The Paella That Saved the World (The Paella Trilogy Book 1)

by Elle Simpson

  But she didn’t. Just took a few trundling steps towards me, a giant alien baby giraffe who hadn’t got a handle on how her legs worked yet, and shook my hand super gently, like she was equally well aware of how breakable the tiny, puny human was.

  “My name is Deeke Deeakatarin—” the Akanarin began, but then caught herself about ten syllables short of in time. “No, that is…I…I have no name of which the human mind can comprehend.”

  I waved the lie away. “Yeah, I got that before with Creepy— With Bob. So now I’m just doing this thing where I name you after my uncles. How do you feel about…” I had to employ an ‘uh’ of hesitancy. Too many aliens and not enough uncles. “Oh no, wait – Desmond?”

  Deeke cocked her head. “Who is Desmond?”

  “My uncle,” I said. “Uncle Desmond.”

  “Then I have no feelings towards your uncle. We have never met.”

  I barely managed to hold in my hysterical snort. “Yeah, I think Uncle Des would’ve mentioned meeting you. What I actually mean is, how do you feel about Desmond as a name – you know, for you.”

  Another head-cock happened. Opposite side. “You wish to give me a name, in the human manner, as you did for our honoured leader?”

  “Yup, just like I did for ’ole Bobby.”

  “Then it is an honour to be Desmond,” Deeke said, bowing her big grey-green head low.

  I sucked in a relieved breath. “Cool beans.”

  “Beans,” Deeke repeated, like she was reading from some computer inside her head – which, you know, she very well might’ve been. “A rudimentary form of human sustenance. Are they normally served cold? Would not such legumes require cooking to make them viable for consumption?”

  Okay, wow. Yikes. “I mean, it’s just…it’s another figure of speech, yeah?”

  “And where does this figure stand?” Deeke asked, turning to look again.

  “Oh my god,” I whispered.

  It was becoming increasingly and freakingly obvious that poor Deeke’s humungous brain was just a big, mushy puddle of Creepy Bob-induced compelled scrambled egg.

  And speaking of the creeper extraordinaire – now I had a secret message to find and a compelled underling to distract. Wait ages for a bus, then two creepy intergalactic shuttle services arrive at once.

  “So like, okay,” I said as Deeke turned back. “A figure of speech is not actually, literally a figure of—”

  “Do not attempt to devour the tiny human!”

  I flailed. News to me, that was. “Des, what—?”

  But Deeke ignored me. Her voice was this sudden, vibrating bellow in my head. I could feel the echo of it in my bones.

  “I will not allow the tiny human Hannah to come to harm! Desist your consumption, abominable beast!”

  And then—

  A sheep. One of the picnic area sheep, to be precise, who was gumming at the hem of my hoodie. But I barely had a nanosecond to register that before the sheep’s eyes went huge, then glassy, then blank. She fell to her side on the grass with a thump, legs twitching uselessly in midair.

  “Des, did you just—”

  Yup, Deeke had one hundred percent, absolutely just compelled a sheep. But not in the psychopathically calm, calculated way Creepy Bob went about it at the hospital. Just instinctual, like flinching, because she thought I was in danger.

  Me.

  (I mean, from a sheep, yeah, but it’s the thought that counts, right? And the thought was epically sweet, scrambled or not.)

  “Um, Des,” I said, toeing gently at our zonked-out, woolly friend. She rocked a little with the motion but didn’t so much as blink. “This is just a sheep. You know that, right? It can’t hurt me or anything. It doesn’t even have horns.”

  But Deeke didn’t look convinced. “It is lacking in bony outgrowths, that is true, but this ‘sheep’ creature you speak of still bears startlingly close resemblance to a puff of Omastorion cloud grass.”

  “Oh…kay?” I said, blinking.

  “Which is carnivorous,” Deeke explained, “highly intelligent, and the cause of many a death in the wilds of the KheeaKa’hren Wastes.”

  I blinked at her again. “Uh…good to know? But also? Not something we need to worry about, because this is a sheep. Not a puff of flesh-eating grass. A sheep, Des.”

  “Are you certain?” Deeke asked.

  “Totes certain. On all of the above. But especially the sheep thing.”

