Rock n Roll Babes from Outer Space (32 page)

‘Who’s caught up to us? What are you talking about?’ Baby tried to speak the words without guilt, but she wasn’t feeling too innocent. She’d deliberately not said a word to the others about Zyggo. Would you change your life just because some big bug blundered up while you were tripping, claimed to be your cousin and told you to skedaddle? On the other hand, as she told Jake, she was geting ready to pack her bags. Or would be. If she had bags. Who has bags anymore, anyway?

‘Daddy Pop. Captain Qwerk himself. He’s on his way
to recapture us. I don’t think it’s going to be pretty.’

‘What makes you think he’s here?’ Lati asked.

‘They’ve contacted Mum,’ said Doll. ‘Now, by my calculations, we’ve got just enough time to finish the concert and then beat it out of here. I covered the saucer with Enigma Cream—used up our entire supply—and parked it by the side of the stage. It’ll probably start to wear off by the time we start the show, but that’s okay. I don’t think anyone will try to interfere then.’

‘Oh, God,’ whimpered Baby. ‘I need to see Jake.’

You’ll see him. Anyway, weren’t you just nattering on about getting a bit sick of the whole Earth gig? You’re not being very consistent.

‘A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.’

Emerson? You’re quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson to Me? I must say, I’m rather gobsmacked. I didn’t think you read.

I don’t. It’s a line from an Angel Pygar song.

Figures. About Jake. Surely, he’s coming to the concert?

Yes, but God, I need to see him right now.

You realise I spoil you girls.

Yes. And we love and worship you for it. We have no other God beside you rarara.

That’s what I like to hear. The second I hear of any funny business with false idols or golden calves or anything like that you’re on your own.

Understood. Thank you. Oh thank you thank you thank you.

Saturna and Skye were dressed and ready to go. They stood in the doorway of the lounge impatiently tapping
their feet and looking at imaginary watches as the twins performed their ritualistic pre-concert toke-up.

‘You know what I think,’ remarked Skye to Saturna, loud enough for the others to hear. ‘I think that the boys smoke dope to excess as a way of avoiding the intensity of life, of facing up to their feelings about things.’

‘That’s bullshit,’ retorted Torquil, trying to think why. ‘Dope, uh, intensifies the intensity,’ he hazarded. ‘Yeah. Of life.’

‘Yeah,’ agreed Tristram, exhaling. ‘You really face up to your feelings. It’s like, you see the real face of your feelings.’ He was onto something here. ‘The nose and eyes and mouth of your feelings. You can smell them. Real as.’

A silence followed. Impatient on the part of Skye and Saturna, philosophical on the part of the twins. ‘What were we talking about?’ asked Torquil, perplexed.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Tristram, inhaling, getting paranoid, thinking, why does Saturna always wear
purple
? What does it
mean
? Is it because she doesn’t like me?

‘Where’s Jake?’ demanded Skye, drumming her fingers on the banister.

‘He, uh.’

‘He, uh, went upstairs to find a sock,’ Torquil finished his brother’s sentence.

‘A sock,’ noted Skye.

‘A sock,’ repeated Saturna dryly. She and Skye didn’t have any trouble with
their
socks.

‘Either of you got a spare sock?’ Jake called out from upstairs. ‘Mine all have egg on them.’

‘Wow,’ marvelled Torquil. ‘Did you hear that?
Egg?
That’s so cool.’

Tristram, on the other hand, didn’t like the sound of that
one little bit.
What was egg doing on Jake’s socks?
Whose egg was it? And why was Skye looking at him like that?

Jake appeared on the landing. Then, abruptly, right before their eyes and, to the accompaniment of a grand flourish of trumpets, he disappeared in a vortex of light.

‘Guess he, uh, decided to go on ahead,’ observed Torquil.

Ping! Jake suddenly found himself backstage.

‘I wish you guys wouldn’t do that,’ he said crankily, as Doll stifled a giggle. His Fuct t-shirt had come through inside-out and back-to-front.

Even God had his little jokes.

As Jake was putting his shirt back on, Baby pulled him to one side. ‘We have to talk.’

Oh no! Not again! But wasn’t everything going well? Like, well enough so that you didn’t have to talk about it?

‘It looks like we’re in a wee nano of trouble. It’s a long story, but the short version is that we’re going to have to make treks sooner than I expected.’

‘Tracks,’ Jake said, ever helpful. ‘Make tracks.’

‘No, treks. Star treks. They’ve sent a search party from our home planet. If they catch us they’ll force us to go back and who knows what they’ll do to us then. Punishmentville for sure. We’re going to have to take off right after the concert. If you want to come too,’ Baby offered casually, ‘you can. I don’t know where we’re going, exactly, and I don’t know how long we’ll be there, but I wouldn’t mind, you know, spending some quality continuum space-time with you.’ As she spoke she hung a plastic ID around his neck. It said ‘Rock n Roll Babes
from Outer Space: Access All Areas’. ‘There,’ she giggled, ‘it’s official.’

Jake was over the moon. ‘Yeah, great,’ he said. What the fuck was she talking about? Going where? Baby, don’t go.

