The Distant Home (13 page)

Mrs Webster walked back into her living room, dusting her hands. Sally and Bobby had been watching through the window.

‘I’d just like to have that reporter in my platoon for one week,’ she said. ‘Now where were we?’

Sally had now had time to think, and in thinking about Mrs Webster’s story, she had had time to reject it. It was crazy. She had never been angry with Mrs Webster before, but she was now. ‘Where we were was that you were telling me lies about who I am and what I am, and who you are! You were trying to frighten me and it isn’t funny! I’m Sally Harrison, not something from outer space. And neither are you!’

Mrs Webster nodded. She moved to a cabinet, opened a drawer, and brought out two sets of goggles, the lenses of which seemed to be made of metal. She handed the goggles to Bobby and Sally. ‘Put these on.’

They hesitated.

‘It’s time I showed you what I’m really like,’ Mrs Webster said.

After another moment’s hesitation, Sally decided to humour Mrs Webster. She put on her goggles, and everything suddenly went black. She heard Bobby’s voice saying, ‘Hey, I can’t see anything!’

Then Mrs Webster’s voice answered. ‘They’re quarter inch steel. Anything less you’d be blinded.’

‘What?’

‘Humour her, Bobby,’ Sally said. ‘She’s just a nice old lady gone a bit crazy.’

Sally was aware of a growing light. Where before everything had been darkness, she was beginning to see something. She was beginning to see Mrs Webster, but a Mrs Webster who was no longer wearing a floral dress. Sally was seeing a Mrs Webster who was somehow made out of light.

Everything about her was changing into a blaze of shimmering light, and now Mrs Webster was growing, until the top of her head was almost touching the ceiling, but the head was not a head any more, it was a spiked helmet, and the body was not a body clothed in a dress any more, but a body clothed in some kind of armour. In a museum once, Sally had seen the armour of a Japanese Samurai warrior. If that armour had been made of dazzlingly bright light—of surging energy—that would have been the nearest thing to the person Sally was now seeing. Even the walking cane had been transformed into some kind of sword, but a sword made of pure energy.

And the voice had changed. Now it was like a deep whisper. ‘This is what an Imperial Marine top sergeant looks like,’ the being who had been Mrs Webster only moments before said. ‘Nothing fancy.’

Sally felt deeply ashamed of having doubted Mrs Webster’s word. ‘I … I’m sorry I said you were crazy.’

‘That’s all right,’ the deep whispery voice said.

‘And … I look like that? Inside?’ Sally knew now that Mrs Webster had been telling the truth.

‘More beautiful. Much more beautiful,’ said the armoured figure. ‘Now I’m changing back, don’t take the goggles off until I tell you.’

The figure shrank and the light faded, and Sally could see nothing at all. Everything was black again. Then Mrs Webster’s normal voice spoke to them. ‘Take the goggles off.’

Sally and Bobby took the goggles off and looked at each other in awe.

‘Wow!’ Bobby said.

Sally turned back to Mrs Webster. ‘Those stories you told us. About princesses and princes and dragons. And then the ones about battles against the Ursoid invaders. They were all sort of true, weren’t they?’

‘All the best stories like that are true,’ Mrs Webster answered.

‘So what happens now?’

‘I’ll tell you that when it happens,’ Mrs Webster said.

‘No!’ Sally seemed to have grown. Her voice rang with a new authority. ‘No, Sergeant. It’s too late now to treat me like a little kid. You say I’m the daughter of your monarch, so you tell me what’s happening.’

For a moment, Mrs Webster seemed to be set back on her heels by Sally’s new aura of authority. When she spoke it was as a Master Sergeant to a Commander in Chief. ‘Sorry ma’am! The situation is like this. For the past twelve years we’ve been in deep cover here, you and me, waiting for the time when we could tell you who you were and you could go and do your rightful job. But the accident changed all that. I knew once they got you in the hospital, they’d find the mistake that was made twelve years ago.’

‘What mistake?’

‘Your body type.’ Mrs Webster paused. ‘There’s another race in the galaxy that looks exactly like Earth people. But they have multiple hearts, blue-green copper-based blood. The technicians were working against the clock, and made a mess of things. They gave you the wrong body type and blood stream. I knew as soon as you were in the hospital they’d find out. And on this planet nothing like that stays a secret for long. So when I got back from the hospital today I broke cover and communicated with a ship we’ve got hiding in the asteroid belt. They’re on their way.’

‘And the Ursoids?’

Bobby could not work out why Sally asked that question. It was what she did sometimes, dropping out three steps in a chain of logic and going straight to the end.

‘Ma’am?’ Mrs Webster was still holding something back.

Patiently, Sally filled in the missing parts of her chain of thought. ‘You said you broke cover. The only reason for cover is if the Ursoids are around.’

Mrs Webster nodded and answered with obvious reluctance. ‘They have agents here like we do. We have to assume they picked up my message. Now with the television story, our cover’s really blown. They’ll be on their way. If they get here before our ship I’ll just have to fight them off.’ She paused. ‘Ma’am, you have to rest. I’ll wake you the moment anything happens.’

