Star Sailors

by James McNaughton

  There are no fresh clothes. Surely, he thinks, someone would have brought some. No? A call would fix things—but, he realises, that would mean waiting around for a delivery.

  No, he thinks, the beginning my new life will not be spent waiting in a hospital for a delivery.

  A new start, he tells himself as he pulls on the stiff and soiled items. The shirt is dark yellow at the collar and particularly acrid. A write-off. A pulse of stink obliges him to briefly hold his breath. Clothes do not always maketh the man, he thinks. Silly old middle-class, materialistic Polonius. Now that, he thinks, is an observation Radley will approve of.

  He’s known Radley for decades, and for much of that time they were divided over Sam. It strikes Bill as apt that Radley, of all people, should be the first to see him on this, the first day of his new life.

  The first day of my new life, Bill says to himself. Yes, that’s what it is. For he has been vindicated entirely. He was right all along. It wasn’t he who was out of step, but the world. Now everything will be clear sailing.

  He wonders if Radley will be happy for him. That doesn’t seem so assured. Radley’s known as his shadow, or black twin, by anyone who knows them—rather than brother, as the nurse described him. Tall and lean like himself, but not as tall, lacking hair and glory, and given to wearing black suits as if every day involved a funeral. There was a time when Radley openly resented him. A long time. Thirty-five years ago they squared up over a game of pool and were pulled apart. The memory brings a smile to Bill’s face. Only in the last five years or so have they been able to properly laugh about that.

  His screen is in the dresser-drawer. According to the Venture Group news update, Samuel has been silent since their exchange. After sleeping for three hours, he finished reading the Bible and fell asleep again. He is still asleep, according to the livestream they’re calling ‘Sam-Cam’.

  Bill wonders if the Bible is the only book Samuel’s been reading. It’s likely that the alien’s genuine reading list would be considered subversive by big business. It wouldn’t take much for a book to get on that list. There’s no mention of his internet activity, either, although in the pre-meeting briefing Bill was told that the alien had been looking at online encyclopaedias and dictionaries.

  He brings up Samuel’s story, which has been titled ‘The Parable’, and frowns. The indefinite article would have been better, because surely, he thinks, better parables will come. But if a lost ‘A’ is the only price of his drunken stupor, he can live with it.

  Anxiety at the prospect of other amendments and additions to Samuel’s text races him through the numbered paragraphs. Nothing new sticks out, which is something, at least. There have been 3.2 billion comments while he slept. Life, Bill thinks, goes on.

  He plants both crutches and swings himself out of the room. Like riding a bike.

  He shares the elevator down with a blind man in a wheelchair. As with the wardrobe, the elevator fills with stale smoke, beery fumes and body odour.

  The blind man sniffs loudly. ‘Someone had a good night.’

  ‘Ah, sorry about this.’

  ‘Shouldn’t mix your drinks, you know.’

  ‘You can tell?’

  ‘I took a wild guess.’

  ‘Ah. Yes. Sorry.’

  Black-suited Radley sits alone at a table in the near-empty café, coffee-less. It seems appropriate to Bill, for a man who has always been plateless at life’s feast.

  Rain falls silently in the car park outside. Grey natural light gleams on the polished floor. An upbeat elevator saxophone plays. Jeremiah stands at the counter, talking to the barista. Upon his head sits a cream fedora. No doubt lingering at the counter, Bill thinks, to avoid Radley.

  ‘I could smell those fumes through the TV screen,’ is Radley’s greeting.

  ‘Fine east-coast wines, Radley. One has to prioritise.’

  They chuckle like turkeys as Radley, black-suited and as cadaverous as usual, half-rises to shake Bill’s hand. In the man’s touch Bill feels something ambiguous. It’s quite pronounced. He prolongs the shake in order to analyse it.

  ‘Knee still playing up?’

  ‘Yeah, I just aggravated it a little.’

  Radley wants his hand back, but the handshake continues. Bill senses himself to be on the verge of a new understanding.

  ‘Ah, but it’s wonderful he’s pulled through,’ Radley says, looking for a sign in Bill’s eyes. ‘Samuel, I mean, as he’s now known. Isn’t it?’

