Prologue
April 11, 1980, 3:00:00 AM (London time)
At that precise moment, a great deal happened on Earth and around the universe: a teenager in Colorado came up with a plot for a book; unicellular life appeared on a rocky planet circling Tau Ceti; a blue giant in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud went nova; and former Beatle Paul McCartney, sleeping peacefully with his arm around his wife Linda, began dreaming about sheep grazing in a pink field.
At 3:02:34 a giant hand reached in and brushed the sheep and the grass away. Paul found himself standing in a living room with a brown carpet and two black overstuffed chairs with footrests. Next to one of the chairs was a table with a bowl of potato chips, a Perrier, and a box of chocolate mints. Both chairs faced a wide-screen TV.
I wouldn't say no to a bit of telly, Paul thought, and looked around for a remote, but there wasn't one. He inspected the TV for an on button, but it didn't have one of those, either. Well, that's silly, dreaming up an un-turn-onable TV. I wonder what this is supposed to symbolize? Shrugging, he settled into the chair near the snacks.
As soon as he put his legs up and crossed them, the screen flickered to life. Cowboys, going hell-for-leather on pretty ponies, firing their six-guns back at whooping, painted Indians. After five seconds of this, the scene shifted to a pair of Roman gladiators whaling away at each other with swords. Five seconds later, a knight in chainmail dodged a stream of flame from a dragon's mouth. And so on, each scene different, but all showing men having adventure.
The constantly changing scene bothered Paul's sense of continuity, and he got up to take a second look around for a way to control the TV (which, he noted, did not turn off when his body left the chair). He searched among the snacks and dug in the chairs, inspected every inch of the TV, peered under the furniture in case the remote had fallen on the floor. Nothing. Oh, well. He sat again and munched on a handful of chips, washing them down with Perrier and chiding himself for being unable to dream up a coherent show.
Then he sensed a presence and looked at the other chair. A faint blob of light appeared in it and expanded into a glowing humanoid shape sitting with its legs on the footrest. It had no facial features or details of any type.
"Hi," said the figure--at least, a male voice issued from its "head"; no mouth opened. It gestured at the TV with a mitten of a hand. "Enjoying the movie?"
"No," said Paul. "It's a bit too helter-skelter."
"We thought you'd get a kick out of it," the figure began cheerfully. "It's - " The penny dropped. "Oh. You don't?"
Paul smiled tolerantly. "Wrong answer, then? Would it help if I changed it to, ‘Smashing! Couldn't be better'?"
"Uh, yeah," the figure mumbled, flushing red along the length of its "body." "Sorry. Guess I should have written that other script after all. Do you mind if we start over?"
"Not at all. Let's start from `Smashing, couldn't be better.'"
"Thanks. We thought you'd get a kick out of it. You've done quite a bit over the years, but you never did these things. Did you ever dream about doing them? I mean, do you ever watch a science fic-tion movie or read a fantasy and go, `Boy, I'd like to do that'?"
"Sure, everyone does." Paul watched a party of men in space suits explore a deserted space sta-tion, lasers out and ready. "By the way, if it isn't too far off the script, who are you?"
"That we thought you might ask. My name's Varx." They shook hands. For Paul it was like clutching a stiff breeze. "I'm an alien."
This dream is really getting interesting, thought Paul. "That's cool. Are you invading Earth?"
"Gods, no! Who'd want it? Besides, there are only two of—three of us. Be hard, you know?"
"Mmm." Paul cocked his head at the figure. "You don't sound like an alien."
"What does an alien sound like?" Varx shot back.
With a grin, Paul pointed his finger at the being. "Touché. Anyway, what's up? Am I supposed to pass along a Message from Space?"
"No. Look, I don't have a lot of time, so I'll get right to the point: how would you like to go on a great adventure?"
Mingled fear and excitement welled up in Paul. "Is this one of those Alien Abductions where you're gonna do tests on me?"
"No, when I said adventure, I meant adventure. You're going to be on another planet."
Paul rubbed his chin and ate a handful of chips so he could think. Should he resist the temptation, thus proving that life was satisfactory, or give into it and perhaps acknowledge an underlying discontent? Finally he asked, "What planet?"
"Does it make a difference?" Varx said sarcastically. "How many have you been to recently?" Then it cocked its head, listening to something else. "Could you hurry up? I've got three more of these visits to make, and I also have to write that other script."
