by Linda Jaivin
He was, too.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the cosmos…
‘We have a situation here.’ Captain Qwerk cleared his throat, producing a tinkling noise like the song of bell-birds. Nufonian skin may look cold, but it can produce awfully pleasant and often unpredictable sounds. There is no other sonic vibration in the universe, for instance, that has quite the clear crystalline ring and symphonic range of a Nufonian fart.
An emergency meeting had been called of the Interplanetary CRAFTE (Council of Responsible Aliens For Terrestrial Exploration). In the room were gathered representatives from several planets. The Nufonians, who were hosting the council, were in the majority. Among the others were several Cherubim from the planet Cherubi. Of all the aliens, the Cherubim were the most humanoid in appearance. Even those who were well over a hundred Earth years old had flawless pink skin, yellow curls and limbs cute with baby fat. Beautiful snowy-white wings sprouted from their plump backs and they shared a mischievous sense of humour which their innocent appearance belied. They were also hopeless exhibitionists with a fetish for posing nude for artists. Sometime after the Renaissance they grew bored with this. They began to wag their live modelling appointments, or masturbate during them. This resulted in the decline of religious art and prompted the rise of the secular state in Europe. In recent years they had become obsessed with the idea of abducting Wim Wenders.
There were also a number of delegates from Sirius. Sirians, who had six eyes, were highly intelligent but so terminally silly that their prime cause of expiration was laughing to death (the second was fatal disorganisation). There was also an Alpha Centaurian and one representative from ET’s home planet, though she didn’t say much—her people were still living down the embarrassment of ET’s awkward but well publicised little adventure.
The aliens didn’t often have a chance for interplanetary get-togethers. So, despite the alleged seriousness of the crisis at hand, when Qwerk called the meeting to order, most were still chatting excitedly, catching up on news and showing each other some of the knick-knacks they’d abducted on recent trips to Earth. A Cherub had scored a dolphin-shaped dildo, which a Sirian was now sticking up one of his three nostrils, to general amusement. A small cluster of greys surrounded another little angel playing with a Gameboy, all of them jingling and jangling in their excitement. Reluctantly, they made their way to their seats and quieted down. The Alpha Centaurian was still munching on a quartz crystal snack when stillness descended on the room. He tried his best to muffle the sound of his chewing, but each cautious crunch caused one of the less mature extraterrestrials at the table to shake uncontrollably with laughter.
Qwerk cleared his throat again. Ding ding ding tinkle tinkle ding ding.
Several of the non-Nufonians exchanged surreptitious glances. Just because Nufonians were the only intelligent life forms around that were organised enough to launch the Earth-bound expeditions of which they all loved to be a part, they thought they were the masters of the universe or something. Nufonians were oh-just-so rational and reasonable. Their dwellings were without exception neat and tidy, they never had arguments over who should take out the garbage, they thought bureaucrats were Just Doing Their Jobs, and found the idea of doing anything on a whim not so much suspicious as incomprehensible. Their auras were perpetually aglow with good health from self-healing and clean living, and they actually remembered to take out insurance each time they went astral travelling. No Nufonian ever had trouble programming the VCR or putting together any furniture that they’d abducted from Ikea. They were, in other words, the most annoying ayles in the entire yoon. A couple of Sirians had hoped to break the Nufonian monopoly on serious space travel but it was, like, the engine was in one place, the boosters in another, someone said she could get the fuel from a contact but then lost the number, and, anyway, no one knew quite where the launching pad had gone.
Nufonians, for their part, would have vastly preferred to carry out their terrestrial expeditions without involving the rest of these cosmic clowns. The sad truth, however, was that the special rocket fuel required for such longdistance travel was made up of a number of minerals and chemicals that were not native to Nufon. They had no choice but to court the others’ co-operation. And the others were more than happy to co-operate, in their own way, in exchange for free rides to Earth.
Earth was an alien magnet. They loved the place. It was just such a funky, low-tech, high-chaos, wild and crazy sort of planet. They couldn’t get enough of it. Some aliens, like the Cherubim and Sirians, simply enjoyed slumming it there. Others, like the hopelessly naughty Zeta Reticulans, played pranks on Earthlings, popping out of children’s closets at night, creating mystery tracks on CDs, and running past-life seminars for people who all believed they were Cleopatra.
