The Mammoth Book of Awesome Comic Fantasy Read online

  And now this.

  It was humiliating and embarrassing, Gran up a tree, naked and painted. She stayed there all evening, and I knew that my girlfriend Pandora would be dropping by soon and would be sure to ask questions.

  Humanity was at that point in the morality cycle when nudity was considered indecent. Gran was probably thirty years before her time. There was something lonely and anachronistic about her, perched there, balancing unsteadily in a squatting position, occasionally grabbing at the trunk for support, then flapping her arms to re-establish the birdlike impression. She looked like some horrible mutation. Her resemblance to a Rufous-necked Hornbill was slight.

  “Talk her down, Gramps,” said Father.

  “She’ll come down when she’s hungry.”

  He was wrong. Late in the evening Gran winged her way to a vacant lot where an ancient tree stood. She began to eat unsterilized apples, juice flowing down her chin. It was a grotesque sight. “She’ll be poisoned!” cried Mother.

  “So, she’s made her choice at last,” said Father.

  He was referring to Your Choice for Peace, the brochure that Gran and Gramps received monthly from the Department of Rest. Accompanying the brochure is a six-page form on which senior citizens describe all that is good about their life, and a few of the things that annoy them. At the end of the form are two boxes in which the oldster indicates his preference for Life or Peace. If he does not check the Life box, or if he fails to complete the form, it is assumed that he has chosen Peace, and they send the Wagon for him.

  Now Gran was cutting a picturesque silhouette against the pale blue of the evening sky as she circled the rooftops, uttering harsh cries. She flew with arms outstretched, legs trailing, and we all had to admit to the beauty of the sight; that was, until a flock of starlings began to mob her.

  Losing directional control she spiralled downward, recovered, levelled out and skimmed towards us, outpacing the starlings and regaining her perch in the garry oak. She made preening motions and settled down for the night. The family Pesterminator, zapping bugs with its tiny laser, considered her electronically for a second but held its fire.

  We were indoors by the time Pandora arrived. She was nervous, complaining that there was a huge mutation in the tree outside, and it had cawed at her.

  Mother said quickly, “It’s only a Rufous-necked Hornbill.”

  “A rare visitor to these shores,” added Father.

  “Why couldn’t she have been a sparrow?” asked Mother. “Or something else inconspicuous.” Things were not going well for her. The little robot Tidy Mice still sulked behind the wainscoting and she’d had to clean the house by hand.

  The garish Gran shone like a beacon in the morning sunlight. There was no concealing the family’s degradation. A small crowd had gathered and people were trying to tempt her down with breadcrumbs. She looked none the worse for her night out, and was greeting the morning with shrill yells.

  Gramps was strapping on an antigravity belt. “I’m going up to fetch her down. This has gone far enough.”

  I said, “Be careful. She may attack you.”

  “Don’t be a damned fool.” Nevertheless, Gramps went into the tool shed, later emerging nude and freshly painted. Mother uttered a small scream of distress, suspecting that Gramps, too, had become involved in the conspiracy to diminish the family’s social standing.

  I reassured her. “She’s more likely to listen to one of her own kind.”

  “Has everyone gone totally insane?” asked Mother.

  Gramps rose gracefully into the garry oak, hovered, then settled beside Gran. He spoke to her quietly for a moment and she listened, head cocked attentively. Then she made low gobbling noises and leaned against him. He called down, “This may take longer than I thought.”

  “Oh, my God,” said Mother.

  “That does it,” said Father. “I’m calling the shrink.”

  Dr Pratt was tall and dignified, and he took in the situation at a glance. “Has your mother exhibited birdish tendencies before?”

  Father answered for Mother. “No more than anyone else. Although, in many other ways, she was—”

  “Gran has always been the soul of conformity,” said Mother quickly, beginning to weep. “If our neighbours have been saying otherwise I’ll remind them of the slander laws. No – she did it to shame us. She always said she hated the colours we painted the house – she said it looked like a strutting peacock.”

  “Rutting peacock,” said Father. “She said rutting peacock. Those were her exact words.”

  “Peacock, eh?” Dr Pratt looked thoughtful. There was a definite avian thread running through this. “So you feel she may be acting in retaliation. She thinks you have made a public spectacle of the house in which she lives, so now she is going to make a public spectacle of you.”

  “Makes sense,” said Father.

  “Gran!” called Dr Pratt. She looked down at us, beady little eyes ringed with red. “I have the personal undertaking of your daughter and son-in-law that the house will be repainted in colours of your own choosing.” He spoke on for a few minutes in soothing tones. “That should do it,” he said to us finally, picking up his bag. “Put her to bed and keep her off berries, seeds, anything like that. And don’t leave any antigravity belts lying around. They can arouse all kinds of prurient interests in older people.”

  “She still isn’t coming down,” said Father. “I don’t think she understood.”

  “Then I advise you to fell the tree,” said Dr Pratt coldly, his patience evaporated. “She’s a disgusting old exhibitionist who needs to be taught a lesson. Just because she chooses to act out her fantasies in an unusual way doesn’t make her any different from anyone else. And what’s he doing up there, anyway? Does he resent the house paint as well?”

