The Mechanical Messiah (35 page)

‘I suppose they would,’ agreed Alice.

‘So I will say goodbye for now.’

‘You do not have to,’ said Alice. ‘You could come back to the spaceship with me if you want to.’

‘I am far too shy,’ said the white rabbit. ‘And your hunter friends would surely try to shoot me.’

‘You said that they would not be able to shoot anything other than each other.’

‘Well, at least you were listening. But I will say goodbye to you and see you again soon.’

And with that the white rabbit vanished.

Just like
that.

‘Don’t put on a tourniquet like
that,’
said Colonel Katterfelto. ‘Around a chap’s arm, perhaps. But never around his throat.’

The surviving Jovians, who had not been wounded, were making poor work of applying the field dressings from the colonel’s first-aid kit (which, with uncanny forethought, the colonel had brought along with him).

‘Let me do it,’ said this gentleman. ‘And Darwin, stop swigging from my hip flask. Victims only, doncha know.’

Darwin offered the hip flask to a Jovian with a hurty-stump.

‘Not a banana in sight,’ said the monkey. ‘I think that we should all go back for tea.’

‘Dear Cameron,’ said Alice. ‘I thought you were bringing out a deckchair and a gin and tonic for me.

Cameron Bell shook his head most sadly. ‘We had better go back now,’ he said.

‘I heard shouting,’ said Alice, who was not making any particular motions towards joining the private detective in a stroll back to the spaceship. ‘I do believe that some of the hunters might have injured themselves, or others.’

‘Happily,’ said Cameron Bell, ‘that is
not
my responsibility.’

‘Am
I
your responsibility, then?’ asked Alice.

‘Would you care to be?’ Cameron Bell surprised even
himself with
this question.

‘A lady likes to have a gallant protector,’ said Alice. ‘Come on, I’ll race you back to the spaceship.’

‘It is not in
that
direction.’

But Alice was off once again.

The big-game hunt had not got off to a particularly good start, all things considered. No big game had actually been bagged, two Jovians were dead and three more quite badly injured. Colonel Katterfelto had created a triage system to judge the seriousness of what had occurred.

Number One,
which was to say the highest category, was, of course,
death.

Number Two,
an injury serious enough to soon elevate the injured party to the Number One category.

Number Three,
the loss of some body part previously considered vital, but whose loss did not in fact lead to death.

Number Four,
anything else.

So far there were two
Number Ones,
one
Number Two
and two
Number Threes.
Which the colonel still considered not bad for the first day out. As he and the remaining hunters limped back towards the spaceship, hauling makeshift stretchers, he thought he would get a bit of a community sing on the go as a morale booster. He chose that evergreen popular Music Hall standard: the ‘Two-by-One’ song.

An anthem in praise of planed timber, approximately two inches by one inch, but sawn to any length you might require.

As the verses were quite long and complicated, he stuck to the chorus, which went:

The two-by-one,

The two-by-one
—

That’s the stuff for you, old son.

You’ll have laughter,

You’ll have fun

When working with the two-by-one.

It’s a marvel of the age,

The greatest of them all.

The four-by-two is much too large

And the one-by-one’s too small.

It certainly had the desired effect and soon all the
Number Four
survivors were laughing once again.

The colonel, Darwin, the walking wounded and the rest met up with Alice and soon after with Cameron Bell.

All were somewhat surprised and a tad disheartened when they returned to the landing site and found that the
Marie Lloyd
was missing.

one,’ said Colonel Katterfelto. ‘The spaceship has upped and gone.’

Darwin the monkey gibbered mournfully. Alice thought it most queer. No laughter came from the Jovian hunters. Most looked rather downcast.

Cameron Bell sat down on a rock and viewed the landing site. He viewed the lichen, the trunks of the trees, the foliage high above.

Alice sat down beside Mr Bell and gave his arm a squeeze.

‘Do you think we will be marooned here for ever?’ she asked him. ‘Do you suppose that I will have to become Eve to all you gentleman Adams?’

Cameron Bell was made speechless by this.

‘I want to go home,’ said Alice.

‘And I too, sweet lady,’ said the private detective. ‘When
I
choose to do so. It is all a most curious business.’

‘Curiouser and curiouser?’ said Alice.

‘Decidedly so. Because although the spaceship is not here, it cannot have left.’

‘Why not?’ asked Alice.

‘Because I have
this.’
Cameron Bell exhibited a large brass key. ‘Call me a suspicious fellow,’ he said, ‘but as the spaceship represents our only means of transport back to planet Earth, I had no wish for it to leave without me.

‘Why would that happen?’ asked Alice.

‘I can think of a number of reasons. Which is why, when I returned to the spaceship to gather deckchairs and drinks, which you will notice are also missing, I availed myself of this key. I believe the technical term for it is the
ignition key.
The spaceship will not fly without it.’

‘But clearly it has,’ said Alice.

Cameron Bell shook his head. ‘Let us suppose that another ignition key exists — and I do not believe that one does — how would you explain the marks left upon the lichen by the weight of the spaceship when it rested there?’

Alice stared. ‘There are no marks,’ said she.

‘Precisely. Which is why I say to you that the spaceship never left.’

