Falling Sideways (44 page)

‘Fine. And—' David surreptitiously sneaked a deep breath before asking the question. ‘Do you know who I am?'

‘Well, naturally. You're David. Our big brother.'

‘Yes!' Philippa shouted, before David had a chance to do or say anything. ‘I
knew
there was something else, and you wouldn't believe me.' She stopped, and stared. ‘This
thing
is your brother?' she asked.

The frog looked up at her and wobbled its throat four times. ‘That's her, isn't it? The one you made out of pondslime because all the others got—'

‘Yes,' David said quickly. ‘Well, sort of. Near as makes no odds.'

‘Oh. Don't know why you bothered, really. Don't like her, she's snotty.'

‘Tough.' David smiled. ‘Because fairly soon now, she's going to be your sister-in-law. And if you don't like it, you can—'

‘
What
did you just say?'

The frog ignored her. ‘What's a sister-in-law?' it asked.

David turned slowly through ninety degrees and looked Philippa square in the eye. ‘That's right, isn't it?' he said.

‘But—' There was a short moment of extremely profound silence. ‘I suppose so,' she said cagily. ‘Presumably. I mean, it's not as if I've got a lot of say in the matter, really—'

‘Yes, you do,' David interrupted. ‘We're free now, remember? You can do whatever you like.'

‘Oh, shut up,' she replied. ‘Just because he's gone, that doesn't mean we're free of anything. What I mean is, we aren't free of
ourselves
. And like I said, I don't really have much choice.'

David nodded slowly. ‘Breeding always shows, huh?'

‘Especially selective breeding,' she answered with a sigh. ‘I can't not love you, any more than I can't go and live at the bottom of the sea without an aqualung or a diving bell. The fact that I'd like to live under the sea very much indeed doesn't change anything. I can't, so that's that. And the same in this case, too.' She shook her head. ‘Sorry,' she said. ‘I'd prefer to be a bit more upbeat about it, but I can't.'

The frog hopped round in a small circle. ‘Can we get on with it, please?' it said. ‘Only it's boring listening to you two arguing.'

Philippa looked up sharply. ‘Get on with what?'

‘Hey.' The frog wobbled its throat again. ‘Doesn't she know?'

‘Doesn't she know what? Oh,' David added, as a complete explanation arrived instantaneously in his brain. ‘Bloody hell,' he added.

‘Bloody hell
what
?' Philippa demanded. ‘Look—'

David pursed his lips. ‘I – I mean
we
need to ask you a small favour,' he said.

‘Small?'

‘Small. Smallish.'

‘How small?'

‘Oh, quite small. Lots of quite small favours.'

‘Lots?'

‘Um,' David said.

‘Lots,' Philippa went on, ‘as in several thousand?'

David nodded. ‘If you don't mind,' he added. ‘Only—'

She was glaring at him so ferociously he expected his fillings to melt. ‘You want me to kiss several thousand frogs, don't you?' she said. ‘To turn them into human beings.'

‘
Pretend
human beings,' the frog pointed out vehemently.

No tactful way of answering that David could see. ‘Yes,' he replied. ‘Dammit, they're my brothers and sisters, and they've come ever such a long way—'

‘And it was dangerous,' the frog pointed out. ‘Really, really dangerous. First we had to break out of the places we were living; then we had to stow away on elevators to get here. It's taken Dad
years
to set it all up.'

‘Homeworld years,' David pointed out. ‘I don't know how long a Homeworld year is in Earth terms, but if he's my brother and he's eight—'

‘Listen.' You could have sharpened carbon steel on Philippa's tone of voice. ‘All right, these frogs aren't ordinary frogs. In fact, they're superfrogs. If Nietzsche had been a frog, he'd have written a book about them. But that doesn't alter the fact that they're
frogs
—'

‘Actually—' the frog started to say.

‘And that there's
lots and lots and lots
of them,' she continued remorselessly. ‘Damn it, even if I could keep up a rate of a hundred kisses an hour, fifteen hours a day, that's still four days of kissing frogs. Screw you, I'm not going to do it.'

‘Oh.'

