The Limpet Syndrome

by Tony Moyle

  “How do you remove the soul if it’s stuck to a rock?”

  “Well, just like the limpet, when the tide comes back in it can be loosened and picked off quite easily. You just need to know which rock it’s stuck to and when the tide is high.”

  “So which rocks are Sandy and Ian clinging to?” asked John, fascinated by the Arbiter’s explanation. It gave him hope that his own soul could show some powerful attributes.

  “Well, you probably know already that the soul has to move rapidly into another carbon-based life form. Normally that has to be done in seconds. In almost every case the soul is drawn towards the last carbon-based form that it has seen in life, it sticks like a flashback. Now if you’re very lucky that’s a tree. It’s much easier to find a tree. If you’re really unlucky it’s a type of insect, a really small one,” explained Laslow, seemingly disinterested with his own explanation. His hands searched around in his cape for something to preoccupy them.

  “Pigeon,” replied John, speaking as much to himself. “They’ve been pigeoncarnated!”

  Laslow’s hands found what they were looking for. A thin ivory smoking pipe about seven inches long and beautifully crafted. The tobacco end had been carved with microscopic detail to reveal the outlines of a collection of mini-planets clumped together in some unknown solar system. The pipe was made of a liquid silver material that captured the light that gleamed in from the high windows, prompting the planets to move around in their own gravitational fields like a tiny physics lesson. When Laslow drew a long lungful of air through it, the resulting sweet-smelling camomile smoke instantly transformed the atmosphere from unease to calm.

  “How can you be certain?” Laslow said between puffs.

  “I have a copy of a newspaper article. Both of them were involved in an explosion in which they were rescuing pigeons from a government lab. It’s the only paper that I’ve had for the last month and I’ve read it over and over again.”

  “That sounds plausible to me,” replied Laslow. “What were they making in this lab?”

  John stopped momentarily before responding. Why did Laslow care what they were making? It would seem to have no relevance. Even if it did, what would Laslow do with this information to help him? The old man felt John’s hesitation and the one thing that he disliked above all else was…well, pretty much everything, actually. Laslow pierced Nash’s eyes with his pitch-black stare, seeking for the information that, hesitation or not, he would eventually uncover. After a period of resistance, John’s mind gave way.

  “It’s a drug of sorts. It seems to have some mind-altering quality. It’s not really clear from the article.”

  Laslow’s pupils, the only part of his face which showed any sign of emotion, expanded slightly. “That’s interesting. Thank you for indulging me.”

  “I didn’t really know I had,” responded John.

  “Is there anything else that you need from me, John?”

  “There is one thing,” asked John, unable to resist asking the one question that was most important to him. “Why did you choose Hell?”

  “What if I told you, John? Would it matter, would it change anything?”

  “I deserve to know, you changed my future,” said John, standing up spontaneously and stabbing his finger against the glass.

  “Deserve to know? No, you do not deserve to know. You were dead at the time and now all you are is a spirit, John. As far as I’m aware there is no Geneva Convention covering the rights of souls. You’re a dot, an insignificant speck in many histories,” replied Laslow, unflinching to John’s suddenly more animated nature.

  “I could still have received a different outcome if it weren’t for you?”

  “If I told you why, I would be disclosing information that you would have absolutely no way of understanding and even less chance of accepting. Stick to your task. There are forces at play here beyond your wildest comprehension. Precarious is your route on the tightrope of fate. Fall on one side and you will witness the destruction of the world that you hold so dear. Fall on the other side and we will witness the destruction of my world and I won’t allow that. Unless you place every sinew, every ounce of effort, every atom, and every recalled emotion into that thin line, not only will you fail, but also you will see me again. If you do see me again…I will burn you.”

  Laslow replaced his hood, lifted himself away from the table and walked towards the door. The conversation was over. Raising a bony finger for the last time, he pointed at John who suddenly felt an intense heat, as if an invisible flame was bearing down on him. The glass, which he still had his finger on, started to bubble and melt. Large lumps of molten glass were running down the centre, coagulating in heaps on the table. Finally with a crack the wooden table split in two under the intense power of the heat. All that stood in front of John now was a three-foot-wide gap in the screen, a pool of melted glass and shards of wood. By the time John had made it through to the visitor’s side of the room, Laslow was gone.

  Had Laslow done that to free him or frighten him, or both? Torn between making a run for it and returning to his cell, he moved carefully and quietly towards the exit. When he reached the doorway, what he saw told him that he was going to need to run. The first clue to this was that the hallway outside the visitors’ room now featured the corpses of two guards, one at either end. They were fully clothed, but what was left of their bodies had been turned from flesh to scorched bone. The unbearable smell of putrid, burnt flesh wafted through the passage. John lifted his jacket sleeve to stop himself gagging on the smell and the wispy, dark smoke that still hung in the air. It was a truly gruesome sight, even though he was viewing it through someone else’s eyes.

  These people had no chance of escaping the power that had so easily melted glass and burnt wood that John correctly guessed to be the cause of their deaths. What scared John more than the power that Laslow carried was the disregard for life and the ease in which he dispatched it. Out in the main reception more bodies were scattered around, killed at the spot where they worked. It was unclear why they had to be victims. If John had touched a nerve it wasn’t the fault of these innocent bystanders.

