The Greatest Show Off Earth

  But Raymond was in no mood to adopt anything remotely resembling a detached attitude, so he just sat and scowled and shivered.

  And presently a siren sounded in the distance and a line of cars swung slowly into view. They were big and bulbous, but hardly the kind of thing Dan Dare used to drive across the front page of The Eagle. These had that stolid utilitarian look about them. These cars said, “We are built for use not beauty, to be driven by folk who prefer good gas mileage to the whimsy of aesthetics.”

  These were dull cars for dull people.

  Raymond played dead and peered through his fingers as the cars swelled towards him from the foreshortened perspective.

  The cars drew up to park in regimented rows. And then their occupants alighted from them.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Raymond to himself alone. ‘So that’s what they look like.’

  They were not pleasing to behold. They walked upon two legs with feet, and had arms to an equal number with hands on the end. But as for the rest of them. Their bodies were roughly egg shaped. The bellies became the heads in a seamless, chinless join. The big broad faces were a lacklustre grey in colour.

  They reminded Raymond of those Mr Potato Head sets he used to get in his Christmas stockings. The ones that he only got to play with a couple of times before his mum got fed up with the waste of King Edwards and quietly consigned them to the dustbin.

  And these weren’t even good-looking potato heads, these were really evil-looking. And most of them appeared to favour what was obviously the Venusian equivalent of the shell suit.

  Raymond hated them on sight. And the degree of his hatred, for which he could find no obvious cause, save the appearance of these ‘people’, startled even himself by its intensity. Because Raymond wasn’t a racist.

  As a child he’d puzzled over racial intolerance and once broached the subject with his father, who was home for a brief spell between sessions at the turf accountants.

  The old chap had laid aside his Sporting Life and given the matter a moment’s thought.

  ‘Son,’ said he, ‘there are good and bad in all races.’

  And pleased with the simple purity of this, young Raymond had gone out to play. ‘But what I want to know,’ his father continued from behind his paper, ‘is why all the bloody bad ones have to live in my street?’

  The boy Raymond never caught this particular remark and so from that day to the present, held fast to the belief that his bigoted git of a father had been a great humanitarian

  But it wasn’t helping now.

  Raymond continued with the furtive peeping through his fingers. ‘I really hate these bastards,’ he muttered beneath his breath.

  The potato heads shuffled amongst the bubbles, consulting their auction lists, pointing and nattering away to one another.

  Raymond listened to them at it. English. They all spoke English. A group drew near to his personal prison. Typical family, by the look of them. Mother, father and a brace of kiddies. Little boy and little girl. Shell suits all. The Humpty Dumptys.

  ‘What’s this one?’ asked the smallest of the hideous offspring, the daughter one. Daddy Dumpty squinted at his auction list with black button eyes. ‘Lot twenty-three. Specimen of Earth life. Male.’

  ‘Yuck,’ went the daughter. ‘Isn’t he ugly?’

  Ugly? Raymond chewed upon his lip but maintained a passive pose.

  ‘Can we wake him up?’ The other little spud began to bang at Raymond’s bubble.

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t, if you don’t mind.’ Raymond knew that voice, although he could not as yet see the speaker. It was the voice of Mr Chameleon, the silver sham with the clipboard. ‘A prime specimen, don’t you think, sir?’

  The potato heads nodded from the big bellies up. ‘Very nice,’ said Daddy Dumpty.

  ‘Does he have a name?’ asked the darling daughter.

  ‘Yes. His name is George.’ Raymond ground his teeth.

  ‘All Earth males are called George,’ Mr Chameleon went on.

  ‘Is it a tradition, or an old charter, or something?’ Daddy asked.

  ‘No. It’s just because they’re stupid.’

  Raymond’s teeth ground a mite harder.

  ‘So, if all the Earth males are called George,’ said Mrs Dumpty, ‘what are all the females called?’

  ‘Mildred,’ came the reply.

  ‘Mummy, I want George,’ said darling daughter.

  ‘No, dear. We’ve come to buy a Klingon today.’

  ‘But I want George. I don’t want a Klingon. I must have George.’