  The prolonged handshake is getting weird. Bill lets go, leans the crutches against the table and settles himself in to the seat opposite. The skin of his right hand remains netted with strange energy from where Radley held it.

  ‘He has a truly remarkable aura about him, Radley. It’s got to be measurable in some way, surely. I must say, though, that the… the, um, sci-fi quasi-biblical story…’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I read it again just now. What do you make of it?’

  ‘Well, he’s been reading the Bible and science fiction. Put them together…’

  ‘Yep. Some might say there are certain similarities between the two anyway.’

  ‘Indeed. Well, there’s been a lot of analysis of ‘The Parable’ while you were asleep.’

  ‘And the consensus?’

  Radley expels air. ‘The world is, I think it’s fair to say, waiting for something a bit more prosaic.’

  Bill scratches his head. ‘It surprised me.’

  ‘That came across.’

  ‘What’s he been doing?’

  ‘Watching movies and reading. Novels, mainly—literature.’ Radley widens his eyes. ‘As if it still matters.’

  Bill’s not sure if this is a reference to a bone of contention between them or between Radley and the world. Great literature is the summit of human endeavour for Radley, who regards it as being the most complex, sustained and abstract incarnation of the highest form of symbolism: language. The man has an elephant’s memory for slights against literature, real or imagined.

  ‘Is he writing anything?’

  Radley smiles radiantly. ‘Bill, he’s writing a treatment for Anna Karenina. Not a full screenplay, I hasten to add, but a treatment.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s set on a steam train, mainly, that leaves Vladivostok in early spring and slowly crosses Russia through the seasons to arrive in Moscow, in winter, a couple of years later. Each family has a large carriage.’

  ‘You’re shitting me.’

  ‘No. Lev has a carriage; Vronsky has a carriage, one with some other officers initially; the Oblonksys have one. Anna and Vronsky meet secretly in the dining room, corridors and toilets during the journey—you know, furtively, in public places. The train stops occasionally for formal balls, society horse races and what-have-you along the way.’

  ‘What the hell?’

  Radley sighs and shakes his head. ‘It’s a notoriously difficult book to film, Bill, but in the right hands it might just work.’

  38

  Baz Beachen, corporate development executive, 90. His face is set in a permanent display of pleasure, as if he’s constantly receiving good news. The way in which his voluminous coal-black hair is combed back and up makes it appear that this good news is being transmitted to him on a rollercoaster.

  Vicky Waterhouse, account executive, 78. Glossy chestnut hair frames her face, which rests halfway into a smile. Her face is capable of significant lateral expression and her smile can be expanded quite organically. Her lips are tastefully filled. She wears large hoop earrings.

  Bob’s mouth gates. With the revelation of his perfect teeth, the rollercoaster-received news upgrades from good to wonderful.

  ‘It was staggering.’

  Vicky tosses her chestnut hair. ‘Wonderful.’

  ‘It was like standing at the frontier of space. The gate to another universe.’

  ‘I could feel galaxies revolving.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Cosmic motion. I felt that the room, the bed and the
chairs we sat in had changed dimension and we were moving at the speed of light. Yet it was all perfectly still.’

  ‘Frozen. There was this amazing sense of suspended motion.’

  ‘But, also, you felt you were constantly arriving.’ Bob smacks his fist on his palm. ‘Now, now, now.’

  ‘That’s right!’

  ‘Incredible.’

  ‘Amazing.’

  ‘Indescribable.’

  ‘What’s most amazing is this.’ Bob’s mouth gates wide to its wonderful-news setting. ‘He was asleep when we sat with him.’

  ‘That was necessary, because we couldn’t have handled direct interaction. There’s no way. It would have been the end of us.’

  Bob gets more wonderful news on his rollercoaster. ‘Well, baby, Mr Klotch thinks we might be up to it.’

  ‘No way. We’ll have another sitting?’

  Bob nods.

  Victoria squeals, gets up, crosses to Bob and throws her arms around his neck.

  Bob looks very happy.

  39

  Bill can scarcely believe what he’s hearing from Radley about film treatments given that their decades-long feud was about Bill’s failure as a journalist to demand answers from Sam.

