Only You Can Save Mankind

The scene changed. Now it showed a tent some- where, and there was the huge man, standing in front of another copy of the map.

This time the sound came up. He was saying:

... that Johnny? He's no fighter. He's no politician. He goes home when the going gets tough. He runs out on his obligations. But apart from that, hey, he's a real nice kid . .

'That's not true!' Johnny shouted.

'It isn't?' said a voice behind him.

He didn't look around immediately. By the sound of it, the voice had come from his chair. And that was much more impossible than the ScreeWee being on television. No-one could sit in that chair. It was full of old T-shirts and books and supper plates and junk. There was a deep sock layer and possibly the Lost Strawberry Yoghurt. No-one could sit down there without special equipment.

The Captain was, though. She seemed quite at home. He'd only ever seen her face on the screen. Now he could see that she was about two metres long, but quite thin - more like a fat snake with legs than an alligator or a newt. She had two thick, heavy pairs about half- way down, and two pairs of thinner ones at the top, on a set of very complicated shoulders. Most of her was covered in a brown overall; the bits that stuck out - her head, all eight hands or feet, and most of her tail - were yellow-bronze, and covered in very small scales. 'If you parked out in the road Mrs Cannock opposite will be really mad,' Johnny heard himself say. 'She goes mad about my dad leaving his car parked out in the road and it's not even a thousand metres long. So this is an hallucination, isn't it?' 'Of course it is,' said the Captain. 'I'm not sure that real space and game space are connected, except in your head.' 'I saw this film once where spaceships could go any- where in the universe through wormholes in space,' said Johnny. 'That means I've got a wormhole in my head?' The Captain shrugged, which was a very interesting sight in a being with four arms. 'Watch this,' she said. 'This is very impressive. I expect this will be shown a lot.' She pointed at the screen. It showed stars, and a dot in the distance. It got big- er very quickly. 'I think I know that,' said Johnny. 'It's one of your ships. The sort you get on level seven, isn't it?' 'The type, I think, will not matter for long,' said the Captain quietly. The ship was heading away from the camera. Its rocket exhausts got larger and larger. 'The camera seemed to be mounted on a 'Missile?' said Johnny weakly. The screen went blank. Johnny thought of the dead Space Invader armada, turning over and over in the frosty emptiness between the game stars. 'I don't want to know about it,' said Johnny. 'I don't want you to tell me how many ScreeWee there were on board. I don't want you to tell me what happ-'

'No,' said the Captain, 'I expect you don't.'

'It's not my fault! I can't help what people are like!'

'Of course not.'

The Captain had a nasty way of talking in a reason- able voice.

'We are under attack,' she said. 'Humans are attack- ing us. Even though we have surrendered.'

'Yes, but you only surrendered to me,' said Johnny. 'I'm just me. It's not like surrendering to a government or something. I'm not important.'

'On the contrary,' said the ScreeWee, 'you're the saviour of civilization. You're all that stands between your world and certain oblivion. You are the last hope.'

'But that's not . . real. That's just what it says at the start of the game!'

'And you did not believe it?'

'Look, it always says something like that!'

'Only you can save mankind?' said the Captain.

'Yes, but it's not really true!'

'If not you, then who else?'

'Look,' said Johnny. 'I have saved mankind. In the game, anyway. There aren't any ScreeWee attack- ing any more. People have to play it for hours to find any.

The Captain smiled. The shrug had been impressive. But the Captain's mouth was half a metre long.

'You humans are strange,' she said. 'You are warlike. But you make rules! Rules of war!'

'Sometimes I think we don't always obey all those rules,' said Johnny.

Another four-armed shrug.

'Does that matter? Even to have made such rules You think all of life is a game.'

The Captain pulled a small piece of silvery paper out of a pocket of her overall.

'Your attackers have left us too short of food. So, by your rules,' she said, 'I must ask for the following: fifteen tonnes of pressed wheat extractions treated with sucrose; ten thousand litres of cold bovine lactation; twenty-five tonnes of the baked wheat extraction containing grilled bovine flesh and trace ingredients, along with chopped and fried tubers and fried and corn-extract-coated rings of vegetables of the allium family; one tonne of crushed mustard seeds mixed with water and permitted addi- tives; three tonnes of exploded corn kernels coated with lactic derivation; ten thousand litres of coloured water containing sucrose and trace elements; fifteen tonnes of prepared and fermented wheat extract in vegetable juice; one thousand tonnes of soured lactic acid flavoured with fruit extract. Daily. Thank you.'

'What?'

'The food of your fighting men,' explained the Captain.

'Doesn't sound like food.'

'You are right,' said the Captain. 'It is disgustingly lacking in fresh vegetables and dangerously high in carbohydrates and saturated fats. However, it appears that this is what you eat.'

'Me? I don't even know what that stuff is! What are pressed wheat extractions treated with sucrose?'

'It said "Snappiflakes" on the packet,' said the Captain.

'Soured lactic acid?'

'You had a banana yoghurt.'

Johnny's lips moved as he tried to work this out.

'The grilled bovine flesh and all that stuff?'

'A hamburger and fries with fried onion rings.'

Johnny tried to sit up.

'Are you saying that I've got to go down to the shops and get takeaway Jumboburgers for an entire alien spacefleet?'

'Not exactly.'

'I should think not-'

'My Chief Engineer wants a Bucket of Chicken Lumps.'

'What do ScreeWee usually eat?'

'Normally we eat a kind of waterweed. It contains a perfect balance of vitamins, minerals and trace elements to ensure a healthy growth of scale and crest.'

'Then why-'

'But, as you would put it, it tastes like poo.'

'Oh.'

The Captain stood up. It was a beautiful movement. The ScreeWee body had no angles in it, apart from the elbows and knees; she seemed to be able to bend wher- ever she wanted.

'And now I must return,' she said. 'I hope your attack of minor germs will shortly be over. I could only wish that my attack of human beings was as easily cured.'

'Why aren't you fighting back?' said Johnny. 'I know you can.

'No. You are wrong. We have surrendered.'

'Yes, but-'

'We will not fire on human ships. Sooner or later, it has to stop. We will run instead. Someone gave us safe conduct.'

The worst bit was that she didn't raise her voice, or accuse him of anything, she just made statements. Big, horrible statements.

'All right,' said Johnny, in a dull voice, 'but I know it's not real. I've got the flu. You get mild hallucina- tions when you get the flu. Everyone knows that. I remember I was ill once and all the floppy bunnies on the wallpaper started dancing about. This is like that. You can't really know about this stuff. You're just in my head.'

'What difference does that make?' said the Captain. She stepped out through the wall, and then poked her head back into the room.

'Remember,' she said, 'only you can save mankind.'

'And I said I already-'

'ScreeWee is only the human name for us,' said the Captain. 'Have you ever wondered what the ScreeWee word for ScreeWee is?'

He must have slept, but he didn't dream. He woke up in the middle of the afternoon.

A huge ball of incandescent nuclear fire, heated to millions of degrees, was shining brightly in the sky.