Saucerers and Gondoliers - Chapter 17

Chapter 17
Sheer Neurally-Induced Ecstasy

"Northampton, eh?" said the Commodore. "Stopped in the station once at Northampton." He scratched his head with his stick. "Was about five at the time, I think. Mama got off at the wrong station. Terrible coffee."

"You lived on Earth?" said Ant.

They were walking across a flower meadow as lush and green as any in England. Behind them, the acre or so of steel on the hull of the cruiser cracked and creaked as the metal cooled.

"This type of grass", said the Commodore, "reflects light of the exact same spectrum as a native type of lichen, Smaragda. Anyone looking for a patch of grass with a telescope from orbit would find a great deal of lichen. Yes", he said, strolling away in the direction of a featureless grassy knoll, "I did live on Earth for quite a while. Nice place. Those Beatles fellows, are they still together? 'Can't Buy Me Loooooove, Ah, Everybody Tells Me So, Give Me Moooooney, That's What I Want'?"

"Erm, not quite together", said Ant.

"One dead, two alive, one a vegetarian on the Mull of Kintyre", said Cleo.

"Gosh", said the Commodore. "As bad as that?"

He tapped the side of the knoll three times in quick succession with his cane. Nothing happened. Impatiently, he tapped it again.

"Is something supposed to happen?" whispered Glenn Bob to Ant. Ant shrugged.

Then, a perfect circle of green at the centre of the mound lifted from the grass around it and began to rotate upwards, as if unscrewing. After a few moments' rotation, it came away entirely and rolled away into the grass. Beneath it, a man's head, in USZ uniform, popped out. It saluted.

The man, however, was not as other men. His hair grew in a peculiar fashion, long at the back and short on top.

"Look at that hair", said Ant, nudging Cleo. "Do you think he's some sort of alien?"

"It's a mullet, Ant", said Cleo sourly. "Your father probably had one in about 1982."

"Good morning sir", said the man.

The Commodore returned the salute grumpily. "Look lively, Falconer. Get her clothes on before an enemy vessel spots her in the buff."

Falconer saluted again and disappeared. The Commodore turned round to look at the Jervis Bay.

“Splendid fellow, Falconer”, he said. “Wouldn’t be without him. Here they come! They’ll have the old girl under wraps before you can say Perihelion.”

As Ant and Cleo followed the Commodore’s eyes, every one of the small green knolls around the cruiser rotated open. Ground crew in USZ uniforms scrambled out of grassy hatchways, running up to the cruiser, attaching hoses and lines to the hull, inspecting meteoroid holes with disapproving clucks. Many of them were dragging rolls of what looked like canvas. When the rolls were spread out, however, they seemed to disappear into the grass they were being rolled across. Ant stared at a nearby roll until his eyes hurt and he realized that it was made of bright green astroturf, exactly the same colour as the grass. Hoisted over the cruiser on wires and armatures, the fabric soon covered it so completely that it was difficult to believe a warship as big as a medium-sized town hall had ever been there.

"Splendid", beamed the Commodore, like a kindly headmaster on School Prize Day.

“I like what you’ve done with your planet”, said Cleo.

“Thank you”, said the Commodore. “Most kind.” He gestured with his stick. “Over there you can see our orchard. Erm, not strictly an apple orchard, I’m afraid. Apple trees only produce knee-high weeds in a Gondolin climate. But for some reason, lichees grow to gigantic size. Erm, whether we want them to or not.”

“Terrific!” Cleo clapped her hands. “I love lichees!”

At the mention of enjoying eating lichees, the Commodore ground his teeth together and said nothing. The lichee orchard, clearly visible now they had come to the top of the grass rise, was a confused jungle of massive green leaves and fist-sized spiky fruit.

“They, ah, grow a little larger in the low gravity”, said the Commodore. “We’ve had to cover them with camouflage sheeting so they can’t be seen from orbit.” Ant could see a flimsy, astroturf-coloured set of awnings secured to the tops of the trees by guyropes.

