Above His Station (18 page)

‘You lawyers…you’re all the same,’ I told the big fat blob. ‘A bunch of bureaucratic pencil-pushers charging extortionate fees that bear no resemblance to the work you’ve actually carried out, just as bad as the criminals you represent. In fact, no. You’re worse. At least the criminals wear masks when they rob you blind. Your lot do it with a smile and a handshake!’ For some reason I felt a bit like crying. Not full-blown snotty hysterics, you understand, but just a little weep, a sign of my immense regret for how things had turned out. ‘Let’s go,’ I said to the rat, who ran up my sleeve and took its old spot on my shoulder. ‘We’re obviously wasting our time here.’

But then Arbitrator Bloch spoke, cutting his hand through the cigar smoke. ‘It’s a real shame you’re leaving, because I was just about to tell you that I’ll present your case.’

My head lolled. ‘Yes, well…thanks for nothing. I hope you can sleep toni- Sorry,
what
did you just say?’

‘Your case,’ said Bloch. ‘I’ll present it.’

‘You will?’ I asked.

‘First thing tomorrow morning I’ll take it before the High Council, and I’ll also tell them that the Prime Ambassador and his party will be required to attend the proceedings. Seeing as they’re already onsite it makes no sense to drag this out any longer than necessary, right?’

‘But I…I don’t understand,’ I said, and I didn’t. ‘It’s not that I’m ungrateful, don’t get me wrong…but what was all that about saving me time and effort? Didn’t you say that raising an appeal would be a pointless exercise?’

‘If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s a bully. I had enough of that when I was a kid. Even when I was small I wasn’t all that small, if you get my meaning,’ said Bloch, prodding one of his several rotund bellies, ‘which is why I’m going to give the little guy a shot. With me fast-tracking your appeal, in a matter of days we’ll put the Ambassador on the stand and I for one will enjoy watching him squirm!’

‘But…won’t you lose your job?’ I asked.

‘Possibly.’

‘And your home?’ I asked.

‘Probably.’

‘And won’t you make your ex-wife mad?’ I asked.

‘Definitely,’ said Bloch. ‘Which is half the reason why it’s going to be worth every second of it.’

I turned to Astrid with a wide grin on my face, hoping to see one on hers too – but if anything, she looked even more dejected than before.

‘Cheer up, Astrid,’ I said, brightly. ‘Didn’t you hear what the Arbitrator just said? He’s going to present our case, and now justice will be done at last!’

‘No, human,’ she replied, her voice constricted by some variety of emotion that I couldn’t fathom. ‘If you are going up against my father the one thing that will
not
be done is justice.’

‘Come on, Slinky,’ said the rat to her. ‘Show a little optimism, will you?’

‘You do not know my father,’ Astrid said. ‘And he will dislike
you
more than anyone.’

‘Me?’ asked the rat, prodding its chest. ‘Why? What have I done?’

‘You are the Earth’s Advocate, remember? So it is you and you alone that shall feel my father’s wrath,’ said Astrid, ‘and you that he will hold personally responsible if you make him look bad.’

‘We’re going to be in a courtroom, right? So what’s the worst thing that he could possibly do to me in there?’ asked the rat - and although it had not really expected an answer, it got one - and although it had not really expected it to be so bad, it was.

‘In Asclepian culture, when one snake accuses another of a crime it doesn’t matter whether they are guilty or not. The damage to their reputation has already been done. My father is the Prime Ambassador, the elected leader of an entire world and if you think that he got the job by playing by the rules, then you know nothing about politics. He will do anything to win this case, and he’s had decades of practice defeating the opposition. My father will eat you for breakfast.’

‘Figuratively or literally?’ asked the rat.

‘Both,’ said Astrid. ‘But if it is any consolation, he will swallow you whole.’

‘Thanks for clarifying that,’ said the rat. ‘Now excuse me whilst I go and throw up.’

