WARNING - THIS TALE IS UNFINISHED

This is a sort of Science Fiction tale. If you include Time Travel in that genre that is. Not that anyone actually travels through time in the story. Dear me no. Nevertheless it is the closest I can get to an accurate description. It's really about a young boy. And what he finds in the forest one day. And how it changed his life.

And your's too in a way. And mine. All our lives I suppose. In due time.

In this second chapter Ugmor'n3 and Er experience a stout Cortez moment. The fears that mingle with their wild surmise are forgotten as they gaze upon their new horizons. Until the awareness of a greater and more immediate threat strikes.

You haven't met Er yet but even my Muse approves of her. Indeed claims she was his idea. Complete codswallop!.

( Author's note :-

A literal, and scrupulously accurate, version of these events is being prepared for the Royal Society at the request of the family of the late Professor Sir Hugh Dorrington-Gore. )

Chapter 2. 'The Door Opens.'

Numbness was beginning to spread up Ugmor'n3's right arm. There was the first twinge of incipient cramp in his left leg and he was aware of something with several pairs of legs edging its way up his back.

Time to move.

Slowly he eased his limbs, inch by inch straightening them. Slowly allowing time for the numbness to fade, for the cramp to recede. Cautiously he regained his feet, keeping close in the lee of the tree. Stood there undecided for more long minutes and then .... and then stepped out from behind the sheltering trunk and walked boldly towards .... whatever it was.

It seemed to watch him as he approached. Eyes it had a-plenty. Two huge ones at its centre and smaller ones towards one end and at the back. If they were eyes that is. They certainly seemed to reflect him and his approach. But they themselves showed no vital life spark, merely staring back passive and uninterested. As he drew closer he saw that they were indeed only a sort of protective shield through which its insides could be seen.

No movement there either. There seemed to be rows and rows of brightly coloured upright rectangular objects on the wall opposite. All seemed to be inanimate and unlikely to be actively hostile. He peered close through the clear side screen, swivelling his head one way and then another. The serried ranks of rectangular objects filled the interior, apart from at the front where the light streaming through the forward transparent shields there disclosed an outward facing seat and a large circular object behind a large box like structure on the surface of which were various strange objects outside his experience.

Emboldened by the stillness and lack of evident threat, he pressed his cheek harder against the shield to improve his angle of view, his hand, sliding down to balance his body angle pressed against a protuberance. 'Click.' The noise startled him and he jumped back. As he did so the panel swung silently open towards him and he was engulfed in a strange smell. A not unpleasant smell but rather one that soothed. Nothing acrid, or cloying, but dry, warm, and promising.

A smell, an atmosphere, that invited him to enter. As if by doing so he would in some strange way be coming home. Would be where he had always belonged. Where he was awaited.

And when he had stopped running .... when he was back behind the tree shrinking into the soft mossy ground between its roots, he was conscious only of the fear rising sick at the back of his throat, of a heartbeat that produced dark red pulses in the blackness behind his closed eyes. He lay there deathly still listening to the sounds of his own body, hearing the quiet of the forest around him, straining his ears for a noise that would tell him that it was moving, moving to seek, to follow, to find him.

A largish maroon and black beetle crawled over his hand. He studied it carefully, following its progress towards his little finger and then down and onto a blade of grass. It seemed completely unaware of either himself or of the thing on the other side of the tree. Unconcerned, unafraid, rapt in the intricacies of its own existence so that he envied it.

Time passed. His breathing returned to normal. Everything returned to, was, normal.

Except the thoughts that turned and tumbled inside his head. Intertwined with the fear was a crowd of ifs and whys. And creeping closer and closer to the surface was the question 'What next?' He could not stay there motionless for ever. Sooner or later he had to ....

"What are you doing?"

A simple question in a quiet clear voice. The voice of a young girl.

A young girl's voice that cut through his thoughts, his fear, like a knife so that he twisted and started upwards, his attempt at concealment betrayed by his body's reaction.

She was standing behind him, the sun a halo behind the tangle of hair that framed her head. A small slender figure, her face deep in shadow.

"I'm sorry if I startled you but I have been watching you for some time and ...."

His eyes adjusted to the light and he recognised the slim nut brown shape as Er, the waif who had attached herself to their family over a year ago and had existed on its fringes ever since.

