Channel Blue (40 page)

The old man was now poking through Perry’s thinning hair as if he was searching for something, a sensation that Perry found quite disconcerting. ‘I learned that one day, on some lowly planetainment – the vision didn’t bother to tell me which one – a product of fornication would rise up and lead all the galaxy’s POFs in a great war against the Edenites and their terror. The reason I’ve asked you here, Perry, is that I think you may be the One we’ve all been waiting for—’

Leslie Satan folded Perry’s left ear forward and looked behind it. ‘But as it turns out, you are not. You can all go now. Sorry for the confusion.’ He pulled a stopper out of the wall and shouted into a small hole. ‘Doris! Prepare for lift-off!’

Perry, Amanda and Nick all stared at the old man, confused.

‘Go ahead,’ said Leslie Satan, motioning with one hand. ‘The airlock will automatically close behind you.’ Perry stood, unsure of what to do. Leslie Satan now flailed his arm towards the airlock. ‘Come now, run along! I don’t want to give them too much of a chance to catch me, do I?’

Amanda spoke first. ‘We were told you had a solution to our problem.’

‘If he had been the One,’ Leslie Satan said, pointing at Perry, ‘I would’ve helped him go back to Earth and save it. But he’s not, so there’s obviously no point.’

‘How do you know that he’s not?’

‘In the vision, I was told that the One would have a star-shaped birthmark on his scalp.’ He pointed at Perry. ‘He doesn’t have anything like that. Just a couple of moles – which you should have someone look at, by the way. Now please, I’m on a tight schedule.’

Nick stepped over to the old man. ‘I can help you. I know their codes; I know their infrastructure. I can help you
destroy
Galaxy Entertainment.’

Leslie Satan seemed exhausted by the very thought of this. ‘It’s hardly worth the time. Galaxy’s only the fifth largest entertainment conglomerate in the known universe. If it goes down, the others will assimilate its holdings and nothing will change.’

‘Please,’ Nick said. ‘Let me come with you.’

‘Sorry,’ Leslie Satan said. ‘I really don’t have the room.’

His lower lip began to quiver, and Nick suddenly looked very much like the nine-year-old boy he was. ‘I don’t have anywhere to go! I was counting on you!’

Leslie Satan raised a hand and, after a second, sneezed. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his handkerchief and dabbed the two slits in the middle of his face. Perry couldn’t help noticing that one of the old man’s ears had come loose and was dangling from the side of his head by a flap of skin. ‘You seem like a very nice little boy, but we just don’t have the thrust for additional passengers.’

Perry had been trying to contain his irritation with Leslie Satan – after all, the old man seemed on the verge of sneezing himself into bits – but something about the lameness of this excuse pushed him over the edge.  ‘Why don’t you get rid of some of this garbage?’ he said, gesturing to the piles around them. ‘And if you really love POFs so much, why not help us stop GOD from killing seven billion of them – even if I
don’t
have some lousy birthmark? What kind of movement is this, anyway?’

The tiny, ancient, nose-less man seemed like he just wanted to take a nap.

‘Look,’ he rasped. ‘We have to pick our battles carefully. There’s no point in getting involved with Earth. Not only are all the inhabitants completely unaware of the forces controlling their lives, but I doubt they would be able to do anything about it if they did. I mean, normally I would fight on behalf of
any
people of random genetics, but the Earthles—’ He shook his head. ‘They’re impossible. I shouldn’t have to tell you. We all saw the show, by the way, which was great. I mean, truly hilarious. I am a fan.’ The old man’s face cracked into a toothless grin. ‘The more you tried to help them, the more they hurt you! So you know the situation. I’ve spent time down there. I’ve tried my best, but it’s no use. If I went down right now and tried to help them, they’d kill me, steal my spaceship and try to use it to kill their enemies. There’s just no point.’

‘But—’

Amanda quieted Perry with a look and turned to the leader of the Movement. ‘Isn’t there
anything
you can do to help us?’

The old man wearily considered this, then leaned over, pulled the stopper out of the wall and shouted into the hole. ‘Doris! Bring me two dischargers from the bridge closet! Make sure they’re full!’

After a few moments, the middle-aged woman in the bathrobe shuffled back into the room carrying two shiny metal tubes with red pistol grips. She gave them to Leslie Satan who, grunting with effort, handed them to Amanda and Perry.

‘What are these for?’ Perry asked.

