The Young Dictator

by Hughes, Rhys

  “I can teach you Spider while we are travelling…”

  “Sure, I’d like that,” said Jenny.

  Boris sniffed. “It’ll be more useful if I teach you Lingua Galactica, the artificial language that every race on every planet of every solar system in the Federation speaks. It’s easy.”

  “We’d better learn that one first,” agreed Jenny.

  “Let’s blast off!” suggested Gran.

  “I’m ready!” said Jenny.

  So Gran called a few more instructions to the spider. There was a loud groaning and the house lurched. Gran peered into the cupboard under the stairs to check the propulsion unit. It was glowing precisely as it ought to. Then she moved to the nearest window.

  “It worked! We’re high above the street. Amazing!”

  Jenny joined her. “There are no exhaust fumes.” She turned to Boris, who waved his tentacles and said:

  “Vegan propulsion units are anti-gravity devices.”

  Jenny nodded down. “Look!”

  “Your parents,” said Gran. “They are coming back from the shops. Let me get one of my guns quickly! Righto!” She opened the window, leaned out and took aim. “Headshot!” But a cloud passed in front of her target and made the shot impossible. “Bah! I could have splattered your Dad’s head like pasta sauce with a dum-dum!”

  “You’ll get another chance, I’m sure,” soothed Jenny.

  “What’s a dum-dum?” asked Boris.

  “Hollow bullet,” replied Gran. “It causes more physical damage than a normal slug. It will pancake on impact, blowing the stinking target to smithereens! I used them a lot when I was a sniper in the Winter War between Finland and Russia back in 1940. I fought on both sides during that conflict, by the way. I love switching sides halfway through bloody and brutal campaigns.” She patted Jenny gently on the head. “I’ll always be loyal to you, though, mein kinder.”

  “Slugs? Pancakes?” Boris was confused.

  “Mein kinder?” So was Jenny.

  “I’d better close the window while we’re still in the atmosphere. We are rising at a rapid rate,” said Gran.

  Not only were they rising vertically, but the house was also veering in a sideways direction. They drifted high over the city of London and when Jenny went to join Gran at the window she could make out the Houses of Parliament very far below. She remembered how she had once ruled from there and sighed deeply with nostalgia.

  “I wonder what Tubbs is doing now? Poor loyal Tubbs!”

  “Your driver?” Gran shrugged her shoulders. “He has been imprisoned for life in the galleys for supporting you.”

  “Are the galleys a bad place?” asked Jenny.

  Gran nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

  “It seems so unfair!” growled Jenny. “Punished just because he helped a dictator! I wish we had a bomb so I could drop it on that building! But I don’t want to kill the skargills in the cavern beneath it, so I wouldn’t use it even if I had one in my possession.”

  “A cobalt bomb would make the biggest impression,” said Gran with a thoughtful look. Then she slammed the window shut and turned away to bark more orders at the spider. “Skreek!”

  The spider adjusted a control and the house accelerated.

  Jenny felt very light and floaty.

  The window went black and then it was full of stars and the Earth was a blue and white ball shrinking rapidly away. Jenny was no longer able to keep her feet on the ground. She began drifting through the room, turning upside down slowly. “I’m weightless!”

  “That’s normal in outer space. Do we have an artificial gravity?” Gran asked Boris. He nodded and explained that Vegans were the utter masters of that particular force and he showed Gran where the right control could be found on one of the consoles. A flick of a switch and Jenny came back down to the carpet. She was annoyed.

  “But I was enjoying the sensation of freedom!”

  Gran chuckled. “Zero gravity will make our voyage too difficult. And we have a lot to do. We must prepare for a hyperspace jump, for example. Bellatrix Three is 250 light years distant from Earth, so at this speed it’ll take trillions and trillions of years for us to get there. I don’t have all that time to waste, so we must find a shortcut.”

  “And the shortcut is through hyperspace, is it?”

  “That’s right, dude,” said Gran.

  “Hyperspace is another dimension where the laws of normal space and time don’t apply,” explained Boris.