"Well, now," Paul said with deliberate slowness, "I can't just rush into this." He steepled his fingers and winked at the figure. "I need to know what you've got planned for me, 'cause I wouldn't fancy, say, the Moon. A bit hard to breathe there, y'know."
"Don't worry about that. We've got a nice oxygen planet all picked out. Yes or no?"
"Just me, or the whole family? Wouldn't want the wife and kids falling in a black hole."
"Just you, but you'll have company. Come on, it'll be fun."
Paul shrugged. "What good's a dream if you don't join in? Count me in. But it had better be fun." He waggled a finger. "Otherwise I'll be quite put out."
"Great!" Leaning over the sides of the chairs, they shook hands again. Then the glowing figure got to its feet. "After you've gone back to sleep, we'll send you off. Oh, by the way," it added in an elaborately offhand voice, "did I mention that this wasn't a dream?"
Paul's grin faded into puzzlement.
Varx snickered. "But it doesn't matter, because you won't remember this conversation anyway. It kind of goes against what we're trying to do. Bye!"
"Hey, wait!" Paul cried, grabbing for the figure’s arm. But his hand encountered only air.
Everything faded to black.
"... up, Paul! Get the fuck up!" Hands gripped Paul's upper arms and jiggled his body.
"Mmph? Whazzamadder?" Paul mumbled, struggling to open his eyes--"Ow!" Bright light smacked him in the face, and everything sizzled out of focus. Heart thumping wildly, he sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes and cleaning away the crusty things, then blinked, getting used to the light. A figure before him sharpened—and Paul gaped.
John Lennon knelt next to him, staring through granny glasses. "About fuckin' time," he muttered, wiping the back of his hand across his brow. Very young he looked in a Beatle haircut, white T-shirt, and blue jeans.
"Jesus Christ, what are you doing here?" Paul blurted. Then he caught himself and said contritely, "Sorry, mate, that came out wrong. Been years, y'know—"
"Where the fuck are we, Paul?" John interrupted, voice high-pitched and rapid. His pale, narrow face was framed by sunlit chestnut hair that played around his forehead in the breeze.
"Huh?" Still a little fogged by sleep, Paul struggled to make sense of everything. "Are y- "
Sunlight?
Breeze?
Grass? SKY? CLOUDS?
"Gak!" Paul twisted wildly around. "How'd I get outside?"
He and John sat in the grass at the edge of a birch forest, looking out at a meadow dotted with purple and yellow wildflowers. About 50 yards away the grass thinned into a ribbon of white beach limning an ocean or large lake. To Paul's right, the trees gradually marched almost up to the beach; to his left, they angled back as if retreating from the encroaching meadow. He turned his head to see how far back the forest went; farther than he could see, anyway. The air smelled of salt, with hints of flowers and rotting vegetation, and seagulls wheeled and cried in the distance. The morning moon, a crescent sinking into the water like a giant hook poised to catch Leviathan, barely blemished the rich blue sky.
It was quite a pleasant place, really, ideal for a family picnic or a romp with a big dog.
But Paul had no business being there.
Nor should he have been dressed, but he was, in clothes identical to John's: T-shirt, jeans, and white socks and sneakers. Also, his hair felt wrong, too short; running his hands through it, Paul guessed that someone had given him a Beatle cut.
With a final incredulous glance around, he confronted John, who was even paler than before. "What the hell is going on?"
"Oh, nothin' much," John said, "just we seem to've been kidnapped and put in this bloody field in the middle of nowhere." Suddenly he grabbed Paul's shoulders. "Tell me where we are! Please tell me you know where we are! Are we in England?" Without waiting for an answer he pushed away from Paul, put his head in his hands, and rocked back and forth, moaning softly, "Oh God, this ain't real, don't let this be real."
"Oh, Jesus." For a moment Paul was so scared that his brain seemed to vanish; but then it came back with a vengeance. His baby face set into uncharacteristically hard lines. "You son of a bitch! How dare you kidnap me like this?"
John looked up. "What?"
"This was one of Yoko's little 'instructions,' right? Don't you have better sense than to do everything she says?" Paul grabbed John's hand. "You take me home right now or I'll slap you with the biggest lawsuit you ever saw!"
John jerked his hand back and scrambled to his feet. "I don't believe this. I do not fuckin' believe this. You think I set this up?"
Paul got up slowly. "I knew you were mad, but this just tops it all. What are you trying to pull with this stunt? Some kind of happening? Or is this like that Rape movie you did once? If you're filming this - " He peered into the forest, looking for a hidden camera crew, and something caught his eye. He walked to a bush in the forest and pulled out a pair of acoustic guitars hidden within, then turned back to John and called, "Is this your way of telling me you want to get back together? Couldn't you have just asked? Or was that too boring for you?"
