Saucerers and Gondoliers - Chapter 20

Chapter 20
Elvis Is Dead

“Freddie Mercury is dead?”

“I’m afraid so”, said Cleo solemnly. “He has gone to the great jamming session in the sky, along with Kurt Cobain and John Lennon.”

“John Lennon is dead? And who is Kurt Cobain?”

Mr. Deveril’s office was tinier even than the Commodore’s nursery, and was wallpapered with tat. Faded, dog-eared copies of Empire, TV Times, Variety and The Face hung from the roof on string, and the walls themselves were plastered with bits of junk mail and excess packaging which any normal household would have thrown away, but which here were treasured, stuck in pride of place, carefully manoeuvred into position so that no edges overlapped. Cinema tickets, Student Union cards, theatre posters all jostled for space on the curved walls. Plastic McDonald’s figurines and lava lamps jostled for space on the shelves.

“Marc Bolan’s dead too”, said Ant sarcastically.

“I know Marc Bolan’s dead!” said Mr. Deveril. “You know, I could be forgiven for thinking you people think I’m some sort of fool.”

“And Elvis”, said Cleo, “Elvis is dead.”

“He is not”, said Ant. “My Dad says he’s been seen in Las Vegas.” Cleo and Ant locked hard stares for several seconds.

Then Ant turned to Mr. Deveril again. “The hair, by the way”, he said, “must go.” This time Cleo nodded firmly.

Deveril touched his hair protectively. “Why? What do men wear their hair like on Earth today?”

Ant thought a moment. “Well...sort of like, everyone looking normal, like everyone else.”

Deveril shuddered. “It sounds terrible”, he said.

“You should also lose the VW medallion”, said Ant.

Deveril fingered the car badge in desperation, as if his mother planet was turning against him. “Do people not wear these any more?”

“Cars yes”, said Ant. “People no. Though if it was gold plated”, he thought suddenly, “you could pass for a drug dealer.”

“I would say”, said Cleo, looking at Deveril’s bare midriff, “that the T shirt must go too. But it seems to be halfway on the way out already.”

Deveril stared at the shirt. “But this is straight out of Dallas!” he wailed.

“Hmm”, said Cleo. “I think I see the problem here”. She picked up a dog-eared copy of Vogue on Mr. Deveril’s desk and flipped it open to a page where a stick-thin model was sauntering down a catwalk dressed as a velour shark, complete with teeth, fins and tail.

“What you have to realize”, she said, “is that people on Earth don’t actually dress like this.”

Mr. Deveril stared at the magazine uncomprehendingly. “You mean you just pretend?”

Cleo thought about this for a moment. “Yes”, she said. “Yes, that’s fair. Women all spend hundreds of pounds a year on fashion magazines that tell them everyone dresses like this, and then they go out and buy another nice white top and another pair of Levis.”

Mr. Deveril was appalled. “Why?” he said.

Cleo shrugged and made a face that said You tell me.

“Men do something very similar”, said Ant. “But without the ‘spend hundreds of pounds on magazines’ part.”

“Blue jeans, a white cotton shirt, a cheap pair of trainers and a crew cut will make any man fade into the background on any street in England”, said Cleo. “As will”, she added, “a suit and tie.”

“But I thought the hippies had cast off the square oppressive clothing of the Man!” said Deveril desperately.

“I think the hippies thought so too”, said Cleo. “Most of them wear suits these days. And work with computers.”

“Then the Man won”, said Deveril.

“Yup”, said Cleo. “Man one, hippies, nil.”

Deveril grimaced. “Earth sounds like a terrible place to live.”

“Oh, it is”, sighed Cleo. “Some days you can’t get a decent latte two days straight.”

Deveril thought about this. “Wait a minute. If it’s such a terrible place to live, why are you so interested in going back there?”

“Because it’s a terrible place to live where I can get a hot bath any time I like, I can eat food in colours other than turquoise and purple, and women’s underwear comes in varieties other than blue Airtex”, said Cleo, smiling sweetly.

