“I guess so…” Kara gave a wan smile. “Now you mention it, it does sound like a bit of overkill. But I was really, really annoyed. I really, really wanted those shoes. Sorry.” She sighed and her eyes closed again. “It happens all the time, you know…”
“Phoist knows what you’d do, if you were really angry,” said Tom. He kissed her on the forehead, and put her back in the cubicle, with the recharge energy drifting around her.
Smiling to himself about Kara’s issues with the mail-order company, Tom collected a cup of coffee from a dispenser. He took it with him down the tube to the control room.
As Kara had said, the controls responded to his thoughts. The cylinder landed, and the door opened automatically on to his front garden, barely a week after leaving it. He stepped out into freezing drizzle, and jumped as the front door of his house was flung open. Freya stood in the doorway, a scowl on her face.
“Oh, so there you are. What do you mean by leaving me here? Where have you been until now? Do you realise how much work you have to do? I’ve had three visits from the taxman, and the police have been round, talking about vandalism down in the West Country. Is that where you’ve been?” She took a deep breath, and noticed his borrowed alien clothes ,and the cylinder in the front garden. “What in Heaven?” Her voice tailed away.
Tom looked at her, pulled himself up to his full height, and smiled at her. “Oh, bugger this for a game of soldiers. I’m sure you can sort it all out, my dear. Oh, I brought you a present.” He pushed the pottery owl into her hands, turned on his heel and re-entered the cylinder.
Freya watched as it vanished, leaving the flattened remains of her replanted roses. She stamped her foot. “Right, if that’s how you want to play it, I’m concreting the garden, as soon as it stops raining. And don’t come whimpering back to me, when it all goes wrong with your floozy.”
On an agricultural planet somewhere deep in the cosmos, a large silver cylinder materialised in a patch of wild roses. In fact, anyone watching would have said it had only recently vanished. The hatch opened. A man emerged, and stood undecided at the end of the lane.
He took a few steps forward, and hardly noticed as the cylinder shimmered and disappeared. Then he was running. “Suzy!” He charged round the corner in the lane, and enveloped the sobbing girl in his arms. She clung tightly to him, her tears soaking his shirt.
“Tom, you mustn’t stay—the Cyclic Imperative. It could kill you.”
“I’ll risk it for you,” he said. “It’s a big universe, and it’s got to find me first.”
The End
Other Works by the author
If you enjoyed this story, please try the other books in the
Dan Provocations series:
Third Universe
Following on from the Legend, Tom wakes and finds he is in a different universe, or is he? He sees Suzanne at a railway station, and follows her through a portal into a Britain where WW2 went on rather too long, and the Mob rules, until the invasion force from the US arrive.
Into the Fourth Universe
After a long life, Tom is murdered, but wakes up again in another universe, and this time, he is in charge of a major corporation. Nobody knows what it actually does, and Tom is dodging multiple attempts on his life while trying to find out.
The Fifth Correction
Things have escalated now that the Temporal Conduct Authority are on the case. Crack agents are sent to terminate Tom officially, because he really should have stayed dead.
In the meantime, the Magus has problems of his own, trying to defeat the deadly doku-virus, and finds solutions to absolutely everything else, apart from the cure.
The Fourteenth Adjustment
The company is saved, but Tom’s non-payment of a parking fine coincides with the rise of the vehicle storage junta and he begins a crusade against parking charges, revenue cameras and the new 10mph speed limit. His reign of unrest sadly ends when he loses his life in a freak copper-sodium flavoured pizza incident, but his people fight on without him... until they are bribed to stop. Is there any hope for decent people now?
All the details at: www.cantbearsd.co.uk
Robert Wingfield
A
uthor of the adult Dan Series of satirical escapism, Robert also writes Gothic horror. The Ankerita novels begin with an unmarked grave slab in a ruined abbey and bring Ankerita Leighton from that time into the present day. Being of other worlds, Ankerita’s visions of the spirits and demons are more vivid than present psychics can possibly imagine, and those very powers draw in good and evil alike. Set in modern times, the novels sometimes explore her origins and others go further back, calling on ancient myths and legends.
For children and all adults (having passed the old grey auntie test), there are the modern Swallows and Amazons stories, Starfire Flight and Orinoco II, which take contemporary youngsters through adventures worthy of the Famous Five, without all the modern zap-zap ping-ping favoured by some TV shows. For younger children, try the modern fairy-tales in the Stefan series.
