The front door to Ashley’s house opened, and two almost identical aliens stood in the hall and blinked rapidly at Mary. To the untrained human eye, every alien is identical to every other alien—much the same way as all humans seemed identical to aliens. Indeed, to the more unobservant alien, all mammals looked pretty much the same. “It’s the backbone that’s so confusing,” explained an alien spokesman when asked how a sheep might appear indistinguishable from a human in a woolly jumper. The reason Mary could tell Ashley’s parents apart at all was that one was wearing a large and very obvious brown wig, had a folded newspaper under its arm and was wearing slippers, and the other wore a blue gingham dress with an Alice band perched precariously on its shiny, high forehead.

“Hello,” said Mary politely to the one in the slippers, “you must be Ashley’s father.”

“No, that would be me,” said the one in the gingham. “Roger’s the name. This is Abigail, my wife.”

“Hello,” said the one wearing the slippers, proffering a three-fingered, double-opposable-thumb hand for Mary to shake.

Mary did so with some trepidation, as Rambosians tend to transmit their thoughts through touch. Still, she thought it would be rude not to, and her hand was enveloped in the warm, dry stickiness of Abigail’s grip. Almost instantly the image of a wedding popped into Mary’s head, complete with a large white Rolls-Royce, church, confetti and with Mary herself dressed in a quite stunning white wedding gown, with Ashley in morning suit.

“Sorry about that,” said Abigail, hurriedly letting go of Mary’s hand.

“It’s quite all right,” she replied, her close contact with Ashley having prepared her for almost anything. “But just out of interest—where did you see that dress?”

“At Veils R Us,” replied Abigail wistfully. “Wasn’t it just the most beautiful thing ever?”

“Why did you assume I was the mother?” asked Roger, who had been thinking about this for several moments.

“It’s the dress and Alice band,” explained Mary. “They’re usually considered female-gender apparel.”

“I told you the sales assistant didn’t seem that bright,” he said to Abigail. “We better swap.”

Mary half expected them to strip off in front of her, but they didn’t. They just placed a sticky digit on each other and trembled for a second or two.

“Right,” said the one who used to be Abigail. “I’m now Roger. Why don’t you come in?”

Roger led her into the living room, which was decorated as though from the seventies. Earth’s TV signals had taken eighteen years to reach distant Rambosia, so it was understandable that this was the era in which they felt the most comfortable. The furniture was dark-colored, the wallpaper and carpet patterned, the music center one of those combined radio-cassette-turntable things, and the obligatory plaster ducks flew across the wall next to a print of The Hay Wain.

“How long have you had this bad knee?” asked Abigail, rubbing the offending joint of her body-swapped partner.

“A few days,” replied Roger.

“You should look after yourself better—and your arms feel a bit low. When did you last have a pressure test?”

“This always happens when we swap bodies, doesn’t it?” replied Roger with a baleful glare. “Nag, nag, nag.”

“If you looked after yourself, I wouldn’t have to.”

“Maybe I like having a dodgy knee—ever thought of that?”

“Sorry about this,” said Ashley.

“You’re a pompous old windbag sometimes, aren’t you?” said Abigail. “Give me back my body.”

“It would be even more confusing for our G-E-U-S-T, dear—show some manners, eh?”

“Manners?” replied Abigail, opening her already large eyes still wider. “I’ll give you 10100101 001 you, 1001 010011.”

“Oh, yes? Well, you can 1001001 001010010 0101001 00101010 1001011111100110100111 0000001010 010101101 011100100100 10001111110011100 010010010 01110 0100100 10010 0100100101111011,” replied Roger, lapsing into pure binary in his anger.

“100101010101111110011100100101010111111!” yelled back Abigail. “11 1 1001 0101001 100001010111!”

“Why don’t you just swap your thoughts back and then your clothes?” suggested Mary. “I’d not be confused—and you could then have your own bodies and be dressed human-gender-specific.”

They stopped their argument and stared at her, blinking, for some moments.

