Only You Can Save Mankind Read online

  We want to go home.

  He typed: All right no problem.

  You give us safe conduct.

  He typed: OK yes.

  The screen went blank.

  And that was it? No music? No ‘Congratulations, You’ve Got the Highest Score’?

  Just the little prompt, flashing on and off.

  What did safe conduct mean, anyway?

  Chapter 2

  Operate Controls To Play Game

  You never said to your parents, ‘Hey, I really need a computer because that way I can play Megasteroids.’

  No, you said, ‘I really need a computer because of school.’

  It’s educational.

  Anyway, there had to be a good side to the Trying Times everyone was going through in this house. If you hung around in your room and generally kept your head down, stuff like computers sort of happened. It made everyone feel better.

  And it was quite useful for school sometimes. Johnny had written ‘What it felt like to be different sorts of peasants’ on it, and printed them out on the printer, although he had to rewrite them in his handwriting because although the school taught Keyboard Skills and New Technology you got into trouble if you used keyboard skills and new technology actually to do anything.

  Funnily enough, it wasn’t much good for maths. He’d always had trouble with algebra, because they wouldn’t let you get away with ‘What it feels like to be x2’. But he had an arrangement with Bigmac about that, because Bigmac got the same feeling when he looked at an essay project as Johnny did when he was faced with a quadratic equation. Anyway, it didn’t matter that much. If you kept your head down, they were generally so grateful that you were not, e.g., causing policemen to come to the school, or actually nailing a teacher to anything, that you got left alone.

  But mainly the computer was good for games. If you turned the volume control up, you didn’t have to hear the shouting.

  The ScreeWee mother ship was in uproar. There was still a haze of smoke in the air from the last bombardment, and indistinct figures pattered back and forth, trying to fix things up well enough to survive the journey.

  The Captain sat back in her chair on the huge, shadowy bridge. She was yellow under the eyes, a sure sign of lack of sleep. So much to be done . . . half the fighters were damaged, and the main ships were in none too good condition, and there was hardly any room and certainly no food for all the survivors they were taking on board.

  She looked up. There was the Gunnery Officer.

  ‘This is not a wise move,’ he said.

  ‘It is the only one I have,’ said the Captain wearily.

  ‘No! We must fight on!’

  ‘And then we die,’ said the Captain. ‘We fight, and then we die. That’s how it goes.’

  ‘Then we die gloriously!’

  ‘There’s an important word in that sentence,’ said the Captain. ‘And it’s not the word “gloriously”.’

  The Gunnery Officer went light green with rage.

  ‘He’s attacked hundreds of our ships!’

  ‘And then he stopped.’

  ‘None of the others have,’ said the Gunnery Officer. ‘They’re humans! You can’t trust a human. They shoot everything.’

  The Captain rested her snout on one hand.

  ‘He doesn’t,’ she said. ‘He listened. He talked. None of the others did. He may be the One.’

  The Gunnery Officer placed his upper two front hands on the desk and glared at her.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ve talked to the other officers. I don’t believe in legends. When the full enormity of what you have done is understood, you will be relieved of your command!’

  She turned tired eyes towards him.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘But right now, I am Captain. I am responsible. Do you understand? Have you got the faintest idea of what that means? Now . . . go!’

  He didn’t like it, but he couldn’t disobey. I can have him shot, she thought. It’d be a good idea. Bound to save trouble later on. It’ll be No.235 on the list of Things to Do . . .

  She turned back to continue staring at the stars outside, on the huge screen that filled one wall.

  The enemy ship still hung there.

  What kind of person is it? she thought. Despicable though they are, there’s so few of them. But they keep coming back! What’s their secret?

  But you can be sure of one thing. They surely only send their bravest and their best.

  The advantage of the Trying Times was that helping yourself from the fridge was OK. There didn’t seem to be any proper mealtimes any more in any case. Or any real cooking.

  Johnny made himseff spaghetti and baked beans. There was no sound from the living room, although the TV was on.

  Then he watched a bit of television in his room. He’d been given the old one when they got the new one. It wasn’t very big and you had to get up and walk over to it every time you wanted to change channels or the volume or whatever, but these were Trying Times.

  There was a film on the News showing some missiles streaking over some city. It was quite good.

  Then he went to bed.

  He was not entirely surprised to wake up at the controls of a starfighter.

  It had been like that with Captain Zoom. You couldn’t get it out of your head. After an evening’s concentrated playing you were climbing ladders and dodging laser-zap bolts all night.

  It was a pretty good dream, even so. He could feel the seat under him. And the cabin smelled of hot oil and overheated plastic and unwashed people.

  It looked pretty much like the one he saw on the screen every evening, except that there was a thin film of grease and dirt over everything. But there was the radar screen, and the weapons console, and the joystick . . .

  Hey, much better than the computer! The cabin was full of noises – the click and whirr of fans, the hum and buzz of instruments.

  And better graphics. You get much better graphics in your dreams.

  The ScreeWee fleet hung in the ai— hung in space in front of him.

  Wow!

