As Long as Rain

By Nick Ascroft

Why not just kill us all? I had asked. He tried to look unmalignant: A, Libby, we have, and B, too much smell, too much of an emission all at once.

The Loopies—two alien species bound to each other in a marriage of convenience—have subdued the human race. Its people sterilised, and pacified with a linguistic disease, the world is a retirement village with Comma nurses waiting on the sick of mind—and sick to the back teeth in the case of Libby Lavers.
Libby alone is unimpaired, the only HS conceived after the takeover. To liberate the planet, he will escape his small-town tourist trap at the end of the world, escape the world itself, and what? Laser them all down from above? Doubtful. But McKinnon, the Comma, has a plan. In the heart of a city broken by the grammarhammer is a weapon. Surely the alien on the level, and Libby is not just his pawn like the Selkirk of the rainforest suggests.
The task is impossible. Must that entail that it necessarily can’t be done? Yes it must. How then does Libby Lavers succeed?
‘China Miéville and Margaret Atwood meet the ghosts of Philip K. Dick and Douglas Adams in a dubious quotation on a book blurb.’

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Ascroft
• Release date: Jan 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9780473363444

Nick Ascroft

Nick Ascroft is a highly regarded sports writer and editor, and an experienced 5-a-side goalkeeper. In his time playing for Red Star White City he made a number of game-winning saves, quite often with his face or nether parts.

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Chapter 1

South Island, New Zealand, Earth, November 3, 2018

I live in difficult and exaggerated times, and both difficult and exaggerated this has their telling. But buckle up your patience and go with me a little way on this. I’m a journalist on the frontlines of an astounding future. Here I am, there, ushering this book into time’s wind in an attempt to convey it back. Are you there, somewhere in the late twentieth century?

If what follows—the goings-on of this enormous Tuesday—is to be correctly read, we are coming to a hinge. The old astounding future is bending back and my better future coming down slap to displace it.

/ / / | | | \ \ \

I was in what can only be called a spaceship. We were about to head off out into space in it—so. Invercargill airport out the cockpit window looked innocuous. Less so, at this moment, in the co-pilot chair, was McKinnon, the space alien, my butler-cum-tutor from when we were back in Doubtful. I wasn’t noticing his new shift into uninnocuousness though, being as I was, mentally, miles away.

Although we sat up the front in the cockpit, we weren’t actually responsible for the piloting, no. McKinnon would take over once we broke the atmosphere, but meanwhile attached on either side of the vessel like training wheels were our helping hands for the difficult bit, as they put it. I could see them in their respective cockpit-pods, Rose and Chris, Loopies like McKinnon. They were probably smiling reassuringly at me, if I’d been paying any attention. Instead, I daydreamt.

The last few weeks had all been quite a battering to the nervous system. I was used to the quiet life of Doubtful, nothing happening, seasons on end. But there it was, I was off to outer space—best breathe deeply and not think too much about it, I thought.

The daydreams were airy, relaxing, those well-practiced scenarios of infinite and easy heroism, going nowhere, just distractions eddying around me, cutting me off from the world. Then, constituting itself, himself, out of the fog of it all, a figure coalesced. I couldn’t place where he fitted in. Had I been about to say something to him? Outside the window, striding, growing clearer, and closer, he passed through the wall of the plane by the cockpit door and up, walking steep invisible stairs, until he stood over me. And as his features dragged into my focus, brilliantly vivid, as if spotlit from some unseen rig that shone on nothing else, though I couldn’t begin to guess the intention of that expression, lips half-pursed, eyes tightening, I recognised the man they meaned to convey. This was meant to be a father, I hadn’t known one, but this was him.

He looked from me down to a closed hand. The fingers were red and weathered, curlicues of skin at the bud of the fingernail and sweat-mud under their ends. My breathing gathered a little wheeze to it. Slowly the hand opened and his eyes grew more intense, meaningful. Lying across his palm was a tiny sword. He looked up again and fixed me in his eyes—they were like drawing pins pricking into my own. The moment paused in the dream video-style, simply hanging there over me, frozen still, with his eyes holding me down.

