'NEW ARRIVALS!' screamed Pete, the incompetent telepath who couldn't quite grasp the distinction between whispering and yelling at a thousand decibels.
I sat bolt upright in bed, pressing the palms of my hands against my electrified temples. My husband, his sleep disturbed by my movement, rolled over in bed towards me.
'Another headache, Rhea?' he asked, immediately falling asleep again.
'Another moron,' I breathed.
Pete screeched, 'ESTIMATED TIME OF ARRIVAL, IN THE AFTERNOON, I THINK. PROXIMITY OF LANDING AREA ... ER ... SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDLANDS ... OR IT COULD BE CORNWALL, I CAN'T TELL.'
I sighed heavily. Something would definitely have to be done about Pete. You would have thought that if they were going to send me top secret, highly confidential interplanetary messages, they'd have the decency to use an interplanetary telepath who could actually read the interplanetary messages properly. It's not fun trying to decipher Pete's cryptic clues.
'OVER AND OUT,' Pete hollered. He then fell out of my brain with all the majestic dexterity of a brick. I flopped back onto my pillows, my brain cells vibrating.
New arrivals, I thought. Not more! I just hoped they were better than the deranged mutants that had turned up last time.
I always seem to get lumbered with the cadets who don't know their nights from their days, and who think a million light year flight to earth is an exciting day trip. You must have heard about people who have seen spaceships on the ground surrounded by aliens who look as if they don't know where they are or what they're doing there? And you must have heard the rumours about UFO's crashing into the sides of mountains, dropping down to earth like rocks, zigzagging from side to side in the sky (not because it's clever, but because the occupants simply haven't a clue how to handle the controls.) Well, those are mine. The new arrivals.
I had one last month who was a complete imbecile. His mission was simple; to collect some samples to take back to the home planet so that the more imbecilic cadets could study them and, hopefully, learn something. Rambo, as he decided to call himself - I thought Dumbo would have been more appropriate - got a little carried away with his project.
His idea of collecting samples was to haul a fully grown cow into his spaceship. Understand that this was no space cruiser or supply ship, but a tiny one-man scouting vessel. During his return journey to the home planet, every telepath on earth heard his messages from way out in space. 'Oh, oh, what is that terrible smell?' and, 'Daisy, stop that this instant,' and, 'Won't someone please help me!'
The cow, I might add, was the least of Rambo's problems. The real hassle, we telepaths soon discovered, was the unsecured tractor, the sick skunk, and the two vultures who were getting very hungry and pecking at Rambo's body parts. I'm told they had to prise him out of his cabin using crow bars when he eventually got home, and he was quarantined for three criens until the smell wore off. Honestly, what do they teach them in space school these days?
I am, as you may have gathered, an on-site teacher. I take my job seriously and put all my effort into transforming blithering idiots into something vaguely resembling intelligent life-forms. It's not easy.
Hoards of teenager terrors pour out of classrooms, straight down to earth. They don't know a thing. Not a dot. The first thing they do it blast over cites with all the interior lights illuminated like a Christmas tree. How can anyone fail to spot them? And they're supposed to be 'inconspicuous'. No-one is supposed to know they're here. What a joke!
With these memories still etched vividly in my mind, I drifted off into a fitful sleep.
I was apprehensive about the arrival of my new cadets the following morning. Roughly translated, Pete's 'Sometime In The Afternoon,' could mean any time between midday and January 5th 1999. And the message I got from Home Base - 'I swear on my surrogate mothers lives they've all passed their release exams' - probably meant they were a scrambled batch of test-tubers who didn't have a brain cell to rub between them.
I cancelled my appointments for the day; the chin-wag with my fake earth-sister, the browse around the supermarket in search of something edible, and the practice expedition to the toilet (yeah, I'm still trying to fathom that one out. I simply don't see the point in stuffing things in one end, only to have it come out the other end. Humans are strange creatures.)
