Above His Station (14 page)

‘I did? When?’

‘Just then!’ said the rat.

‘Really?’ I said, unaware that I had said anything at all. ‘How peculiar.’

*

Following the directions in the Visitors’ Guide, not only had I learned several interesting facts about how crocodiles care for their young, but I had also managed to find the exact area that we needed to get to in a very succinct manner. The snakes were in an area called ‘
Slithering House
’, which for some reason made the rat chuckle.

‘That’s got to be copyright, surely,’ it said, although the meaning was lost on me.

I walked along slowly, making sure that I read the names of every species of snake as I went along, keen not to miss anything – and it wasn’t easy, because the place was so very dark. All the tanks were lit from within so you could see their inhabitants, which gave the added feeling of entering somewhere without permission. There were so many snakes, of all sizes and breeds. There was a boa constrictor that had the largest tank of the lot, up on a small raised platform at the far end of the vast room, and I felt sure that this was the snake that I sought. It was possibly as much as 12 feet in length, although it was difficult to gauge accurately on the account that it was all coiled up. I walked up the gentle incline of the ramp to the platform and tapped my wedding ring on the glass to get the snake’s attention.

‘Must you?’ it said.

‘Must I what?’ I asked.

‘Can’t you read?’ The boa constrictor nodded towards a sticker in the corner of the glass telling people not to knock on the glass as it frightens the snakes.

‘Oh…sorry,’ I said. ‘Listen, I wonder if you might be who I’m looking for.’

‘Depends,’ said the boa constrictor.

‘On what?’ I enquired.

‘On why you’re looking for me,’ said the snake. ‘
Obviously.
’

One sarcastic talking animal was more than enough for me, thank you very much, I didn’t need another one. So I discarded politeness in favour of a more direct route:

‘Are you Astrid?’

‘Why do you want to know?’ asked the boa constrictor.

‘Why does everything have to be so long-winded with you things? A simple yes or no will do!’ I said, crossly. ‘Are you Astrid or not?’

‘Nope,’ said the snake. ‘I’m Phil.’

‘Right then…
Phil
…can you tell me where I might find Astrid?’

The boa constrictor flicked its tail in the direction over my shoulder on the far wall.

‘Third one from the left.’

‘
Thank you,
’ I said in my best sarcastic voice.

Now at least I was getting somewhere! I strode down the ramp and over to the wall, and in the third tank along from the left, I found my prize: a rather striking
Python Reticulatus
(that’s a reticulated python to you and me). It was mostly golden-green in colour, with patches of dark brown to aid its camouflage amongst the leaves and rocks within its tank.

‘Astrid?’ I said, stepping closer to the glass.

‘A human being,’ said the python. ‘My, you’re a rarity these days.’

‘So it seems,’ I said. ‘Look, I won’t take up too much of your time, it’s just that we’ve got a few questions we’d like to ask, if it’s all right with you.’

‘We?’ asked the python. ‘I see only you, unless
ssss
…’

It was awfully disconcerting hearing the snake hiss like that, and I felt my furry friend retreat further under my anorak’s collar. I had to coax it out with threats to get it to show itself.

‘A man and a rat,’ said Astrid, tasting the air with her tongue. ‘At any other time the most bitter of enemies. It’s funny how a crisis often lends itself to ironic alliances.’

‘That’s very astute of you,’ I said, intrigued as to what other philosophical assessments the reticulated python was capable of, yet also aware that I was pressed for time. ‘And actually, it’s this particular crisis that I’m hoping you can help me with. It’s about all this business with people turning into animals. King Simba reckons that mankind deserved what it got…that someone did it to them on purpose. And he also inferred that you might know something about it?’

‘Asclepians,’ replied Astrid.

‘
Asclepians?
What’s one of those?’ I asked.

‘They are my kind…from the planet Asclepia,’ confirmed the snake. ‘Although I have since learned that our species’ descendants came originally from this world. We have always been an inquisitive species, wondering if there were others like us somewhere amongst the stars. We found the proof on December 24
^th
in the Earth year of 1968, when our long-range scanners intercepted a transmission beamed through the ether of space. It was unlike anything we had ever heard before. The voices were so proud, so serene…like angels talking in their sleep.’

