There Ain't Gonna Be No World War Three, Chapter 18

(apologies to anyone who was confused - for a period of about ten minutes, this one was mislabelled chapter 17. - DG)

18. Bumbly Wumbly Jumbly Gumbly

The air smelled of wet earth, as it always did on wet winter days when there was wind. There was no snow, as there so often wasn't in Middle England, even at midwinter. This wasn't countryside that went out of its way to look like it belonged in fairy tales.

"I'm going to miss this", said Cleo.

"You are?" Harjit looked around herself. She sniffed the air. "Can you smell that? The wind is blowing from Billing Sewage Works."

"I am even going to miss", said Cleo, "Billing Sewage Works. I'm going to miss the way people on the footpath downwind from it make the same face one by one when the wind changes direction. My dad used to stop his car and watch it happen through binoculars. And I will miss you. Though I will be back to visit."

"You had better, Shakespeare", said Harjit, wiping her eyes. "Now go on, before I get all Theme-From-Titanic on your ass."

"Bye Teds", said Armand. He extended a hand. Ant was about to shake it, then clapped Armand round the shoulder and hugged him in as manly a way as he could manage.

"You look after yourselves", said Ant. "And look after each other."

"The ladies'll be safe with me, Teds", said Armand, tapping his nose. "Specially the fat wuns. I go for fat wuns." He winked at Harjit.

Harjit looked up at Armand. "Don't worry", she said to Cleo in a deafening stage whisper. "I'll make sure he's OK."

"Shame about that Mark Two Orgonizer", said Armand. "It were fun, that."

"It was an experimental model", said Ant. "There was only one. They need it back to mass-produce it."

"An they ent gunna trust it to no illiterate numbnuts oo moight ave an Addictive Personality, hey", grinned Armand.

Ant grinned back. "We understand each other so well. We'll be back. Watch the skies."

He undid the latch on Cleo's back garden gate, and walked in up the path. A patch of fur containing two glittering eyes detached itself from a patch of shadow down one side of the garden shed and rubbed itself up against his legs. He bent down to stroke it.

"Well", said Armand to Harjit. "Om filled with confidence."

A bundle of nylon hit Armand in the small of the back. He turned and bent down to pick it up.

"Wossis, Teds?"

"I won't be needing it. It's warm where I'm going."

"You never told me you was goin to Torremolinos, Teds. Fly the Flag."

Ant laughed and walked on up the path.

Armand unfolded the coat, held it up in the dim light from Cleo's parents' house.

"Issa noice coat, this", he said.

"Don't be giving this one to any Year Sevens", said Harjit.

"Wait up - there's summat in the pocket." Armand tugged at something heavy and shiny jammed into the lining. It slid out, sleek and glittering. It had a heavy wheel on its back. The wheel had four settings - HAPPY, SAD, FRIT and ANGRY.

"Oh, Teds", sighed Armand gleefully. "You shouldn't ave."

"Now, you be careful with that", said Harjit.

"Wanna be really appy?" said Armand, spinning the wheel like a man playing Russian Roulette.

"I like my emotions home-grown, thank you", said Harjit.

"Owjoo know till you've tried it, eh?" Armand held up the Orgonizer. "Goo on. It dunt urt none."

Harjit squeaked. "Armand Jeffries, you dare -"

***

Ant turned to see darkened figures running around on the playing field behind Ant's parents' garden. There was a brief, bright green-and-violet flash, and then a voice yelled: "WOOHOO!"

"NOW DO ME! GOO ON, TAKE IT! DO ME, DO ME, DO ME!"

Ant smirked and turned to Cleo's parents' patio doors, which were sliding open to reveal Mr. Shakespeare, dressed in a diamond-patterned sweater that wouldn't have looked out of place on a fashion-blind Japanese businessman on a golfing holiday.

"Cleopatra...?" Mr. Shakespeare looked past Cleo to Ant. "And Anthony...? But you're supposed to be in..."

"You are wearing your very best sweater", said Cleo rapidly, "because you believe you have a job again. Because they phoned you up a couple of days ago to tell you that the court case was off. You haven't been phoned back up again to tell you the court case is on again yet because even Alastair doesn't work that quickly."

