Part 24 (2/2)

'Joke? You think my performance a joke?' The Astronomer Royal seemed to rumble, a bit like an earthquake, or the nearby volcano.

'No, I'm sure -'

'It is a performance in the highest sense. A quintessential juxtaposition of tragedy and comedy, of emotion and action. Of information and suggestion, threat and remedy. And you mock it?'

I sat down, the better to weather the Royal temper tantrum. 'No. It's like this. I'm not here to judge or criticize, write reviews or even spread theatre gossip. I'm here to ask you a favour.' I took a deep breath and plunged on, before the Astronomer Royal could protest. 'I come from a planet many ... a very long way away. And this planet I come from is in danger. It is dying.'

The Astronomer Royal opened and closed a few of its mouths interestedly.

Something the size of a killer whale barely escaped being squashed in one.

'A dying world? A race against time? I understand! You have a performance of your own. You have come here to observe, at least observe for as long as you are able within your own small lifetime. Observe and make notes and take pointers from my own performance. You are a fan!

My first alien fan! I am surprised and gratified!'

No, no no no no! 'Look. I'm not a fan.' 'Not a fan?'

'No!' My voice was a shout of frustration. With an effort I got my temper under control. He was an alien after all: he probably didn't even realize how badly he was annoying me, how obtuse he was being or how easily he was missing the point. 'That is, what I mean is, I have something far more important to discuss. You see, I know the future. I know what you are going to do on your world's moon - 'You know the climax of my performance?' The Astronomer Royal's voice was a mixture of petulance and anger. 'You aren't a fan and you know the climax of my performance?'

'Yes, that's right, and I'm here to ask you not to do what you're going to do!

Not to seed the Moon with life, not to launch it into s.p.a.ce. If you do that, it'll mean the end for my world.'

The Astronomer Royal suddenly heaved. If I had thought the previous motion was dangerous I soon learnt my mistake. The sea bed for a mile in either direction heaved. Cthalctose spun, and bashed into one another with huge force and were whirled away in the terrible currents. Nearby rocks toppled lazily to the ocean floor with the sound of slow summer thunder.

'You know the climax of my performance? You aren't a fan and you know the climax of my performance, and you want me to alter the ending?'

Tentacles had reached out to grab me, otherwise I would surely have been whirled away with the rest of the audience. The tentacles closed over me with crus.h.i.+ng force. 'I see it all now. Yes. Oh yes. You come here, emissary from another world, come in peace, so you say? But we know now why you come! Oh yes, we do. You come not to study at the cilia' of a master but to steal his secrets, to disclose the climax of his own performance and ruin a hundred years of planning and rehearsals! And for what? So your own, miserable existence can be enriched by the tiniest fragment of my own genius! You have come here to steal my thunder and I won't have it!' The tentacle uncurled. I found myself hurtling towards a number of Vehicles.

One of them opened its maw to swallow me whole. 'Vehicles! Providers!

Take this alien pestilence to the nursery and give him to the Royal Polyps!'

I thought fast. This was no good. I'd already been swallowed and half digested once. I didn't want to be so again. Especially not as a precursor to having something even more horrible done to me in the heart of an underwater volcano. A Vehicle swam closer, acid churning in its wake. I tried to imagine what Benny would do.

'Wait!' I shouted. 'What if I can suggest a better way of ending the performance?' The Vehicle stopped.

The Royal seaquake stopped.

The Astronomer Royal's mouths opened and closed interestedly.

'How?'

Good. Yes. Excellent. How was I going to make good on that suggestion?

Once again I had seen Benny proved right. I never thought about anything before I did it. I just dug big holes for myself. 'Um,' I said. 'You could ... well, perhaps it would be worth considering ... that is to say what about changing the ending so you don't . . .' Oh yes, very good, Jason. But how?

I couldn't think.

The Astronomer Royal eventually gave up waiting for an answer. For a being whose normal life span was in excess of half a millennium he seemed unfairly impatient.

'As I thought. Everyone's a critic. No one has the artistic genius to back up their cra.s.s and obviously derived suggestions. Vehicles! Providers! Give him to the children.'

