Earthborn Read online

  ‘But you told me you lived on St Botolf’s Street and that Granny Morgan’s house was high up on Beacon Hill,’ said Nesta, dredging up what she had long believed were facts. ‘You showed me on the map. You said how you took rides in the Swan Boats on the pond in the park, and played tag on Boston Common when you were very young. Was that all made up?’

  ‘You won’t understand this,’ said Alison, feeling cornered by these questions. ‘It is almost impossible to explain. But we do remember Boston as if we had been there. Sometimes we ourselves find it difficult to distinguish between genuine and implanted memories. For our time on Earth, the implanted memories are stronger. They have to be.’

  ‘And you never flew on Concorde?’ said Nesta, nervously rucking up memories as if they were made of cloth.

  ‘We think we did,’ said her mother, ‘but we know we didn’t. That is a dichotomy we have learnt to live with.’

  At a stroke, Nesta was deprived of the whole of her family history. She had long accepted the early deaths of her grandparents, each from different causes and at different times. Her Granny Morgan had been the last to die: back there in Boston, of heart disease, when Nesta was just four years old.

  After that, so she had been told, her parents had lost all contact with their old home. Neither parent had ever laid claim to brothers or sisters, just friends; and friendship fades. ‘People change, and move off in different directions. They lose touch,’ her father had said. So the broken ties had been neatly shrugged off; but the history was still comfortably there, giving shape and form of life. Now all of it was blown away and, as far as Nesta could see, there was nothing else to put in its place. The emptiness was unbearable.

  A dark thought came uninvited into her heart and soul. If she had no ancestors, no earthly place of origin, where then was God?

  ‘I don’t want to know this,’ she sobbed, clenching her hands so that her nails bit into the palms. ‘It’s a dream. It has to be.’

  ‘It’s not a dream,’ said her mother gently, ‘and it is not bad, not at all bad. The story of the Faraway Planet was mostly true: we did come here in that spaceship and it really is no bigger than a handball. There is nothing bad or sinister about it – it is simply Ormingat science. It is not magic. Our experts know how to do things that the people of Earth cannot begin to comprehend.’

  ‘I am one of the people of Earth,’ said Nesta. ‘I was born here in York. I have never travelled out of England.’

  ‘That won’t always be so,’ said her mother. ‘You were destined from birth to travel far and to come into your own.’

  Then Alison went on to explain that very soon, much sooner than they had anticipated, it was quite probable that they would all be going to Ormingat. They would enter the spaceship together and travel home. They would become their true selves, body and soul.

  The idea of ‘going home’ to this Faraway Planet seemed dreadful to Nesta. The thought of it made her angry. Her parents who claimed to be such upright tellers of truth had been living a lie for years and years! She felt betrayed and confused.

  ‘All I have ever wanted was to be like everybody else!’ she said. ‘When I was bullied at school, the thing I minded most was being different. This is worse; this is much, much worse. I don’t want to believe you. And I don’t want to change into some sort of alien.’

  Alison held her closer and sighed.

  ‘It’s not what you think,’ she said. ‘It isn’t sudden or terrible. The journey home will take three years. On that journey, the shape and texture of your body will very, very gradually change, no more than that. I just wanted to let you know that the change will be a good one. Nothing bad is going to happen to you.’

  Nesta sat upright. Shaking off her mother’s arm.

  ‘You don’t even know if I have an “Orpingat” body,’ she said abruptly. ‘The body – or whatever you call it – I have now is the one I was born with. And you and Father might be able to “diminish”, but you can’t be sure that I can.’

  ‘You can,’ said her mother firmly. ‘We know you can. When you were six months old I had to take you into the spaceship to be presented and have your name entwined with you.’

  ‘Entwined? Nesta?’ said her daughter.

  ‘Neshayla,’ said Alison softly, in the same strange voice she used in naming the Faraway Planet, and, though it was spoken deliberately low, its tone was till unearthly. Even the English words were coloured by the proximity of this voice. They bore an accent distinctly foreign. ‘And I am Athelerane.’