Cleo, meanwhile, was running down the lea side of the hill towards the orchard.

“AH - DON’T PICK ONE”, called the Commodore. “YOU COULD GET YOURSELF STUNG QUITE BADLY.”

Cleo stopped dead. “How so?” she said weakly.

The Commodore sauntered casually down the rise, holding the small of his back as he did so. When he eventually reached the bottom, he raised his cane and parted the leaves of one of the nearby lichees.

“Because they grow to enormous size here as well”, he said.

The Commodore had revealed a gigantic stinging nettle leaf the size of a coffee table. Each spine on the back of the horrible thing was the length and thickness of a darning needle.

“There’s enough acetylcholine in one of these spines to kill a big cat, a puppy dog, or a human baby”, he said, frowning. “Never blunder around here in the dark. We grow them all around our perimeter, too, to keep the colony safe.”

“Safe from what?” said Ant. “Dinosaurs?”

“We’ve only explored a tiny part of Gondolin”, shrugged the Commodore. “So far the only native life we’ve found has been little more complex than bacteria, but there could very well be dinosaurs out there for all we know.” He let the lichee leaves fall back over the nettle. “They make excellent soup, too, you know, boiled down. We supplement this with fungus and the occasional experimental piece of native lichen. Erm, the native lichen is still very much experimental at this juncture, I’m afraid.”

“Gosh”, said Cleo. “Does this mean you live an idyllic vegetarian existence?”

The Commodore blinked. “Pardon me? Oh, good gracious no. Perish the thought. Here, let me show you where we kill the pigs.”

Cleo’s face went purple.

“Don’t worry”, said the Commodore, patting her arm reassuringly. “It’s a wonderfully safe and humane process. I believe there is nothing like it on Earth.” He raised his stick and pointed further round the trees.

The only reason why Ant had failed to notice the pigs was that he had assumed they were large flabby pink boulders of some description. Besides being pink and flabby, they also looked extremely contented. Although the muck they were rolling in was a deep blue green and resembled oil paint rather than mud, this did not seem to bother them. Some of them were even rooting in it with their snouts. One of them leapt up onto the fence that separated them from Ant, Cleo and Glenn Bob, and grunted happily at the Commodore.

Suddenly, a keening mechanical note sounded. The pigs appeared to take no notice.

“Aha!” said the Commodore. “The siren. We are in luck. They are going to kill one now. We must stay very still, and go no closer. Watch.”

Ant and Cleo, Cleo with a visible lump in her throat, watched as the pigs continued to roll, root and grunt.

“Now, keep your eye on the porker in that far corner”, said the Commodore. “He’s the closest to the Machine.”

The pig in question was rummaging happily in a pile of earth, apparently oblivious of how Close To The Machine it was. Ant unhappily reminded himself that he had no more idea where the Machine was than the pig did.

The Commodore appeared to sense his discomfort, and pointed. “Over there. See?”

At the end of the Commodore’s cane, Ant picked out an oddly-shaped aerial poking from a clump of what he now realized was rather obvious plastic foliage at the edge of the pigs’ corral. The clump, he noticed, also appeared to be moving; and natural clumps of vegetation, he reminded himself, seldom had exhaust pipes and caterpillar tracks.

“They disguise the projector”, said the Commodore, watching Ant’s eyes. “Makes the piggies happier with it, you see.”

Suddenly, another sound - almost deafeningly loud, but only at the very edges of hearing - filled the air. It sounded to Ant like a television turned on but with the sound turned down. Leaves vibrated on the trees despite the almost total silence, and the air itself seemed electric, as if at the onset of a storm.

