Saucerers and Gondoliers - Chapter 5

Chapter 5 - Too Many Moons

There were too many moons, the sky was the wrong colour, and it was cold.
Ant had expected some sort of huge futuristic space terminal. Instead, the ship had dropped out of a sky the colour of strawberry custard onto a landscape that had at first appeared dead, and had then, as the ground came closer, seemed covered with dead woodland. Finally, once they were skimming almost at treetop height, he had seen that there were leaves on many of the dead trees.
"It's sunset here", said Ant. "And autumn."
Billy Hank shook his head. "Plants here don't use none of - what's that there chemical that your fancy Earth undergrowth uses fer photosynthesizin'?"
"Chlorophyll", said Cleo.
"Yup. That green un. Don't got us none o'that here. All our plants are brown. Way it should be", he added proudly, tapping a plaque on the wall that said WELCOME TO THE LAND OF THE LONG AUTUMN.
The ship, which Ant had been proudly informed was the USASF Corvette Virginia, skipped and dipped over the landscape until it finally stopped almost dead in the air above a flat-topped rocky outcrop barely the size of a school playing field. There were a few dish aerials and refuelling tanks scattered here and there. Despite the fact that it seemed to behave more like a helicopter than an aeroplane, the ship ploughed a furrow in the ground with its skids when it landed. Billy Hank looked at Wayne Bob severely.
There was an American flag flapping dispiritedly in the breeze. Although it was an American flag, however, it was not the right American flag.
"That's not an American flag", Ant whispered to Cleo. "That's an X with stars on it."
"It's not the Stars and Stripes. It's the Confederate flag,", replied Cleo; and she sounded worried.
"What's so bad about a flag?" said Ant.
"Would you feel good if the flag had a swastika on it?"
What does she mean by that? thought Ant - but then there was far too much else to think about.
"I don't think these are real Americans", he whispered quietly to her. "They're some sort of American space morons."
Then, they were hustled inside, into an office that was only partially built above ground level. Ant had not even known it was an office, as earth was piled up around its walls, and it looked more like a hillock; Billy Hank and Wayne Bob had to lead them right around it before they could see the entrance, a door down a flight of metal steps. The office was filled with wires and circuit boards and bits of flying saucer. There were two chairs, and a table, keyboard and screen that Ant imagined must operate some sort of air traffic control system, and, ominously, a rack of guns - the same sort of gun their kidnapper had waved at them. As there were only two chairs, Ant and Cleo were forced to sit on ammunition crates. There were many ammunition crates.
Ant felt weird and giddy, as if he were somehow sitting on a roller coaster whilst at the same time sitting on an ammunition crate without moving.
"Look, we aren't anything to do with him", said Ant, nodding at the still unconscious pilot of their saucer, who lay on the floor, breathing heavily and sweating.
"He kidnapped us", said Cleo. "He pointed a gun at us."
"This gun?" said Billy Hank, holding up the horribly large pistol the saucer pilot had threatened them with. "Now, child, you can't know a deal about firearms if you don't know when one of 'em ain't loaded." He tilted the pistol grip of the weapon up to Cleo's eyes. It was empty.
"Hey!" shouted Wayne Bob, as if he'd only just noticed this, "this wun's a Nigger."
To do her credit, Cleo didn't even blink. Instead, she simply said:
"I'm sorry, I don't understand that word. Could it be that it is a word used on your planet to describe black people? On my planet, you see, there is no race prejudice and we all live happily in harmony."
Wayne Bob gave a shudder, as if Cleo had described his own personal version of Hell. And then Billy Hank, who had seemed the kindlier of the two up to this point, said to Ant:
"You got to understand, we do things different here. You're in the town of Croatoan, the one and only settlement on the planet of New Dixie."
Ant blinked. "You and Wayne Bob are a town?"
"Don't give me no sass there, boy. This here's a Christian city of over two hundred souls."
Ant looked out of the window and saw only sand blowing in the wind. "There's nobody out there", he said gently.
"All underground", said Billy Hank. "Can't rightly live on the surface, on account of the heat and the cold and the tides and the fungal parasites and aboriginal megafauna."
"Sounds nice", said Ant, wondering what an aboriginal megafauna was and whether it had anything to do with Australia.
"Where are we?" said Cleo; and then, as if the two men had been trying to convince her otherwise, said: "This is not Northamptonshire."
Billy Hank bent down to Cleo's level. "Purdy little monkey, ain't she, Wayne Bob? Where you from, child?"
"Africa", said Cleo, although Ant knew perfectly well she had been born in Chatham.
"That's on Earth, ain't it?" Billy Hank looked to Wayne Bob for confirmation. Wayne Bob nodded.
"Well, child", continued Billy Hank, "you are on one of five planets orbiting Barnard's Star, six light years from Earth."
Cleo swallowed.