"Down!" he hissed and reaching out roughly seized her arm and pulled her alongside him behind the sheltering tree.

Obediently she lay there. And then her face split into a mocking grin. "It's only some sort of shelter. It's not alive. It won't eat you you know."

"You don't know that", he whispered fiercely, "and even if it is, who is it sheltering?" And then a muttered "Girls!" and then, a little more lamely, "Better safe than sorry."

Er just smiled her secret smile and managed to look demure in a way that suggested she was anything but.

Where she came from no-one knew. Perhaps her people were dead or she had been lost or abandoned. No-one asked, she never said. She had just appeared one late evening at the very edge of the firelight, A feral creature, half starved, contesting with the dogs for scraps of food. She had been lucky. It was a time when food was plentiful. The season and hunting fortune meant that the family could afford to be liberal with their scraps, otherwise the dogs might have been less accommodating. Over the months that followed she had crept closer, insinuating herself further into the group, making herself useful in small ways. Contributing when contribution was required, seemingly invisible when it was not.

Finally she had gained a form of acceptance. No-one knew her real name, her before-them name. No one ever asked. The family hadn't given her a name either. Not consciously anyway, but over time she became known as Er. It came with the acceptance.

Now she lay there at his side, but slightly to his rear as befitted her place. She reached out and plucked a grass shoot and nibbled at its soft green core as if patiently accepting the overriding need to do nothing. It made Ugmor'n3 very uneasy; changed the 'What next?' into 'What now?'

Now that she had chanced upon him, joined him, he had little option.

"I'll go and take another look", he whispered. "In there. In that thing. Just to make sure it's all right. You stay here and ...."

"I'll come with you," said Er firmly, beginning to rise to her feet.

"No!" He was adamant. "It really might be dangerous and ...."

"Then it's best I see for myself so that if it does eat you I can tell the others how to avoid the same fate." She was already moving out from behind the tree and towards the van. Her left leg was sadly scarred and she had a slight limp and yet she moved quickly with a soundless grace so that by the time he caught up with her, she was already half way across the clearing.

Together they reached the still open door and peered in.

"It didn't eat you before so unless it's got very hungry in the past twenty minutes we should be all right." With that she slipped past him and into the van's interior.

Ugmor'n3 followed. The decision was no longer truly his.

Inside the same warm slightly perfumed atmosphere that had struck him the first time. The same sense of welcome. Er seemed to feel it too. That she was alive at all was testament to her finely honed sense of danger and yet she was already exploring the shelves, lost in the mysteries to be found, seemingly without care.

Perhaps it was simply the fact that there was two of them; perhaps it was because Er's confidence was infectious or because he wanted to show her that it was only caution and not fear that had made him hesitate before. Whatever the reason all terror subsided and he too was soon lost in the discovery of the alien, incomprehensible, marvels around him.

And marvels indeed there were. Strange things wondrous to their eyes. Later, in the weeks and months that followed, they would come to know and to understand what these objects were, would learn their names, become familiar with them, recognise their virtues, make use of them. But now on this first day .... now nothing that they had seen or experienced before in their lives had remotely prepared them for the sheer otherness of the contents of the van.

The brightly coloured rectangular objects which they would later know as books contained brightly coloured images inside. Some perfect natural representations of things, some just drawings. Most of such concerned children who seemed to exist in a world that related to their own only by the similarity of an occasional sky or forest view. Indeed the children, the people, themselves were barely recognisable, might well have been another species.

At the front of the van, backing on to the driver's seat, was the librarian's desk. On it and in its drawers were a mixture of items indispensable to a mobile librarian's job together with Patricia Armitage's private possessions. These latter included her laptop, currently open and humming softly to itself, and a couple of shopping bags containing the purchases made at the local M&S at the beginning of her day.

It was the laptop that first caught Ugmor'n3's eye. Miss Armitage had left it recharging from the roof mounted solar panels that a eco-conscious County Council had seen fit to install on the van's roof.

He poked at it cautiously with a tentative finger ....

'Je m'appelle Marie-Louise et j'habite dans une petite village á  la compagne, prá¨s de la ville de ....'

A woman's voice rang out clearly as Ugmor'n3 leapt backwards, all his newly acquired confidence fled. His back pressed against the side of the van, all his fears flooding back.

