The adult female placed a forefinger on C-S-C’s lips and the child was instantly solemn and silent. One of the other females led the way. They walked a short distance along a tree-lined path before coming to a clearing. It was encased in a huge dome with the appearance of thick glass, exactly like the one that had surrounded Velociraptor when they docked. The same low hum filled the air.
Just outside the dome was a large control panel, set into a post. The lead female placed her nose on a clear plate in the middle of the panel. A thick, metallic rectangle rose smoothly from the ground at the base of the force-field, creating a wide doorway, through which the party passed, all but one. The adult male at the rear pressed his nose to the panel, and the rectangle sank, making the force-field intact once more. He would wait there for the party’s return.
The group made its way further into the domed area. Gordon looked around warily. It was dotted with thick bushes and clusters of trees. Animals could remain hidden if they wanted to. Nick had got over being scared of the gorillas, but he was keeping very close to Gordon in their current location.
“What do you make of this, Zack?”
“It seems there is an animal in here they want to witness your close encounter with.”
The gorillas set up their equipment. The male with the fruit basket set it down about twenty feet from the group. Standing briefly on his hind legs, he beat out a signal with his hands against his chest. The response was immediate.
Three hominid children of different ages and sizes came running from the bushes. The boy was probably around fourteen years old, the girls perhaps twelve and ten. Clearly, they were conditioned to respond to the great ape’s signal. They expected food, but not so many gorillas, and they certainly hadn’t expected to see other young hominids. They skidded to a halt and went into a huddle. Gordon could hear their staccato mutterings.
Gordon looked round at the gorillas. Two were directing their equipment at the muttering trio. One was clearly focusing on Gordon’s and Nick’s reactions. Those with clipboards were making rapid, hieroglyphic notes.
Gordon made up his mind. “Give me a hand with that basket, Mr Nicholas.” He walked up to it and gripped one side of the handle. The need to respond in rôle seemed to steady Nick’s nerves. “Aye aye, Captain,” he said, and gripped the other side.
Together they lifted it and started across the intervening space. The response of the huddled children was immediate. The boy turned to face them and began to walk in their direction, holding his head high. The two girls followed his cue and caught up with him, one on either side.
They were all dirty and dressed in ragged skins. Their hair was matted and their teeth crooked, soiled and yellowing. They came to a halt perhaps ten feet away. Gordon could smell them as they eyed the contents of the basket hungrily. He signalled to Nick to set it down, and they retreated a respectful distance.
Gordon smiled and raised his two hands in a gesture of invitation. The three children fell upon it and began cramming their mouths with the fruit, sighing and grunting with satisfaction. Gordon watched them in silence and mounting pity. It seemed they had no parents to look after them, or to teach them anything.
He turned to the watching gorillas. Between two highly intelligent species sharing 95% of their DNA, certain mimes and signals are immediately recognisable. Gordon pointed at the feeding children. He raised one arm above his head to indicate adult height. He swept his arm round the surrounding territory and made the hand and facial gestures which signal ‘I’m asking you something’. He was able to make himself crystal clear. “Where are their parents?”
C-S-C’s mother gave her head a slight shake. She traced the line of a tear from her eye down her cheek. Gordon turned back to the feeding children. “Hey!” he said. Simultaneously, three pairs of jaws stopped chewing and three sets of eyes stared at him suspiciously. Gordon tapped himself in the chest. “Gor-don” he said, slowly and carefully. “We’re one of a kind, like …”
The boy snarled something that sounded like: “Dip da-dip da-dip, doo-wop a doobee-doo!”
Gordon was not a lad who gave up easily. Perhaps signing would work better. He pointed at his lieutenant, whose nervous expression was undermining their position somewhat. “Nick” he intoned, with increased volume and perfect clarity. “Our names are signed as…”
The taller of the two girls spat out a mouthful of fruit and stuck her arm straight out, her forefinger pointing menacingly at him. “Boog-e-dy boog-e-dy boog-e-dy boog-e-dy, shoobee, doo-wop she-bop!!”
