Falling Sideways (32 page)

Now, then. It was all very well deciding to send her back to the aliens' homeworld, but exactly how was he supposed to go about it? Empty room, whitewashed walls, nothing in there at all except the two of them and a bag of sugar; and something told him that the fine print on the back of the bag probably wasn't
Interstellar Elevator Operating Procedures for Dummies
.

But David read it all the same, just to make sure. Or, at least, he tried to. It turned out not to be possible, because the writing was in some kind of strange, otherworldy script that was either interstellar alien or Burmese. He said something uncharacteristically vulgar and put the packet down hard; whereupon a voice said ‘Please wait.'

That would've been a good time to leave. But he didn't.

‘Transliteration and translation complete,' said the voice; and now the writing on the packet was in proper letters, and it said—

CONGRATULATIONS! on your purchase of a General Utilities SKZZ889 Litespeed. Properly cared for and serviced by your local GU agent using only genuine GU replacement parts
 . . .

There was quite a lot more in that vein, and David skipped down until it started to get interesting.

Operating your SKZZ889
, he read; and then there was a little logo, and
Where do you want to go today?
in bright red letters and a different font. Under that, it said—

First, input your departure coordinates using the plotting numerator and simply follow the on-line instructions. If your SKZZ889 is not fitted with a raniform numerator, use the back-up glyceroballistic system, taking care to avoid exposure to naked moisture. Next, input your arrival coordinates
—

Of course, he was used to this kind of thing; indeed, following the call of duty, he'd once or twice climbed into the cage with Hewlett-Packard On-line Help, alone and armed with nothing more than the traditional upturned chair and whip. But that didn't make it any less frustrating. What, for example, was a raniform numerator? And if he didn't have one (he was prepared to bet lots of money that he didn't have one, because the ones he got of anything never had the optional helpful bits referred to in the manual) what in buggery was a back-up glyceroballistic system? He read on; and as he worked his way down the back of the packet, he tilted it so as to be able to see the words – and a few grains of sugar spilled out of the top and touched the floor—

‘Departure coordinates set. Stated departure coordinates do not agree with coordinates in system memory. Replace or cancel?'

Ah, David said to himself, so that's what it means: from ‘glycero', meaning ‘sweet stuff', and ‘ballistic', meaning ‘to throw'. He frowned; twenty to one in fivers that the beta version of this contraption used salt instead of sugar, hence the superstition.

Anyway, that could wait. ‘Cancel,' he said.

‘Operation cancelled. Please input departure coordinates.'

Oh for pity's sake, he thought, not again—

—And while he was thinking that, a tiny speck of fluff that must've got into the room when he opened the door flew up his nose and started tickling unbearably—

Now would be a very bad time to sneeze; a very bad time inde— inDEEshoo!

There was a brief, rather lovely snowstorm of floating sugar, like the snow scenes in those old-fashioned shake'em-up paperweights; and even before all the sugar had settled, the voice was saying, ‘Coordinates set, departure initiation sequence completed, departure in five, four, three, two—'

On
two
, he had his hand on the door handle. On
one
, he'd started turning it. On the
dep
of
departure completed
, he'd turned it as far as it would go – and found out that it wasn't nearly far enough.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

I
f there was any movement, David didn't feel it. As far as he was concerned, there was a period of about five seconds when the door handle wouldn't turn; then the door opened and he nearly fell through it.

‘Hey.' The voice came from somewhere around floor level. ‘So where do you think you're going in such a goddamn hurry?'

He didn't recognise the voice, as such, but it gave him a clue as to what to look for and, come to that, where to look for it. He redirected his attention to toecap level, and sure enough . . .

‘Hello, frog,' he replied. ‘I, um, come in peace. Take me to your—'

‘Not so fast,' snarled the frog; one of the frogs, he couldn't tell which. He hoped it was safe to assume that the speaker was the slightly larger frog at the head of the military-looking formation of about two dozen raniforms, though he realised he was extrapolating from his knowledge of human hierarchies, which wasn't very scientific of him. The main justification for his assumption lay in the fact that the front frog was wearing some sort of headgear and managing to grip a small metallic object in its offside front paw. ‘Stay exactly where you are, nice and easy, and nobody's gonna get hurt. Copy?'