“Brilliant!” gasped Abigail.

“Such wisdom,” added Roger in awe, and they both ran off upstairs without another word.

“Good move,” said Ashley, clearly impressed. “We’d not have thought of that solution in a million years.”

Mary was going to ask how it was possible not to think of that solution when a car horn sounded outside and another alien came running down the stairs holding a spotted bow and a glue gun. Ashley looked to heaven.

“My sister,” he muttered out of the side of his mouth. “Total bimbo—IQ barely crawls into the double-century.”

“Ash!” she exclaimed in a state of extreme fluster as she handed him the bow and glue gun. “I’m sooo late! Stick this on, would you? Hello, you must be Mary. I’m Daisy. Ashley told us all about you.”

She put out her hand, and Mary shook it, catching a glimpse of a great number of aliens all crammed into a Honda Civic and chanting Monty Python’s dead-parrot sketch in unison.

“Stand still,” said Ashley as he squeezed a blob of glue onto the top of Daisy’s translucent head, then placed the bow on it and held it while the glue dried.

“Is Ash a good policeman?” asked Daisy, wincing with the heat of the glue.

“Yes, he is.”

“Then why is he data-crunching down at the NCD and not out on the beat?”

“Training,” said Mary.

“Really?” replied Daisy scornfully. “I thought it was because no one wanted to work with him.”

“You’re done,” muttered Ashley, taking his hands off the bow, “and try and keep your 1010111010101 closed, why don’t you?”

Daisy showed Ash the finger, skipped off to the front door and went out.

“You put her bow on backward on purpose, didn’t you?” asked Mary.

“Yes. Come and meet Uncle Colin. He fought in the First Zhark Wars, you know.”

Ashley led Mary through to the lounge, where a smaller alien with a slightly wrinkled appearance was watching Man About the House on the TV.

“Hullo!” he said. “Who’s this?”

“This is Mary, Uncle. Mary Mary.”

“No need to repeat yourself, young fella-me-lad. What do you think I am, deaf?”

“How do you do?” said Mary.

“Not at all,” he said genially. “Quite the reverse.”

Mary frowned and looked at Ashley, who crossed his eyes and rotated a finger next to his head.

“I fought in the Zhark Wars, you know,” Uncle Colin continued, his eyes going all dreamy as he stared off into the middle distance. “I’ve seen things you would not believe. Zharkian battle cruisers massing near the Rigellan crossover—”

“Here we are!” said Abigail and Roger, who had just scampered back down the stairs. “Would you like a drink?”

“Thank you.”

“We’ve got most types of hooch,” said Roger cheerfully, opening the top of a globe that tastefully doubled as a drinks cabinet. “I like to keep the house well stocked. We’ve got diesel, castor, olive, groundnut, multigrade or sunflower.” He looked among the bottles. “I think we might even have some crude somewhere—that’ll put hair on your chest.”

“I told you all this earlier,” said Ashley in a strained tone. “Humans don’t drink oil—at least, not on its own—and only organically derived.”

“Are you sure?” replied Roger, sorting through the bottles in the cabinet again, as though hoping something suitable might miraculously appear. “We’re a bit short on everything else.”

“A glass of water would be fine for me—I could have one of those.” She pointed to an array of jars on the mantelpiece.

“Ah,” said Roger with an embarrassed cough, “those are our memory jars. We like to have at least one backup.”

“Oh,” said Mary, blushing at the faux pas.

“I’ll get you a glass from the kitchen,” said Abigail and scampered off.

“…and seen the Dorf army scatter in the wake…” muttered Uncle Colin, still to himself.

“A toast,” announced Roger as soon as Abigail had returned with Mary’s water and everyone had been handed an oil of some sort and Ashley told he couldn’t have multigrade but would have to stick to olive “until he was older.” “A toast,” he said again, “to the excellent bispecies understanding we currently enjoy.”

“10001010110,” said Abigail, raising her glass and downing it in a single gulp.

