Роберт Грант - The Quanderhorn Xperimentations

Only the idiot boy, who you remember is part insect, had the strength to reach forward to the escape button, but he was, of course, too much of an idiot to understand the reality reversal. All in all, a typical day for Quanderhorn’s so-called ‘Task Force’. Task Farce if you ask me. Ha ha ha! [1] Martians have a notoriously underdeveloped sense of humour. The most popular joke on Mars goes as follows: “ Knock Knock . If you don’t stop knocking on my door, I will kill you with this Death Ray. Knock Knock . Zap.”

The Professor leant over me and barked into the microphone: ‘Troy, listen to me: you’re the only one who’s immune from the Thought Reversal Effect, and you’re the only one who’s strong enough to reach that button. Do exactly what I—’

At which point, there was a bang and a fizz, and the comms bank went dead.

‘Dammit!’ Quanderhorn railed. ‘We’ve lost the communi-link.’ He began frantically pulling panels off the desk, ripping and twisting bare wires back together.

Good old Delores, the end-of-the-world countdown announcer (I’m sorry to say, she had a lot more employment than you could imagine) chipped in with ‘ Gravitational wave impact in seventy-five seconds.’

And over the speaker, the panic in the cockpit raged on unabated.

Troy yelling: ‘What am I supposed to do? Somebody tell me!’

Brian shouting: ‘Don’t press the button!’

‘I’m not pressing the button!’

And Dr. Janussen calling: ‘The situation is hopeful. There’s every way we can get out of this!’

It was then the truly twisted nature of Quanderhorn’s warped mind showed itself. He turned to me with that look he has sometimes, when you know you’re going to be talked into something you really don’t want to do. ‘Guuuurk – you have certain telepathic abilities, don’t you?’

‘I knew you were going to say that,’ I japed to throw him off the trail, but he was having none of it.

‘Is it possible for you to telepathically occupy the mind of a remote being?’

‘I’m really forbidden from doing that by the Uranian Convention on PFI guidelines,’ I protested firmly, ‘together with eating our captors’ mothers, and cheating at canasta.’

‘But it is possible.’

‘Only with the simplest of creatures,’ I dissembled. ‘Perhaps a sheep from Norfolk, or a very stupid dog.’

A smile slowly ruptured his face. ‘Or Troy?’

‘Oh, easily!’ I realised with horror I’d been hoodwinked by his devilish verbal trickery. ‘But then I, too, would be stuck in a deathtrap spacecraft that’s about to be shredded like a savoy cabbage in a German sausage restaurant.’

‘Only your mind would be at risk…’ he purred seductively. ‘Your body would be safe.’

‘Yes, but they get along so well together, I’m really loath to split them up.’

‘Really? Because I’m sure you’d prefer that to my notifying your Martian overlords that you’ve been sneaking out at night and [REDACTED] Earth women [REDACTED] [REDACTED] Friday.’

‘That’s a scurrilous lie,’ I protested – which it most certainly was: be in no doubt about that. I was of course intent on denying his outrageous and illegal command, but my innate Martian nobility and desire to assist lower life forms asserted itself. ‘But I think I’ll do as you ask, anyway.’ Sometimes, one just has to take the moral high ground.

Amidst more dire warnings from the countdown clock lady and the bedlam from the cockpit, I tried to focus myself into a state of Waku-Tingg. [2] There is no direct translation for Waku-Tingg in any Earth tongue. The best we can guess is: ‘Hot blast of wind that can split a rock.’ The other alternative is that Guuuurk simply made it up. This would not be the first time. This, of course, involved taking off my hat, closing all my eyes, inflating my head to its maximum, tiptoeing back towards the exit door, tiptoeing back again when I found the Professor was blocking my way, and inwardly chanting the sacred sonical . Actually, to be honest, I couldn’t quite remember the sacred sonical , so I had to make do with the closest Terranean equivalent, ‘There was a young girl from Nantucket’. Still, it did the job.

The room faded around me. There was a rushing wind. I concentrated on the poor benighted craft. What irony! Only a downtrodden spat-upon hostage, unjustly contemned by all, could rescue these hapless ‘heroes’. What a glorious moment to be Martian!

There was a deafening reverse ‘Whoosh!’ and I projected my mighty mind out into the void. I could sense with uncanny accuracy my precise destination and my essence took flight.

I expertly took stock of my new surroundings.

I could smell salt water and the cawing of strange swooping birds.

A small human appeared to be sitting on my back, for some reason, while another burlier fellow whipped my rump with discomfiting vigour.

‘Donkey rides! Fourpence a go!’ he yelled in an uncouth accent.

I protested loudly, but only a strange hee-hawing sound came out. Was that Bridlington Pier I could see in the distance?

I concentrated harder. ‘Would you kindly stop hitting my bottom!’ I managed to get out.

It was beginning to dawn on me I might have gone marginally off course.

The tiny human shrieked in terror. ‘The donkey’s talking!’ he keened.

‘So he is,’ the ruffian agreed. ‘That’ll be another sixpence. Giddy up, Pedro!’

‘Ouch! That really hurts, you know.’

Clearly this shambolic planet’s magnetic fields were incorrectly aligned, which had thrown me off course. Typical! There was no alternative but to attempt the complex manoeuvre once more. I shook off my straw hat, spat out my carrot and prepared to leap. As my head swelled, the obnoxious minikin yelped: ‘Mummy! My donkey’s saying a filthy rhyme!’

The seaside drained into the distance and I made another mental touchdown.

It took a scant handful of leaps: I spent a few seconds as a chicken straining to lay a particularly large and painfully bulbous egg, a head louse on a hepcat bongo drum player, a devious squirrel whose tree had a delightful view into the adjacent nurses’ home (I made a note of the Ordnance Survey grid co-ordinates for future research), and after one final effort, I was in the right place. Just as I’d planned.

Inside the mind of Troy Quanderhorn.

Transcript from the Quanderbox Flight Auto-Stenographic device of Flight 002 of Gargantua 1, January 1st, 1952, 11.49 Zulu Time

TROY (STOKER): Where’s Pops gone? What’s happening?

NYLON (CAPTAIN): Professor Quanderhorn is still getting through! Goodbye? Goodbye? Professor!

JANUSSEN (NAVIGATOR): The communi-link must be utterly intact!

NYLON: Troy, you’re not the only one who can save us now.

TROY: Good! I could use the help… Oh, no, wait… hang on, hang on! I think I get this, now. You’re oppositing, aren’t you?

JANUSSEN: No!

TROY: Oh, darn it, I thought… No, wait, wait again: you mean ‘Yes’, don’t you?

NYLON: No!

TROY: (SLOWLY) So… what you meant to say a moment ago was: I’m the only one who can’t save us.

NYLON: That’s absolutely right!

JANUSSEN: Yes! Yes! What Brian didn’t mean to say was: everyone in the world can save us, except you!

ANNOUNCEMENT: Gravitational wave impact in sixty seconds.