Aliens In My Garden

by Jude Gwynaire

  Soon, he thought, the mistake of your existence will be undone, and my people will have a home at last.

  He smiled at them, then saw Peridot coming out of her pyramid.

  19

  Peridot had never thought of herself as a leader. But now, by some process of natural selection, she found herself leading her fellow Astarians, a bio-mech and an indigenous woman up to the surface to confront the person who was their leader, which she supposed would mean she’d become the leader. That was how things worked—if you deposed a leader, you had to be able to answer the question ‘What shall we do now then?’ And answering that question meant you were the leader.

  They took the elevator up in batches, and Peridot tapped her hand on her leg all the way, wondering how you went about relieving a commander of duty for technically doing his job.

  When the new girl, Celeste, and her Garden friend, arrived, the native woman had her fists clenched and her eyes stubbornly open. Peridot laughed despite her nerves. That was it. She’d challenge Zirca, make him stop his insane plan with the Garden king, and now, looking at Alditha, she had her answer to what to do next. It was so simple, so obvious, she couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it till now.

  This is why you’ve never been the leader.

  She stepped out of her pyramid. And there he was.

  The others followed her in a loose line, spreading out as they got near the boy with the conker-coloured hair and the pinched expression.

  Zirca looked from face to face, frowning at Celeste, who kept her face stern.

  ‘I’m issuing Executive Order 514,’ he said eventually. ‘Things have clearly become more complex here since the original survey team landed. There’s life here-’ He eyed Alditha coldly. ‘-where there shouldn’t be. The fleet will be here shortly, they can sort it out. Meanwhile, the exploration team is to return to cryo-sleep and await their arrival.’

  ‘Except you’re lying, aren’t you?’

  Peridot had said it before she’d even thought it.

  Zirca’s gaze hardened on her like frost. ‘Lying, Hydrographer Peridot? What do you mean?’

  ‘You’re lying on the basis that you don’t know I overheard you talking to that Skoros man. He took over a bio-mech somehow. I don’t know how, but he did it. And you told him you planned to kill everyone here.’

  Zirca frowned, but chuckled. ‘Peridot, I think perhaps you have a cryo-sleep hangover. These vivid fantasies of yours belong in a dream.’

  ‘Your hands,’ said Celeste.

  No-one had noticed Zirca’s hands except Alditha, but now they all looked. They were stained with mud.

  ‘Become a Gardener since you woke up, have you?’ asked Peridot with an unusual sarcasm.

  ‘What have you done?’ demanded Mali-Juna.

  Zirca didn’t hesitate. He reached out and grabbed Alditha’s hand, pulled her to him and yanked her arm up her back. She was taller than he was, but he was surprisingly strong.

  ‘I’ve done what had to be done,’ he snarled, dropping all pretence. ‘These things aren’t life. They’re a mistake. A stupid mistake by your idiot brother,’ he said, nodding at Peridot. ‘How long were we on our mission? Trying to find our people a home. You want to throw all that away for them? Hydrographer Peridot, I’m putting you on report for insubordination and dereliction of duty.’

  ‘Commander Zirca, I’m putting you on report on a charge of attempted genocide.’

  ‘Attempted,’ murmured Celeste. ‘What have you done, digging in the ground?’

  ‘Stick around, whoever you are,’ Zirca snapped. ‘You’ll find out soon now.’

  Celeste frowned, unable to shake the sense that he wasn’t bluffing.

  __________

  A witch gains her importance from the importance of others. But others sometimes gain their importance from the importance of their witch. Harper’s Army had been, for a banner-waving mob, obedient, waiting at the end of the long leg of shops and houses. Waiting for their witch to invite them in.

  The call would never come. Alditha would never impose on them that way.

  Harper, though, had no such qualms. He saw the strange alien boy grab Alditha, yank her arm up her back. ‘Alditha.’ He took a breath, puffed out his chest feathers, swallowed the panic of his first reaction. It was time for a little owl to be brave.

  ‘SKRRRRRAWWWWK,’ he screeched across the crowd. ‘Harper’s Army. They’ve got our witch. GET ’EM.’

  Without waiting for them, but knowing in his talons they’d follow him, Harper flew into battle.