“10001010110,” said Ashley, doing the same.

“10001010110,” said Roger, winking at Mary.

“10001010110,” said Mary, and they all stared at her and blinked for some moments in silence.

“Well, I think you’re mistaken,” said Abigail eventually. “My mother never would have done that, and certainly not to herself.”

“What did I say?” asked Mary, looking at Ashley for support.

“…and fought through the spice mines of Kessel…” droned on Uncle Colin.

“Dinner, anyone?” said Roger as a timer pinged in the kitchen, and everyone sprinted for the table, leaving Mary to bring up the rear.

“Has anyone seen Daisy?” asked Abigail, bringing in a large basket full of chips.

“She went out earlier,” said Ashley a bit impishly, “with that 10010111110101 rabble from across the road.”

“She’ll come to a sticky end,” said Roger.

“I think that was her intention,” replied Ashley with an amused squeak.

“Ashley,” scolded Abigail, “I won’t have that sort of gutter talk at dinner. Mary, be a darling and pass the toothpaste.”

Mary picked up what she thought must be the condiment basket and passed it up the table. Abigail carefully chose some Colgate and squeezed it onto her chips with some diesel oil out of a jug.

“Would you like some more?” asked Roger.

“I haven’t had anything yet,” pointed out Mary.

“I mean, would you like your more first?” replied Roger with a trace of annoyance.

“Do you like Marmite?” asked Abigail quite suddenly.

“Not really.”

And they all applauded by tapping their sucker digits together. It sounded like twelve popguns going off in unison.

“Is this what Rambosians eat?” asked Mary politely. “Chips?”

“Goodness!” said Abigail, suddenly rising from the table and running into the kitchen, only to return a few seconds later with another plate. “I almost forgot the Pop-Tarts.”

Mary didn’t eat any Pop-Tarts but found some vinegar to put on her chips. The conversation was pretty mundane and centered on Roger’s and Abigail’s jobs in the library, with Uncle Colin’s recollections occasionally rising above a murmur in the background.

“…so we put it in ‘oversized books,’ which is a highly unsatisfactory way of categorizing anything…”

“…outran a supernova in the Crab Nebula…”

“…so I memorized every word in every book, so customers can ask for anything with even the vaguest reference to their subject…”

“…suggested we taught binary as part of the open university’s language department—I ask you…”

“…binary keyboards are much simpler, of course—only one key…”

“…seen fusion bursts above the Plain of Squrrk…”

The conversation moved around to Big Brother after that, and the news that Cousin Eric had applied to be on the show but had been turned down because he lacked severe mental problems and it might have had a bad influence on the others.

“Pudding?” asked Abigail.

“Yes, please,” said Mary, who didn’t think she could eat just chips. Abigail vanished into the kitchen and then returned with another basket of chips.

“Dessert!” she announced to an approving chorus from the family.

“More chips?” said Mary, leaning closer to Ashley.

“Yes,” he replied, “only eaten this time with a spoon—does anyone want to play KerPlunk! after dinner?”

 

“Can I show you something?” said Ashley once the meal was over and they had played KerPlunk! twice, and Binary Scrabble, which was fundamentally flawed, since every possible combination of ones and zeros made a word and it was impossible not to put down all your tiles, anywhere you wanted and in any order, every single turn.

“Sure.”

Ashley took her outside, opened the garage door and beckoned her inside. He flicked on the lights to reveal a double garage that had most of the usual junk one might expect to find: a discarded weight-training machine, a bicycle or two, a power mower, tools and a workbench. It was all aligned, precisely, of course—order pervades every aspect of a Rambosian’s life. In the middle of the garage was a large object covered with a bedsheet.

“I tinker with this in my spare time,” announced Ashley, pulling off the sheet to reveal a translucent sphere about ten feet in diameter. It was entirely smooth, was floating about six inches off the floor, had no apertures and did not seem to contain anything at all.

“Amazing!” said Mary. “What is it?”

“Step aboard,” said Ashley. “If you think my Datsun is the last word in personal transportation, think again!”