  “Are we going to jump all the way to our destination?” asked Jenny. It seemed absurd to her, but clearly they weren’t joking. She imagined two kangaroo feet fixed to the outside of the house. Then she shook her head and the image vanished. Boris said:

  “We’ll have to do a series of hops. Each one will take us a bit closer to Bellatrix Three. That is the best way of travelling from one solar system to another without getting lost. If we tried to get there in a single hop we might accidentally end up going through a star and that would be the end of us! Navigating space is quite tricky.”

  “But the giant spider can handle it,” commented Gran.

  “Skeek kreek,” agreed the spider.

  Jenny frowned. “If Bellatrix is further away than Vega, how can we be sure Boris won’t sneak off when we pass his home planet?” It was a good question, but Gran explained that the stars were in different directions and that Boris couldn’t ever be a deserter.

  Jenny opened one of the tins of biscuits and helped herself to handfuls of chocolate chip cookies. She yawned.

  “When do we make the first jump?” she asked.

  Gran said, “I can’t really hear you with your mouth full of biscuits. It’s not a good idea to eat in hyperspace…”

  “Are we in hyperspace already?” asked Jenny.

  “Yes,” said Boris. “We’re in the middle of our first hop. It will take us beyond the orbit of Neptune, the outermost planet of your solar system. It might be a good time for your first Lingua Galactica lesson. If you want to say ‘hello’ you can just mutter the word ‘ksoxn’. If you want to be very polite about it, then you must say—”

  “I can’t feel anything!” interrupted Jenny.

  Boris smiled. “That’s because there are no sensations in hyperspace. If you go to the window and look out, you’ll see that I’m telling the truth. It is very difficult for a Vegan to tell lies.”

  “You must have often lied about your identity during your affair with Jenny’s Mum,” said Gran sceptically.

  “I didn’t say it was impossible for Vegans to lie, just that it’s hard. I’m not lying about us being in hyperspace, that’s for sure! I pressed this little button here to make the first jump…”

  Jenny went to the window. No galaxies, no stars, no planets out there, nothing solid. Just weird gridlines made of energy. She turned away and returned to the biscuit tin, snatching up more cookies despite the repeated warning from Gran. The language lesson continued and she learned thirty new words that could be understood anywhere by any race in the universe that was a member of the Federation.

  The days passed. They settled into a comfortable routine, phasing in and out of hyperspace at regular intervals, approaching their destination in the same way that a gigantic cosmic rabbit might. Just before it was time to make the last hyperspace hop to Bellatrix Three, Gran said, “We need to summon an emergency council to greet us when we land. Where is your communicator?” She glanced at Boris.

  “Here it is,” he replied, holding in one of his tentacles a blue box that bristled with wires. Gran told him to switch it on and broadcast a message to the representatives of the major civilised worlds. She told him exactly what to say and he repeated it precisely.

  “Ksoxn judhsll! Hsli dkjow sklkdoi slwbxh sjuhih!”

  “Lsyhnboi,” added Gran.

  “Lsyhnboi,” repeated Boris.

  Jenny nodded to herself. Lingua Galactica was a much more concise language than any to be found on Earth and the message Boris had sent would have requir
ed at least one thousand extra words in English to make the same amount of sense. He had called for an emergency meeting of the highest council of the Federation and he had also insisted that one be held as soon as possible. Both Jenny and Gran were perfectly fluent now in the language and regularly spoke in it.

  Even the spider knew conversational basics.

  They waited a few seconds.

  Then the reply came: “Ysjjlk wlkqw ksjoiuj shsk.”

  “Strange,” remarked Boris.

  “What’s strange?” wondered Jenny.

  “I don’t recognise the voice,” answered Boris.

  “Does it matter?” demanded Gran.

  “No, I suppose not… but I thought I was familiar with all the different voices of all the communicator operators in this zone of the galaxy. Must be someone new! Anyway, he has agreed to call a council and said it will be ready to receive us when we land.”

  Gran rubbed her palms together. “Excellent!”

  Jenny asked, “Shall I load the guns?”

  “Might as well,” said Gran.

  “Do you want the blunderbuss for yourself?”

