Campion's Choice

When Jack woke up Ursula sat by the bedside.

‘Thank goodness you’re okay. We were worried for a while that there might be a problem.’

He looked around the strange room at the small windows, thick beams and a scarily low, sagging ceiling.

‘Where am I? What am I doing here?’ he asked woozily.

‘Ah … I suppose the simple answer is that Anax decided.’

A sketchpad rested in Ursula’s lap and Jack glimpsed an open page. It was filled with beautiful drawings of hands.

‘Anax? The guy who brought Mister Clamp back from the dead? I thought you called him Peter Mahan. Isn’t he a doctor?’

‘Yes.’

‘But … you kidnapped me!’

Jack threw off the covers and jumped down on the bare floorboards where he staggered around unsteadily until coming to rest against a whitewashed wall. His head was spinning. It was like being seasick.

‘Kidnapped you? Well .. er … technically … yes .. I suppose we did.’

‘I was in my room .. I woke up .. I mean … I was sitting on the end of the bed ..… no … not me .. someone else … who was it? Are there two of me? Am I an alien?’

Jack wasn’t sure what he was doing but he had to try and escape. Clumsily rattling the nearest ancient window the hinges creaked but it stubbornly stayed firmly shut. Keeping Ursula as far away as possible he inched along the wall towards the door and shakily grabbed at the handle. It was locked.

‘You’ll all get arrested. The police will be looking for me.’

Ursula closed her sketchpad and rose from the seat.

’Actually, you won’t be missed. You have been temporarily replaced.’

‘Replaced? By the double I saw last night?’

‘Yes. I suppose he is your double. His name is Luke. He looks like you, talks like you, thinks like you. He shares all of your memories. He is you. No one will notice the difference.’

‘You can’t keep me here.’

‘We can. There is no escape. I’m sorry. It’s just for a short visit.’

‘Visit? This isn’t a visit!’ Frustration came out as a high-pitched shout.

Ursula dropped the sketchbook into her handbag and fussed around the bed sheets.

‘You must be exhausted. I think the best thing to do would be to come downstairs and have breakfast. Then, when you’ve filled up, we should go out into the garden and talk. It’s really a fantastic day,’ she said brightly.

Suddenly there was a distinct clicking and grating sound. The door to the room opened slowly and stood ajar. Some sort of electric locking mechanism? The landing outside was empty.

’There are clothes in the drawers. They’re your size, and they’re the kinds of things you like wearing. The breakfast room is downstairs. It’s on the left through the door next to the glass case, which contains two stuffed partridges being attacked by a fox.

The old woman left the room.

‘I’m never wearing your clothes,’ Jack yelled and slammed the oak door shut. Before the wall had hardly finished shaking, he realised he was standing in the middle of the room completely naked.

After trying on various items of clothing he settled for yellow shorts and a green t-shirt with a triple C logo, in curly grey letters, splashed across the chest.

At the foot of the stairs he turned left at the stuffed partridges and walked cautiously into the ‘breakfast room’. It was a magnificent high ceilinged affair, with five floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a glorious, bright green lawn.

A bookcase in the wall swung open and Ursula appeared. So, the place has secret passageways, Jack thought as the old woman stepped into the sunlight and walked briskly over to an intricately carved sideboard.

‘What would you like for breakfast? Have whatever you want.’

‘Is this my last ever meal?’

Ursula pulled a chair away from the huge dining table and sat down to face him. She spoke slowly.

‘Nothing in life is ever certain. However, I think I can safely say that … not only will this not be your last meal … there is every chance you will enjoy hereafter many, many more meals.’

‘I’m not a condemned man?’

‘No. You’re our guest. If you walk over to the serving dishes on the sideboard and simply tell them what you want, your choice will appear.’

There were seven covered silver dishes lined up by the wall. They looked like burnished beer barrels on legs.

Jack went to the first and felt slightly stupid talking to a large shiny pot

‘Er … bacon and eggs, please,’ he stammered.

He took hold of the thin silver handle and rolled back the lid. The first thing that hit him was the smell. It was as if someone had come up with the most perfect bacon smell in the world. One sniff was enough to fill a stomach. He approached the next one with a lot more confidence.

‘Hot chocolate with marshmallows on top.’

When he lifted that lid there was a mug of the brownest, creamiest, most heavenly smelling milk chocolate topped with large pink and white marshmallows. Without hesitating he went along the row making choices: pancakes and syrup, waffles and blueberry jam, porridge, kedgeree and, finally, a beef burger. The last wasn’t really breakfast but Jack couldn’t resist the opportunity. He grabbed the burger and sank his teeth into the lightest bun in the world that contained the juiciest meat imaginable.

