Tales of the Talking Picture

by Tom Slemen

  'You must love her, and she must love you,' the witch told him. 'When people fall in love – true love – they often become so close, they know what the other one is thinking. A telepathy of the heart.'

  Matthew yawned, and lay there in his bed, gazing up through the top of the window pane at the ancient sentinel stars twinkling above his town. Matthew used to be into astronomy, but he lent his telescope to his friend Mousey Thompson almost a year ago and hadn't seen it since. Mousey hadn't even used the telescope to look at heavenly bodies, but earthly ones instead, and Dolly Bunclarke's in particular.

  What was that star? Matthew wondered, and then he recognised it from the three starts in a row below it that formed Orion's Belt. That star was Rigel, but how many light years away was it? He used to know. Matthew turned to Rhiannon, and in soft sleepy voice he asked, 'Do you know any tales about the stars? Aliens maybe? Just one more tale before I go to sleep, please?'

  The Talking Picture emanated a faint midnight blue and purple aura, and the witch's eyes glowed with a green radiance. 'The eternal stars, always moving westwards on the tide of the night,' Rhiannon reflected, and then she told Matthew to close his eyes. He did this, and he waited to become another person – a boy who was yet unborn in Matthew's time.'

  Matthew could see a starry sky and all around was starlit fields, somewhere in the country. He opened one eye and was amazed to see the same glittering stars on his bedroom ceiling. Yes, it was happening again; the walls, ceiling and floor of the room were fading away as the witch transported Matthew into the scene of another tale...

  Higgledy

  Three minutes after midnight, nine-year-old Danny Thurber left the farmhouse via the kitchen window and hurried through the moonlit fields of barley until he was safely concealed by the shadow of the solar mill; a conventional windmill with solar-panelled sails that could be driven by the wind or the sun's rays.

  His lively dark eyes glanced back to the farmhouse, to the room where his father was sleeping. Danny then looked over to the church on the dark horizon. Beneath the spire, buried in the churchyard, his mother was sleeping a sleep of sorts. Well, Danny liked to believe that.

  He sprinted off towards the woods, but was intercepted half way.

  "Danny, what are you doing out here at this hour?" said the old farm robot, or 'Scarecrow' as Danny called it, because all it could do nowadays was startle the birds.

  "Oh, go and recharge your batteries," whispered Danny.

  The farm robot just stood there, lost for words. Its wide-brimmed hat and hanging arms gave it the resemblance of an Old West gun-slinger. Scarecrow's sluggish microprocessor brain, irreparably damaged by a bolt of lightning two years back, suddenly got the syntactical gist of Danny's utterance. "I don't need my batteries recharging, Danny. Danny?"

  Danny was nowhere to be seen.

  Scarecrow switched his vision to the infra-red end of the spectrum, and immediately his lensed eyes spotted Danny's shimmering outline in the distance, running through the woods.

  Scarecrow suffered one of his temporary memory-circuit drop-outs and suddenly forgot who he was looking for. He stared into the starry sky with his eyes set at maximum magnification and became engrossed with the mountains of the Moon, the rings of Saturn, Jupiter's Great Red Spot, and the Milky Way.

  Danny was nearing the rendezvous point. Already, he could hear the excited voices of the other children who, like him, had escaped from their bedrooms to catch the Irish space vendor. Tonight was the nocturnal event of the year.

  At last he reached the familiar clearing in the woodland. In the moonlight, a circle of children in nighties and pyjamas stood around the space vendor, a bearded pot-bellied man who was burdened with boxes and cages, Danny felt the five-pound note in his pocket. The result of three long weeks of sweet rationing and an arduous chocolate fast.

  "Danny, you little divil, " said the space vendor, "you're late. I was about to give up on yer."

  "It's the farm boy," said a sarcastic freckle-faced girl with no front teeth. Nobody took any notice of her. All the other children were totally enthralled with the myriad of strange, exotic creatures that were squeaking and warbling in the space vendor's cages.

  "What's this?" Danny squinted through the bars of a cage at a small yellow furry spider with four luminous eyes. It whistled like a possessed flute

  "A Piper Spider." said the Irishman. "He hypnotises his prey with his sweet melodic tunes. I caught him on Merak Three. If you' re ever troubled with rodents and the like on your farm, then the Piper's your man."