I lost it. My veins freaked out, and pumped with adrenaline, hormones, hysteria, anything to get me out of the seatbelt, out the hatch and down the runway like a madman. This was like no dream I’d ever had. I hadn’t summoned up the image, it’d just organised itself of its own volition. It was important, obviously it was enormously important.

If I’m anything, I’m a bit of a freak for what’s rational. I like to be very square with things, to know where I stand. There’s fantasy, and then there’s the serious stuff that one should take notice of. One’s psyche doesn’t just throw out a daydream about some apocalyptic relative with absolutely no reasoning, especially under such peculiar circumstances.

The countdown from twenty for take-off began in Rose’s infinitely relaxed intonation. I looked across at McKinnon. From his expression I imagined exactly what I looked like to him. Flailing in slow motion. My eyes were goggled wide, and my lips wubbering at the halfways of a number of different proclamations.

You could see the calculations, in the way he flicked his irises back and forth. Causes, pros, effects, cons. It wasn’t just concern for a friend hyperventilating, there was something else there. Surely this would’ve been a perfect moment for him to give me his one-eyebrow-up look of: aren’t we being a little dramatic. No, in fact he looked conspicuously unresponsive. My father was showing me a wee sword and, his silence condemning him, McKinnon was in on it. I opted for more asthma.

Calm. I knew what I was experiencing, it was intuition. Intuition manifested in unconscious symbolism. The dream had boiled away with the onset of my panic attack. I tried to register. To be calm and process the data, process it and react accordingly. I tried to concentrate on various points in my vision, find something still and unthreatening and attempt some focus. I looked at the control board, its maze of random lights, switches, dials—too much—PANIC. The view of the runway—it was beginning to undulate in the heat of the engine—further PANIC. I swung my vision left. Rose was obviously saying the word twelve into her microphone. I swung back around to McKinnon, and Chris over his shoulder in miniature, there in that other cockpit looking serene. This was, oh yeah, oh yeah … I closed my eyes. Something had to be done immediately. Something had to be announced.

McKinnon, I said softly, quickly, pathetically, I have to … and there was Chris out the window, like an imp on his shoulder. They normally look almost convincing as humans, but this was obviously a maniac. There were tentacles under that preposterously placid face, there was no doubt in it. This was some horrible half-frog, half-mosquito and giant anteater creature, some lunatic alien mongrel species, whom I was volunteering my safety to.

We were down to three, I had to act. But McKinnon was suddenly up. He paused briefly to make a reassuring palm-out gesture to me, then in one motion flicked down a row of switches from off to on. Corresponding lights glared little beads of red. His other hand went to the covered switch at the end of the row. He uncovered with his thumb and flicked it down with his index. There was a sound like a hundred brass bands exploding.

/ / / | | | \ \ \

Upon my miraculous arrival into Invercargill and subsequent capture, there had been a blur of events leading me out to the airport. I could retrace it all if I thought about it. There had been a breakfast, that I remembered distinctly. And I had been marched through a department store to its top office where I had first met Rose and Chris. Women, inasmuch as they looked like two middle-aged, pleasingly dumpy human women, though who knew what gender structure their species navigated around.

They were holding teacups, and smiling, Rose sitting casually on one side of the desk, and Chris, more officially, slotted behind it. Although of course there was that bit of me that warmed to a smile, fourteen years of disingenuous Loopies had taught me the joys of disdain. New Loopies always needed breaking in. Their smiles were designed for the handicapped and the doddery. I showed my resentment with the cheesiest lovey grin, eyes-squeezed head-waggling. Then, letting it slip back into a sneer, I clicked my fingers twice, looking at the ceiling.

Cup of tea’d be nice.