"Alastair?" Mr. Shakespeare scratched his woolly head. "Who in the name of God's Alastair?"

Behind him, on the side, the phone began to ring.

"That", said Cleo, "is Alastair. Or rather, someone phoning up to tell you what Alastair has just done. Alastair has just found out I've taken away something really valuable from him. Which means he's going to want to hurt me. He's going to want to hurt me really, really badly. And he's going to be doing it through you. Hi mum."

"What is all of this?" said Mrs. Shakespeare, rising up from the sofa behind her husband. She was wearing a white flannel bathrobe, holding it shut against the cold blowing in through the open patio door. "Hello Anthony. Cleopatra, you are not supposed to be back from Germany yet. Don't tell me you've been sent back early because of any further misbehaviour, young lady, because if you have, no number of fitted kitchens -" She crossed the room to pick up the telephone.

"DON'T ANSWER THAT", said Cleo.

Cleo's mother stopped in the act of picking up the receiver.

"What has gotten into you, Cleopatra. And Tamora - letting your sister set you a bad example yet again."

"When you pick up that telephone", said Cleo, "it is going to be someone telling you Dad is now in trouble with the union again. Some new evidence will have come to light. Someone new will be prepared to testify against him. He will be on suspension again. Go on, pick up the phone and listen."

Cleo's mother picked up the phone. "Hello?

"Oh, hello David.

"Yes, Leonard is here. Why?"

She held the phone a good few inches from her ear, and looked at it as if it were a particularly large and hairy type of arachnid. She looked up at Cleo.

She put her ear to the phone again.

"Yes. Yes, I'll tell him to phone you right away."

She put the phone down. She was breathing heavily.

"How did you know that, Cleopatra?"

"Pay attention. We do not have much time. I need you to get everything out of the house, and I mean everything, that you do not want to lose forever. You are going to carry it down to the bottom of the garden, where a number of very nice men will help you put it into a waiting vehicle. You do not have time to change. You do not have time to do your hair. You do not have time to complain in a screechy Jamaican accent. I will explain to you as we go. I promise there will be an explanation, and that it will be backed up with facts, but if you do not move and move now, you and I and a whole lot of other people I care about a great deal may end up vitally challenged. Start with the DVD player. They don't have them where we're going. And bring the refrigerator, and the washing machine. Do not, under any circumstances, forget the cat."

Mr. Shakespeare had a hand held up. "Er - daughter?"

"Yes?"

"Vitally challenged?"

"Dead."

Mrs. Shakespeare folded her arms. "Does this have to do with drugs, young lady?"

"No it doesn't, and that is the last explanation I am giving before you start moving your big fat butt. Sergeant Falconer - if my mother doesn't move her big fat butt, shoot her."

"Right you are, ma'am." Three men in what looked like military uniform had just come in through the patio doors. They wore holsters which contained what looked unsettlingly like weapons. The man Cleo had addressed as Sergeant Falconer was undoing the flaps on his holster.

"It's all right, ma'am, this isn't a gun, more of a sort of Happy Pistol, it won't hurt a bit. We get shot with 'em in training all the time, partly so's we know what it feels like and to tell you the truth, partly cause we like it." He took out his gun and began to fiddle with the settings on it. "Where would you like to get shot? The head's good, for preference."

"Leave my wife alone!" yelled Mr. Shakespeare.

"It's all right, dad, it really won't hurt, it'll just make her grin like grandma does in church for a while." Cleo waved her arms at two men carrying a sideboard. "EASY with that, it has PLATES in it. Plates are made from PORCELAIN on this planet."

"On this PLANET?"

Irritably, Cleo picked up a DVD rack. "Make yourself useful. Go down to the bottom of the garden, give this to the first man you see, and do me a favour - look up."

Mr. Shakespeare dumbfoundedly accepted the rack.

"It's all right, Len", said Ant. "It'll all be all right."

Mr. Shakespeare nodded and walked meekly out of the living room.

