Monkey Come Home (5 page)

‘Yes,’ Mum said, still visibly shaken. ‘Do tell.’

I gave them a brief version of the events of the past three days and told them that Sam and I believed Earl had been in the rocket that we’d seen on the news. Dad looked sceptical.

‘Okay. You and Sam might have found an unusual chunk of metal in the sand. And your monkey does seem very intelligent. But I find it hard to believe that he was up in space. For starters, they said that the nose cone was unmanned.’

‘He’s a monkey,’ I said. ‘And Sam and I saw Earl’s little compartment in the cone with our own eyes.

‘Earl?’ Dad said. ‘Did you name him after your toy?’

‘No, he typed out his name on my computer. And look at what else he wrote.’ I pulled out the sheet of paper I’d recorded the letters on.

saveninapurl-optionxearl-orciapronto

‘It’s gobbledegook,’ Dad said.

‘Not if you unscramble it, which I did after the news last night. It says “panuniversal-exploration-corporation". That’s who sent the rocket into space.’

Dad still didn’t seem convinced. Earl approached him and bowed his head. ‘I think he wants you to feel his skull,’ Serenity said.

‘Whatever you say, Doctor Doolittle.’ Dad reached down and gently patted Earl’s head. ‘Ooh. His little noggin sure is bumpy.’

Mum had a longer, more exploratory feel. She crinkled her brow and took a deep breath then said, ‘Barry, I think those bumps are electrodes.’

“
I
s
Earl bionic?’ Serenity asked Dad. ‘Like half-man, half-machine?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘What are the electrodes for?’

‘If that’s what they are, they might have been used to measure his brain activity while he was carrying out different procedures. Or they could be tracking devices.’

‘So, now you believe me that Earl was in space? I asked.

‘I’m not sure, Avery. But it’s possible.’

Mum picked up Earl and nursed him in her arms like a baby. ‘Whatever are we going to do with you, little space monkey?’

‘We’ll have to notify the authorities,’ Dad said. ‘We can’t hide him here. We could be in all sorts of trouble if they come looking for him.’

‘But what will happen to Earl if we hand him over?’ I asked.

‘Assuming that he was lost up there for thirty Earth years, which might have been mere days or weeks in space, they would want to figure out
how he survived. He would probably be dissected in a lab and…’

‘Barry!’ Mum cut him off. ‘Don’t upset the children.’

‘Keep going, Dad. I can handle it.’

‘They would carry out all sorts of tests on his tissues and organs, and then analyse the results.’

‘That is so barbaric,’ Serenity said.

‘Not really,’ Dad answered. ‘Their discoveries would advance science and possibly be of great benefit to the future of mankind.’

‘Pfff! Thank you Senator Bloom.’ Mum gave him a fairy clap. Dad responded with a curtsy.

‘And then what?’ I said.

‘There is no then what.’

‘But what would happen to all of his bits?’

‘He would probably be stuffed and put on display in a space museum for posterity.’

‘Ee Ee!’ Earl said, and raced out of the room

‘That was sensitive, Barry. Now you’ve traumatised the monkey as well as the children.’

‘Oh come on, April. Do you really think he can understand us?

‘Yes,’ Mum said. ‘As a matter of fact, I do.’

‘What does posterity mean?’ I asked.

‘Future generations,’ Dad said. ‘So one day you could take your grandchildren to the space museum to visit Earl and tell them your story.’

Earl returned. He had brought back a small photo magnet from my room, which he handed to Mum. ‘There we go!’ she said. ‘I knew he could understand exactly what you were saying.’ She passed it to Dad.

Dad looked it over and shrugged. ‘It’s just a picture of Avery with the toy Earl on his shoulders.’

‘Yes, Barry. But don’t you get it? The monkey is stuffed.’

D
ad walked to the old fisherman’s hut that Sam called home to seek his advice. Like Sam, he was worried that One Pebble Bay would become another over-developed coastal resort if the world found out about Earl. But he had his own reason, which none of us knew about, for wanting to protect the monkey.

Mum thought our time with Earl might be short and that we should make the most of it. We couldn’t risk anybody seeing him, so she drove us
to Old Jetty Beach. Not many people visit Old Jetty because it, only accessible by water or a long, steep, overgrown track.

Earl loved being outside after having been cooped up in my room for the last couple of days, and in the nose cone for who knows how long before that. He kept darting off the track and returning with his discoveries of rocks, sticks and leaves.

Serenity and I ran for the water as soon as our feet hit the sand but Earl needed some coaxing.
Perhaps he had bad memories of swimming from the nose cone to the shore. Once he was in the water, though, he proved to be as good a swimmer as Sam had said he would be. His wet fur stuck to his body and he looked like a slinky little weasel.

Mum had brought some cheese sandwiches for us and some fruit for Earl, but the cheese was spread with Elsie’s homemade chutney, which I can’t stand. I was complaining about Mum doing it on purpose when Earl swiped my sandwich from me and licked off the chutney. Then he gave it back to me. Mum and Serenity almost wet their pants they were laughing so much. So I defiantly ate the chutney-free sandwich and they stopped laughing. Serenity said it was possibly the most revolting thing she had ever seen me do, especially because Earl had been licking his bottom five minutes earlier.

After lunch we played a game of beach-ball soccer, using sticks in the sand for goal posts. It was boys against girls but Earl didn’t understand the concept of the game or the rules. He kept trying to bite the ball whenever it came near him.
Eventually he succeeded and the ball deflated. The sun was going down as well and the first chill of autumn was in the air. Mum announced that it was time to go home. I felt like I had swallowed a stone.

Nobody spoke on the trip back. Even Earl sat still on the back seat with me and didn’t make a sound or bother to look out the window. Dad had returned from Sam’s place by the time we arrived home. ‘How was the beach?’ He asked, but he didn’t seem like he was interested in an answer. I knew that he was about to hit us with some bad news.

‘I got a phone call this afternoon from a guy called Chase Craven. He said he was from PUXCorp, the organisation that was on the news last night. He’s coming around tomorrow. It seems they already know that the nose cone splashed down here. And they want to ask us a few questions.

T
he sky was clear and blue on Monday morning, but if life was a cartoon, there would have been one little grey cloud hanging over number fifteen Bell Street. Dad had no idea how much Chase Craven already knew, so he couldn’t make any promises to us about Earl. And he wouldn’t let me skip school, even after I pleaded and argued that it would probably be Earl’s last day with us. I put on a brave face when I said goodbye to Earl. But I’m sure he knew something was wrong.

School was an endurance test. I wasn’t allowed to talk about Earl but he was all I could think of. It didn’t help that the return of the nose cone was the hot topic in the playground. Some of my friends even bragged about seeing it on Thursday night, despite the fact that none of them would have been up that late. By lunchtime, everyone was trying to outdo each other with stories about UFOs and extraterrestrials. I badly wanted to blow all their stories away with the amazing truth.

Our teacher, Miss Perry, organised a class debate in the afternoon. ‘We should only explore other planets once we have stopped destroying our own,’ was the proposal. I had to sit on my hands and bite my tongue for the whole session. Miss Perry asked me why I wasn’t joining in, so I said I was experiencing gastrointestinal disturbances, which I thought sounded better than a tummy ache. She gave me a ten-minute early mark.

I ran home faster than ever before, hoping like crazy that Earl would be there. But when I got to our front gate, ten tonnes of doubt fell on me. I stopped to pat Bagpipes, who was lolling on his back in the sun, and prepared myself for the worst.