SNOWDROPS WERE PEEKING above the lush greensward in the city park and groundskeepers with their billhooks were trimming random shoots on tree trunks in the foggy dawn as Sheriff Fatty Millstone walked the back way to the Cracked Bell pub to hold forth on the first day after the alien attack on their own mining operations in Antarctica.
From the sheriff’s point of view, the handling of the attack in the global media had been well managed, leaving no vantage for newshounds to raise a general panic in the global citizenry. Still, he had discussed with the Prime Minister and his wife the doctor of space medicine’s potential strategies to be used if any enterprising reporter should guess too much about the situation and so was dangerous.
Olive, the waitress who had drawn service at the sheriff’s table for the day, met him at the rear door with a wink and a warning: ‘Misters Straight and Crenshaw are arguing about the news again at your table. I provided both with pints “on the house,” but drinks only brought out their belligerence.’
‘Thanks, Olive. You had better bring me a pint and top off the newshounds. I shall have my hands full, so stand ready to serve at any time.’
Olive curtsied before she rushed off to fetch the sheriff’s pint of bitter. By the time she had reached the table, the sheriff was perusing the morning’s tabloids while the two reporters were waiting for his judgement as to the relative merits of their products. The waitress placed a coaster by Fatty’s right hand and lowered a pint upon it. Straight had just begun his response to something the sheriff had said, and it was easy to deduce the gist of the issue.
‘Sheriff, surely you must agree that the international news should abide by standards of evidence and fair play. My story about what may have happened in Antarctica last night is strictly factual.’
Crenshaw bristled and scowled. ‘My colleague has violated the first principles of news writing. He has taken government pronouncements as gospel and provided no independent analysis whatsoever. In contrast, I have in my article suggested plausible scenarios that accommodate the facts without distorting them. I maintain that the people have a right to know the truth. What do you think?’
‘Gentlemen, I have just read both of your dispatches. Though they differ in many respects, they do not depart from the facts given in press releases of responsible national governments. Mr Straight’s piece does, as he maintains, stick closely to the facts in the releases, and, where he departs from them, Mr Crenshaw ventures to present logical possibilities not implied in the releases. So, no harm has been done or intended on either of your parts. Your respective newspapers’ letters to the editor should help you sort out the understanding of your readership. Olive, please replenish the newshounds’ pint glasses.’
Though he smiled when Olive brought him a new drink, Straight was not mollified. ‘I do not think my colleague has done justice to his material by writing, and I quote, “The destructive power unleashed in Antarctica is greater than any measured in all the wars of the Twentieth Century.” How, pray, can anyone claim to have measured the heat and blast that caused the destruction near the South Pole? Mr Crenshaw has surely experienced one of his seizures. In the best case, he has written without engaging his critical faculties.’
Crenshaw raised his nose from his drink and said, ‘ “Mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau!” The volume of ice melted by the heat and blast of what must have been an unauthorised test of a new nuclear weapon was, according to three official releases, greater than that of any previous atom bomb test. In any case, no natural phenomena “like those caused by global warming,” could have caused the effects we know about. Straight’s uncritical repetition of that garbage is worse than false news. It insults the intelligence of mindful readers like mine.’
Now Straight was seething, and the sheriff saw trouble brewing as the adherents of both reporters were gathering their wits to enter the fray. ‘Gentlemen, I declare the time for argumentation has passed. I am sure additional information will be forthcoming in what promises to be a long-term speculation. All the governments have promised to initiate investigations if only because the Antarctic resources are thought to be fabulous. What self-respecting nation would be left out of an eventual sharing agreement for that wealth?’
The conversation thereafter gravitated to the wealth of the ice-bound continent. Now the reporters were challenging each other’s bases for gauging the treasure net of the cost of extraction and processing. Straight mentioned an ancient map of the South-Polar continent held I the Vatican Library. The details in that record, as well as the methods implied by its creation, suggested a time when the land had been ice free and open to discovery. By the time the discussion had gravitated to findings from core samples taken by teams from five nations, any insinuation about alien involvement in the incident had receded to its vanishing point. Perceiving his task for the day to have been accomplished, the sheriff rose from his chair, pulled on his slicker, and walked out the rear exit of the pub.
