the way to feed the fish in the coffee-shop aquarium, having been promoted to Fish-feeder-in-chief as the result of an utter lack of interest in any-one else in the skeleton crew in assuming the role.
They sent four members of the Special Intervention Task Force to overpower me and take me down to Camp Munro for a full physical examination. They came dressed in full combat gear, all in black down to the little gloves on their little hands and the masks on their faces. In fact the only flash of colour was on a very fancy patch on their shoulder reading S.I.T.F. over a snarling tiger, which rather gave the game away about their identity.
I kicked one in the kidneys, one in the balls, and then punched one in the solar plexus and one in the throat. As I could move considerably more quickly than they could it took less than 20 seconds to put all four on the ground, including the time it took to undo the stab-vest on the one I punched in the stomach. I had deliberately chosen the different target areas for future reference. My conclusions were that punching to the throat was too dangerous, as it was more likely to result in lasting damage, while kicking the genitals was the most effective, but required careful calibration to avoid permanent damage.
I stepped over the moaning bodies and continued on my way. There was a queen angelfish that I was concerned about, as it seemed a little off its food, and I was hoping it was not seriously ill. I really did not want the crew to come back to one less fish than they had started with.
3.4. Twenty-four pubs
I liked Camp Munro. It smelt different, it sounded different and it had a different ambient temperature. The original part, the laboratories and food store modules, were all set out in a very neat grid pattern, but the later additions of accommodation blocks and entertainment complexes came in all sorts of sizes and shapes and had been added in a haphazard manner, in a sort of anti-grid. There was even a small mountain in the middle of it, where outcrops of the city had grown out to either side and eventually enclosed it. The city was difficult to navigate, poorly organised, had little unity of style or co-ordination and was utterly without any overriding design principle.
I had hot drinks in thirteen different coffee shops, alcohol in twenty-four pubs and meals in seventeen restaurants. I was less interested in the food than in having the opportunity to eavesdrop on people’s conversations without them noticing. The pubs were better in some ways for listening in over longer periods than the duration of a meal, but it was apparently conventional for lone drinkers to stay at the bar with the other lone drinkers, and it was harder to eavesdrop on any-one other than the lone drinkers, who turned out to not have much conversation.
Eventually I settled on one pub and returned there in a bid to make some acquaintances, sort of outer-circle friends. Once people recognised my face it was easier to get into conversations and a few times, when I deemed it would be socially acceptable, I contributed to an on-going conversation, which was almost always about whatever sport was showing on the screens overhead. A knowledge of facts and figures about the relevant sport conferred a definite social advantage, so I threw in a few snippets to help enhance my community standing and create favourable opportunities for bonding.
The forerunner for the role of principle friend, to replace either Lieutenant Shue or my back-up friend Dr Howard, was a man called Lewis Fields. He was a technical support officer in an insurance office, and he would tell us humorous tales of his working day, exaggerated but told with such conviction I had to study his brain activity to confirm he was lying.
I had to decide whether to keep him as a Camp Munro friend, for when I was there, or upgrade him to my principle friend. I found I enjoyed laughing, and so far I had not exactly done much of that with my Bonaventure friends. In fact literature told me the best number for core friends amongst humans was five, so I was not exactly over-endowed with them, but five seemed more than generous to me. Frankly one human friend was really more than enough for me.
3.5. The Ben-body
When I came back to my Ben-body after a day down at Camp Munro in my Haroon-body, I woke up to perfect darkness. It seemed some-one had draped a sheet of plastic over me, but when I raised a hand to pull it back I discovered the some-one had in fact put me in a plastic bag. In my attempts to find my way out I fell off the bed or the trolley or whatever I was on, and landed on the floor. As this seemed a perfect situation to legitimately employ some swear words, I said: “Fuck.”
This was followed by some-one screaming loudly, running away at speed and shouting for one ‘Malcolm’. As I could not find a way out of the bag I took a piece of my sleeping shorts, converted it into a small scalpel blade and cut my way out. I was no longer in the hospital ward, but down in the store-room where they stored luggage and cargo due to be loaded onto the shuttle going down to Camp Munro.
