Alien Abduction - The Wiltshire Revelations

by By Brian Stableford

  “You just said that I’ll get to decide my own fate,” Steve pointed out.

  “Of course you will,” Alison told him, “but Jan and Mill will still have to pretend that they decided it for you, between themselves. That’s an absolute must, so far as saving face is concerned. Fortunately, you’re the kind of bloke who’ll let them. I only wish....”

  Before Alison could voice her only wish, the doorbell rang. Steve glanced at his wristwatch, and saw that it was half past six— just about time to get serious with the vegetables. His eyes met Alison’s, which showed the same hesitant suspicion as his own. He went to the door and opened it. Janine was standing on the threshold, clutching a bottle of oaky claret.

  “I know I should have called,” Janine said, as she moved past Steve, “but I thought it might be less awkward if I just....” She stopped as she caught sight of Alison.

  “I guess you had the same thought as me,” Alison said, in a tone far less sprightly than the one in which she’d just been showing off her cleverness to Steve.

  For a moment or two, it looked as if Janine might not take off her coat, but then she did. Evidently, she meant business—although Steve was far from certain exactly what that business might be.

  “When did Milly ring you?” Steve asked.

  Janine looked at him, apparently not quite sure how to answer.

  “Milly rang you, didn’t she?” Steve said. “To tell you that I was cooking the food she’d bought for dinner a deux, and to suggest that this might be a good opportunity to begin patching things up. What time did she call?”

  “About four-thirty, I guess,” Janine said. “She was sorry for leaving it so late, she said, but things had been a bit hectic in the family home. I’m sorry too—obviously, I ought to have given you more notice.”

  “I’ll go, if you like,” Alison said, speaking to Janine.

  “No,” Steve said. “You mustn’t.”

  “Well,” Alison said, “given that I’ve helped you so much with the cooking...shall I put the veg on now? I can put in a little extra there’s plenty in reserve. If that’s okay with you, Jan.”

  “Of course,” Janine said. “I wouldn’t dream of trying to send you away. I should have remembered that Steve gave you a lift home last night—you must have been in the car when Milly got the news. She didn’t tell me that she’d invited you too. I suppose she thought it would help us all if we were both here.”

  “There’s time to do some mashed potatoes too,” Alison said “Just in case there’s not enough roast for three. Don’t move a muscle, Steve—entertain your other guest while I see to it.” She vanished into the kitchen, but stuck her head out again a moment later to say: “Oh, by the way, Jan, there’s nothing going on. I’ve already explained to Steve why I could never sleep with him, in the unlikely event of his ever being desperate enough to ask me. He understands, and he’s fine with it.”

  When Alison had vanished for a second time, Janine said; “She never changes. I suppose you’re surprised to see me.”

  “Very,” Steve admitted.

  “Milly and I had a long talk on Sunday. Alison helped us out. We decided that things had to be settled, to spare us all any more pain. I just wanted you to know that I’m okay with the situation. I was hurt, but I’m better now. You’re with Milly now, and that’s okay. I think it might be possible for us all to be friends, if we’re mature and sensible about it.”

  “Right,” Steve said. “That would be good.”

  “And Milly needs support from all of us just now,” Janine went on. “We have to put her first. She’s always been a bit fragile, you know, since she had the bulimia. She seems all right now, but the fact that she’s been a regular at AlAbAn for a year and more is an indicator that she never quite got back to normal.”

  “You and I are regulars at AlAbAn now,” Steve pointed out. “We’ve all had our experiences.”

  “Well, I’d be the last person to claim to be completely normal,” Janine said, insincerely, “and you’ve had your troubles too—but Milly’s the one who’s in the firing line at present. We have to figure out how best to help her. I’m glad Ali’s here. It’ll give us all a chance to compare notes. You and I will have to put our differences aside.”

  Steve wasn’t sure that he’d had any differences to put aside, even before Alison had given him her version of the likely future scenario towards which everyone was supposed to be working. He wasn’t exactly sure why Milly had rung Janine immediately after he’d told her about Alison coming round to eat up the spare food, but he could see well enough why Alison thought that Milly’s mind was as straight as a corkscrew, in the nicest possible way. He had no idea how straight Janine’s mind was at present.

  “Well, I’m glad you came,” Steve said. “It means that I can give you both your presents, in case I don’t see you again before Monday.

  Alison’s head reappeared round the kitchen doorway with suspicious alacrity. “You bought me a present?” she said.

  “You bought us both presents?” Janine said. “I didn’t buy you one.”

  “Me neither,” said Alison.

  “Oh, they’re nothing special,” Steve assured them both. “I happened to be in Reading last Saturday, and there’s a Natural World shop in the mall there. I like the shop—it’s a little bit trinkety, but it’s the kind of place in which a secondary school science teacher feels perfectly at home. You’ll have to forgive me if the presents are a million miles away from anything you actually wanted.”

