"Two score and thirteen years ago a child was born on that bloody planet. It was two months premature and three pounds underweight. Its' mother died during delivery from complications caused by heavy smoking. The father blamed the child for the mother's death.
The dangers of smoking and childbirth weren't fully understood in those days.
Naturally the older siblings adopted their father's view and also blamed the new-born child for causing their mother's death. Subsequently the child was reared as a pariah on the periphery of a socially inadequate single-parent family. It never ever felt a mother's caress. Inevitably the child grew up dysfunctional and at the age of six was discovered to be a transvestite-"
"Wait a minute. Good God! Are you trying to tell me you're a man?"
"Will you let me continue please." She retorted angrily. "This is painful enough without going into details and I can only get through it in one go."
"Sorry. It's just that-"
"Be quiet please!" She snapped before pausing to continue her harrowing monologue.
"At eight, because of its overwhelming urges to wear pretty frocks and frilly knickers, the child was put into care on with the agreement of its father. It was deemed 'Beyond Parental Control and Diagnosed as a deviant. Nobody wanted to adopt or foster a transvestite child. The betrayal was complete.
For the next two and a half years that child was systematically beaten, tortured, raped and eventually maimed."
(Here she gave the bangle on her left hand a sudden twist and to my sickening amazement her left hand came off. She held out the stump for me to study the myriad tiny connections but I was already too nauseous with shock to react. Unaffected by my nausea, she carried on talking.)
"That's an artificial limb but I'll tell you more of that later. For now it's sufficient to say that the child's hand was severed when it was ten years old.
Just before its twelfth birthday that child came to the brutally cruel conclusion that its life was destined to be short. It was set to be the lead player in a paedophile snuff movie for the sexual gratification of the perverts who regularly visited the care home. The prospect of snuffing out the life of a little blond haired transvestite was quite delightful for the paedophiles. After all, what harm was there in removing a piece of perverted transvestite scum? It had no right to exist in a world of decent people. The child realised that unless it took some pretty drastic action it possibly wouldn't see its fourteenth birthday and definitely not its sixteenth birthday. It could never be allowed to bear witness to what happened in that home.
On Christmas Eve, that child absconded from care while the snow lay two feet deep and the thermometer read five degrees below.
After floundering for miles it eventually flung itself into the freezing raging waters of the River Severn and emerged half dead on the Welsh bank nearly a mile down stream. The child is still uncertain to this day if that plunge was an act of desperation or attempted suicide.
Following a near fatal night spent in a hay barn, the child finally made it into the hills and for six months lived like some feral arctic predator. It survived by stealing chickens and eggs and vegetables from farms and fields and eating them raw. It stole from shops and clothes lines- anything anywhere, just to keep body and soul together.
An existence like that concentrates the mind of twelve-year-old child exquisitely. It developed a depth of reasoning and a lucidity of perception far beyond the parameters of normal human understanding. Forced to live were a single slip could send it plunging to destruction, the child somehow developed an intimate relationship with gravity. Forced to roam were a loss of direction could lead to exposure and starvation, the child acquired an acute perception of space. Forced to spend every day on the razor edge of survival and dancing in the jaws of death, the child absorbed a visceral awareness of time.
Two score years ago that transvestite child, not yet even a teenager, developed some very original ideas about those unforgiving concepts of gravity, space and time.
When he tried to explain his ideas, they ridiculed him and sniggered at his pretty frock. One of their number even reported the child to social services as 'in need of care and attention'.
'Care and attention!' I ask you! What that child didn't know about 'care and attention' wasn't worth knowing. 'Care and attention' had brought that child nothing but beatings, torture, maiming and rape. Desperation and terror saved it from their clutches and it managed to escape to the slums where it survived by begging while its brain refused to let go of its obsession.
Then that child's hormones betrayed him. It sought female company but its transvestism disgusted women. Wounded to the core, the child tried to kill itself. It was not to be however and its emaciated body somehow clung on to life. Unable to kill itself, that child confronted its cowardice and resumed slaving away at the maths and science. Some inexplicable unrecognised force seemed to drive it on.
Thirty-six years ago, that child finally determined the principles of, and the relationships between Gravity, Space and Time. Now however, the child was so imbued with an implacable resentment towards humanity that it resolved to remain in it's dark stinking corner and deny humanity any of the wonderful benefits of its discoveries. Instead it put down the pen, picked up the tools, and with its single hand, started labouring away at the engineering in a barn as a prisoner of a paedophile farmer.