As for the Nufonians, they claimed they just wanted to make the world a better place. ‘Now is that,’ they were in the habit of remarking, ‘such a bad thing?’ They somehow neglected to mention that they had a Hidden Agenda for Earth. The Hidden Agenda was 1475 pages long, exactly one page longer than Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy, making it the longest book in the entire yoon. There were exactly two copies.
Qwerk motioned to the interstellar policemen guarding the meeting to close the door and step outside. ‘What I am about to reveal,’ he announced, a tremor of importance cymballing his voice, ‘is a bit sensitive.’
A Cherub yawned loudly. Qwerk looked over with exasperation.
‘Sorry,’ she giggled. ‘Late night.’
‘I’d appreciate it if this information does not leave the room. But what we have here is a suboptimal…uh, what has happened is that, well, quite frankly, what we are facing are the consequences of an experiment gone wrong.’
‘Cool,’ enthused the Alpha Centaurian.
If these are supposed to be the responsible aliens, Qwerk thought, not for the first time, the universe was in big trouble. The Alpha noticed the look of dismay on Qwerk’s face. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Go on. Ouch!’ He slapped away a Sirian who’d crawled under the table to nibble at his toes. Alpha Centaurians had particularly sexy toes, and there were twenty of them on each foot.
Qwerk put his shiny grey head in his hands. ‘Can we get serious, please? Just for one minute?’
‘Yeah!’ cried a Cherub. ‘Get Sirius!’
‘Get Sirius!’
‘Get Sirius!’
The Cherubim led the others to jump the Sirians, whom they held down and tickled to within an inch of their lives. Whoops of laughter, the flapping of fat white wings, the clink and squish of alien bodies wrestling and rolling around the floor and gasped pleas for mercy reverberated off the walls. Involuntarily, Qwerk’s antennae vibrated and a big blue tear dribbled out of one big black eye.
One of the Cherubim signalled to the others. ‘Sssst. Ssssst.’ With much puffing and panting and a few surreptitious pokes and jabs, they settled down again.
‘Briefly,’ Qwerk soldiered on, ‘we have been conducting experiments with hybridisation, Earthling-Nufonian crosses to be specific. This is, er, a rather difficult and risky endeavour. We had hoped that an infusion of Nufonian genes into the human gene pool would have a calming effect on Earthlings. I really can’t understand why you’re rolling your eyes at that, by the way. We hope they can become saner, straighter, more balanced, less aggressive. We think they should stop grumbling when they have to stand in queues or fill out forms in triplicate. After all—’
‘Bureaucrats are Just Doing Their Jobs,’ came the ironic chorus.
Like all Nufonians, Qwerk suffered from a severe irony deficiency. He didn’t realise they were taking the piss. He merely thought they were finally getting the message. About time too. He would have smiled but Nufonian faces are by their nature expressionless, so he continued blankly. ‘A small but growing number of Earthlings understand and support our efforts; we have made useful contacts in communities from Sedona in the American southwest to Mullumbimby on the Australian east coast.’
‘I once sco
red the best dope in Mullumbimby,’ a Cherub whispered to the Alpha. ‘Had a vision of Nirvana. It was wicked. Thirteen Dalai Lamas and Kurt Cobain all sitting on giant lotus pads, having this filthy jam session.’
‘You’re so lucky,’ the Alpha sighed. ‘All dope does for us is make us want to go around sticking our elbows into things.’
‘That could be interesting.’
‘Yeah, well, it’s got me into BIG TROUBLE in the past.’
‘Do tell.’
Qwerk rapped on the table. ‘Can I please have your attention?’
‘Later, dude,’ promised the Alpha.
‘As you might imagine, there has been much trial and error. We’ve had to conduct quite a number of, uh, sexual experiments on Earthling subjects, both male and female.’ Now Qwerk had their full attention. ‘Although we have tried quite a variety of, er, biodynamic positions and, ahem, mechanical apparatuses, we initially encountered enormous difficulty in getting Earthling, uh, sperm samples to impregnate Nufonian eggs. Similarly, Earthling eggs are not easily, er, penetrated by Nufonian sperm. Through, uh, perseverance and diligence we finally did manage to work out the kinks in the process.’ Qwerk, blushing pale blue, paused and looked around the room.