Dodging from dish to dish he crammed his mouth with greedy bites.

‘Kedgeree was an unusual choice,’ Ursula said. She came over and helped herself to some of the golden waffles as Jack hovered a fork over the plateful of fishy rice. He scooped up a mouthful and gagged.

‘Ugh! I’ve always wondered what kedgeree was. I thought it sounded nice, but it’s disgusting.’

He grabbed his milk chocolate and drained the glass, enjoying the glorious, creamy sensation that danced over his taste buds.

‘Do you fancy a walk to help you digest? Perhaps a stroll around the village?’ Ursula enquired.

Jack nodded. He wiped his mouth with a bright white napkin and couldn’t help from thinking about the dishes he would conjure up, for his next meal, if he failed to escape.

They walked around the village of Hanston in a frosty silence. Ursula, in a light green summer dress, seemed quite happy to glide along and soak up the morning sun. Jack wanted to ask questions but he wasn’t ready. He still felt dizzy and needed to get his head straight before starting a conversation. The sun beat down on his bare arms and neck, the heat already promising another very hot day.

Hanston grew up around a Common, a large green space that lay at the heart of the village. Most of the village’s houses are low squatting, thatched cottages. But there are two modern estates. These are both set back and hidden by trees. Further on Jack saw some dilapidated outhouses, which might have once been old warehouses or even some kind of broken down hospital.

The four biggest buildings in the village are the red brick School, a white stone church, a surprisingly modern, metallic looking village hall and the house Jack woke up in: The Manor.

It took less than fifteen minutes to complete a round trip of the village and at one point, when they passed the familiar, gleaming pink Rover Ursula lovingly patted the car’s bonnet.

‘How old is The Manor?’ Jack asked as they walked down the driveway towards a double garage.

‘It’s Elizabethan, so about four hundred years old. Are you thirsty?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Lemonade in the garden?’

‘That’ll do nicely.’

Jack had begun to feel surprisingly cheerful and safe. It was weird. He knew he should be tense and stressed but it was great to have the pressures of the world lifted from his skinny shoulders.

As they approached The Manor Jack glanced sideways into the garage and, again, saw the pink Rover. Was it following them around? Can cars do that? Spy on people? If so what strange might be waiting around the next corner?

They sat down under a cherry tree and Jack’s first question to Ursula was, ‘is this all about magic? I mean, are you like, some kind of interplanetary bunch of wizards and witches?’

‘No.’

‘Well, how do you explain serving dishes that can produce any food? Or your car that seems to follow us around? That’s not magic?’

‘No. They’re just machines.’

‘It seems like magic.’

‘Well, I’m sure if you showed someone a mobile phone, a thousand years ago, they would say that it was magic but it wouldn’t be true.’

Jack sat in silence and sipped lemonade. It was a already scorching day. Heat rose from stone slabs and The Manor shimmered in the distance. Looking up through the tangle of cherry tree leaves, he watched sunshine spill and sparkle through the foliage.

’So, am I like a ‘chosen one’? You know, someone special, who you’ve found, and I have to help on some kind of quest or something? Is that why you’ve kidnapped me and why you’re keeping me prisoner?’

Ursula laughed.

‘No. It is just chance. You, Tia and Gidean found the coins. And you’re our guest, not a prisoner.’

Jack took a long swig of lemonade. The heat of the day made him feel really stupid. He tried to concentrate.

‘If you’re a guest, in a hotel, you can leave. If you’re a prisoner you can’t. Can I leave?’

‘We would like you to be our guest for a while longer,’ Ursula smiled. Jack tried to study her face for clues. That made his head ache. All he wanted was to go back to bed and sleep. He was too tired to fight.

‘Okay. I’m your guest. And you are aliens. Where are you from?’

‘We’re not from anywhere. At least, I don’t think we are. I don’t know for sure. We are, or rather were, travellers.’

‘So why are you on Earth?’

Ursula fanned herself with her hand and looked uncomfortable. She took her time before answering.

‘I’m a historian. History is a tricky thing. Truth and facts are important but history is also about memories. Some of the memories we have say that we came to Earth to collect fuel. At that time, mistakes were made. We were forced to land. And we had to stay here.’

There was something sad in her words.

‘The book that I read said you ran out of fuel….’ Jack began but stopped talking when Ursula bent down and, from a large leather bag, produced ’Take the coins, take the Earth - Aliens all around us’.

‘I’m afraid we took this from your house. I hope it’s the last copy. I thought I destroyed all of them. I’m afraid I’ll have to destroy this one.’