  Deeke nodded, seeming a little reassured at least. Then, “Might I ask you a question, Hannah?”

  “Shoot.”

  “I cannot shoot,” Deeke said. “I do not have a pulse pistol in my possession. Nor a pulse cannon. Nor a photon phase—”

  I interrupted before she could give me the full list of terrifying evil alien weaponry. “No, I mean, like – what’s your question?”

  “Ah. You use the verb in imperative to invite inquiry. I see.” Deeke nodded in understanding – which was good, because it meant at least one of us understood what was going on. “Then, my question is simply this: though you gifted me the name Desmond, you have since referred to me solely as ‘Des.’ Why is that?”

  “Because Des is your nickname.”

  “What is a nick-name?” Deeke asked, picking the word out carefully.

  “It’s like a shorter version of your name that your friends call you,” I told her.

  Deeke cocked her head. “Friends?”

  “Yeah. Friends. Buds. Pals. Bffs. That kinda thing.”

  Deeke’s head kept on cocking – to such a bizarre angle I was genuinely worried it might snap off. “Do you have a nickname, Hannah?”

  “Not really. There’s not much you can do with Hannah, to be honest. I mean, sometimes Toni – that’s my mum’s boyfriend – sometimes he calls me Hans. But not like I’m a middle-aged German man or anything. I don’t own lederhosen.”

  “Is owning lederhosen a requirement for being a middle-aged German man?” Deeke asked.

  “Just a bonus, I’m guessing.”

  That got another extreme head tilt, less psychopathic than Creepy Bob, more confused alien puppy. “I do not know what lederhosen are.”

  “Like, I’m not entirely sure either,” I told her.

  (Because who is, honestly?)

  Deeke was still looking down at me, still in confused alien puppy mode. “Nicknames are what friends call one another?”

  “Yeah. Nicknames, friends, pretty much.”

  “Then,” Deeke said, and she sounded kind of – kind of hesitant suddenly. “Then would you, Hannah…perhaps permit me the honour of calling you Hans?”

  “Des?”

  “Yes, Hannah?”

  “Absolutely you can call me Hans.”

  Deeke’s eyes went a little glimmery. “Thank you,” she said, mega quietly, almost not even in my head at all. “Thank you, Hans.”

  “You’re more than welcome, Des.”

  A groggy ‘baa’ interrupted our moment of profound intergalactic, interspecies bff’ing – the potentially carnivorous sheep. She’d recovered from the mind whammy and was trying to eat the hem of my hoodie again.

  Deeke tucked her chin in, looking concerned. “Are you most certain that these sheep creatures are not carnivorous? This being’s thoughts appear to be primarily towards the consumption of indigenous plant life, but that could all be some manner of elaborate ruse.”

  “I’m gonna bet it really isn’t.”

  “Your imminent and possible death by sheep consumption is not a scenario that should be taken lightly, or gambled upon.”

  I didn’t think it was appropriate to mention to Deeke that any version of my imminent and possible death was only being made possible and imminent by her creepy boss.

  So, “Look, no – the sheep does not want to eat me. Even slightly. You don’t have to worry about that, okay?”

  “Then I shall endeavour to try,” Deeke agreed absently, chin still tucked in, but her eyes weren’t focused on the sheep anymore – they were fixed on my b
azookas instead.

  (And it wasn’t like I knew what floated Akanarin boats back then. Still don’t, thank bejesus for that. But even then, I was more than pretty sure she wasn’t checking out the invisible décolletage. Therefore?)

  “What’s up, Des?” I asked.

  “My kind do not normally ornament our bodies with decorative coverings,” Deeke said, glancing up at me, the big alien puppy dog eyes in full deployment. “But…”

  I looked down at my bazongas again. Took the lay of the land – and the land was mostly covered in the amazing tackiness that was the gift shop’s number one best-selling, powder-pink, bedazzled, ‘I Like Big Dishes and I Cannot Lie’ hoodie.

  Then I looked back up. “Des?” I said.

  “Yes, Hans?”

  “Would you like a tacky souvenir hoodie?”

  “Most ardently,” Deeke said.

  14

  Which possibly explained at least, like, a quarter of the expression on Mum’s face when we walked into the control room.