“Oh”, said Mr. Deveril; and then, seizing a pen, with absolute sincerity, added:

“Can you describe any of this women’s underwear to me?”

***

“ANT! CLEO! I’ve been doing me some NON-EUCLIDEAN GEOMETRY!”

Glenn Bob’s face was the same as Lieutenant Farthing’s had been when Commodore Drummond had told her there was a Soviet fighter in her garage.

“Oh”, said Ant. “Uh, I suppose that’ll be Geometry that’s Non-Euclidean, then.”

“Doctor Allison says I do mathematics real well”, said Glenn Bob. “She says I might make Navigator or Pilot.”

Ant thought about this. “I’d rather be a pilot”, he said.

“I’d rather be a Navigator”, said Glenn Bob. “There’s more mathematics involved.”

The thought that anyone might deliberately do mathematics for some twisted form of pleasure was difficult for Ant to take in easily. He stared hard at Glenn Bob for some sign that the other boy was not entirely serious. There was no such sign. Glenn Bob had only been on Gondolin a day, and already looked as if he belonged in his uniform. Ant, meanwhile, felt more alien with every passing hour.

Glenn Bob was sitting next to a severe-looking woman with grey hair and steel-rimmed spectacles.

“Excuse me, ma’am”, said Ant, “but are you Doctor Allison? We were told to report here to you. The Commodore said you’d saved us seats.”

The lady nodded stiffly and pointed at two empty spaces next to herself. Ant and Cleo crowded into them gratefully.

The room around Ant was familiar. The same pictures and posters lined the curving walls. The same lady in the Marks and Spencer’s dress scowled down from the photograph.

“You’d think she’d have more fashion sense in space in 1999”, whispered Ant. “She should have giant plastic boots and big pointy shoulders or something. She looks like she bought that in our High Street.”

“Ant”, whispered Cleo in embarrassment, “that’s the Queen.”

“Oh”, said Ant.

“And that man she’s shaking hands with is the Commodore. It must be a VERY old photo.”

“Crikey, yes”, whispered Ant. “He has legs in it.”

“WELCOME, ANTHONY STEVENS AND CLEOPATRA SHAKESPEARE”, bellowed the Commodore from the front of the crowd, “TO OUR TOWN HALL.”

The room was different from the last time that Ant and Cleo had been in it, because it was now full of people. The tables had been folded back or cleared away, and twenty or thirty Gondoliers with assorted military and peculiar hairstyles were sitting in rows up and down the room, chattering excitedly. When the Commodore announced Ant and Cleo, however, the chattering stopped. A sea of eyes turned towards them, gawping at them whilst trying to appear to be gawping at something slightly to the side of them.

The chattering became whispering.

“Isn’t it amazing! They look exactly like us!”

“Apart from the strange hairstyles.”

“They’re called dreadlocks, I believe. All Earth women wear them now. Even the Queen.”

The Commodore was already making his way toward them through the crowd. At one point he stopped, grabbed hold of a blonde woman supporting the most mountainous back-combed beehive Ant had ever seen, and dragged her by the elbow towards Ant and Cleo, saying such things as “You really must meet them. They will be so delighted.”

Once the woman saw them, she adopted a massive insincere smile, like a shark wearing lipstick.

“May I introduce our resident fashionista, Miss Michelle Enlyfrith”, said the Commodore.

Michelle Enlyfrith extended enormous pink fingernails like a velociraptor’s. “You must be the young lady from Earth everyone’s talking about. I can’t wait to discuss the latest modes with you.”

“I can see”, said Cleo drily, looking Miss Enlyfrith up and down, “that we’re going to have quite a long discussion.”

Miss Enlyfrith went whiter than her foundation, and titters travelled through the crowd like wind through grass. Appearing to notice nothing, the Commodore released her and strode forward to the front of the crowd, leaning heavily on his stick. Eventually, he reached a dais where a small high desk and chair had been set up. Opening the desk top, he took out a black tricorn hat and dull metal chain, which he hung over himself as he settled into the chair, and a gavel, with which he gently thwacked the desk lid.