"Now just you wait a minute, young lady!" yelled Mrs. Shakespeare."

Mr. Shakespeare glanced back up the path. Sergeant Falconer looked questioningly at him. Mr. Shakespeare frowned and nodded.

Sergeant Falconer took aim, and fired.

"When we get home", said Mrs. Shakespeare, "Mummy and Daddy are going to make us all pink jelly for tea with all bananas stuck in it, and there are going to be fluffy pink pussy cats that fly on little angel wings and are called bumbly wumbly jumbly gumbly."

She smiled at Tamora and drooled.

"I think I prefer her like that", said Cleo. "HEY! YOU! DON'T PICK UP THAT DRESSER WITHOUT TAKING MY MOTHER'S CAPODIMONTE FROG COLLECTION OUT OF IT FIRST!"

Mr. Shakespeare's face appeared again at the door. It was whiter than a zombie's in a bad horror movie.

"Ah", said Cleo. "You looked up."

"In the sky", he said, turning round and pointing up at the sky in case Cleo had forgotten where it was. "There's a - there's a -"

"Revere-class cruiser", said Ant.

"- hovering over -"

"Flying saucers exist", said Cleo, handing an oil painting to a crewman. "The Americans have been building them since the 1940s. The British and Russians have been building them since the 1950s."

"A Revere¬-class cruiser..." said Mr. Shakespeare.

"Is a really big flying saucer." Cleo gathered up a bundle of coats from the hallway and threw them at Sergeant Major McNaught, who saluted and departed at a run. "It was built in Connecticut."

"I've got to go now", said Ant. "I have to be somewhere really really fast."

A voice called from further into the house. "DO YOU NEED THE KITCHEN SINK, MISS?"

"No, leave that. But take the dishwasher. You'll need two men to lift it." She turned back to her father. "The American and British colonies in space revolted in the early 1970s. The Americans and British are doing bad things - brutal things - to put down the revolt. One of those brutal things was arranging for people to give false evidence against you. In order to put pressure on me. Because I'm a revolutionary, and you're my father."

Mr. Shakespeare screwed up his face. "Cleopatra, you have to learn that not everything revolves around you -"

"Did you do any of those things they accused you of?"

"Wha? - well, no. Of course not."

"Then why would anyone accuse you of them, then?" She picked up a massive bundle of fur, which yowled complainingly, and passed it to her father. "Make sure he goes in and doesn't come out."

"In what?"

"Remember that big ship in the sky? It's coming down. And we're going into it. All of us. And dad - we're not coming back. Not ever."

Mr. Shakespeare rubbed the back of his neck. "I don't know, Princess Angel Cake. This is all very sudden."

"Dad. We do not have time for this. This house probably has more microphones in it than a film set. Every word we are saying is being listened to. That means people are coming to this house right now. And dad - they are coming to kill us."

Mr. Shakespeare considered this. Then he shook himself alert.

"Letitia's jewellery", he said. "And our wedding photos, and your baby photos. Go upstairs and get them. Everything else", he said, "can rot as far as I'm concerned. Where are we going, daughter?"

"Somewhere good", said Cleo. "But bring some tinned food from the pantry. Unless you really, really like lichees. And I mean really like. In a way that's, you know, medically inadvisable."

Mr. Shakespeare nodded in a strange, serene way that indicated he was complying with what logic clearly told him was insanity, and moved off to the kitchen.

***

Ant's house was dark. Despite this, he could see the multicoloured light of a television blaring in one corner of the living room, visible through the dust-covered Venetian blind.

He left the two Shadow Ministry men who had been watching the house happily talking to each other about how nice each other's shoes were, tucked the Orgonizer back into his belt, and rang the bell. He had to ring it three times and knock on the front window - the TV was turned up very, very loud.

The front door was open.

"Ant", said his dad, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. He had fallen asleep watching the television again. Ant could hear the sound of Space Above Beyond Behind and Between, a serial his father had claimed he would rather die by torture than watch, playing in the background.