Not just gripping a small metallic object; pointing it, too. Remembering how important it is not to let them see you're afraid (a principle he'd absorbed from a TV series about dog training), David managed to restrict himself to a slight frown. ‘Fair enough,' he said. ‘I can quite understand why you're worried, and I promise I'll be careful.'

The frog looked up at him, and David could almost feel it frantically flipping through its mental card index of clichés to find an appropriate response. ‘Worried?' it said, eventually. ‘Who're you calling worried, big guy?'

‘Well, you,' David replied kindly, ‘obviously. You're afraid I might tread on you. I can see your point, of course. After all, I'm so much bigger than you are.'

‘Hey!' The frog's throat swelled to hen's-egg size. ‘I ain't scared of you, buster. I ain't scared of
nothing
.'

‘Really? Splendid.' David smiled. ‘Then it stands to reason that you aren't afraid of me, and you won't mind if I move. Thanks – I was getting cramp.'

The frog didn't answer, but it was still pointing the metallic thing. Of course, it could just be some harmless artefact, like a fountain pen or a tyre-pressure gauge, that it had picked out of the pondside mud on its way here. Or it might not be; and if the hypothesis forming in David's mind was correct, it almost certainly wasn't. He stayed put.

‘Did I mention that I come in peace?' he asked politely.

‘Sez you,' croaked the frog. ‘Me, I ain't so sure. Who's the dame?'

Interesting: the frog's entire repertoire of Human seemed to have been gleaned from gangster movies and war films. David had once met a man who'd learned German from opera libretti, which meant he could chatter away all day about swords and dragons and magic rings, but couldn't order a cup of coffee or ask the way to the bus station without florid arm gestures and a phrase book. In the frog's case, he suspected it was something to do with the old (therefore cheap) films that satellite TV companies bounce off their orbiting hardware. On balance, George Raft movies were probably a better paradigm of human culture and society than the Aussie soaps, but there wasn't a great deal in it; it was still a bit like the UK government sending Basil Brush to represent British interests at the United Nations.

‘The dame?' He looked round, and realised that the frog had been talking about the girl, still blissfully asleep on the floor. For one moment, he'd assumed Judi Dench or Peggy Ashcroft had managed to sneak in while his back had been turned. ‘Um, she's with me.'

‘Oh yeah?' The frog didn't seem to know what to make of that. ‘Then the two of you better stay right where you are.'

‘Oh well,' David said. ‘So what do you suggest we do now?'

‘Shuddup,' replied the frog. ‘I'm thinkin'.'

‘Think away,' David said, with the very slightest trace of a yawn. ‘Of course, in your position I'd take me to your leader, I mean your superior officer, and let him deal with it. Then anything that went wrong would be his fault, not yours. But if you feel confident that you can handle this situation yourself, that's absolutely fine. Wonderful, in fact, that your society's armed forces are so keen to encourage individual initiative.'

The frog glowered at him.

‘Also,' David went on, ‘in your position I'd be asking myself how come a Hideous Tall Bastard can understand what I'm saying, and talk back to me in words I can understand. I'd be really concerned about that, personally.'

Frogs don't have facial expressions the way humans do; even so, David could recognise Extremely Worried when he saw it. Something to do with the slight sideways twist of the neck, a definite tensing-up of the main hind-leg muscles. ‘Yeah,' said the frog, ‘what about that? You gotta come and explain that to the Chief.'

‘Delighted,' David replied. ‘Which way?'

A rhetorical question. The room he'd found himself in was, of course, empty and whitewashed, though almost the first thing he'd noticed was the absence of bags of sugar. But of course there wouldn't be any, would there? Not when there was a perfectly good raniform numerator instead.

(A living, breathing computer; a computer made up of several dozen frogs, instead of chips and little bits of wire. The idea appealed to him strongly in his professional capacity; all his working life, he'd wanted to find a computer that actually felt pain when you belted it.)

