Rock n Roll Babes from Outer Space (24 page)

Inside the secret bowels of the Pentagon, close to where the small intestine of Offensive Strategy met the large intestine of Military Intelligence, stood a recessed and relatively inconspicuous door through which few people ever passed and behind which things transpired that Fox Mulder would have given his right arm—and Dana Scully’s as well—to find out about. Upon the door was drawn a logo which to the uninitiated eye might suggest a ban on frisbees. Below the logo, stencilled letters spelt out
CONSPIRASEE.

It was the headquarters of the highly hush-hush, much feared Central Organisation for the Non-civilian Secret Project Involving the Restraint of Aliens, Starpeople and other Extraterrestrial Exotics. The offices behind the inconspicuous door were far from humble. They featured an extensive library, a bank of computers and a
well-equipped laboratory with a setup not dissimilar to the sexual experimentation chamber on Galgal. One of the things You Wouldn’t Want to Know was what lay in the smallish coffin-like containers stacked in the refrigerator cabinet that dominated an entire wall of the room. The only decorations were Wanted posters with pictures and descriptions of ET, assorted Klingons and Captain Qwerk.

When the phone rang the man in charge of
CONSPIRASEE,
General ‘Jackal’ Mikeson, was studying a television advertisement that appeared to feature actual alien actors. Putting the vid on pause, he hit the button on his speaker phone. He settled his big armyman’s frame into his leather swivel chair and jutted his enormous Roger Ramjet chin at the speaker. ‘Mikeson,’ he barked.

‘Bo Davidey. Public Relations.’

Mikeson was not particularly committed to a relationship with the public. He picked up a dart from an ashtray and threw it at the poster of Qwerk. It landed right in the middle of Qwerk’s bulbous forehead. ‘Yes, Davidey,’ he said. ‘What is it this time?’ He picked up another dart. ‘I haven’t got all day.’

‘Ever hear of a group called, uh, let me just check my notes, right, “Persons Aware of the Reality of Alien Networks for Organised Interplanetary Destruction”?’

Mikeson rolled his eyes. ‘
PARANOID
. Nutcases, the lot of them.’

‘That’s a bit harsh.’

Mikeson shrugged his broad armyman’s shoulders. ‘You can spell, Davidey.’ He picked his nose and examined the findings for alien spore.

‘I’ve got a journalist from
Time
who wants some comment on the group’s allegations that the military is
suppressing information on alien contacts.’

‘Deny it. Completely.’ Mikeson couldn’t believe these guys in PR sometimes. That place was a real lights-are-onbut-no-one’s-at-home scenario. Duh, he mouthed at the receiver.

‘No other comment?’

‘No. That all?’

‘Well, there’s one other thing, actually. I don’t know if you really want to bother with this one. But there are some scattered reports from our spies in Sydney that a rash of green-skinned female aliens have landed and, uh, formed a rock band.’

‘Green-skinned female aliens. A rock band.’ Mikeson rolled his eyes again. ‘And you want a comment?’

‘If you—’

‘I don’t.’

‘All right. No problem. Thanks, General.’

‘Pleasure.’ A
rock band
for Christ’s sake. Where the fuck was Sydney anyway? And what kind of name was that for a place? ‘I come from
Sydney
?’

Gimme a break.

‘Hot as,’ complained Tristram, wiping his brow on the sleeve of his Karen Carpenter t-shirt. Summer was a sauna in Newtown. Goths suffered most in their unrelenting black. But it was not the done thing for anyone in Newtown to wear white, even in summer. Oh, sure, the yuppies who were energetically attempting to gentrify the place—they wore white. But they weren’t
really
Newtown. They didn’t count.

‘It would help if you didn’t have the oven on, you
know,’ remarked Saturna, who’d just popped back home from the shop to fetch her knitting needles and wool—a regular customer at Phantasma was having a baby and wanted a black bonnet and booties.

‘You can’t bake hash brownies without turning the oven on,’ Torq argued reasonably. ‘No pain, no gain.’ They watched the wall above the stove blacken with cockroaches. Turning on the oven always got the roaches going.

‘Arthropodic as,’ remarked Lati, impressed.

Tristram and Torquil gazed besottedly at Lati. Sometimes she made
no
sense whatsoever.

Saturna shook her head in dismay and exited, fanning herself with a black lace fan. She and Skye adored Doll, of course, but they really couldn’t understand why the other aliens, who were girls too after all, encouraged the boys in their worst habits and strange humour.

