Henry hadn't seen Alien, but he imagined what came out of John Hurt's chest must have been pretty awful. He opened his mouth to say something, but Fogarty was in full flight.
'You wouldn't, would you? You'd be on your guard. Think about it. If you looked like hell and dripped slime, wouldn't it make sense to come on like something a lot more harmless? So you use advanced alien technology to change your shape – molecular adjuster, I'd say. But what do you change it to? Fairy, that's what! A fairy!'
'Why?' asked Henry. He'd seen Mr Fogarty like this before and the only way to stop it was to meet it head on.
'Why? Why what? Why a fairy? Because a fairy is familiar…' he narrowed his eyes '… yet strangely unfamiliar. Every kid on the planet's seen fairies in a picture book, but how many've seen the real thing? Everybody loves a fairy – tiptoes through the bluebells, butter wouldn't melt – but at the same time, fairy says Don't mess with me otherwise you don't get the gold at the end of the rainbow. You heard that thing talking about gold, didn't you?'
'That's leprechauns,' Henry said.
It stopped him. 'What's leprechauns?'
'Gold at the end of the rainbow. Irish leprechauns. They promise you gold, but don't give it to you. Fairies just help plants grow.' Then, before Mr Fogarty could get his breath back, he went on, 'Anyway, if he was part of the alien invasion, why would he tell us he'd shrunk?'
'What?'
'Why would he tell us? Why wouldn't he just pretend he was a normal fairy?'
'To get our sympathy – '
'If we thought he was a real fairy, he wouldn't need our sympathy,' Henry said patiently. 'He'd have it already. Everybody loves fairies – you just said so yourself.' He waited while Mr Fogarty considered it. The old boy might be batty, but he wasn't stupid.
Eventually Fogarty said, 'You think I should trust him?'
'Yes!' Henry said emphatically.
'You think we should help him?'
'Yes,' Henry said, but less emphatically this time. It was the 'we' that got to him. He wanted to help Pyrgus the fairy. In fact he wanted to help quite badly. But a little voice in his head muttered that maybe he wouldn't be able to do all that much. Henry had other problems in his life.
Fogarty shrugged. 'OK,' he said. 'Let's go back in.'
'We've had a discussion,' Fogarty said briskly, 'and we've decided – '
'What was that thing?' Pyrgus asked, interrupting.
'What thing?'
'That thing you gave me to eat.'
'Potato crisp,' Fogarty told him. 'It wasn't poisoned, if that's what you think.'
Pyrgus looked at him in surprise. 'Didn't think it was – I just thought it tasted nice.'
'Potato crisp,' Fogarty said again. 'Cheese and onion.'
'Haven't you ever eaten one before?' Henry asked.
Pyrgus shook his head. 'We don't have them in my realm.'
'Don't you?' Henry was fascinated. He couldn't really imagine a world where you couldn't buy yourself a packet of crisps. 'What do you do for snacks?'
'Brindles,' Pyrgus said. 'They'd be the most popular. Bubble smoke, I suppose. And nants, if you've got a sweet tooth. Slice of ordle. Then there's chaos horn, but that's a sex thing. In Cheapside they sell retinduculus from stalls.'
'This chaos horn – ' Henry began.
'Can you talk about all that some other time?' Fogarty cut in. He glared at Henry, then at Pyrgus. 'As I was saying, we've had a discussion, young Henry and me, and we've decided to give you the benefit of the doubt – '
'What doubt?' asked Pyrgus.
'What doubt?' asked Henry.
Fogarty ignored them. 'We've decided you might just be who you say you are, although you haven't really said yet, have you? But we need to ask you a few more questions.' He waited, then when Pyrgus said nothing, went on: 'This shape you're in, this fairy business -little, wings, skinny – you say that's not natural? That's just what happens to you when you come through a portal?'
'Unless it's got a filter,' Pyrgus said. He scowled. 'Or the filter doesn't work.'
'It's important how you answer this,' Fogarty said, 'so think carefully. Every country in the world – our world – has got folklore about fairies. Little stick-insect people like you with big wings. Every country.'
'What's your question?' Pyrgus asked.
Fogarty's eyes darkened. 'No smoke,' he said. 'No smoke – that's what they say, don't they? Mean to tell me all those stories about fairy folk are just coincidence? Don't have anything to do with your people?'
Bewildered, Pyrgus said, 'No, I'm not trying to tell you that.'
'So an awful lot of your people – your alien not-human-at-all people – must be swarming through the portals. Without filters.'
'Mr Fogarty – ' Henry began. He'd thought they'd cleared up the alien stuff.
But Pyrgus cut him off. 'I'm not trying to tell you that either. We don't have very many people using gates to your world. Why would we? It rains a lot here. And who wants to shrink and grow wings? You think it's fun getting eaten by cats and put in a jamjar? There's only one filtered gate and it's expensive to operate. My fa – the people who have it are always complaining about the cost, so it's only used when you really, really have to. I told you there's only one other gate that gets you anywhere useful just now. Believe me, nobody's swarming through it.'
Fogarty had the look Hodge got when he was about to pounce on a mouse. 'So where do all our fairies come from?' he asked triumphantly.
'They're descendants of Landsman and the shipwrecked seeds people,' Pyrgus said.
Fogarty's jaw dropped. 'Oh.' But he recovered quickly. 'All right. Answer me this then. What do you look like when you don't look like a fairy?'
'Handsome,' Pyrgus said and grinned.
It went on like that for a while. Pyrgus answered Mr Fogarty's questions and gave reasonable explanations. By lunchtime, enough trust had been generated for Mr Fogarty to let Pyrgus out of the kitchen while they all ate lunch in the cluttered living room. Henry made them beans on toast, as he often did for Mr Fogarty and himself. He cut up a baked bean for Pyrgus, who ate each piece in his hands like watermelon. When he'd finished, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve and gave Henry a thumbs up. They tramped back into the kitchen with Pyrgus sitting on Henry's shoulder. He fluttered down to his microphone as Henry pulled up a chair.
'That was even better than your potato crisps. What was it?'
'Baked beans,' Henry said.
'You're a super cook, Henry,' Pyrgus told him. 'How did you make that brilliant sauce?'
'Comes in a tin,' Henry muttered, embarrassed.
Fogarty said, 'See if there's a small box in the drawer, Henry. We need to make the speaker portable.' He pushed himself to his feet. 'Never mind, I'll get it – I want to look for a different mike.' He rummaged in the drawer and came up with a rusting tin box that had contained tobacco sometime around 1918. 'This'll do. Ah – ' From the jumble of wiring and components, he picked out a throat mike even smaller than the button mike currently linked to the speaker. 'Should make things easier.'
While Henry and Pyrgus watched curiously, he packed the various bits of the speaker into the tin box and replaced the button mike with the smaller throat mike, extending the wire as he did so. 'There,' he said when he'd finished. 'Portable. More or less.' He went back to the drawer and returned with two rubber bands, which he attached to the throat mike. 'OK, young Pyrgus, think you can carry something this size on your back?'
Pyrgus examined the throat mike. 'Think so,' he said cautiously. He folded his wings and slipped his arms through the rubber bands, pulling on the microphone like a knapsack. When he spread his wings again experimentally, it sat comfortably between them.
'Say something,' Fogarty instructed.