13

Very kindly, the Chief Arbitrator called down to reception and managed to acquire us some accommodation for the duration of the hearing. The apartment had two (admittedly spacious) bedrooms, and so Astrid took one whilst the rat and I took the other. It wasn’t as if I had had time to bring any luggage along with me apart from my satchel. My suitcase (I hoped) was still at Regal Street station, safely hidden from sight under the bench. The rat didn’t have anything in the way of belongings either, so between the two of us we had ample room to stretch out without encroaching on each other’s space. It was a very democratic decision, splitting the room up into 2, with me having the bed and the mirror-fronted wardrobe (in which was hanging my anorak, hoping the lavender-scented pot pourri would soften the stench of rat sick). This gave the rat the choice of either the armchair or the sofa to sleep on.

Only my constant yawning alerted me to how tired I was. I had been on the go since first light and I had seen and done a lot. A whole day had passed and during that time I had been abandoned in the Underground, met a talking rat, been attacked by wild animals (twice!) I’d been threatened by gorillas, sexually propositioned by a leopard and met a king, and then introduced to a snake who wasn’t really a snake but an alien from another planet whose species were responsible for altering the genetic makeup of every living man, woman and child on the face of the Earth. And now here I was on a far off moon hoping to get some sort of positive resolution out of the whole sorry mess. I needed to sleep just to give my brain a chance to catalogue everything that I had experienced, or it would only end up conking out on me at a later date, and probably just when I needed it the most, knowing how my luck had been running.

 I went over to the window and looked out onto Puck’s lunar landscape. Uranus was almost the farthest planet from the Sun, and it had yet to illuminate the side of the moon that we were on so it was pitch-black outside. The sky looked a bit like mercury (the stuff you get in thermometers, not the planet) its silvery-oily surface seeming to change every few seconds, but then I realised that it was merely refraction of star-light through the glass dome. I checked my wristwatch, more out of habit than anything. It was odd not having a nice well-rounded 24 hours to mark my day by, and it hadn’t even occurred to me to ask anyone what the time was. It seemed irrelevant. After all, what exactly could I be late for? My job was obviously no longer on the cards.

Surprisingly, it was thinking of my job back at Regal Street, a reminder when life followed a semblance of sense, which made me think of Claire and David. The guilty feelings crept up on me unannounced, I freely admit. I had not even given either of them more than a passing thought all day, especially not since I had learned what had happened to mankind. Almost as if I hadn’t even considered that they would be involved, that mankind meant everyone on Earth
except
them. I had convinced myself that they were both perfectly fine, as were millions of other people around the globe, and this was just something that was all going to be sorted out soon anyway.

Looking out the window and seeing another planet certainly gives you a unique perspective on things. The rat was already snoring its little heart out over on the armchair without a care in the world, but for me these thoughts came so easily. I didn’t have to consult my memory, long or short term. They were already there at the forefront of my mind, waiting until my attention wasn’t being drawn in several different places at once. I supposed that meant that I had exhibited a degree of control, subconscious or otherwise. I had blocked these thoughts, worries and concerns from my perception, freeing me to channel my energy into discovering what had befallen the Earth. Although that was very considerate of them at the time, now they were jostling each other in an increasingly disorganised line, moaning about how they’d already been waiting for far too long as it was and they weren’t going to put up with any queue-jumpers. I experienced several thoughts at once, something I had assumed was surely impossible. The words overlapped, the meanings merged and the images blurred into a mosaic of mixed-up moments. I felt almost as if I was remembering someone else’s recollections.

Molly used to like that
Pop Idol
singing contest on Saturday night TV (I think it’s called something else now, but it’s still got that same man in it). Whenever one of the contestants gets booted off, they always show them a little film of their time on the programme. Well, that was exactly what it felt like as my thoughts ganged up on me.

So I took the coward’s way out and fell asleep.

*

Upon waking the next morning (I guessed it was morning as vague shafts of stilted sunlight broke through the apartment windows) I discovered that Astrid was nowhere to be found.

‘She didn’t say anything to you about popping out anywhere?’ I asked the rat.

‘What, like down the local supermarket you mean? We’re on fucking Puck, Gramps…and yes, it does sound weird when I say it like that.’

‘So maybe not use the ‘F’ word quite so much?’ I suggested. ‘It would certainly be good practice for the court case.’

‘Ohhh, the court case,’ said the rat, flopping back down onto the armchair, wiping its hands down its face. ‘I’d hoped it was all just a bad dream.’

‘Ditto,’ said I. ‘And speaking of which, you were talking in your sleep last night.’