  ‘And Father?’ said Nesta, fascinated in spite of herself.

  ‘He is Maffaylie.’

  The voice that vibrated on these names made Nesta shiver.

  Alison got up, put on the light and closed the curtains.

  ‘I think we should have supper now and go to bed,’ she said in her normal mid-Atlantic accent. ‘It may be some days before your father returns. It is better if we sleep. We can talk more tomorrow.’

  Nesta did not sleep. She lay in the darkness and tried to remember every detail of the Faraway Planet story. She prayed for the problem to go away. Please God, let me sleep now and wake up tomorrow morning to find that none of this is true.

  CHAPTER 8

  * * *

  Explanations

  After a night of tossing and turning, feeling so feverish that she flung the covers from her bed, Nesta was longing for morning to come.

  The clock by her bed crept from seven to eight. Drifting in and out of reverie, she waited for the dawn. However grey and bleak it might be, it would be welcome. Then she heard her mother moving around in the house. It was Saturday morning, a time of later rising than on weekdays.

  With just the faintest hope that her father would be sitting at the breakfast table, that the events of the night before had been no more than a very vivid dream, Nesta got dressed and went downstairs. But in the kitchen, she found only her mother. Alison was sitting waiting for her, waiting nervously and trying hard to appear calm.

  ‘Have your breakfast first,’ she said. ‘Then I have things to show you.’

  To one side of the breakfast table there was a pile of newspapers.

  Nesta glanced at them but said nothing. She was still angry and shocked and doubtful. She poured herself a cup of coffee and accepted toast and marmalade. It was as if something fragile were about to be broken, reality ready to be smashed to smithereens. She would not be the first to speak of it.

  ‘That’s all I want this morning,’ she said. ‘I don’t feel hungry.’

  Alison sat by her, drinking coffee but eating nothing.

  ‘Everything that happened last night is true,’ said Alison very deliberately. ‘I know you’re hoping it was just a dream. That’s understandable. But it is true. And there is much more I have to tell you.’

  Nesta gave her a sharp look, but persisted in saying nothing.

  ‘The reason your father had to go into the spaceship yesterday is to do with the stories in these newspapers.’

  She put one hand on top of the pile of papers, flat as if swearing on the Bible. The resemblance flashed across Nesta’s mind and she half-smiled grimly.

  ‘You remember the story of the boy who disappeared from the hospital in Casselton?’ Alison said. ‘It was on TV last week. An overcoat was left on his bed. It is believed to belong to his father, though his father had already vanished in a mysterious way.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nesta reluctantly. ‘I know. I watched it, same as everybody else.’

  Alison handed her one of the newspapers, open at the right place.

  ‘Read that one first,’ she said.

  After Nesta had read everything, including the letter from James Martin, she sat back and said, ‘So you think that this boy and his father are from outer space, and that the people writing about it are becoming suspicious?’

  ‘Strongly suspicious,’ said Alison, ‘and likely to become more so. It will go quiet, and then all sorts of security people will be secretly prying and in
vestigating.’

  ‘And what has that to do with us? How do you connect it up?’ said Nesta coldly.

  ‘The names,’ said Alison. ‘Quite apart from anything else, the names give it away. Until now, no one on Earth has known the name of Ormingat. No one has ever suspected a thing. We have visited for the best part of three Earth centuries, watching carefully and acquiring all sorts of knowledge.’

  ‘And that is why you came here?’

  ‘No. In the beginning, we came as explorers. Then we realized what a mixed-up place the Earth was. Clever, yes, but so mindlessly aggressive! Our people became concerned in case Earthlings should ever acquire the ability to reach Ormingat. No one knows how we would handle the problem of a hostile, alien invasion. Ours is a peaceful planet. So, all those years ago, it was decided that the Earth must be one of our areas of study. We were to learn all we could about it.’