  He fetched the packages from the cupboard, and handed them over. Alison came back into the sitting-room so that she and Janine could compare gifts.

  “It’s a rock,” Janine observed, when she’d unwrapped hers. “I think it’s broken.”

  “It’s split in two so you can move the two halves apart and look inside,” Steve said.

  Janine did that, and looked suitably surprised by the mass of crystals inside the seemingly-unprepossessing ovoid, arranged in layers around a central cavity.

  “It’s a geode,” Steve explained. He could have gone on, but Alison intervened.

  “I’ve got a rock too,” she said. “Shaped like a snail.”

  “It’s an ammonite,” Steve said. “I used to hunt fossils down on the Dorset coast when I was a kid, with my Dad—that was probably a major factor in my choice of career. I never found one as big or as neatly-formed as that one, though. It’s about a hundred million years old, give or take twenty million. Those crystals have been locked up inside the geode far longer, unseen by human or any other kind of eye. I’m sorry they’re not posh jewelry, but I’ve always thought that it’s nice to have something on the mantelpiece to remind us how old the world is, and how small our troubles—or humankind’s troubles—are, in the context of geological time.”

  “Jesus,” Alison said. “You really are a romantic, aren’t you, in your own weird way?”

  “You used to hunt fossils along the Dorset cliffs?” Janine said. “How on Earth did you manage that?”

  “You hunt for fossils at the bottom of the cliffs, not the top,” Steve told her. “I never, ever, went near the upper edges. I’ve always been a bottom-of-the-cliff sort of person, since earliest childhood.”

  “What did you get Milly?” Alison asked.

  Steve was too smart to be caught out by that one. He shook his head, mysteriously. “I’d better see to those vegetables,” he said, as he beat a hasty retreat to the kitchen, leaving Alison and Janine to compare trophies and replan their tactics for the next few moves in their convoluted game.

  * * * *

  Milly’s father’s funeral was arranged for the following Wednesday—the day after Boxing Day. Steve wanted to go, in order to lend Milly his moral support, and offered to drive Janine and Alison, but Milly said on Boxing Day that she’d prefer it if they didn’t, because none of them had actually known her father, even though Alison and Janine might remember having met him when they were children. The funeral, she said, was essentially a family
occasion. This gave Steve the impression that Milly didn’t think that his moral support, and that of Janine and Alison, was worth anywhere near as much as he and they did.

  “Have you seen much of Janine and Alison since Friday?” Milly asked, in all apparent innocence. It was a question she hadn’t asked before, although they’d talked on the phone every day—and Steve hadn’t volunteered the relevant information.

  “We’ve got together a couple of times,” Steve said. “Nothing to worry about—Alison was always there to act as chaperone.”

  “I wasn’t worried,” Milly told him. “You don’t need to be chaperoned, and neither does Jan. Alison might, mind. She’s the double-dyed slut.”

  “That’s unfair,” Steve told her.

  “I know,” Milly replied. “It’s just part of our relationship—you wouldn’t understand. Watch out that she doesn’t pull the wool over your eyes. I love her dearly, and I’m truly sorry that I wrote that wretched letter, but she’s a sly one.”

  “When will you get back to Salisbury?” Steve asked.

  “I’m not absolutely sure. Because of the holiday I haven’t missed out on that much work, so it’s difficult to resist Mum’s insistence that I have to stay till the weekend. Probably Sunday, I guess, although I’ll try to get away before—I’ll see you that evening. I’m back at work on Monday, of course. If you want to see Janine again, that’s fine—with or without a chaperone.”

  “Is that that you want?” Steve asked.

  “I’m thinking about what you might want,” Milly said. “From my point of view, mind, you’re probably safer with Jan than hanging around at a loose end. It sounds awful, I now, but I think I can trust her morals better than she was able to trust mine—and if I can’t, I’d hardly be in a position to complain, would I?”

  Steve related this conversation to Alison on the Friday, when they met up for a drink in the Pheasant, without a chaperone.

  “She’s right, I suppose,” Alison said. “I am a sly one. It doesn’t make any difference, though, does it? Everything’s working to plan. Jan is preparing the ground to take you back and Milly’s preparing to hand you over. It’ll take time, but you’ll get there in the end.”

  “According to you, it was supposed to be my decision,” Steve reminded her.

  “Yes, of course—but that’s the decision you’ll make, isn’t it? We’re all anticipating the same future here. It’s because it is your decision that we know how things are bound to turn out. Milly’s just accepting the inevitable, and saving as much face as possible.”

  “But why is everyone taking it for granted that I prefer Janine?” Steve asked. “Nobody’s actually asked me.”

  “Actually, I did ask you,” Alison reminded him. “You didn’t answer, but I took that as tacit confirmation. Jan’s the best-looking, even without taking into account your predilection for doll-like delicacy. If someone had a particular liking for tall women in uniform, that might narrow her advantage over Milly, but no one’s under any illusions here. Milly tried flat-out competition with Janine, back in her bulimic days, but she had to admit in the end that it was pointless. Jan wins—that’s just the way it goes. Shit happens. We’ve been friends long enough to know that.”

