Chapter Three -- Adam J. M. Eagleton (again)

(By the way, I have tried all I can to add indents to this chapter, but the bloody thing won't let me. So you'll have to forgive me for that.)


*


They had moved into the living room, and Quadenhaden was cautiously sipping a glass of brandy. Thatcher had swallowed his in one gulp.
“I find difficult to believe already this not realise of this,” Quadenhaden said calmly.
“I beg your pardon?” Thatcher said, frowning.
“You demand of me a pardon in a type nonspecified?” said Quadenhaden, glancing at Tibsen.
Thatcher stared at him as though there was an alien before him. “What?”
“You are disturbed to rather?” Quadenhaden asked in perplexity.
“Hip wofer laptapasta icy-icy harsle frusker,” Tibsen murmured quickly to her companion. He frowned for a moment, then looked at the floor and nodded.
“Linhakky raffle fusking,” he mumbled.
“You must please forgive Quadenhaden,” Tibsen said confidently to the Thatchers, who looked decidedly alarmed. “There is something unnatural in his use of the English language. I feel certain that mine use is better, for I have studied it for more thoroughly long.”
“Are you French?” Violet asked.
“No, Tibsen. Tibsen is my name.”
“Don’t be rude, Violet,” Thatcher said quietly.
“What Quadenhaden was attempting to say is that he is surprised that you are not already aware of this.”
“Well, we haven’t really had much contact with the rest of the world for . . . a while now,” Thatcher said. “Well . . . no contact, for . . . several years.”
“That would explain it, then. But humans are excellent at communicating. That’s your strong point, we’ve been told. You spent all your time working out new ways to communicate with one another. How is it that you have not heard of this?”
“Miss Tibsen, I don’t have any idea what’s going on in the world. The King could be dead, and I wouldn’t know.”
“Your British monarch is dead, as far as I know.”
“See?”
“What?” Florence exclaimed. “The King’s dead?”
“Yes,” Thatcher said calmly.
“You seem unaffected by this news,” Tibsen said. “You seem unaffected by that news and also the news that your species no longer has power, or any Earth species, for that matter.”
“Oh, I am, I assure you.”
“Forgive me, it is just that I read that humans were very emotional creatures. You don’t seem to be that.”
“To be what?”
“Emotional.”
“Well, to tell you the truth, Miss Tibsen, the thought of the human race in peril doesn’t inspire a terrific amount of emotion in me, no. Animals, yes: they’re innocent. But humans probably got themselves into this problem in the first place.”
“I cannot confirm or deny that, Mr Thatcher,” Tibsen said rather solemnly. “I doubt the humans did get themselves into this problem, as you say, in the first place, because they had no contact with Oharg at all, excepting a few minor broadcasts to them.”
“Yes, well. . . . But what’s different about us, then? How come nothing’s happened here?”
“I can’t answer that, I’m afraid,” she said with a small laugh of disbelief. “We were travelling over this ocean to the mainland, and Quadenhaden spotted your buildings here. We were curious, so we landed, and found you. I can’t explain how you have managed to escape Bernice’s wretched manipulation technique, primitive though it is.”
“I’m sorry, Bernice?” Thatcher asked.
“Yes. He’s the President of Koksmutlop, and the leader of the Nyat-f Party. He’s responsible for the imprisonment of over two hundred planets and their inhabitants.”
“But why on Earth are you here on . . . er, Earth?”
“My friend,” she said, gesturing to a sulking Quadenhaden. “He likes the planet somewhat.”
“Somewhat?” Quadenhaden chimed in. “Hah! Hip lomey hasta wekwester!”
“Futnob. Yes, well. . . . That’s why we’re here, and not back on our own planet. Personally, I am rather fond of humans, too. And I’m incredibly thankful that you all still have intelligent thought, otherwise there’d be no hope.”
“But what’s stopping humans having intelligent thought?” Violet said. “Exactly, I mean.”
“Did you ever read about a meteorite which fell to this planet in . . . ap pof wop, Quadenhaden?”
“Hiss-nerf mau issnee.”
“1733, apparently,” Tibsen said.
“I’m not sure,” Violet replied, looking at Florence.
“I do,” Florence announced. “It caused the tsunami which hit Spain, didn’t it?”
“That’s right,” said Tibsen. “Well, that was from Oharg. It was manufactured by Beaulieu Industries in the Icks-Hilf Valley in western Koksmutlop, and was made primarily from a substance designed by Bernice according to the results from a biological examination of a human being abducted several years before then. It’s been integrating itself into your atmosphere for over three hundred years, and into your water, which is the whole problem. As soon as you drink the infected water, the process begins. Gradually the brain is broken down until it’s entirely helpless, and the Nyat-f can do what they like with it.”
“But what’s the point of all this?” Florence said in a somewhat broken voice.
“War. They need an army to fight their war with another planet, a stronger planet. They got ahead of themselves, invading without a proper army. That’s all this is: the gathering of soldiers.”
“So . . . that water’s poisoned?” Thatcher asked, pointing out of the window at the ocean.
“Yes. What water do you drink? It must be some kind of wonder liquid,” Tibsen said, laughing.
“It’s. . . .” Thatcher hesitated, then sighed. “I treat the water we drink with a. . . . I’m a scientist, Miss Tibsen. A rather famous one, actually. Well, I used to be. . . . I discovered a cure for cancer, back in 2009. Obviously I was rapidly propelled into enormous wealth and prominence; I was awarded the Nobel Prize, given a knighthood, all of that, you know. . . . As expected.
“But the cure I discovered was incomplete. My wife was already profoundly ill with the disease, and I could not stop it. It was . . . ironic, if anything. I left England a few years later, unable to bear the attention.
“By that time, the world was in a miserable state. The atmosphere was decomposing around us, the water was packed with poison, the minds were . . . dying, actually. Losing all sense of reality, and truth. We were better off far away from all of that.
“My grandfather was a scientist, too, of sorts. He, like myself, detested the state of the planet’s water supply, and had managed to develop a frankly extraordinary method of filtering it. I didn’t know this until I moved here. I chose this island in particular on his recommendation, because it was here that he found . . . something which is at the heart of this method. Our water is untainted, Miss Tibsen, as is our food.”
Tibsen was silent for a moment. “You owe your life to your grandfather, Mr Thatcher. Or perhaps just your sanity.”