John Banks cast a critical eye around the overcrowded village hall. It hadn't been decorated for years and the walls were festooned with yellowed bits of sticky tape, hardened lumps of tacky putty and out-of-date posters. Strings from long-dead balloons dangled from the rafters above the heads of the villagers who crammed the hall. People were perched on every available seat, table, window sill and any other horizontal surface. Those who hadn't been lucky enough to get a seat stood at the back and sides. The hubbub of raised voices echoed off the walls and filled the confined space with noise.
Dora stood nearby, talking to a group of women.
She's taking all this in her stride.
He, on the other hand, felt he hadn't been coping well, what with the encounter with the debris creature being so confusing and the suspicion that Jones had manipulated him. He also had a growing sense that perhaps the people of Amblesby hadn't quite grasped the enormity of their situation. It was the little things like the sprinkling of colourful rosettes pinned to the clothing of certain members of the crowd as though this was some kind of election rally, a couple of pensioners with ancient gas-mask boxes on strings around their necks and Mrs Lacey from the bank in the high street taking a collection for the Red Cross.
Where was Jones? He couldn't see him anywhere.
It was time to start. He raised his arms above his head. "Quiet please!" he shouted. The noise gradually died away, and all eyes turned to him. "As Mr Jones suggested," he began, "we've gathered here to discuss what we should do next. I think it's only fair that the first thing we should sort out is who should be in charge during this crisis. It's all very well Jones nominating me, but I'm sure you would all feel better if we have a vote. I propose we elect four people. The first a quartermaster to oversee our supplies - food, tools and so on; the second to form a party to explore the surroundings outside the village and search for fresh water; the third to organise our defences; the fourth to find some way of meeting our energy needs, you know, generating electricity or something."
"What about getting us back to Earth?" shouted a voice from the centre of the hall. "Someone needs to sort that out." There was a murmur of agreement.
John scanned the faces in front of him, looking for who had spoken. His eyes settled on Peter Reeves. Tall and distinguished looking, Reeves had been one of the regular commuters on the trains to London that had, until a few hours ago, stopped at the little station near the river at the bottom end of the village.
"That's the most important job of all, and it's something everyone should be involved in," said John.
"But someone needs to coordinate it," said Reeves. "Otherwise no-one will bother or we'll be duplicating efforts because we're all doing the same things."
"All right, we'll also vote for a fifth person to coordinate the efforts for finding a way of returning us to Earth."
A sea of blank faces stared back at him. Only a few here and there were nodding or looking in the least concerned.
"OK, let's begin with nominations for quartermaster. Who would like to nominate someone to be in charge of rations?" There was silence, punctuated by a few coughs. "Anyone?"
In the front row, a hand went up.
"Yes, Mr Collins?" said John.
"Um, I don't want to nominate anyone. It's just that I was wondering how long it'll be before you get the televisions going again."
John closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
******
Stark fluorescent lighting bounced off the white walls of the bunker buried in the manor's foundations, sharply contrasting with the dark figure hunched over a grey metal table covered in papers and books. Montgomery-Jones pored over the unrolled sheets of the gazebo's building plans, his fingers stroking the black ink lines he'd so painstakingly drawn by hand. The corners of the plans were held down by forks, spoons and a half-drunk cup of tea. Also on the table were the stack of his wife's books he had used when he had originally researched the designs for the gazebo. They ranged in subject from alchemy, through pyramidology, crop circles and ley lines, to wicca and were all fairly new, apart from one old leather-bound volume with yellowed pages.
He gazed at the views on the plans with a faraway look on his face. Each precise drawing showed the gazebo from a different angle.
His heart swelled with pride. So this was the machine that had moved Amblesby to Hollow. How had it worked? The function had to be in the shape - the exact relationship of the gazebo's beams, supports, and occult ornamentation. Nothing else made sense. It had no moving parts, no electronics. It didn't even have electricity, for Heaven's sake.
There was no time to lose. He had to see what he could salvage from the damaged gazebo. Then the repairs could begin.
His eyes wandered over to the building materials next to his underground workshop door. Over the last couple of years, he'd spent many evenings scouring survivalist's websites for tips and instructions about what to stockpile for the upcoming nuclear war he was convinced would happen one day. There were neatly stacked piles of timber on pallets, steel lintels leaning against the wall, shelves bearing boxes of screws, nails, glues, plaster, cement and a myriad of other items, all stored for the day the manor was destroyed by a nuclear blast and a new home needed to be built.