  ‘Is he answering questions yet, Radley? I mean those questions about governance, energy, conservation and technology that I famously failed to ask 40 years ago?’

  ‘Not yet. Well, not officially. He has a one-hour special with our Great Helmsman coming up, in which all will be revealed. Some say it’s been shot already. I don’t know. Top-level stuff, so I’m out of the loop.’

  ‘Do they think he suffered permanent brain damage?’

  ‘He read Anna Karenina in three sessions, Bill.’

  So, Bill thinks, Klotch is taking over. Am I out of the picture too?

  ‘I should have brought the film treatment up with me.’ Radley’s eyes shine at the thought of it. ‘I found the ending quite affecting, actually. As the train approaches Moscow, Anna’s husband denies her the divorce and she realises there’s no way she can live in in the city with Vronsky, as his mistress. She and Vronsky have a bitter argument. Anna goes to see Dolly in the Oblonsky’s carriage, but it’s empty—unfurnished empty, I mean—stripped bare, back to the metal. Anna returns to her own carriage and it’s also stripped. All the carriages are gutted. The train’s empty. Still moving, but deserted; a shell. It stops. She gets off at the station, some nondescript town, the last stop before Moscow, to find out what’s happening. Steam-breathing men on the platform stare at her. Stare through her. They don’t seem to hear her questions. It’s winter, midnight, freezing. All the windows on the empty train are black. There’s no driver. No lights. The ghost train begins to pull out without her. She runs alongside it, hammering on the icy steel. Stop! Let me in! It starts to pull away. She throws herself under it.’

  Bill is speechless.

  Jeremiah approaches, bearing three coffees on a tray. Golden, but still deferential to his elders and recent superiors. What good manners, Bill thinks.

  Jeremiah places a Styrofoam cup of Big Dawn in front of Bill and slaps his shoulder.

  Radley’s eyebrows go up at this display of familiarity. Jeremiah removes his hat and sits down. Everyone’s started wearing hats to protect their hairstyles from the constant rain. Jeremiah’s slicked back hair is immaculate. The old fringe made him look bearish and hardworking; this hair makes him look rich.

  ‘Thanks, Jeremiah. Mmm, this is just the ticket.’

  ‘Best coffee in the world, Bill. Here you go, Mr Radley.’

  ‘I wouldn’t drink this Big Dawn shit if it was the last coffee on Earth.’

  Bill smiles. ‘Well, cheers guys. Don’t worry, Jeremiah, I’ll take that with me. One for the road.’

  ‘Oh, okay. Well, cheers and well done, Bill.’

  Bill holds out his hand to be shaken. Jeremiah leaps at the opportunity. The familiar enthusiasm and loyalty Bill feels in the younger man’s grip confirms to him that Jeremiah has his back and always will.

  ‘Well done, Bill,’ Radley adds. ‘You got there in the end.’

  ‘It’s been a long, strange trip.’

  ‘Aye.’

  No sense of pride and accomplishment materialises in Bill. He wonders what Trix thinks, whether he has found redemption in her eyes. He hopes that he’s done enough to win her back now that Klotch is taking over.

  ‘I was never good at asking Sam questions,’ he tells Radley. ‘Didn’t want to disturb his energy. I thought the right time would come. I let him say what he wanted to say. And then he was gone.’

  Radley and Jeremiah nod.

  ‘When he described his world as a watery planet, very much like ours, I felt I knew enough. I saw a place where the sun came up and went down, and wind blew and trees swayed and rain fell. A place like Earth. A place of abundance. Governance and resource management seemed secondary things.’

  ‘You were a friend to him before anything, Bill,’ Jeremiah says. ‘It wasn’t your job to interrogate him. Even though you were a journalist.’

  Radley nods graciously in agreement. ‘Let Klotch drill this one full of questions.’

  ‘An hour-long special?’

  ‘Yeah, all very hush-hush, but I’ve heard a rumour that it won’t be anything like an hour long, because the alien didn’t “understand” much of what Mr Klotch said to him in their initial conversation. Whatever that means. And there have been a couple of other developments, Bill, which will be drip-fed over the coming advertising cycles. Samuel’s learned sign language and his sign teacher has stayed on as his permanent voice. He doesn’t write anymore—he signs and she speaks. She’s lovely, very photogenic, of course, which is why she got the job. The trouble is she has this nasal voice and a donkey-like bray when she laughs, which is often. And he has an attendant Buddhist monk, as well.’