  __________

  Odiz heard the singing as soon as he set foot in the castle. His beard seemed to hear it too, and pulled away from his face, as if trying to escape. He smoothed it down his belly and his eyebrows got in on the act, waggling as if alive.

  Wizards, on the whole, liked a bit of a sing-song, on the principle that it often led to or was accompanied by alcohol and large quantities of food, and a good night being had by all.

  This wasn’t that kind of singing.

  This was the singing that made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and want to run away. It was Skoros, singing what could only be a song he invented. A song that sounded like the singer was not at home to Mr. Sanity, or any of his family.

  Odiz straightened up from his fighting stance, all three of his remaining hands ready to fire magic. Instead he simply walked towards the direction of the mad crooning. It seemed to be waiting for him.

  He followed the singing down hallways and corridors he’d never seen before, the voice getting louder all the time. Soon he came to a large wooden dining hall door, and knew without a doubt that the voice was coming from the room on the other side. Odiz pondered—people thought wizard battles were all about shooting lightning bolts out of your fingertips and the size of your staff, but that was why most people weren’t wizards. Wizard battles were about winning, purely and simply yet as deviously as necessary. Veeraswamy’s Silent Fart? The spell had a certain appeal—it was an undetectable vapour that rendered the opponent unconscious unless they’d read a lot of books about breathing protection spells, or could turn themselves into a swamp dragon at will. It gave you the element of surprise, and–

  ‘So you’re here at last then?’ said Skoros, breaking off his song.

  Odiz cursed silently. So much for the element of surprise. Right. Lightning bolts out of the fingertips it was, then. He said the words of Caxton’s Oblivionator in his mind, and his hands grew hot. When he felt like he couldn’t hold back the power anymore, he went through the door, roaring as the power flowed through him. He shot three handfuls of the Oblivionator at a big iron chair at the far end of the room, where Skoros sat, his arms along its ornate square arm-rests. The Oblivionator screamed through the air, hot and orange, and then-

  -Hit an invisible wall that crackled blue around the chair. Skoros’ throne was sturdy, but covered in moving cogs and wheels and flashing lights. Odiz goggled at it. There was even a ‘crown’ of sorts, a metal skullcap which seemed to pulse with the same lights.

  ‘Caxton’s Oblivionator? Oh, that is disappointing. I expected something more imaginative from the great Odiz. Like the third hand though, I can imagine that comes in-’ He chuckled suddenly. ‘-Handy,’ he finished. ‘D’you want to do the tedious trading of insults thing, old man, or shall I just kill you now?’

  Odiz bristled. ‘Oh, can’t dispense with the social niceties, y’know? Crucial to the fundamentals-’

  He snapped his fingers and three giant cobras slithered from thin air up and over the throne, down over Skoros’ body.

  ‘That’s more like it,’ said the beardless wizard. Then he crooked a little finger, the chair flashed blue for a second, and three dead cobras fell heavily to the floor. ‘Y’see, the trouble is, old man, there’s magic, and that’s all fine and dandy if you want to eat a lot of dinners and throw snakes at people. Then there’s what I’ve got. The Astarians call it bio-mechanics.’

  As he gave it a n
ame, he pressed a button on the throne, and compartments opened up all over it. Cogs whirred, pistons pistoned, and thin strips of metal emerged from the throne, covering his toes, his legs, his arms and body, a sudden suit of armour, till just his face was showing. He stood up with a hiss of steam and clanked heavily over to Odiz, gripping the mage’s shoulders in his metal-gloved fingers. Servo-power intensified his grip, and Odiz winced as he felt the fingers bite down on him.

  ‘I call it science,’ said Skoros. ‘You can call it death if you like.’

  He smiled, and the armour glowed blue, sending massive bolts of electrical energy into Odiz’ body. The mage’s third hand leapt up and punched Skoros square on the nose, once, twice, then it began to char and blacken, and fell out of the air.

  ‘Yours,’ grunted Odiz, ‘not mine.’ Against the will of the lightning coursing into him, he raised his hands, grabbed Skoros round the midriff and focused, grunting against the blinding spasms of pain as his beard caught fire and seemed to squeal as it sizzled. His hands glowed red through the blue fire, and he poured the heat of them through Skoros’ metal armour, which glowed yellow, then orange, then red.