"That means I'm not going to be home in time for tea, doesn't it."
Billy Hank grinned and roughed up Cleo's carefully arranged hair extensions. "Your nigra friend'll be given some easy manual labour. You, on the other hand, young man, will have to go to School."
"Crikey", said Ant. "I wish I was a negro."
Wayne Bob and Billy Hank looked at him sternly.
***
The classroom was hot. Everywhere below ground was hot. This was, Ant had been told, because it was difficult to pump the air around to recirculate it. Something called 'Sheet Fungus' kept growing on the air filters in the pumps. The desk Ant was working at was made of wood so old and worm-eaten that it was spongy to the touch. It had the names of many previous occupants carved into it. Most of them appeared to have been called Glenn. Outside the classroom - which was a cubic space carved into solid rock and lined with plastic boards - someone was squeaking a mop up and down the dusty corridor. The corridor, Ant knew, was dusty because its walls, floor and ceiling were made of earth.
Ant's schoolmates all had hair a millimetre in length (in the case of the boys) or twined severely into pigtails (in the case of the girls). They were very noticeably all white. There was a school uniform, a bright orange, military style thing which had the number '12A' on the left breast, and which involved Ant wearing shorts. Ant's classmates marvelled at his tanned brown legs.
The teacher was writing on the blackboard with a stick of what should have been chalk, and was instead some other mineral that kept breaking and scarring the board. What she had written so far said CROATOAN - OUR TOWN ITS HISTORY. Nobody in the entire room seemed to be interested apart from Ant, who wanted desperately to know how an entire town of American rednecks had ended up orbiting Barnard's Star.
"We begin our story", said the teacher, "in the year 1947. America had emerged from the Second World War as the most powerful nation in the world."
There was a chorus of yee-haws and hooooowhees from the audience, and the teacher waited for the patriotism to subside.
"Without America's assistance", said the teacher, "the ancient and more decadent nations of the Old World would have been engulfed by the menace of Nazzyism under Aydolf Hitler. Only America stood firm against the onslaught of Nazzy Germany, declaring war after Hitler invaded Poland. Hitler's less brave European neighbours only dared to enter the war after the American victories at the Battle of D-Day."
Ant put up his hand. Outside, the mop continued to squeak.
"Isn't it actually true that the Americans entered the war two years after everyone else, and sustained hardly any casualties in comparison to the British, Russians and Chinese?"
The teacher squinted at Ant.
"You're the little Earth boy, aren't you."
"Sure am, ma'am", said Ant.
"Well, Anthony, you are going to have to learn that we don't interrupt our teachers on New Dixie."
Ant put his hand down and mumbled, "Sorry, ma'am."
The teacher continued. "America was the most technologically sophisticated nation in the world, the most democratic, the most free. However, several evils remained to be fought." She scribbled in four more lines, which were:
COMMUNISM
INTER RACIAL MIXING
TWO TONE MUSIC
WOOLLY THINKING
"Even with the great strength that had been given it by God, America had a powerful fight on its hands. However, heaven had another gift to give. In the year 1947", said the teacher, writing up the date on the board, "three air force interceptors were engaged by an alien craft in the desert in New Mexico, and destroyed it in a dogfight."
Ant could remember his father watching a documentary on TV in which earnest men in T shirts, beards and sandals had explained how an Unidentified Flying Object had crashed near a town in New Mexico, and how the American government had hushed up the whole affair, and that the town was called -
"Roswell", breathed Ant.
"Precisely, Anthony." The teacher actually smiled. "I can see you know your history. Such was the technological sophistication of the craft that it took many years before the advanced techniques involved in constructing her could be simulated. The programme was highly secret and expensive, and not even known by the President."
Ant put up his hand.
"Yes, Stevens?"
"Pardon me, ma'am, but if the President was supposed to run the country, and he didn't know what the military were doing, how could the country have been called democratic or free?"
The teacher stared at Ant as if attempting to force him to explode by sheer force of glare power.
"Go to the back of the room and face the corner", she said.
The class giggled. Ant rose, and rose to go.
"And wear this", she said, lifting something from her desk and handing it to Ant. It was a white plastic cone, with a large black letter 'D' written on it.
"D", said the teacher with immense satisfaction, "for Dunce."
The class laughed again. This audience, it seemed, would laugh at anything. Outside, the mop was lifted and wrung out, then filled with water again and set to squeaking on the floor once more.
The teacher continued her lesson.
"America's first interstellar vehicle, the Explorator, flew in 1951 and reconnoitred Alpha Centauri, immediately discovering the habitable planets which go round, or orbit, that star. America's first colonies were founded not long afterwards. It was not long after that that America began to hand down its knowledge of interstellar flight to less fortunate races, such as the British."
The class giggled again. Ant's ears burned.
"It was at this point, however, that our glorious nation fell under attack again - not from outside, but from within.