The aerial flared bright green and purple for the blink of an eye - so brightly that the trees and bushes cast a shadow from it - and Ant felt a definite warm glow wash over him. What did it matter, he thought, that he was a squillion light years from home, that he had been in danger of death for weeks, that his joints hurt and his stomach ached and his entire body was crying out for sleep, food and warmth in any order they became available. How could it be a problem that his Mum and Dad had no idea where he was, and were probably already blaming each other for stealing him off each other? If they could only experience this feeling, this marvellous, wonderful feeling, they would not have a care in the world. They would not care at all, he would not care at all, if he took a rocket pistol and unloaded a full clip into his forehead, and would laugh while he did it.

Over in the corner of the corral, the pig flopped over on its back with a beatific porcine smile, raising all four trotters in the air.

Ant shook himself. The universe came back to normal. The pig’s feet, however, were still pointing at the sky. A dandelion seed settled inside one of the pig’s nostrils. The pig did not move.

“Marvellously humane device”, said the Commodore. “Died of sheer neurally induced ecstasy, don’t you know.”

“That”, said Ant, “is horrible.” Despite the fact that it was horrible, however, he was having difficulty wiping the smile off his face.

The Commodore, however, appeared not to hear. “The animal, you see, has its nerve endings affected by a powerful ultrasonic pulse at a set of precisely determined frequencies. Dies of happiness. Invented by two of our chaps, Gould and Dawkins. Splendid chaps.” He waved at two men who were standing in the next field over holding remote controls. They waved back.

Commodore Drummond strolled over to the fence and poked the dead porker with his stick through the bars. “What a way to go, eh?”

“And of course”, said Cleo sweetly, “think of the military applications.”

The Commodore turned round and squinted at Cleo in puzzlement. “What? Military, did you say?”

“Of course. Why”, she said, appearing to think deeply on the subject, “if a planet of, say, Soviets or Americans doesn’t do what you say, you need simply position a giant one of these in orbit way above them and turn it on.”

The Commodore looked at Cleo in alarm. “But, ah, that would be murder.”

“No, surely not”, said Cleo, smiling beautifully. “After all, they’d die of happiness.”

“You’re one of these Vegetarians, aren’t you”, said the Commodore, staring at her in deep suspicion.

“I apologize to my lettuce before I eat it”, said Cleo.

“It’s true”, said Ant, still grinning insanely. “She does.”

“Well”, said the Commodore tartly, we do have a few of your sort here.” He waved his stick back towards the Jervis Bay. “Richard Turpin, for example.”

“See, Cleo”, grinned Ant. “Mr. Turpin can’t be all bad. He’s a vegetarian, like you.”

“Hitler”, said Cleo emphatically, “was a vegetarian.”

“SESAME”, proclaimed the Commodore, raising his hand on high like Moses parting the waters. The grassy bank in front of them swung up on hinges, and wheezed up into the air on struts, dropping clods of earth. Behind the bank, a tunnel, lit by long lines of lights, led into the hillside.

The Commodore hurried through and waited until Ant and Cleo followed, then tapped the tunnel wall twice with his cane. Arthritically, the tunnel door rumbled shut behind them. “Can’t be too careful”, he said. “Not born in a barn, enemy always watching and so forth.” He appeared to be walking a little more slowly now, but still kept pointing proudly to the various features of his domain as they strolled through it.

“See that? That’s what we call an electric light. Do you have those on Earth? Oh, silly me, of course you do.”

The passage crossed others going back and forth inside the hill. The other passages were busy. People passed wheeling handcarts loaded with hoses, cables, tools and mysterious pieces of equipment in the direction of the Jervis Bay. All of them, men and women alike, saluted the Commodore.

One of them was dressed in a jumpsuit and carried a flight helmet. However, what most interested Ant about her was the fact that she was a she, taller than the Commodore, with her head shaved close to her scalp. Despite this, she was also so strikingly beautiful it hurt Ant’s eyes to look at her.

“Where’s Turpin with that Moke? I heard he’d come in.”

“Mr. Turpin”, said the Commodore, “came in injured, Lieutenant. And the Moke is lost.”

“That idiot!” spat the Lieutenant. “Some day he’s going to get us all killed! Erm, he isn’t badly injured, is he?”