“What do you make of it, Zack?”
There was a second’s silence. “Hard to say,” Zack replied. Seemingly, Gordon would have to continue acting on his own initiative. “Oh well,” he thought, “nil desperandum …”
“WE,” he said, pointing first at Nick, then at himself, “are – here – to – help – YOU.” He pointed his finger at the three of them. That didn’t go down too well at all.
“CHANG CHANG, CHANG-ITTY CHANG SHOO-BOP!!” the younger girl screamed. All three were now pointing fingers at him, their eyes blazing.
“This is definitely not the way it should be.” Gordon thought. “Do you recognise any of their words?” he asked Zack. “They don’t sound like Latin.”
“No,” Zack agreed, “They’re not from Greece either.”
The boy darted to a fallen branch lying in the grass and snatched it up. Whirling it round his head, he began advancing on Gordon. His lips wrinkled back to reveal just how disgusting his teeth were. There was a bark of alarm from one of the watching gorillas. Gordon stuck his hand up at them, palm out. Don’t interfere.
The two girls began to shriek encouragement. “WA-WA-WA-WAAA!” yelled the smaller one. “SHA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA-NA, YIPPITTY BOOM DE BOOM!” howled the bigger one. There seemed to be a tonal quality to their spoken language, but it conveyed nothing to Gordon of any real significance. The threatening body language, however, was all too plain.
“At least he’s using an elementary tool,” Captain Bennett commented to his flight lieutenant. Mr Nicholas was keeping his skipper between himself and the advancing humanoid.
“A wop boppa loo-bop, a wop bam BOOM!” cried the boy, and charged. That last syllable rang a bell. He bore down on Gordon, swinging the thick branch with lethal force, clearly intending to crush the life out of this smaller fellow creature that had just brought him food.
The young, adolescent male launched himself into the air. Gordon’s eyes narrowed, and two things happened: the club shot twenty feet into the air, and the boy spun twice like a top before ploughing into the ground in a winded heap. The two girls stared at their crumpled companion. They crouched in wariness, their arms around each other.
“You need help” Gordon told them, “whether you want it or not. Do-wa-did-dy-diddy-dum-diddy-do!”
“What did you just say to them?” Nick asked.
“I’ve no idea,” Gordon replied, “but it seemed appropriate, in the circumstances. Mr Zack, get out here.”
Zack slid out of him. “Yes, Captain?” The noise level from the watching gorillas increased significantly. Gordon felt his senses slipping.
“I think we have boldly gone as far as we can go on this particular mission. Do you think you can get us back home on your own?”
Mr Zack inclined his head gravely, with admirable self-control. “It will be my pleasure, Captain.”
NOTES
DELTA; EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES; GORILLAS’ NOSES; HIEROGLYPHS; NIL DESPERANDUM; GREECE AND GREASE; DOO WA DIDDY ...; INANE.
Chapter 29
Why Do People Do Terrible Things?
Gordon pointed the piece of toast at his mouth. It opened to receive it and opted instead for an enormous yawn. “You look tired,” his dad said. “Did you sleep all right?”
Gordon nodded. “Busy dream,” he explained. He did feel a bit jet-lagged.
“Goodness me!” he heard his mum exclaim from the hallway. “Surely you don’t need to take all these books wit
h you?”
“’es ‘a ‘oo,” Gordon said. He’d taken his first mouthful of toast and added a spoonful of strawberry yoghurt.
His dad laughed. “You sound like Scooby Doo. You’re not doing a Ghosts and Monsters project, are you?”
Gordon swallowed and normal service was resumed. “No, I don’t have that many books on ghosts and monsters. We’re doing Hot and Cold today. Mrs McCarthy asked us to bring books about hot and cold things.”
He ticked them off on his fingers. “I’m taking two books on volcanoes, my book on the sun and the planets, my ‘Great Fire of London’ book and my ‘How Things Work’ book about making steel. Then there’s my book about Emperor penguins, the one about global warming melting the ice-caps, and the one about the Woolly Mammoth in the last ice-age from my Pre-History series. I’ve got The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe …”
“Whoah!” his dad said, “I’m sure she didn’t mean half your library.”