If you like facts and figures and fun, there is the One Man in a Bus series. So far they cover guided tours around North Cyprus, Sicily, and Syros, but there are more planned when the author can save up enough of his beer money.
Finally, if you have an aging relative, try ‘Everyone’s Guide to not being an Old Person’, a spoof on what old folks make a point of doing, which makes them appear old. An ideal present for Granny.
Notes
[←1]
- ‘Guaranteed to cure any alcohol-induced headache, or your liver back’
[←2]
It would have been ‘Santa’ but the registrar was dyslexic and didn’t believe in Father Christmas
[←3]
Skagans have all the usual senses plus some. The sixth being the talent in homing in on an available woman from anything up to 5 kilometres, and the seventh, the ability to detect a good fight at the same range. Some anthropologists argue that these two senses are actually only one.
[←4]
Anthropologists will note that this is the normal way a Skagan will spend his evening—when he is not fighting that is.
[←5]
Some say this is how she became the Elder. When there was no obvious leader, succession was usually settled through a game of baseball.
[←6]
There was a good market for Silver in those days, especially during the pantomime season which ran for most of the winter.
[←7]
See, told you so.
[←8]
Followers of Saint Norbert the Parthenophobic of Westcliff
[←9]
Did you guess it was our old friend, recently escaped from his job on Antares 3? Coincidence? Not really.
[←10]
‘Galactic Fog’: repository of data, when you want to share your personal details with security forces, search engines, and anyone else who knows the default passwords.
[←11]
A mixture of plasma and Doku-hair, creating an impenetrable force-field. (The Doku is a four-horned bovine creature, found mainly on the dung planet of Glenforbis and noted for its composure under extreme conditions.)
[←12]
It analyses the fears and revulsions of the attacking creature, and reflects back images of said creature experiencing the same in a jungle somewhere: More effective than threats or violence, and in keeping with the non-interference clause in the tent’s conditions of sale.
[←13]
Tom had no idea what she meant, but later he looked it up, and found that the Arsolites belonged to a race of beings who were always challenging their arch rivals, the Collonialls, to competitive team games, and invariably coming second.
[←14]
These gas powered weapons were designed to both cut and cauterise simultaneously. They were developed by one of the Smorg leaders who could not stand the sight of blood, but loved fighting.
[←15]
/> He had had a dream, where when they died, all his colleagues went either to Heaven or Hell, but for some reason he ended up in Watford, holding an Underground ticket for Cockfosters.
[←16]
Pronounced ‘Fook-sarkey’, a thick wine made with rice and vaginal secretions. No don’t step back in horror. There are tribes in the Andes that make the drink, ‘chicha’, using saliva, so how can this be any worse?
[←17]
Drongo, a wild creature, half dog, half wallaby, half mad.
[←18]
The bio-tracer works on a principle that all beings in the cosmos produce unique waves in the space-time continuum in accordance with their biorhythms. Once the trace pattern is identified, targets can be tracked down almost anywhere in the Galaxy. It is very popular with private investigators, and annoyed wives.
[←19]
All Skagan gods were called Norbert. It made religion simpler.
[←20]
The name they had christened the ale was Tom’s idea, after the Magus told him it had been brewed out of roots, leaves and earth.
[←21]
Ancient Skagan for ‘back door’.
[←22]
The traditional male to male Skagan greeting is a slap around the face, followed by hand gripping and then a shoulder charge. Male to female, of course, involves sex.
[←23]
A ‘SOSHI’, not to be confused with Sushi, which is of less interest to historians, most of whom prefer pizza.
[←24]
ASID, numbs the parts everybody can reach.
[←25]
The smaller lizard thus made a safe getaway, and in the fullness of years, grew to be a very large lizard, attributing its longevity to the appearance of the ‘Mysterious Cork of Drogda’. A whole cult of cork worship grew up, and the planet thence after became famous for its wines.
[←26]
The lovers, not the mosquitoes, which were now smeared on the remains of the walls.
[←27]
A ‘pilum’, if you really want to split spacecraft.
[←28]
A long wheelbase version of the basic open-topped buggy
[←29]
You can tell they’re up to no good by the apostrophes in the species name.
[←30]
Most of the time
[←31]
Jeff Beck, if anyone cares. Tom didn’t.
[←32]
More poignent than she thought–see ‘Third Universe’, the next in the series.
[←33]
End of Us
The Legend of Dan Page 33