‘You know, it’d really make a difference if we had demos to send around,’ Jake said. She wouldn’t really, you know, be doing the
thing
with Ebola Van Axel, would she? Getting the two bands on the road as soon as possible, it had occurred to him, was an excellent way of taking her away from that troll.

‘So? Let’s make demos then.’ Baby was agreeable. Was it her imagination or was Jake avoiding her eyes?

‘Not that easy,’ Jake said. He glanced at the twins. They’d agreed to present their plan to the babes together. But when Jake looked at him, Tristram contemplated the ceiling and paradiddled the table with his hands. Rightleftrightrightleftrightleftleft. Torquil scrutinised the table and paradiddlediddled his chair. Rightleftrightrightleftleft. Percussive types could always find something to do when things got awkward.
‘Why not?’ Baby asked. ‘Is there some sort of insurmountable popsicle or something?’

‘That’s “obstacle”. Sort of.’

The girls had already read the boys’ minds. They knew they were about to be hit up for dough. They didn’t care. They were perfectly happy to shell out. Abducting money was easy. They were just enjoying watching the boys squirm.

They creased their pretty brows and tilted their heads in a perfect imitation of Earthling befuddlement. ‘Well?’ questioned Lati. ‘What is it?’

‘Money,’ Jake blurted out with uncharacteristic nervousness. ‘You know,’ he blundered on, ‘for the studio and stuff.’ Jake paused. He felt like
such
a con artist. Yet it was a perfectly legitimate proposition. He was doing this for them, too, after all.

‘Yes, we know,’ chuckled Baby. ‘And we appreciate it.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Never mind.’ Doll emptied her pockets and dumped several fat wads onto the table. ‘How much do we need?’

‘That’s a good start,’ whewed Torquil. ‘That’s a very good start.’

Jake mailed the two CDs to venues along the east coast and then followed up with phone calls. When he wasn’t on the blower, he was under Kate hammering her into shape for the tour. Ow! Ow!
Easy
on the exhaust pipe.

The girls had a word to the abductees. They’d look after the saucer with the groupies. There’d been an emotional scene with Ebola, who’d pleaded to be allowed to come along as a roadie. A mixer. Anything. They’d
already asked Henry to come with them. Anyway, there was no way that Jake was going to put up with Ebola on tour.

The twins, on the other hand, thought that it would be hysterical. ‘Now what do you know about being a roadie, Ebola?’ they teased him.

‘Everything,’ he answered earnestly. ‘I know the roadie’s credo off by heart.’

‘What’s that, Eb?’

Ebola puffed himself up and recited, ‘If it’s wet, drink it, if it’s dry, smoke it, if it moves, fuck it, if it doesn’t, throw it in the truck.’

The twins looked at each other. The guy was serious.

In the end, Baby managed to appease Eb with one of her magic smiles and the promise that, upon return, she’d let him kiss her feet for a whole ten minutes—without boots.

The bookers for the various venues, upon receiving the demos, put the Babes’ CD on continual replay, and made love with whoever or whatever was available—boyfriends, girlfriends, neighbours, pets, television sets—for hours on end. It took days for them to remember to get back to work. Then the first thing they did was call and say they were megamega-keen to have the Babes. And they didn’t really mind
who
supported them. Bosnia, whatever.

‘We’ll have heaps of time to talk when we get back, George. Promise.’ Baby waved goodbye to George. He’d
wanted to have a talk with the babes about the end of the world before they left, but they kept putting him off. Young people. Always in a hurry. Young aliens, it seemed, were no different. What could you do? George waddled back over to his place.

Baby folded her large frame into the front seat of the Kombi next to Jake, who was at the wheel, revving up. The others were all in the back with the gear. ‘Let’s vehiculate!’ she whooped, pulling the door shut after her. The door promptly fell off its hinges.
Ouch,
whimpered Kate. That
hurt
.

‘
Shit
,’ said Jake, stepping out to have a look. ‘I was expecting a bit of strife, but I was fairly confident she’d at least make it out of the drive.’ He kicked the bumper in frustration.

Now was that any way to treat a lady? Kate had been stressing out badly ever since the trip had been mooted that night at the Annandale.

Doll rummaged in her bag and came up with a roll of Bind-a-Bean. She hopped out and taped up the door. That seemed to work.