  Danny shook his head. "What's that in the other cage?"

  "Here, take a look." the space vendor held the cage out for the farm boy's inspection.

  A pink beetle the size of a tortoise lowered its antennae in fear. Danny tapped the bars of its cage with his finger. "It's okay boy, I won't hurt you."

  "It isn't a boy." said one of the children.

  "How can you tell?" Danny asked.

  "It's a Rigelian Beetle; it isn't any sex." explained the space vendor.

  "How?" said Danny.

  "How do I know? I only catch the bleeders," replied the space vendor, agitated. "Now do you want it or what? I've got to be onboard ship in fifteen minutes or they'll be blasting off without me." He looked at his sophisticated watch that knew the time zones of a thousand planets, then stared at the actinic glow of the spaceport a mile away.

  "How much?" said Danny.

  "Six pounds," the space vendor answered rapidly.

  "I've only got five," said Danny, awkwardly. His heart sank.

  "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, you drive a hard bargain. Five it is then. Here," the space vendor palmed the five-pound note, then took the Rigelian Beetle from its cage and placed it in Danny's cupped hands.

  "Does it sting?" asked Danny, as the beetles cold mandibles nibbled playfully at his thumb.

  "No. Would I sell it to yer if it was? It's a very sociable creature. The natives of Rigel Six say that if you treat them right, they're a friend for life," said the space vendor.

  "I'll treat it right." Danny stroked the shell of his new pet as he walked away. He looked at his watch and decided to get a move on. He trotted away from the clearing.

  An amplified voice suddenly echoed through the woods from a megaphone. "Nobody move! Stay where you are!"

  A unit of gas-masked spaceport police toting spray-guns invaded the clearing. The blinding beam of a searchlight singled out the trembling space vendor. He dropped the cages and boxes of his portable off-world zoo and started to run, but discovered he was surrounded.

  The children scattered, crying and screaming.

  Danny turned around and looked back at the clearing, startled by the screams and the sinister men in black zig-zagging through the woods. He listened in horror to the sound of the spray-guns releasing their jets of killer-gas into the creatures' cages. His stomach turned when he heard the scream of the Piper Spider.

  The beam of the police searchlight swept in his direction, Danny ran out of the woodland and headed for the silhouetted farmhouse in the distance. He rushed past Scarecrow, panting, his heart ready to explode.

  Scarecrow trotted after him.

  Danny halted beneath the ledge of the kitchen window and regained his breath for a few seconds. His heart was thumping in his ears. The beam of the searchlight shot out from the woods and wavered around the farm, then settled on Scarecrow.

  "Quick!" gasped Danny to the robot, "give me a hand up!"

  "What for?" Scarecrow asked.

  "I want to get through the window. Hurry up!"

  "Why don't you use the front door?"

  "Give me a hand up now!" shouted Danny, and Scarecrow obliged. He cupped his hands around Danny's raised foot and the robot's limb motors whirred and shrieked as Danny was lifted up onto the window ledge. Skilfully opening the window without producing a single squeak, Danny placed the beetle on the inside ledge of the window, then slid in head-first. As he closed the window behind him, he heard a s
uccession of muffled shots. A cluster of knockout darts ricocheted with a clang off Scarecrow's chassis.

  "Halt your fire," said the distant voice of a spaceport policeman. He looked at Scarecrow through his night-vision visor. "It's Just a farm robot."

  From his bedroom window, Danny watched the figures of the policemen retreating back Into the woods. He waited until five minutes had dragged by before he dared to switch on his bedside lamp to survey his new pet.

  "It's okay," he whispered to the beetle, "You're safe now."

  The beetle blinked its sorrowful golden eyes at him and tilted its head from side to side, trying to comprehend what Danny was saying. Danny stroked its head with his little finger, and after a while, the creature responded to his affection by rattling its shell.

  "Time for bed now." Danny looked around the bedroom for something to keep the beetle in. After a lengthy search, he found an old cage that had once housed two white mice. He lifted the tiny door of the cage and placed the Rigelian beetle inside it.