‘Rest? After what you’ve just told me? I have to talk to Mum and Dad.’

Mrs Webster was uneasy. ‘I don’t think—’

Firmly but gently, Sally cut in. ‘That’s not a request, Sergeant. It’s an order.’

Jim opened his back door carefully, half-expecting to find the TV reporter there, but when he saw it was Sally and Mrs Webster, he stepped to one side, allowing them to come in.

Mrs Webster put her finger to her lips to ensure everyone’s silence. As Sally was embraced by her parents and aunt, Mrs Webster turned on the radio in the kitchen and then ran the kitchen tap to add to the noise. Then she beckoned for them to gather together so they could talk in whispers.

‘Darling, are you all right?’ Maria was saying to Sally. ‘I’ve been so worried.’

‘What did they do to you in that hospital?’ Jim was saying.

‘I’m okay.’ Sally managed to get out before her parents continued talking.

‘I was frantic, are you sure there are no bones broken? You’re not concussed? Getting headaches?’ That was Maria.

‘There’s been some ridiculous garbage on the news, you wouldn’t believe.’ That was Jim.

‘I’m fine, I saw the TV, I …’ Sally was on the point of trying to explain how things really were when she saw Mrs Webster shaking her head. She stopped, grateful that she did not have to tell her mother and father everything yet, because frankly she did not know where she would begin. ‘I wanted you to know I was safe, but Dr Chambers and those other two people’ll probably try and get me back to the hospital somehow so I’m probably better off …’ and she pointed in the direction of Mrs Webster’s house.

Jim and Maria exchanged a look and nodded, and then looked at Kate, who also nodded her agreement. They certainly did not want Sally grabbed again. She probably was safer at Mrs Webster’s.

‘Just… just be careful,’ Sally said. ‘I love you.’

‘And we love you too, darling.’ Maria gave her daughter a hug. It was funny how one moment one’s children could be so grown up, and the next moment so vulnerable. ‘Is Bobby …?’ She gestured at Mrs Webster’s.

Sally nodded. ‘And if anything … if anything weird happens. Then you come there too. Okay? Promise?’

The grown up Sally was back, and that made Maria feel even more motherly. ‘You always talk to me as if I’m the child and you’re the mother.’ She embraced Sally again. ‘Oh, my baby!’

Mrs Webster was looking at Sally, tapping her watch. Sally nodded and gently disentangled herself from her mother’s embrace. ‘Better go,’ she whispered, and she and Mrs Webster slipped out the back door again, crossed the backyard, and went through the gate which connected the Harrison backyard to Mrs Webster’s.

In Middle Street, the Five Network TV van had now been joined by other media cars and vans. The story was starting to snowball. Various reporters, women, men, young, old, thin, fat, were milling around.

A group of photographers from various newspapers and magazines, strung with cameras— most of them carrying little stepladders to stand on if necessary—were moving around like a wolf pack, looking for something to photograph.

Suddenly they were on the alert. A cab had turned into Middle Street and was approaching the Harrison house. It came to a halt and a boy with curly hair and a grumpy expression got out and just stood there, like someone in a shop waiting to be served. Once the boy saw that he had the attention of the press corps, he held up his hand.

‘My name is Cyril Flannery,’ he said. ‘Harrison works for my father so I know the family.’ He had their full attention. ‘The girl from outer space came to my birthday party last year. I happen to have a very good photo of her. Who wants to make an offer?’

As the reporters clustered around, Bobby was watching the scene on the video screen embedded in the microwave oven door. He turned around as Sally and Mrs Webster entered. ‘Cyril Flannery’s turned up. He’s selling them a photograph of you!’

‘What a user!’ Sally said. ‘What an absolute dork!’

‘Forget him, Sall,’ said Bobby, and moved with Sally and Mrs Webster into the living room. ‘Are Mum and Dad okay?’

‘They’re fine.’

‘Did you tell them? About who you are?’

‘I couldn’t,’ she said. ‘Not yet. There’s so much more that I need to know myself.’ She looked at Mrs Webster. ‘When were you going to tell me? If there hadn’t been an accident?’

‘The top brass wanted to wait. The psychologists in High Command said it was important that you have a normal childhood.’

‘On a backwater planet?’ There was an edge to Sally’s voice.

‘There’s a lot worse places to grow up,’ Mrs Webster said. ‘But that’s finished. The Ursoids know where you are now. They’ll try and capture you, and if they can’t do that, they’ll try and kill you, and if they can’t find you to kill you, they’ll destroy this planet.’

Bobby was horrified. ‘The whole planet?’

‘To them, it’s like a primitive village.’ She looked at Sally. ‘Ma’am, the Empire’s fighting for its life. We can’t afford to lose the heir to the throne. If our people learn that you’re dead …’ Mrs Webster paused, the words were coming hard. ‘The bottom line is that we’ve got to get you away from here.’

‘Away?’

‘From this planet.’