  “Yes please. Two pistols also.”

  “In that case I’ll take the submachine gun.” Jenny turned to Boris. “Do you have a particular preference?”

  Boris shuddered. “Me use a gun? Never!”

  “More fool you, buster!”

  The final hop was calculated and Boris pressed the correct button and Gran called instructions to the spider, adjusting course by tiny fractions of degrees. The suspense was intense. The time seemed to go slowly but this was an illusion, for Boris had explained that hyperspace was outside time, in the same way that a dog chained to a lamppost is often outside a shop. At last the jump was fully completed.

  The spaceship that had once been a house appeared high over a garish orange planet. A massive blue-white sun burned brightly to one side. As Gran called instructions to the spider, the house descended slowly into the atmosphere of this peculiar world. From the inside, Jenny watched as the colour beyond the window changed from black to terracotta, which is a shade of orange mixed with reddish brown. Long stringy clouds tangled themselves around the house chimney.

  Boris joined her and pointed with a tentacle.

  “Look there! On the horizon!”

  Jenny squinted. “It looks like a palace of crystal…”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what it is! The council meetings are held there. It is the only building on the surface of Bellatrix Three. There is a landing pad in front of it. Our destination!”

  Gran spoke faster to the spider. “Skeel kreel kreek!”

  The house slowed down gradually.

  It glided sideways now, skimming the surface of a murky ocean where no waves rose and fell, approaching the shore of the island on which the crystal palace stood. It was a delicate matter to land the house on the pad, but Gran and the spider managed it. Boris waved all his tentacles and his mouth swung like a lasso over his head.

  “We have arrived safely! Welcome to Bellatrix Three!”

  “Will we be able to breathe the air?” asked Jenny. She knew that some planets had poisonous atmospheres.

  Boris nodded. “That’s one of the reasons this world was chosen as the location for emergency meetings: it has a unique atmosphere that can be breathed by any race in the universe.”

  Jenny and Gran looked at each other. Then they stepped to the front door, slid back the bolt and opened it.

  There was a hiss as the inner and outer atmospheres equalised. Jenny’s nostrils flared as she inhaled the alien air. Not bad at all. “Smells just like vanilla and strawberry!” she chortled.

  She stepped out onto the landing pad. Gran, Boris and the spider came right behind her. The entrance to the crystal palace was a flight of shining steps. On the top step waited a dozen figures, but because of the reflected glare it was difficult to see them clearly.

  “Those must be the representatives of the Federation planets. They are here to greet us!” cried Gran. “Make sure your gun is loaded, Jenny, and that the safety catch is off. Ready?”

  She nodded. They walked forward, reached the bottom step, started to climb to the top. Then a voice boomed:

  “Drop your weapons now!”

  Jenny shielded her eyes with her hand and looked up. The creature that had spoken was immensely tall.

  “Why should we?” demanded Jenny.

  “Because if you don’t, I’ll destroy you with my weapon!” And the tall creature grinned and winked maliciously. He had tusks and nine eyes, so the effect was comical as well as disturbing. Then he aimed his own gun directly at Gran and licked his lips.

  Gran was confused. “I thought they didn’t know what weapons were? Have you tried to trick us, Boris?”

  “I swear that I didn’t!” gasped Boris.

  “I think we ought to do as he says and drop our guns,” hissed Jenny as she threw her own submachine gun down the steps. Gran reluctantly did the same. Then the tall creature said:

  “My name is Genghis Kan’t and I am the ruler!”

  Boris asked, “Ruler of what?”

  “Of everything, you fool! The entire galaxy!”

  Boris waved his tentacles in extreme agitation. “But the galaxy doesn’t have any rulers! All the planets are free to do what they like and they live in peace and harmony with each other.”

  Genghis Kan’t shook his head. “The situation has recently changed. I launched a coup and took over…”

  “What happened to the Federation?” squeaked Boris.

  “I disbanded it. The galaxy is now a dictatorship and I am the dictator! Bow down before me! I have conquered and enslaved the galaxy! So bow down before mighty Genghis Kan’t!”

