Terra's World

by Mitch Benn

  Terra’s World

  Mitch Benn

  GOLLANCZ

  LONDON

  CONTENTS

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE

  INTERLUDE

  PART TWO

  PART THREE

  PART FOUR

  EPILOGUE

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  For Mike Benn, for sending me on this adventure.

  - Hi, Mitch here again.

  - Once again, a note on notation:

  ‘Dialogue presented as it’s spoken will be formatted like this.’

  - Dialogue translated from the languages of the planet Fnrr (and other planets) will be formatted like this.

  - Nice to see you again. Hope you enjoy yourself.

  M xx

  PROLOGUE

  Fear of a Black Planet

  The Coshrai people of the planet Sagaska were the first to see it.

  A rogue planet, adrift in deep space. It came within range of their long-range astroscopes in the second cycle of what, in the Coshrai’s rather idiosyncratic calendar, was denoted the year 5-Black-7-Tree-4.

  As it approached, the Coshrai astrographers refocused and retuned their imaging devices, trying to make out some features of the planet’s surface.

  It had none. It was black.

  No land mass, no ocean, no ice cap, not even so much as a crater could be seen. The planet was featureless and black, like a hole in the fabric of space. And still it approached.

  Coshrai probes were launched from Sagaska to take a closer look, and saw nothing. The rogue planet seemed to be covered in a thick layer of black dust. The planet was silent, dead, black.

  The scientific communities of neighbouring worlds were consulted. Intrigued, they sent delegations to observe the approach of the black planet, which was now predicted to pass right through Sagaska’s home system.

  On Sagaska itself, expectations ranged from indifference to apocalyptic terror. The Obscure and Ancient Order of Scryers, a society of mystics and soothsayers to whom scant attention had been paid for centuries, enjoyed a resurgence in popularity as a bewildered populace turned to them for guidance.

  After due consideration, divination and meditation the Order of Scryers decreed that the conjunction of the appearance of a black planetoid with a black calendar year (only one year in twenty-three was designated ‘black’ in the Coshrai calendar; that’s how idiosyncratic it was) must clearly be of great significance.

  When pressed further on what that significance might be, the Order of Scryers considered, divined and meditated some more before announcing that the black planet was a good and auspicious omen, heralding a time of peace and prosperity for Sagaska, and requesting that all further enquiries be made via their newly engaged publicity agent.

  The scientific delegations from Sagaska’s neighbouring worlds began to arrive: astrographers from Binda Prime; xenologists from Shaa; stellar physicists from Ch’Kesh Ch’Kesh.

  The black planet was now visible – in as much as a black non-reflective object can ever be said to be visible – in Sagaska’s night sky, a patch of pure darkness among the stars. The rogue planet’s trajectory had been plotted; contrary to the more hysterical predictions of the panickier elements of Coshrai society, it was not expected to smash into Sagaska, nor would it pass by so closely as to cause any great gravitational disturbances. Rather, at around midday on the fifth day of the fourth cycle of the year 5-Black-7-Tree-4, it would pass within a few thousand macro-furlongs of Sagaska’s upper atmosphere, before moving on into space.

  As Sagaska watched, the rogue planet drifted ever closer, silent, dead, black.

  At midday on the fifth day of the fourth cycle of the year 5-Black-7-Tree-4, the whole population of Sagaska, both native and visiting, looked to the skies in awe and excitement.

  Just after midday on the fifth day of the fourth cycle of the year 5-Black-7-Tree-4, all contact with the planet Sagaska was lost.

  The first ships from Shaa and Ch’kesh Ch’kesh arrived a few days later. Their initial thought was that Sagaska had simply disappeared. The rogue planet was there, as silent, dead and black as ever, but of Sagaska there was no sign.

  It was only when they studied the size and orbit of the black planet that the dreadful truth became clear.

  The rogue planet had clearly moved on, straight through Sagaska’s system and out into deep space. The planet they were now looking at was Sagaska itself, but of the Coshrai, their cities, their culture, there remained not a trace. Just dust. Thick black dust.

