Revelations

REVELATIONS

  Ten Science Fiction Stories

  by Pam Crane

  Copyright 2017 Pam Crane

  Thank you for downloading this free ebook.

  CONTENTS

  Desert Island Disks

  Clouds on the Horizon

  Never

  Pioneers

  Celebration

  The Happiest Day of My Life

  Intervention

  The Greening of Terra

  Silver

  The Future of Fish

  DESERT ISLAND DISKS

  It was one helluva challenge. The BBC had been ruthlessly faithful to their brief: one celebrity, one unpopulated island, and the precise accoutrements of the regular castaway. Except that this time the island was uncompromisingly real, under the watchful eye of a GPS satellite, and in case of emergency their 21st century hermit would be issued with a digital beacon. Once this was activated there would be no going back; the Desert Island experience was over.

  Adam had matured as a scientist and a popular presenter. He also fulfilled the other part of the brief - the DG wanted an Adam; symbolically it seemed apt for a man cast alone into his personal Eden. Several Adams had been considered - an eccentric scientist (too old and thus an insurance risk, though an excellent lateral thinker), a US pop icon (wouldn't last five minutes without an audience, though a bell and a mirror had been suggested), an outstanding batsman (certainly possible but less motivated, and solo cricket is no fun), a comedian (short-listed but a touch too fastidious), a musician, really keen to chuck himself into the unknown and so nearly chosen simply because 'maroon' was the name of his band, and finally an ageing rocker ... but his name wasn't really Adam, he had a history of instability, and was now too long in the tooth. Adam Winsford however was the right age, fit as a fiddle, highly intelligent, super-motivated, and ready to become his own socio-biological experiment.

  Adam would be cast away with only the clothes he stood up in; so these had to be chosen with care. Did it matter if he got wet? Would he need extra warmth on a tropical island? Did he need clothes at all? In the end he opted for rugged linen chinos and a bush shirt, his most comfortable walking boots, a storm jacket and a Tilley hat.

  The set books were going to be an encumbrance. Came the recording, and the last bars of Tom Lehrer's Elements, and he was about to ask "Kirsty, might I take the very smallest editions of Shakespeare and the Bible?" when he had an idea - if instead he asked for a couple of really old books, those heavily bound Victorian family volumes that weighed a ton and never fell apart, they could be pressed into use as bench or table supports. His third book was a no-brainer. "Lofty Wiseman's SAS Survival Guide, please, Kirsty." It was tiny. He could stick it in a shirt pocket as a constant companion. And his luxury would have to be a knife. Without a knife he was a dead man.

  Three sweltering months had passed. He missed his nightly dram and had foraged unsuccessfully for jetsam to make a still. He was getting skinny and had let his beard grow. Ten mind-numbing weeks infiltrating the Alpha Course back in 2009 had put him right off religion, so all the poetry, wisdom and drama of the KJV was propping up a makeshift table in the hillside cave he had made his home. The bats he was sharing with made regular suppers; the messiness of distant coastal communities meant that here and there drift-nets washed up on his beach and he was able to use these to catch fish and small game. There was no shortage of containers for water collection - every storm brought a fresh pile of plastic gifts, along with useful timber, rope and salted bottles - but metal was scarce. His cooking had to be done amid hot stones. One day he found a lorry tyre and at last he had a comfortable seat.

  He was rocking there now, shirtless, in the mouth of the cave as the rapid tropical twilight brought the bats out in their evening rush over his head. D:Ream's Take Me Away was on the turntable and he was hallucinating again. This time it was Lizzy B. smiling at him in only an open lab coat and goggles; he reached out - his hand passed through her and she faded. Adam sighed and gazed at the darkening sky. It was a flawless evening. Oh, the stars! He was about to open the Shakespeare and, in the light from the fire, write up his bio-notes on the margins of Twelfth Night, when something flashed in the darkness. There was a thud that set the cave and the hillside shuddering, and then silence. Adam put down the quill and peered outside. Nothing stirred. It could wait till morning.