  Alison paused and smiled wistfully. Learning was for her a way of life.

  ‘And it was far from wasteful,’ she went on, ‘even without the prospect of invasion. Much of the knowledge turned out to be wonderful, and well worth adding to our own culture. Yet, after all these years, there is still the dark side: wars and famine and pestilence. That is something we find so hard to understand.’

  ‘Aren’t you looking in the wrong place then?’ said Nesta with a trace of sarcasm in her voice. ‘York is not poverty-stricken. There’s no war or famine here. A local flood is a major event.’

  ‘No,’ said her mother, ‘I agree with you. We have had the easiest of missions. Our job is cultural research. We are not scientists or anthropologists. But there could be Ormingatrig anywhere on this Earth. We are not allowed to know who they are or where they are. We are not here to conquer or to colonize. One way or another, we are here to learn. Others may not be as lucky as we are.’

  Nesta by now was well on her way to believing the story, but that did not make her like it any the better. There had always been something within her that seemed to set her apart. The implanted fairytale must have done its job after all.

  ‘We’re not so lucky now,’ she said flatly. ‘If you expect me to leave here and go to a place that to me is unknown and unwanted, I can’t count myself as lucky, no matter how beautiful your planet of Ormingat might be. It is yours, not mine.’

  ‘Take time to think about it,’ said her mother. ‘I know it seems strange, but to be different is not always bad. Think of yourself not so much as different, but as very special.’

  Breakfast was over. The newspapers were stashed away in the bottom drawer of the bureau.

  ‘What will you do today?’ said Alison, almost as if everything were normal. ‘I am going into town, if you’d like to come. We can have lunch at Betty’s. There’s no point in sitting around here just waiting. I don’t suppose your father will be home for at least another day, maybe longer.’

  ‘I already told you, Mom, I promised to meet Amy,’ said Nesta, deliberately copying her mother’s casual tone. ‘We’re going to look at hockey boots. Amy has been picked for the junior team. It’s something new they’re trying out.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ said her mother, ‘but, remember you must not tell her anything about all this. I can’t stress too much how important it is to stay silent.’

  ‘What do you take me for?’ said Nesta indignantly, her eyes more grey than blue at that moment. ‘I wouldn’t tell her even if I could. She’d think I wasn’t all there.’

  Nesta was becoming increasingly streetwise. School had done that much for her. She used expressions now that she never heard at home. Yet, coming from her, they sounded strange, as if she were not meant to talk in that way.

  CHAPTER 9

  * * *

  Stella’s Visitors

  The Gwynns were not the only ones to pay special attention to the articles in the Casselton Courier.

  On the fifth floor of a government building in Manchester is the office of a very small but efficient department that deals entirely in reports of sightings of UFOs or any other strange phenomena that might indicate the presence of extraterrestrial beings anywhere in Britain. Other departments would also pick up this sort of information but their interests would be more pedestrian, concerned with things like air space, national defence and smuggling. Manchester’s ETD was directed entirely at the possibility that there could be intelligent beings from some other galaxy infiltrating our ecosystem.

  ‘This may be of interest,’ said Mrs Ames, the office secretary. In her hand she had the article that had come in the morning post. It had been sent from Casselton by one of their amateur observers: an account of the disappearance of Thomas Derwent from Casselton General Hospital.

  Rupert Shawcross read the article with more than usual interest. Casselton was his home town, though his visits there over the past thirty years had been few and far between.

  ‘Might be worth looking into,’ he said.

  ‘Shall I ask Charles to go? Next week some time?’

  ‘No,’ said Rupert, ‘I’ll go myself. Book me in somewhere for, well, let’s say, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday night. That’ll give me time to see the local police and follow up any leads.’

  Mrs Ames raised her eyebrows. Rupert did not usually volunteer to do the legwork. He was more into collating and working on the computer. Pale-eyed and pale-skinned, he seldom saw the light of day. Whenever possible he would leave outside duties to his younger colleagues.

