Emily Taylor - The Apprentice Read online

  2.

  Emily felt a gentle hand on her shoulder and looked around half expecting to see her friend Zula. It wasn’t him; it was an old man. Wearing a long flowing robe and sporting a fine grey beard that reached to his tummy, he looked like a wizard.

  ‘Welcome Emily,’ he said. ‘Sorry about the asteroid, it’s all I could find on short notice.’

  His voice was deep and melodious, the most beautiful voice Emily had ever heard. It gurgled and eddied like the stream that babbled around her feet.

  ‘Is this heaven?’ she asked.

  ‘Heaven, hell no! This is Camillo, a type-C asteroid, diameter twenty kilometres.’

  ‘Am I dead?’

  ‘Dead, yes you are dead! Dead on Earth but...,’ he pinched her arm.

  ‘Ouch!’

  ‘But, very much alive up here!’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Excuse me, my manners are atrocious. I’m Zeus, these days you teroids normally call me God,’ he said, offering his hand.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Emily, looking into his, mischievous, sparkling eyes while she shook his hand.

  She stared at him for a long moment, taking stock and wondering what the hell was going on.

  ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ he said. ‘I need the exercise.’

  ‘What happened?’ demanded Emily. ‘Where’s Abdullah and all the people in the building?’

  Taking Emily’s hand in his, Zeus strode off along the beach, dragging her behind. ‘Let’s find some breakfast,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll talk. I’m starving,’

  The waves washed over their ankles, erasing their footprints behind them.

  ‘I’m experimenting with waves,’ said Zeus. ‘Do you like the beach?’

  ‘It’s lovely,’ said Emily, trying to run but being pulled up short by the pain.

  A sheet of silver fish erupted out of the water just ahead of them as larger fish chased after them. A wave washed up the beach covering it with small silver fish, flipping about in the morning sun and then the next wave washed the beach clean as if they were never there.

  ‘One day I want to visit Earth again,’ said Zeus. ‘The modern world must be wonderful.’

  ‘That all depends on where you go and who you visit.’

  The golden sand felt wonderful under Emily’s bare feet. It tickled as the waves washed up the beach and then pulled the sand out from under her toes as they sucked back.

  Emily and Zeus walked in silence along the beach until they reach a headland where their way was blocked by huge granite boulders. Turning inland, Zeus led Emily along a path through tall sugar cane, the orange sunlight painting them with tiger stripes. As the rumble of the surf faded, Emily heard the sound of bells; randomly playing different notes. A familiar sound, but she just couldn’t quite put her finger on what, where and when.

  Sheep! That’s it, the sheep she saw in Spain before she was abducted; lanky sheep; clanging away lazily on their bells in the shade of the trees.

  And sheep it was, each with its own bell, each bell with its own note; clanging away softly as they grazed in a flowery meadow under almond and olive trees. A couple of lambs ran to their mothers and the sheep filed away.

  ‘Nice touch?’ asked Zeus.

  ‘Like it!’ Emily replied, not quite understanding where God was coming from.

  Climbing over the stone wall at the end of the paddock, they entered a tropical plantation with banana and papaya trees growing in the shade of tall mango trees. Some of the leaves of the banana plants were brown and curled. Pointing to the dead leaves, Zeus said, ‘I’m having trouble getting the tropical plants to grow in the same place as the temperate ones. It seems that some plants need the occasional frost to fruit and the bananas and mangos just don’t like it.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ he asked, breaking off a bunch of bananas and offering Emily a couple.

  Munching on bananas as they went, they climbed up a steep path between large boulders, arriving puffing at the summit of the hill ten minutes later.

  They sat on the edge of a bluff, with their feet dangling over the side. Looking down gave Emily the heebie-jeebies, so she focused on the gentle curve of the horizon. A cool breeze tousled her long hair, flicking it in her eyes. Seagulls glided overhead, sliding effortlessly from side to side. Zeus threw a banana peel and they dived down, caught it in mid-air, then flew off into the distance, squabbling. From where they sat, Emily could see the beach they had walked along, and following its golden curve into the distance, the forest where the velvet stream flowed, gurgling and eddying through its twisted roots.