‘Babes! Babes!’ The cheers for the Babes began halfway through the support band’s set. Outside the stadium people were pleading tearfully with the guards to let them in. There were no scalpers—no one who managed to get a ticket would have parted with it under any circumstances. The guards, bewitched by the Babes’ presence, let more people in than they should have. Like, maybe twenty or thirty thousand more. By the time the lights dimmed for the Babes, the crowd was hysterical with anticipation. The ambulance tent had already treated dozens of people for whiplash caused by overly boisterous Mexican waving. They’d given away thousands of condoms as the mere proximity of the Babes had brought on a veritable love frenzy.

A strobe projected millions of spinning stars onto a black backdrop. Comets shot through the night and a large hologram of the moon rose above the stage, inciting a great gasp of appreciation from the audience. Next, as lasers crisscrossed the sky, a spotlight came up over the drums to reveal Doll, in a sleeveless black leather minidress, black tights and knee-high boots, lightly brushing the cymbals. Lati then strode onto the stage in a lime green PVC catsuit, with thigh-high kelly-green patent leather boots, and picked up her bass. Her riffs were nearly drowned out by shrieks and screams and the
general roar of adulation and astonishment as Baby floated onstage in an anti-gravity space suit. Wrenching off the helmet and tossing it into the crowd, she shook free her tumbling mass of plaits and, still high above the stage, launched into their new hit single ‘Chaos is my Best Friend’. As she sang, she ripped off the spacesuit, limb by limb, in a space-age strip tease, just like Jane Fonda in
Barbarella,
only raunchier. The spacesuit had been filled with helium, and each part she removed floated up into the air above the stadium and then far away. Underneath, she was wearing a minidress made entirely of mirrors, like a disco ball. Her long legs were covered in sparkly black tights, ripped and torn specially for the occasion by Revor, and on her feet were a pair of specially made silver Blundstones. By the time she’d floated down to the stage and picked up her guitar, the mosh pit was steaming and bubbling like some great witches’ cauldron. The magic of the Babes was such that no stage diver ever came crashing to ground, no mosher ever copped a foot in the face, no girl was so much as touched up against her will and, despite the intensity of the mosh, no one suffered even a crushed toe or bruised rib.

Next, they played the ever-popular ‘Abduction’.

I wanna be your abductee,

Tied and captured and wild and free,

Oh darlin’ you were meant for me.

Prod me with your stethoscope

Stick me with needles—I can cope.

I wanna be your abductee

The crowd joined in on the chorus with an enthusiastic roar:

Tied and captured and wild and free!

A cheer went up when Revor hunched across the stage to take Doll an extra drumstick, the roadie’s roadie in a black t-shirt and sneakers, and with more keys on his belt than even Henry the mixer.

At some point in the fourth song, there was a sudden commotion. All eyes raised to the sky as Pallas descended, rockets blazing. The spaceship blinked and glowed. A strobe light swirled from the nose of the craft and swept the crowd.
‘HOOWEEE!’
screamed the punters. This was better than Voodoo Lounge and Zoo TV and Madonna put together!

A flock of Cherubim appeared next, close on the tail of Pallas, chittering and chattering in their spirally language like some insane loop on a dance track. Which is exactly what the crowd took it for. More cheers greeted the Cherubim, who flew hither and thither, flapping their wings madly, and shedding feathers over the fans, who enthusiastically scrambled to souvenir them.

The Channel Three news helicopter had arrived on the scene too, along with a rather distressed paraglider who’d got caught in the updraft.

Now the hatch on Pallas popped open and Qwerk appeared in the doorway. The last thing Captain Qwerk ever intended was to become a sideshow at a rock concert. He was trembling so violently that he sounded like someone attacking a giant gong with a hammer, a sound that blended in perfectly with Doll’s madcap drumming. Qwerk was rockin’ the groove.

Steadying himself, he stepped out now, a Lobot-a-tron semi-automatic pacifier in hand, and immediately shrunk back in horror at the sea of shrieking faces, tossing hair, waving fists and pogo-ing bodies, more hysteria and
erotic energy per square metre than he had imagined could be contained safely in the entire cosmos. And there on stage, the cause of all this insanity and chaos: the babes themselves.

‘Close Encounter You!’ screamed the punters, sure that these fabulous FX were the cue for that particular hit. Two teenage girls with pink and yellow mohawks broke through the barricades, dashed up to Qwerk, gave him a big smacking wet kiss on each cheek and then, flashing the victory sign to the cheering crowd, ran back into the mosh.

It was a Nufonian’s worst nightmare. This is what Nufonians like when they come to Earth: Nufonians like a discreet arrival, preferably on some lonely stretch of highway in the middle of the night, when they are least likely to disturb anyone. Meeting Earthlings, they like to keep a certain distance, for Nufonians cherish the notion of, and
this is not a pun,
personal space. They do not like to kiss Earthlings. Even the sex tends to be a bit clinical—recall, if you will, the laboratory-like feel of the sexual experimentation chamber. They always ask politely to be taken to Earthlings’ leaders, for they like going through proper channels.

Qwerk, unclinically smooched and improperly channelled, stood frozen as a teardrop on Pluto.