Ugmor'n3 felt a small hand creep into his. Er stood alongside him, seeking, giving comfort. The slow carefully articulated words meant nothing, but there could be no doubt as to what they were nor as to what they were coming from.

A box that spoke with the voice of a young woman.

Disk 1 of Miss Armitage's 'French for Beginners' that she was painstakingly studying in preparation for her long awaited trip to France continued the lesson.

'J'ai un petit chiot qui est tout a fait adorable. Il s'appelle .... '

Er took a sudden step forward and shut the lid. The voice ceased.

He felt her hand tighten its grip.

Then "It's only a voice." she said. "It can't hurt us."

"No it can't." Ugmor'n3 fought the terror that tried to strangle the voice in his throat. Then again. "No it can't." Louder, firmer.

"Look what I've found", Er, a quaver in her own voice, guided him away to safer ground; to printed pages which whilst themselves things of wonder were not possessed of human attributes. What she had found was a pile of magazines. Glossy publications crammed with photographs of the most elegant women modelling the most elegant clothes, Pages illustrating the latest fashions, the most expensive lingerie, the most seductive cosmetics and their application.

A world of unimaginable beauty, of femininity at its most beguiling, its most sensuous, its most powerful. A beauty, a concept of femininity, far, far beyond Ugmor'en3's and Er's reality. Beyond, far beyond, even their dreamings.

A femininity that whispered to them of another existence. A vision once seen that could not be forgotten, a vision that beckoned, that dared to suggest that you too .... you too could be of this world, could share its joys, know its delights, partake of its fruits.

Er slowly turned the pages. Slowly and in silence. Ugmor'n3 watched over her shoulder entranced. The terror of the speaking box erased in the wonder of this new world and its murmured promises of what could be.

The realisation that the box and its voice could be the catalyst, would perhaps provide the key to their nascent desires lay in the future. The now consisted of shiny pages and their glittering images.

Time passed. The light faded. Ugmor'n3 dragged himself back to their world.

"We must go. Must get back. It's getting dark and ...."

"Yes", replied Er. "We must. We can come back though. Now we know ...."

"Yes. Now we know."

"And the voice. It's only a voice." Ugnor'n3 paused. "It can't hurt us. We can keep it in its box. Whilst we look."

"We've hardly started. There are so many things to see."

They left the van, carefully shutting the door behind them. Went out as light fled before the lengthening shadows. Walking close one to the other their shared experience drawing them together, creating a bond. Both seeing in their mind's eye the images of this new world of wonders that was theirs to share. That was their secret.

That was their secret....

The thought struck them both simultaneously.

What if the others .... what if Ug finds out?

They turned to each other. The question unspoken but lying heavily between them.

"But he mustn't. It must be our secret. If he should find it .... if he should find out that we have found it and not told him .... if .... "

The enormity of the potential disaster swirled round them. Dreams of what might be splintered into fragments. Ug was unpredictable but violence and destruction were his two most likely reactions to anything that he regarded as a threat. And anything unknown would fall squarely into that category. He was possessed of brute courage in everyday situations but this was counterbalanced by a mortal dread of that which was beyond his understanding. If he thought that Ugmor'n3 and Er had dared that which he did not then his rage could turn on them ....

"But he mustn't ...." repeated Ugmor'n3 in desperation. "He just mustn't .... He ...."

"But he will", said Er in a small voice. "He will."

Ugmor'n3 nodded. She was right. He was bound to. He usually hunted in the other direction down towards the river where game was more plentiful but sometimes .... sometimes .... He would find it, perhaps them there, sooner or later. Probably sooner rather than later.

"Then we must stop him. We must. We must." Er's chin stuck out in fierce determination.

Ugmor'n3 looked at her small figure as if seeing her for the first time. There was something in her tone, in her, that he had been blind to before. As if all that she had survived in her short life had given her a steeliness above the norm. But more than that .... He saw her for a fleeting moment as if she were stepping out of the glossy pages.

"Yes. We must. But how...?"

"We will because we must."

And with that he had to be content as he followed her slight form down through the forest in the direction of the cave they both knew as home, his small spear trailing behind him.

Fleurie's Muse: I notice yer didn't bleedin' scrub the first bit as yer promised. All that crap about Professor Sir Hugh Dorrington-Gore and the Royal Society. Jesus won'tcher ever learn!

Fleurie: Sod off.