  ‘Is it true that you created Earth in seven days and man on the eighth,’ asked Emily.

  ‘Hell no!’ exclaimed Zeus with a smile.

  ‘What happened? Why am I here?’ demanded Emily.

  ‘The building was destroyed by missiles.’

  ‘But what about the other people? What about Abdullah and his wives, and the crowd outside listening to Azziz preach?’

  ‘Dead and gone.’

  ‘Don’t they go to Heaven too?’

  ‘This is not Heaven. It’s an asteroid.’

  ‘Why me then, why am I here?’

  ‘Because you have spirit, you have passion, you dream. You look at the stars and wonder. And I need an assistant. Would you like to be my assistant?’

  ‘Assistant what, assistant God?’

  ‘Well yes, but not assistant God, more like God’s assistant. I’m not God in the way you think, it’s just my name. I look after Earth, is my department. With the success of you teroids over the last couple of millennia, it is more of a Human Affairs department these days.’

  ‘Wow! So you look after Earth!’

  ‘It’s nothing special. I drew the short straw to be honest. Back then I was a bit of a hell raiser. I failed all my exams and was always in trouble. After Chiron I visited Earth and had a couple of children with teroids. I was younger then and had such fun! The girls were so beautiful and spirited, they were lovely!

  ‘I ended up on a committee looking after the Earth Affairs. Committees are such messy things because no one can agree on anything. We were always fighting. It was decided that Earth did not warrant more than one anode, so the committee was disbanded and I stayed on.’

  ‘What’s an anode?’ ask Emily.

  ‘I am,’ he said. ‘Are you ready for it?’

  Ready for what? Emily wondered.

  ‘Ready for anything,’ she said.

  Zeus hesitated and looked at Emily like he wasn’t quite sure about something, then clicked his fingers.

  Click!

  ‘Aaaagh,’ screamed Emily in surprise, as he turned into an alien!

  A little taller than her, he had two legs and two arms but after that the similarity stopped. His hands had just two fingers and a thumb. He had browny-green eyes, a cucumber nose and four spikes sticking up across the top of his head, almost like a crown. His skin was copper-green and soft and dry like gecko skin. He still sported his grey beard and the flowing robe that changed colour with the light.

  Click!

  He turned back into God.

  Emily was lost for words for a minute. Was that for real?

  ‘Again!’ she said.

  Click!

  Alien.

  Click!

  God.

  She gathered her wits and then asked, ‘So can you change things on Earth? Do you have a master plan and shoot bolts of lightning at sinners?’

  ‘A master plan? Hell no!’ he replied, his eyes full of humour. ‘There is no plan. How could you keep control of four billion humans? I don’t take too much notice of individual people. I work on keeping Earth on a decent orbit; take an interest in human affairs; keep an eye on people who stand out from the crowd, and occasionally will listen to a plead or intervene, but I do try not to interfere.’

  ‘Intervene?’

  ‘Yes, intervene. I can plant thoughts. Voice of God, that’s me trying to put ideas into people’s heads. No
t very good ideas probably, but I try. I can use tornadoes, earthquakes, shafts of light and lightning bolts. Lightning bolts are useful but a bit unpredictable. It’s hard to get them to fly straight. Occasionally I’ll save a person, animal or plant when it gets destroyed, and bring it up here.

  ‘Oh!’ he said, remembering something, ‘and I can turn things to stone.’

  ‘Do you do that very often?’

  ‘Sometimes. It’s always the famous people who are the troublemakers. There’s plenty of statues in your cities, isn’t there?’

  ‘I spose there is,’ said Emily, but her mind was elsewhere. ‘Up here? Where’s up here?’ she demanded. ‘Heaven?’

  We’re in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter. There used to be a beautiful planet called Zinonia. Our spaceship crashed into it and well..., well now you have the Asteroid Belt.’

  Zeus went quiet for a moment then continued, ‘I really don’t like to talk about it, but it’s best you know. My father, Cronus, was the navigator. Our family name has been mud ever since, even though I did resolve the troubles.’