  Raymond watched the brat’s face contort and the little feet begin to stamp.

  ‘How much do you think George will fetch?’ asked Daddy Dumpty.

  ‘Let me have a look.’ And now Raymond could see Mr Chameleon, who had stepped into his line of vision. And lo, he was a potato head also. And a short one at that.

  He leafed through papers on his clipboard with a stubby little finger. ‘The reserve price is five pounds, sir,’ he said.

  Five pounds? With considerable difficulty Raymond kept his rage in check. Five pounds? Of course, the Venusian fiver was probably not the same as the Earth fiver. It was probably worth much much more. Bound to be. Had to be.

  ‘Five pounds?’ Daddy Dumpty shook himself. His daughter was turning purple, while repeating the phrase, ‘I must have George,’ again and again in a higher and higher register.

  ‘Of course you must, dear. Please calm down.’

  ‘Then I can have George?’

  ‘Well. ..’

  ‘See the fine young physique, sir,’ said Mr Chameleon. ‘This specimen is in excellent physical condition. He’ll provide well.’

  Provide? Raymond wondered about provide. Provide, as in working? Slavery, then? Or some other kind of provide. Provide as in offspring? Stud farm work? Yes, he’d be prepared to give stud farm work a try,

  ‘Are the Georges always this unpleasant blue colour?’ asked Mrs Dumpty. ‘Oh no, madam. Not when you warm them up. They’re quite pink then.’

  ‘That’s nice, pink. I like pink. What’s the best way to warm them up?’

  ‘Slow grilled over charcoal,’ said Mr Chameleon. ‘They’re best cooked live, of course. With the mouth glued shut and a chilli pepper stuck up the bum for seasoning.’

  Raymond bit right through a filling.

  But he sat very quietly throughout the auction. It didn’t teach him much about the Venusian way of life. It was just like any auction on Earth. Any cattle auction say, or one where porker pigs are being sold for bacon.

  Mr Chameleon extolled the virtues of each specimen, the flavour, the tenderness of the special cuts. Raymond’s blood ran colder and colder. He did learn that there were one million pennies in a Venusian pound, but he didn’t learn what a Venusian penny was worth. And he really didn’t care.

  All he cared about was how to escape from this dismal planet in one piece. And preferably before the chilli pepper was inserted.

  ‘Here you go then, sir.’ Raymond peeped once more through his fingers. The auction was now over. The bloody Humpty Dumpty family had got him, and for the knock-down price of £4.99.

  ‘A porter will roll the containment sphere to your car for you.’ Mr Chameleon was all smiles. ‘Handle it with care. As you know, the spheres are virtually indestructible from within, but a sharp tap on the outside will shatter them. Wear gloves, we wouldn’t want you to cut yourself.’

  ‘Can I cut George’s balls off?’ asked the darling daughter.

  ‘Of course, dear,’ said her doting dad. ‘But put them on the barbecue to cook with George. They won’t taste very nice if they’re raw.

  ‘I really, really hate these bastards,’ Raymond muttered. ‘And now, at least, I know just why I do.’

  4

  Simon woke early and took another shower. He’d taken two the previous night, but he felt sure that the unsavoury taint of the flying starfish still clung to him like a mildewed body-stocking.

  In a curiou
s way, however, he found the smell almost comforting. Without it he felt certain he could have quite easily convinced himself that all which had occurred with Raymond was nothing more than the product of his over-active imagination.

  Simon recalled an article he had once read whilst sitting in the dentist’s waiting-room. It was part of a hand-printed pamphlet affair published by an organization with the enigmatic acronym B.E.A.S.T. and it was all about how the human brain tended to filter out things that didn’t fit into the everyday. For example, seeing a ghost. You saw the thing when you were stone-cold sober and you were definitely certain you’d seen it. But the next day your memory began to fade and in no time at all you’d convinced yourself that you’d never really seen it at all. The article hinted darkly that subtle influences were at work which came from beyond the brain. Possibly emanating from the ghost itself, or the UFO, or whatever. It was all part of some evil psychic smokescreen to keep mankind from learning some terrible truth.