The Commodore shook his head. “And he appears to have exchanged the Moke for a Soviet Fantasm fighter which you might want to take a look at. It’s in the Jervis’s lifeboat bay right now.”

The Lieutenant’s eyes went wide. Ant had seen such looks on the faces of children who’d been told there was a new bicycle in the garage.

“Off you go, Lieutenant”, said the Commodore.

The Lieutenant almost skipped away down the corridor. Before she left, however, her eyes lit on Ant, Glenn Bob and Cleo.

“What are these?” she said.

“Waifs and strays”, smiled the Commodore. “This fellow”, he said, clapping Glenn Bob on the shoulder, “was piloting the Fantasm when it was brought in.”

The Lieutenant looked at Glenn Bob with evident surprise. Ant could tell she was impressed. “Russian?”

“I”, said Glenn Bob, “am one hundred per cent American.”

“I am confused”, said the Lieutenant. “Are these Americans too?”

“I’m afraid Richard appears to have managed to abduct them at some point”, said the Commodore. “It’s really all quite embarrassing. I’ve no doubt that he judged his mission to be compromised in some way, and that’s why he took them on board, but...” the Commodore suddenly paused as if he’d thought of something truly horrible, leaned down to Ant, and said quietly: “...ah...he didn’t use you as hostages, did he?”

Cleo's mouth worked soundlessly on new things to call Turpin, but evidently could find nothing bad enough. “I never thought of that!”

“No, he didn’t”, said Ant firmly. “He was wounded in the hand when we met him. He only needed us to load up cargo and operate the controls.”

“It figures”, grinned the Lieutenant. “Turpin needs three hands to pilot a saucer most days of the week.”

“Ahem, that’s not strictly true”, interrupted the Commodore. “Mr. Turpin is in fact an excellent pilot. It’s simply that Lieutenant Farthing here believes herself to be a better one.”

“Quite true”, said Lieutenant Farthing.

“We’re English”, said Cleo. “From Earth.”

The Lieutenant put out a hand. “Penelope Farthing at your service”, she said. “I’m English from Outer Space.” Her gaze strayed from Cleo to Ant. “Ah. I see this one has already met Messrs. Gould and Dawkins.”

“Erm, yes”, said the Commodore. “We have been showing them the Humane Killer.”

“I thought so”, nodded the Lieutenant. “That’s Gould and Dawkins for you. Wonderful at target acquisition systems and laser-guided munitions, terrible at domestic plumbing.” She put out a hand and tweaked Ant hard on the nose. Ant’s lockjaw smile magically disappeared.

“Ow”, said Ant. “Thanks...I think.”

“Don’t mention it”, said Lieutenant Farthing. “The face muscles go into spasm, you see. Jervis Bay’s boat deck, did you say, sir?”

“The very same”, nodded the Commodore.

The Lieutenant saluted and jogged off down the corridor.

“It is no doubt apparent”, said the Commodore wanly, “that certain of my junior officers salute me only when they are minded to do so.”

“Why don’t you have them keelhauled or something”, said Ant.

“Can’t afford to. Need all the men and women I have.”

He set off down the corridor, head heavy, leaning hard on his cane, towards a large set of steel doors marked LIVING QUARTERS! PLEASE WIPE YOUR FEET! LEAVE RADIOACTIVITY OUTSIDE!

The Commodore sank himself down onto a rough seat cut into the rock next to the door, and struggled with his knees until both of his feet popped off. Once they were off, he sat back, the empty bottoms of his trousers drooping down the wall, sighed hugely, and mopped his brow with a handkerchief.

Then, he winked at Ant and Cleo, leaned down to the floor, picked up a manky-looking doormat, picked up his feet one by one, and wiped them carefully. Then, he carefully clicked his feet back onto his knees, rose unsteadily onto his feet, and walked on into Gondolin.

Beyond the door, Gondolin was a city.