Gordon nodded vigorously. “She did, Dad. Some children never bring any. She relies on me because there’s always plenty to go round when we do a theme. She brings a lot and I bring a lot. Nick brings a few, and some of the others bring one or two.”
He finished off his orange juice. “Mrs McCarthy says having me in the class is like having another teacher,” he said proudly. “Sometimes I listen to reading, and help with spelling and arithmetic. Other times, I read to the whole class. Mrs McCarthy says they sit stiller when I read to them than when she does.”
“They do” said a familiar voice inside his head. Victor took the smile that appeared on his son’s face to be a sign of self-satisfaction.
“Well your mother and I are proud of you, son,” Victor told him. “But I hope they remember that you’re there to learn as well, not just to help the others learn.”
Gordon nodded earnestly. “They do, Dad. You really get to understand things better yourself when you try to teach them to other people.”
His father stood up: it was his time to hit the road. “That’s very true,” he said. “But who’s going to carry all those books? Your mum will need muscles on her muscles.”
“We take his old pushchair,” said Edith, briskly. “Right, coat; shoes on.”
Zack emerged, fetchingly attired in a striped, three-button blazer with a smart crest on the breast pocket, white flannels and a matching rowing cap. It was that time of year. “No problems getting home last night?” Gordon asked him as they set off.
“None at all. C-S-C wanted to keep you as a pet, but her parents told her that would be very wrong. She hopes you’ll go back and see her one day.”
“That would be good,” Gordon decided. “I’d like to see how their humans are getting on. Maybe they’ll reclassify us as apes.”
“Not likely,” was Zack’s opinion. “The apes have conquered Space, while the humans are still battering each other’s brains out in the jungle.
“How did we get home?” Gordon asked. “I don’t remember a thing.”
Zack was enthusiastic. “The technology on that planet is amazing. The Station Commander calculated the coordinates from data he found on the Velociraptor’s computers. He beamed it right back to the docking station above Earth. I got us home from there.”
Gordon dropped behind his mum so an oncoming lady would have room to pass them and the mobile library. “That’s a big improvement on going through a wormhole.”
“Tell me about it! Never a dull moment with you, is there?”
“Hope not,” Gordon said cheerfully; then his face saddened. “Seriously, though, what chances do those children have?”
“Better than before your visit. The gorillas were amazed at the level of technology a humanoid species has managed to achieve on our planet. I’m sure you’ve made them more determined to protect those that are left. They’re going to see if they can help them realise their potential.”
Gordon’s mum glanced back to check where he was. “Come on, slowcoach!” she called back to him. The pushchair jolted over an uneven piece of pavement, and she turned back to check the bag of books was still in place. “You don’t ... Oh! How did you get there so fast?!”
Gordon looked up at her innocently. “Where?”
“There! You were twenty feet behind me a second ago!”
“Whoops!” Zack said. He was still twenty feet behind her.
“Mum, why do people do terrible things?”
That was a tough question to be asked out of the blue on the way to school. “What sort of terrible things are you thinking of?” she asked him, buying herself a little time to think.
“Murders and wars and atrocities and suicide bombings?”
“‘What a piece of work is a man?’” Zack murmured. It never took him long to catch up either, or to come out with a handy quotation.
“Human beings sometimes do terrible things and sometimes they do wonderful things,” his mum said slowly. “There’s good and bad in everyone.”
“You and Dad don’t do terrible things,” Gordon said stoutly. “I don’t do terrible things.” They had reached the final corner before school.
“No,” his mum said. “But if I thought someone was going to hurt you, I’d kill them before I’d let them do it.”
“Human emotions,” Zack said, “are very strong. Think about that this morning when you’re doing your theme.”
They got a green man and crossed over to the school gates. “We’re doing ‘Hot and Cold’,” Gordon said.
“People talk about the fires of passion and burning with desire,” Zack told him, “And about cold hatred and icy contempt.”