  "Now, what shall I call you?" Danny watched bemused as the insect investigated the treadmill. Its six legs stumbled chaotically on the rungs of the wheel the mice had once turned. It moves in a higgledy-piggledy way, Danny thought. "Higgledy," yawned Danny. "That's what I'll call you."

  The following morning at seven, Danny awoke from a dream that had been haunted by the sinister figures of the spaceport police. In that dream, the police had stormed the bedroom and sprayed Higgledy's cage with insecticide.

  The child rubbed his eyes, hopped out of bed, and looked over at the cage anxiously. Higgledy was watching him through the bars. The creature's tail was wagging madly. Danny put his fingers through the bars to stroke its head and Higgledy' s mandibles nibbled at them.

  "You're hungry, eh? I'll get you something." Danny placed the cage containing Higgledy in the wardrobe, got dressed, and ran downstairs to the kitchen, whistling.

  Outside, Danny's father was attempting to repair a combine-harvester robot; a dome-shaped vermillion-coloured machine some twenty feet in height. He sat atop of it unfastening its access panel, while Scarecrow stood in the field below, watching him. Mr Thurber unscrewed the panel and yanked it away, then descended through the hatch into the harvester automaton with a torch and toolbox.

  "Mr Thurber," said Scarecrow.

  "What?" replied Mr Thurber. His voice echoed in the belly of the machine.

  "Three men are coining to the farmhouse."

  The farmer emerged from the harvester's hatchway shielding his eyes from the morning sun with his hand.

  "Where?"

  "There, sir." Scarecrow pointed to the three policemen walking up the path to the farmhouse with a German Shepherd dog.

  The policemen stopped and surveyed the harvester.

  "Can I help you?" shouted Mr Thurber.

  "Are you George Thurber?" asked one of the policemen.

  "Yes. Why?"

  "Can we see you a moment?"

  The farmer came down from the harvester and walked over to the policemen wiping the greasy oil patches from his hands with a rag. Scarecrow followed his master.

  "Can I help you?" asked Mr Thurber.

  The police dog pounced forward, growled, then started to bark. Its handler pulled it back.

  "It's the robot that's upsetting it. It hasn't taken to them yet," the handler explained, looking at Scarecrow derisively.

  The farmer turned to Scarecrow and said: "Go back to the harvester."

  As Scarecrow walked away, the police dog whined.

  One of the policemen stepped forward. He had three horizontal stripes on his helmet. "I'm Sergeant Hackett, spaceport police." Hackett displayed his ID logo on his helmet visor, then continued. "We've been told that your son is keeping an illegal alien creature on this farm. "

  "What? My son? Who told you that nonsense?"

  "An anonymous caller. Do you mind if we look around?" said Hackett, his eyes darting about.

  "Yes I do, sergeant. I've got work to do you know? "

  "So have we, sir," said Hackett.

  "Then you'd better go and obtain a search warrant first." said Mr Thurber.

  "We don't require a search warrant, sir," retorted Hackett. "The spaceport police have automatic access right to any suspect property."

  "What?" said Mr Thurber, stunned.

  "Well, if you won't cooperate sir -" Hackett produced a skeleton-key device from his belt and proceeded to the front door of the farmhouse. Before he reached it, the door opened anyway, and Danny came out. "What's wrong Dad?"

  The policemen walked into the farmhouse and split up. Sergeant Hackett headed straight upsairs and searched the bedrooms. A few minutes later he came downstairs holding a cage.

  Danny's heart sank. His father stood beside him in the hall, amazed.

  "Take a look at that, sir," the sergeant handed over the cage to Mr Thurber. The farmer saw that the cage was empty, but the bars had been broken and twisted. Something small and strong had escaped from the cage.

  "What on earth have you been keeping in this cage?" Mr Thurber grabbed his son by the arm.

  Danny blinked rapidly at the hole in the cage. "It escaped?"

  "Yes," said the sergeant, "and it's left a few nasty holes upstairs. Looks like it gnawed through the wardrobe and made its exit out of the house through the solar-heating ducts."

  "Well? What was it, eh?" Mr Thurber crouched menacingly over Danny.

  "Some type of beetle. Rigelian I think." shrugged Danny.