Thirty-four years ago, that child finally brought forth an engine incorporating his newly discovered principles then he installed that engine into a spacecraft."
(Here she fondly caressed the crude aluminium levers in the middle of the otherwise smooth sophisticated console of The Cold Albatross.)
"Finally that terrified youth, pointed his spacecraft towards the darkest, loneliest, remotest corner of the universe and left Earth forever. It was to be a single journey. A voyage exploring every possible experience available to humankind and embracing every side of life including finally the dark side, suicide! A voyage hopefully ending in a death, unwitnessed, and unlamented as far away from Mother Earth s mortal man could get.
And so we come to the present. I have been wandering this universe star by star galaxy by galaxy for the last three decades. Always searching, always hoping to find what? Love, compassion, tolerance; I don't know."
As she finished she took back the artificial hand I had been stupidly holding and deftly reattached it to her stump. I had never seen such an amazing and complex piece of bioengineering before. That single invention alone would have brought indescribable joy to millions of amputees and quadriplegics. Under the bangle it was quite impossible to see the join or differentiate either hand. It was only then that the whole saga began to sink in and I remembered the transvestite factor. Once again my jaw sagged as I studied her perfectly feminine figure and shook my head disbelievingly.
"You're definitely a man?"
"Absolutely." She murmured."
"I hardly find that possible. There's no way such a petite and feminine figure could possibly belong to a man. You're inches shorter than I am."
I found myself measuring myself against her and realised she was about two dress sizes smaller than I was. All the telltale signs were incongruent. She had tiny feet, delicate hands and full rounded hips tapering to a perfect waist. Her ripe breasts filled the cocktail dress impeccably and I shook my head in wonderment. Then she spoke again.
"It's my transvestism that makes me a freak. They'd never accept me back on Earth; there's no way I could live normally amongst them. They'd probably lock me up again."
If this was all that made her afraid it behoved me to set her straight.
"Things have moved on a long way since you left Earth. They don't lock gays or transvestites up anymore."
"Huh! Not with bars and keys maybe, but prejudice can trap and imprison just as effectively. Anyway you've seen enough. I'd better return you to earth, you'd better go back to your seat."
"But you said you'd explain the amputated limb and there's a million other questions to be answered." I argued.
She shrugged resignedly as though having realised that she had promised too much and opened the Pandora's box of my curiosity. I suspected she really wanted to take it further.
"OK then. If you must hold me to my word I'll give you half an hour of my time. What d'you want to know. I've explained how The Cold Albatross works what more could you possibly want?"
"Is there life out there?" I blurted, desperate for an answer to the eternal question," and have you contacted them?" I added for good measure.
She looked at me and sucked her full red lips thoughtfully before nodding softly.
"Yes; and I have dined with kings."
It took me a few seconds to grasp her meaning. Any star traveller arriving amongst a planet bound species would probably be treated as an honoured guest. Especially if that alien race wanted the secrets of The Cold Albatross.
"Were they all friendly?" I asked.
"All but one. My very first contact believe it or not. It was my third warp attempt and I hadn't yet met a single intelligent soul. I was feeling lonely and contemplating the final suicidal. I had pointed The Albatross to the outermost rim of the universe with a view to ending it all."
"Go on." I encouraged.
"Well I had reached the edge of the universe and dematerialised out of hyper-time with a discharge of energy that would have destroyed a small star. Some antimatter had leaked from the Albatross's coil and polluted the space warp. The energy accumulates you see and the further you travel the more energy you have to shed at the end. I thought I would be isolated and far enough away from any galaxies or stars not to cause any damage. I had also arranged to emerge behind a megallanic cloud so as to be invisible to the rest of the universe. I didn't want any witnesses to my end, God forbid."
"So what stopped you?"
"Two things. Cowardice- I was afraid of death, and the stupefaction at discovering an isolated yellow dwarf star almost identical to Sol."
"Go on." I pressed excitedly.
"It was crazy really. Here was an inexplicable single star right on the outer rim of the universe having only its own family of planets and their attendant moons for company. The whole system was totally isolated and invisible to the rest of the universe because of the vast megallanic cloud blocking out all the other stars and galaxies. There were thirty-six planets in nine orbits with each orbit containing four quadrimetrically-opposed planets. Imagine my surprise at discovering that the planets in the third orbit from the centre were almost identical to earth and each supporting oxygen breathing life."
"And?" I pressed excitedly.
