Sputnik's Guide to Life on Earth

by Frank Cottrell Boyce

Sputnik got up and took a bow.

  ‘And Sputnik of course,’ said the mum. ‘He came all the way over from Kirkcudbright to protect us from burglars.’

  ‘That’s what I call a good working farm dog,’ said the dad.

  ‘Stop calling us burglars.’

  ‘You were stealing the money from the Hayfield treat! That’s for charity. That’s worse than burglary.’

  ‘My tadpoles!’ shrieked Annabel, pointing to the empty jam jar.

  ‘You stole her tadpoles?!’

  ‘We never did steal her tadpoles. They turned into frogs and attacked us.’

  ‘My tadpoles!’ sobbed Annabel.

  ‘How could you steal a little girl’s tadpoles?’ snapped the mum.

  ‘We DIDN’T STEAL THEM.’

  ‘Don’t shout at my wife, son,’ said the dad.

  ‘How could a dog do all that?’ sniffed Ed.

  ‘He’s not even a dog,’ muttered Jez.

  ‘Frogs!’ Ed was completely sobbing now. ‘Hundreds of frogs.’

  The dad made them pick up all the money and count it. It was daylight by then. Then the dad went outside and had a long chat with someone on the phone. When he came back in, he was telling whoever it was to come over as soon as possible.

  Jez and Ed sat on the couch, as silent as if they’d been muted. They knew they were going to be taken away. I couldn’t help but think about Grandad and wonder if he felt this bad when he found out they were going to take him away.

  A car pulled up, but it wasn’t the police. The dad had rung the priest instead. When he arrived, the dad made Jez and Ed hand the money over to him. The priest didn’t know about the burglary. He just kept telling them what a great job they’d done and what grand lads they were, until Ed squealed, ‘We’re not, Father. We tried to steal the money but we’re sorry now.’

  After breakfast Mrs Rowland from the Temporary came round.

  ‘Well, Prez,’ she said, ‘you’ll be pleased to hear that your grandad is finally accepting his new environment.’ I pictured Grandad in a prison uniform, queuing up for prison food with a prison haircut. ‘As soon as he’s properly settled, I’ll take you over for a visit, maybe at the end of next week just before you go back to school.’

  I didn’t say anything. I wanted to see him. But I didn’t want to see him in jail.

  ‘And the dog? You did get rid of the dog?’

  ‘We had a think about that,’ said the dad, looking around the room. Almost invisibly everyone nodded at him, as if he’d asked them a silent question, as if they could all read each other’s thoughts the way that Sputnik could read mine.

  ‘Oh?’ said Mrs Rowland.

  ‘I asked around a bit and it turns out that the fierce dog isn’t Sputnik.’

  ‘It isn’t your dog?’

  ‘No. I asked Dmitri in the shop to describe the dog that attacked him. I’ll call him and put him on speakerphone so you can hear . . .’

  The dad rang Dmitri. Sputnik strolled in and sat down with his head on one side, smiling up at Mrs Rowland.

  Dmitri answered the phone. He said he was very happy to describe the dog that attacked him. It was ‘a big beastie, a bit like a Dobermann but uncommon huge with deep empty eyes and – I know this sounds strange – there was smoke coming out of his ears.’

  ‘Is that man talking about me?’ whimpered Sputnik. ‘So. Rude.’

  ‘Seems to be a case –’ the dad shrugged – ‘of mistaken dog identity.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Rowland. ‘He’s nothing like a Dobermann. More like a Labrador.’

  ‘I thought lurcher cross,’ said the dad. ‘But either way, we’ll be keeping Sputnik and he’ll be welcome in the house any time.’

  So Sputnik had a new home, a permanent one. But we were running out of time to save the world. The summer would be over and the leaves would begin to fall, and that, as Sputnik had made clear, would be that.

  16.

  Curtains

  Now that he didn’t have to sneak in, Sputnik explored the whole house. He found the entire place fascinating. He took photos. He took notes. He unpacked all his stuff – spare kilt, spare sporran. He emptied his backpack out on the top bunk in Ray’s room.

  ‘Aren’t you going to unpack your backpack?’ he asked.