Righto sir, Rose hopped off the desk and made for the Zip, bounding as smugly as a TV dolphin, and we’ve got something to discuss with you, which we think will tickle your interest, Mr Ants-In-His-Pants.

Chris continued—You’re sick of being cooped up, eh fella? A man of your abilities, stuck in swampy, claustrophobic Doubtful. Waking up to the same old codswallop day after day after day, she thumped the desk in time, over and over and over.

Rose was nodding, dropping in my sugar lumps—No, we understand, Libby. Quite understand. Have a seat, she signalled to the idiot who’d brought me in. A chair was stuck under me. Then tousling my hair from behind it, the idiot made an affirming hum, did that lazy one finger salute they do and loped off.

Biscuits? I inquired, receiving my tea. They ignored me.

So … said Rose smiling knowingly at Chris.

So, said Chris smiling back, we think a little vacation—she grabbed a remote control off the desk and aimed it at the TV-video on the side wall—could be just the ticket.

The TV lit up and I almost spat my last sip. This was some excellent footage. It was the Moon, an aerial shot that dived down from a great height into a large crater then up and out into another. Then another—another.

But the Moon’s old hat, Rose fawned an arm, Buzz and Neil, all that lot, howrabout Mars. Mars appeared onscreen, beautiful, the detail of the atmosphere. The shot zoomed effortlessly into the craggy surface. I was dumbstruck. Explore the canyons in your own Marsmobile—

And the asteroids, Chris dashed on, Ceres, Juno, Vesta … They appeared one by one.

Euphrosyne, Mnemosyne …

Sisyphus.

Tezcatlipoca.

Babuquivari, and, a pause, "whatever you wanna call that one."

As Chris finished, a ruddy egg-shaped planetoid popped up on the screen. Like the others it was stunningly shot, each little pocked crater modelling itself in crisp focus. This was unbelievable. Alien camerawork. Back in Doubtful I’d only ever been allowed to see our own videos. I had hunted down all the space documentaries I could get my hands on, and all the old NASA-related National Geographics and night sky atlases, planispheres, telescopes. I loved this stuff—and it was a fact of which they were clearly aware.

My very own asteroid lingered on the screen, slowly revolving to reveal a speckled red underbelly.

But why stop there? Rose hopped back up onto the desktop and sat there cross-legged, her eyes glittering, Holiday by the rings of Saturn. Take your camera to the vistas of the Jovian moons. Go sightseeing to Uranus, pretty blue Neptune, and—the pictures were so beautiful they hurt my chest—best of all …

Chris took up the pitch—Pluto, be the first to see the surface of Pluto and little Charon. Go on, land there, plant a flag, have a picnic.

Neptune lingered on the screen, fixed in a leisurely zoom, its azureness slowly filling the frame—little white twirls of cloud deliquescing like milk in unstirred tea—leaving Pluto as a teaser. No one had ever really seen Pluto, no proper photo, like the Voyager snaps of the giants from the 70s and 80s. I waited for it. Plip, the screen went blank.

S’gotta be better than Doubtful. Rose was beaming—the beatific bearer of good news.

I knew what this was. This was a bribe, a you-scratch-our-back-and-vice-versa. Forget your little human cuzzies, why favour the loser, come back on over to the side of plenty. I tried to muster revolutionary spirit.

But … my own spaceship. No one had absolute resolve. Everybody breaks under torture, they say. I tried to see it from an undercover freedom-fighter point of view. Some time away, free of surveillance, time to plan. Of course I’d be exposed to some of their technology at last: a spaceship … with some time and this brilliant little sack of matters grey and white in my skull, I could suss out how it worked, no sweat. Information being power and whatnot.

I sold out. We had lunch. Then in no time I was bouncing at the back of a bus, taking in a sunny Invercargill day out the window.

