Night Boat to Cairo

Cola leaned over to her bedside table, picked up the strategically placed glass and took a mouthful of water. She switched the bedside lamp off and, in the darkness, snuggled down under the duvet.

She closed her eyes.

There was a knock on the door and she floated out of bed into an upright position. She tiptoed to the door (so as not to wake the carpet up), and flung it wide open. The door swung silently and slowly open to reveal David, Plessey and Gorden standing outside.

David spoke, but she couldn't make the words out. The words probably weren't important anyway. She motioned the friends in.

David's head was caved in, just as it was when she'd last seen him. Plessey's shell glowed, showing bright lines and patterns brighter than any normal snail's shell should glow. But he was a wizard after all.

Gorden smiled at her then strode slowly and meaningfully into the room.

David was talking at her - his mouth moving fast and silent. She could hear Gorden's footfalls on the carpet as loud thumps as he walked behind her as she "spoke" to David. Plessey slid effortlessly into the room, leaving a trail of slime behind him that glowed with patterns in the same way as his shell. Cola thought she could make out letters. No, not just letters. Cola could make out words written in the sparkling patterns of his trail.

She heard a noise behind her and turned away. She could hear David's pleasant smile crack into an insane grin as she turned away from him towards..

Gorden.

He stood, a magnificent (if a little self-import) buck in the prime of his life. He wasn't looking at her but was busy at the kitchen. She padded towards him, no longer worrying about waking the carpet up - surely the whole warren would be woken by this silence.?

Gorden turned to her and smiled that smile. The smile that could make her knees go weak, the smile that pushed the whole force of his personality forwards. She stepped towards him. He was cooking something. His mouth moved in the same silent way that David's had. But this time she knew what the words were.

She looked down into the frying pan at two eggs like little universes, even though they were frying they were swarming with life, like universes do.

---*---

Cola sat bolt upright in the darkness.

Her eyes split wide open and for a second or more she looked around expecting to see David, Plessey and Gorden, especially Gorden, standing in the room chatting (and cooking).

The fact of the dream seeped into her being. First of all her toes acknowledged that it was a dream.

Then her legs, then her fingers.

Her head nodded; 'It was a dream' it told her.

Her arms capitulated.

Finally her heart gave in. 'It was only a dream.' It said, 'it wasn't really Gorden'. Her head nodded,

"He's dead" Cola said, quietly, just in case it wasn't true.

She grabbed a pillow and hugged it to herself. A tear forming in each eye she rocked back and forth, not looking for sleep

---*---

There were other people, tonight, who were not asleep. Burning the midnight lumens, so it were.

We find ourselves looking into a darkened burrow; the only light a yellow-whiteness from a ageing, but highly focussed, table lamp.

A shadow of a rabbit is seated by this table leafing through some papers. Imagine you are a camera, spinning around trying to make out his form in the shadows, trying to scry his face by the light reflected from the papers. You fail. But it will make a good scene in the movie.

We'll focus on the papers now. We recognise these as Herbert's notes, previously in Cola's possession. The rabbit is speed-reading the papers, one or two a second, searching for something, or maybe just eager to find the punch line.

The figure stops and leans back. (Bugger, you think as the coney-form disappears into the darkness., we'll not find out who it is now!)

The rabbit is holding a piece of paper at arms length, under the light, chuckling. A male voice chuckles (Oooh! good, you think. At least we know it's a buck...)

The rabbit leans forward and picks up the next few sheets and reads these papers slow enough for us to follow.

"Those were the days'!" He says with another chuckle.

---*---

Spiron informed us of a request he'd received from a client he'd worked for before who wished a pick up.

Sounded simple; although I don't remember anyone telling me that we were an intergalactic taxi service.

"It has to be precisely timed." Spiron explained to us all, "We have to land at this point".

We were standing around a projection of the globe we were aiming for. At Spiron's pointing finger the globe expanded and our view zoomed in. The dot on the surface became clearly a settlement of some sort on a river. The settlement seemed smaller than the spaceport we'd been at last week. I said so.

"It's a pre-industrial world." Spiron said, nodding.

"Shouldn't that mean its interdicted?" I asked.

Spiron shrugged, "Only level one Contact is allowed." I was slightly confused.

"Does that mean we can land in a 'large' settlement like this?"

He shook his head "Technically, no. But it won't matter." He paused for a second, just enough time for me to open my mouth. "We're picking up Lord Fader."

I heard a communal 'gulp' from my crewmates.

"So he's a Lord and he can order us to land in an interdicted area."

"Something along those lines." Spiron said, returning to the plan. "We land on ion engines just out side the settlement. Here." His finger pointed to a field on the edge of town. "Right, get to work!" He shouted and we scuttled out.

I heard Kurl speak low to himself, "Poor souls"

From my gunnery I controlled a handful of the 'sects used for scouting and I'd had four sections of my crystal sphere set to display from their optics. I was swapping between their audio channels as they swarmed (pretty small a swarm admittedly, considering there was only four) trying to see if I could make anything interesting out.