  – No point. I’m going back to the Temporary soon.

  This didn’t seem to bother him. He nibbled the curtains.

  – Curtains are not edible.

  ‘They’ve got fruit on them, look. Blackberries, raspberries.’

  – They’re just pictures.

  ‘Yes. Pictures. Of fruit. Why would anyone put a picture of something edible on something inedible?

  – They just look nice.

  ‘They look tasty. But they’re not tasty. They are curtains of lies and disappointment. They are not going in the Companion.’

  And he finally got stuck into finishing his list. He piled up history books and atlases. He printed out train timetables, star maps and stuff about bird migration. He stuck his list-so-far up on the ceiling over the top bunk so we could discuss it in detail and save the world together.

  TV Remote

  High-Vis Jackets

  The Atmosphere

  The Tide

  Chickens and Eggs

  Prez’s Grandad’s Harmonica

  Concealer

  Mooring Hitch Knot

  – Hitch knots? Really?

  ‘Definitely. That hammock was the best night’s sleep I’ve ever had, like lying on a big antigravity mattress. We are well on the way to saving your planet. Got any other ideas?’

  – I can’t think of a single thing worth doing or seeing.

  ‘There must be something.’

  – What’s it like on your planet? What things are worth seeing there?

  ‘I told you. I don’t have a planet. Planetary Clearance got to it years ago. I wander round the universe like a comet.’

  – But where do you live?

  ‘I live where I am.’

  – But you must have something. Like a rocket?

  ‘Rocket? Where are you from, the Stone Age? No one uses rockets any more.’

  – So how do you travel through space?

  ‘I don’t know. Just a kind of knack. It’s not like space is flat. It’s rippled and curved. And it moves about. It’s alive. You learn to ride it after a while.’

  – But you can’t travel faster than light. Nothing can.

  ‘No. But you can take a shortcut. However far you go, you always end up where you started. Except for the gloves obviously.’

  – The gloves? What gloves? Why?

  ‘The thing about the universe is it’s bent. I’ll show you.’ He took a strip of paper, gave it a twist, then held the ends together. ‘You think it’s got two sides, don’t you? But run your finger along it.’

  I traced my finger along the paper.

  – It’s just got one side.

  ‘It’s called a Möbius strip. That’s what the universe is like. If you set off in a straight line, you end up where you started. Except that you’re the other way round. If you’ve got a left-hand glove, it’s on your right hand. You become your own reflection.’

  I tried it again the other way round.

  – So you don’t live on a rocket. You don’t live on a planet. Where do you live?

  ‘The Centre of the Universe. That’s my address.’

  – Where’s that?

  ‘Well, where’s the centre of infinity? Think about it. The centre of infinity is everywhere. From wherever you’re standing, infinity stretches out infinitely in every direction. It’s infinite that way. And that way. And that way. Therefore you must be in the middle. Wherever you are, that’s the centre of the universe.’

  – But don’t you have a home?

  ‘Of course I do! Every port I land at, every safe harbour is home. For a while. Come on. All hands on deck. Let’s steer this planet through the storm and save it from extinction. Think of something worth seeing or doing.
Keep trying. We don’t have forever. Well, we do, but forever isn’t very long.’

  I’m trying but I can’t think of anything except Grandad in jail. Sitting in a cell. Or queuing for food. All because he got mixed up about chopping vegetables.

  – The world’s not fair. Maybe it’s not worth saving.

  I pulled the duvet over my head.

  I don’t know how long I was lying there like that before I had the idea.

  Of course there was something on Earth I wanted to see. And of course I could go and see it.

  I woke Sputnik.

  – I’ve thought of something.

  ‘Shush. You’ll wake Ray. It’s the middle of the night.’

  – I know, but I’ve thought of something. Something really worth seeing. You’ll love it.

  ‘If you can’t get to sleep, turn around three times and then lie down really quickly.’

  – No, no. It’s better that it’s night-time.

  ‘What is it? What are we going to see?’

  – My grandad.

  ‘But your grandad’s in jail.’

  – Yes. But I’ve got a plan.