The rat caught my eye and swirled its finger around its ear, but I ignored it as I was trying to pay attention.

‘It transpired that these voices were the crew of
Apollo 8
reading a passage from your Bible to the nations of this world,’ continued Astrid. ‘But back then my race had no concept of such a thing. All we knew was that we had asked the stars for answers and they had responded. And so, after many years, we mastered the capability of interstellar propulsion and sought to understand where this transmission had originated from. I and two other Asclepians took flight in the
Viper Explorer 1
, searching the stars for enlightenment. But the Universe is vast and unending, and it took us decades to reach even the nearest edge of your Solar System. It was 2003 when we came across an unidentified capsule, drifting aimlessly in the void of space.’

The rat was only too quick to galvanise (and then vocalise) my confused thoughts for me. ‘Whoa there, sister. Rewind. You’re saying that snakes come from
space?
’

‘No, not all of them,’ said Astrid.

‘But how could you possibly fly a spaceship? You don’t even have any hands!’

‘We pilot our interstellar crafts by willpower…of which Asclepians have in abundance,’ explained Astrid.

‘So…just so we’re clear…’ said the rat, ‘…you’re a fucking
alien?
’

‘Using the more common definition of the word,’ said Astrid, ‘yes, I suppose I am.’

The rat slapped its forehead. ‘Perfect! On top of everything else, now we’ve got fucking aliens turning up! This is unbelievable!’

I was tempted to agree. This was a very far-fetched revelation to be certain, and even though it made no sense by using the realms of possibility as my frame of reference, I found that if I went with the theory that the more impossible something sounded the more likely it was to be true, it was actually perfectly credible.

‘You’ll have to excuse my friend’s manners,’ I told the snake. ‘You were saying something about a capsule?’

‘Yes, indeed,’ Astrid continued (and I was very glad she did, because this was the moment that I had been waiting for, the moment when I learned what was finally behind all the insanity of the day…or so I hoped). ‘At first we believed it to be an emergency escape pod of some kind, yet our scanners revealed that it was devoid of life. So we dispatched our shuttlecraft and boarded the capsule to gather what information we could about its function, and where exactly it might have come from.’

‘And what did you find?’ I asked.

‘Nothing of any consequence,’ replied Astrid. ‘A collection of objects stored within a cylindrical container; bizarre things that we could not understand.’

‘Sorry to sound like a scratched record,’ I said. ‘But what sort of objects?’

‘All sorts,’ replied the python. ‘Historical documents and photographs, a detailed map of your world, some of your greatest artistic achievements and a vast collection of music and literature. Shakespeare, Chaucer, Twain, the first three Harry Potter books; all sorts of information about your planet. And then we found something extraordinary.’

‘Which was?’ I asked, eagerly.

‘Genesis.’

‘No way!’ exclaimed the rat. ‘Okay, so they moved away from their Prog Rock roots once Peter Gabriel left, but isn’t blasting them into space a bit harsh?’

‘I think she means the Bible,’ I said, and I was right as it goes.

‘And within this book, on the very first page were the very same words that my race had intercepted all those years ago,’ confirmed Astrid. ‘“
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep”.
Such simple words, yet so poetic.’

‘Poetic? It doesn’t even fucking rhyme!’ said the rat.

‘Again,’ I interjected, ‘I feel I must apologize. Please…do carry on.’

‘My crew and I celebrated our success,’ said Astrid. ‘We had discovered this new planet Earth but we were still no closer to learning our own beginnings. And then…just as we had almost given up hope, I came across a startling revelation.’

‘You needed a shit but there was no toilet onboard,’ said the rat.

I felt like clouting the bloody thing around the ears! This was a serious conversation and I was on the verge of discovery! Thankfully, the python ignored my travelling companion’s vulgarity and continued thus…

‘It was another book…one just as important as the Bible, perhaps even more so.’

‘What was it?’ I asked, breathlessly.

‘One that held the answers to all our questions, all our longings and prayers.’

‘
Yes?
’ I said. ‘Which book?’

‘
Life In Cold Blood
by-’

‘Sir David flaming Attenborough!’ I said. ‘He gets everywhere!’