  Sagaska was silent. Sagaska was dead. Sagaska was black.

  PART ONE

  Ordinary World

  1.1

  Billy Dolphin really missed science fiction.

  There wasn’t much of it about these days, not like when Billy was younger.

  His dad had introduced him to science fiction, or sci-fi, or just SF (the brevity of the name you gave it was, Billy had always thought, an indicator of how ‘into’ it you were) at the age of four or five, sitting him down in front of the TV to watch Star Trek reruns, or Doctor Who, or maybe one of the more kid-friendly SF movies like Star Wars (original trilogy, obviously; even at that age Billy’s taste in SF had been quite discerning, although as he got older he realised that Star Wars wasn’t really science fiction at all so much as heroic fantasy with spaceships and lasers, but at least it had spaceships and lasers).

  From movies and TV shows Billy had graduated to SF books; at first, novelisations of the movies and TV shows and, later, original SF classics. They were pretty much all Billy read, and reading was pretty much all Billy did.

  Billy Dolphin consumed science fiction like most people consumed food. He would start with perhaps some contemporary, cyber-punky SF as an appetiser, move on to a satisfying main course of Proper Big Idea SF – Clarke or Asimov or one of their later disciples – then indulge in a couple of cheerfully violent SF comics for dessert.

  That’s not to say Billy didn’t consume actual food as well. In fact, what with his healthy appetite and his sedentary lifestyle he had, throughout his childhood, developed a physique which well-meaning medical professionals and clothing store assistants would refer to as ‘well built’, as they looked him up and down with expressions of concern and disapproval. Billy always wished they’d just call him fat. The whole ‘well built’ nonsense just meant they thought not only that he was fat but also too emotionally fragile to handle being called fat.

  His parents would occasionally use the f-word to describe Billy’s condition, but his mother, in particular, had always prefaced it with ‘puppy’ – reassuring Billy (or whomever else she was talking to) that this was merely childhood chubbiness which he would grow out of in time. Now, at the age of fourteen, Billy was beginning to suspect that his mother was wrong. He was growing and developing as young boys do at that age, and his excess bodyweight was growing and developing right along with him. Billy wasn’t ‘stretching out’; he was just expanding.

  This, combined with Billy Dolphin’s unusual surname, was not making for a happy time at school. In his first year at Latimer Lane Comprehensive (established 1974, 623 pupils, ranked number three in the district according to Ofsted), Billy had been at pains to point out that ‘Dolphin’ was a corruption of the French ‘Dauphin’ (meaning Prince), and as such Billy was distantly related to European royalty and NOT to aquatic mammals (yes, MAMMALS, not fish, Gary Bassett). This information was ignored by his classmates. Between his weight and his name they’d already found the perfect nickname for him, and no amount of linguistic or zoological pedantry on his p
art would dissuade them from using it. He was Billy the Whale.

  Billy the Whale, useless at football, Billy the Whale, dressed by his mum, Billy the Whale, rubbish with girls (although, hello? Hadn’t anyone noticed his best friend was a girl? Okay, so Lydia was a bit boyish, and she was rather grumpy and she did have short purple hair, but she STILL COUNTED AS A GIRL, so there).

  But none of that mattered, not his name, not his weight, not school, not Gary Bassett, because there was always science fiction. Sci-fi, to make his heart race and his mind soar. SF, to take him away.

  Or there had been.

  Until that stupid Terra girl turned up and ruined everything.

  * * *

  Two years earlier, on the day when the Earth had, to borrow a phrase, stood still, Billy Dolphin had been as excited as everyone else.

  He and his dad had sat rooted to the spot in front of the TV for hours as the drama unfolded. Mealtimes had come and gone, food was brought out and sat cooling and ignored in front of them. Even hunger couldn’t tear Billy’s attention from the screen.

  This was, after all, Billy’s dream coming true. An honest-to-goodness alien spaceship, piloted by an honest-to-goodness alien from an honest-to-goodness alien planet. Billy and his dad hugged each other, their hearts racing and their minds wonderfully blown, amazed at the new world in which they found themselves and overcome with excitement at what it might contain.