'Wait!' A moment of inspiration struck me. 'Please wait!' I pulled the last half a dozen of the Doctor's force-field emitters off my wrist, those I should have given to any of the NASA technicians who were still alive. 'Let me ask you a question. How do you suppose I've survived in your ocean so far? I've been swallowed and digested and puked up and crushed by large tentacles. I'm still alive because of one of these things.'

'These things?' There was doubt in the Astronomer Royal's voice. But curiosity as well. 'They are so small. I can hardly see them.'

'They are called force-field emitters. I don't know how they work, exactly, but I do know they can be used to harness energy and control it. Do you have nuclear fusion? Fission? Ion drives?'

'We understand these things you speak of. The Royal Polyps play with them from time to time. But you know what children are like They tire quickly.'

'Well, with these things here you can make your Polyps' toys into s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps bigger than you ever dreamt of. You will have the power of your sun at your finger - tentacletips. You will be able to get everyone off the planet before it is destroyed. You'll be able to live. You'll all be able to live!'

'Live?' The Astronomer Royal mouthed the word as if it were a novelty.

Perhaps it was. I didn't know how long he'd been living with the notion that his generation would be the last. That he himself would probably witness the extinction of his species.

'Yes. Live. You know, somewhere else. Another planet? There are loads around.'

'I know! I am the Astronomer Royal?'

'Yes of course. I'd forgotten that in the ... uh ... immensity of your performance?' Ah Benny. If you could only see me now. It's not so hard.

By now the audience was drifting back. The Astronomer Royal considered.

He looked at the various members of the audience. He thought about it some more. A small tentacle - no bigger than an elephant's trunk - plucked the force-field emitters from me, held them and examined them with intricate thoroughness.

'Hexagonal crystalline structure? We understand this. Polarized lines of force. We understand this. Quantum particle emission using normal s.p.a.ce and time as a conduit for a cohesive tripolar field. Ah. This we do not understand. But we can learn. Perhaps you are right. Perhaps we can live.

We will have our best Engineers work on the problem at a molecular level.'

Things like sea urchins swam out of the Astronomer Royal's mouth. They had long, fine spines with which they propelled themselves through the acid sea. They swam up to the force-field emitters and lifted them from the tentacle. Some held them, some examined them with their spines.

Meanwhile the Astronomer Royal seemed to reach a decision. 'Until we know all that can be known about these objects you will remain our guest.

Since the estimated time for understanding these objects and recreating them is many times your own lifetime, we will now have you placed in suspended animation. Your presence will also act as insurance against something going wrong, or others of your kind coming to change the climax of our new performance.' What? 'No, wait, I've - The Astronomer Royal ejected more Engineers. Now I was worried. If they could examine things at a molecular level did that mean they could get inside my force field? I , scrabbled for Benny's ring. Time to kiss this place goodbye. The engineers attached themselves to me. Their spines rubbed against the force field, a couple of millimetres from my face. Despite my safety I began to feel claustrophobic. And which pocket had I put the ring in? Left or right? Was it under that hankie? Beside the wallet?

Something tickled my face.

The urchin spines were inside the force field. They were touching me, exploring me, learning about me. I felt a tickling sensation in my ear, all over my skin. Were they inside my body now? I tried to shout. There didn't seem much point. I didn't feel any pain. I didn't feel any fear.

I didn't feel anything at all in fact. For more than a thousand years.

I dreamt. Of course they weren't dreams: they were performances. Other people's experiences, an emotional flood of them, accelerated almost to nonsense by the slowing of my own metabolism. I saw images from the greatest and the weakest of the Cthalctose minds. I saw them build and fight and destroy and build again. I saw them learn about the force fields; I saw them think about the applications of the technology they now owned; I saw them build schools and hospitals and extend life and banish poverty. I saw them build great cities in the ocean, free themselves from the confines of the rocks to which they would normally be fixed for their whole adult life.

I saw them evolve from a race of thinkers to a race of builders. They took abstract philosophy, art and history and fused them with the new science to form a powerful whole.

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