John was visibly startled by the guitars. The color that the anger had put in his cheeks drained away. He took a deep, shuddering breath. "Paul, think for a minute. Think. How could I have put us here? How could I? What d'ye think I did, drug you in your bed? Please." He was near tears. "We've gotta go after the real criminals, not each other! We're both pawns in this fuckin' game!"
"Bravo." Paul slapped one of the guitars lightly against his thigh by way of applause. "You always were a good actor. Here." He tossed the guitars in John's direction; they made twin thunk-twangs as they hit the ground. "If you'd asked like a normal fella I might've said yes."
Thereupon Paul turned his back on John and walked along the edge of the forest, still looking for the camera crew, who were no doubt sniggering over their wonderful trick. Well, let's see how loud they laugh after I've got home. God, Linda must be worried sick. (Unless she'd cooperated with John in this mad venture... but that didn't bear thinking about.)
After about five minutes of finding nothing, Paul thought, Well, either they're so far back in that I can't see them from here, or I've guessed wrong and they're set up in the meadow or on the beach somewhere. John knows, and he glanced angrily back at his ex-partner, who hadn't moved a muscle except to watch Paul. But Paul wasn't ready to ask John anything yet; he felt like he'd win a point if he found the camera crew on his own. They must be on the beach, he decided, and he tramped through the grass down to the sand, hoping to catch a glimpse of something: the gleam of sunlight off chrome, a belatedly ducking head. He also wanted to get a sense of the lay of the land; if he could figure out where they were, or at least find a building, he might be able to walk out of this insanity entirely, call a cab or the police or something.
But he didn't see a building or a camera crew on the flat white sands as he stood atop the small eroded rise that separated meadow from beach. In fact, the stretch of beach was absolutely pristine: the sand was strewn with shells, driftwood, and seaweed, but no trash or footprints. Not so much as an airplane contrail marred the scene. I must be on something John owns, and black thoughts drifted through Paul's head, for John would certainly have put paid to any phones nearby.
He turned to fix the distant John—who wasn't so distant any more, having started towards Paul—with a vicious glare, but his gaze went upward instead, traveling to the top of a domelike structure that was visible just over the trees to his right. Aha! he thought triumphantly—which turned into a disgruntled Damn when he realized he was just looking at the top of the full moon....
The full moon?
Over the forest?
Paul whirled around to face the ocean.
If he'd been drinking water, he would have spit it out. He froze so violently he almost fell over. "Uh... uh... uh..." he whimpered.
"Oh, for fuck's sake, what's the matter now?" John said behind him. "Did somethin' finally butter that thick loaf of yours?"
Paul pointed a shaking hand at the moon over the water.
"What, the moon? I always knew you were a lunatic, but—"
Unable to turn around, Paul pointed another shaking hand to his left, at the trees.
So the baffled John turned to look—
"Jesus fucking Christ!" he screamed, and he leaped backwards, knocking himself and Paul down the rise. He landed on his rear in the sand; Paul sprawled face forward.
Jolted out of his trance, Paul scrambled to his knees and clutched at John, the last familiar thing in the universe. "Whereinhell are we?"
"I don't know! Oh God, I don't know!" John cried, hugging Paul tight.
Then all words were swept away in a tornado of screaming....
"Right," John whispered, "I think that proves I didn't do this."
Paul blinked. "Yeah."
Wetness on John's hand made him notice he was shredding Paul, and he disengaged his nails from Paul's arm. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah." Paul seemed oblivious to the damage. John's shirt was tight between Paul's fingers, but Paul let go, his hand drifting up to touch his chin, when John gently pulled away.
I hope he's okay, John thought. I hope I'm okay. I feel okay. That must mean I'm not. Noticing that Paul's blood had messed up his fingernails, John got up and walked to the edge of the water, swished his hand around. As he straightened up, dripping, he realized I have to go to the toilet. I wonder if there are toilets on this planet. He glanced vaguely about for a restaurant or a Port-O-San. Then he found himself rubbing his wet hand on his shirt. "Who dressed us?" he said aloud, and pulled off the shirt to get a better look at it. Nothing indicated its origin, not even a label. "Hope it don't need to be dry cleaned," he murmured, wiping his glasses on it before putting it back on. His shoes and socks were equally generic, and he didn't feel like checking his jeans. With nothing left to do, he returned to Paul, sat cross-legged, and began to dibble a hole in the sand.