  ‘A plan?’ said Sputnik, sitting up in bed. ‘I love a plan. What is it?’

  – A jailbreak.

  ‘A jailbreak?’ Sputnik hitched up his kilt. Fastened his flying helmet. Pulled down his goggles.

  ‘I’m in,’ he said.

  We slipped downstairs. Sputnik whispered, ‘So how are we going to do this?’

  – I thought we could bring the remote and you could put all the guards on pause while we got him out.

  We looked everywhere for the remote – down the back of the couch, under the television. We couldn’t find it anywhere. Why do remotes always go missing just when you want them?

  ‘What about the lightsaber? We could cut through bars and fences with that.’

  – The batteries are gone. Someone must have borrowed them for the remote.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Sputnik. ‘Let’s go. We’ll think of something.’

  I took my phone, and as we crossed the farmyard I dived into the tractor shed and grabbed a torch and some wire cutters.

  The 63 is a late bus that runs along the main road into Dumfries. Everyone calls it the booze bus because it stops at all the pubs it passes. We got on it just outside Dmitri’s shop. When it stopped at Whitesands, the driver got out, locked the bus and went home.

  – Perfect. We need a getaway vehicle. What could be more inconspicuous than a bus?

  ‘Can you drive a bus?’

  – We don’t need to drive it. Once we’ve got Grandad, we’ll get back on board and hide on it until morning. Then when it heads back to Kirkcudbright, we get off at the loaning, walk down to the farm and hide Grandad in the Coo Palace. We can feed him and keep him company and he can get washed at the sinks. It’s even got a toilet. He can live like a king in a castle until the police forget about him.

  ‘That sounds like a plan,’ said Sputnik.

  But things don’t always go according to plan.

  17.

  Jailbreak

  The prison didn’t look like I thought it would.

  It was on an ordinary street with no barbed-wire fence or guards.

  So some of the plans I had – such as cutting through the barbed wire with the wire cutters I had borrowed from the big barn, or tying up the guards with the twine from the hay-baler – weren’t really that useful.

  – We could dig a tunnel.

  ‘Have you brought a spade?’

  – No, but . . .

  ‘I’m not digging a tunnel. I’m not a dog. I’m the Sputnik. I go in through the front door.’

  Which is exactly what he did.

  There was a door marked ‘Reception’. He opened it and strolled in. Inside there was one of those hatches with a window and a thing to talk through. Behind the glass was a big hefty bloke in a white shirt, watching a CCTV monitor and slurping a purple Slush Puppie.

  ‘I’m Sputnik Mellows,’ said Sputnik. ‘I’m here to do a jailbreak. Just try and stop me, Big Hefty Bloke in a White Shirt.’

  Big Hefty Bloke put down the Slush Puppie, pushed back his window and looked at Sputnik. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you cheeky?’ Then he looked at me.

  ‘What is he?’

  ‘Errrm . . . mostly terrier,’ I said. ‘Whistling terrier.’

  ‘Good work,’ said Sputnik. ‘You keep him talking. I’ll go and jailbreak your grandad.’ There was a serious-looking metal door in front of us. Sputnik was sizing it up.

  I said, ‘You can’t just stroll in and jailbreak someone. You have to have a plan of action. Disguises. Gadgets. Alibis. You don’t even know what my grandad looks like. Never mind what cell he’s in!’

  Big Hefty Bloke was staring at me. That’s when I realized.

  ‘I said that out loud, didn’t I?’ It must have been because I was thinking I was going to see Grandad any minute.

  ‘So you’re going to do a jailbreak?’ asked the man.

  ‘Going to jailbreak his grandad,’ said Sputnik. ‘I know exactly what he looks like because the boy has a photo of him in his backpack, which he looks at every time he gets his pyjamas out.’

  Obviously Big Hefty Bloke didn’t understand any of that. He was still staring at me.

  I said, ‘Jailbreak. Yeah. Why not?’ There didn’t seem much point denying it.

  ‘So what is your plan? Knock me on the head, disguise yourself in my uniform and steal my keys?’

  ‘It worked in Colditz,’ I said. ‘Twice.’ I had been researching jailbreaks on my phone all the way on the bus.