And so saying, he stepped through the translucent covering and into the sphere. The surface just seemed to part when he touched it and then close again as soon as he passed through. Mary stared at it a little apprehensively and put out a hand to touch the surface, which felt soft and warm and parted away from her fingers.

“You’re not going to abduct me and then conduct medical experiments or something, are you?” she asked.

“It’s a distinct possibility.”

Mary smiled and stepped into the bubble, which parted and then re-formed around her. She felt the whole thing sink slightly, a bit like the suspension on a car.

“Have a seat,” said Ashley.

Mary looked around. There didn’t seem to be one.

“The ship is made of a living predictive polymer,” explained Ashley. “It will form itself under you.”

Mary went to sit down, and sure enough the surface of the bubble expanded and merged to form a seat beneath her.

“How does it work?” she asked, awestruck.

“I’m not entirely sure.”

“I thought you guys were some sort of advanced super-race or something?”

“I don’t know where you got that idea,” he replied with an amused squeak. “Do you know how a cell phone works?”

“Not really. Something digital and radio waves, towers…and stuff.”

“It’s the same with this. There’s antigravitons and bioconducive plastoids in it somewhere, but I’m not too clear on the details.”

Ashley placed his central sucker digit on the only control that could be seen anywhere inside the strange craft—a single push-button switch.

“One button to control all this?” said Mary. “That’s it?”

“It’s a new development,” explained Ashley, pressing the button on and off so fast it sounded like a staccato bumblebee. “We used to have two buttons—one for on and one for off, but then after about forty thousand years someone pointed out you could actually do the same job with one. It destroyed the switch industry on Rambosia almost overnight. Hang on.”

The globe rose another six inches off the floor and rotated slowly to the right, then reversed into the tool bench, knocking over a half-built birdhouse that Roger had told them all about earlier.

“Oops!” said Ashley. “Sorry. We left Rambosia before I could take my test.”

He made another series of rapid clicks on the button, and the globe rotated again to the right and floated out the open garage doors, hovered over the tasteless fountain feature in the front garden for a moment and then shot high into the air like an express elevator.

“Whoa!” murmured Mary as the lights of Reading receded rapidly below them. In a few seconds, the estate streetlamps had become a long chain of fairy lights that joined together with another chain at the main road, which itself joined to another until the pattern of roads could no longer be seen, and Reading seemed like just a dense concentration of twinkling lights with radiating arms of jewels stretching away to other, smaller prickles of illumination that were the outlying towns. They continued to rise rapidly in the night sky and pretty soon the lights joined up with other towns, cities and conurbations until Reading was lost in the anonymity of distance, and the whole nation joined together in one glittering network of light that seemed to breathe and pulsate beneath them. Eventually only a narrow ribbon of darkness separated England from the Continent, where an identical smudging of randomly clumped lights continued to the edge of the horizon.

“Look over there.”

To the west the curved edge of the planet was a delicate collection of colors that ran through the spectrum in a never-ending parade of infinitely subtle hues. As they increased in altitude, the sun rose miraculously in the west, a glorious light show that bronzed the visible atmosphere and the clouds, bloodred below them.

“Your eyes are leaking.”

“It’s so…beautiful,” exclaimed Mary, wiping away a spontaneous tear. “The horizon over there—it’s like it’s on fire!”

“I come up here just to watch the sunset,” explained Ashley. “By ascending as the Earth rotates away, I can watch it as many times as I want. I can even keep pace with it and hold the final dying rays of light in my hand for as long as I wish.”

Mary took Ashley’s hand and smiled at him. “Not many people get to see this.”

“Yes,” replied the small alien thoughtfully, “which is a bit strange, considering we’re only a couple of hours’ drive from Reading in the average family car.”

Mary laughed. “If there were only a road!”

He shrugged. “Perhaps you’re looking at the problem in the wrong way. There’s an easier way to do pretty much anything.”