With my day clear, I waited for the new arrivals to turn up.
And waited.
And waited.
I chewed my nails down to the knuckles. I watched the news channel to find out if there had been any inexplicable explosions in the area. I began to grow tense, real tense. I was propped up against the armchair like a plank of wood, hoping and praying that the new arrivals would have the sense to land somewhere discreet.
As if!
They finally arrived mid-afternoon. I was standing in the playground, waiting for my two hybrid children to emerge from school, when I heard a whooshing sound, like someone going whoosh. One hundred and thirteen parental faces looked skywards. I followed their gaze. My heart stopped. I pounded at my chest, encouraging it to start again.
There, fifteen centimetres above the school building, was a shiny silver spaceship with red and white flashing lights and shadowy forms flitting across the portholes. The tachyon drive decellorator backfired, and one hundred and thirteen faces instantly hit the dust.
My stunned mind couldn't muster up the enthusiasm to think of a suitable exclamation, like What On Earth Do They Think They're Doing? or, Wait Till I Get My Hands On Them! I just stood there like a statue, staring at this interstellar vehicle with my mouth hanging wide.
And, as I stared, a side panel door slithered open. A long thin body - not even disguised in human form yet! - leaned out.
The alien from another planet, totally oblivious to the chaos and screams of hysteria as one hundred and thirteen parents scattered like panic-stricken mice, smiled straight at me, waved, and raised his foot to step out.
'WHOA!' he hollered, noticing that they hadn't actually landed on terra-firma yet. 'Back it down a bit, Larry. I didn't bring my parachute.'
'Use the telescopic, one-piece, ingeniously designed lightweight ladder,' came a voice from inside the spaceship.
'Ah,' said the alien hanging by one arm outside the door, 'I forgot to bring that, too.'
My mind suddenly pieced itself back together and, furious, I spat telepathic words into their microscopic brains.
'If you don't vacate the vicinity in ten seconds, I'll disintegrate you into a million particles and let you float randomly off into infinite oblivion.'
Alien eyes peered at me for a second - he had nine seconds left. Slowly turning his head, he drawled, 'I don't think she's pleased to see us, lads.'
An approaching human distracted my fury. It was the headmaster, and he didn't look amused.
'What's going on?' he asked. 'I can't tolerate this kind of disruption on school premises.'
'It's nothing to do with me,' I said.
The alien looked down at us and grinned sheepishly. 'Sorry about this, Rhea, old bean,' he said. 'I guess it's a bit inconvenient dropping in on you like this, eh? I know its against regulations, and all that, but we miscalculated the landing co-ordinates and got lost.' He pulled a metallic map out of the top pocket of his metallic suit, and added, 'You don't happen to know where twenty-six degrees west, eighteen degrees south-south-west is, do you?'
I smiled lamely at the headmaster. He gave me a ten minute lecture about insurance companies not paying for rooves damaged by spaceships. I assured him that tachyon drive propulsion engines wouldn't do any damage to his building or cause any detrimental effect on the environment, just as Larry began lowering the ship to the ground. It took the roof off.
It was the worst, most embarrassing moment in the history of the universe. An alien spaceship, in broad daylight and in full view of half the population of Birmingham, stops to ask a fellow alien for directions to their secret landing site, and then skims the top layer off a school building. I didn't know where to put myself.
The headmaster was furious. The kids, however, were delighted at the prospect of an unexpected holiday. As they poured out of school, they barely glanced at the silver disc wavering above their heads - this is the age of man's technological advancement, after all - although some of the younger ones thought it was a big helium balloon and cried for their mothers to get them one too.
Insisting that the spaceship take a hike to the moon and get its act together, I then had to walk past the angry parents. Some of the looks they gave me could have halted a charging rhinoceros at thirty paces. Humans are such speciests.
I asked my offspring if they fancied coming with me on a quick trip to the moon. Barry shrugged, Robert burst into tears saying he'd miss his favourite programmes on television. So I couldn't go.