Our ship was dropping at a frightening speed, one reason I was concentrating on the 'sects responses rather than the rush outside my sphere.

My 'sects showed a crowd of 'people' gathering in the centre of this town. It all looked very mediaeval and I couldn't see what a "Lord" was doing here. The people of this planet were conanoid to a high degree - two arms, two legs, head with long ears. About the only major external difference was that their tails were long and furry rather than short and fluffy. They were gathering around a podium.

A cowled figure in dark robes strode out of a building near the square and kicked a small animal out of the way and walked straight for the podium. I instructed two of the 'sects to follow him closely and turned their audio on,

I pulled the other two 'sect's out to keep an eye on the crowd. I turned their volume up a little and the sphere was filled with the murmur of people.

The two following the robed figure just reported heavy-breathing noises from him, as if from a broken respirator.

The figure stepped up on the podium. I arranged his two tailing 'sects behind him so that I could see the crowd and I positioned the other two at the far end of the crowd, so I could watch his movements and see, behind him, our landing site. I checked with the Ship, we were nearly there.

The figure threw back his cowl. I took a sharp intake of breath. I nearly laughed.

Revealed beneath the cowl and beneath the robes was a figure in black body armour. His head was helmeted in a manner that I would be hard put to describe accurately in a family publication.

His smooth, shiny, black helmet had no eye or nose or ear holes. Where his eyes should be was a pair of black hemispheres, where his mouth and nose should be was a respirator device that seemed to carry his voice as well.

His form was virtually identical to an image burnt into my mind from my childhood. Although I could not see one whit of fur I already was convinced that this was someone else from my home. My interdicted home.

Earth was interdicted because of the volatile nature of its inhabitants. Our planet has power far superior to our control of that power. This is a common occurrence and is a "type two" interdiction. The planet we surveyed here was a "type one" - they lacked the ability to trace a ship like ours, so some Contact was allowed, but this was (supposedly) policed. Earth's quick rise from a type one interdiction to a type two over the course of a couple of hundred years was a little abnormal but not noticeably so, on a galactic level.

Type three interdictions were those planets that 'we' just weren't allowed on. These were the most commonly broken interdictions and the most dangerous to break. Until you got to the surface you wouldn't necessarily know whether the interdiction was due to disease or what. Sometimes a "superior" race would interdict themselves to facilitate Transcending the Galactic Consciousness early.

The dark figure spoke. Lord Fader indeed!

Remind me - I'll have to check copyright laws with regards to mickey-taking. I'll ask Weird Al he'll know.

The dark figure spoke. A shiver slid down my spine.

"Hear me you Lords and Lady creatures." He bellowed.

Our ship was closing now, it's ion drives flaming below it.

"I descend upon your earth from the skies." His arms wide open.

The crowd could see our ship now and they had succumbed to the awe that a primitive will feel when faced with something so far beyond their ken that it will go down in history as a visit from the Gods.

"I command your very souls! You are believers!" He thumped the podium.

I couldn't believe my ears and was mentally congratulating Lord Fader on his chutzpah.

"Place before me what is mine!" The podium rocked, not just from his fists but from our ship as it landed behind him in a gust of flames.

I've never seen a ship land on ion drive - it's incredibly destructive to any form of life - but it was a magnificent sight - a ship of flames! I held my breath as the flames cleared to reveal our ship and the blasted circle of ground beneath it. Nothing would grow there for a long time, I thought , prophetically.

Lord Fader turned his back on the crowd and walked away. The people shouted at him and tried to call to him. He pushed through them as if they were blades of grass and he walked straight to our ship.

Our cargo ramp descended before Lord Fader. I was impressed: Spiron had rigged extra lighting around it so that the natives were nearly blinded; I could see them cowering and covering their eyes with their forelegs.

Spiron strode into the ship. I commanded two 'sects to follow him and I left two outside to monitor the natives.

One brave soul threw a rock at the ship. It didn't hit, Bov picked it off with a very accurate cannon shot.

No more rocks were thrown.

We took off. Ion engines again. The nearest indigies were caught in the blast and were fried instantly. The crowd was suddenly a mass of swarming bodies, most screaming. some trying to pull injured friends and relatives away from the blast. Many crying.

We launched into the sky.

Lord Fader walked straight to the cockpit.

"Nice speech." Spiron said as he twitched the controls that took us up and out.

"I've always wanted to give that one. Wasted on them."

"Did you get what you came here for?" Spiron asked. Fader didn't reply.

Fader strode to the viewscreen and stared at the rapidly shrinking planet. I realised that he was walking under full acceleration. The rest of us, Spiron included, were strapped down. He must be strong, or that body suit....

"Goodbye." He said to the planet. "You were.. " he sought for a good word then gave up. "annoying."

Suddenly the planet was rocked by a number of explosions, Explosions that were so large we see them from our high orbit. If I wanted to I could have counted them.

As tears streamed down my face my implant returned the number of bombs, and their type and yield based upon a spectrographic analysis of the explosions.

'Estimated number of survivors based upon previous figures is less than one percent.'