleo from Earth. Almost certainly, that meant that the Man With The Van was a government agent - and if that meant Ant and Cleo were now suspected of being sympathizers with the rebel colonies in space...
"The thing is", said Ant, "I sort of promised Cleo I'd spend the next couple of weeks with her. On her Christian Retreat", he added quickly.
The streets continued to motor past at an unsafe speed.
"Christian Retreat?" said Ant's dad. "I see. Does it cost anything?"
"No", said Ant confidently. He could almost hear the clank of calculation in his father's head. Christian Retreat at no cost versus Millennium Dome at cost of three tickets @ twenty pounds each rather than four...and he knew perfectly well that his dad would not have booked tickets in advance.
Sure enough, things lurched ponderously down the path of least expense. "All right", said Ant's dad. "But just this once, mind." Mr. Stevens looked secretly relieved at not having to spend a week confined to the same caravan as both Jordan and Ant. Unsettlingly, however, he also looked disappointed at having missed an opportunity to introduce Ant to his new family.
"You tell your mum, though", he said. Ant nodded. He was used to acting as an intermediary between his mum and dad. At least he wasn't doing this while they were both in the same house any longer. "Tell your father this." "Well, you tell your mother that." Tell her yourself, she's only in the spare room upstairs.
***
"The only trouble is, mum, I told Ant I'd spend a couple of weeks with him in Dougie's partner's mum's caravan on the Isle of Grain."
Mrs. Shakespeare blinked.
"LEONARD", she said.
"Does Dougie know about this?" said Mr. Shakespeare quickly.
"Oh yes", said Cleo. "He would have to. It's a very small caravan. We girls are all sleeping in one room, the boys in another. Can I take my sleeping bag? I don't think they'll have one spare."
Mrs. Shakespeare looked meaningfully at Mr. Shakespeare. Mr. Shakespeare drew in his breath and frowned, contemplating the imaginary horrors that might await his daughter in a caravan on the Isle of Grain, and balancing them against the very real horrors that would result if she was not allowed to get her own way.
Finally he looked up and said:
"Is this going to cost money?"