"Dad", said Ant, "I have fallen in with revolutionaries from Outer Space. Britain and America are attempting to put down a rebellion on planets orbiting other stars. Because of this, we have to go now, because shadowy government agents are coming here to kill us. Follow me and I will take you to a waiting spaceship."

Ant's dad looked at him for a very long time.

"I always thought it would be something like that", he said. "I'll get my coat."

***

"I hope you all realize that all this is very irregular."

Commodore Drummond, Mayor of Gondolin and Representative in the USZ Senate, was wearing his very best walking legs, a polished brass pair with patriotic USZ roundels on the knees. Jervis Bay was leaving Earth orbit; beneath her, winter lay spread out over the Northern Hemisphere like an immense sugary cake frosting.

"Don't gripe, Commodore, you now have two devices on board, one which makes this ship virtually invulnerable to harm and one which makes it invisible to radar. In my opinion you've got yourself a very good deal."

Cleo was sitting on the chart table, which had been covered with hastily-packed ammunition crates scribbled BOOKS ON EMPLOYMENT LAW, CAPO DI MONTY, and TINNED FOOD in permanent marker. In front of her, Mr. Shakespeare, Mr. Stevens and Jochen were gawping at the planet below them, clearly visible through the bow windows. Mrs. Shakespeare was beaming rather than gawping; the effects of the Orgonizer had still not worn off.

"Guck mal, Mutti", said Jochen. "Das große Licht da unten - das ist München."

"Änd I should be impressed?" said Frau von-und-zu. "I do not need to see Munich from orbit. I häff seen it right clöse up."

"It's true that you have done us a very good turn", grumbled Drummond. "If that weren't true, you wouldn't be here to begin with. Particularly because that device has just allowed us to fly a ten-thousand-tonne cruiser right into the sky above England undetected - a most amazing test of its capabilities. And we still have no idea where in the Saucerer ship the device that does all of this is - all we did was keep all systems in the ship turned on. The stealth effect seems to have worked for the Jervis Bay with the Saucerer vessel coupled to it just as well as it did for the ship itself. And to do you credit, Miss Shakespeare, you did capture an alien with one of those creatures still in her living brain", he added, "to wit, yourself. You will be comprehensively debriefed on the blue goop and its capabilities as soon as we return to Gondolin. I believe you have worked out where Gondolin is located."

"Oh yes", said Cleo. "It was quite easy really. When we were travelling from Earth to Ross 248, Captain Farthing said we were closer to Gondolin than we thought. But Gondolin can also easily be reached easily from Groombridge 34A and Barnard's Star, which shouldn't be possible - Barnard's and Ross 248 are in different constellations. Barnard's is in Ophiuchus, and Ross 248 is in Andromeda, and those constellations are in opposite parts of the sky."

"So Anthony thought Gondolin must be in the Solar System", said Drummond.

Ant nodded. "The Sun lies right between the two. And", he said wretchedly, "I thought Gondolin looked a little bit like Jupiter's moon Io does from space. I sort of thought Gondolin might be Io."

The Commodore's face lit up. "But bless you, lad, Io's only a few thousand kilometres across! It has virtually no atmosphere, it's covered by a thin coating of sulphur, and has a surface temperature well below the freezing point of water. It is covered in more volcanoes than a teenager has spots, all of them filled with black molten sulphur and orthopyroxene - some of those volcanoes have been photographed erupting at the same time at different ends of the planet. No, goodness gracious me, that wouldn't be a place I'd choose to live."

"Yes, well, of course", said Ant, his ears burning, "I know that now."

"Jolly good, jolly good. And this is Cleopatra's charming mother, I believe. And your father." The Commodore shook hands with Mr. and Mrs. Shakespeare. Mrs. Shakespeare beamed at the Commodore like a proud mother on Speech Day. "You really have brought up a capital gel here, I do congratulate you. And this must be Mr. Stevens, Anthony's father. Anthony has told me so much about you. Will your mother be joining us?"

Ant's dad, who evidently hadn't thought about this, looked at Ant in shock. Ant shook his head. Ant's dad exhaled in obvious relief.

"Now, to the business of what you're all going to do for a living on Gondolin."