  ‘Not your usual method of enquiry,’ said Mrs Ames, slightly mocking, though that was something Rupert would not perceive.

  ‘I know the area,’ he said dryly. ‘I was born there. I might see something others could miss.’

  So it was that on Thursday, the fourteenth of January, Inspector Galway and the man from the Ministry were together at Stella Dalrymple’s front door in the village of Belthorp.

  Stella was expecting them and even knew the purpose of the visit. The meetings the inspector had already had with her had made him very careful to keep her properly informed. Her anger when told of Thomas’s disappearance was still only too clear in Inspector Galway’s mind! That was before he had shown her the coat, of course. Her reaction to the finding of the coat still seemed odd to him, if only because she did not seem to be quite as mystified as everybody else.

  ‘Come in, Inspector,’ she said, opening the door wide. ‘And you must be Mr Shawcross?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rupert uncomfortably. He felt more at home dealing with pieces of paper or, better still, feeding data into a computer. After so many warnings about the lady he was about to interview, he was not sure what to expect. She looked quite normal – attractive really with that copper-coloured hair and slim figure. She was not young, but she was not old either. She was certainly no battleaxe. And really, all Inspector Galway had said was that Mrs Dalrymple was a very forthright and determined woman.

  She sat them in her front room and gave them tea and biscuits.

  ‘Now,’ she said briskly. ‘I don’t think I can tell you anything about Thomas or Patrick that you don’t know already. But you are welcome to ask.’

  ‘Well,’ said the inspector, ‘I think I had better begin by revising what you do know, for Mr Shawcross’s information.’

  ‘Rupert,’ said Mr Shawcross, smiling in a friendly way over his cup.

  ‘Rupert,’ said the inspector, swallowing anxiously. How would Mrs Dalrymple respond?

  ‘Stella,’ she said, smiling back at the visitor. Then she turned to the inspector and said, almost mischievously, ‘So what do we call you?’

  ‘John,’ he said, relieved. Perhaps it was going to be less difficult than he thought. Being less formal might help to make the interview easier. Though any interview with Stella Dalrymple was bound to have its dangerous moments at this time.

  ‘So,’ he went on, ‘Rupert already knows that you were friend and neighbour to the Derwents for four or five years.’

  ‘Five,’ said Stella, ‘and not just a friend and neighbour. I was employed by P
atrick to look after Thomas whilst he was at work. I did that for practically the whole of the time that they were here. They became almost family to me.’

  On the last words, she felt something like a sob creep into her throat. She had been prepared for this meeting and determined to keep calm. But it was not easy.

  John Galway looked at her sharply, concerned that they might be upsetting her. He knew how much she loved the boy; the little he had seen of her had made him very aware of that.

  Stella caught his look and said quickly, ‘I am unhappy. But I have agreed to answer your questions, so far as I am able. So don’t worry. Life has to go on. People have to cope with whatever happens.’

  ‘But what did happen?’ said Rupert. ‘What do you think happened?’

  Unlike the inspector, Rupert was very much the man from the Ministry, anxious to find out what he needed to know. Even the bonhomie and the first-name terms were artificial; they served a purpose. Given the choice, Rupert would happily have dispensed with the flummery and got straight to the point.

  Stella looked at him and knew his true worth. His eyes lacked warmth.

  ‘Patrick disappeared after a crash on Walgate Hill in Casselton,’ she said. ‘The drivers of the brewery tanker involved in the crash thought they had run him over. But the only trace of him was a strip torn from his sheepskin coat that they found stuck to one of the wheels.’

  John Galway appreciated Stella’s control and knew that Rupert’s visit would get him nowhere unless the lady decided that it would. He himself suspected that Stella knew more than she would ever say. Though how much more was imponderable.

  ‘And the boy – his son?’ said Rupert.