The old lady placed the book on the wooden bench and covered it with her hand. At first the book began to smoke but then, when she lifted her hand, it began to burn and rapidly turned into a black smudge of ash. She bent forward and with a puff blew away the remains.

‘I’m sorry.’ She looked genuinely apologetic.

Jack wanted to jump up and rage because that was his present. With a great effort he controlled his temper.

‘When did you lot get stuck here?’ he asked, trying to pretend that everything was normal.

‘Roughly, two and a half thousand years ago. 467 BC to be precise.’

‘So you’ve been in England all that time?’

‘No. We’ve only been in England, on and off, for a couple of thousand years.’

Jack drained the glass of lemonade. History had never been his favourite subject. He found dates, and numbers, boring and he wasn’t interested in the past. He was interested in here and now. And right here and right now, he was beginning to lose his temper.

‘This is all about the coins. Ever since we found them things got weird. The book says you’re looking for them. Do they belong to you? Did you make them?’

There was a faint noise and Jack looked up. A high brick wall surrounded the garden and in the distance, in the middle of a red brick wall, a battered wooden door opened. Peter Mahan, the man Ursula called Anax, came into the garden followed by a bodyguard of three men and three women. This small group walked towards a low flight of steps at the back of The Manor and as Mahan stopped for a moment his image in the heat haze seemed to twist and turn.

Seeing the man Ursula spoke quickly.

‘Jack, you may be here for a while. We may not be able to talk freely again. Ask me now if there are things you need to know.’

Her voice was barely louder than a whisper. Jack saw that the seven adults over by the Manor were watching.

‘You’re stuck on Earth but you want to leave?’ Jack asked quickly.

‘Yes.’

‘The coins are important?’

‘Yes.’

‘What are the coins?’

For the first time since they met Jack thought Ursula seemed to be really confused. She rushed to try and answer Jack’s question.

‘I don’t have all the answers. There are things we just don’t know. Things we lost. Things we’ve forgotten. We were following a meteor. It contained an element called Alzen. It’s not found here on earth.’

‘And you use Alzen for spaceship fuel? Like petrol in a car?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the coins are made of Alzen?’

Ursula hesitated again.

‘The meteor disappeared. We lost track of it. The story of the coins …’

Before she could finish Anax strode across the lawn and arrived flanked by his companions.

‘Come with me,’ the tall bearded man ordered.

Anax’s six guards closed in and, with a gentle nudge, they marched Jack across the large expanse of grass.

‘Where are you taking me?’

No one offered an answer.

They walked to the front entrance of Hanston School and the little party swept up the front steps. Once inside a sea of uniformed students parted silently to let them through.

Anax led the procession to a room at the back of the school and then dismissed his followers. He was alone with Jack.

They appeared to have entered some kind of a junk shop, a room filled with a mixture of antiques and bric-a-brac. There were old birdcages, a suit of armour, a length of rusting chain, a broken toaster, a pile of old leather shoes and a heap of broken spectacles. Everywhere Jack looked there were strange, battered pieces. He stared at the chains. Maybe he was going to be tortured.

‘Sit down.’

Jack remained standing.

‘Have it your way. I understand you are prepared to give us the coin?’

Jack stayed silent.

‘We will accept it.’

Anax dragged a chair, on rollers, from under a pile of stained curtains, dusted the seat clean and then settled himself to watch the boy. Jack reached into his pocket for the ban liang but hesitated. He couldn’t just give it away.

‘What do I get?’

Anax half stood but his chair skittered backwards. He angrily clutched the arms to keep himself upright and stuck out his grizzled grey beard.

‘Don’t play games.’

‘I’m not. The coin is something you want, but you can’t take it from me … or you would have done that already. So, let me go or ..’

‘Or what?’

‘Or let’s do a deal.’

‘What do you have in mind?’

‘The offer I made to Ursula. You fix Grampus and the Dadster and protect my family and I’ll give you the coin.’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘You brought Mister Clamp back from the dead.’

’Yes, and it nearly finished me. It was an emergency.

When Anax stood up the chair rolled across the room before coming to rest against a pile of old cameras.

‘No deal then.’

Jack shrugged and let go of the ban liang in his pocket. He was trying to play cool. Inside all his nerves jangled.

‘Get out of here.’ Anax’s words were half angry, half weary.

‘I can go home?’ Jack felt elated.

‘No. Just get out of this room. I need to think. I’ll find you later.’

Jack wasted no time and, keeping an eye on the man, he backed towards the door. It was huge relief to escape, if only temporarily, into an eerily silent corridor.