‘Don't look like that,' she snarled guiltily. ‘It's not fair, even you should be able to see that.'

‘Yes. Right.'

Philippa found she couldn't maintain eye contact, so she looked away. ‘For one thing,' she went on helplessly, ‘what actual hard evidence have you got that kissing the rotten things'll turn them into anything?'

‘Well, you could kiss just one, to find out. And then we'd know.'

‘Yes, but—' David didn't need to burgle her mind to follow the train of thought: kiss one (successfully) and she'd have to kiss them all, otherwise it'd be bitterly unfair and mean of her. He could see that, just as he could see her point, as clearly as if it was a hundred and fifty feet tall with a big flashing orange light on top to warn passing aircraft. The thought of kissing even one frog was enough to make him feel distinctly unwell.

Nevertheless.

He had two options, he could see that. One was to turn to face her, putting on that I-ask-you-to-do-this-onelittle-thing-for-me expression that fulfils the function in a relationship performed in global diplomacy by a flight of a hundred Cruise missiles. The other was to apologise and change the subject very, very quickly. He had no more than a third of a second in which to make up his mind, failing which it'd all be academic anyhow. Piece of cake, really.

‘Please?' he said.

She scowled at him for a full five seconds. ‘No,' she said. ‘Sorry, but I'm not going to do it.'

‘You're sure about that?'

‘You bet I'm sure. One hundred per cent sure, mind closed like a bank on Sunday. Sorry.'

Yes, but they're your brothers. Well, in a sense they're your brothers. He took a deep breath. ‘I'm asking you to do this one little thing for me . . .'

‘Excuse me,' said the frog.

‘Not now,' David hissed. ‘One little thing,' he continued wretchedly, ‘and it'd mean so much to them if only . . .'

‘It's not a little thing, it's a great big enormous thing.'

‘Fine, I'm asking you to do this one great big enormous thing for me, all right? Now if it was the other way round, and I was the one who had the chance to bring—'

‘Excuse me . . .'

‘I said shut up. Damn, where was— Oh yes, right, bring happiness into the lives of all these thousands of—'

‘Hey.' The frog made an enormous jump and landed on David's toe. ‘You up there, I think there's one very important point you may have missed.'

‘Well? What?'

Instead of replying, the frog made an even more enormous leap, landing on David's shoulder this time. Before David could say ‘No, you fool, you're thinking of parrots', the frog had planted a loud, smacking kiss on his cheek and shot into the air like the Space Shuttle leaving Florida. When it landed, it did so on two feet, not four—

‘Bloody hell,' David said.

‘You were the one who assumed we were all your brothers,' replied the erstwhile frog. ‘But we aren't, as you can see. Now . . .'

Apart from the unusually long legs, big hands and bright green hair, the ex-frog looked just like any human female you might happen to run into on, say, the catwalk of a Paris fashion house, or the main lot of a major Hollywood studio. ‘You're my sister,' David said slowly.

‘That's right.'

‘I see. And, um, how many of you are, well, girls?'

The ex-frog smiled. ‘All of us,' she replied. ‘Just as well you haven't got anything arranged for the next four days, really.'

‘Yes, but—' Part of him wanted to ask Philippa what she thought was so amazingly funny. The rest of him could guess what her reply would be. Damn, he thought; and, Oh, well.

‘Also,' the former frog went on, ‘while I think of it, you'd better find us all something to wear. It's not just the distinct nip in the air, there's also a small matter of primitive human nudity taboos. And after that, you can fix us something to eat.'

David's mouth was wide open. When he managed to get control of it again, he said, ‘Do you mean to tell me I've gone from being an only child to having six thousand sisters?'

‘Lucky you,' the frog replied. ‘Come on, I'm freezing my curiously shaped human appendage off here.'

‘All right,' David groaned, ‘all
right
. So what do you want me to do first, clothe and feed you, or kiss a load more frogs?'

‘Don't be so brusque. And really, you should be more organised. No offence, but you're going about this whole business in a rather cavalier fashion.'

(‘Six thousand sisters,' Philippa whispered cruelly. ‘That's
wicked
.'

