Only You Can Save Mankind Read online

  ‘She is under arrest. These are my instructions—’

  ‘Arrest? What for? What did she do?’

  ‘She did nothing. Listen to me. You have sixty seconds to get beyond range of our guns. For honour. After that, you will be fired upon with extreme force.’

  ‘Hang on—’

  ‘The count has started.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘End of communication. Die, human.’

  The screen went blank.

  Johnny stared at it.

  It hadn’t been a friendly face. The voice had sounded as though it had learned Human out of a book, just like the real Captain. But in this case it had been a nasty book. It also sounded as though it belonged to someone who would count to sixty like this: ‘One, two, three, four, five, seven, eighteen, thirty-five, forty-nine, fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty – firing, ready or not—’

  His ship jerked forward, ramming him back in his seat. That was one good thing about game space – you could do the kinds of turns and manouevres that, in real space, would leave the human body looking like thin pink lino across the cabin wall . . .

  The fleet slid past, dwindling to a collection of dots behind him. A couple of laser beams crackled past, but some way away; it looked as though they were trying to frighten him off rather than kill him.

  The ScreeWee had turned around. They were heading back deeper into game space. Why? They’d show up on people’s screens soon! There were always some players who’d go looking. Any day now some kid’d switch on his machine and there’d be wall-to-wall ScreeWee, heading straight for him. They weren’t safe even now. Yes – there were always some people who’d go looking . . .

  And there was a green dot ahead of him. He recognized the way it moved, like a dog creeping around the edge of a sheep field.

  He headed towards it.

  Now he could remember. You thought better in game space, too. It was as if he was more him in game space. Krystal or Kylie or one of those made-up names, Wobbler had said. And Bigmac said the other name was Dunn . . .

  He twirled the knob of the communicator panel.

  ‘Krystal?’ he tried. ‘Kylie? Kathryn? Whatever?’

  There was just the hiss of the stars, and then: ‘It’s Kirsty, actually.’

  ‘Don’t fire!’ said Johnny, quickly.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Don’t fire, first. Promise? I hate dying. It makes it hard to think.’

  The other ship had stopped being a dot now. If she was going to fire, he was as good as dead – if dead was good.

  ‘All right,’ she said, slowly. ‘No firing. Peace talk. Now tell me who you are.’

  ‘I’m a player, like you,’ said Johnny.

  ‘No you’re not. None of the other players talk to me. Anyway, you’re on their side. I’ve been watching you.’

  ‘Not . . . exactly on their side,’ said Johnny.

  ‘Well, you’re not on my side,’ said Kirsty. ‘No one is.’

  ‘Did they try to surrender to you too? I heard you say in Patel’s shop that they’d sent you a message.’

  There was another silence filled with the whispers of the universe, and then a cautious voice: ‘You’re not the fat one who looks as though he could do with a bra, are you?’

  ‘No. Listen—’ Johnny tapped his controls hurriedly.

  ‘The black one who looks like an accountant?’

  ‘No. Look—’

  ‘Oh, no . . . not the skinny one with the big boots and the pointy head . . . ?’

  ‘No, I’m the one who kind of hangs around and no one notices much,’ said Johnny desperately.

  ‘Who? I didn’t see anyone.’

  ‘Right! That was me!’

  ‘They surrendered to you?’

  ‘Yes!’ Number three missile went ping as it locked on to her ship. Now for number four—

  ’But you’re a nerd!’

  Ping!

  ‘I think it’s dweeb now. Anyway, I’m more than a dweeb.’

  Ping!

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m a dweeb with five missiles targeted on you.’

  ‘You said you weren’t going to fire!’

  ‘I haven’t yet.’

  ‘You said this was a peace talk!’

  ‘You did. Anyway, it is. It’s just that I’m . . . kind of shouting.’

  If he concentrated, he thought he could hear music in the background when she spoke.

  ‘You’ve really got missiles targeted on me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m amazed you thought of it.’

  ‘So am I. Look, I don’t want to shoot anyone. But I need help. The fleet’s turned round. They fired at me!’

  ‘That’s their job, dweeb. They fire at us, we fire at them. Why did they stop? It’s no fun if they don’t fire back.’