  It was with a gradual lurching disappointment over the next few months that Billy Dolphin realised that one thing this brave new world would NOT contain was science fiction.

  Before the arrival of the lemon-shaped spaceship, of the lost Terra girl and her alien stepfather whose name Billy could never remember (or pronounce), space had been, from a storytelling point of view, a blank slate. A virgin canvas onto which the science fiction author could project whatever his (or her) fancy conjured forth. Since nobody knew what or who was out there, anything was possible. There were no limits imposed upon science fiction’s collective imagination.

  But now it was different. Now everyone not only knew that there was indeed life on other planets, they knew on which other planets, what these planets were called and what the inhabitants looked like. Thus far humanity might only have encountered one alien race – the Fnrrns – but scientists were now learning more about other extra-terrestrial civilisations. Indeed, the very fact that alien life was now being defined, catalogued, UNDERSTOOD by human beings meant that space simply wasn’t the playground for the imagination it had once been. Sci-fi was subject to a whole new set of rules, rules that were making it less fun – and less popular, hence less commercial – than it used to be.

  This began to be reflected in popular culture; some of Billy’s favourite SF television shows were cancelled – or simply ‘not renewed’ – and no new ones took their place. The lists of forthcoming movies were bereft of futuristic or space-based titles. Visiting his beloved local bookshop, Billy would notice the science fiction section slowly dwindling down to a single shelf, containing only the ‘classic SF’ authors – Wells, Verne and the like – whose continued presence in the store owed more to the ‘classic’ part of their status than to the ‘SF’ bit.

  There was still fantasy to be had, of the fictitious realm swords n’ sorcerers type, but Billy had never been a fan of tales with ‘magic’ in them (it always felt like cheating to him) and, of course, there was no shortage of horror fiction, though that seemed to have been swamped by endless ranks of interchangeable Romantic Vampire Novels. Since when were vampires romantic? (Billy would ponder.) What was romantic about sleeping in a coffin and sucking the blood out of people? Vampires were supposed to be zombie serial killers, not dreamy-eyed, high-cheekboned, lovelorn poets. And even if a several-centuries-old man LOOKS seventeen, isn’t a love story between a several-centuries-old man and a teenage girl a bit, well, you know, dodgy? Lydia at least was with him on that one.

  But sci-fi, good old spaceshippy, lasery, robotty distant planets and/or distant future capital S capital F – nobody seemed to want that any more. Not since that day. Not since the space girl arrived. Not since Terra.

  And then, as if to add cosmic insult to cultural injury, she’d disappeared.

  A few months after the spaceship’s arrival, Terra and her human family suddenly faded from public view. There was no more mention of them on the news, no more public appearances, the expected regular visits from alien delegations never happened, the eagerly anticipated leaps forward in technology never materialised. By now, many people had forgotten all about Terra the space girl, and of those who remembered, some were beginning to suspect that the whole thing had been an elaborate hoax. As far as Billy Dolphin could tell, the only lasting legacy of the whole Terra incident had been the end of his beloved science fic—

  ‘You know what I think? I think you’re jealous,’ said Lydia.

  They were waiting for the bus at the end of what had been an extremely Tuesdayish Tuesday.

  ‘Jealous?’ replied Billy, plucking one earphone out. Was that actually what Lydia had said?

  ‘Yes, jealous,’ said Lydia, yanking Billy’s other earphone out. Led Zeppelin dangled squeakily around Billy’s midriff as Lydia went on. ‘All day, every day, Terra this, Terra that, she ruined sci-fi, she ruined my life—’

  ‘I wasn’t even talking,’ protested Billy, fumbling for his earphones.

  ‘No, but you were thinking about it,’ grumped Lydia. ‘Your lips were moving and your eyebrows were doing that thing.’

  ‘Was singing along,’ muttered Billy, rummaging in his pocket to silence Robert Plant.

  ‘You’re jealous because that Terra girl actually did the things you dream of doing. She travelled in space. She met aliens.’

