'Oh no!' groaned Nettie,
'We used to have traffic problems like this on Blerontin,' observed The Journalist 'Several million years ago, before intelligent life developed.'
'Oh shut up!' said Nettie. She couldn't bear self-satisfied aliens who couldn't see any of the good things about Earth. 'This is hopeless. We've only got nine hours left!'
'Where have we got to get to?'
'The Earl's Court Road,' Nettie replied.
'Shall we take the shortcut?'
Nettie looked around, There were no police cars as far as she could see, and the woman in the car behind was picking her fingernails.
'Go for it!' she said, and the craft left the fly-over to the amazement of a couple of small children who were on their way to school.
'Look, Mum! That car's flying!'
'Well I never, dear,' said their mother, without taking her eyes off the Hello magazine she was reading. 'Whatever will we see next!'
Nettie and The Journalist swooped low over Notting Hill and effected a landing on the south side of Holland Park. Here they waited for their moment, hopped over a closed gate and filtered into the one-way system around Earl's Court.
'Eight-thirty!' said Nettie, leaping out of the 'car'. 'You stay here! If I know that scumbag Nigel, he'll still be in bed!'
She used her door key to get in, and was soon racing up the stairs to Nigel's flat. She let herself in and immediately fell over a broken ironing board that was lying across the doorway.
'Who's that?' called a voice from the bedroom.
'It's me!' yelled Nettie, picking herself up and striding into the bedroom.
The young girl with whom Nigel was currently in congress tried to pretend she was merely sitting astride a pile of old laundry.
'Shit! Nettie!' exclaimed Nigel, making an effort to disguise himself as the pile of old laundry in question by pulling all the sheets around himself. 'I thought you'd been abducted by aliens!'
'This is important, Nigel!' Nettie was straight to the point.
'I can explain all this.' Nigel began. You see Nancy here's mother died recently and I've been looking after...'
'Think back, Nigel! After the spaceship took off, did you see anyone?'
You mean like going to a psychiatrist?'
'No! No!' Trust Nigel to be only thinking of himself, thought Nettie. 'Did you see an old man with a white beard, hanging around the wreckage?'
'I think I'd better go,' said Nancy, who was actually nineteen but looked younger.
'No! No! Hang on,' said Nigel instinctively. He could see that Nettie had other things on her mind than putting his balls in the toaster, and he half-hoped he might be able to resume what he had been doing, once he'd sorted out whatever it was his ex-girlfriend actually did want of him. 'Did I see what?'
Nettie was suddenly overwhelmed by the hopelessness of it all. Here was a whole world - a whole civilization so much more advanced than her own - depending on her eliciting a sensible answer from this creep whom she'd once been in love with. What a hope in hell! She might as well try and teach Turkish to the cat!
'An old man with a white beard? He was in my car. I took him to the police station in Oxford.'
It took Nettie a moment to realize that this was exactly the information she had come all this way to extract. The moment she did, Nettie ran to the bed and gave Nigel a smacking kiss on the lips. Then she gave one to Nancy for good measure, and the next minute she was leaping down the stone stairs of the large Victorian mansion two at a time, whooping: 'The! The! The!'
'I think I'd better go,' said Nancy. She was just about to start a degree in Art History.
29
Leovinus had undergone a sea-change.
For a start he had taken off his false eyebrows and stuck them on the wall of his cell, just above the door. But even more importantly he had spent the last week doing something that he had never really done before - certainly not since he was on the verge of becoming an infant prodigy. Seven days in a prison cell, without reading materials, without any ability to communicate with others, and - what's more - without a single admirer, had forced him to take stock of himself. He had spent a week looking back at his life and at the person he had become. And the more he had done this, the more he had become convinced that he had failed. The more he looked into his own soul, the more he realized how far he fell short.
He flinched with acute embarrassment as he remembered that last press conference - how he had revelled in the sycophancy. He curled up with shame as he remembered the answer he had given to that Journalist who had asked if he felt responsible for the collapse of the Yassaccan economy. What had he said? 'His responsibility was towards his Art' or something like that? Now, as he stared round at the bare walls of his cell, he realized that he'd been talking through his bottom. No one could hide behind the pretensions of creativity when people were actually suffering - maybe even dying - because of it.
He remembered the two cub reporters with their lovely smiles and alluring cleavages... How he had felt so superior to them... How he'd believed deep down that no one was good enough for him. Now, the more he looked about himself, in the solitude and misery of his prison cell, he felt he was not good enough for anyone else. The first Blerontinian who walked in through that door, he began to think, would have more right to freedom and happiness than he had. Even that dreadful Gat of Blerontis!
Leovinus had been granted such wonderful gifts - such fabulous, unlimited gifts - and what had he done with them? Had he made anyone else happy? Had he brought prosperity and peace to other worlds? No. As far as Leovinus could see, he had used his gifts almost exclusively for his own self-aggrandizement. Full stop. It was pathetic, now he looked back. Had he been loved? Had he loved?
And here, had you been eavesdropping outside the great man's cell (as indeed Constable Hackett was doing) then you would have heard a terrible groan rise up from the Greatest Genius The Galaxy Had Ever Known, as he remembered how his love and affection had been focussed not on a living creature - not on a wife - not on a lover - not even on a pet snorkling! - but on an agglomeration of wires and neurons, sensors and cybernetic pathways - Titania - his last, his greatest, his absolute obsession!
'But she loves me!' he cried from the depths of his despair.
'But she is not real...' came an answering echo as his thoughts bounced off the bare cell walls. 'You created her!'
This change that overcame Leovinus, in his Oxfordshire prison cell, would be unfortunately powerful ammunition for right-wing politicians who trumpet the beneficial effects of jail. Fortunately, however, it went totally unnoticed by anyone with political clout on Earth.
Leovinus had just reached that point of self-castigation at which he was really beginning to enjoy it, when he was rudely interrupted.
'Visitors for you, Chang!' said Constable Hackett. He had grown rather fond of the old fellow over the past week.
The door was flung open and the dreadful Journalist entered accompanied by an extraordinarily attractive female alien, all the more attractive for being dressed Yassaccan style, in the simple transparent shift with the single motif on the side which indicated that the wearer was unmarried and interested in proposals.
She was also wearing that fabulously expensive Yassaccan scent that was now almost unobtainable on Blerontin.
'My dear friend!' exclaimed Leovinus to The (surprised) Journalist. 'You are far more worthy of freedom and happiness than I!' It was an odd thing to say to the first Blerontinian to walk in through the door, but Leovinus, who had just been thinking he'd never get a chance to say it, said it anyway.
'There's not a moment to lose!' exclaimed the remarkably attractive and remarkably available female alien. 'We've only got an hour left!'