  Although dreams ought to be a bit more exciting. You got chased in dreams. Things happened to you. Sitting in the cockpit of a starfighter bristling with weapons was fun, but things ought to happen . . .

  He wondered if he should launch a missile or something . . . No, hang on, they’d surrendered. And there was that thing about safe conduct.

  His hands wandered over the switches in front of him. They were a bit different from the computer keyboard, but this one—

  ‘Are you receiving me?’

  The face of the Captain appeared on the communications screen.

  ‘Yes?’ said Johnny.

  ‘We are ready.’

  ‘Ready?’ said Johnny. ‘What for?’

  ‘Lead the way,’ said the Captain. The voice came out of a grille beside the screen. It must be being translated by something, Johnny thought. I shouldn’t think giant newts speak English.

  ‘Where to?’ he said. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Earth.’

  ‘Earth? Hang on! That’s where I live! People can get into serious trouble showing huge alien fleets where they live!’

  The grille hummed and buzzed for a while. Then the Captain said: ‘Apology. That is a direct translation. We call the planet that is our home, “Earth”. When I speak in ScreeWee, your computer finds the word in your language that means the same thing. The actual word in ScreeWee sounds like . . .’ There was a noise like someone taking their foot out of a wet cowpat. ‘I will show our home to you.’

  A red circle suddenly developed on the navigation screen.

  Johnny knew about that. You just moved a green circle over it, the computer went binkabinkabinka, and you’d set your course.

  They’ve shown me where they live.

  The thought sunk in.

  They trust me.

  As he moved his fighter forwards, the entire alien fleet pulled in behind him. They eclipsed the stars.

  T
he cabin hummed and buzzed quietly to itself.

  Well, at least it didn’t look too hard . . .

  A green dot appeared ahead of him.

  He watched it get bigger, and recognized the shape of a starfighter, just like his.

  But it was a little hard to make it out.

  This was because it was half-hidden by laser bolts.

  It was firing at him as it came.

  And it was travelling so fast it was very nearly catching up with its own fire.

  Johnny jerked the joystick and his ship rolled out of the way as the . . . the enemy starfighter roared past and barrelled on towards the ScreeWee ships.

  The whole sky full of ScreeWee ships.

  Which had surrendered to him.

  But people out there were still playing the game.

  ‘No! Listen to me! They’re not fighting any more!’

  The starfighter turned in a wide curve and headed directly for the command ship. Johnny saw it launch a missile. Someone sitting at a keyboard somewhere had launched a missile.

  ‘Listen! You’ve got to stop!’

  It’s not listening to me, he thought. You don’t listen to the enemy. The enemy’s there to be shot at. That’s why it’s the enemy. That’s what the enemy’s for.

  He swung around to follow the starship, which had slowed down. It was pouring shot after shot into the command ship . . .

  . . . which wasn’t firing back.

  Johnny stared in horror.

  The ship rocked under the hail of fire. The Gunnery Officer crawled across the shaking floor and pulled himself up beside the Captain’s chair.

  ‘Fool! Fool! I told you this would happen! I demand that we return fire!’

  The Captain was watching the Chosen One’s ship. It hadn’t moved.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘We have to give him a chance. We must not fire on human ships.’

  ‘A chance? How much of a chance do we have? I shall give the order to—’

  The Captain moved very fast. When her hand stopped she was holding a gun very close to the Gunnery Officer’s head. It was really only a ceremonial weapon; normally ScreeWee fought only with their claws. But its shape said very clearly that things came out of the hole in the front end with the very definite purpose of travelling fast through the air and then killing people.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  The Gunnery Officer’s face went blue, a sure sign of terror. But he had enough courage left to say: ‘You would not dare fire!’

  It’s a game, thought Johnny. There’s not a real person in that ship. It’s someone playing a game. It’s all a game. It’s just things happening on a screen somewhere.

  No.

  I mean, yes.

  But . . .

  . . . at the same time . . .

  . . . it’s all happening here . . .

  His own ship leapt forward.

  It was easy. It was so easy. Just line up circles on the screen, binkabinkabinka, and then press the Fire button until every weapon on the ship was empty. He’d done it many times before.

  The invader hadn’t even seen him. It launched some missiles – and then blew up in an impressive display of graphics.

  That’s all it is, Johnny told himself. Just things on a screen. It’s not real. There’s no arms and feet spinning away through the wreckage. It’s all a game.

  The missiles arrived . . .

  The whole cockpit went blinding white.

  He was aware, just for a moment, of cold space around him, with things in it . . .

  A bookcase. A chair. A bed.

  He was sitting in front of the computer. The screen was blank. He was holding the joystick so hard that he had to concentrate to let go of it.

  The clock by his bed said 6:3 ≡ , because it was broken. But it meant he’d have to get up in another hour or so.

  He sat with his quilt around him watching the television until the alarm went off.

  There were some more pictures of missiles and bullets streaking over a city. They looked pretty much the same as the ones he’d seen last night, but were probably back by popular demand.

  He felt sick.

  Yo-less could help, Johnny decided.

  He normally hung out with Wobbler and Bigmac on the bit of wall behind the school library. They weren’t exactly a gang. If you take a big bag of crisps and shake them up, all the little bits end up in one corner.