  “He chose the paint. He’s there to bring her down.”

  We watched them in perplexity. The pair huddled together on the branch, engaged in mutual grooming. The crowd outside the gate had swollen to over a hundred.

  On the following morning Gran and Gramps greeted the dawn with a cacophony of gobbling and screeching.

  I heard Father throw open his bedroom window and threaten to blast them right out of that bloody tree and into the hereafter if they didn’t keep it down. I heard the metallic click as he cocked his twelve-bore. I heard Mother squeal with apprehension, and the muffled thumping of a physical struggle in the next room.

  I was saddened by the strain it puts on marriages when parents live in the house – or, in our case, outside the window.

  The crowds gathered early and it was quickly apparent that Gramps was through with trying to talk Gran down; in fact, he was through with talking altogether. He perched beside his mate in spry fashion, jerking his head this way and that as he scanned the sky for hawks, cocking an eye at the crowd, shuddering suddenly as though shaking feathers into position.

  Dr Pratt arrived at noon, shortly before the media. “A classic case of regression to the childlike state,” he told us. “The signs are all there: the unashamed nakedness, the bright colours, the speechlessness, the favourite toy, in this case the antigravity belt. I have brought a surrogate toy that I think will solve our problem. Try luring them down with this.”

  He handed Mother a bright red plastic baby’s rattle.

  Gran fastened a beady eye on it, shuffled her arms, then launched herself from the tree in a swooping glide. As Mother ducked in alarm, Gran caught the rattle neatly in her bony old toes, wheeled and flapped back to her perch. Heads close, she and Gramps examined the toy.

  We waited breathlessly.

  Then Gran stomped it against the branch and the shattered remnants fell to the ground.

  The crowd applauded. For the first time we noticed the Newspocket van, and the crew with cameras. The effect on Dr Pratt was instantaneous. He strode towards them and introduced himself to a red-haired woman with a microphone.

  “Tell me, Dr Pratt, to what do you attribute this phenomenon?”
/>   “The manifestation of birdishness in the elderly is a subject that has received very little study up to the present date. Indeed, I would say that it has been virtually ignored. Apart from my own paper – still in draft form – you could search the psychiatric archives in vain for mention of Pratt’s Syndrome.”

  “And why is that, Dr Pratt?”

  “Basically, fear. The fear in each and every one of us of admitting that something primitive and atavistic can lurk within our very genes. For what is more primitive than a bird, the only survivor of the age of dinosaurs?”

  “What indeed, Dr Pratt?”

  “You see in that tree two pathetic human creatures who have reverted to a state that existed long before Man took his first step on Earth, a state that can only have been passed on as a tiny coded message in their very flesh and the flesh of their ancestors, through a million years of Time.”

  “And how long do you expect their condition to last, Dr Pratt?”

  “Until autumn. The winters in these parts are hard, and they’ll be out of that tree come the first frost, if they’ve got any sense left at all.”

  “Well, thank you, Dr—”

  A raucous screaming cut her short. A group of shapes appeared in the eastern sky, low over the rooftops. They were too big for birds, yet too small for aircraft, and there was a moment’s shocked incomprehension before we recognized them for what they were. Then they wheeled over the News-pocket van with a bedlam of yells and revealed themselves as teenagers of both sexes, unclothed, but painted a simple black semi-matt exterior latex. There were nine of them.

  In the weeks following, we came to know them as the Crows. They flew overhead, circled, then settled all over the garry oak and the roof of our house.

  They made no attempt to harass Gran or Gramps. Indeed, they seemed almost reverential in their attitude towards the old people.

  It seemed that Gran had unlocked some kind of floodgate in the human unconscious, and people took to the air in increasing numbers. The manufacturers of antigravity belts became millionaires overnight, and the skies became a bright tapestry of wheeling, screeching figures in rainbow colours and startling nakedness. The media named them the Byrds.

  “I view it as a protest against today’s moral code,” said Dr Pratt, who spent most of his time on panels or giving interviews. “For more years than I care to remember, people have been repressed, their honest desires cloaked in conformity just as tightly as their bodies have been swathed in concealing garb. Now, suddenly, people are saying they’ve had enough. They’re pleasing themselves. It shouldn’t surprise us. It’s healthy. It’s good.”

  It was curious, the way the doctor had become pro-Byrd. These days he seemed to be acting in the capacity of press agent for Gran – who herself had become a cult figure. In addition, he was working on his learned paper, The Origins and Spread of Avian Tendencies in Humans.

  Pandora and I reckoned he was in the pay of the belt people.

  “But it’s fun to be in the centre of things,” she said one evening, as the Cros came in to roost, and the garry oak creaked under the weight of a flock of Glaucous Gulls, come to pay homage to Gran. “It’s put the town on the map – and your family, too.” She took my hand, smiling at me proudly.

  There were the Pelicans, who specialized in high dives into the sea, deactivating their belts in mid-air, then reactivating them underwater to rocket Polaris-like from the depths. They rarely caught fish, though; and frequently had to be treated for an ailment known as Pelicans’ Balloon, caused by travelling through water at speed with open mouth.