Withdrawing his hand from the hole and wiping it on his pants, John said, "Yeah, looks like."
"Or I've gone completely mad."
"Either you have or I have." John grinned weakly. "I hope it's you and I'm just a figment of your imagination."
Paul sat, deciding. Finally he said, "I'm pretty sure it's real," and turned away from the moons, locked eyes with John. "It's either real or it's not, right?"
"Right, I think that covers all the options."
"Well, I read a book where the hero got bunged into a real world, but he just thought he was going mad."
"Yeah, so?"
"So he almost got killed. I think we'd better assume it's real, 'cause if it is and we think it isn't and we run into something that wants to eat us and we think `Oh, nothing can hurt us, it's just a mad fantasy—'" Here Paul had to take a breath.
John giggled. "So I shouldn't tell Darth Vader to fuck off if he pushes us around. If he's around here."
"Wouldn't that be lovely," Paul muttered. "God, what could be around here?"
"Us!" John jumped to his feet and pounded on his chest, breathed deeply of the fresh air. "What a nice day. What say we suss out the sand? I'd fancy a bit of breakfast."
"How can you be hungry at a time like this?" Paul put his chin in his hands; then his eyes widened, and he patted his face. "Why didn't I notice—I've been shaved!"
John explored his own smooth face. "Well, we got the whole potato, didn't we? New clothes, haircuts, shaves.... suppose we gotta look pretty to be eaten. Messy people probably make aliens fart. So how about brekky, then?"
"I'm in no great hurry to find out what's out there," murmured Paul. Nevertheless, he got to his feet and walked back to retrieve the guitars—no sense abandoning the only things they had in the world. If nothing else, they could serve as clubs. John saluted him as he returned, accepted a guitar, and marched off up the beach, with the trees and the round moon off to their left and the water and the crescent moon to the right. Paul plodded along behind, looking at the ground.
After some minutes of water and sand, during which the round moon vanished below the trees and the crescent moon rose and began to fade into the daylight, the gauze clogging Paul's brain began to unwrap. His thoughts became keener, his head lifted, he walked faster, and he noticed things: great leafy bushes growing in the sand, about waist high and rather like giant heads of lettuce; the click, click of a falling oyster as a patient brown bird dropped it again and again on a half-buried rock to break it open; the suspicious gaze of a jackrabbit standing on the rise, whiskers quivering, watching the strangers pass; and John humming Magical Mystery Tour.
Paul drew abreast of John to study his face. John batted his eyelashes at him and continued to hum. He's gone mad, Paul thought, dropping back. Can't blame him. I do wish Linda were here instead of him. Still, I'd rather be here with a daft John than by myself.
You know, I wouldn't really mind seeing an alien or a troll or something. Paul cringed a little, half expecting one to materialize at his request. When nothing happened, he continued in a bolder tone of thought, Not close up, of course, at a distance, but wouldn't that be something? I'd be the only Earth person to know they really exist—well, John too. Don't think it's worth dying for, but if there was some safe way—d
John stopped at a lettuce-bush. "Half a tick, I gotta take a pee."
"Is it safe?" Paul said, daring to poke the alien leaves with the toe of his shoe. "Maybe these are the people."
"Well, they should like what I'm gonna give 'em, then."
When the plant didn't rise up and consume John, Paul emptied his own bladder as well, commenting "It seems so weird to have to pee here. I mean, nobody ever does on Star Trek or in Lord of the Rings or any of those places. It just seems a bit crass."
John snorted. "Maybe they don't water the crass in fiction, but they do in real life."
They zipped up and resumed their trek. Paul watched for alien traces: saucers in the sky, hands with swords reaching from the water, giants emerging from the castle. Thus, he was the first to see two humanoid shapes approaching from the meadow. A shock of fear went through him, but it melted away when one of the figures hoisted a guitar.
"We are not alone," John intoned solemnly, raising his guitar in reply.
Paul and John stopped short. That really was Beatle Ringo bearing down on them, face clear and unlined, the gray streak in his hair stark against the brown. And George was no longer the weathered hippie millionaire in the Gothic mansion, but a beardless boy with cheek in a garage band.
John's normally half-lidded eyes were very big. "Jesus, they're bloody kids."
"They must've been taken from our past," breathed Paul, a little dizzy, "or they've drunk from the Fountain of --"
Alarms went off in their heads at the same moment.
They slowly turned to face each other.
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