18. BLINKY’S BLUNDER

THE CASE OF MERCURY RISING, 18

It took an unbelievably long time for us to get anywhere near the orbit of Venus, and during that unbelievably long time very little else was said about the butterfly-like females in what we’d nick-named the hulk, a rusted old vessel with a green winged pilot who seemed to know exactly where the thing was going, and the best way of getting there. It’s route slowly varied from our own because it was supposed to be landing on Venus, and we weren’t. Our route took us on a swing round that planet and on a direct route to Mercury, and nothing was to be allowed to get in our way.

“I’d like to have got to know Mistress Flutterby a little bit more,” said Angelina to me one morning when her craft was finally out of our vision.

“Her lot seem to have found a better way through life than we have,” I remarked, “seeing as they’ve got no word for war.”

“And their love life … I bet you wouldn’t fancy being one of their males,” grinned the love of my life.

“It does seem a bit … boring,” I told her, “living in the dark and only mating, how often?”

“Every time one of the femmes fancied it, I suppose,” she grinned, “and if it was me it would be quite often, but they seem to fancy a bit of the other only when they feel the need to breed!”

“I don’t know. How many ladies would you reckon were on that globe?” I asked.

It transpired that we had no idea, so I asked Mercury Rising.

“They never said,” was his reply, “and although I gleaned quite a lot of technical information, that was one thing I left out. Silly me, and now I guess we’ll never know.”

“I don’t suppose it matters,” I grunted.

“Yet, if it’s any help in solving your little conundrum, I did ascertain that sometime the duration of a sleep by the males can be in excess of an Earth decade,” he said, “I thought that a useful fact and probably explains their fondness for peace.”

“A decade? Dreaming? And then wake up, biff, bang, hello girls, goodbye lasses, and back to sleep? Not much of a life,” I muttered.

“There’s no evidence that they dream at all,” the computer told me, “though the females live quite an active life by the sound of it. They seem to have found many fascinating ways of combatting the monotony of years in space.”

“There can’t much to be active about,” said Angelina, “stuck in a rusted hulk for year after year and nowhere to go.”

“You’d be surprised,” was all that Mercury Rising said, and I was about to ask it what it meant when there was the sound of the radio alarm and Igor’s voice came through the air to us, clear as a bell despite the distance separating us. We were to find, though, that there were quite lengthy pauses in a back and forward conversation due to the simple fact that it took around three minutes for radio signals to reach us from Earth, and a corresponding three minutes for our reply to reach Igor.

“Hello friends,” he said, “please switch to video and face the monitor where there is a camera, during our conversation, for we like to see the people we’re talking to.”

We did as he suggested and waited for Igor’s bearded and excessively hairy face to appear.

But it was Blinky’s face, and not Igor’s when it put in an appearance on the monitor screen. Blinky Curmudgeon was the owner and boss of the outfit Angelina and I worked for, a detective agency which so far had done precious little true detecting. He looked uncertain of himself and I was sure he was on the cusp of losing his vision in one of his occasional bouts of total blindness, but was struggling against it.

“I can see you,” he said, “and I am here to warn you. Igor is monitoring your voyage through the Universe...” Blinky was always prone to exaggeration... “and has detected another non-natural metal object in Venus orbit.”

For the sake of easier comprehension I’ll make no reference to the lengthy pauses but treat this as a back and forth normal conversation.

“That’ll be Mistress Flutterby,” I said, glad for once that I had information that he didn’t.

“What in the name of goodness is Mistress Flutterby?” demanded Blinky, “I hope you haven’t picked up any wild women on your travels!”

“The only wild woman I’ve got is our Angelina, and she’s quite woman enough for me!” I told him, “but our paths have crossed with a non-terrestrial vessel peopled by huge and possibly man-sized green butterfly alien people. And they’re all female...” And I went on to explain about our meeting with the strange aliens, and to my surprise Blinky became quite disturbed.

“You should have blasted them out of the skies!” he roared as he struggled to keep his eyesight functioning, and little did he know that was the biggest blunder of his life.

“What?” I demanded, “we meet a truly peaceful and totally unwarlike group of sentient beings and, no questions asked, we blast them?”

“If they’re alien they can’t be up to any good,” he replied, “you must know that! Haven’t you watched Doctor Who? Don’t you know there is almost endless evil out there in the Universe? What about the Daleks?”

“Blinky,” said Angelina, smiling that bewitching smile of hers, “if I thought you meant one syllable of that tirade I’d screw your balls off when we return!”

Blinky was at a loss. He’d always been confused by Angelina. When he’d first met her his eyesight had been on the blink permanently and he had judged, somehow, from her voice and her general efficiency that she was a truly old woman who needed to be handled with kid gloves, and then, when his eyesight returned on the spasmodic basis that he had to get used to because it was better than not at all, he rather fancied her in the way that older men often find they fancy pretty young secretaries, but daren’t show it. But any mention by her of his genitalia and possible assaulting them had him flummoxed.

“Miss Parr!” he stammered.

“I mean it, Blinky,” she said, “we meet a real species advocating peace and love and who have no word in their language for things like war and anger and mutilating others, and you want us to destroy them?”

“But… but we’ll have none of that leftie talk here! You’d have us going back to the sixties and their peace rallies and love-ins, with naked bodies intertwining with each other in muddy fields and guns and bombs banned!” His voice was a lot less certain than his words, though. In truth, Blinky was a thoroughly decent man who had a penchant for pretty women, but he was a product of an era when the reality of some things, like war, were immutable.

“I would have us living in peace,” replied Angelina, “and the butterfly people seem to have solved that one. They make their menfolk sleep for centuries and only use them for breeding. No more testosterone, Blinky, and no more violence, no more war and no need for guns to backfire into a man’s face. Remember, women are from Venus!”

Blinky’s vision problems were the result of an accident at the police firing range, and I’ve no doubt that last point made by Angelina went home, because Igor’s face replaced Blinky’s on the monitor.

“Don’t worry,” he said, “there are no guns on board Mercury Rising! Now you’re slipping out of range, behind the planet...”

And his face faded, the sound became a background hiss of white noise and communication with home was gone.

“Well, well, well,” I said, “fancy Blinky being such a warmonger!”

“And fancy us not having any guns,” murmured Angelina, “because if we haven’t any guns how are we going to blast Igor’s diamonds at the sun?”

I looked at her and shook my head. “I’ve no idea,” I said, “don’t tell me that, despite his mighty IQ, Igor’s forgotten something?”

© Peter Rogerson 01.03.20