Falling Sideways (15 page)

Silence – stunned silence – David could almost feel the disbelief resonating through the webbing between the Uuuurk's fingers – followed by frantic croaking, which he eventually figured out was laughter.

‘Oh boy,' the voice eventually said. ‘Have you guys even
heard
of evolution? But that's OK. I'll be straight with you, it's this kinda soft-hearted dipshit naivety you guys have that makes us like you so much. You're
cute
. Listening to some of the garbage you guys come out with sometimes, it makes a person just want to reach out and cuddle you to death.'

David thought for a moment. ‘All right,' he said. ‘Now, would you mind very much getting off me, because I'm having trouble breathing. I promise I won't be any trouble.'

‘Hey, I don't know about that. You done enough damage already.'

‘You have my word of honour,' David said gravely. ‘As a human.'

‘Yeah, OK, what the hell. Hold still, I'll jump off you.'

There was a soft thump, as of four paws landing lightly on the deck plating, and David began to feel sensation returning to his body, along with enough pins and needles to fit out an international voodoo convention. He got up slowly and shakily, and looked round until he saw a large green frog, about the size of an adult chimp. It had huge round yellow eyes, and it blinked at him like a civil servant on being asked exactly why the form had to be signed in triplicate . . . ‘Bastard!' David yelled, and kicked the alien so hard it flew through the air and bounced off two walls before landing in a tangled hammock of wires behind some machine. ‘Hey,' he added, as a vast wave of euphoria swept over him. ‘You know what? All my life I've really wanted to kick a frog, and I never dared, because I thought it was cruel, or someone would see me. What I've been missing all these years!'

Croaking frantically, the alien scrambled out of the wire cradle and hopped across the floor, narrowly avoiding the nondescript metal object David had just thrown at it. ‘You gone crazy or something?' it whined. ‘What the hell do you think you're doing?'

David grinned and picked up a small console. ‘Not allowed to be cruel to animals,' he said, breathing heavily. ‘Can't pick on small, helpless, defenceless animals, it's not right. Doesn't say anything in the rules about not picking on small, sadistic, hyper-evolved superbeings, though. Now hold still while I smash your head in.'

While he was saying this the alien must've found some way to trigger the alarm system. Red lights flashed, a siren started blaring
uuurk-uuurk-uuurk
, and something like yellow smoke billowed out of vents in the walls. David said something uncharacteristically vulgar and hurled the console; he missed, but hit the door panel just as it was sliding shut. It stuck half-open, and David made for it as quickly as he could.

Outside, he found himself in a corridor – a round brushed-stainless steel tunnel that clanged alarmingly underfoot. It had an oddly unfinished look, which he might have investigated further if he hadn't been preoccupied with running for his life.

Silly, he told himself as he ran. You're on a spaceship, billions of miles from home, there's no way in hell you'll escape, and all you've done is give them grounds for being extremely upset with you. This time it's definitely the end of the line.

He turned a corner, only to find that he was facing a dead end. The tunnel just stopped, in a seamless cul-desac (as if he was a fugitive cartoon and he'd just reached the edge of the page). He spun round, and saw that he wasn't alone.

‘You idiot,' said George.

David sagged. He was bigger and stronger than the alien, but George was bigger and stronger than him, so trying to fight his way through was out of the question. There wasn't enough room to squeeze past, even if he was quick enough. This was it, then: the process that had started when he'd bought the lock of hair had finally reached its conclusion. All this time, he'd been falling down a long, dark hole (which had been bad) and now he was about to stop falling (which would be worse; worse even than going to prison or getting eaten by tigers or being told his job was being relocated to Merseyside—)

‘Just tell me one thing,' David asked quietly. ‘What did I do wrong?'

George looked at him, puzzled. ‘You mean, apart from smashing up expensive equipment and assaulting a Uuuurk citizen?'

‘Yes. Why me? What harm did I ever do anybody?'

This time, George looked away. ‘It's just one of those things,' he said, in an odd tone of voice. ‘It's one of life's minor tragedies that the eggs never get to see the omelette. Next time, we'll try and make it a bit easier, I promise.'