There were so many people, being herded around by their Commas, so many cars and buses and taxis even (which made no sense to me). The street was extravagantly wide, and with so many shops nestled to either side, like piglets to a monstrous sow. I tried to imagine it when it wasn’t just a façade, a memory of actual human settlement, this comfort of appearance for its citizens. I looked at them, babbling animatedly in groups, talking to themselves in the backs of the taxis. Some were pretending to shop, some pretending to serve them, chattering nonsenses to one another. One had a deck chair on a traffic island, a Comma sat near his feet, nodding emphatically to whatever unrelated string of words was spewing out.

It would’ve been a nice town. So much sky; I’m sure Doubtful’s mountainscape was picturesque to others, but to me this three-sixty of flattened horizon was breathtaking: distant clouds sprawling further acres towards its far edge, little tufts and minarets, delicately textured, hued from plastic-bag white to butterscotch.

So many different people, milling around like dust in a sunbeam, the place was huge and still so green. The thousands of houses, the old houses—unheard of in Doubtful. This place oozed human history, all the brilliances that had now passed. The sensation was bittersweet.

Crossing a bridge, the driver slowed to one-finger salute a Comma walking across it. She was power-dressed in a short-skirted navy blue suit with shoulder pads. She looked directly at McKinnon sitting in the front, and without smiling touched a straightened finger to her forelock. She held it there for a little as the bus passed, her gaze unshifting as the other hanger-on Loopies flitted through it, saluting warmly back. And as my turn came, her eyes seemed to narrow and her hand dropped. I pulled her a face out the back window.

We arrived at their airstrip. It was waiting, and what a stupid looking thing. They had chopped the wings and tail off of a 767, sat it on its flat end, facing directly upward, and slapped on, just below were the wings had been, the sidecar rockets with a bubble-dome of glass each. Then the whole thing was painted a thick bristly orange. It looked like a gigantic pedal-boat somehow, moored miles from its lakeside.

I ambled out behind the three Loopies. Rose and Chris looked fit to pop.

We’re so pleased to be a part of this, this was one of them. Now, you know we’re only with you till the first night in orbit, but the telephone’s there, so Libby please, ring us for anything.

Anything at all, the other one now, and repeating what they’d said earlier, If you just wanna have a natter … she was moving in to take my duffle bag.

Or if I just want to hang up on you. I the picture get. I yanked my bag out of her reach, and clutched it behind my back. They smiled.

But there was something in the smile. Had I pulled my bag away too obviously? Too guiltily? Could they suspect the illicitness of the contents I had been too guardedly concealing? If they knew of my notebooks, I was not just some slap-him-on-the-wrist teenager, but a conspirator. And the other item, the gun, they could see it in my eyes now.

I’m not a vegetable and I can manage, you know, I smiled perhaps too toothily, you Commas, lordy lordy—think you’ve mollycoddled one you’ve mollycoddled them all.

McKinnon broke his silence, a silence I wouldn’t register until later, Yeah, shimmy up the gangplank, Libby, there’s a lad. We’ll stop pestering you two ladies and get aboard, shall we.

Rose had been thinking—"Commas, of course, we’re Commas in Doubtful. It’s Pseudonyms in Invercargill, Sues usually," her voice was low. I grabbed the opportunity to dash up the stairs, my bag unsurveilled.

Looking down from the hatch-door, Chris had her hand on McKinnon’s shoulder. It sat there clumsily, out of place, like a fried egg. She said in the same low tone, as if continuing Rose’s thought—I’m sorry it’s you going and not me.

/ / / | | | \ \ \

Back in the spaceship, and that bomb-blast of a noise, McKinnon was now madly typing into a computer keyboard. Out the window were only heat glare and the sun, blasting through into my eyes, refracted and lensed by the hot air to blind me. I was in the middle of a historic mutiny. We were out on the lam again, free.

At the moment of take-off McKinnon had somehow ejected our sidecar companions. They had blasted their big rockets, sent us immediately fifty-odd metres into the air, but then, as it happened, in the flick of the switch, into three separate arcs. They shot out at opposite angles, and we soared up through the middle.