  Jenny whispered to Gran, “I think he’s beaten us to it!”

  “We’d better bow,” advised Gran.

  They did so and Genghis Kan’t was satisfied with their meekness and submission, but Boris did a silly thing. He turned and began running back down the steps towards the spaceship.

  Perhaps he thought he could escape and return to Vega. Maybe he was worried about his own people. But Genghis Kan’t aimed his gun at Boris’ back and pulled the trigger. And then—

  It was weird and horrible and very yucky!

  A dirty beam of energy spurted out of the barrel of the gun and caught up with the fleeing Boris. It enveloped him and froze him in his tracks. It made him turn transparent. He screamed and his scream was dreadful and Gran and Jenny covered their ears.

  But Genghis Kan’t roared with nasty laughter!

  Because Boris was now transparent, his skeleton could be seen plainly and it did an unexpected thing. It turned around inside his body so that it was facing the wrong way. And then it also screamed. It screamed on its own, independently of its body, so there were two screams coming out at the same time. Then Boris vanished.

  He disintegrated. Like a pointless daydream.

  “Oh dear,” whispered Gran.

  Genghis Kan’t pointed at them. “You will be my prisoners and obey my orders for the rest of your lives!”

  “Like being home with Mum and Dad!” wailed Jenny.

  “Yes, I suppose it is,” said Gran.

  During this exchange, the spider had very quietly scuttled away down the steps and through the open door of the spaceship. No one had noticed it because it kept itself so low to the ground. Suddenly the house rose into the air and accelerated away back into space. Genghis Kan’t shook a huge gauntleted fist at it in fury, but he quickly grew calm again and a glow of triumph appeared in his bizarre eyes.

  “I could order missiles to blast it to bits,” he snarled, “but it is obvious it comes from a planet that isn’t yet under my control and it makes more sense for me to see where it’s headed.”

  “We are earthlings from Earth,” said Jenny.

  Genghis Kan’t rubbed one of his tusks in thought. “I will send a secret invasion fleet to follow your spaceship back to your home world. Then it will
crush and dominate your species!”

  Instinctively, both Gran and Jenny clenched their own fists and echoed his words under their breath. “Crush and dominate!” They couldn’t really help themselves. It was force of habit…

  “In the meantime, you are my captives and slaves!”

  Genghis laughed and spluttered.

  Jenny sighed. It was like being back in school after all! She winced as Genghis Kan’t ordered his guards forward. They grabbed her and Gran and dragged them off to a dungeon under the palace. The last thing Jenny saw of the outside, through a small window in a corridor, was a vast fleet of spaceships taking off from behind the palace and heading in the same direction as the house. The invasion of Earth had already begun! Genghis Kan’t didn’t exactly waste much time!

  “Don’t worry,” said Gran as the dungeon door slammed behind them very loudly. “I think I have an idea…”

  Caterpillar the Hun

  “I have escaped from dungeons before,” said Gran as she and Jenny heard the door being locked behind them. She spoke in English, just in case the guards outside were still listening. “Many dungeons. For example, I was once forced to wear an iron mask that couldn’t be taken off, but I used it to tunnel my way through the wall. By the time I reached the other side, I had worn the iron away completely…”

  “So you were free of both the dungeon and the mask?” asked Jenny in an awed tone. The narrow room was gloomy and creepy but her Gran was a constant source of inspiration to her.

  “That’s right. It happened in the Nineteenth Century. The continent of Europe was in a mess back then, I can tell you!” Gran sat in a corner and rested her back against the cold stone.

  “That was a very daring escape,” said Jenny.

  “I had to keep twisting around and around, boring my way deeper and deeper into the stone,” explained Gran.

  “You were like a human mole,” Jenny suggested.

  Gran scowled at this and said:

  “Moles don’t dig with their heads! Be sensible. I was soon very dizzy. I emerged underwater and had to wrestle an octopus before floating to the surface and then swimming to the mainland. The dungeon was sited on an island, you see. But listen: the point is that there isn’t a cell in the cosmos that can hold me! I am an escapologist!”