‘Next time?' David started to say; but he couldn't make himself heard. The tunnel was reverberating with the deafening sounds of gunfire, klaxons, sledgehammers and desperate barking.

‘Bugger,' said George.

Something exploded or fell over or got dropped from a great height, just around the corner. George swung round; and David, seeing a tiny skylight of opportunity, hurled himself across the tunnel at him in a flying tackle, as seen on TV. Of course he missed – he'd never done this sort of stuff before – and hit the wall (which hurt his shoulder rather a lot) and slithered along the almost frictionless tunnel floor on his bum, like someone on a fairground ride. Trying to grab him as he sailed past, George slipped, fell on his nose and knocked himself silly. Never in the field of human conflict had the physical incompetence of the two participants been so perfectly symmetrical.

‘Bloody hell,' David muttered, scrabbling to his feet.

Another ear-splitting noise just round the corner. A moment ago the noise had been a good thing, because it had given him a chance to escape. Now, however, it seemed rather more ambiguous. If George had still been conscious, he could've asked him what was going on; but that was out of the question, thanks to his possibly ill-advised Bruce Lee impression. Those surviving remnants of the PFLDP that hadn't already given up on him as his own worst enemy were howling at him to consider the trend. Back when being in prison had been the worst fate he could possible imagine, he'd taken his chances and escaped (and look where that had got him). Before that, he'd been sure that all his troubles would be over if only he could get the unconscious body of the newly hatched clone up the stairs and inside his flat. Before that, he'd honestly believed that recreating Philippa Levens in the flesh was his only chance at true happiness.

Pillock.

On the other hand, how could things possibly get worse? If he stayed put, a load of frogs were going to dice him like pepperoni as a prelude to taking over the planet. If he walked round the corner slap bang into a death ray or a laser beam, it could only be an improvement. Couldn't it?

Well, what the hell. If there was one lesson to be learned from the trend, it was that whatever he did only made things worse. Therefore, if he sat down in the corridor and stayed put, the trend dictated that that would prove to be the wrong decision and the course of action most likely to bury him in the deepest-ranging stratum of trouble. He shook his head, sighed and strolled down the corridor. No point hurrying, after all.

As he turned the corner, someone jumped out from behind him (naturally; big deal) and clamped his shoulder in a bone-crunching grip.

‘You're nicked,' said a voice.

A familiar voice; a blessed, wonderful, heavenly voice, like a choir of angels ringing you up to tell you that you've just won a brand new Seat Ibiza. It was the policeman.

‘All right,' the voice went on. (Down the corridor, something else blew up, making the floor shake.) ‘You have the right to remain silent, though anything you do say will be taken down in writing—'

‘Is that really you?' he interrupted. ‘Really?'

‘Shut up,' the policeman replied. ‘You are entitled to have a lawyer present—'

Another explosion; this time only a few yards away, round the next corner, because the shock wave from the blast picked him up and slammed him against the wall like a naan bread being slapped on a tandoor. The grip on his shoulder immediately relaxed; and as soon as he'd picked himself up off the floor and looked round and down, he saw the policeman lying in a heap. Damn, he thought. Really, this isn't fair.

‘Are you all right?' he asked.

‘Does it look like I'm bloody all right?' the policeman groaned. ‘No, I'm not all right, my left arm's definitely bust and probably my left leg as well. And don't think you're going to get away with this, because sooner or later—'

‘I don't want to get away with it,' David howled. ‘I want to be arrested, you stupid little man. Now get up and get on with it, before that bloody frog shows up.'

‘What frog?'

‘What frog?' The Uuurk, of course.'

‘Uuuurk? Frog?' The policeman drowned in deep bewilderment. ‘Are you talking about a French person here, or . . .?'

‘No, you fool, the
Uuuurk
! The aliens whose ship we're on.'

The policeman looked up at him with a very strange expression on his face. ‘What the hell are you talking about, aliens?' he said feebly, before passing out from the pain.

Policemen, David thought bitterly. There's never one conscious when you need one.