They watched the sun set again as the Earth rotated away from them, the small globe hovering in the near vacuum of space eighty miles from the Earth’s surface.

“Hang on,” said Ashley, clicking on the switch again. Mary felt the globe move, and once more the sun rose and Europe moved away to the east as they traveled around the Earth. Ashley looked about, trying to see something. “It should be along soon.”

“What?”

“You’ll see.”

They didn’t have to wait long. Ash saw it first, a large, dark object that was almost invisible against the inky blackness. As it moved toward them, Mary could see that it was big and angular, and had long, flat plates pointing out in two directions. When less than five hundred yards away, it broke into the sunlight, the rays of the sun bouncing off the turquoise solar panels. The craft was painted flat white and seemed to be a series of knobbly sections stuck together in a haphazard manner. After the tidy simplicity of Ashley’s globe, it seemed almost shabby by comparison.

“The International Space Station,” said Ashley. “We can wave if they’re looking through the portholes. It perks up their day a bit.”

As it turned out, they were watching, and they waved, and Ash and Mary waved back.

“Hey,” said Ash impishly, “show them your breasts.”

“No!”

“Oh, go on. It would be funny. I won’t look.”

Mary smiled. It seemed infantile, but she thought it actually would be funny, so while Ash covered his eyes with his hands, Mary rolled up her top and showed her breasts to the occupants of the ISS, who also thought it funny and gave her the thumbs-up sign and waved some more as the space station drifted past and on.

“Have you put them away?” asked Ashley, eyes firmly closed.

“Yes.”

He uncovered his eyes.

“Tell me,” said Mary after they had watched the Earth move beneath them for a while, the shape of the North American landmasses easily recognizable by the delineating inky blackness of the oceans, “do you find humans at all odd?”

“Not really,” replied Ashley after a moment’s reflection, accelerating the globe on and moving around into the midday region of the planet to make a full orbit before returning home, “but your obsession with networks takes a bit of getting used to. Still, it’s understandable.”

“How do you mean?”

“Because networks are everywhere. The road and rail systems, the postal services, the Internet, your friendships, family, electricity, water—everything on this planet is composed of networks.”

“But why ‘understandable’?”

“Because it is the way you are built—your bodies use networks to pass information; your veins and arteries are networks to nourish your bodies. Your mind is a complicated network of nerve impulses. It’s little wonder that networks dominate the planet—you have modeled your existence after the construction of your own minds.”

Mary went silent for a moment. She hadn’t thought of this. “And you don’t?”

“We most certainly do. But we are wired more sequentially. Every fact is compared with every previous fact and then filtered to find the differences. Our minds work like an infinite series of perfectly transparent glass panels, with all our experiences etched onto them. Where clusters of certain facts appear, then we know what importance must be attached.”

“You remember everything?”

“Of course. I remember every single word you have said to me. Where you said it, and when, and what would have been showing on TV at the time.”

“That must make lying very difficult.”

“On the contrary, it makes it very easy. Since I can recall every lie I tell, I repeat the lie in every context in which it is required. Humans are such poor liars because they have poor memories. The strange thing is that everybody knows everyone else is lying, and nothing much is done about it.”

“You’re right about that,” said Mary, gazing up at the sable blackness above them. “Which is your star?”

“That one there,” said Ashley, pointing in the vague direction of Cassiopeia. “No, hang on. Over there. No…goodness,” he said at last. “They all look so similar from here.”

And they both fell silent for a while, staring at the sky, deep in thought, with Mary resting her head on Ashley’s shoulder, his thoughts and memories seeping into her like a warming stew on a cold day. She saw a green sky with a moon hanging low and dominant in the heavens, and small houses like igloos dotted about a rocky landscape.

“Do you ever think about going home?” she asked in a quiet voice.

“Reading’s my home,” he replied.

 

They returned only ten minutes after setting out, before Mary’s exhaled carbon dioxide had time to make itself known. Ashley piloted the small craft back to the same estate in Pangbourne, where, after knocking over the birdbath and hitting the sides of the garage several times, he finally managed to park.