  ‘Yaaaaaargh,’ yelled Skoros as the red-hot metal fused, burning cloth and flesh, sticking to his body, burning through his body in places. Wisps of smoke curled up from him, smelling like cooked bacon. Odiz dropped out of his grip and lay panting, recovering on the floor.

  Skoros could see nothing through the agony of the melted metal, tried to take a step forward. As he bent his legs, the metal pushed against them, sending new waves of exhilarating pain through him, and he fell. The sensation of landing racked him all over again with screaming sobs, and Odiz rolled over onto his side. His heart was beating too fast, the electric shock had turned him into a chemical mayhem.

  ‘Y’know...Odiz,’ gasped Skoros through the pain, ‘you’re a difficult man to kill.’

  ‘What...what gave it away?’ panted the old man.

  ‘I cut off your hands, but still you kept coming, ahh,’ Skoros seethed, sucking his teeth to push through the heat as he tried to get to his knees.

  ‘’s’called...being a wizard,’ said Odiz. ‘A proper one.’

  ‘Really?’ Skoros panted. ‘Let’s see how you do...without a throat.’ He swung one arm around clumsily, grabbing Odiz by the neck. The mage scrabbled frantically, but within seconds, there was nothing to scrabble at—the heat of Skoros’ gauntlet pushed through him, burned his skin away, his throat, his breath. Odiz was an old man, but when he died, it wasn’t a comfortable, old man’s death. Skoros fought the pain with pure, cold satisfaction, seeing his enemy finally drop away from him, head and shoulders parted. Inside the gauntlet, the pain was like nothing he’d ever known, as molten metal burned the skin off his fingers, fusing to flesh and bone.

  ‘Pain...’ said Skoros to no-one but himself, to fight the sensation, ‘is life. Pain is victory. I will master it. I will be its ruler. I will... endure.’

  He began to crawl towards the door, leaving the body of Odiz behind him.

  __________

  ‘Why did the mission depend on finding an uninhabited planet?’ demanded Peridot. ‘We all just accepted it, because that was the way things were done. But why? You’re the mission commander, you must know.’

  Zirca sneered. ‘All available research suggests there can only be one dominant sentient species on a planet. To have two or more only leads to inevitable conflict, war, and the destruction of one species by the other. Finding a planet with no other sentient life is the only viable solution.’

  ‘So now you’re prepared to reverse engineer the situation? To take life and destroy it, just because you think it shouldn’t be here?’

  ‘I’m doing my job, Peridot. Moral philosophy is not your forte, go back to looking at water.’

  ‘You’re missing the point, Zica,’ Mali-Juna butted in. ‘You’ve seen the data, how can you not have worked it out yet?’

  Zirca frowned, but kept a tight grip on Alditha’s arm. ‘Worked what out?’

  ‘They’re all sentient,’ said Mali-Juna. ‘The trolls, the pixies, the goblins, the potatoes, point me out a sentient life form on this planet, I’ll point you out a sentient life form living alongside other sentient life forms. No inevitable war, no ultimate destruction, nothing.’

  ‘We call it sharing,’ muttered Alditha.

  ‘Wooly-headed idealism,’ snapped Zirca, yanking Alditha’s arm higher.

  ‘Any minute now, I’m going to get tired of that,’ she told him politely.

  ‘You can’t argue with the data,’ said Peridot calmly. ‘All these different sentient life forms are here. Yes, it’s unusual in the universe, but that’s academic—they’re here, and they’re the ones that matter because they’re the ones you’re thinking of destroying.’

  ‘In fact, they’re right here,’ said Rhodon, looking sideways. Everyone followed her gaze. Harper’s Army was charging down the square towards them.

  ‘Ha,’ snorted Zirca. ‘No war, no destruction, nothing,’ he said, mockingly.

  ‘You really are daft as a brush, aren’t you?’ asked Alditha. ‘We’ve had wars, we’re not a perfect people. We’ve had wars cos the Spooky Enders took Old Michlethwaite the Troll’s quarry and that weren’t right. We’ve had wars cos the Cremini Family and the Chanterelle Confederacy couldn’t come to terms over spore-spread territories. But we don’t have wars to extinction. What’d be the point of that?’