That was all behind him now. His lips thinned in a satisfied smile. His secret hoard of building supplies was to be put to a much more productive and profitable use.
******
New feelings seared through Pip's mind. His comfortable existence, which had consisted of eating, sleeping, being cuddled by Mrs Dillinger and yapping at everyone and everything else, was being pushed aside by a compelling need to follow the rudimentary instructions forced into his skull. His tiny brain, unable to cope with the complexity, translated these instructions into the urge to explore, to seek out... what? A vague monochrome image of the blackened remains of the gazebo kept popping into his mind and it was this that had the strongest feelings associated with it. But far from providing him with a clear objective, he felt confused. The demands of thinking in a visual way, instead of the usual way of smells and sounds, was taking its toll on his already shaky sanity.
From his hiding place under the shed in Mr Klammer's garden, the craving to smell the picture in his head warred with his yearning to go home. To say he was being driven was as understated as saying Hannibal crossed the Alps. What was going on in Pip's mind was as unusual as Hannibal's epic crossing. And like Hannibal, Pip wasn't alone. But it wasn't an army he had with him, just a small artificial sub-personality, squeezed into his cramped cranium, watching and impelling him.
Pip could hear Mrs Dillinger calling him and a tiny part of him responded and wanted to go scuttling back into her ample arms, but overriding that now were the instructions crashing into his cortex.
Seek. Watch. Report.
******
"It... it can't be real. It's just so weird," said Toby. He slouched against a partial tree trunk that leaned towards the void. The trunk was sliced off cleanly directly above the cliff edge. The other two teenage boys, Julian and Scab, lay on their stomachs looking over the edge. All three were dressed in baggy denim jeans and hoodies. Scab, skateboard under his chest, kept flicking his thickly curled ginger hair out of his eyes.
Julian nodded. The sight that lay before them was too much for mere words. A whole alien world started at the foot of the cliff. It was... it was... it was begging to be explored.
"I dunno," said Scab. "People get abducted by aliens all the time. It's all over the internet." He coughed and spat over the edge. The boys watched the spinning phlegm until it disappeared.
"Yeah, right," said Toby, "Only on the weird sites you visit."
"This not the same as someone being abducted by aliens, Scab," said Julian. "This is a whole village. A few thousand people all at once. And the buildings and everything too. I've never heard of that happening before."
"Yeah. Me neither," said Toby, rubbing his chin. "It's like the Wild West. I reckon there's gonna be a lot of changes and we're the ones who are going to make them. We're going to start our own society. Chuck out the crap we thought we were gonna have to live with and start again. Like they did in the Wild West." He scratched his acned cheek. Blonde, straight hair stabbed from under his hoodie.
"That's supposing we don't get returned to Earth." Julian lifted his head and squinted into the distance. "Don't you think there's something strange about the horizon?" he said.
"That's cos we're on an alien planet, innit?" said Scab. "Everyone knows alien planets are weird."
"Don't be thick," said Toby. "I can see what he means. There isn't a horizon. The land just goes on and on, getting greyer, and sort of curves upwards."
"The sun's weird too," said Scab. "It's like one of those long light bulbs, you know, the ones they have in supermarkets and offices and stuff."
"Fluorescent bulb?"
"Yeah. One of those. Like the ends plug into something. You know."
"I think it looks like a lightsaber," said Toby. "But sort of yellowy-white, not green like Skywalker's."
"Skywalker's lightsaber was blue," said Scab.
"It was green, you moron," said Toby.
"Anyway, it's not like a lightsaber at all, dickhead," said Scab. "Lightsabers only have a handle at one end. This sun looks like it has handles at both ends."
"They're obviously not handles," said Julian. "But they must be holding the sun in place. I wonder how that works? How are the handles held in place themselves? I mean, you can't just anchor them in the sky."
His eyes went back to ground level and then slowly raised, following the land that curved upwards. The distant haze claimed the landscape, but not before a look of comprehension swept over Julian's face.
His jaw dropped.
"That's it," he whispered. "We're not on an alien planet. We're in one."