  Bill feels generous towards his old foe, Radley, who has been kind enough to visit and fill him in. ‘I wake up and everything’s changed. The train’s moved on.’

  Radley’s eyes gleam at the allusion.

  But facts must be faced, Bill thinks. Another costume drama won’t prevent the collapse of civilisation, no matter how deft the adaptation. ‘I had a quick look at the top comments on “The Parable”. There seems to be a fair bit of confusion out there. Anger, even.’

  Radley shrugs. ‘They want a miracle cure for all the world’s woes, delivered in words of two syllables or less.’

  Bill wonders where Trix is, what she’s doing at this precise moment. Working, probably. Creating. Enjoying herself.

  ‘Anna Karenina’s gone straight to number one. I’m assuming you’ve read it?’

  The question was directed at Jeremiah, but Bill answers. ‘Years ago. Didn’t want it to end.’

  Jeremiah sips at the Big Dawn in its Styrofoam cup with tremendous concentration, as if he’s about to cast the deciding vote in the final of a global coffee competition.

  Bill remembers the wine-fuelled discussion that he had with Jeremiah and Simon in the back of the courier van while crossing the Rimutaka Hill to Wellington. They took turns swigging from the bottle in the dark as the van swung the mountainous corners. Having just made things right with his son, Bill pledged to make things right with Trix by promising to always speak the truth in future. He held the miraculously sleeping Solangia to his heart. ‘My granddaughter,’ he had announced several times, in the heat of the moment.

  The odour of his soiled clothes rises around him. Solangia is his granddaughter? There’s no blood connection at all. That was the painkillers talking.

  Jeremiah had made promises in the back of the van about Karen in his own cautious way, something about a change of direction. Was he just being deferential? Bill realises he hadn’t been paying that much attention to details. While hurtling south through the starry night to see the miraculously awakened alien—reconciled with his son, his self-imposed exile over, and inspired by his general proximity to Trix at the masked party (which promised
more close encounters and a full reconciliation)—it had seemed to Bill that the three men in the van simultaneously arrived at a simple but profound insight: to be truthful in everything. Trix, Karen and Cheryl just wanted their men to tell the truth! It was a brilliant and overwhelming insight. To do the right thing in all things was simply the right thing to do. Love would surely follow and flourish.

  The piped saxophone stops. Someone behind the counter sneezes. Probably on the food, Bill thinks.

  Things feel less certain now. Bill wonders if Jeremiah and Simon were just humouring him? And now Klotch is taking over and Samuel’s already on the cutting-room floor. The train’s moved on. Rank body odour rises around him. He notes that hardly any trace of his previous peace and equanimity remains.

  Jeremiah breaks the silence. ‘What about the previous messages? The coma messages? Is Samuel likely to revise them much, you think?’

  Radley shakes his head at Jeremiah. ‘Give it a rest, son. Why would he revise something you guys made up?’

  Jeremiah flushes. Bill also feels embarrassed.

  ‘But I’ll bet my left ball,’ Radley continues, ‘that no one in the media so much as mentions those coma messages now.’

  Jeremiah nods. ‘You’re right, Mr Radley. The messages are off-topic. I signed off the contract today. Grade 1 disbursements and immediate loss of access for the offending news organisation.’

  ‘Off-topic,’ sneers Radley. ‘Loss of Venture Group’s prosthetic nipple.’

  ‘Steady on, Radley,’ Bill says. ‘Anyway, Samuel can talk for himself now, as we’re seeing.’

  Jeremiah cups his coffee in two hands, huddles over it and blows on it, as if plucked from the icy sea after a shipwreck. He frowns. ‘I’m worried that the coma messages will make the scientists look bad.’

  Radley seems to have been slapped across the face. ‘What scientists?’

  ‘Steady on, Radley. Jeremiah’s a good kid. Hey, you put in the decisive vote for him for promotion, remember?’

  ‘I thought he’d read Gravity’s Rainbow!’