Kinks indeed.
Except for the whispery flutter of angel wings—for all their modelling experience, Cherubim had a big problem holding themselves perfectly still when excited—the room was silent. Even the Sirians were rapt. So, the boring old Nufonians did get up to a bit of hanky panky after all. The others couldn’t wait for tea time so that they could have a great big goss.
‘We did finally manage successfully to breed three hybrids, all females for convenience of further interbreeding. As they grew up, however, we discovered that the Earthling genes were apparently dominant. They were constantly breaking out of their Socialisation Centre and hitching up with itinerant Klingons and other unsavoury types.’ Qwerk’s voice grew stern. ‘They failed to respond appropriately to directive improvement. Which is to say’—here he paused and sighed—‘they turned out incorrigibly wild, undisciplined, uncontrollable and, while quite intelligent, incapable of being educated in Nufonian values.’
‘Whoowa!’ hooted the Alpha Centaurian, impressed. ‘When can we meet them?’
‘Well, that brings us to the purpose of this convocation,’ responded Qwerk, relieved that someone was taking a real interest in the issue. ‘You see, we hadn’t yet worked out what to do about them when somehow they managed, we don’t know how, to steal a spaceship as well as all the fuel reserves on the entire planet. We have every reason to believe,’ Qwerk concluded gravely, ‘that they have already reached Earth.’
‘Far out!’ cried a Cherub, envious.
‘Cool!’
Just when you think you’re finally on the same wavelength with them, thought Qwerk, you realise that they could all be from Mars. He exhaled a delicate silver bell of a sigh, and continued. ‘In sum, we need to send an expedition to Earth to, uh, recapture them, in a caring, sharing sort of way of course, and bring them and the spaceship back. Do we have your support?’
‘Yay!’ A Sirian jumped onto the table, flipped over onto his hands and clapped his four fat green feet in the air. ‘We’re going to Earth! We’re going to Earth! We’re going to Earth!’
The room exploded in gleeful pandemonium.
‘Far out!’
‘Far away!’
‘Count us in!’
‘Us too!’
‘When are we going?’
‘What’ll I wear?’
‘Are we there yet?’
‘What are we waiting for!’
‘ET, call home!’
‘Please. You’re not going to bring that up again, are you?’
‘Just kidding.’
‘I need to go to the toilet!’
‘Wardrobe stress! Wardrobe stress! I really don’t have a thing to wear to Earth.’
‘Don’t wear anything.’
‘Yeah!’
‘Beam me up, Scotty!’
‘Yippee!’
‘Rock n roll!’
Elizabeth Bay, on the genteel side of King’s Cross, was not, on the surface of things, a particularly rock n roll suburb. It was no Newtown, that’s for sure. When Elizabeth Bay wore blue in its hair, it tended to be a rinse. Even Elizabeth Bay’s bohemians, the artists and filmmakers and musicians and actors who hung out in the tiny suburb’s chic little cafes instead of doing their work, didn’t hang out too long, for they tended to be old enough to realise that if you didn’t do any work at all you wouldn’t get to stay an artist or filmmaker or musician or actor, a thought that hadn’t fully dawned on some of their younger peers in Newtown.
Yet there in Elizabeth Bay stood the rock n rollingest little hotel in all of Sydney, the Sebel Townhouse. The Smashing Pumpkins, Björk, Green Day, Alanis Morrisette, Billy Idol, Queen, Rod Stewart, Joe Cocker, Cyndi Lauper, and even the extraterrestrialoid Michael Jackson had all roomed at the Sebel at one time or another.
On this fine Sunday, the Rock Star in Residence at the Sebel was none other than Ebola Van Axel, lead singer of the American death metal band Twisted Mofo, on the final leg of his F*** the World Tour. Normally, Big Eb wouldn’t have been caught dead up at this hour, this hour being about three in the afternoon. But the combination of jet lag, weird drugs and the ministrations of a bevy of energetic young groupies saw him this afternoon lounging on a deckchair beside the rooftop pool, a pale, hairy sausage in a casing of black leather and dark sunglasses. Eb, feeling delicate, was scoffing peanut butter and oyster sandwiches from the room service trolley by his side and barely enduring the happy squeals of the evites cavorting in the water and throwing caviar at each other.