Others were gathering now about Mr Bell, either intrigued or annoyed by his conversation.

‘What
exactly
are you saying?’ asked the colonel.

‘I am saying that the spaceship never left.’

‘Hate to contradict you,’ said the old soldier, ‘but as you can see — or as you
cannot
— there is no spaceship. It’s gone.’

‘I perceive by the lower buttons of your jacket that you are a gambling man,’ said Cameron Bell, and the colonel grunted in assent to this. ‘Then I will wager you one hundred pounds that you cannot walk from here directly to those trees over there.’

‘To beyond where the spaceship stood?’ asked the colonel.

Cameron Bell brought out a handkerchief and dabbed at the head he was nodding.

‘One hundred pounds?’ The colonel glanced at Darwin.

Darwin shrugged his shoulders.

‘Just to walk from here to there?’

‘In a straight line, yes.’

‘Then you have a wager, sir.’ The colonel extended his tanned and wrinkly hand. Cameron Bell gave this hand a good shaking.

‘In your own time, then,’ said the private detective.

‘Man’s a damn fool,’ said the colonel.

‘Hold hard, if thou pleaseth,’ said a Jovian hunter, who had this very afternoon acquired the new nickname of Stumpy. ‘Canst anyone take this bet?’

‘Certainly,’ said’ Cameron Bell. Giving Stumpy’s stump a little shake.

Colonel Katterfelto and three chuckling Jovians set out to earn themselves an easy one hundred pounds each at the expense of a private detective who had clearly been out in the shafts of sunlight for a little too long.

Darwin eyed the private detective. This man was no sun-struck fool, he felt sure.

‘Excuse me, please,’ said the monkey of space.

‘How might I help you, Darwin?’ asked Mr Cameron Bell.

‘My feelings are,’ said Darwin, ‘that you are about to win the bets. But please assure me that in doing so no harm will come to the colonel. He may lack for certain necessary skills as the leader of a big-game hunt, but I do consider him to be my closest friend.’

‘If I am correct,’ said Cameron Bell, ‘he will experience nothing more than a headache. If I am incorrect, however, I have no idea how I will pay him his winnings.’

The detective and the monkey looked on.

And one at least was surprised by what happened next.

There came a sound as of a wooden ball striking a coconut after a well-thrown hurl at a fairground shy.

‘Damn and blast!’ cried Colonel Katterfelto, staggering backwards and falling down in a heap.

‘Blasteth also,’ came further cries, to the accompaniment of further such horrible coconut-striking sounds.

‘Quite as I suspected,’ said Mr Cameron Bell, making the very smuggest of faces. ‘But as to how it is done, I do not have the foggiest idea.’

‘They hit their heads upon nothing,’ said Alice. ‘Oh no —I understand you now. Not upon
nothing,
but upon something that we can no longer see.’

‘Precisely,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘The spaceship is there, but somehow quite invisible.’

‘It is the glamour,’ said Alice, with wonder in her voice. ‘The glamour of Fairyland. It can be nothing else.’

Darwin’s face wore a helpless look.

Alice tried to explain. ‘It is magic,’ she told the monkey. ‘Upon this magical planet, magic really works. On Earth many people, perhaps myself included, believe in the fairy folk. They are said to have magical powers, one of which is called the glamour. They can make things appear to be other things. Or not appear to be there at all. I find it rather wonderful. But it also makes me afraid.’

‘I wonder,’ said Cameron Bell, ‘whether the spaceship is invisible on the
inside.
Come, Darwin, I shall collect my winnings and then we shall both find out.’

The
Marie Lloyd
was
not
invisible on the inside. And once Cameron Bell had explained to the losers of the bet that someone or
something
had placed a cloak of invisibility about the spaceship, the spell appeared to be broken and the exterior of the ship in wavering rainbow patterns came once more to be seen.

Which Alice for one considered to be something of a shame. Because it was, after all, a rather ugly spaceship and it
did
spoil the view of the valley.

‘Which I suspect might well be the point,’ said Cameron Bell, over dinner. ‘I am coming to the conclusion that magic thrives upon Venus. Perhaps the very planet itself is magical. And this, believe me, is radical thinking upon my part. I am a man of Earthly logic and although scientists of Earth in their arrogant bravado would seek to explain the universe and its origins, I am of no such ilk. I am of the opinion that this planet does not want us upon it. I am of the opinion that it would be in all of our interests to depart this world as speedily as we might.’

Corporal Larkspur, who was serving the evening’s repast —rather splendid lamb shanks in gravy with two veg and Treacle Sponge Bastard for pudding — overheard these words and was moved to contribute some of his own.

‘The hunters hath paid a great deal of money to cometh on this trip,’ he told Mr Bell. ‘Once we hath sufficient trophies to fill the Refridgetorium, we shalt depart for Earth.’

‘Might not be as simple as that,’ said the colonel, splashing red wine into glasses about the table. ‘Big white furry thing in the glade this afternoon. All took aim. All missed. Chaps shot each other. Big white furry thing should have been caught in the crossfire. But no trace. Nothing. Odd planet, this. At least on Mars, if you shot something with a ray gun, it had the decency to die. Here things come and go as they please.’