Fourth Bear (36 page)

“And what was that?”

The door was suddenly flung open. Madeleine marched out, struck Jack a glancing blow on the head with a rolling pin and went back inside in one swift movement. Jack fell over, more from surprise than the blow itself.

“She said she’d do that.”

“Why?”

“She got a call from Briggs about something.”

“
Shit,”
he murmured. Implausibly, things
had
gotten worse. Much worse.

Least likely alien abduction suspects:
The Rambosians, who when asked if they’d been involved in reported medical experiments on “abductees,” replied, “You must be joking. If we wanted to know about your physiology—which we don’t—we’d just watch BBC2 or read
Gray’s Anatomy
.” When pressed, they had to admit they couldn’t think of any life-form bored enough to want to travel halfway across the galaxy to push a probe up an ape’s bottom, nor what it might accomplish—apart from confirming that in general apes don’t like that sort of thing.

—
The Bumper Book of Berkshire Records
, 2004 edition

The front door
to Ashley’s house opened, and two almost identical aliens stood in the hall and blinked rapidly at Mary. To the untrained human eye, every alien is identical to every other alien—much the same way as all humans seemed identical to aliens. Indeed, to the more unobservant alien, all
mammals
looked pretty much the same. “It’s the backbone that’s so confusing,” explained an alien spokesman when asked how a sheep might appear indistinguishable from a human in a woolly jumper. The reason Mary could tell Ashley’s parents apart at all was that one was wearing a large and very obvious brown wig, had a folded newspaper under its arm and was wearing slippers, and the other wore a blue gingham dress with an Alice band perched precariously on its shiny, high forehead.

“Hello,” said Mary politely to the one in the slippers, “you must be Ashley’s father.”

“No, that would be me,” said the one in the gingham. “Roger’s the name. This is Abigail, my wife.”

“Hello,” said the one wearing the slippers, proffering a three-fingered, double-opposable-thumb hand for Mary to shake.

Mary did so with some trepidation, as Rambosians tend to transmit their thoughts through touch. Still, she thought it would be rude not to, and her hand was enveloped in the warm, dry stickiness of Abigail’s grip. Almost instantly the image of a wedding popped into Mary’s head, complete with a large white Rolls-Royce, church, confetti and with Mary herself dressed in a quite
stunning
white wedding gown, with Ashley in morning suit.

“Sorry about that,” said Abigail, hurriedly letting go of Mary’s hand.

“It’s quite all right,” she replied, her close contact with Ashley having prepared her for almost anything. “But just out of interest—where did you see that dress?”

“At Veils R Us,” replied Abigail wistfully. “Wasn’t it just the most beautiful thing ever?”

“Why did you assume I was the mother?” asked Roger, who had been thinking about this for several moments.

“It’s the dress and Alice band,” explained Mary. “They’re
usually
considered female-gender apparel.”

“I told you the sales assistant didn’t seem that bright,” he said to Abigail. “We better swap.”

Mary half expected them to strip off in front of her, but they didn’t. They just placed a sticky digit on each other and trembled for a second or two.

“Right,” said the one who used to be Abigail. “I’m now Roger. Why don’t you come in?”

Roger led her into the living room, which was decorated as though from the seventies. Earth’s TV signals had taken eighteen years to reach distant Rambosia, so it was understandable that this was the era in which they felt the most comfortable. The furniture was dark-colored, the wallpaper and carpet patterned, the music center one of those combined radio-cassette-turntable things, and the obligatory plaster ducks flew across the wall next to a print of
The Hay Wain
.

“How long have you had this bad knee?” asked Abigail, rubbing the offending joint of her body-swapped partner.

“A few days,” replied Roger.

“You should look after yourself better—and your arms feel a bit low. When did you last have a pressure test?”

“This always happens when we swap bodies, doesn’t it?” replied Roger with a baleful glare. “Nag, nag, nag.”

“If you looked after yourself, I wouldn’t have to.”

“Maybe I
like
having a dodgy knee—ever thought of that?”

“Sorry about this,” said Ashley.

“You’re a pompous old windbag sometimes, aren’t you?” said Abigail. “Give me back my body.”

“It would be even
more
confusing for our G-E-U-S-T, dear—show some manners, eh?”

“Manners?” replied Abigail, opening her already large eyes still wider. “I’ll give you 10100101 001 you, 1001 010011.”

“Oh, yes? Well, you can 1001001 001010010 0101001 00101010 1001011111100110100111 0000001010 010101101 011100100100 10001111110011100 010010010 01110 0100100 10010 0100100101111011,” replied Roger, lapsing into pure binary in his anger.

“100101010101111110011100100101010111111!” yelled back Abigail. “11 1 1001 0101001 100001010111!”

“Why don’t you just swap your thoughts back and then your
clothes?
” suggested Mary. “I’d not be confused—and you could then have your own bodies and be dressed human-gender-specific.”

They stopped their argument and stared at her, blinking, for some moments.

“Brilliant!” gasped Abigail.

“Such wisdom,” added Roger in awe, and they both ran off upstairs without another word.

“Good move,” said Ashley, clearly impressed. “We’d not have thought of
that
solution in a million years.”

Mary was going to ask how it was possible
not
to think of that solution when a car horn sounded outside and another alien came running down the stairs holding a spotted bow and a glue gun. Ashley looked to heaven.

“My sister,” he muttered out of the side of his mouth. “
Total
bimbo—IQ barely crawls into the double-century.”

“Ash!” she exclaimed in a state of extreme fluster as she handed him the bow and glue gun. “I’m sooo late! Stick this on, would you? Hello, you must be Mary. I’m Daisy. Ashley told us all about you.”