  "Rigelian beetle, eh?" said the sergeant.

  "I don't believe it," said Mr Thurber, "An alien crawling around on my farm."

  "Calm down, sir," said the sergeant.

  "Is this - this beetle dangerous?" asked Mr Thurber.

  "Not to humans as far as I can recall. It is a crop menace, though," said the sergeant.

  "That's all I need, The farm's in a bad state as it is. How are you going to catch this thing, sergeant?" said Mr Thurber.

  "We won't really be able to do anything at all for a couple of weeks; I know from experience that the Rigelian Beetle can be very cunning in the first few weeks of its life-cycle. But after that period it starts to grow at an enormous rate and can't hide."

  "How big does it grow?" Danny asked the sergeant.

  "The last one we put down was twelve feet in length," said the sergeant. "On Rigel Six they've been known to grow twice that length."

  "There'll be no farm left," said Mr Thurber.

  "Once the creature exceeds six feet in length it'll be very hard to conceal itself on a farm this size, and that's when we'll move in," said the sergeant.

  "When will that be?" asked Mr Thurber.

  "About a fortnight from now. Until then there's nothing we can do. In the past we've laid traps, put poison bait down; it's useless. The thing Just avoids them. We've even tried using dogs to track them, but the thing emits a chemical that makes the dogs have sneezing fits," said the sergeant. He and the other two policemen headed towards the front door.

  "So that's it, eh?" said Mr Thurber, shaking his head.

  "That's it for now. Bye." The sergeant and his men left.

  Danny stood there in the hall, avoiding eye-contact with his father.

  That night at supper, Mr Thurber brought up the subject of the alien at large. "Scarecrow said he saw that beetle thing this afternoon."

  "Yeah? Where?" Danny sipped his cocoa and listened eagerly.

  "It was in the turnip patch; I examined the area but I couldn't make out any tracks, and none of the turnips had been disturbed."

  "Did Scarecrow say how big it was?" Danny asked.

  His father nodded with a sombre look. "He estimated it was about six inches long. If his brain wasn't damaged we could have plugged him into a TV to play back what he saw."

  "Will the men kill it when they come back?" said Danny, pensively.

  "Probably. I don't know. I hope they don't kill it. I know it's a crop menace but if it was up to me, I'd send the thing back
to where it belongs."

  Danny apologized at last. "I'm sorry about the trouble I caused, Dad."

  "It's okay. You just didn't think - as usual. You should have told me first. If you wanted a pet, you should have told me. I would have bought you a pup, or a goldfish or a hamster. But that thing out there isn't a pet. It's a pest, and it doesn't even belong in this environment."

  "I'm sorry." said Danny. After losing his mother, the boy had become close to his father, and hated upsetting him and letting him down.

  "I know. It wasn't really your fault. That space vendor should've known better. Anyway, it's time you called it a day, eh?" Mr Thurber rose from his chair and patted his son's head.

  Danny finished his cola and got up from the big fireside armchair, yawning already. "Goodnight Dad," he said, as he left the living room.

  "Goodnight son."

  In bed, Danny read his favourite book, The Great Space Explorers, a book his mother had bought him shortly before she died. It was a book his father didn't want him to read. He had always had Danny earmarked for a career on the Earth. But Danny knew what he wanted to be. He wanted to join the ranks of Neil Armstrong and Hans Utrecht. He longed to be an interstellar pathfinder, a space-faring adventurer, not a prisoner of the Earth. His schoolmates taught themselves about the capitals of the world, the longest rivers, the highest mountains, but he hungered for the terrain of the other worlds out there. In another four years he would be eligible to become a space cadet, and Danny believed he would make a fine spaceman. He had already absorbed every fact known about the Solar System and the neighbouring star systems.

  He browsed the book until he reached the holographic map depicting the Milky Way Galaxy. The red stars of the map represented the explored planetary systems of the galaxy - thirty in all - while the countless blue stars signified the unexplored systems. The tiny yellow star arrowed on the map was the Earth's star, the Sun, officially known as Sol.

  Somewhere out there, Danny reasoned, aliens looking up at their night-time skies must see our Sun as just another star in one of their constellations. And with that thought he fell asleep.