‘It’s the most powerful firearm we have,’ Leslie Satan replied. ‘With a little luck, you can use them to blow up the moon base before their bots take you out. Eventually, of course, they’ll come back here and finish you off, along with your planet, but it’ll buy you a little time anyway.’

‘What about me?’ Nick said. ‘Where’s my discharger?’

‘I don’t give guns to children,’ Leslie Satan said. ‘Now please, all of you, off my ship. There’s a massive rebellion on a CrazyPlanet near Corvus 9 and I’m running very late.’

There seemed nothing left to say. Perry, Amanda and Nick turned and walked back to the airlock. When they’d almost reached the door, Nick suddenly darted behind one of the piles of refuse.

‘What are you doing?’ Amanda said.

‘I’m stowing away. When he’s stuck with me, he’ll realise how useful I am to The Movement.’ Nick’s eyes darted furtively. ‘You’ll give me away, keep going!’

Perry glanced at Amanda, who nodded. The two of them stepped into the airlock and, after putting on their helmets and gloves, stepped through another hatch, down a ramp and back onto the lunar surface. The fuselage closed quickly behind them and, almost before they could get out of its way, a column of fire lifted the strange craft away from the moon. They watched as it became a small glint of light among the stars and then disappeared.

‘I never thought Satan would be such a let-down,’ Perry said.

Amanda brushed white dust off the visor of her helmet. ‘At least Nick isn’t our problem anymore.’

Perry nodded. ‘There is that to be grateful for.’ He slipped one gloved hand around the pistol grip of the discharger. Despite his general distrust of guns, it felt good. Yes, he was still a product of fornication on a moon filled with smarter and more powerful enemies, but now he had
firepower
. Not that he had the slightest idea what to do with it. He looked at Amanda. ‘What now?’

‘I guess we go back to the base and blow it up,’ Amanda said. ‘We’ll certainly have the element of surprise on our side. Stars don’t usually show up at their press conferences with weapons.’

Perry gazed intently at this relentlessly surprising woman. ‘Are you really up for this? Are we really going to kill Marty? And Vermy? And
Elvis
?’

She shrugged. ‘It’s the only way to stop them from ending Earth, right?’

‘I thought you didn’t believe in killing. That Edenites don’t murder each other.’

‘We don’t,’ Amanda said. She didn’t meet his gaze – she was busy examining her discharger. ‘It’s not something I’m comfortable with. I mean, I’ve never even
seen
one of these things before. But I know the people in that base and how they feel about us.’ Perry had never heard her group the two of them together before, which made him feel good despite the direness of their situation. ‘I know their attitude towards the talent. The only reason we haven’t died already is because we’ve helped the ratings. So why should we hesitate when our only hope of having a decent life is to kill them?’

She shook her head, clearly amazed at the words coming out of her mouth. ‘I’m obviously seeing this quite differently now that I’m on the other side of the camera.’

Perry frowned, unconvinced. ‘Leslie Satan said they’ll just come back and do it later. It might even jack up the ratings of the eventual finale – raised stakes and all that. You know—’ He adopted an announcer’s voice: ‘
This
time, it’s
PERSONAL
!’

‘True,’ Amanda said. ‘But what else can we do?’

Perry didn’t have any response to this, so they walked back towards Base Station Blue, dischargers in hand. As they navigated the rim of the crater, Amanda took Perry’s gloved hand in hers and he felt an irrational surge of hope. Then he tripped on a rock and fell, accidentally firing off his discharger. A shaky blue beam shot out of the end of the metal tube and vaporised the palace-sized boulder in a puff of white dust.

Perry lay on his side, watching the silent cloud where the boulder had been. ‘Whoa.’

Amanda helped him to his feet. ‘Are you OK?’

He could hear the sound of his breathing in his helmet intercom. ‘Yeah.’ Then, after a moment, he shook his head. ‘No, I’m not.’ Something deep down was bothering him, but he found it almost impossible to articulate. After a few more breaths, he tried. ‘This isn’t how it’s supposed to end.’

Amanda frowned. ‘What?’

‘It just isn’t right.’ Perry regarded the long silver tube that still lay on the ground. He bent down, picked it up and, with a sudden jerk of his arms, flung it into the crater.

Amanda stared at him in shock. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I told you. This isn’t how it’s supposed to end.’

‘You keep saying that. What are you talking about?’