Ebola Van Axel was having a hair crisis. The members of Metallica, probably the most important metal band in the world, had recently had their hair cut short. Did that mean, Eb fretted, that short hair now had more cred? How can you play heavy metal with short hair? What would you toss? Your ears? He’d feel ridiculous. He’d look worse than ridiculous. In fact, Ebola Van Axel, total guitar hero and idol to millions of troubled and confused teenage boys, was convinced that he’d look like a real estate salesman. That’s because his brother, whom he resembled, had short hair and was a real estate salesman. Maybe shaving would be better. But what if he turned out to have a pointy skull? The life of a major rock star was full of hard choices.
Oh, Jesus. Would these girls ever shut their silly traps? He had a serious headache.
Ebola was in the midst of these tortured reflections when he noticed something funny in the air: a vibration, an effervescence, a shimmering, a hint of mystery, a touch of magic. It was the sort of spiritually incandescent moment that in bygone days might have signalled to mortals that they were about to be enchanted by a nymph, or bewitched by a fairy, spell-bound by a sprite, close-encountered by an elf or leprechaun. It heralded a head-on collision of worlds in which neither side could ever have enough third-party insurance.
Whatever it was, it was making Ebola very horny. ‘Hey,’ he beckoned, ‘one of you chicks wanna come over here and blow me?’ They ignored him. They were hanging off the side of the pool and staring transfixed up at the rooftop water tower. ‘Hey.’ Still no response. Ebola burped and hoisted a bottle of Dom Perignon—the second of the day—to his lips. He was about to take a swig when a flash, a gleam of sparkling light from the tower, caught his attention. He raised his shaded eyes to see what the girls were looking at, and was rewarded with a most extraordinary vision. Eb quickly looked down again lest he be trampled by a herd of pink elephants. The affluence of inkahol could be a scary thing. He squeezed his eyes to within an angström of shut and snuck another look.
There it was. Clear as day—and the day was very clear. God’s frisbee on the spire of Our Lady of Contemporary Hedonism. The hi-hat in the Infinite Drum Kit. The funkiest disco ball in the entire yoon. A 100 per centguaranteed-or-your-money-back, genuine flying saucer.
Atop the tower, Gal
gal pulsed and glowed and beamed in the sunlight. Whirrrr. Whirrrr. Sssssssssss. A crack appeared in the saucer’s apparently seamless exterior and widened to become a door. Weird green light poured out of the opening. Baby was the first to step into the light. Silhouetted there, with her Amazonian stature and hourglass figure, she looked like a heroine out of a Japanese comic strip. Doll and Lati emerged at her sides, variations on a theme of yoonal babedom. The antennae of all three were particularly striking in profile. With a loud hiss, a porthole beneath the door slid open and expelled a cloud of sparkling purple and blue gas. The gas formed itself into a grand staircase spiralling down to the pool deck.
Ebola dropped the bottle of champagne. Landing upright, it ejaculated a celebratory geyser of thick white foam into the air.
‘Yorp! Yorp!’ Revor shot out from between Baby’s legs, scampered down the steps, flew through the spurting foam and executed a perfect triple backwards somersault into the pool, plummeting down through the water and coming up between the legs of one of the groupies.
Revor had excellent lung capacity. It had always made him a popular guest at pool parties in the outer.
The babes, meanwhile, descended their steps of ether, which dissolved behind them. Baby had changed into a hot pink fake fur miniskirt, skin-tight black lurex top, fishnets and knee-high lace up boots. Doll was still in black leather, though now she was wearing the asteroid belt and Doc Martens. Ladi wore her white t-shirt, jeans and Converse all-star sneakers. She’d tied coloured ribbons in bows around her antennae.
‘Oh, baby!’ exclaimed Ebola, scrambling to his feet and grabbing his crotch.
‘Yes?’ replied Baby. How had he known her name? She grabbed her crotch in turn, thinking, when on Earth…
‘Phwoah! You chicks sticking around for awhile? Maybe, uh, we could, you know, do something?’
Now what would he have in mind? Doll decided to find out. Scanning his thoughts, her antennae stiffened with annoyance. ‘I don’t think so, butt-face,’ she hissed. ‘Of course,’ she conceded, ‘I only speak for myself.’