  ‘They surrendered.’

  ‘They can’t surrender. It’s a game.’

  ‘Well, they did. Sometimes you change the game. I don’t know, Kirsty!’

  ‘Listen, I hate that name!’

  ‘I’ve got to call you something,’ said Johnny. ‘What do you call yourself?’

  ‘If you tell anyone else I’ll kill you—’

  ‘I thought you were planning to do that anyway.’

  ‘I don’t mean just kill you, I mean really kill you.’

  ‘All right. What’s your game name?’

  ‘Sigourney – you’re laughing!’

  ‘I’m not! I’m not! It was a sneeze! Honest! No, it’s a . . . good name. Very . . . appropriate . . .’

  ‘It’s just dreaming, anyway. I’m dreaming this. You’re dreaming this.’

  ‘So what? Doesn’t make things unimportant.’

  There was some more silence with the scratchy suggestion of music in the background, and then: ‘Ah-ha! While we’ve been talking, Mr Clever, I’ve targeted missiles on you!’

  Johnny shrugged, even though there was no way she could see that.

  ‘Doesn’t matter. I thought you would, anyway. So we kill each other. Then we’ll have to go through all this again. It’s stupid. Don’t you want to find out what happens next?’

  More scratchy music.

  ‘I can hear scratchy music,’ said Johnny.

  ‘It’s my Walkman.’

  ‘Clever. I wish I’d thought of that. I tried dreaming my camera, but the pictures weren’t any good. What’re you listening to?’

  ‘C Inlay 4 Details – “Please Keep This Copy For Your Records”.’

  There was another scratchy pause.

  Then, as if she’d been thinking deeply, she said: ‘Look, we can’t be in the same dream. That can’t happen.’

  ‘We could find out. Where’d you live?’

  This time the pause went on for a long time. The ScreeWee fleet appeared on the radar.

  ‘We’d better move,’ said Johnny. ‘They’ve started firing. Something’s happened to the Captain. She’s the one that wanted peace in the first place. Look, I know you live in Tyne Avenue or Crescent or somewhere—’

  ‘How come we live so close?’

  ‘Dunno. Bad luck, I suppose. Look, they’re going to be in range soon—’

  ‘No problem. Then we shoot them.’

  ‘We’ll be killed. Anyway—’

  ‘So what? Dying’s easy.’

  ‘I know. It’s living that’s the problem,’ said Johnny, meaning it. ‘You don’t sound like someone who takes the easy way.’

  C Inlay 4 Details played on in the distance.

  ‘So what do you have in mind?’

  Johnny hesitated. He hadn’t thought that far. The new Captain didn’t seem to want to talk.

  ‘Dunno. I just don’t want any ScreeWee to get killed.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Because when they die, they die for real.

  ‘I just don’t, OK?’

  Several fighters had left the fleet and were heading purposefully towards them.

  ‘I’m going to try and talk one more time,’
he decided. ‘Someone must be listening.’

  ‘Nerdy idea.’

  ‘I’m not much good at the other kind.’

  Johnny turned his ship and hit the Go-faster button. A few shots whiffled harmlessly past him and did a lot of damage to empty space.

  And then he was heading at maximum speed towards the fleet.

  Music came over the intercom.

  ‘Idiot! Dodge and dive! No wonder you get shot a lot!’

  He wiggled the joystick. Something clipped one of the starship’s wings and exploded behind him.

  ‘And you’ve got the fighters after you! Huh! You can’t even save yourself!’

  Johnny didn’t take his eyes off the fleet, which was bouncing around the sky as he flung his ship about in an effort to avoid being shot at.

  ‘You might try to be some help!’ he shouted. There was a boom behind him.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘You’re shooting them?’

  ‘You’re very hard to please, actually.’

  The Captain tried the door of her cabin again. It was still locked. And there was almost certainly a guard in the corridor outside. ScreeWee tended to obey orders, even if they didn’t like them. The Gunnery Officer was very unusual.

  That, she thought bitterly, is what comes of promoting a male. They’re unreliable thinkers.

  She looked around the cabin. She didn’t want to be in it. She wanted to be outside it. But she was in it. She needed a new idea.