‘The show. As far as I can tell, it’s a comedy. Not for me, of course – for me it’s been horrific. But everyone watching thinks it’s funny. Even that old turd Leslie Satan thinks it’s funny.’

Behind the visor of her helmet, Amanda furrowed her brow with concern. ‘No one’s watching this, Perry. We’re on the moon now. This isn’t part of any show.’

‘I know. But you said it yourself – there’s something going on here. It may not be fate or destiny, but it’s definitely some kind of story, right? And I just don’t believe it has this kind of ending. Think of what’s happened since you walked into my classroom. My being mistaken for a prophet and a terrorist. Our thing in the van. You getting pregnant. Noah Overton actually getting a chance to save the world. Would any of that have happened in a drama? No. They’re all plot points in a comedy.’ Perry paced back and forth on the rim of the crater. ‘Now, I don’t write comedies, but I do teach them. And a comedy would not end with us walking into a press conference on the moon and killing everyone.’

Amanda took this in. ‘OK,’ she said. She considered the discharger in her hands, and, in one economical movement, pitched it off the cliff. They watched it spin slowly as it fell from view. Seconds later, a shaky blue beam shot up from the crater’s floor and struck the cliff.

Perry and Amanda fell in slow motion, the ground beneath them inextricably tugged by the moon’s weak gravity into the mouth of the crater. Like cartoon coyotes momentarily suspended in mid-air, they flailed their bodies away from the disappearing ground, diving with outstretched arms for solid terrain until they dangled from the new rim of the crater, clinging to moon rocks as their legs swung free.

Amanda pulled herself up first and helped Perry to his feet. They crouched forward, gloved hands on the knees of their spacesuits, panting for several seconds before they could speak.

‘See?’ Perry wheezed. ‘Comedy.’

‘So tell me,’ Amanda said. ‘How does it end?’

CHANNEL 36

THE WAY IT WAS SUPPOSED TO END

On the stage between the Stool of Truth and the real-time image of Earth, Perry and Amanda sat facing members of the galactic media. The journalists’ attention was focused on screens around the auditorium, which played a selection of ‘highlights’ from
Bunt to the Rescue
: Perry getting punched by gang members, chased by a bag lady, tear-gassed by police, pummelled by Del Waddle, drowned by the Gardener. Perry wasn’t sure which annoyed him most: the polite chuckling of the assembled journalists or the roaring guffaws of Marty Firth, who sat next to him, throwing his head back in hysteria, Vermy swinging from his right ear. It was probably his imagination, but Perry thought he saw amusement in the eyes of Marty’s brain parasite as well.

Finally, the clips ended. Before the lights rose, Amanda squeezed Perry’s hand, stood and slipped out. Moments earlier, while sitting in their dressing room, they had agreed this would be the perfect moment for her to leave so as not to draw undue attention to herself or delay the start of the press conference. This was just after Perry had told her the inspiration that had come to him as he was going to the bathroom.

Entering the bathroom, Perry had been in a state of panic. The press conference was five minutes away and he had no idea how to stop the destruction of Earth scheduled for its end. He walked across the tiled room to a metal vessel affixed to the wall that he decided must be the urinal.

He peered into the mirror on the wall and saw a terrified man, the terror made oddly comic by the make-up on his face. Marty Firth had insisted that Perry, in addition to shaving, wear make-up to counteract his genetically unaltered complexion. ‘We received complaints from the viewers about your pasty appearance on my show,’ Marty had told him. ‘I don’t mind your whole crazy-eyed “What the hell am I doing here?” look. There’s nothing we can do about that. But we can make you look less anaemic. This press conference is going out live to billions of viewers, so we need you to look your very best.’ Perry, distracted as he was by the fate of Earth and his inability to come up with a plan to save it, was unable to mount an argument. Now, looking into the mirror, he wished that he had: he looked utterly ridiculous, a grim, balding drag queen in a white suit.

At least no one he knew would be among the billions watching.

With shaking hands, Perry unzipped his fly. Why was his mind such a terrible blank? It wasn’t as if he was sitting in his crappy apartment by himself, unable to come up with a satisfying end to a script that no one would read, much less produce. The world was counting on him! Amanda was counting on him!
His unborn child
was counting on him! It’s no wonder that when he reached into his fly he couldn’t find anything, his genitals having attempted escape by nearly shrivelling up inside themselves. Whatever the opposite of an erection was, Perry had one.