I was pacing up and down the living room, contemplating decapitating the cretins who had broken every planetary rule in the book, when my husband came home. He burst through the front door, bubbling with excitement, and chattering incomprehensibly about some weird and wonderful happening.
Great, I thought. He's got a pay-rise. Hubby dragged me outside and pointed at the star-speckled sky. The moon was bouncing up and down on the horizon like a yo-yo on elastic. Decapitation, I decided, was too good for them.
I waited until my family was asleep before sneaking out of the house. Hubby doesn't know there's anything different about me, you see. He just thinks I'm ... different. The kids, on the other hand, have seen me perform miscellaneous magic tricks, including play-wrestling with them six inches from the ceiling (there's less injuries that way). They think its normal behaviour. So normal they don't bother mentioning it to anyone, least of all their father. Hence my need to sneak out of the house in the middle of the night.
I crept into the garden. It was freezing cold. I hate the cold. I peered up at the now stationary moon planning my revenge. I wasn't in a good mood.
Fortunately - or maybe not - I didn't have to make the journey to the moon to inflict injury on my cadets. They came to me. In their spaceship. It glowed bright in the sky, dropped a couple of hundred metres, then wobbled precariously above the house.
'Look what we can do!' a voice cried into my head.
The spaceship putted, wobbled a bit more, then burst out on all sides into the shape of a cigar.
'Great, isn't it,' the voice said. 'We found his button on the control panel. Watch what it does when I press it again.'
The cigar turned into a shimmering U-bend, twisted into every conceivable shape from a square to a pentagon star, then finally settled into an irregular shape which resembled a blob of phosphorescent ink squashed between two black pages.
I sighed. I tutted. I closed my eyes and wished it was all a dream. When I opened them again, the spaceship had landed in my garden, crushing my beloved apple tree beneath its convex belly and coming to rest at an angle against the compost heap.
Right, I thought, I've got you now, you twerps.
I banged on the side of the spacecraft. 'Get out here, now!' I hissed through gritted teeth.
There was no sound of movement from within. With any luck, I thought, they had knocked themselves out on impact and I could shoot them back to home planet with my kindest regards - or simply shoot them.
I pounded on the silver metal again. Something shuffled. Something slipped. Something banged its stupid head against the interior support beam.
'You're not angry with us, are you, Rhea, old bean?' one of them asked.
'No, no, of course not, whatever gave you that idea?' My voice sounded like bitter syrup. 'I simply want to welcome you to this wonderful planet, and to congratulate you on the discretion you displayed on arrival.'
'That's okay then.'
The side panel door slithered open. I was surprised to see that my three morons had bothered to transform themselves into human guise. There might, I thought, be hope for them yet.
A tall, good-looking man wandered down the ramp first. It had to be Max, the infamous, arrogant, egotistical Max I'd heard so much about. He lifted my rigid hand and kissed my fingertips. It was a pity he'd neglected to put his lips on first.
Larry followed. Short and fat, with fuzzy ginger hair surrounding his gleaming dome. He'd put his eyes in wrong, and they were gazing at each other with deep affection.
Finally came Steven. I knew Steven vaguely. We used to be neighbours in the test-tube laboratory. It was rumoured that we shared the same father in our chromosomes - specimen no.7748a/# - so we were practically related.
They stood before me in a line. Max smoothed his bare arm like it was the sleeve of a garment. I suddenly realised he thought it was the sleeve of a garment.
'You idiot!' I said. 'What you're wearing is called skin. All humans have it to keep their insides inside. It is not what you are supposed to wear under regulation 49k of the interplanetary code.'
Max looked at me in astonishment. 'You mean,' he gasped, as the penny dropped into the empty cavern of his head, 'These aren't humanoid clothes?'
'Max,' I began, 'Humans take their clothes off. They wash them in hot water, hang them with wooden pegs on plastic clothes lines, and run a scalding iron over them to take out the creases. Now, you try peeling what you're wearing off, and then tell me if you're wearing clothes or not.'