  ‘But if you crashed and destroyed a planet, why weren’t you killed?’

  ‘We’re tough. We can teleport and can stay in limbo, not here, not there, nowhere. We have an exoskeleton, can survive in space, breath just about any atmosphere and eat anything carbonic. If needed, we can take energy from our surroundings; ride the solar wind, so to speak.

  ‘So when our spaceship, it was a small planet really, exploded, we went into limbo until things settled down. We regrouped on Ceres, the largest remaining fragment of Zinonia, and decided what to do. My brother, Hades, who was mate on our ship, wanted to take over Earth but after much discussion it was decided to leave Earth alone. As a developing planet with promising and interesting life forms, it was thought best to leave it to evolve all on its own. It had teroids, stupid but emotional and passionate. Emotion and passion are things we aspire to, but don’t really understand.

  ‘So we stayed and have set up shop refurbishing asteroids. We give them gravity, water, atmosphere, whatever our customers want.’

  Customers, what customers? Emily was fascinated, ‘Where do you find your customers?’

  ‘Sometimes they approach us directly, others we find. Some we just grab because we’re sure that we can do good business with them. Like I grabbed you because I think you have something to offer. You get an asteroid and in exchange you help me.’

  ‘And how do you find them? How did you find me?’

  ‘We’re telepathic, so can pick up thought waves. There’s an awful lot of clutter. Teroids, that’s humans, think loudly. You would not believe the rubbish people and animals think. They spend most of their time thinking about opposite sex; sizing up suitable partners and plotting ways to make babies with them. Boys think about girls, girls think about boys. The rest of the time they think about food, except when they’re thinking about shelter. If you filter the thoughts, remove babies, food, shelter, warmth and sport, eventually there’s an interesting thought or two. Like Daisy, the cow from Kansas, standing in her meadow trying to find a pattern in the stars; chewing the cud, so to speak, while trying to make sense of the universe. She now has an asteroid and we have yogurt and cheese. Deal!’

  ‘You give asteroids gravity. How do you give gravity?’ asked Emily.

  ‘I’ll take you on a tour of the factory tomorrow and show you how it all works.’

  ‘Cool,’ said Emily. She liked factory tours. Her class went on a tour of the phosphate factory once. It was just down the road from school so they walked there. It was all misty in the factory and the air made her eyes hurt. They put on gas masks and ran around pretending to be pigs. Her dad used to work there driving a forklift. He said that if it blew up it would flatten half of Sheffield. Imagine that, bird poo exploding and flattening the whole town!

  Zeus said, ‘You’ll enjoy our little tour tomorrow.’ Then looking up at the sky said, ‘The sentry slugs are our main source of information. They see everything, they know everything. When something interesting is happening or they spot a potential customer, they let us know.’

  ‘Sentry slugs?’

  ‘Sentry slugs,’ said Zeus, pointing to one of the moons as it passed overhead.

  ‘Would you like to visit one?’

  Looking closely, the moon had bits sticking out.

  ‘Love to,’ said Emily, then fired another question at him. ‘You mean that they have slugs in them. Why don’t you use robots?’

  ‘Robots!’ said Zeus laughing. ‘Hell no, it’s much too boring. A robot would go crazy!’

  They sat in silence for a while. There was a lot to take in, and half of Emily’s brain was still in Abdullah’s penthouse apartment chasing crabs around the toilet seat.

  ‘Do you want the job?’ asked Zeus.

  ‘What job?’

  ‘To be my assistant.’

  ‘And I get this asteroid instead of being blown to smithereens in Khartoum?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll have to think about that,’ said Emily, trying to sound serious.

  God looked a little worried.

  ‘Yes!’ shouted Emily, throwing her hands in the air. ‘You have a deal!’

  She shook his hand vigorously and gave him a kiss on both cheeks, making him to blush.

  Emily had another banana; slowly peeling back the skin as she munched on it, then flicked the last of it over the cliff. With harsh cries the seagulls dived after it, catching it just above the waves then chased each other out to sea until they were lost from sight.