He had gained control now and was carefully monitoring the ascent at the steering column. We can’t break the atmosphere anymore, he said, "but we’ve got to make them think we think we can." McKinnon’s expression was unruffled, but he was obviously highly enthused, muttering away to himself.

Rose and … Chris? I attempted over the noise.

Oh yeah they’re fine, probably parachuting to earth as we speak.

But they know … you, that you … it was hard over the blinding light of the sun, bellowing in, trying to outroar the engines. I reiterated—They saw you, will they say they know they saw you? McKinnon gave me an abstract look. He cocked his head like a seagull.

They’re with me on this, really. They might’nt’ve planned to’ve been. But we stick together, our mob. Hardly prime cuts of espionage, those two, I know, but they’ll give it a whirl. No yeah, they’ll think of something.

Was it g-forces, the light, or the noise? I didn’t know, but I felt like a finger on the inside of a balloon, pushing out. With each kilometre that we shot further upwards, I felt the atmosphere resisting us, pulling ever more at our legs, holding us in. I thought about mumsy old Chris and Rose floating to the ground, racking their brains to contrive some plausible poppycock. They were used to spoon-feeding handicapped teenagers, mowing lawns, and now they had to fudge some artful lies to some serious individuals and cover for McKinnon and me. Not that they could lie to their overlords. McKinnon had told me that was impossible, a clause crucial in the being of every Comma. A certain parsimony with the truth was on occasions possible …

Actually, what the hell were we doing? The Puncs’d see through them immediately. Any second now they’d shoot us straight out of the sky. We were plum ducks, plum ducks cooking in this bonfire of the sun’s assault. This wasn’t my plan.

What was McKinnon doing? Some goofball from space, and he thought he’d save me by flying us into a deadly ray-beam. I started fumbling again at my seatbelt. McKinnon had to be stopped. I had got myself this far and only I could get me out.

It came free, and I lunged for my rash alien friend. Yes, he was my friend, I suddenly wanted to hug his big stupid head, wanted to rub a dishevelling hand in his haircut that never grew or changed shape. My lunge went into a slop halfway across. Then, as my centre of gravity passed the seatback I was thrown down solidly into the back door of the cockpit. My forehead took a wallop but my extended arms had buckled into the brunt of it, somewhat cushioning the blow. I lay there like a draught stop at the bottom of the door, glad of the shade the lower view afforded.

McKinnon dabbed some buttons then carefully undid himself. He got down at the base of his chair and worked his way back to me, crawling, legs first along the floor.

Centipede, I managed.

He corrected—Millipede, and grabbed ahold of me, life-saver-style, one arm over my chest, I’m a vegetarian. The ship tore on invertiginous into the sky, humming to itself.

McKinnon battled my acquiescent body back into the glare of my seat. There was some pain in the dizziness, but it seemed to be sitting outside the cockpit window, broiling on the nosecone and not in me.

It’s all right, McKinnon said, You’re okay. And we’re free, Libby—they drugged your food, that’s why you probably feel odd—we really are, free as birds. He licked his fingers, leant across, smoothed my forehead and blew on the dampened bruise. The cool air was strange and I closed my eyes with it. Free, he said like the word was blinding and couldn’t be said enough, just trust me Libby, I’m participating in the repercussions of our circumstances to affect the most desirable …

I blurted in, the information had struck me. Things tabled up at last into sense. Madagascar! I interrupted. Madagascar, Madagascar! I shouted eagerly with my eyes closed.

/ / / | | | \ \ \

McKinnon often told me stories about the galaxy, and about life in the universe. His opinions of it all sieved through his feigned impartiality pretty readily. But he always held back. I could tell he really wanted to start preaching, convert me to whatever wacko Comma philosophy his species was so mad about. But there was protocol, it was quite clear