Nick came bouncing up. “Hey, Gordon,” he said excitedly. “You’ll never guess what I dreamed last night.”
“Resist!” Zack warned Gordon. It was really tempting to come out with a mouthful of trekkytalk. However, resist he did, while Nick told him all about the journey into space and the Planet of the Apes.
It was actually quite interesting to hear it from his point of view.
NOTES
“WHAT A PIECE OF WORK ...”; FIRES ... ICY (METAPHORS AGAIN); TREKKYTALK.
Chapter 30
Making His Dad Proud
Tom slouched into the classroom. He turned his chair away from the table so he didn’t have to look at anybody. He was lost. The disastrous, ear-splitting, loose-cannon, pain-in-the-backside mini-wrecker had gone. Since his father’s death he’d been withdrawn and subdued. He rocked without realising he was doing it. He muttered to himself while moving a toy soldier around in a game of his own.
Mrs McCarthy got their theme underway. In these final weeks before the summer holidays she was giving them more practice in making choices and in independent learning. It would help them cope with the much bigger and more complicated school experiences they would be facing in September.
“As you know,” she reminded them. “Our theme this morning is Hot and Cold. A big thank you to Gordon, Nick, Rachel, Susie, Peter and John for bringing in books.” She pointed at a box on an adjoining table. “I’ve brought a boxful from the local library. The books are there for you to get ideas from. There’s plenty for everybody.”
Her eyes strayed to Tom, who never voluntarily picked up a book and had shown no interest in learning to read. Despite the school’s best efforts, his reading age was three years behind what it ought to have been.
“You can draw a picture or do a painting. You can take words like fire, ice, volcano, glacier and make hot and cold shapes with them. You can write a story or a poem ...”
She made sure she caught everyone’s eye – everyone except Tom. “But most of all, I want you to have picked one particular book and looked through it. Later this morning, each of you should be ready to tell the whole class something you have learned from your book.”
The array of faces displayed the usual range of reactions. “All right? Off you go.” Gordon made a bee-line for the box of books from the library. He knew Mrs McCarthy would have picked one or two just for him, and he wasn
’t disappointed.
There was a book with real poems in it, rather than the usual rhymes for kids about finding clues in the news about shoes, or a fly in the sky ending up in a pie. Gordon still wasn’t totally clear what the differences were between real poems and ‘rhymes for kids’; but he knew there were differences and he knew they mattered. He looked at the list of contents.
“Try that one,” Zack suggested, pointing to a poem with an appropriate title, by a poet with an appropriate name.
Tom was painting. Zack wandered over to look at the picture. It was recognisably a Tom. Exploding red and yellow flames erupted from a black blob that you knew was a tank from the size of the gun sticking out of it. Next to it was a stick figure, also carrying a gun, also burning.
Once the painting was finished, he went back to his chair. He sat hunched over his soldier, rocking. Mrs McCarthy took his painting over to him and tried to get him to talk about it, but he’d locked his door. She reminded him gently about choosing a book, but then she was needed elsewhere.
Gordon got an idea. “Zack,” he whispered. “I want to try something.” He waited until Zack was facing Tom on the other side of his table, and then concentrated: “Look up, Tom. Look straight ahead of you.”
Slowly, Tom’s head came up. He appeared to be staring into space.
“Your daddy loved you, Tom. He loved you very much.” Tom didn’t move, but Gordon saw his eyes fill with tears. His hands cradled the toy soldier.
“Maybe he can see you right now, just like you can see him. Maybe he’s in your head and your heart, just like you’re in his.”
Tom’s head didn’t move. His hands set the toy soldier on to the table and moved it gently across the space in front of him.
“He wants you to learn, Tom. He wants you to be strong, and help your Mummy, and do well in school.”
Tom blinked, and a tear rolled down his cheek. He made no effort to wipe it away.
“Learn for him Tom. Stop hating. Make him proud of you. Let him see you learn now. Choose a book. Gordon will help you read it.”
A little frown appeared on Tom’s hurting face. He brought the soldier up to the level of his eyes and muttered something to it.