  Humans seemed much better at ideas. They always seemed to be on the verge of being totally insane, but it seemed to work for them. The inside of their heads would be an interesting place to visit, but she wouldn’t want to live there.

  How do you think like a human? Go into madness first, probably, and then out the other side . . .

  ‘Listen! Listen! If you keep going this way, you’ll all be killed! You’re going back into game space! People like me will find you! You’ll all be killed! That’s how it goes!’

  And then he died.

  It was 6.3 ≡. He was lying on his bed with his clothes on, but he still felt cold.

  Bits and pieces of his . . . his previous life trickled through his mind.

  Sigourney!

  Well, Yo-less would say that explained anything. And now it looked as if he’d be spending every night watching the ScreeWee get killed.

  It was bad enough fighting off people in ones and twos. But they were just the ones who were weird or lonely or bored enough to go looking. Wobbler said thousands of copies of the game had been sold. Even if most people took them back to the shops, there’d always be someone playing. Once the ScreeWee turned up again, the news would get around . . .

  And then, one day, long after no one played the game any more, there’d be these broken ships, turning over and over in the blank-screen darkness of game space.

  And he couldn’t stop it. Kir— Sigourney was right. That’s what they were there for.

  It was Tuesday, too. It was Maths for most of the morning. And then English. He’d better write a poem at lunchtime. You could generally get away with a poem.

  He got his jacket out of the shed and sponged it off as best he could, and then propped it up by the heater. Then he investigated the fridge.

  His father had been doing the shopping again. You could always tell. There were generally expensive things in jars, and odd foreign vegetables. This time there was Yoghurt Vindaloo and more celery. No one in the house liked celery much. It always ended up going brown. And his father never bought bread and potatoes. He seemed to think that stuff like that just grew in kitchens, like mushrooms (although he always bought mushrooms, if they were the special expensive dried kind that looked like bits of mouldy bark and were picked by wizened old Frenchmen).

  There was a carton of milk which thumped when he shook it.

  Johnny found a cup in the ghastly cavern of the dishwasher and rinsed it under the tap. At least there wasn’t much that could go wrong with black coffee.

  He quite enjoyed the time by himself in the mornings. The day was too early to have started going really wrong.

  The war was still on television. It was getting on his nerves. It was worrying him. You’d really think everyone would have had enough by now.

  Bigmac was in school. He’d stayed the night at Yo-less’s. Mrs Yo-less had washed out his clothes, even the T-shirt with ‘Blackbury Skins’ on the back. It was a lot cleaner than it had ever been.

  He could feel Wobbler and Yo-less looking at him with interest. So were one or two other people.

  Later on, when they were in the middle of the rush which meant that every pupil in the school had to walk all the way across the campus to be somewhere else, Yo-less said: ‘Bigmac said you pulled him out of the wreck. Did you?’

  ‘What? He wasn’t even—’ Johnny paused.

  It was amazing. He’d never thought so fast before. He thought of Bigmac’s room, with its Weapons of the World posters and plastic model guns and weight-training stuff he couldn’t lift. Bigmac had been thrown out of the school role-playing games club for getting too excited. Bigmac, who spent all his time trying hard to be a big thicko; Bigmac, who could work out maths problems just by looking at them. Bigmac, who played the game of being . . . well, big tough Bigmac.

  Johnny looked around. Bigmac was watching him. It was amazing, given that Bigmac’s ancestors were a sort of monkey, how much his expression looked like the one he’d first seen on the face of the Captain, whose ancestors were a kind of alligator. It said: Help me.

  ‘Can’t really remember,’ he said.

  ‘Only my mum rang the hospital and they said there were only two boys and they were—’

  ‘It was dark,’ said Johnny.

  ‘Yes, but if you’d really—’

  ‘It’s just best if everyone shuts up about it, all right?’ said Johnny, nodding meaningfully at Bigmac.

  ‘She said you did everything right, anyway,’ said Yo-less. ‘And she said you aren’t being properly looked after.’

  ‘Yo-less.’

  ‘She said you ought to come round our house to eat sometimes —’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Johnny. ‘I’m a bit busy these days—’

  ‘Doing what?’ said Yo-less.