CHAPTER SEVEN

T
he choice, it seemed, was his. Either he could stand there like the last cocktail-stick-impaled sausage on the plate at a stand-up buffet and wait for the war to come to him, or he could go to meet it. He felt in his trouser pocket for a coin to flip, but there didn't seem to be one there. It was hours and hours since he'd had anything to eat. I'd probably be a good idea to find a lavatory before too long, as well.

Hands still in pockets, he walked round the corner.

He saw the policemen at exactly the same moment that they saw him. They weren't your ordinary, mildly annoying, excuse-me-sir-but-did-you-know-your-offside-brake-light-is-defective bluebottles; they were the kevlar-plated, massively armed, dark-blue-pulloverclad types, the sort who'd all had Lewis Collins posters on their bedroom walls when they were kids. They pointed their machine guns at him and yelled, though he couldn't make out what they were saying; the visors of their helmets muffled the words, making them sound unnervingly like yapping dogs.

Ho hum, David thought, as he slowly raised his hands. Hyper-evolved frogs that speak English and Imperial Stormtroopers who don't. Alien is as alien does.

They jumped on him and searched him carefully to make sure he didn't have an anti-tank rifle hidden up his nose; then they charged him with being an accessory. They didn't specify what kind of accessory, but David hazarded a guess that, if anything, he was probably a handbag. When they'd quite finished doing that, they frogmarched him (hah!) out of the door—

—Into bright, dazzling sunlight, and the familiar mean streets of Ravenscourt Park.

‘Here,' said one of the policemen, as they shovelled him into a plain black van, ‘what're you grinning at?'

‘I'm sorry,' David replied. ‘It's just so nice to be here, that's all.'

They were about to slam the van doors when a car drew up and two people got out. One of them had an eyepatch and looked distinctly familiar. The other one was Philippa Levens.

‘Hold it,' the man said, waving a photograph in a small plastic wallet (either a bus pass, David guessed, or a video library membership card). ‘Chief Inspector Urquhart, Serious Crime. Did you get him?'

The Imperial Stormtrooper who'd been about to shut the van door nodded. He was a tall man, well over six feet; if he ever got nits in his hair, they'd need oxygen masks. ‘That's him in there,' he said.

‘You're sure it's Perkins?'

‘Take a look for yourself if you don't believe me.'

Chief Inspector Urquhart (David was inclined to doubt that that was his real name, even if he did have a little plastic card with a photo laminated into it) peered into the van, winked at David, and nodded. ‘That's him,' he said. ‘Did you get the rest of them?'

The Stormtrooper shook his head. ‘Just him,' he replied.

‘Not even Honest John?'

‘No. It's like they knew we were coming or something.'

‘Ah well.' The Chief Inspector shrugged. ‘All right,' he said, ‘I'll get forensics up here, I expect they'll want to take this place apart brick by brick.' He sighed, turned to go, then turned back. ‘You may as well leave this one with me,' he said, in a tone of voice that suggested he was offering to do them a small favour. ‘I'm heading back that way myself, I can save you a trip.'

At first the Imperial Stormtrooper looked very suspicious indeed; then, as David watched, suspicion drained from his face like brine from a tin of crab meat. ‘All right, thanks,' he said (and there was just the slightest feather of an edge to his voice, suggesting that a tiny part of him couldn't believe what the rest was saying).

The Chief Inspector reached into the van and clamped a hand firmly on David's shoulder. ‘He won't be any trouble,' he assured the Stormtroopers. ‘Carry on.'

David allowed himself to be herded into the back seat of the Chief Inspector's car and driven off. This time, he made a conscious effort to remember which way they went. After they'd driven in silence for a couple of minutes (due west, David noted) the Chief Inspector cleared his throat in a self-conscious manner and said, ‘Sorry.'

David didn't reply immediately. ‘Were you talking to me?' he said.

‘Yes.'

‘Fine. Now stop this car and let me out.'

The Chief Inspector shook his head. ‘Don't think so,' he said. ‘For one thing, it wouldn't be safe. Once they realise you've escaped again they'll be after you. If you stay out on the streets you won't last five minutes.'

‘Doesn't matter. Don't care. Stop the car.'