"Well you see, I had rematerialized a bit close to the star and the Albatross's discharge of
polluted energy had caused the star to flicker. The planets had also wobbled in their orbits. I simply didn't know it was there. Fortunately I had arrived perpendicularly to the system's orbital plane so I hadn't permanently displaced any planets and the natural dynamics of the system quickly stabilised itself. I never thought that stars could form in such splendid isolation, it was a real eye opener I can tell you. Mind you my astronomy was pretty fundamental and I-."
"Never mind the bloody astrophysics, get on with it." I nagged impatiently.
"Well the upshot was that the residents of the planets thought a bloody God had arrived in their skies. It was crazy really. They were quite advance technologically, in fact they had already developed a crude interplanetary atomic drive. I was chagrined to learn that they had been engaged in a four-sided interplanetary war for bloody generations. Here was me; after travelling billions of light years through time and space, only to learn that things never change. They thought their planetary system was the only one in existence so all four races were a right bloody xenophobic lot. For a transgalactic traveller to suddenly appear in their mist was a total rebuttal of all their beliefs, and theories. It's amazing how backward they were about astrophysics and astronomy because their black night skies were devoid of the constellations.
Anyway, I appeared amongst them with a bang that shook their worlds and they quickly realised they were not alone. It's remarkable how they suddenly united to confront a common foe and they were attacking me before I had a chance to realise what was happening. Cold Albatross was a very crude and frail craft in those days and I was caught completely on the hop. I had to recheck everything before making my return and I was outside in my spacesuit inspecting the drive coil when they pounced on me. They captured me and accused me of all sorts until some more level headed individuals finally came to their senses.
They realised they had captured a species totally alien to anything from their four worlds and therefore I must have come from somewhere else. I was clear evidence that there must be something on the other side of The Curtain of the Gods. That was their name for the megallanic cloud. They finally realised that if they were kind and courteous to me then they might learn what lay beyond."
"Did you tell them?"
"Of course. Why not? I even took a dozen of them, -three from each planet- for a ride in Cold Albatross to show them what lay beyond their tiny existence. When we penetrated to other side of the curtain and they saw the whole universe in all its majesty, they nearly died of fright. They begged me to show them Cold Albatross's secrets, just like you did."
"But you didn't. I hope."
"What d'you mean by that?"
"Well they attacked you and they took you prisoner, they must be a warlike species. It would have been dangerous."
"So you're judge and jury now. The human race hasn't changed much then."
I suddenly felt I was on trial and had just failed an important test. She wagged her head sadly and turned once more to stare out of the window. I still could not believe such a petite figure of feminine perfection was male. Then she turned to face me again.
"They were four very frightened species. They were stunned to discover that there was an infinite number of worlds and they thought I was the harbinger of Armageddon. Don't you remember all those stupid early films way back on earth? Even the greatest writers and philosophers always portrayed a visit by aliens as hostile. Shit Ruby. They were no worse than the human race and technically they were more advanced. At least they had interplanetary travel with a reliable atomic drive. They just hadn't cracked gravity or space."
"Or time." I added.
"I didn't crack time travel. I just discovered it when I warped space. It was a unexpected accident but an inevitable one. Once I encountered the phenomenon I had to work backwards from the first time shift and make the equations fit the facts. Nevertheless it was pretty hairy. I rebuilt Cold Albatross on one planet with the help of some amphibian people. The problem was her reconstruction altered her mass and I landed in the Middle Ages trying to get back. It fair bloody put the wind up me I can tell you."
I grinned at her disarming modesty. She had still managed to finally crack time and make sense of the whole physical spectrum. That betokened an awesome intelligence.
She still appeared to be a young woman despite claiming to be over fifty so it looked as though she had many years yet to refine and develop her discoveries. I would have given both arms to persuade her to return to Earth but before I could dream up any plausible arguments she interrupted my thoughts again.
"Would you like to meet the race who gave me my artificial hand and helped me rebuild Cold Albatross? They're the most gentle and kindly race I've ever met. It might remove your prejudices."
"Would I just!" I gasped. "Where do they live?"
"Rest your butt on the divan and watch out of the window. You won't learn much but the sight is well worth seeing."
She slipped easily into the cockpit seat with all the decorum of a woman well used to short cocktail dresses and I watched her deftly set the console dials with a practised ease.
The moon rapidly dropped away and the millions of brilliant stars started to turn bluer until they faded into the ultra-violet spectrum and disappeared altogether. She casually vacated the seat and joined me on the divan.
"It's a hell of a long way away so it'll take about a day of our time. We'll go time warp in about an hour. I've set the warp a bit weaker than normal in case you begin to feel nauseous. We may as well chat and make ourselves at home. It'll be more comfortable in my cabin."