‘Oh no you don't, wise guy,' snapped the frog. ‘You stay there. I go fetch.'

There was, of course, a single door in the opposite wall; the question was how the frog was going to reach the door handle. In the event, however, there was no need; the frog croaked twice, the door opened. Should've seen that one coming, David rebuked himself.

The Chief, when he hopped in, turned out to be slightly larger and a slightly deeper shade of green, but otherwise identical. ‘OK, sergeant,' it said briskly, ‘I'll take it from here. While I'm talking to the prisoner, you and your men go implement first-contact protocol seven. You got that?'

‘Right on it, boss.'

Pause. ‘You know what first-contact protocol seven is, do you?'

‘No, boss.'

‘Look it up. Copy?'

‘Copy, boss.'

‘They're all right, really,' said the Chief in a hopeful tone, once the other frogs had hopped away, almost but not quite in step, like Mr Jones the butcher. ‘Enthusiastic. Try hard. Persistent. Frogged. Once they've shrugged off this annoying habit of getting everything they do wrong, they'll be good soldiers.' The Chief hopped a pace closer and studied David's shoes for a while, as if trying to figure out if they were in charge of the enormous thing resting on them. ‘So,' it said. ‘You can understand every word I ark ark rivet?'

David nodded. ‘I've been wondering about that,' he replied. ‘Look, you may find this a bit hard to believe, but a while back, somebody actually managed to turn me into a fr— into, um, one of you gentlemen. At least, he made me think I was—'

The frog shook its head vigorously. ‘No,' it said, ‘not possible. Least, you've got it the wrong way round.' Brief silence, as the frog thought hard. ‘I'll try to explain,' it said. ‘You see, whoever this person was, he didn't turn you
into
a frog. He turned you—'

‘Back.' David nodded. ‘You have no idea how relieved I am to hear you say that. I'd pretty much convinced myself I was going crazy.' He looked away, gathering his thoughts. ‘I knew there was something fishy going on at the time,' he continued. ‘Like, I'd seen some other people –
human
people – turned into frogs and I'll swear they didn't realise what was going on; one minute human, bang, next minute frog, the whole frog, nothing but the frog. But when it happened to me—'

‘You remembered.' The frog nodded. ‘You remembered being human. You remembered who you were. You knew what had happened to you. Am I right?'

‘Exactly. And I couldn't have done that—'

‘—If you were really one of them.' The frog hopped round in a small, tight circle. ‘Actually, it's pretty simple. This turning-into-things, it's all based on belief; on what you truly believe you are. You take one of those Ugly Tall Bastards—'

‘Humans,' David amended reproachfully.

‘Whatever,' said the frog equably. ‘What's in a name, after all? You take one of those
humans
, all you gotta do is sorta reach into his mind and turn the dial ninety degrees; suddenly he believes he's a frog. You know why? Because he's never had to think, what am I, which species am I being today, he's always just got on with being what he is. But you, of course—'

‘Different.' David rubbed his chin, and noticed that his throat was bobbing froggishly. ‘Because although I was turned into a human at a really early age and never consciously knew any different—'

‘Subconsciously—' The frog took up the train of thought like a relay racer's torch: quick, efficient, no fumble. ‘Subconsciously, you still know you were once something else; so all the time your mind's running spot checks – what am I right now, have I turned back, have I reverted to my proper shape? And, when the moment comes and suddenly there's this huge big clue bearing down on you—'

‘I remember,' David said. ‘I panicked. Suddenly I didn't know what or who I was, and instinctively I grabbed out for the default setting.' He shook his head slowly from side to side. ‘And ever since then,' he went on, ‘I've been wondering . . . And there was something else,' he added. ‘I was in front of this workshop sort of place, and there was a whole load of fr— of
us
, standing out in the road. And I could talk to them.'

‘A whole load,' the frog repeated. ‘Interesting.'

David shrugged. ‘So that's it, then. All these years I've been kidding myself I'm a human, when really I'm—'