“What’s the time?”
Ashley glanced at his watch.
“10010 past 1011.”
Jack did a quick calculation. Eighteen minutes past eleven. It was binary, of course, Ashley’s mother tongue. He generously spoke it as ones and zeros for Jack’s benefit—full-speed binary sounds like torn linen and is totally unintelligible. Ashley had no problem with English or any of the other twenty-three principal languages on the planet; it was the decimal numbering system he couldn’t get his head around. He was a Rambosian, an alien visitor from a small planet eighteen light-years away who had arrived quite unexpectedly along with 127 others four years previously. Every single one of the 70 billion or so inhabitants of Rambosia were huge fans of Earth’s prodigious output of television drama and comedy, and Ashley had been part of a mission to discover why there had never been a third series of
Ashley had been in uniform for two years as part of the Alien Equal Opportunities Program and had found himself, after much reshuffling, at the Nursery Crime Division, where he could do no serious harm. His real name was 1001111001000100111011100100, but that was tricky to remember and even harder to pronounce. Get the emphasis wrong on the seventh digit and it could mean “My prawns have asthma.” He was about five feet tall with slender arms and legs that bent both ways at the elbows and knees. His head was twice the width of his shoulders, with big eyes, a small mouth and no nose. The UFO fraternity
“So,” continued Jack, “ten minutes to go. What stories do Rambosians use to terrify their children into behaving themselves, Ash?”
“Vertical stripes, mainly.”
“Why?”
Jack watched Ashley think. Due to the Rambosian physiology of a translucent outer membrane filled with a blend of gelatinous liquid, Jack really
“It’s the linear uniformity in the vertical plane,” Ashley explained with a shiver, and turned a darker shade of blue. “We don’t much fancy bar codes, railings or pinstripe suits either. Mind you,
“I always wondered about that,” replied Jack slowly. Conversation was never easy with Ashley. There really wasn’t much in common between humans and Rambosians—except for a passionate interest in order and bureaucracy. During his lunch hour, Ashley could often be found indulging in his hobby of “carspotting,” which is like trainspotting, only with cars. On the weekends Rambosians would cluster around one of the town’s many vehicle- number-recognition cameras, where they’d all get a bit tipsy reading the binary data stream. Other than that they lived their own lives and didn’t say very much. That was the thing about aliens that no one ever really expected. They’re a bit dull.
The walkie-talkie crackled into life. “Jack, are you there?”
It was Detective Sergeant Mary Mary, Jack’s number two at the Nursery Crime Division. They had been together since the Humpty affair, and although there had been a few hiccups in the early days, they now got on well. She didn’t know why she’d been allocated to the NCD but was glad that she was. Despite its being a career black hole and the butt of many station jokes, she felt somehow that she
Jack picked up the radio and keyed the mike. “NCD-1 in position front of house. All quiet.”
“I thought I was NCD-1,” replied Mary over the airwaves. “I’m in the front line today.”
“No, you’re NCD-2. Ashley’s NCD-3, and Baker and Gretel are NCD-4 and -5.”
“I should be NCD-3,” cut in Baker. “I’ve been working part-time at the division longer than anyone.”
“Shall we stick to names?” asked Mary. “It’s going to be a lot easier.”
“Whatever. Spratt at front of house, nothing to report.”
“Good,” replied Mary. “We have thumb reentry in T minus? five minutes.”
This time there’d be no escape for the Scissor-man.
Inside the house Mary was briefing Conrad’s parents for the last time. They stared at her anxiously, but with both Jack and Ashley at the front and Gretel and Baker at the back, it seemed as safe a sting operation as they could make it.
“Your backs are to be turned for Conrad’s thumb to go in at 2330,” explained Mary as she checked her watch. “At the same time he should lean back on his chair, refuse to eat his soup and play with these matches. I’ll be in the closet and on the radio, so if we can’t catch the Scissor-man before he reaches the house, I’ll give the thumb- out order and Conrad aborts all actions. Do you understand?”
Mr. and Mrs. Hoffman looked at each other and then at Conrad, who at seventeen was old enough to understand the risks. Like many of the children in the area, he had lived in a condition of understated terror for so long that he now barely noticed. He had never had a brush with the cautionaries himself; the presence of Roland Snork in the neighborhood was enough for most children. Roland’s face was frozen in an ugly grimace because the wind
“We’re happy to go ahead, Sergeant,” said Mr. Hoffman with a dryness in his throat. “There are methods other than terror to instill discipline. We want to be like normal families, where threats of mutilation and a sorry end to achieve good behavior are met with a sarcastic, ‘Yeah, Dad, like way to go—you’re such a zoid, like, y’know. Tight.’”
He sighed deeply and turned to his son. “Conrad? Are you happy to go ahead?”
The boy nodded his head enthusiastically.
“Yes, Father,” he replied good-naturedly, “if it is for the good of everyone. Would anyone like a sandwich or a cup of tea?”
“No, Conrad. There’ll be no more tea making for you after tonight.”
“Are you sure? I could bake you all a cake, too—and then play the piano for your entertainment before taking the dog for a walk and repainting the spare room.”
Even Mary found him a bit creepy. She didn’t have any children of her own—unless you counted her collection of ex-boyfriends—but children to her were meant to be something a little more than mindless automatons.
The Hoffmans hugged each other nervously, but when Mr. Hoffman shook Mary’s hand, she noticed that his left thumb was missing.
“I was one of the first,” he muttered sadly, following her gaze.
“A life lived in fear is a life half lived. A life half lived is fear lived in half. A life half feared is fear half lived.”
Some people have a way with words, but Hoffman wasn’t one of them.
“What exactly
“We call them PDRs,” explained Mary. “Persons of Dubious Reality. Refugees from the collective consciousness. Uninvited visitors who have fallen through the grating that divides the real from the written. They arrive with their actions hardwired due to their repetitious existence, and the older and more basic they are, the more rigidly they stick to them. Characters from cautionary tales are