  “All right, Mum?” I said. “You look busy and stuff. This is my friend Des.”

  “Hannah…” Mum said, in a voice about a hundred decibels fainter than her usual volume level. She got up from her seat in front of the control desk, mouth hinged open like our wonky garden gate. “What on earth…?”

  I ignored her and turned back to Deeke. “Des, this is my mum. You can call her Tracy or Trace or Professor Stanton. Don’t call her Mum, though. That’d be weird.”

  Deeke bowed her head low. It made her hoodie ride up even further – like, cropped crop-top levels. “Professor Stanton, I am Hannah’s friend Desmond, though not her Uncle Desmond. This is an important distinction.”

  “Yes,” Mum said, still sounding faint but approaching normal sarcasm levels at least. “I think I’d know if you were my little brother.”

  That nugget earned Mum a befuddled head tilt.

  (I was already well on my way then to being fluent in Akanarin head tilts. Honestly, you’d be surprised at the subtleties.)

  “I am substantially taller than you, Professor Stanton,” Deeke said.

  “Littler in age terms,” Mum clarified.

  The tilt got tiltier and befuddlier. “You are substantially older than I am, Professor Stanton.”

  “Oh, am I?” Mum said, in the kind of tone that made that a question which so totally didn’t need answered, thank you very much.

  But Deeke wasn’t fluent in Mum yet. “Yes,” she said, “this is evident from the intensified dermal creasing at the corners of your eyes and in your interocular ridge, and by the decrease in skin elasticity beginning to occur at your mouth and jaw line.”

  I sucked in a breath. “Stop while you’re ahead, Des.”

  “Ahead of what?”

  “Ahead of, like, getting grounded until the end of time.”

  “Sound advice,” Mum muttered, giving Des a look that would’ve melted me – a look, in fact, that matched the one the Big Dish was glaring down at us through the control room’s huge floor-to-ceiling windows. Mum hooked a thumb towards her malevolent one-eyed child. “I’m told you’re here to help, Des. Don’t suppose you happen to know anything about radio telescopes?”

  “Radio telescopes,” Deeke repeated, doing her ‘reading from a computer inside her brain’ thing again. She paused a second. Then, “Yes, I now know everything there is to know of radio telescopes – though only, of course, to the extent of current human knowledge.”

  “Oh, of course,” Mum said, bland as butter. “Pull up a chair then. See if you can help me reestablish the connection to the auxiliary generator. I need to shift the Dish to parked to check on the receiver box, but we’re not getting enough power from the grid.”

  “The changing wind direction is of concern to you, Professor?”

  “Not so much at the moment, but I think—”

  I tuned out the technobabble in approximately half a microsecond and watched in horror instead as Deeke folded herself down onto a chair at the control desk next to Mum.

  God, so much for distracting her. And it’s not like I hadn’t tried. It’s just that nothing had worked.

  I’d offered to show Deeke the Big Dish close up, to take her to the planetarium and run one of the shows, even to buy her a tacky souvenir t-shirt to go with the hoodie. But the longer I tried to delay her, the more Creepy Bob’s compulsion kicked in. Deeke’s answers got shorter, her voice blanker, and she’d grown more and more insistent on getting to the control room ‘to help with repairs and for no nefarious purposes whatsoever.’

  So I’d given in to the inevitable. Had to. I’d thought that once we arrived, maybe I could get everyone talking, have Mum distract Deeke with some science chit-chat while I looked for the message. I hadn’t counted on Mum’s workaholism, though.

  Should’ve counted on it – because now there I was, with no idea where to look for the message and no distractions to cover me.

  “Buttocks,” I whispered emphatically.

  Colin had said the extractor would know what it was looking for, but how would I know when it had found it? How would I even know if—

  A sudden thrum started to thrum from somewhere about my person – a thrum I could only call yearning.

  (And don’t get me wrong, I’ve been known to make yearning thrums before. Towards Dishy Rishi in Year Twelve, for example, or to the chocolate cake they sell in the gift shop cafe, or most recently towards supermodel aliens and their supermodel cheekbones.

  So I’ve thrummed yearningly, yeah, but my yearning thrums don’t tend to thrum from the front pocket of my hoodie. Therefore, ergo, ipso facto, and all that other fancy Latin stuff? The extractor had done its job and found the message.