I vigorously nodded my agreement and couldn't wait to follow her into the inner sanctum.
It was pointless to think of some trap like 'the spider and the fly' for I was already well and truly enchanted by her manner and there was nowhere to go anyway.
I entered her cabin to find it laid out like a whore's boudoir. It was obvious she spent a lot of time dressing up. There were several other doors leading off and she explained where they led.
"That's the bedroom and bathroom, that's the study and that's the kitchen. There's no spare room I'm afraid so you'll have to sleep on the sofa."
"Why all the clothes?" I asked wonderingly. "It's almost narcissistic."
"I'm a transvestite for heaven's sake. That's what transvestites do!"
Once again I had to remember she was male and I shook my head dizzily. She opened the door to the kitchen and invited me to join her in preparing a meal. I readily seized the chance to do something useful and we spent a happy hour experimenting with some familiar Earth food and some strange stuff I had never seen before. I held it up curiously.
"Is this from other worlds?"
"Mmm- yesh," she mumbled through a mouthful of the unrecognisable fruit, "but don't worry, I'm as human as you and it's never harmed me."
She proffered me a segment of the weird looking fruit so I cautiously bit gently in to the delicate purple cube and was pleasantly surprised.
"Mmm. It's sweet." I mumbled as the delicious juices squirted out unexpectedly.
"It'll make you feel hungry in minute. They use it as an appetiser on its home planet.
It prevents you from absorbing too much nourishment from your other food; you can eat all day without growing fat. Think what it would fetch on earth. I use it all the time cos I get bored a lot and frankly I eat too much."
In the kitchen bar we settled down to eat and she spent a solid hour entertaining me with hilarious tales of culinary disasters the length and breadth of the universe. As a hostess she was proving to be a real hit. Later we returned to her main cabin again and she slipped into the cockpit to set the controls for time warp. I felt a slight nausea before she returned and then the stories continued as she led me through another door into study.
"This is my chartroom as well as my study." She grinned. "It's bloody rudimentary because I probably haven't visited more than one percent of all the galaxies."
"Bit like Ferdinand Magellan's charts eh? 'Here be dragons'." I chuckled.
She grinned and pointed to an ellipse shaped three-dimensional hologram that was suspended above the desk.
"This is a crude representation of the universe and this is where we're going. The illuminated line is a rudimentary presentation of our course, speed and present position. That's the galaxy were going to. I change down to an interstellar drive once I've rematerialized out of hyper-time. It's not very accurate I'm afraid and it takes a bit of searching to exactly relocate the right star. We'll be looking for another yellow dwarf about one-third from the centre along the red arm. It's an amazingly beautiful galaxy because it's got four brilliantly coloured arms, red, green, yellow and blue. That's what attracted me to it in the first place. I like bright colours. It usually takes about an hour to finally reach the particular star and about another hour to do the interplanetary bit. They were ecstatic the first time I visited them and I've enjoyed their company many times since. They're an incredible people and just about the only race that I list as my friends. They're so gentle and so kind."
"Have you revealed your secrets to them then?" I asked.
"Not all. They don't want to leave their star system so they're quite happy with the interplanetary drive. They say they've got plenty to occupy them for all eternity. That's one of the traits that endeared me to them. They're not greedy. I explained how the interplanetary anti-grav drive worked but kept the intergalactic projections of space and time to myself. They'll be euphoric when I introduce you to them. They might even come out to meet us once they detect the power shedding from our arrival. We won't notice anything but there's a hell of a lot of energy accumulated along the warp and most of it discharges as light. First there's a hell of a blast of raw heat as the space time continuum rips open then the light pours out of the warp hole like an erupting fountain. They told me it looked like a white hole the first time I arrived; you know a place were matter pours out instead of in."
As a science correspondent I knew about black holes and white holes. I could perfectly imagine the effects on an advanced society at finding a white hole suddenly pouring countless zillions of cubic miles of hot matter into their star system. The resultant increase in fatal debris could be catastrophic. They must have been as relieved as hell when it stopped."
"Anyway to cut a long story short." She continued. "They realised it was not a hole when the warp closed and suspected it was the act of some intelligent species. They were anticipating me for they thought I had picked up their radio signals. I arrived to an unexpectedly friendly reception. They had outgrown their home planet and they were looking for more living space but they were virtually 'planet-bound'. I was treated like a hero and I couldn't understand why until they explained the overcrowding problem."
"Surely they had birth control?" I asked.