"Do?" said Ant's dad in fear. The possibility of work being involved had evidently not occurred to him.

"Yes. Do any of you have any...skills at all?"

Cleo's dad frowned. He sucked in his cheeks. He looked at the big, heavy box marked BOOKS ON EMPLOYMENT LAW.

"I can weld", he said.

"Splendid, splendid", said the Commodore. "Always have need of a good welder. And what about you, Mr. Stevens?"

"I can drive stuff", said Ant's dad. "Stuff that's, you know, got wheels. Eighteen of them, for preference"

The Commodore maintained his smile. "Well", he said, "maybe Mr. Shakespeare here can teach you welding."

"What about us?" said Ant. "Er, sir", he added.

Drummond looked narrowly at Ant. "Cleopatra and yourself will be inducted into the Gondolin pilot cadet school. That is what you wanted, isn't it?"

"Erm. Yes", said Ant. "Very much so."

"Excellent. I do so love to give people exactly what they want."

"Erm", said Cleo. Her eyes were trying to escape from their sockets. "Erm."

Drummond turned back to Cleo. "You had something to add?"

"Erm", said Cleo. "Pilot?"

"All young people on Gondolin", said Drummond, "are taught to fly a starship. It is essential training out here."

Cleo swallowed what she had been going to say.

"In any case", said Drummond, "due to your efforts, we now have not one, but two Wolfram's Shields, and the Anglo-Americans have none." He reached out with his baton and rapped the pizza box balanced on one of the consoles. "That means we can use one of them in Jervis Bay while our boffins figure out how the other one works." He flipped open the pizza box and examined its contents. "Doesn't look much." He reached into the box and lifted out the ammonite. "Wouldn't think it was capable of -"

The ammonite turned to sugary dust in his hands.

He frowned. He rubbed the remaining flakes of ammonite between his fingers. He brought the fingers to his lips, and tasted the dust.

"A meringue", he said. He smacked his lips, looked at the ceiling, and said: "Cinnamon-flavoured, I believe." He looked sternly at Cleo.

"Oh dear", said Cleo. "Looks like we've been outwitted by Alastair yet again. Maybe we only have one Wolfram's Shield after all."

Jochen's mother met Cleo's eyes briefly; then she gawped fixedly at the highly interesting lights of Munich visible from orbit through the viewport.

"Uh sir", said Captain Farthing. "Apologies for interrupting, but we came back with one more extra passenger."

"Another mouth to feed?" The Commodore was beside himself. "The piggeries and nettle-and-lichee farms are overstretched as it is. What are you trying to do, evacuate the entire population of England by stealth?"

"This isn't a new mouth, sir. It's more of an old mouth come back to us."

Farthing stood aside to reveal a young woman dressed in a tweed coat and polka-dot blouse.

"Who is this?" said the Commodore angrily. "Every new face on Gondolin is a potential security risk. I explicitly...told..."

Everyone on the bridge, who had been informed by Captain Farthing well in advance, was grinning like an idiot. Some burly astronavigators were even wiping away tears of joy.

"Hello daddy", said Charity.

"Oh my", said the Commodore. "Oh my word. Oh sweet merciful heaven."

He sat down heavily on the charting table in shock. His legs, no longer supported, clattered to the floor.

"If it's any consolation, I never thought I'd ever come home either", said Charity.

"She was, um, infected with the Blue Goo", said Cleo. "But she got better. We have a process now for curing it."

***

An owl hooted in among the trees. Far away, on the main road, a lone car growled past, carrying some lunatic or other who felt like driving around at three in the morning. It was difficult for Karg to believe he was in the middle of one of the largest cities on Earth. The road was visible as a line of lights, but all around him was impenetrable blackness. The black of deep space. A black he'd hoped he'd never see again.

Anything could be creeping up on him in the dark. If this had only been a public park, there would have been streetlights, and he would have been able to see where he was going without bumping into slabs of granite every ten paces. Admittedly, they would have been sodium lights, and they wouldn't have shown the all-important bright blue colour of something nasty oozing out of a bush and up his trouser leg, but -

"Mr. Karg, stop imagining vampires coming out of the undergrowth and come here. If fifteen armed men and a wing of Harridan A3s circling overhead won't secure our perimeter, I don't know what will."