  But where?)

  I swivelled, hands on hips, like I was stretching out a kink in my back, and let the extractor take a proper look around. A nanosecond of swivelling was all it took. The thrum kicked up to melodramatic romance-novel levels when I twisted towards one of the old-fashioned computers that lined the room like ugly metal sideboards.

  Bingo. Message found.

  Extractor in hand, I tiptoed backwards – settled my bum on the edge of the computer cabinet, then attempted some casual leaning. And when all of that didn’t attract any attention from the eggheads at the control desk, I slipped the extractor into place.

  The second it touched the cabinet’s metal top, a pale light flared deep down in the cloudy crystal, then faded to nothing just as quickly.

  I blinked. Wait, was that it? Message extracted?

  Skrick-shreek!

  I jumped. Thought for one flailing, failtastic, heart-thudding second that the familiar screech and scrape was the extractor setting off an alarm or something. Wasn’t, though. Of course it wasn’t. Just someone opening the main doors out in reception.

  “That’ll be Antonio with lunch,” Mum said absently, her eyes never leaving the screen in front of her. “Go and help him, would you, love? He’ll have his hands full.”

  “Um…” I flicked a glance down at the extractor. Could I move it yet? Was the message safe?

  “Hannah,” Mum said, in a voice that told me a grounding was inevitable but the duration was still negotiable.

  “Yeah, sorry. Two secs.” Nothing for it – I snatched up the extractor, felt the thrum die away even as I wrapped my fingers around it. “Hold up, Tone! I’ll come and give you a hand.”

  Five steps and I was at the control room door, shouldering it open, sliding out into reception. And—

  Waiting there?

  Wasn’t Toni.

  “Hello again, Hannah,” said Creepy Bob.

  15

  “Why are you here?” Creepy Bob asked. “I see no reason for you to be here.”

  “Uh…” A faint pulse of compulsion was building around me, hardly there but growing stronger with every second I stood frozen and freaked. “I’m…” I jolted into life, started to make some weird, nervous gesture – I don’t even know what – and that was when I realised. The
extractor. Oh god. I was still holding the extractor.

  I stuffed my hands into the pocket of my hoodie. Shrugged jerkily, hoping. But—

  Creepy Bob’s head tilted down, watching all the while.

  Oh god, oh no.

  I snatched my hands back out again. Hoped desperately that the extractor wasn’t bulky enough to show through the thick cotton. “Uh…I’m…I’m…” I stuttered. “I’m just…”

  Footsteps, suddenly. Deeke’s big feet flip-flapping across the lino, then the quieter scuff of Mum’s shoes behind.

  “Afternoon,” Mum said, appearing at my side. “Didn’t think we’d be seeing you again quite so soon, Bob.”

  Creepy Bob didn’t reply. Her eyes were still fixed on mine. I was a rabbit and she was the headlights of the creepy car about to make me go splat. “I asked you a question, Hannah. You have not answered it.” Her voice was sharp somehow, even under all the blankness. “Why are you here?”

  I opened my mouth, found it empty of even the most ridiculous excuse, but Mum cut in before I could start stuttering again.

  “Now, excuse me,” she said. “There is absolutely no need to take that sort of tone with—”

  “Silence.”

  A thwack of compulsion went flying by. A strong one. Mum’s mouth shut with a clack.

  “You need to attend to matters elsewhere in the complex,” Creepy Bob told her, still not looking away from me. “Leave. Now.”

  Mum did. Straight out the front door and gone.

  “Honoured Leader,” Deeke began, her voice wavery. “My most humble apologies. I have not yet had time to—”

  “And I have no time to hear your pathetic excuses,” Creepy Bob snapped. “Where are the primitive computational devices?”

  Deeke nodded to the control room. “In here, Honoured Leader.”

  “Then take me to them, and you can finally do what it is you were sent here to do.”

  “Yes, Honoured Leader.” Deeke bowed her head low and ducked back through the doorway.

  “Imbecilic child,” Creepy Bob muttered. She grabbed my elbow as she stalked past and hauled me along after Deeke. Louder, she said, “Finding the Watchkeeper’s message should have been the work of mere moments.”