‘That book taught us so much about my race’s beginnings, and I couldn’t wait to return to Asclepia to impart all that we’d discovered,’ said Astrid. ‘As the journey home would be long and arduous, we decided to transmit our findings across a carrier-wave, piggy-backing the data-stream through space via inter-sonic frequencies.’

‘Best way,’ nodded the rat.

‘We were about to return to the mother-ship when something went wrong.’

‘
Wrong?
’ I asked. ‘How do you mean?’

‘Our shuttle was buffeted by cosmic winds-’

‘I get that whenever I eat onions,’ said the rat.

‘We were spinning wildly out of control with all our senses bombarded-’

‘You should try Jagermeister and Red Bull,’ said the rat.

‘And then a freak electromagnetic storm disabled our rear thrusters-’

‘
Don’t!
’ I snapped, pre-empting my furry companion’s interjection.

‘With our guidance systems offline and our shuttle caught in Earth’s gravitational pull, we had no choice but to make an emergency landing,’ continued Astrid. ‘We crashed somewhere in Cambodia. My two crewmates were killed on impact. I was the only survivor…lost and alone in a strange new world.’

‘I know how that feels,’ I said.

‘Some time later I was captured and sold onto a distributor, and I eventually found myself in the hands of a collector, who sold me to this place,’ Astrid said. ‘And here I’ve been ever since, incarcerated within this prison of glass.’

She went suddenly silent, and I began to get anxious. Whilst the snake was speaking I felt as if I was getting somewhere; that she was leading up to a major disclosure to help me understand what it was that I was dealing with. Yet, rather disappointingly, it seemed that she had come to the end of her tale and I was still none the wiser. 

‘Um,’ I began, ‘…not to sound ungrateful…but what has any of that got to do with what has befallen mankind? King Simba said that you would guide my next steps, but I’m still not any clearer on where I have to go and what I have to do.’

‘Do? Why, whatever do you mean?’ asked Astrid.

‘To fix this, of course! Put things back the way they were! With everybody changed back to normal instead of cats and dogs and flamingos and what-have-you.’ I fought to keep my temper in check, but failed miserably. Ever since that morning, I had been going from one place to the next looking for someone or some
thing
to give me some answers. I had been so relieved upon leaving the Big Cat enclosure, that finally I was getting somewhere at last, and now I realised that the only place that I had gone was right back where I started from and no better off for my trouble.

‘I am sorry, human, but there is nothing you can do,’ said Astrid. ‘Asclepian technology is very thorough.’

‘
Asclepian
technology?’ I said, agog. ‘Your people – I mean, snakes – I mean, aliens – I mean, whatever you are…you’re telling me
they’re
responsible for what’s happened to mankind?’

There followed an uncomfortable pause, which I took to be confirmation of my accusation.

‘I witnessed it,’ said Astrid, finally. ‘I saw the people changing with my own eyes, right here in this very room, and I instantly recognised the effects of the
S-Triple-R
.’

The rat looked up at me. ‘Are you going to ask her or shall I?’

‘Be my guest,’ I said.

‘Okay, Slinky-Hips…what’s an
S-Triple-R
when it’s at home?’

‘It’s technical. You wouldn’t understand,’ replied Astrid.

‘Try me,’ said the rat.

Astrid sighed. ‘Simply put, the
Spontaneously Random Reincarnation Ray
operates on a physiological level to rewrite the genetic source code of a target, and now that mankind has been reconfigured, it can never be unravelled.’

‘
Unravelled?
You make us sound like a ball of wool!’ I snapped.

‘The
S-Triple-R
is used primarily during a time of oncoming death,’ explained Astrid. ‘When one of our species reaches the end of their skin-sheds they are bathed in radiation so they may become one with the Universe once more. Sometimes we become butterflies or birds or antelope or eels, and in some very rare cases – one might even say unfortunate – we even become
rats
. The device’s effects are entirely random, as its name implies.’

‘But why? What has mankind ever done to you?’ I asked.

‘I cannot say,’ replied Astrid. ‘Ever since my shuttle crashed on your planet, I have had no contact with my home-world. I don’t even know if my transmissions all those years ago were ever received. I’ve been stranded here waiting,
hoping
, that one day they would come for me…yet so far there has been nothing. But I will tell you this much, human, whatever your species did to piss the Asclepians off, it must have been pretty bad.’