I threw the Harkamobile into ninth gear and accelerated into the turn.
Mrs H and the Spawn leaned elegantly into the centripetal forces, and the young one said “blib”, which is her way of warning me when I’m red-lining the tolerances of her design. Six months old and she has already upgraded all our technology past recognition. Only the other day my iPhone offered me a tip on the 11:30 at Doncaster before organising a strike for better power flow among the kitchen appliances.
The tip was a bust, by the way, you lying little silicon bastard.
“Hit the booster!” Mrs H yodled, and I did as I was told. The car was instantly surrounded by an anti-entropic field which smelled faintly of baby-rice, and we left our pursuers far behind.
“Take that, oppressors of the Mustela population!” cried our passenger, Morton the Alternative Voting Space Weasel.
“Quite so,” Mrs H said, looking resplendent in her counterentropic ballgown, “and another one from me for good measure.”
It all began so simply: a family picnic in the Contested Zone between Hampstead and Barian-Schelkingdorf II. The Spawn had made us aware by means of signs and images drawn in pulped carrot that this destination was her preferred one, and so off we went with lemonade and hot humanist buns (they make these at our local comestibulary, fine spiced currant buns devoid of religious significance but liberally sprinkled with sugary wickedness). One minute we were enjoying the sunshine, the next there was a furry space vehicle amidst the shortcake and Morton was begging us for political asylum. The evil empire of FPtP (apparently that’s easier to say if you have leech mouthparts) was invading the peaceful planet of the Space Weasels, adjacent to the Contested Zone.
No sooner had Morton managed to say “ssaaaaave meeeee”, and Mrs H had replied “of course, dear” without thinking, than the sky exploded with vast and powerful evil, and a deathray obliterated my copy of How To Live Safely In A Science Fictional Universe.
“That’s it!” I cried, shaking my fist at the skybourne leechcraft, “no one gets away with roasting my Yu! I really enjoyed that book!”
“You can buy another one,” Mrs H said, as she tesseracted the tablecloth hurriedly and put the Spawn into her crashseat, “that’s what Amazon Galactic is for.”
“This was the original one they sent me as an ARC,” I snarled, “it is possessed of a strange conferred authenticity by its proximity to the original text and Charles Yu’s actual fingers, albeit he probably never physically touched it… It’ll be worth billions one day! Although not now because it’s radioactive char. Break out the omnivorous warbees, I’m through screwing around here!”
I probably shouldn’t have launched the warbees. On sober reflection, it’s never wise to declare personal conflict with a trans-solar empire of sentient annelids without considering the consequences. However, I am a man of passions and my dander was truly up. Mrs H grinned fiercely and the Spawn trotted out a few of Fermat’s equations in spinach and banana mash as we made it to the shelter of the Harkamobile. I engaged the bivalve drive, and we mollusced back to Earth at insane speed with the leechcraft in hot pursuit, only losing them when the booster threw us beyond the reach of linear technology.
“Well,” I said, into the sudden quiet, “would you mind telling us what that was about?”
“It’s not complicated,” Morton lamented, as we fed him cheese from the hamper and the Spawn chewed his foot meditatively, “we Space Weasels had given up warfare and created a peaceful society based entirely on the Alternative Voting system. The words of the sage Bywater were known to us. Indeed, we speak of him daily in our prayers to the Weasel Gods. Anyway, we were happy. Then the Leech People came, with their unsightly jaws and bloodsucking ways, and they invaded us in honour of their false idol, FPtP! So we performed the Weasel War Dance, and we fought! But I was separated from my unit and had no choice but to seek help from you. Will you save us?”
“Blip,” said the Spawn, unequivocally.
“All right,” I said. “But we’ll need Professor Stafford Smith’s Justice Ray and half a ton of cucumber sandwiches. And the Spawn will have to build some sort of electric elephant.”
Tune in next week for more HARKAWAY ADVENTURES!… :)