  John and Nash knew they had to get out, and fast. If they were found here in this devastation they wouldn’t just be facing false passport charges, they’d be up for mass murder. They both ran for it, both for once in the same direction.

  “That was a bit intense,” thought Nash.

  “Did you get most of that?” replied John puffing out of the main doors and down the street away from the airport compound.

  “Yes, and at least I believe you a bit more now. There’s stuff there that I never wanted to hear and certainly never want to see again.”

  “You’re not alone. I think I’ve seen enough of Switzerland for a while: what say you we get back to London?”

  “Agreed, but I don’t think we’re going be able to go commercially again.”

  “You’re right, we didn’t get here that well using domestic airlines, but how else are we going to get back?” said John between puffed-out strides.

  “I could call my friend, Syd? He’s got his own charter plane. We’ve used him a lot when we’ve done gigs in Europe, if we can find a phone I’ll call him and he can organise a pick-up.”

  “That seems like a good move, although something tells me we could have saved a lot of stress if we’d thought of that on the way out,” replied John.

  - CHAPTER FOURTEEN -

  FLIGHT 44

  It was a beautiful May morning in Buckinghamshire. The warm sunlight shone down upon the wooded valley bathing it in a shower of golden glitter that played hide-and-seek with bush and thicket. The spring plumage that covered twig and branch was a kaleidoscope of pastel shades. Flowers of red, yellow, white and blue quivered in the brisk wind and danced in time to a secret melody. It was a small part of the world at peace. Fauna and flora entwined in harmony, working together in a perfect balance of symmetry, just the way nature intended it. Perfect symmetry? Maybe that w
as a little over-the-top. It was almost perfect. The animals, insects and plants that lived there in the wood were demonstrating some rather strange behaviours. They all felt that there was something unnatural amongst them and it made their instincts twitch.

  Peculiar behaviours in animals isn’t that unusual of course. It’s said that a cow can sense a change in the weather, even when there are no obvious signs of one. It is these same evolutionary instincts that cats use to perceive danger well before the event. What was strange in this valley was that all of the animals were acting oddly, as if the valley species had gained a combined sixth sense. As a consequence of this new power, none of them would go anywhere near the large oak tree next to a group of silver birches at the foot of the valley. Almost all life forms had moved away from it over the last five or six weeks and their anxiety was not totally inappropriate.

  The pigeons were the only species that went anywhere near that strange oak and it wasn’t just the group that normally lived in it. Their population had expanded rapidly over the last week in anticipation of some great unscheduled pigeon convention. None of the other creatures knew the reason for this migration and they wanted nothing to do with it. Well, almost nothing. Although no animal ventured to the tree itself, that didn’t stop it from being the only topic of conversation amongst the twitters, hoots, growls and croaks.

  Throughout the generations humans have learnt from the strange, intuitive behaviours of animals, and the opposite is also true. Most pet owners will swear that their animals demonstrate human behaviours copied from their masters. Maybe they’re right, or quite possibly their brains have been addled by the overexposure to pet faeces? What all animals, including humans, share is a natural sense of inquisitiveness. In most neighbourhoods people tend to be a little bit nosy. A curtain in a second-floor window ruffles to reveal a little old lady spying on an unannounced guest arriving at a neighbour’s house. Some minutes later the rumours spread around town of an affair between Mrs. Hitchins and the man from the gas company.

  Just occasionally the pigeons noticed the nose of a fox poking out of an old tree trunk just within earshot. When a feathery head had turned in that direction a rustle of leaves was followed by the rapid retreat of an embarrassed wren. The animals were on watch. Perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of natural nosiness, or perhaps because two pigeons as big as pheasants now lived in that tree. On this particular May morning, these abnormally sized pigeons were sitting in the nest of that old oak tree fighting over a worm.

  “I really don’t want it,” said Sandy. “Is it too much to ask to have something different once in a while? I mean, a snail wouldn’t go amiss?”

  “Yeah a good, juicy snail would be great. It would feel like normal food,” said Ian.

  “Look, one of us is going to have to eat it or she’ll force it down our throats again. I still haven’t stopped coughing from the last time,” added Sandy despondently, virtually retching at the very thought.

  Over on the other side of the nest two infant pigeons sat watching them intently but with a touch of fear. Sitting as far as possible from Ian and Sandy without falling out of the tree, they watched their oversized siblings curiously, waiting to see what strange habits they were likely to reveal next. Over the past month Ian had given them names to pass the time, uncertain if this was a sign of insanity or normality. The one on the left with the blue head was called Fred, and to his left was Emma, his sister. Ian didn’t know biologically whether she was a she, but had decided the white and brown colour made her look more feminine.

  “Do you think Em or Fred want it?” Ian said to Sandy. “They look like they need some feeding up, they’re nowhere near as big as we are.”

  “What did you say?”

  Occasionally Sandy experienced a flashback to his past life. A connection that he could not fully control would seep out of his left brain activity. It was like déjà vu, although not something that he’d seen before, something he had been before.