'Are you saying I'm nude,' he blushed.
'Stark naked, mate.'
ax shot back into the spaceship. Steve and Larry followed, both glowing bright red.
As the entire world now knew of their arrival, it was imperative that the cadets concluded their mission and return to home planet as soon as possible. The sooner the better, as far as I was concerned. I figured Space School had all but expelled them from the premises heaving a great sigh of relief.
'Atomic generator,' Steve said, as they sat around the kitchen table wearing smelly animal skins - they didn't know a thing about their earth history.
'What?' I said.
'Atomic generator,' Steve said again. 'In order to pass our grade three examinations, we have to dismantle and reassemble an atomic generator within a nuclear plant.'
'Presumably without blowing the whole world up in the process?' I asked.
'Well, yes, I guess so.'
'Space School specifically assigned you three to this task?'
Larry shook his fuzzy head, his ginger eyebrows puckering into a confused tangle. 'I thought they said automobile. Dismantle and reassemble an automobile.'
'I thought they said rubber plant.' Max said.
'How can you dismantle and reassemble abber plant,' Steve scoffed.
'That's what we're supposed to find out, isn't it?'
'Listen,' I said, 'Have you any idea of the enormity of the task you're undertaking? Have you studied? Are you sure you can do it without microwaving everyone?'
'Studied?' Max laughed. 'We don't need to study.'
I leaned across the table towards him and grabbed hold of his fur coat. 'Max, darling,' I seethed. 'You're incapable of landing a spaceship without attracting world-wide attention. You practically shake the moon out of orbit, step onto the planet wearing nothing but a smile, then tell me that dismantling an atomic generator is not beyond your capabilities. If you were me, what would you think?'
Max shrugged, then absently stuck his finger in his coffee. His finger melted. Horrified, he quickly grew a thumb to take its place.
I contacted Pete. Cadets were normally assigned simple tasks, like soil gathering, oxygen analysis, and standing at the sides of road counting red and white cars.
'What's the Home Base reports on the new cadets?' I asked Pete.
I sensed him hesitating. He coughed a little, then I heard the rustling of paper.
'IS IT ... IS IT THE SEDUCTION OF AN EARTHLY FEMALE?' he asked.
'I don't know. I'm asking you.'
'OH. WELL. LET'S SEE.' More papers rustled, which I thought strange as interplanetary messages are stored on thin strands of information molecules completely invisible to the naked eye.
'ER,' he said.
'Yes?' I said.
WELL,' he said.
'What?' I said.
'I've, er, kind of lost the last six transmissions from home planet.'
I groaned, and resisted the temptation to send a grade nine mind piercer into his head, mainly because I couldn't actually locate his mind.
I turned to my three enthusiastic cadets. 'How about starting up a wild flower collection instead?' I asked.
They yawned. Larry discovered his nose and began to pick it. Max leaned back in his chair, and said flowers just weren't his scene.
I braced myself to contact Home Base personally, something they discourage because of the staff shortages in the receiving department.
'An atomic generator?' I thrust across the galaxy.
'An Austin Montego turbo-charged motorcar,' they replied, 'Built in the New Clear factory in Birmingham.'
I sighed with relief. I felt the whole world sighing with me.
Once I'd told my already bored cadets what they really had to do, they lost interest.
'I'm not going to some filthy factory to dissect some stupid piece of machinery,' Max whinged.
'No do, no pass,' I said.
Larry instantly fell asleep across the table, emitting thunderous snores. The noise Max and Steve made trying to wake him up again woke my husband up instead. He stumbled down the stairs bleary eyed, and came face-to-face with the three Neanderthal cavemen sitting around his kitchen table.
'I found them outside,' I told him.
'Frozen in a glacier?' he asked.