  Yo-less was called Yo-less because he never said ‘Yo’. He’d given up objecting to the name by now. At least it was better than Nearly Crucial, which was the last nickname, and MC Spanner, which was the one before that. Johnny was the official nickname generator.

  Yo-less said he’d never said ‘crucial’, either. He pointed out that Johnny was white and never said, ‘YerWhat? YerWhat? YerWhat?’ or ‘Ars-nal! Ars-nal!’ and anyway, you shouldn’t make jokes about racial stereotyping.

  Johnny didn’t go into too much detail. He just talked about the dream, and not about the messages on the screen. Yo-less listened carefully. Yo-less listened to everything carefully. It worried teachers, the way he listened carefully to everything they said. They always suspected he was trying to catch them out.

  He said, ‘What you’ve got here is a projection of a psychological conflict. That’s all. Want a cheese ring?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s just crunchy cheesy-flavoured—’

  ‘I mean the other thing you said.’

  Yo-less passed the packet on to Bigmac.

  ‘Well . . . your mum and dad are splitting up, right? Well-known fact.’

  ‘Could be. It’s a bit of a trying time,’ said Johnny.

  ‘O-kay. And there’s nothing you can do about it.’

  ‘Shouldn’t think so,’ said Johnny.

  ‘And this definitely affects you,’ said Yo-less.

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Johnny cautiously. ‘I know I have to do a lot of my own cooking.’

  ‘Right. So you project your . . . um . . . suppressed emotions on to a computer game. Happens all the time,’ said Yo-less, whose mother was a nurse, and who wanted to be a doctor if he grew up. ‘You can’t solve the real problems, so you turn them into problems you can solve. Like . . . if this was thirty years ago, you’d probably dream about fighting dragons or something. It’s a projected fantasy.’

  ‘Saving hundreds of intelligent newts doesn’t sound very easy to solve,’ said Johnny.

  ‘Dunno,’ said Bigmac, happily. ‘Ratatatat-blam! No more problem.’ Bigmac wore large boots and camouflage trousers all the time. You could spot him a mile off by his camouflage trousers.

  ‘The thing is,’ said Yo-less, ‘it’s not real. Real’s real. But stuff on a screen isn’t.’

  ‘I’ve cracked Stellar Smashers,’ said Wobbler. ‘You can have that if you want. Everyone says it’s a lot better.’

  ‘No-oo,’ said Johnny, ‘I think I’ll stick with this one for a while. See if I can get to level twenty-one.’

  ‘If you get to level twenty-one and blow up the whole fleet you get a special number on the screen, and if you write off to Gobi Software you get a five-pound token,’ said Wobbler. ‘It was in Computer Weekly.’

  Johnny thought about the Captain.

  ‘A whole five pounds?’ he said. ‘Gosh.’

  It was Games in the afternoon. Bigmac was the only one who played. He’d never been keen until they’d introduced hockey. You got a club to hit people, he said.

  Yo-less didn’t do sport because of intellectual incompatibility. Wobbler didn’t do sport because the sports master had asked him not to. Johnny didn’t do sport because he had a permanent note, and no one cared much anyway, so he went home early and spent the afternoon reading the manual.

  He didn’t touch the computer before tea.

  There was an extended News, which meant that Cobbers was postponed. There were the same pictures of missiles streaking across a city that he’d seen the night before, except that now there were more journalists in sand-coloured shirts
with lots of pockets talking excitedly about them.

  He heard his mother downstairs complain about Cobbers, and by the sound of the raised voices that started Trying Times again.

  There was some History homework about Christopher Columbus. He looked him up in the encyclopedia and copied out four hundred words, which usually worked. He drew a picture of Columbus as well, and coloured it in.

  After a while he realized that he was putting off switching the computer on. It came to something, he thought, when you did school work rather than play games . . .

  It wouldn’t hurt to at least have a game of Pac-Man or something. Trouble was, the ghosts would probably stay in the middle of the screen and refuse to come out and be eaten. He didn’t think he could cope with that. He’d got enough to worry about as it was.

  On top of it all, his father came upstairs to be fatherly. This happened about once a fortnight. There didn’t seem to be any way of stopping it. You had to put up with twenty minutes of being asked about how you were getting on at school, and had you really thought about what you wanted to be when you grew up.

  The thing to do was not encourage things, but as politely as possible.

  His father sat on the edge of the bed and looked around the room as though he’d never seen it before.

  After the normal questions about teachers Johnny hadn’t had since the first year, his father stared at nothing much for a while and then said, ‘Things have been a bit tricky lately. I expect you’ve noticed.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s been a bit tricky at work. Not a good time to start a new business.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nothing you want to talk about?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so.’

  His father looked around the room again. Then he said, ‘Remember last year, when we all went down to Falmouth for the week?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You enjoyed that, didn’t you?’

  He’d got sunburnt and twisted his ankle on some rocks and he had to get up at 8.30 every morning, even though it was supposed to be a holiday. And the only TV in the hotel was in front of some old woman who never let go of the remote-control.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We ought to go again.’

  His father was staring at him.