"Those who planned America's interstellar colonies did so secretly, knowing that dark forces were afoot in the very centres of American power themselves. Pernicious African rock and roll music, white liberalism and a refusal of the negro to respect his proper place made America so weak by the 1970's that she was defeated on the battlefield by a tiny nation of Communists in South East Asia -"
There were more smans, and someone said: "Anthony got him brown man legs. He a man."
Then a girl, a white-skinned, blonde girl with regulation pigtails, put her hand up, and asked: "Miss Ikeman, is Anthony a negro?"
Miss Ikeman laughed. "Good heavens no, child. It's just that he's been up outside, under the Sun of Earth. That Sun is even brighter and whiter than corridor lighting, rather than the proper dim red colour of sunlight we are used to. Earth's sun shines with a stronger ultraviolet light, and tans the skin. Anthony has over-exposed himself and will of course probably suffer from skin cancer in later life, like most inhabitants of Earth who are foolish enough to go outdoors."
Whispers circulated round the class, and "He's been Outside" seemed to be whispered, if anything, with greater disbelief than "He's from Earth."
Then Miss Ikeman opened the door to the classroom, and what Ant had been dreading happened. She walked back in with Cleo, dragging her by the arm. Cleo's hair had been done up in what was obviously intended to look like a bandana, and she had a mop and bucket in her hands.
"Now this, children", said Miss Ikeman, "is a Negro. Observe the slouching stance, the pouting, arrogant demeanour, and - saints alive! The violent tendencies." Cleo had only stamped her foot, but Miss Ikeman had jumped as if electrified.
Miss Ikeman caught hold of Cleo's arm with a grip of iron. Cleo winced. "Y'all can all see", she said, "the smaller skull, containing the less advanced negro brain."
Cleo's skull did not look any smaller, from Ant's viewpoint, than Miss Ikeman's. Her lip was also beginning to tremble.
In a moment of inspiration, Ant whipped off his dunce's cap, whirled round and popped it on Miss Ikeman's head. The white plastic fell over her eyes, blocking her vision.
"OBSERVE", yelled Ant to the class, "THE SMALL SKULL, CONTAINING THE LESS ADVANCED BRAIN."
Miss Ikeman screeched, turned around, and ran full tilt into the wall. The class screamed, but it was a scream of laughter. Ant had the impression they had not been entertained so well in ages. They crowded round the door, watching Miss Ikeman run down the electrically-lit corridor outside, bumping into the wall, whimpering and attempting frantically to rip the plastic cone from off her head.
Cleo turned to Ant.
"I wasn't going to cry", she said. "But thanks."
"I knew you weren't", said Ant. "No thanks are necessary." And then, bending over closer and whispering more quietly, he said:
"Don't worry. We are getting out of here. I promise."
***
"This here's your noo family", said Billy Hank.
"I've already got a family, thanks", said Ant frostily. Though I only see half of it at any one time, he added to himself.
The room didn't look too different from any normal living room, apart from the fact that it was so small. It was a friendly room - insanely friendly, with big happy teddy bears, clowns and golliwogs painted inexpertly on the walls. Ant had never trusted clowns, and decided to disapprove of the golliwogs as a point of loyalty to Cleo. The room also had no windows. It had no windows because what was behind the walls painted with clowns and golliwogs was many, many metres of solid rock.
There was also a lock on the door.
"But your old family are communists", said Draylene. Draylene, as far as Ant could work out, was the woman Billy Hank and Wayne Bob had decided should be his new mother. She had teeth that splayed out in different directions, and eyes to match.
"My father", said Ant, "is not a communist." Which is true, after all. He's just a rabid trades unionist who buys diesel oil from terrorists.
"We understand", said Jesse Clem. Jesse Clem was kindly and unsettling. His trousers were pulled up till the waist sat just below his nipples. "You done been brainwashed there. But we'll keep your brain nice and clean here, oh yes we will. You got to realize, son, that your entire family are communists. Excepting you, now, that is. You're safe here with us, oh yes you are." He put his hand on Ant's shoulder. It was very heavy.
"You done got you a little brother now too", said Draylene. She stood aside in the doorway, and a hideous three-foot goblin came in. It was red-haired, covered in freckles, and had inherited its mother's teeth. Ant knew instinctively that women would find it adorable.
It stared at Ant.
"Am goan kill yew", it said, and ran out making Red Indian war whoops.
"That there's your little brother Billy Jed", said Jesse Clem. "Ain't he a scamp?"
Billy Hank pointed at the bed in the corner, which had a handmade quilt covered in still more bears. "That's your bunk there." He bent down closer to Ant and whispered in his ear. "Now, Draylene and Jesse Clem here just lost them their youngest, little Jimmy Brad, to the Swamp Fever. Iffen they don't got two children, they don't qualify for quarters of this size no more, you hear? Now you be good to these folks, and I'll be good to you."