Fatty Millstone’s favourite season was spring, with its daffodils in profusion and the lichens and moss still wet from early morning dew. In the park, he saw the regular folk milling around to the raucous music of a murder of crows. Dolly the cow was grazing the thick grass, and dogs were circling and cavorting as their owners reminded them who was being walked and why.
This morning Dr Ibngort Prbzt was also enjoying a walk of his own, and he sidled over to join the sheriff. They walked up the slow grade to the butterfly wonderland structure where the Prime Minister’s wife was setting her gardens for spring planting. Two of the PM’s amanuenses wearing working gloves were helping. After exchanging pleasantries, Millstone and Prbzt continued to climb to the apiary at the summit of the hill. There, in the privacy of the hives, the two men discussed the state of play vis-à-vis the Antarctic event.
‘I am happy to report that the newshounds have been diverted from reporting about alien involvement in events at the South Pole—for now.’
Dr Prbzt smiled weakly and said, ‘The scope of the attack was so great, the speculation will not be swept aside for long. I have disturbing news from Sogguth.’
‘What does our spy in the Universe Council Headquarters have to say?’
‘The good news is that the attack seems to have assuaged the feelings of hardliners on the Council. So, provisional plans for a re-attack have been cancelled.’
‘And the bad news?’
‘During the attack, a small group of five special-forces troops landed on Earth with orders to disrupt alien-human relations wherever possible. Sogguth provided a list of names and descriptions with pictures of those troops. His strong recommendation was to round up the five, check them thoroughly for medical problems and return them to the Council forthwith.’
‘We need to report this news to the PM as soon as possible. He will need to spread the word about the unwelcome visitors.’
‘Because of the sensitivity of the apprehension, I volunteer to help coordinate the search and detention operation. Your wife has been alerted to stand by to perform the medical examinations. Your clone, Charles, is already leading the team to build out a secure living space in your tenement to confine the five once they have been found and relocated here.’
‘Thank you for volunteering. I am glad to know preparations are underway to accommodate our prospective guests. Let’s walk down the hill and do everything else possible before I report back to Sogguth. He will be anxious to know our plan and its key details.’
The two friends went first to the butterfly wonderland to alert the PM’s wife and his two amanuenses. Then they proceeded straight down to the command centre in the tenement, where they reviewed Sogguth’s messages before sending Charles as their emissary to invite Sir Douglas, the PM, to an emergency meeting to discuss the entire situation.
Before luncheon, the PM arrived where the Millstones, the Prbtzes, the amanuenses, and the watch-standing clones were waiting for him. The sheriff briefed the PM about the latest messages from Sogguth and the subsequent actions taken to prepare for the advent of the five invaders. Sarah, always the gracious hostess, served everyone a noon meal including such delicacies as tomato aspic, quail eggs, and Beluga caviar with whipped butter and toast points.
The PM dictated his instructions to his amanuenses, among them classified arrest warrants for the five identified criminal interlopers. Sanitised versions of those warrants were to be delivered first to the Secretary-General of the United Nations and then to specified heads of state personally by Dr Prbzt as soon as they had been prepared. Since Sogguth had specifically stated in his missives that the primary target for the five disruptive agents was England, a special team of five clones of Fatty Millstone, led by the sheriff himself and Charles, his primary clone, was appointed to police the nation. A cover story was invented on the spot so that the distributed pictures and descriptions were not linked to their alien origins or their current mission parameters. The PM’s and sheriff’s teams were ready to assume their newly devised roles by the time their lunch had been consumed, and Dr Prbzt bade farewell to his wife Trudy before he set off for Parliament and the launch of his international mission.