“You’re fucking dead, mate,” said some-one, presumably Malcolm, peering through the doorway with a woman trying to shelter behind him. It was not a threat, just a statement of fact.
It turned out that five minutes after I had retired to bed the previous watch, Lieutenant Belgatti had found a reference backing up his assertion that butterflies only lived for a year. As I had only just left him he saw no reason why he should not come into my room to show it to me. He was a little surprised to find I was already in bed, but even more surprised, on shaking me, to discover I was dead.
I had already gone to Camp Munro and my Ben-body was lying inert and not breathing.
There was no doctor on board, but Lieutenant Belgatti and every other first-aider around did their best - ever more frantic - to revive me, and a whole host of doctors were called up for remote advice, but after a couple of hours every-one had to accept that I was beyond hope.
After the first shock had subsided Lieutenant Belgatti duly informed his superiors that their alien was dead. He told them I had been in perfect health when I left him, but also had to admit that I had drunk three beers, two wines, one sherry, one cider and four fruit-based liquors over the course of the evening.
My corpse was put in a body bag and I was waiting for the shuttle to take me down to Camp Munro for an autopsy to prove I was human (Atkinson’s idea) or for a thorough exploration of an alien body (every-one else). I guess they were all pretty pleased that their problem had solved itself by dying and they had the opportunity to study me to their hearts’ content, until I ruined things by sitting up. My death and resurrection was, of course, going to take some explaining away.
If I had had any intention of explaining.
3.6. How to tell when your alien entity is dead
“Hello, Ben,” said Lieutenant Shue.
I was in my room, drawing large-scale images of fingerprints with some of the ridges picked out in different colours to highlight the patterns. “I’m busy,” I said, without looking up. “Go away.”
“I’ll only come back later.”
“I’ll still be busy.”
They had been pestering me to explain my death and resurrection for days and had got nowhere, so they had recalled Lieutenant Shue early just so he could come and pester me instead. He sat down on the second bed and did his usual visual check of the artwork on display for anything new.
“You were dead, and now you’re alive. Of course they’re going to be interested in that.”
“They can be as interested as they like.”
“Give me something to keep them happy. We’re about to go away on a ten-month deployment. Is this going to happen again? Happen often? How long should we leave you before we can consider you genuinely dead?”
“It will not happen again,” I allowed. And who knows, maybe it wouldn’t.
Lieutenant Shue hesitated, and then spoke with care. “Some time back, when we were talking about your ‘base materials’, you said you had made organics. Did you make your body? Are you not a shape-shifter, but something else that occupies an artificial body?” he asked. Lieutenant Shue was not stupid. “Did you make your body?”
“Maybe.”
“
It’s a question that needs a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer.”
“Only if I intend to answer it.”
He expounded his theory, and peppered me with questions while watching me for any reaction. He had worked it out pretty well, although he was still a little hesitant about it. I concentrated on my drawing and ignored every one of his fifteen questions.
Eventually even Lieutenant Shue grew bored. “What is wrong with you?” he asked in exasperation. “What does it matter if we know a little bit about you?” He gave up in the end, and left, and I was free to concentrate on my drawing again. Although not for long.
I heard his rapid footsteps coming back my way and he burst back into the ward. “Jesus, you’re going down to Camp Munro,” he said. “That’s why you left your body. When every-one thinks you’re asleep you’re down in Camp Munro.”
Lieutenant Shue was much better at deductive reasoning than his bosses.
3.7. Even bosses have bosses
Atkinson decided that all seven of the crew who had tried to find my non-existent pulse and revive me had been mistaken, and that I had never been dead. He was, of course, right. He disbelieved the seven, just as he had previously dismissed the whole crew of the Bonaventure and the four S.I.T.F. officers (only one of whom was not yet back at work). To believe them meant that he had to be wrong,