  ‘She grew up with aliens,’ added Billy wistfully.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Lydia. ‘Don’t tell me this is all about a couple of cancelled TV shows. This is envy, pure and simple.’

  ‘Maybe,’ mumbled Billy, looking down at his feet.

  ‘It’s not like it’s her fault anyway,’ persisted Lydia. ‘She wasn’t to know what would happen, she just wanted to come home.’

  Billy raised his eyes to the gunmetal-grey clouded sky. ‘Well, I promise not to give her a hard time if I ever run into her,’ he said with a grudging smile.

  Lydia sat next to him on the bus stop bench and kicked her legs. ‘No one knows where she is anyway,’ she reminded him, removing her woolly hat and ruffling her purple hair, ‘I reckon she’s naffed off back to the planet Whatsit.’

  The first drop of inevitable rain struck Billy between the eyes and trickled down his nose. ‘Can’t say I blame her,’ he said, stuffing Led Zeppelin back into his ears. Lydia sighed and resigned herself to waiting for the bus in silence.

  Billy registered Lydia’s disappointment. He was sure she’d get over it. In time, the bus squeaked to a halt and they slouched on board, taking seats at the back. Billy closed his eyes and let ‘Kashmir’ bounce around the inside of his skull. Billy had inherited his love of classic rock from his dad, along with his love of science fiction. Thinking about it, Billy wasn’t sure he owned a single album by a band which didn’t have at least one dead member. He knew his musical tastes were decades out of date, and he didn’t care. He was only dimly aware of what kind of music his contemporaries were listening to. The brief bursts he’d heard coming from their mobile phones were enough to put him off any further investigation.

  Billy had no idea what sort of music Lydia listened to. Lydia didn’t play music on her phone, she would just fiddle with it endlessly with varying degrees of annoyance. Glancing across at her, Billy noticed that she was frowning at her phone right now. Billy was never rude enough to loom over Lydia’s shoulder to spy on what she was doing, but in the year or so he’d known her he’d never seen her look happy while staring at that phone. Perhaps she was having a tense conversation over some social network
or another, or just losing a game rather badly. Lydia’s phone seemed to be a source of great irritation to her; Billy wondered why she bothered with it.

  Billy’s stop came first. ‘Bye, then,’ he mumbled to Lydia. Lydia, glowering at her phone, may or may not have mumbled something back; Billy still had his earphones in. As he watched the bus slosh away into the damp evening light, Billy wondered what might be on TV that night. Something about lawyers, probably. Or hospitals. Or lawyers in hospital.

  Billy Dolphin REALLY missed science fiction.

  1.2

  ‘What?’

  Billy was dumbfounded on several levels at once. He had no idea what the strikingly pretty blonde girl had just said to him, he had no idea who the strikingly pretty blonde girl was, and, most perplexingly, he had absolutely no idea why this strikingly pretty blonde girl would be talking to him.

  He’d missed the girl’s question for the same reason he rarely heard anything anyone said to him the first time. He’d had his earphones in – Van Halen on this occasion (pre-Sammy Hagar era, obviously) – and what remained of his attention was focused on the book in his hands. This was how he spent most morning breaks, and unless Lydia had something particularly irritating to get off her chest, he generally spent this small nugget of private time unmolested, having staked out his territory on the steps leading up to the school’s refectory. Not this time, though. During a lull between album tracks he suddenly became aware that someone was talking to him, and looking up, he was startled to see who – indeed, what – it was.

  It was a girl. An actual proper girl-type girl. She had bright, excited blue eyes, and tumbling honey-blonde hair. She was dressed in a shiny blue sweater and jeans. (Latimer Lane had renounced school uniforms a few years before Billy’s arrival, under the regime of a previous, rather progressive and liberal, head teacher. This head teacher had subsequently left under something of a cloud when it transpired he’d been a bit too progressive and liberal with regard to the school’s finances, but the decree abolishing uniforms still stood.) She looked to be about Billy’s own age and was pointing at his book.