Fatty and Charles made the assignments of their team members to blanket the nation with a lengthy alert package for all sheriffs, intelligence agencies, and Special Branch. Fatty outlined the procedures to be followed by apprehending law enforcement personnel, and Sarah did the same for medical personnel who would prepare the invaders for their trans-universal travel back to the Council that had sent them. Fatty’s clone Ignatius volunteered to accompany the set on their travel, but he felt they could be drugged sufficiently not to be a problem on their journey home.
It took Ibngort three weeks to accomplish his international mission. During that interval, Fatty’s team had contacted all the sheriffs in the nation, and apprehension drills were currently underway throughout the land. So as not to miss an evident opportunity, Picklock Lane was not neglected. Specifically, the orange-crate rhetoricians, who were always criticising authority from their elevated positions outside the Aquarium, were the most natural group with whom the disrupters might associate.
Four weeks after the interdiction mission had begun, two males answering the descriptions of two invaders appeared on Picklock Lane looking to join the open interchange between the speakers and the ordinary citizens. They wanted to stir up resentment between aliens and humans, but their terms had been superannuated. The sheriff’s monitor identified them as invaders within hours of their appearance. Fatty and Charles, accompanied by their entire team of enforcers, took the strangers prisoner and led them to the special facility within the tenement where Sarah and her medical team began their work on health assessment and conditioning for long-haul space travel.
The second pair of two agents appeared two weeks later, looking for the chance to plant divisiveness on the orange crates. As before, the enforcers captured them and led them to the tenement to be entertained by Sarah and the other medics. That left only one known agent remaining to be apprehended.
The capture of the four agents was kept extremely quiet, with no formal notification of the press. In fact, the law enforcement community around the world was kept in the dark about any progress in the interdiction mission. The weeks passed into months, and law enforcement personnel contacted Sheriff Millstone about the continued practicability of the mission. The sheriff kept his own counsel and assured his colleagues that the mission was still running. He asked the callers to be vigilant and not to lose heart.
The fifth agent was caught on surveillance cameras entering at Heathrow Airport. He was followed from there to Picklock Lane, where his main concern was to be reunited with his four lost associates. Sheriff Millstone met the man in front of the Aquarium and guaranteed he would escort him to the location where his four associates were being treated medically. Realising his disruptive mission was now over, the fifth agent asked to transmit a message to his superiors, but the sheriff denied his request in favour of a better idea: to be returned to the Council by fastest available means once he had passed medical clearance.
The five agents underwent four additional weeks of preparation before Sarah certified them disease-free and sanctioned for all forms of space travel if they did so under the prescribed sedation. Fatty sent a FLASH message to Sogguth requesting additional instructions prior to putting the five on a redistribution spacecraft. Sogguth’s reply was an unconditional green light to transport the five agents as planned.
On the next available spacecraft, the five sedated agents were escorted up the Stairway to Heaven and installed in cubicles where they were to remain under sedation until they reached the Council. When Sarah certified the agents’ medical conditions, she departed the spacecraft and met Fatty in the park where they watched the ladder retract and the giant machine zoom off into the heavens. The relative silence in the park returned to normal.
Sarah said, ‘I sincerely hope those five souls will be the last we have to return to the Council.’
Fatty shook his head. ‘It depends on how much power the reactionary faction amongst the Council members remains viable after this setback. At any rate, you did a splendid job getting the agents ready for their return. Congratulations.’
‘Please wait to congratulate me until the time we hear about the five agents’ safe return. I have an odd feeling about those five.’
‘What are your thoughts, Sarah?’
‘First, these men failed to accomplish their mission. There might be penalties for such a failure. Second, bureaucracies make plans and have budgets for them and for backups. Third, I would not be surprised if none of the five made it home safely but died unaccountably in transit. That last idea sends chills up and down my spine.’
‘Ignatius volunteered to accompany the five on their journey.’
‘I know. He tried to importune me to convince you to relent and let him go. I did not do that, and I believe it was the correct decision.’
‘Let’s go back to the tenement and sink into the hot tub. Fate must now take over the action regarding our five intruders. For us, tomorrow is another—and let’s hope—normal day.’
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