‘Was I fuck,’ said the rat.

‘I swear!’ I swore.

‘And, like, what sort of stuff was I saying?’

‘Well…you seemed to be talking to someone and whatever it was about, it was a fairly heated conversation…or should I say argument. You were saying things like “
how could you treat her like that?
” and “
for once in your life take some responsibility
” and “
your mother would be turning in her grave
”.’

‘I said that? Seriously?’ asked the rat.

‘You sounded more disappointed than anything,’ I said. ‘As if this person or whatever had let you down in some respect.’

‘Weird,’ said the rat. ‘I can’t remember. How Laura puts up with it, I don’t know.’

‘What’s she got to do with anything?’ I said, immediately confused.

If anything, the rat’s confusion was a touch more immediate than mine. ‘Who?’

‘What do you mean ‘
who
’?’ I asked. ‘Laura, of course!’

‘Who the fuck is Laura?’

‘She’s my daughter-in-law! But why would you be dreaming about her?’

‘I suppose it could have been a different Laura,’ said the rat.

Trying to disguise the hope in my voice, I asked ‘Do you know any other Laura’s?’

The rat shook its head. ‘But then I don’t know your Laura either, do I?’

‘No…I suppose you don’t,’ I said.

‘So you must have got the wrong end of the stick.’

‘Yes…I suppose I must have,’ I said, my own mood darkening as the rat’s mood brightened up. Something about its sleep-talking sounded odd now that I had vocalised it, and it wasn’t just because I’d been woken up from a much-deserved sleep either. I felt a sudden haziness come over me, as if perhaps I had remembered things incorrectly and it had really been my own voice that had woken me up. But no, I could definitely remember the rat’s reedy little voice talking. Fearing that senility had chosen that moment to cloud my judgement, I decided to change the subject back to a more comfortable one. ‘So you’ve no idea where she’s gone then?’

‘Who? Laura?’ asked the rat.

‘No, not Laura! Forget about bloody Laura!’ I snapped. ‘
Astrid!
’

‘Maybe she left a note, did you check her room?’

I realised that I had not. Astrid’s bedroom door was ajar, yet I distinctly remembered that it was closed last night before I turned my light off. I got out of my bed and placed my feet down flat on the floor in much the same way as I had done every morning for the past 40-odd years, expecting to find my slippers there. But of course they were not. They were packed in my suitcase 1.6 billion miles away. I thought about that for only a second as I couldn’t afford to dwell on it for longer. It was like probing at a painful tooth with my tongue. I knew it was there but if I left it alone maybe it would go away.

I couldn’t shake my unease as my hand pushed against Astrid’s door and it swung open without a creak. I didn’t know exactly what I would find, but what I had hoped to find was Astrid still tucked up in bed, lost within the creases of the sumptuous duvet.

But that was not what I found at all.

Astrid’s bed and Astrid’s bedroom were both completely empty.

I popped my head back into the other room. ‘She’s not here.’

‘Didn’t we establish that, like, five minutes ago?’ yawned the rat. ‘Let’s just hope she went out for an early morning slither…or whatever it is that snakes do to keep fit.’

‘That would be hunting rats mainly,’ I said.

‘Oh,’ the rat gulped. ‘Well, in that case let’s hope she’s
not
doing that. Look, I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation. She probably just went down to reception to brag about her arse again. She’ll be back.’

‘But what if she’s not?’ I asked, getting an awful feeling that I was going to be stranded on Puck for the rest of my years. As depressing as living on Earth would be, at least it was home. ‘You don’t think something could have happened to her, do you?’

‘Such as?’ asked the rat.

‘Well, I don’t know, do I? Something bad!’ Just as I felt my anxiety begin to flood my mind with all sorts of nasty images, I heard the door to our apartment open. ‘Oh, thank the Lord,’ I said, seeing Astrid slinking along the carpet. ‘Where on Earth have you been?’

‘On Earth? Several places,’ she replied, aiming her nose in the air. ‘However, if you are enquiring where I have been on Puck, the answer is that I’ve been collecting some very interesting information.’

Ushering the snake inside, I sat down on the corner of my bed, with the rat hopping over to join me. ‘Well? Don’t keep us in suspense!’