After the ensuing argument had died down, we were overcome with exhaustion and went to bed. I put the three cadets in the spare room and made sure I was the first one up at the crack of dawn to stir them from the coma's. Gravity isn't very prolific on the home planet, and the old habit of sleeping in mid-air dies hard.
Hubby's mood hadn't improved overnight. As I raided his wardrobe for suitable clothes for my cadets, he began another argument.
'I don't understand,' he fumed, as Larry tugged a pair of his trousers on and split the seams. 'Why did you drag three tramps off the street and put them up for the night, Rhea?'
'Charity,' I said. 'We have to take care of the less fortunate.'
'No we don't,' hubby said, 'Not in our house.'
He cast another glance at the mutations roaming around our bedroom. The cadets were fascinated by my dressing table and began smearing makeup on their faces. Fuscia pink lipstick looked awful on Max.
'I want them out of the house by the time I get home,' hubby insisted. 'Do I make myself clear?'
'Crystal,' I said, and hubby left for work muttering furiously under his breath.
I organised a day-trip to the New Clear car factory. After leaving my children with a neighbour, we set out. Only we didn't get as far as the end of the driveway. As soon as the cadets saw my car, they went berserk.
'This is a motorcar, isn't it?' Max said reverently, pulling the entire bonnet off by its hinges.
'But it's not an Austin Montego,' I cried, watching Larry drag the doors off. 'It's a Morgan Plus Eight fuel-injected 1980, and it's mine!'
My desperate plea's fell on deaf ears. The three cadets tore my precious car to pieces using their strong telekinetic powers. By the time I'd drawn enough breath to yell at them to stop vandalising my pride and joy, my Morgan was spread across the ground like a metalic jigsaw, with only the chassis to prove it had ever been a car at all.
'That was simple,' Max said, diving onto the engine and tearing it in two.
I cried. I sobbed and wailed. The cadets all huddled over the engine, pulling it to bits. I cried some more.
And then, through my tears, I saw a strange thing happen. Max suddenly stood up straight, and gasped out loud in amazement. He said, 'I understand! I know how it works! I UNDERSTAND THE PRINCIPLE OF THE COMBUSTION ENGINE!'
I was about to congratulate him and request he put my car back together again, when he ran into the house screaming, 'I understand! I understand!'
I rushed in after him, and found him in the living room. He'd already dismantled the excruciatingly expensive stereo system, and was in the process of pulling the tube out of the back of the television set. Larry and Steve joined in the destruction.
'No!' I wailed, 'Don't do that. Leave it alone. This is my home!'
They left the television in pieces and concentrated all their attention on the vacuum cleaner, the video recorder, the telephone, and then the computer. The room looked like the aftermath of an explosion in an electrical store. Motors, screws and tangled wires floated before my tear-filled eyes.
Max kept saying, 'I understand!' It would have been a very poignant and emotional moment, if it hadn't been my possessions they were gutting.
I attempted to halt the onslaught with my own telekinetic powers. I wrapped electric cables around their necks, tried to smother them with the curtains, used an electro-magnetic force to bind them together, but nothing worked. Their combined strength and enthusiasm was too much for me to contend with.
I contacted Pete for assistance. He wisely suggested that I tell them to Pack It In. I tried it. It didn't work. Larry untangled some copper wiring, spliced it to the electricity supply and attached it to my rubber plant, nuking it to a frazzle.
I feverishly communicated with Home Base for instructions. Only then did they bother to inform me that these cadets were, in fact, genetically engineered minds of the highest calibre, the elite of the scientific galaxy with an infinitesimal capacity for knowledge. Some snotty-nosed communicator told me there had been a problem igniting their brain cells, and they'd been sent to earth in the hope that new stimulus would trigger their highly intelligent but dormant minds into action.
Why hadn't they told me that before? I could have carted them off to the Sahara Desert where they could cause the least possible harm. Elite scientists, I knew, were highly volatile, and totally mad.