  “I said that they aren’t as big as us.”

  “Not that bit,” said Sandy shaking his head. “It may not have crossed your pea-sized brain but we are bigger than every pigeon that we’ve seen. Given that we eat less than any of them there must be some other reason for that, don’t you think?”

  Ian shrugged, clueless to Sandy’s thought-process.

  “What was the other bit you said?”

  “I said Em or Fred might want it. The worm,” Ian added in case he’d omitted even the smallest piece of the message.

  “Em or Fred,” muttered Sandy slowly, several times over and over again.

  “Those two, remember I called them EM and FRED,” replied Ian, even more slowly as if talking to an idiot.

  “I’ve got this word Em-or-fed circling around me. It’s something important but I can’t work it out. Does it mean anything to you, Ian?”

  Ian sat for a moment trying intensely to show that his face was concentrating. In truth, Ian’s brain had always been a bleak place, desolate from any true intellectual capacity. Even when he did try to really think, all that popped into his head was something completely random. His eyes stared upwards and his tongue hung from his beak as he vainly attempted to demonstrate thought.

  “Is Emorfed a…type of cheese?” replied Ian randomly. This was a bluff. What he’d actually been thinking about was what colour of offspring you’d get if you bred Emma and Fred together.

  “No, it’s not a cheese, you spastic,” Sandy glared, rubbing his head with his wing in an attempt to massage the answer out. “God, I wish I could think straight, my brain’s completely jumbled.”

  Ian hopped over to Fred and Emma to offer the worm that was still wriggling around fighting for life. Both pigeons shuffled away as Ian laid the worm in front of them like a holy sacrifice.

  “Would you say that Fred’s head is blue, or more a violet colour?” Ian asked, still contemplating baby colours.

  “Violet.”

  “So that would make their chicks a sky-blue colour, I’d guess.”

  “Violet,” Sandy repeated.

  “I know, you said that.”

  “Not the colour,” Sandy replied calmly. “Violet Stokes, I’m starting to remember.”

  “Violet, who?” said Ian.

  “I phoned her just before we died in the bomb,” said Sandy, now ignoring any noises that came from Ian in case he lost his train of thought. “I phoned my friend, Violet Stokes. I phoned her to warn her about something. What was it? Yes, I know, I phoned to warn her about Emorfed, that’s it.”

  “What’s a phone?”

  The pictures were becoming clearer. Connections were flashing around in Sandy’s head. The pieces in this mental jigsaw only fell into place if he blurted them out loud in case he lost the ability to recall them.

  “Now I remember Violet, she was my second-year primary schoolteacher,” Ian chirped.

  “Shut up,” replied Sandy curtly. “She was the leader of J.A.W.S., the animal welfare group.”

  “Oh, that Violet,” Ian replied, not altogether convinced. “Why did you want to warn her about cheese? Is she lactose intolerant?”

  “Remind me to smack you when I get my hands back. Emorfed is not a cheese, you idiot. It’s the drug that they were developing at Tavistock. It’s what they were testing on the pigeons in preparation for using it on the whole of the British public. What’s more, I am absolutely sure it’s the reason that I wouldn’t let go of life. Why part of me remained when the rest of me died. It must be stopped and we, scrub that, I, am the only one who can do it.”

  Ian continued to look blankly at him.

  “I’m not really sure why I’m explaining this to you, I’d be better of telling those two over there.”

  Both Emma and Fred nodded in agreement.

  Ian tried to compute what Sandy had said. Whether Ian would have understood it even if he was still in his human form was questionable, so the chance of a Eureka moment now was low. Ian decided wisely not to comment and just nodded, not want
ing to demonstrate less intelligence than two real pigeons.

  “I think it’s time for us to leave,” said Sandy.

  “How are we going to do that? We haven’t worked out the flying thing yet.”

  Sandy couldn’t argue with this. Between them, they had now recorded exactly forty-two unsuccessful attempts. Flight forty-one had almost come off until Sandy had engaged too much force on lift-off. He’d gone upwards alright, but after hitting one of the boughs above him, had descended just as quickly. Flight forty-two had also shown signs of promise. That time, Ian had definitely flown. Unfortunately, he’d flapped too hard with one wing which sent him into a fast and painful circular crash. What had disappointed them most was that both Fred and Emma had earned their wings weeks ago. Sandy had put it down to them having only pigeon instincts and no human baggage. Secretly, though, he felt quite inferior and as jealous as any sibling would.

  “Ian, ask Fred to give us another demo.”

  Sandy had never engaged directly with his so-called brother and sister. It was penance enough to have to deal with Ian every waking moment of the day, without the indignity of stooping even lower. Ian shuffled over to the others. Neither Sandy nor Ian had learnt to communicate in pigeon. Whenever they spoke, they spoke in English. They discussed why this was but neither had come up with any provable reason. Sandy had surmised that their human souls had retained certain memories that projected outwards, controlling their speech. Ian guessed that they were just quicker learners than the average pigeon and eventually Fred and Emma would catch up, especially if Ian spoke loudly and slowly to them.