  Johnny fumbled in his pocket.

  ‘What does this look like to you?’ he said.

  Yo-less took it gravely.

  ‘It’s a photograph,’ he said. ‘Just looks like a TV screen with dots on.’

  ‘Yes,’ sighed Johnny. ‘It does, doesn’t it.’

  He took it back and shoved it deep into his pocket.

  ‘Yo-less?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If someone was . . . you know . . . going a bit weird in the head—’

  ‘Mental, he means,’ said Wobbler, behind him.

  ‘Just a bit over-strained,’ said Johnny. ‘I mean . . . would they know? Themselves?’

  ‘Well, everyone thinks they’re a bit mad,’ said Yo-less. ‘It’s part of being normal.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think I’m mad,’ said Johnny.

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘Ah-aha!’ said Wobbler.

  ‘I mean – the whole world seems kind of weird right now. You watch the telly, don’t you? How can you be the good guys if you’re dropping clever bombs right down people’s chimneys? And blowing people up just because they’re being bossed around by a loony?’

  ‘Shouldn’t let ’emselves be bossed around, then,’ said Bigmac. Johnny looked at him. Bigmac deflated a bit. ‘It’s their own fault. They don’t have to. That’s what my brother says, anyway,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Is it?’ said Johnny.

  Bigmac shrugged.

  ‘Oh, well, yes,’ said Wobbler. ‘How? It’s hard enough to get rid of prime ministers and at least they don’t have people taken out and shot. Not any more, anyway.’

  ‘My brother’s stupid,’ said Bigmac, so quietly under his breath that Johnny wondered if anyone else even
heard it.

  ‘There was a man on the box saying that the bomb-aimers were so good because they all grew up playing computer games,’ said Wobbler.

  ‘See?’ said Johnny. ‘That’s what I mean. Games look real. Real things look like games. And . . . and . . . it all kind of runs together in my head.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Yo-less, knowingly. ‘That’s not mental. That’s shamanism. I read a book about it.’

  ‘What’s shamanism?’

  ‘Shamans used to be these kind of people who lived partly in a dream world and partly in the real world,’ said Wobbler. ‘Like medicine men and druids and guys like that. They used to be very important. They used to guide people.’

  ‘Guide?’ said Johnny. ‘Where to?’

  ‘Not sure. Anyway, my mother says they were creations of Satan.’

  ‘Yes, but your mother says that about practically everything,’ said Wobbler.

  ‘This is true,’ said Yo-less gravely. ‘It’s her hobby.’

  ‘She said role-playing games were creations of Satan,’ said Wobbler.

  ‘True.’

  ‘Dead clever of him,’ said Wobbler. ‘I mean, sitting down there in Hell, working out all the combat tables and everything. I bet he used to really swear every time the dice caught fire . . .’

  Shamanism, thought Johnny. Yes. I could be a shaman. A guide. That’s better than being mental, at any rate.

  It was Maths again. As far as Johnny was concerned, the future would be a better place if it didn’t contain 3y + x2. He had problems enough without people giving him pages of them.

  He was trying to put off the idea of ringing someone up.

  And then there was Social Education. Normally you could ignore Social Education, which tended to be about anything anyone had on their minds at the time or, failing that, AIDS. Really the day ended with Maths. SE was just there to keep you off the streets for another three-quarters of an hour.

  He could try ringing up. You just needed the phone book and a bit of thought . . .

  Johnny stared at the ceiling. The teacher was going on about the war. That was all there was to talk about these days. He listened with half an ear. No one liked the bombing. One of the girls was nearly in tears about it . . .

  Supposing she was really there? Or supposing she said she’d never heard of him?

  Bigmac was arguing. That was unusual.

  And then someone said, ‘Do you think it’s easy? Do you think the pilots really just sit there like . . . like a game? Do you think they laugh? Really laugh? Not just laugh because they’re still alive, but laugh because it’s . . . it’s fun? When they’re being shot at for a living, every day? When any minute they might get blown up too? Do you think they don’t wonder what it’s all about? Do you think they like it? But we always turn it into something that’s not exactly real. We turn it into games and it’s not games. We really have to find out what’s real!’