  ‘My clothes might be a bit big for you – by about twenty sizes. Plus I don’t have keys. We’re all electronic now. I thought they built a glider in Colditz?’

  ‘They did, but it took so long the war was over by the time they finished it.’

  ‘So you haven’t got a glider?’

  ‘Not yet. You can check if you like.’ I held my hands up as though I might have a glider tucked away in my trousers.

  He laughed and took another slurp of Slush Puppie. Which is probably why he never saw – on his CCTV – Sputnik moving quickly and quietly along the corridors of the prison.

  ‘Then there’s Bonnie Prince Charlie,’ I said. ‘He got out of jail by disguising himself as a woman and sneaking out that way.’

  ‘As this is an all-male facility,’ said Big Hefty bloke, ‘I don’t think being disguised as a woman is going to help. It’s only going to make you more conspicuous.’ He seemed happy to spend time giving me lots of jailbreak advice. I think he probably thought I wasn’t serious. When he said, ‘Why not dig a tunnel?’ for instance, he was definitely using a shouldn’t-you-be-at-home-in-bed voice.

  ‘I thought about it. Takes too long and my accomplice doesn’t really like digging.’

  ‘Mass breakout? All guns blazing?’

  ‘I hate guns.’

  ‘Very wise. John Dillinger . . .’

  ‘He used a gun but it was a fake gun made out of soap and boot polish. That was good. But my grandad doesn’t know I’m jailbreaking him. It’s sort of a surprise.’

  ‘Helicopter? A helicopter is always a treat.’

  ‘Haven’t got one.’

  I was actually enjoying talking.

  ‘Ladder over the wall?’

  ‘My grandad’s not so steady on his feet.’

  ‘Smuggled out in the laundry basket?’

  ‘Do you have laundry baskets?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘All the best jailbreaks are when someone just strolls out the front door.’

  ‘That’s true. Though of course, in this case, they’d have to get past me. And not much gets past me.’

  As he was saying this, I could see Sputnik on the CCTV monitor, looking straight into camera and giving me a thumbs-up. Then all the monitor screens flickered and died. ‘What now?’ Big Hefty Bloke sighed. He went to fiddle with the console, but as he turned away from me there was a
whirring sound and a metal screen began to unroll across the window of his hatch. ‘What’s going on? This is the emergency failsafe.’ He tried to block the metal roller with his hand but it just kept coming. ‘Ow!’ he yelped, snatching his hand away and sucking his finger. He dashed to his office door, trying to get through to my side, but I heard a loud metal click.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he yelled.

  ‘I told you . . . we’re jailbreaking my grandad.’

  The lights went out.

  All of them.

  Sputnik had closed down the entire electronic security system.

  On the other side of the metal screen I could hear Big Hefty Bloke desperately pressing buttons on his phone. I could hear a recorded voice replying, ‘The number you have dialled has not been recognized. Please check and try again.’

  Then the serious-looking metal door clicked open.

  The only light came from one of those blue lamps that are supposed to kill flies. I could see the glint of Sputnik’s goggles bouncing towards me and a crowd of big, uncertain shadows following him.

  ‘I couldn’t figure out which one was your grandad,’ he said, ‘so I brought them all.’

  ‘You brought me a busload of criminals?’

  ‘Your grandad’s a criminal. What better place to hide him than among a busload of criminals? Come on – to the 63 bus stop at Whitesands.’

  Sputnik had killed the street lights too. The whole town was in darkness. We could hear the water roaring over the weir. Moonlight brightened the windows of the waiting bus, as though the moon was helping us find our getaway vehicle. The 63 has sliding doors, the kind with a rubber seal. If you can squeeze something into the gap, it’s easy to force the doors open. I used my backpack to keep them open.

  The prisoners seemed to know that they’d better not cause a stramash. The quiet shadows of the escaped prisoners piled on to the bus. I tried to look into their faces as they passed but they were looking down. I poked around in the driver’s cab with my torch until I found the switch; then I put the lights on.

  ‘Grandad?’ I called out excitedly. ‘It’s me. Prez!’

  First one head, then another, then another popped up from behind the seats where they had been hiding.