The Austere Planet

“What a rubbish ending,” said Finch, throwing down the book in disgust. “A duck did it.”

“A duck?” I said. “I thought it was supposed to swans that were dangerous.”

“The duck’s quack was at exactly the right pitch to crack the glass that the poisonous gas was contained in.”

“Who keeps poisonous gas in a glass jar? That’s just asking for trouble.”

“The victim was planning to commit murder using the gas.”

“So the victim was also the murderer,” I said.

“Of course, I told you, this is an austere world and it shows in the books. This is a crime thriller with just one character, who turns out to be both killer and victim, and one off-screen duck.”

“It’s not going to make a great movie is it,” I said. 

Finch jumped off the rock he’d been sitting on.

“Right, let’s go to lunch,” he said.

“Where?” I said. I gestured around the desolate land around us. What looked as if it had once been a road was now nothing but rubble.  Suddenly I saw another figure, on the former road. He was holding a large lump of tarmac, which he placed on the ground in front of him, stepped on, crouched down, grabbed the tarmac’s corners and started leaping along the road in this position, crouched on the lump of tarmac, which was slowly lumping down the road.

“What on earth is he doing Finch?” I said.

“He seems to be walking along the road,” said Finch. “He seems to have found the last surviving piece of road from the rubble and is taking it with him rather than trust the road.”

“Then how are we supposed to go anywhere for lunch, I don’t have the requisite lump of tarmac to leap around on.”

“I told you, this is an austere world. And where you have the bulk of the population leaping around on rubble, you have a separate, superior, mode of transport for the elite.  In this case, teleport.”

So saying, he passed me a teleport bracelet and seconds later we were in a restaurant. Not just any restaurant, but a glass-domed restaurant in the sky, with diamond-encrusted wallpaper.

“Where are we, Finch?” I said. “This can’t be the same world, can it?”

“This is an austere world. Where you have extreme poverty you also have extreme wealth.”

“That’s all very well,” I said, as a waiter approached, “but we don’t have extreme wealth.”

“Relax,” said Finch. “We’ll do what the ruling elite do on an austere world – we’ll just charge it to the taxpayer.” 

“Can you do that?” I said.

“Do you not follow politics?” said Finch.

He passed a card to the waiter, which I saw was emblazoned with the words ‘VIP Lane’. The waiter smiled and led us to a table by the window.

The meal was one of the best, and most exotic, I have ever encountered:  Baked moonfish in a golden sauce, and a fillet of rainbow deer steak.

Rainbow deer are the only animal in the known universe that is entirely invisible, thus making it difficult to hunt and consequently enormously expensive. The male rainbow deer is highly sexed, due to the difficulties involved in mating when both yourself and your potential mate cannot be seen, and is widely reported as regularly having sex with thin air. This is, obviously, impossible to verify either way.

“This must be immoral,” I said. “Such extreme extravagance when everyone else is living in dire poverty.”

“You want to overthrow the system?” asked Finch.

“No, I just don’t think we should be eating such an expensive meal when the people are living in rubble.”

“It’s too late to worry about that now,” said Finch. “You should have thought about it before the meal. Besides, it hardly matters, our lunch is a drop in the ocean, entire industries exist to feed the desires of the super-rich in these worlds.”

“Surely someone should do something about it,” I said.  

“Well, if by someone you mean the PM, he’s just over there.”

I turned around to look where Finch was pointing. A grotesque, fat, green, blubbery creature was cramming its dribbling mouth with plateful, after plateful of food.

“That’s the Prime Minister? Why would anyone vote for such a hideous, slug-like creature.”

“Because if they don’t, the wrong hideous slug-like creature will get in*.”

As we were speaking, a gaggle of besuited aids gathered round the prime minister.  “It’s time for you to record your annual message to the people,” one of them said.

“So soon?,” said the prime minister, in a dreadful gargle of a voice. “Can’t you just repeat the message from last year?”

“We did that last year,” said the aid. “And we’re coming up for an election year, you need to get a new message out there.”

“Oh very well,” the giant slug gargled.  A camera was wheeled out and there was much fuss with make-up and lighting before they were ready to start filming.

“Action,” shouted the aid in charge of shooting.

“The government is about helping ourselves,” said the Prime Minister.

“Er, that’s not quite right, PM. Can we just do it again, this time follow the script we’ve written for you.”

“The government is about helping you to help us help ourselves,” said the Prime Minister.

“Better said the aide, but just try again, this time just say the words we’ve written.”

“Oh very well,” gargled the slug. “The government is about helping you. There, I said it, can I get back to lunch now.”

“Thank you Prime Minister, that was superb.”

“We should go,” said Finch. “There are other worlds to see.”

“I’d like to return to Earth,” I said. “I’m missing England.”

“This is England,” said Finch. “Don’t you recognise it?”