Helpless, I watched the trio scramble towards my kitchen. I heard my microwave shattering, and smelled gas as they tore my cooker apart. I was beyond caring. Let them do their worst, I thought, as I lay down and cried on the sofa.
When hubby came home that night, he didn't speak for twenty minutes. The whole house had been destroyed. Light bulbs were splintered, carpets had been liquidised for analysis, even the walls had been demolished in the cadets relentless quest for enlightenment. They were like maniacs, their eyes filled with insane curiosity as they clambered and tinkered over the debris.
'What happened?' hubby said, sitting absolutely motionless in what was left of an armchair. 'Where are the kids? Are the kids alright?'
I didn't dare tell him that the kids were, at that moment, floating around their bedrooms boring holes into the walls with the lazer guns the cadets had created.
Fortunately, hubby slipped quickly into a catatonic stupor, just as my three studious cadets collapsed onto the floor with huge sighs of ecstatic joy.
'I understand it all,' Max said.
Glaring at them with my most tyrannical look, I hissed, 'You understand, do you?'
All three smiled deliriously, and nodded.
'Then perhaps,' I snarled, ' You could put everything back together again.'
One twinkling eye looked to the others. I held my breath. Hubby stirred oblivious in the background.
Would they have the enthusiasm and the energy to rectify their carnage? I wondered.
Max looked at me, and nodded. The kids came downstairs to watch. We crouched in a corner as missiles shot across the room like bullets.
In the blink of an eye, the components of the television set poured back inside the box. A picture fleetingly appeared on screen, then snapped off again. The stereo system blasted Meatloaf's Bat Out Of Hell, then fell silent.
Liquidised carpets poured across the floors like coloured water emptied from a bucket, and solidified into carpets again. Brick walls were sucked back into position, my microwave heated up a repaired cup of coffee, whole lightbulbs floated back into their sockets, and furniture was put back together by invisible forces.
When normality returned, and my home looked even cleaner and tidier than it did before, Max, Larry and Steven stood before me awaiting my approval.
'My car?' I said, following a sheet of glass back into the window frame and peering through it onto the driveway.
'As good as new,' Larry beamed. 'We even rectified the dodgy propeller shaft.'
Hubby mumbled incoherently. Barry, over-excited by the events, floated up to the ceiling intent on ripping my light fixtures to pieces, but I managed to grab his legs in time and extradited him to his room.
I tried not to show how impressed I was at the speed and efficiency with which the cadets had gained their knowledge. They looked too smug and superior to have compliments bestowed on them.
Instead, I merely shook their hands and asked when they would be leaving.
'Our mission here has been accomplished,' Max said, his voice deeper, his eyes bursting with the wisdom he had attained. 'We'll leave immediately.'
Great, I thought. 'Pity,' I said.
Hubby emerged from his gibbering delirium a few hours later. His frantic eyes flicked around the room, carefully inspecting everything in sight.
'What happened?' he gasped.
'You fell and banged your head,' I lied. 'You've been out for hours, but the doctor said you'd make a full recovery.'
Hubby ran his fingers over his cranium, and frowned suspiciously.
'The furniture,' he said. 'It was all in pieces. Everything was a mess - '
'You were hallucinating,' I smiled sweetly.
Barry opened his mouth to speak the truth, but I thrust my fist into it before he could utter a word. Hubby staggered to his feet and pointed at the kitchen.
'Those men,' he said, 'Those three strange men who were here this morning?'
'What men, dear?'
'Those ... They ... '
'Here, darling. Sit down. You've obviously been under a lot of stress lately.'
That evening, as hubby twitched and trembled on the sofa, there was a knock on the door. Hubby went to answer it. He came back ashen-faced with his jaw hanging on his chest.
'It's for you,' he said, easing himself gently back onto the sofa.
I hurried to the door. Max stood there with a jagged piece of metal in his hands.
'The spaceship,' he shrugged. 'We crashed it.'