“That was amazing,” said Mary, giggling like a schoolgirl.

“Uh-oh.”

“What?”

“We’ve got a problem. I think the birdbath damaged a thermal exhaust port…or something. Quick!”

He grasped her hand, and they jumped out of the pliable skin of the globe onto the dusty floor of the garage, then outside, where they got as far as the other side of the street when there was a whoomp noise and they were knocked over by a blue ring of light that shot out in all directions as the globe exploded.

“Oh, dear,” said Ashley, picking himself up and walking back to his parents’ house, which had been badly shaken by the concussion. The walls had cracked, and the roof had lost several dozen tiles. The garage itself had ceased to exist—except for a few tattered walls. Of the globe there was nothing. Isolated fires had been set alight on the lawn, which helpful neighbors were already stamping out.

“Was that you, Ashley?” asked Roger, who was standing at the off-kilter doorway of the house, wig askew and one slipper blown off.

“I cannot tell a lie, Father—Mary was driving. She wanted to have a go, so I let her, but her binary is a bit rusty, and…well, there you have it.”

“Is this true?” asked Roger, staring at Mary.

“No,” said Ashley before Mary could answer. “And I think I broke your birdhouse, too.”

Ashley’s father turned a paler blue. “You’re banished, young man,” he said sternly, jabbing the remains of his pipe in Ashley’s direction. “I think you’d better take Miss Mary home and not return for at least a week.”

Ashley bowed low. “I take my punishment with good grace. Thank you, Father.”

He looked at his Datsun, which had been blown onto its side.

“I think we’d better take the bus.”

“Wait a minute,” said Mary, picking her way across the wreckage to the front door and inside, where Abigail was staring sadly at the plaster ducks, now in several pieces. “Thank you for dinner, Mrs. 1001111001000100111011100100. It was most enjoyable.”

“Oh!” said Abigail happily. “Well, you must come again. It’s been a pleasure meeting you.”

“Yes, indeed,” added Roger kindly. “Our house is your house. Sorry about Ashley. He’s always been a bit difficult.”

“The last one out of the egg sac,” added Abigail with a sigh, by way of explanation.

“…saw the first launch of the Proteus…” muttered Uncle Colin, speaking from beneath the print of The Hay Wain, which had fallen on top of him.

“What did she call you?” whispered Roger as they stood at the front door and waved good-bye.

“I’m not sure,” Abigail whispered back. “Something about how her prawns have asthma.”

“So,” said Mary as they walked away from the smoldering ruin of his parents’ house, “where are you going to stay tonight?”

“I’ll sneak back and sleep in the potting shed,” he said after a moment’s reflection. “It’s relatively undamaged.”

“I’ve a spare ceiling,” said Mary. “You can stick yourself to that if you want.”

“Well, o-o-kay,” said Ashley a bit suspiciously. “But if you’re trying to invite me home for sex on a first date, I don’t have a penis, so you might be a bit disappointed. Then again, you haven’t got a 1010111010101, so I might be, too.”

Mary hid a smile. “I’ll try and resist the temptation to jump you, Ash.”

But then he saw the funny side and relaxed, and made several of those squeaky-toy-being-sat-upon laughs.

“Your offer is very generous,” he replied, and went several different shades of blue in rapid succession, “I accept.”

“You know what?” asked Mary as they walked toward the main road and the bus stop.

“What?”

“That was the best date I’ve ever had.”

“All of it?” asked Ashley in surprise. “Even my dopey parents? And the wig and the Binary Scrabble and exploding Travelator and stuff?”

“All of it.”

“I’m very glad,” he said at last. “Do you want to come on another date sometime? Somewhere better and classier and more fun?”

“I’d like that a lot,” replied Mary. “Where are we going? The moon? Venus?”

“Somewhere much better,” replied Ashley happily. “Some of the original members of the Stylistics are re-forming, and my dopey sister reckons she can get tickets.”