  The susurration of the bats' return woke him. Something was blocking the sunlight at the cave entrance. Another hallucination - who would it be today, he wondered? But this was not a person. No.

  An animal?

  It was large, roundish, bluish, with several legs ... and ... tendrils? And huge eyes with lids like camera shutters! And it wasn't fading at all.

  Adam froze. He must be stuck in a nightmare. What to do? He clutched his knife and slowly raised it, glinting in the sunbeams.

  "You are a man."

  This thing was speaking to him. And it had no mouth.

  "I am a visitor."

  Too right it was a visitor. Solitude was seriously afflicting his brain.

  "Last night my approach to this piece of land was too quick. My craft is embedded in its forest. I intended only a fly-by. I apologise for this intrusion."

  Craft?

  The flash and the bang?

  This thing was real?

  It was making sounds with its tendrils, like the strings of a banjo or a grasshopper's legs. It knew English. It was looking at him without blinking.

  "You have a name."

  "Adam."

  "We study your culture. You transmit. We know your history. I am an anthropologist. We are watching you destroy yourselves. We are not allowed to intervene. We have seen Star Trek - it is the same philosophy. I am pleased to meet you. Why are you all alone? Where is your mate?"

  It was too much to take in. Nick Pope and the boys at SETI would have been doing handsprings. There was an alien on his doorstep.

  "I need nourishment. Will you lead me to the sea, please?"

  "To the sea?"

  "I need to immerse. My tank is broken. I cannot feed."

  Adam noticed now the texture of the creature's body - it was a mass of tiny pores. It must absorb nutrients directly from surrounding fluid.

  "Our sea is polluted." he said.

  "It will suffice." The creature extended a forelimb that ended in something resembling fingers. Adam closed his own hand over the cool digits with a growing excitement and wonder. In his twenty-odd years as a scientist he had never considered this possible.

  "I am a geneticist," said Adam. "I am alone on this island as an experiment in survival. Currently I have no mate. This is amazing! Where have you come from? Where is your craft? We have tried for so long to find extraterrestrial life!" They were moving awkwardly side by side down the path he had cut through the rainforest, approaching the curve of bleached coral sand and a glorious turquoise ocean.

  "Our home is 22.7 light-years away. From your view-point, it orbits a star near the tail of Scorpius." The visitor paused to disentangle his animated tendrils from a thorn bush.

  "Aaah! The sea!"

  At a speed that took Adam's breath away the visitor scurried headlong into the water and sank gratefully among the fish and the corals. Some fifteen minutes later he re-emerged, looking a little larger, a slightly darker blue, eyes glowing with relief.

  "Now we can go to my craft."

  The two set off again into the tangle of trees. Presently Adam was staring in delight and disbelief at his first authentic flying saucer. The ten-metre disk, its shining surface mirroring man, alien, island and sky, was wedged between rocks at an angle of forty-five degrees, pilot's door swinging open, and clearly damaged.

  "May I see?"

  "If you can reach."

  Adam pulled
over a dead palm-bole and leaned it against the slippery hull.

  "I can climb in this way if you stop the wood from moving."

  What he saw when he entered the warm chamber defied description. He had never imagined, let alone set eyes on any technology like this. The broken tank was recognisable - but he understood nothing else pulsing in the smooth blue walls. He would have to tell someone. How could he keep this to himself?

  "I need to eat now!" said Adam. "I'll come back down. Thank you so very, very much for showing me your vehicle. Will you come with me again to the cave?"

  "I will," replied his visitor. "And we can talk about your world, and mine, and God ..."

  "God?"

  "Of course!"

  Surely not. Adam felt sick to the pit of his stomach. He had left all that nonsense behind.

  They reached the cave.

  Adam retrieved the beacon.

  He pressed the small red button.

  Soon help would come.

  Two minutes later the day went frighteningly dark; a second disk filled the entire sky.

  "Adam, you have rescued us!" said his new friend as a ladder of light unfurled into the forest and his flailing