  Simon had found the article quite fascinating, but he hadn’t had time to finish it, because he’d been called into the surgery to have some new crowns fitted. And the next time he went to the dentist the pamphlet wasn’t there.

  Perhaps he’d just imagined it.

  But he was sure he hadn’t imagined Abdullah the flying starfish.

  As he scrubbed away at his teeth for the umpteenth time, he wondered just what Raymond might be up to.

  ‘Probably wining and dining at the palace of some Venusian monarch,’ said Simon through the toothpaste foam. ‘The lucky sod.’

  His ablutions completed and aftershave liberally applied to even the most intimate of places, Simon set out to face the day ahead.

  Now Simon being Simon, the evening hadn’t been a complete disaster for him. Having legged it away from The Jolly Gardeners, he had chanced to bump into the landlady from The Bear Flag Inn, who was trying to clear her blocked sinuses with a late-evening jog. Her husband Keith (or possibly Trevor) was away at a bar food conference in Penge. Simon had been invited back for an after-hours Campari soda. This had led, as Simon hoped it might, to several hours of frenzied sexual athletics, culminating in an oral contract for him to tend the pub’s hanging baskets throughout the summer.

  It is interesting to note that when the landlady’s sinuses finally cleared and her husband returned from his conference, both would be equally baffled by the strong smell of fish which led from the bar, up the staircase and into the marital bedchamber.

  It was mowing all this week for Simon. Mr Hilsavise had, through many years of hard toil, and the convenient, if strangely unaccountable, collapse of all the other gardening firms in the village, built up a vast clientele; and Simon, being his only employee, was never short of work.

  Today Simon had to take out the big Allen Scythe and crop the meadow below Long Bob’s chicken farm.

  Simon was very fond of the big Allen Scythe. It was a mighty hulking piece of 1950s farming technology, all green and shiny and driven by a powerful petrol engine. Massive solid wheels with old-fashioned racing-car tyres, and a giant hair-clipper arrangement on the front.

  It went at a fair old lick once you’d primed it up and teased it into life. Little short of concrete posts could stand before the big Allen Scythe.

  Simon reversed the Transit flat-back up to the meadow gate and switched off the engine. He swung the gate open, dropped the Transit’s tail-flap, angled down a pair of scaffold boards and wheeled the Allen Scythe carefully to the ground.

  The day smelt sweet. The sun shone vigorously, birds exchanged gossip, daffs held their heads up high. All those bunnies who had escaped the attention of Dick and his dog the night before, bounced around as only bunnies can.

  It was all very heaven.

  Simon was attending to the minutiae of carburettor tickling, prior to starter-cord tugging, when the sound of distant drumming reached his ear.

  ‘Hello,’ said Simon, as one would. ‘Whatever can this be?’

  Roman Candle practised in Long Bob’s barn. But this wasn’t your ‘Rage Against the Machine’ type drumming. This was more your military type drumming. The sort that marched the peasant cannon fodder into the jaws of death. It didn’t seem to fit on a day like this.

  Simon did shifty glancings to the left and the right of him, wiped his oily fingers on the rag which he had brought for that purpose and took to sidling once more. He did low sidling this time, ducking from one tree to another. Slinking and creeping and moving furtively in suspicious manner (which is really ‘sidling’ in the true sense of the word).

  He crept up the bank that fell away from the lower boundary of Long Bob’s farm and peered through the tall grass he had been sent to cut. And then he wondered at what he saw.

  Long Bob stood in the middle of his farmyard. And a fine traditional farmyard it was too. Set with all the things a fine traditional farmyard should be set: a tractor lacking wheels, two wrecked cars of uncertain age, many sheets of corrugated iron far gone with the rust, and many many many plastic fertilizer bags. And chickens.

  Long Bob stood in the midst of his chickens as well a chicken farmer might. So it wasn’t this that had caused Simon to wonder. It was more the manner of Long Bob’s attire.

  He was clad in one of those ex-army single-piece, zip-up-the-front tank suits onto which he had fastened a pair of home-made epaulettes, wrought from gold milk bottle tops and Christmas tinsel. Atop his tall cranium perched an old tin helmet. Onto this had been glued a pair of chicken wings.