She put out her hand, and Mary shook it, catching a glimpse of a great number of aliens all crammed into a Honda Civic and chanting Monty Python’s dead-parrot sketch in unison.

“Stand still,” said Ashley as he squeezed a blob of glue onto the top of Daisy’s translucent head, then placed the bow on it and held it while the glue dried.

“Is Ash a good policeman?” asked Daisy, wincing with the heat of the glue.

“Yes, he is.”

“Then why is he data-crunching down at the NCD and not out on the beat?”

“Training,” said Mary.

“Really?” replied Daisy scornfully. “I thought it was because no one wanted to work with him.”

“You’re done,” muttered Ashley, taking his hands off the bow,

“and try and keep your 1010111010101 closed, why don’t you?”

Daisy showed Ash the finger, skipped off to the front door and went out.

“You put her bow on backward on purpose, didn’t you?” asked Mary.

“Yes. Come and meet Uncle Colin. He fought in the First Zhark Wars, you know.”

Ashley led Mary through to the lounge, where a smaller alien with a slightly wrinkled appearance was watching
Man About the House
on the TV.

“Hullo!” he said. “Who’s this?”

“This is Mary, Uncle.
Mary
Mary.”

“No need to repeat yourself, young fella-me-lad. What do you think I am, deaf?”

“How do you do?” said Mary.

“Not at all,” he said genially. “
Quite
the reverse.”

Mary frowned and looked at Ashley, who crossed his eyes and rotated a finger next to his head.

“I fought in the Zhark Wars, you know,” Uncle Colin continued, his eyes going all dreamy as he stared off into the middle distance. “I’ve seen things you would not believe. Zharkian battle cruisers massing near the Rigellan crossover—”

“Here we are!” said Abigail and Roger, who had just scampered back down the stairs. “Would you like a drink?”

“Thank you.”

“We’ve got most types of hooch,” said Roger cheerfully, opening the top of a globe that tastefully doubled as a drinks cabinet. “I like to keep the house well stocked. We’ve got diesel, castor, olive, groundnut, multigrade or sunflower.” He looked among the bottles. “I think we might even have some crude somewhere—
that’ll
put hair on your chest.”

“I told you all this earlier,” said Ashley in a strained tone.

“Humans don’t drink oil—at least, not on its own—and only organically derived.”

“Are you sure?” replied Roger, sorting through the bottles in the cabinet again, as though hoping something suitable might miraculously appear. “We’re a bit short on everything else.”

“A glass of water would be fine for me—I could have one of those.” She pointed to an array of jars on the mantelpiece.

“Ah,” said Roger with an embarrassed cough, “those are our memory jars. We like to have at least one backup.”

“Oh,” said Mary, blushing at the faux pas.

“I’ll get you a glass from the kitchen,” said Abigail and scampered off.

“… and seen the Dorf army scatter in the wake…” muttered Uncle Colin, still to himself.

“A toast,” announced Roger as soon as Abigail had returned with Mary’s water and everyone had been handed an oil of some sort and Ashley told he couldn’t have multigrade but would have to stick to olive “until he was older.” “A toast,” he said again, “to the excellent bispecies understanding we currently enjoy.”

“10001010110,” said Abigail, raising her glass and downing it in a single gulp.

“10001010110,” said Ashley, doing the same.

“10001010110,” said Roger, winking at Mary.

“10001010110,” said Mary, and they all stared at her and blinked for some moments in silence.

“Well, I think you’re mistaken,” said Abigail eventually. “My mother
never
would have done that, and certainly not to herself.”

“What did I say?” asked Mary, looking at Ashley for support.

“… and fought through the spice mines of Kessel…” droned on Uncle Colin.

“Dinner, anyone?” said Roger as a timer pinged in the kitchen, and everyone sprinted for the table, leaving Mary to bring up the rear.

“Has anyone seen Daisy?” asked Abigail, bringing in a large basket full of chips.

“She went out earlier,” said Ashley a bit impishly, “with that 10010111110101 rabble from across the road.”

“She’ll come to a sticky end,” said Roger.

“I think that was her intention,” replied Ashley with an amused squeak.

“Ashley,” scolded Abigail, “I won’t have that sort of gutter talk at dinner. Mary, be a darling and pass the toothpaste.”

Mary picked up what she thought must be the condiment basket and passed it up the table. Abigail carefully chose some Colgate and squeezed it onto her chips with some diesel oil out of a jug.

“Would you like some more?” asked Roger.

“I haven’t had anything yet,” pointed out Mary.

“I mean, would you like your more
first?
” replied Roger with a trace of annoyance.

“Do you like Marmite?” asked Abigail quite suddenly.

“Not really.”

And they all applauded by tapping their sucker digits together. It sounded like twelve popguns going off in unison.

“Is this what Rambosians eat?” asked Mary politely. “Chips?”

“Goodness!” said Abigail, suddenly rising from the table and running into the kitchen, only to return a few seconds later with another plate. “I almost forgot the Pop-Tarts.”

Mary didn’t eat any Pop-Tarts but found some vinegar to put on her chips. The conversation was pretty mundane and centered on Roger’s and Abigail’s jobs in the library, with Uncle Colin’s recollections occasionally rising above a murmur in the background.

“…so we put it in ‘oversized books,’ which is a
highly
unsatisfactory way of categorizing anything…”

“…outran a supernova in the Crab Nebula…”

“…so I memorized every word in every book, so customers can ask for anything with even the vaguest reference to their subject…”