"They evolved from Amphibians in their primordial slime because there are no stray meteorites in their galaxy to destroy the dinosaurs and stuff. They lay hundreds of eggs at one go. Despite the incredibly painful steps they have taken, it's almost impossible to stop the population growth. They do try I can assure you. The self-sacrifices they make are superhuman. Nearly all the women forgo motherhood and their urges are just as strong as ours. They envy our mammalian race enormously in only having one or two young. I think you'll find they are a lovely people, ever so gentle."
I smiled sleepily and she immediately apologised for having kept me up.
"I'm so sorry. You must think me a terrible hostess. Here, lets make up your bed."
She tugged at the sofa and it unfolded to provide a large double bed.
"You use the bathroom first. I've got my own private door from the bedroom."
I showered and inspected the fittings then wondered about a dressing gown. Almost by telepathy there was a discreet knock on the door and I opened it to find a bathrobe being extended blindly through the gap.
"Thank you." I whispered as I sensed the nervousness in the extended hand. "Why are you frightened?"
"I've always been afraid of adults ever since a child. Night-time is always the worst." She mumbled as the door closed and a precise click told me she had locked herself in her bedroom.
It puzzled me why she even had locks on the door unless she regularly carried guests.
Then as I recalled her life story it dawned on me where the fear came from. She was a really messed up kid. As my hair dried I settled down to study some videos she had left out for me in preparation for meeting her friends and I wondered at the strange yellowish race in the pictures. Their tallest men were slightly taller than her but she was quite a petite girl. I would be a giant on their worlds. They were quite pretty too. Faces not terribly dissimilar to human ones but no breasts of course and no visible genitalia. My human host must have been a terribly lonely frightened soul to befriend such an alien people but I knew I was prejudging the whole issue. 'Wait and see' was the best policy.
In the middle of the 'night' I heard her whimpering softly and I knocked gently on her
door. There was instant silence followed by a nervous 'Whoisit?'
"Who do you think it is?" I replied a little impatiently.
"Wait a minute!"
The door eased back a fraction before a heavy chain-bolt stopped its progress.
"What d'you want? Isn't the sofa bed comfortable enough?"
"The bed's perfect." I whispered reassuringly. "It's the noises coming from this bedroom. Why are you crying?"
"I cry every time I sleep. It's nightmares, I'm sorry if it disturbs you. There are some
bunks in the cargo hold but it's not very comfortable in there. There's no sound insulation either so the drive noise is quite invasive."
"D'you want me to comfort you?" I asked concernedly.
Her eyes flashed and her face twisted with a cynical snarl as she recoiled from the door.
"Not bloody likely. That's the last thing I want."
I was shocked at the metamorphosis. Whatever outward appearances she portrayed, it was obvious that the damage inside her head was near total. 'Despite the incredible genius locked up inside her skull she was definitely one fouled up individual'.
'The childhood thing again'. I concluded. 'Somebody or bodies down on Earth had a lot to answer for'
I gently closed the door again and retreated to my sofa bed. What this girl needed was neglect. 'Care and attention' she'd obviously had her fill of. It was like taming a wild animal. Just put out the food, the bait, the temptation, and let it eventually come to you. Later that night my beliefs were confirmed. Her bedroom door opened gently and she crept nervously into my bed. Whispering softly I asked what she wanted but there was no response. She was 'sleep-walking'.
'Like a small child afraid of the dark', I thought.
I felt her soft small body curl up inside mine and the whimpering eventually subsided. It was a mildly confusing situation for I found it hard to decide if she was dreaming of a lover or a mother. In any event she slept like a log and I was awake long before her. To avoid complications I gently carried her in my arms back to her own bedroom so that she would wake in her own bed and hopefully have no recollections of her nocturnes. She emerged refreshed some hours later long after I had dressed and eaten.
In anticipation of the forthcoming arrival she was dressed in a practical tight fitting overall that hinted gently of her masculinity. It was obvious she was much more at ease with the aliens than with me but that was to be expected. She studied my city power-dressing suit and grinned thoughtfully.
"There's some spare clothing in the cargo hold. You'd better change."
Gratefully I investigated the slop chest and was relieved to find several complete changes of outfits including underwear. It was obvious she had prepared for my company. Back in the cockpit I asked her about it.
"I steal the everything from warehouses on Earth. It's easy to hover silently above some remote building and just tractor beam it aboard. I just throw out what's not required."
"Hasn't anybody ever seen you."
"What! 'Flying saucers'? Do me a favour. Do you seriously believe in them?"
I grinned at her caustic brevity. She was right of course.