  ‘In your case, I’m increasingly of the opinion that extinction is its reward,’ growled Zirca.

  ‘That just makes me better’n you then, don’t it?’

  The roar of the army got closer.

  Then another noise overpowered it. It was the sound of roots ripping through the ground, horizontally, towards the army. Celeste yelped as one went under her feet.

  On the far side of the Astarians and Alditha, the roots tangled together, blossomed into a tight wall of soft yellow dandelions, ripened, closed, turned to puffballs of seeds on white parachutes. Then, as one, the dandelion clocks launched towards the racing army, an impenetrable sudden snow of seeds. The army slowed, fighting its way through the dandelion blizzard. Harper and Razor, though, flew above the flurry and prepared to dive on Zirca.

  ‘No,’ Alditha yelled, and both birds pulled up suddenly. ‘No-one attacks these people,’ Alditha explained. ‘They’re here now, and whether they need a witch or not is up to them, but right now, they’re under my protection. Do you understand me, Harper Fluffbelly? Razor Darkwing?’

  ‘Raaark. Did you miss the part where they’ve got you prisoner?’

  ‘I’m nobody’s prisoner, Razor Darkwing, you should know that by now. If I wasn’t held by Blackheart Bindweed, d’you think the fear of a broken arm is keeping me here?’

  ‘But-?’ stammered Harper. ‘But then, why?’

  ‘These people have no home, Harper. Their home was lost to them a long time ago, and they’ve been looking for somewhere else to be. You know what home is like—it’s warm, and safe, and you can be yourself in all your daftness. Now you tell me how it felt when you and I were at odds, eh? When you felt you couldn’t come home to me? These people are scared, my wonderful, silly bird. It’s not how they treat us that matters right now, it’s how we treat them.’

  ‘That was well said, Witch Alditha,’ said a resonant, woody voice behind them. In all the confusion, people seemed to have forgotten the fact that a wall of dandelions had spontaneously been created. The Green Man and Big Red walked up to them.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Alditha acknowledged, for she knew the dandelion storm had been the Green Man’s doing—could only have been his doing. She called very few people in the Garden ‘sir,’ but the Green Man was one of them. ‘I hope all is okay between us now...’

  The Green Man paused, considering his answer.

  ‘Indeed,’ he said eventually with a slow nod of his head. ‘Indeed, you are forgiven, Witch Alditha.’ He extended a curling branch towards the witch and s
troked her face. ‘A feud between you and I will not help matters, and my kin did not die in vain. And you are right—these Astarians must be very scared.’

  ‘I’m not scared, you pathetic aberration,’ growled Zirca, his eyes growing wild. ‘You’re all going to be dead soon.’

  ‘Yes, about that,’ said Alditha. ‘What have you hidden in our Garden, Mr Zirca?’

  ‘You think I’m going to tell you?’

  ‘Well you see, I’m not going to let you get hurt. Now, there are plenty of people who seem to want you to get hurt, for hurting me and threatening to kill us all, and I can see their point of view. But I’m not going to let that happen, and it strikes me that you wanted to nip off back to bed for a bit because whatever you’ve done, it can’t get you in there. But it can out here. So the longer we waste nattering, the more likely you are to die right along with the rest of us. I mentioned the bit about not letting that happen, didn’t I?’ she asked, checking with Celeste.

  Celeste nodded.

  ‘Good. So, there we are. Oh, and one other thing.’

  She coughed, and Zirca suddenly found he was holding nothing but a whisper of black smoke. Then, before he could react, his hands were yanked behind him and tied tight with string.

  Alditha reappeared in front of him. ‘If you’re going to break someone’s arm, just break it. Don’t go for the yanking it up their back option, it just irritates everyone to no good purpose. Now, I’m going to ask you properly.’ She fixed him with a firm stare. ‘What have you done, and how do we stop it?’

  20

  ‘I’m not sure the lad’s up to it...’ said Big Red to the Green Man, within earshot of where Zirca was still being held prisoner, ‘...coming clean, and telling us what he’s done, I mean. I think he’d rather die along with everyone else.’