Sally had already worked out that this is what Mrs Webster had been leading up to, but when the words were spoken they still came as a brutal shock. To leave the planet? The world where she had been born? And not just leave the planet, but leave her family? She tried to put it into words. ‘Mrs Webster, Sergeant, this is my family you’re asking me to leave behind. My mother. My father. My twin brother.’

Mrs Webster looked sad. They had never seen her like this. ‘Ma’am, I know. If it wasn’t life and death, we’d never ask it. Not till you were grown-up and leaving home anyway. But your survival, the survival of the planet, the survival of the Empire maybe …’

‘I’m a kid!’ Sally said, and just for that moment she sounded like one.

‘Sometimes kids leave home,’ said Mrs Webster. ‘They go to camp, they go to boarding school, they go to hospital. There’s a divorce and they have to choose between two parents. Sometimes they have to make decisions they don’t want to make. That a kid shouldn’t have to make.’

There was silence in the room. Neither Bobby nor Mrs Webster felt they could speak.

It was up to Sally to break the silence, and finally she did. ‘I know all that.’ She paused. ‘But this is my family.’

Bobby tried to cheer her up. ‘C’mon, sis, don’t be a wimp! Boy, if I could rule the galaxy or something …’

Mrs Webster cut him off sharply. ‘You’d be better off living an ordinary life on Earth. There’s no tougher slot than command.’ She looked at Sally. ‘Ma’am I’ve been authorized to show you what’s happening out there, show you just what this decision means to the Empire. But we don’t have much time. Ursoid agents could be here any moment.’

She took Sally by the hand, led her to a chair, and sat her down. ‘This’ll take a few moments,’ she said.

It was like the microwave oven that doubled for a video security system. Everything in Mrs Webster’s house seemed to have a second and much more mysterious purpose.

Once Sally had been seated, Mrs Webster had rolled out a big hair dryer on a stand, one of the ones that fit over your head like a helmet. Once she had the helmet part fitted over Sally’s head, she then plugged the hair dryer into the CD player, plugged that into the video recorder and TV set, and slipped what looked like a compact disc into the CD player.

Bobby noticed several weird things about that compact disc. For a start, it did not have any writing on it, one side being as plain as the other. For a second thing, it was kind of hard to see; it kept appearing and disappearing, as if shifting in and out of existence in Mrs Webster’s hand.

He asked Mrs Webster about that, and she said she did not have time to explain properly, but that the disc was being continuously updated by the Library Planet in the Galactic Hub, and at the times it had seemingly vanished from her hand it was somewhere else having new information inserted. ‘Kind of like data in my computer’s random access memory?’ Bobby said, trying to get his mind around a disc that was both here and somewhere else.

‘Kind of like that,’ Mrs Webster replied, and then set the whole thing going.

The video screen instantly became a red blur, as if a video were being run at an incredible speed, and at the same time there was a soft gabbling as if voices were speaking at an equally incredible speed.

Sally just sat there in the chair as if in a trance, her eyes staring at the screen but seeming to see beyond it, a thousand metres beyond it, staring out into space.

She was seeing the history of the Galactic Empire.

It was born on an insignificant planet circling a star near the Galactic Hub. On that planet had lived energy creatures like Mrs Webster. They had become the dominant species on that planet in the same way that humans had on Earth.

Then they had left their planet, moving out through space time, discovering how to overcome the physical laws which prevent anything from travelling faster than the speed of light, learning to slip through time instead of space, disappearing in one part of the galaxy, reappearing in another.

They had explored, they had colonized planets, they had built an Empire. So vast was their Empire that they had used all of their energies in learning about it. There had sometimes been wars within the Empire when disputes had arisen about the Imperial succession, but always peace had followed.

And then the Ursoids had come, wave after wave of them in their stubby little starships, appearing from nowhere to strike at Imperial planets, leaving them ravaged and slagged.

At first, no one knew what was happening. It was thought for a time that the destruction had been wreaked by dissident factions inside the Empire. Three planets had been raided before the Imperial Battle Fleet even sighted an Ursoid.

Then there was contact. A small group of the Fleet caught a distress signal emanating from a nearby star system. A planet was under attack. They got there just as the Ursoid raiders were departing, leaving a slagged and smoking planet behind.

The ensuing battle was short and sharply contested, but the Ursoids were outnumbered and outgunned. Searching the derelict Ursoid craft, the Imperial warriors were astounded to find that they were dealing with a hitherto unknown species. The bearlike creatures they found dead at their posts had come from beyond this galaxy.

Time passed. The threat seemed to have vanished as abruptly as it had begun. And then they came in strength. The real war had begun.

Sally sat watching the screen, information pouring into her receptive brain. Civilized worlds became desert wastelands. Refugees hurried aboard shuttles taking them to giant starships and away to new homes. Warriors who looked like Mrs Webster in her real incarnation fought with energy swords against other energy warriors, but these opponents were bearlike, they were Ursoids from beyond the galaxy.

Bobby dozed and then slept as Sally continued to absorb information: history, economics, the languages of the Empire. She was learning everything that a member of the Imperial family had to know.

And so the long night passed.