Half of the problem was the fact that there were so many men standing around, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. He hadn't tried counting any of them. Were there just fifteen, or had a sixteenth crept in without his knowledge? Did he, despite the infra-red goggles strapped to his forehead, have any realistic way of knowing?

It wasn't a public park. It was a private cemetery. One of the largest private cemeteries in London. And it was reputed to have its own vampire. Having seen worse than vampires in his time, Karg's hand was firmly on the trigger of the Gyrojet in his breast pocket. The one that fired the newly developed sodium hypochlorite bullets.

"You wanted to see me, sir?" Drague's figure was visible now Karg had his goggles on; he was shining an infra-red torchlight on a large marble slab. The torch beam would have been invisible to anyone not wearing the same goggles Karg and Drague were wearing. To anyone outside the cemetery, it would look like there was no-one here.

The slab had text chiselled into it which began SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF. Karg felt able to guess the rest.

"Yes. Yes, just you. You, somewhat bizarrely, I feel I can trust." Drague's torch beam moved down the grave. "We are not here on a wild goose chase, after all. The telephone call was genuine. Someone has left a wreath, it seems."

Karg looked at the wreath, and the torch beam attached to his own goggles tracked across itwas he looked. It was a stone wreath - a spiral stone wreath. It resembled nothing so much as a stone ammonite resting on a piece of paper. The piece of paper said, in hastily scribbled permanent marker:

YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO START TRUSTING US SOME TIME, ALASTAIR, AND WE ARE BOTH GOING TO NEED THESE THINGS - A STORM IS COMING, AND IT WILL BLOW ON EARTH AND GONDOLIN ALIKE. MAY YOUR FATHER REST IN PEACE. CLEO X

"Bless, as they say", said Drague, "her little cotton socks." He lifted up the ammonite. Under the beam of his torch, the rest of the chiselled text on the slab read:

W. A. DRAGUE DSO CdG
1918 - 1983
LOVING FATHER
DEVOTED HUSBAND
SERVANT OF HIS COUNTRY

Underneath that, it continued:

TWO MEN LOOK OUT OF THE SAME PRISON BARS
ONE SEES MUD AND THE OTHER STARS

Karg turned his goggles to look at Drague. In the dark, unseen by any other man, possibly not even imagining he could be seen by Karg, Alastair Drague was crying real, genuine, honest-to-goodness tears. Karg felt like bottling them and seeing what price they'd fetch on the open market.

"We have what we came for, it seems", said Drague. "Come. We have a great deal to do. Things have been set in motion, and I do not believe I can stop them. But I feel obliged to try."

He produced a cigarette lighter as they walked back toward the streetlights of the land of the living. As they walked, a torch beam - a visible-light torch beam, blindingly bright - stabbed out of the dark and played across their faces.

"Have you finished in there yet, sir?"

Drague shaded his eyes against the glare. "Quite finished, thank you, Norman. Sorry about the lateness of the hour."

"That's quite all right, Mr. Drague. Anything for a relative of one of our most distinguished residents. Did you and your men find what you was looking for? I think it might have been left by a young girl, a black girl, quite pretty. She knocked on my door about two hours ago. Was wanting to find your dad's grave. It was after hours and everything and it's against the rules, but for some reason, I really wanted to help her find it. I might even say I got a warm and happy glow out of the whole process. I am not sure why."

Drague smiled thinly. "You got a warm and happy glow, Norman, because she was an angel from heaven. You get ready to turn in - my men will be out of here in ten minutes."

"Good night, Mr. Drague, sir."

"Good night, Norman. Sleep tight." Drague turned to Karg, who already had his short-wave radio out.

"On it, sir."

As Karg radioed the men on the perimeter instructing them to stand down, Drague held the flame of his cigarette lighter to one corner of the note from Cleo, and held the note by another corner as it burned away thoroughly and entirely.