“As elected mayor, I call this meeting of the Gondolin Town Council to order. Items tabled for discussion include the possibility of making workable underpants out of wood fibre, the current soft toilet paper shortage, and the proposed repatriation of three foreign nationals, Mr. Anthony Stevens and Miss Cleopatra Shakespeare of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and Mr. Glenn Bob Linklater of the United States of America. I propose to skip to this final point since”, his eyes travelled beadily around the chamber, “that appears to be what most people have attended this meeting for.”

“Speak for yourself, your worship”, said a gruff voice from the crowd. “I for one care deeply for soft toilet paper.” Laughter rustled through the audience.

Ant fidgeted nervously. Now he was here, he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to be returned to cold wet England in the first form secondary. Unfortunately, however, Cleo’s hand had already shot up. It was like being at school all over again.

“The Council recognizes Miss Shakespeare”, said the Commodore.

“If it please your worship”, said Cleo, “It is imperative I return to Earth as soon as possible. I have a grade three violin examination and mock Eleven Plusses to attend to. I have been spirited away from my home planet against my will.”

The Commodore coughed. “Yes. I am really quite sorry about that, you know. All I can say is that Richard Turpin is one of our very finest officers, and I’m sure he had the very best of reasons for his actions.”

There was a general murmur of assent from the crowd, and much nodding.

“Mr. Turpin”, said Cleo firmly, “abducted us from our parents and our families. And we would very much like to go back to them, please.”

“Ah, but”, said the Commodore, pointing at Cleo with his gavel, “It’s not quite as simple as all that, you see. If we send you back to Earth, and you start blabbing like a big blabbermouth about flying saucers - if the general public on Earth finds out that we exist - our only sure weapon against the colonial powers on Earth vanishes. The British and American governments would then have nothing to lose by attacking us. And would you want an interstellar war on your conscience, young lady?”

Cleo looked as if she was about to cry. “But I want to go HOME!” she wailed, and stamped her foot.

“Poor dear”, said a lady in the crowd.

“The CO’s just a big old bully”, said another.

“Please don’t misinterpret what I’ve said”, said the Commodore hastily. “We have every intention of sending you home. But you have to understand the terrible damage you can cause if we do. You can’t just zip back to England, step into school and say you’re sorry you’re a few weeks late for roll call because you were taken up by a UFO.”

“That one doesn’t work”, said Ant ruefully. “Trust me.” The crowd giggled.

But Cleo was having none of this. “We’ve been missing for over a month, mister! What do you expect me to tell them? ‘Oh mercy me, I fell over and lost my memory’?”

“Why not?” said the Commodore, and looked at Captain Yancy in puzzlement. The Captain boggled his eyeballs, shook his head, and shrugged back. Kids nowadays.

“We’re going to need a better explanation”, said Cleo, crossing her arms defiantly.

“The police on Earth are a bit hot on explanations”, agreed Ant.

“We could have been kidnapped”, said Cleo. “The police love to hear about children being kidnapped.”

“Do they?” said the Commodore. “How odd.”

“We could have been abducted by someone unprincipled, totally immoral”, said Cleo with a delicious shiver of terror. “A man with absolutely no concept of the difference between good and evil.”

“Rather than Lieutenant Turpin, you mean”, clarified the Commodore. The crowd, who were evidently of the opinion that Turpin was some sort of olympic-gold-medal-winning saint on roller skates, nodded and murmured again.

“We could have escaped from him”, continued Cleo. “I could have squirmed free of my bonds and leapt heroically from a moving car.”

“You’d be bound, then”, said the Captain.

“A despicable fiend like that would be bound to tie me up”, assured Cleo.

“You’d have to be able to lie about this”, said the Captain. “Convincingly.”

“Oh, I can lie”, said Cleo. “I can make up all sorts of stories.”

“That’s as may be”, said the Captain. “But what you’re going to have to do is tell exactly the same story as Mr. Stevens here.” He nodded at Ant. “And remember every lie in that story, and be able to re-tell it, over and over again. For the rest of your life. Do you think you can do that?”

Cleo suddenly looked far less certain.