After ten minutes with the index he got as far as prisoners of war, and eventually to the Geneva Conven- tion. It wasn't something you could illustrate with big coloured pictures so there wasn't much about it, but what there was he read with interest.
It was amazing.
He'd always thought that prisoners were, well, prisoners - you hadn't actually killed them, so they ought to think themselves lucky. But it turned out that you had to give them the same food as your own soldiers, and look after them and generally keep them safe. Even if they'd just bombed a whole city you had to help them out of their crashed plane, give them medicine, and treat them properly.
Johnny stared at the page. It was weird. The people who'd written the encyclopedia - it said inside the cover that they were the Universal Wonder Knowledge Data Printing Inc, of Power Cable, Nebraska - had shoved in all these pictures of parrots and stuff because they were the Natural Wonders of the World, when what was really strange was that human beings had come up with an idea like this. It was like finding a tiny bit of the Middle Ages in the middle of all the missiles and things.
Johnny knew about the Middle Ages because of doing his essay on 'What it felt like to be a peasant in the Middle Ages'. 'When a knight fell off his horse in battle the other side weren't allowed to open him up with a can opener and torture him, but had to look after him and send him back home after a while, although they were allowed to charge for the service.
On the whole, the ScreeWee were letting him off lightly. According to the Geneva Convention, he ought to be feeding all of them as well.
He put the book back and turned the television on.
That was odd. Someone was complaining that the enemy were putting prisoners of war in buildings that might be bombed, so that they could be bombed by their own side. That was a barbaric thing, said the man. Everyone else in the studio agreed.
So did Johnny, in a way. But he wondered bow he would explain something like this to the Captain. Everything made sense a bit at a time. It was just when you tried to think of it all at once that it came out wrong.
There was too much war on television now. He felt it was time to start showing something else.
He went out into the kitchen and made himself some toast, and then tried to scrape the burnt bits off quietly so as not to wake people up. He took the toast and the encyclopedia upstairs and got back into bed.
To pass the time he read some more about Switzer- land, which was where Geneva was. Every man in the country had to do army training and keep a gun at home, it said. But Switzerland never fought anyone. Perhaps that made sense somewhere. And what the country used to be known for was designing intricate and ingenious mechanical masterpieces that made a little wooden bird come out and go cuckoo.
After a while he dozed off, and didn't dream at all.
On the screen the fake stars drifted by. After an hour or so a yellow dot appeared in the very centre. After another hour it grew slightly bigger, enough to be seen as a cluster of smaller yellow dots.
Then Johnny's mother, who had come to see where he was, tucked him up and switched it off. 'I cannot believe this! Why can't we fight!'
5
If Not You, Who Else?
There was a constant smell of smoke and burnt plastic in the ship now, the Captain noticed. The air condi- tioners couldn't get rid of it any more. Some of the smoke and burned plastic was the air conditioners.
She could feel the eyes of her officers on her. She didn't know how many of them she could count on. She got the feeling that she wasn't very popular.
She looked up into the eyes of the Gunnery Officer. 'You disobeyed my orders,' she repeated. The Gunnery Officer looked around the control- room with an air of injured innocence.
'But we were being attacked,' he said. 'They fired the first shots.'
'I said that we would not fire,' said the Captain, try- ing to ignore the background murmur of agreement. 'I gave my word to the Chosen One. He was about to fire.'
'But he did not,' said the Gunnery Officer. 'He merely watched.'
'He was about to fire.'
'About is too late. The tanker Kreewhea is destroyed. Along with half our campaign provisions, I should add ... Captain,' said the Gunnery Officer.
'Nevertheless, an order was directly disobeyed.'
The Captain pointed out of the window. The fleet
was passing several more ships of the ancient Space
Invader race.
'They fought,' she said. 'Endlessly. And look at them
now. And they were only the first. Remember what
happened to the Vortiroids? And the Meggazzoids?
And the Glaxoticon? Do you want to be like them?'
'Hah. They were primitive. Very low resolution.'
'But there were many of them. And they still died.'
'If we are going to die, I for one would rather die
fighting,' said the Gunnery Officer. This time the mur-
mur was a lot louder.
'You would still be dead,' said the Captain.
She thought: There'll be a mutiny if I shoot him or
imprison him. I can't fine him because none of us
have been paid. I can't confine him to his quarters
because.., she hated to think this.. . we might need
him, at the end.
'You are severely reprimanded,' she said.
The Gunnery Officer smirked.
'It will go on your record,' the Captain added.
'Since we will not escape alive-' the Gunnery
Officer began.
'That is my responsibility,' said the Captain. 'You are
dismissed.'
The Gunnery Officer glared at her.
'When we get home-'
'Oh?' said the Captain. 'Now you think we will get
home?'
By early evening Johnny's temperature was a hundred and two, and he was suffering from what his mother called Sunday night flu. He was lying in the lovely warm glow that comes from knowing that, whatever happens, there'll be no school tomorrow.
The backs of his eyeballs felt itchy. The insides of his elbows felt hot.
It was what came of spending all his time in front of a computer, he'd been told, instead of in the healthy fresh air. He couldn't quite see this, even in his itchy- eyeball state. Surely the fresh air would have been worse? But in his experience being ill always came of whatever you'd been doing. Parents would probably manage to say it came of taking vitamins and wrapping up nice and warm. He'd probably get an appointment down at the health centre next Friday, since they always liked you to be good and ill by the time you came, so that the doctors could be sure of what you'd got.
He could hear the TV downstairs. He spent twenty minutes wondering whether to get out of bed to switch on his old one, but when he moved there were purple blurs in front of his eyes and an ongoing hum in his ears.
He must have managed it, though, because next time he looked it was on, and the colours were much better than usual. There were the newscasters - the black one and the one who looked like his glasses fitted under his skin instead of over the top - and there was the studio, just like normal.
Except that it had the words 'ScreeWee War' in the corner, where there were usually words like 'Budget Shock' or 'Euro Summit'. He couldn't hear what people were saying, but the screen switched to a map of space. It was black. That was the point of space. It was just infinity, huge and black with one dot in it that was everything else.
There was one stubby red arrow in the middle of the blackness. Several dozen blue ones were heading towards it from the edge of the map. In one corner of the map was a photo of a man talking into a phone.
Hang on, thought Johnny. I'm almost certain there wasn't a BBC reporter with the ScreeWees. They'd have said. Probably there isn't even a CNN one.
He still wasn't getting any sound, but he didn't really need any. It was obvious that humans were closing in on the fleet.