  The long fellow was beating on a small tin drum.

  Simon watched him at it. If the farmer’s strange appearance was sufficient to inspire wonder, what might be said regarding the behaviour of his chickens?

  What indeed?

  Now Simon knew of chickens. You could hardly live in the country and not know of chickens. Chickens and the ways of chickens are things well known to countryfolk.

  The ways of chickens do not extend to much beyond pecking at grain, sitting on eggs, getting eaten by foxes in the night, and on rare occasions, running around the farmyard after their heads have been chopped off.

  But there was something different here.

  Long Bob’s chickens weren’t engaged in normal chickenly pursuits. They were standing still and quiet and they were all staring intently at Long Bob. The farmer played another roll upon his drum. ‘Ten . . . shun,’ went he.

  The chickens didn’t move.

  ‘Ten . . . shun. Come on now, you can do it.’ If the chickens could they didn’t choose to. ‘Come on now. Tenshun.’

  The chickens just stared on. And then in ones and twos they ceased to stare. Their heads began to bob, their claws to scratch, their beaks to peck up grain. And soon they all were bobbing, scratching, pecking and the like.

  ‘Bugger!’ Bob tore off his drum and flung it to the ground.

  He shouted further words, but these were swallowed by the din of clucking hens. Simon watched him as he stalked off to his farmhouse, kicking fowl to left and right.

  What a curious how-do-you-do.

  Simon dropped down from his lair and returned to the Allen Scythe, shaking his head and clicking his expensive dental work. Long Bob was clearly two eggs short of a fry up. But those chickens. The way they’d really seemed to be listening. Whatever was all that about?

  Simon gave his head a final shake. He would find out in good time, he felt quite sure of that. And when he did, then he would profit from the finding out. He felt quite sure of that also.

  ‘Boom shanka,’ said the lad. ‘Boom shanka boom.’

  By lunchtime he had finished with the meadow. He dragged the big Allen Scythe up onto the flat-back, flung the scaffold boards after it, locked up the tail-flap, took from his pocket a crisp white linen handkerchief, applied it to his face and wiped away the sweat of honest toil.

  The sky was blue. The sun was high. The pub was calling. But not The Jolly Gardeners.

  And not The Bear Flag Inn.

  Simon drove into the village a
nd left the Transit in the customers-only car-park behind the supermarket. Today he would risk The Bramfield Arms, a Ploughbloke’s Lunch and a pint of Cloudy.

  He was almost halfway over the zebra crossing by the chemists when a shiny grey van pulled out unexpectedly from the kerb and nearly ran him down. Simon leapt for his life. He rolled nimbly into the gutter, where several village females (one of whom just happened to be called Mildred) helped him to his feet and fussed around. They spoke in righteous tones regarding the need for a bypass and traffic-calming speed ramps, whilst they felt him up and down for broken bones.

  Simon thanked them for their concern and assured them that he was uninjured. He prised away the hand of one lady he’d recently known (in the biblical sense), declined the offer of a nice cup of tea, or something ‘a little stronger’ to steady his nerves, and slipped into The Bramfield Arms.

  Now, from the sunlit street to the unlit saloon bar may just be one small step for a man, but it’s a giant leap in at the deep end for the unwary stranger.

  The Bramfield Arms did not extend to the traveller a warm and cheery welcome. No home fires burned in the inglenook. No apple-cheeked village lovely made sheep’s eyes at you across the bar as she drew the farmhouse cider and cleaved off a slice of cherry pie. Oh no. Oh dear me no.

  Here, in a subaqueous gloom, made rutilant by the depth-charge flares issuing from the games machines, Black Jack Wooler, beer-bellied blackguard and lord of the underworld, wallowed behind his bar counter like a great bloated pike.

  The air had a definitely liquid quality to it. You sank into the saloon bar as you entered it. Orrible it were!

  In the snooker room to the pub’s rear end, Faith No More played on the jukebox and. youthful sportswear cultists had at one another with billiard cues. But the sounds of their jollification scarcely reached the saloon bar. They went down with all hands, to vanish in the dark and icy depths. Yuck!