  “Do you think all men are that shallow, or just me? Do you really think that it always comes down to looks, and nothing else.”

  “It’s all men, in my experience,” Alison told him, “and yes, alas, it always does seem to come down to looks. Beauty is the bottom line. Always has been, always will be. Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. That’s Keats.”

  “I’m familiar with the quotation,” Steve admitted, feeling somewhat caught out, although she couldn’t have known that he’d used it himself to make the same cynical point he was now trying to blunt.

  “Well, that’s the long and the short of it. In spite of the special pleading of pulp romantic fiction, from Jane Eyre on, the looker always gets the guy she wants—permanently, if she wants him permanently—and as many other guys, on a temporary basis, as she fancies along the way. It was a bit different, I suppose, back in Keats’ day, when girls weren’t allowed to be sluts. When everyone had to pretend to be a virgin, even lookers were only entitled to grab one and stick to him, so everyone lower down the scale could pick a fresh one from the remaining pool, but it’s not like that any more

  These days, lookers can sample to their heart’s content. Can you honestly put your hand on your heart and contradict me?”

  “There isn’t just one linear scale of beauty,” Steve said, defiantly. “Different people are attractive in different ways, and different people have different tastes. Plenty of men might prefer Milly to Janine, or you to either of them.”

  “In your dreams—or mine, more likely. It works the other way too, Steve. Didn’t you always win, in competition with your male friends, in the days when you weren’t such a loner?”

  “I’m not a loner,” Steve protested, although it was certainly true that he hadn’t restarted hanging out with people from work since he’d got his return ticket from Coventry, rarely saw anyone from the cricket club during the winter months, and knew perfectly well that internet poker didn’t count as authentic social interaction.

  “But you don’t have friends the way Janine, Milly and I are friends, do you?”

  “No, thank God,” Steve riposted. “I wouldn’t need enemies, would I?”

  “Don’t be like that,” Alison said. “I’m not getting at you— certainly not trying to hurt you. If I’m getting at anyone, it’s myself. You’re right, too—with friends like Janine and Milly, I certainly don’t need enemies. I mustn’t give you the wrong impression about that, either. They’re not my enemies, and there’ve been plenty of times when I really needed them. It’s easy for me to slag them off while I’m out with you, all smug because it makes me look good in envious eyes—but when things go wrong, they provide a safety net for which I’ve often had cause to be thankful.”

  “I still think you’re oversimplifying,” Steve said. “If I do get back with Janine, it won’t be just because of her looks. I’m really not that shallow.”

  “And I’m really not trying to pick a fight,” she said. “I’ll take it as a compliment that you care enough about what I think to disagree with me.”

  Steve smiled wryly at that. “Oh, I care,” he said. “I’d begun to rely on you as the voice of sanity in a deeply confusing and disturbing world. I suppose you’re right, and I’m only protesting because I’d like you to think better of me than you do, even though I don’t deserve it.”

  “Now you’re trying to make me feel guilty. That’s not fair—I’m too easy a target...and I wish that wasn’t true in more ways than one, although it obviously is.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t run yourself down like that,” Steve said.

  “Why? So you can pretend that I’m more attractive than I am, so that you needn’t be ashamed to be seen with me.”

  Steve didn’t reply to that.

  “Okay,” Alison said. “That was stupid, and unfair, and made me out to be a liar when I said I wasn’t getting at you. I really was trying to be the voice of sanity, but it’s harder than I thought. Obviously, I’ll need more practice before I can perfect that act. Now I’m babbling. Janine would have been—will be—so much more controlled.”

  Steve frowned. “What do you mean, will be?” he asked.

  “Just a guess,” she said. “I thought tonight might be a practice run for the unchaperoned outing you didn’t quite have the confidence to tackle yet. I thought you might have asked me out on my own because you weren’t quite ready to ask Janine out on her own, and I couldn’t help feeling a little bit resentful about it. Tell me I’m wrong, and I’ll take your word for it.”

  Steve knew that telling her she was wrong wasn’t going to sound at all convincing, given the circumstances, “You’re too clever for your own good,” he said, instead, “and too paranoid by half. You’re my voice
of sanity, remember?”

  “So I am,” Alison said, probably agreeing to all three propositions. “I’ve spoiled things now, haven’t I? You won’t ask me to do this again.”

  “If I were as shallow as you think I am,” Steve said, “I probably wouldn’t—but I’m deep enough to know what the voice of sanity is worth, and you do seem to need more practice. Are you coming to AlAbAn on Thursday?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she said. “It’s Janine’s turn to tell her story. I missed Milly’s, unfortunately, but there’s no way I’m going to miss Jan’s. I’d quite like to hear your theory, too.”