‘Six thousand sisters-in-law,' David replied, with extreme venom. ‘Hadn't thought of that, had you?'

There was a slight pause before she replied. ‘I'll manage,' she said. And that seemed to settle that; which was probably why David suddenly smiled, and actually seemed to relax a little.)

It was Philippa who got things organised, in the end.

Very sensibly, she saw that the logistics of kitting out six thousand new adult human beings and getting them ready to face the world had to be sorted out once and for all before any more sisters could be added to the tally. All she said was, ‘Wait there, don't do
anything
till I get back,' and, fortunately, David had the good sense to do as he was told. While she was away, he asked the ex-frog—

‘I don't have a name,' she said, in answer to his question, ‘or at least, not what you think of as a name. You'd better give me one.'

‘‘Me? Why . . .?'

‘Oh, stop being difficult and give me a name.'

‘All right,' David replied. ‘Gertrude Ethel.'

‘That's two names, isn't it?'

‘I'm in a generous mood.'

‘Could've fooled me. Are they nice names?'

‘Very,' David replied. ‘Very fashionable.'

‘Fashionable? What is . . .?'

‘Very popular,' David explained. ‘And people will admire you and think well of you because your name's so, um, nice.'

‘Really? What a strange system. Gertrude – what was the other one again?'

‘Ethel.'

‘Ethel.' Gertude-Ethel shrugged. ‘Oh, well' she said, ‘I'm sure I'll get the hang of all this sooner or later.'

Gertrude-Ethel told him every detail of her life on Homeworld. It took her twenty-one seconds, including a digression and a parenthetical criticism of the way he combed his hair. On Homeworld, she told him, they'd sat around all day in a big compound. The authorities felt that since they were the offspring of the notorious anarchist rulebreaker whom nobody ever talked about, it wasn't really safe to let them loose among right-thinking Homeworlders, just in case – they'd calculated that there was a one-in-seventeen-million chance of the criminal's mental deviance having passed on to one of his children; and on Homeworld they practise zero tolerance when it comes to risks to public safety. So they'd spent the last eight Homeworld years (from various clues contained in what she told him, David figured that one Homeworld year was roughly equivalent to two million Earth years) hopping around in a big glass dome, dividing their time between sitting on rocks in the middle of the water and not sitting on rocks in the middle of the water. All in all, Gertrude-Ethel said, they were beginning to ask themselves if there was possibly more to life than this when Father suddenly arrived to lead them to the Promised Land, even though everything they'd been told by the Homeworld Information and Education Service made it sound rather more like the Threatened Land—

‘It's supposed to be so hot,' Gertrude-Ethel explained, ‘that if you're out of the water for more than fifteen seconds, you shrivel up and die. That's assuming the predators don't get you first – the huge two-legged lizards and the flying ones with the long, pointed beaks . . .' It took David a moment to realise that she was talking about dinosaurs; which gave him an idea of how up-to-date Homeworld's information about his planet was, or had been before his brief trip home. He explained that things had changed a bit since Homeworld did its official surveys of the place: ice ages, the twilight of the great reptiles, the mobile-phone revolution, that sort of thing. Not, he added quickly, that she'd missed anything much.

While he talked to her, he couldn't help but be aware of all the other frogs, the huge sea of them, waiting at a safe distance just inside the door, or sprawled out front in the road. They were bizarrely silent, and he realised that they were listening attentively to every word he said. ‘They've never heard an alien before,' Gertrude-Ethel explained, ‘or at least, not properly. And they're only eight.' Something in his expression seemed to trouble her, because she suddenly looked very worried and asked, ‘You
are
glad to see us, aren't you?' To his everlasting surprise, David didn't have to think at all before answering ‘Yes.'

‘That's all right, then,' Gertrude-Ethel replied, closing the subject as firmly as a Swiss vault door. ‘You know,' she went on, ‘this place is so much more fun than home. We're really going to like it here.' At which point the other 5,999 frogs all simultaneously croaked three times, presumably by way of agreement (and if it gets more bizarre than this, David thought, I really don't want to know).

‘Really?' he replied. ‘But all you've done since you got here is sit about on concrete going rivet rivet—'