  There were the Darwin’s Tree Finches, a retiring sect whose existence went unsuspected for some weeks, because they spent so much time in the depths of forests with cactus spines held between their teeth, trying to extract bugs from holes in dead trees. They were a brooding and introspective group.

  Virtually every species of bird was represented. And because every cult must have its lunatic fringe, there were the Pigeons. They flocked to the downtown city streets and mingled with the crowds hurrying to and fro. From the shoulders up they looked much like anyone else, only greyer, and with a curious habit of jerking their heads while walking. Bodily, though, they were like any other Byrd: proudly unclothed.

  Their roosting habits triggered the first open clash between Byrds and Man. There were complaints that they kept people awake at night and fouled the rooftops. People began to string electrified wires around their ridges and guttering, and to put poison out.

  The Pigeons’ retaliation took place early one evening when the commuting crowds jammed the streets. It was simple and graphic, and well coordinated. Afterwards, people referred to it obliquely as the Great Deluge, because it was not the kind of event that is discussed openly in proper society.

  There were other sects, many of them; and perhaps the strangest was a group who eschewed the use of antigravity belts altogether. From time to time we would catch sight of them sitting on the concrete abutments of abandoned motor-ways, searching one another for parasites. Their bodies were painted a uniform brown except for their private parts: those were a luminous red. They called themselves Hamadryas Baboons.

  People thought they had missed the point of the whole thing, somehow.

  Inevitably when there are large numbers of people involved, there are tragedies. Sometimes an elderly Byrd would succumb to cardiac arrest in mid-air, and drift away on the winds. Others would suffer belt malfunctions and plummet to the ground. As the first chill nights began to grip the country, some of the older Byrds died of exposure and fell from their perches. Courageously they maintained their role until the end, and when daylight came they would be found in the ritualistic “Dead Byrd” posture, on their backs with legs in the air.

  “All good things come to an end,” said Dr Pratt one evening as the russet leaves drifted from the trees. It had been a busy day, dozens of groups having come to pay homage to Gran. There was a sense of wrapping up, of things coming to a climax. “We will stage a mass rally,” said Dr Pratt to the Newspocket reporter. “There will be such a gathering of Byrds as the country has never known. Gran will address the multitude at the Great Coming Down.”

  Mother said, “So long as it’s soon. I don’t think Gran can take any more frosts.”

  I went to invite Pandora to the Great Coming Down, but she was not at home. I was about to return when I caught sight of a monstrous thing sitting on the backyard fence. It was bright green except around the eyes, which were grey, and the hair, which was a vivid yellow. It looked at me. It blinked in oddly reptilian fashion. It was Pandora.

  She said, “Who’s a pretty boy, then?”

  * * *

  The very next day Gran swooped down from the garry oak and seized Mother’s scarf with her toes, and a grim tug-of-war ensued. “Let go, you crazy old fool!” shouted Mother.

  Gran cranked her belt up to maximum lift and took a quick twist of the scarf around her ankles. The other end was wrapped snugly around Mother’s neck and tucked into her heavy winter coat. Mother left the ground, feet kicking. Her shouts degenerated into strangled grunts. Father got a grip of her knees as she passed overhead and Gran, with a screech of frustration, found herself descending again; whereupon Gramps, having observed the scene with bright interest, came winging in and took hold of her, adding the power of his belt to hers.

  Father’s feet left the ground.

  Mother by now had assumed the basic hanging attitude: arms dangling limply, head lolling, tongue protruding, face empurpled. I jumped and got hold of Father’s ankles. There was a short, sharp rending sound and we fell back to earth in a heap, Mother on top. Gran and Gramps flew back to the garry oak with their half of the scarf, and began to pull it apart with their teeth. Father pried the other half away from Mother’s neck. She was still breathing.

  “Most fascinating,” said Dr Pratt.

  “My wife nearly strangled by those murderous brutes and he calls it fascinating?”

  “No – look at the Ho
rnbills.”

  “So, they’re eating the scarf. They’re crazy. What’s new?”

  “They’re not eating it. If you will observe closely, you will see them shredding it. And see – the female is working the strands around that clump of twigs. It’s crystal clear what they’re doing, of course. This is a classic example of nest-building.”

  The effect on Father was instantaneous. He jumped up, seized Dr Pratt by the throat and, shaking him back and forth, shouted, “Any fool knows birds only nest in the spring!” He was overwrought, of course. He apologized the next day.

  By that time the Byrds were nesting all over town. They used a variety of materials and in many instances their craftsmanship was pretty to see. The local Newspocket station ran a competition for The Nest I Would Be Happiest To Join My Mate In’, treating the matter as a great joke; although some of the inhabitants who had been forcibly undressed in the street thought otherwise. The Byrds wasted nothing. Their nests were intricately woven collections of whatever could be stolen from below: overcoats, shirts, pants, clothes lines, undergarments, hearing aids, wigs.

  “The nesting phenomenon has a twofold significance,” Dr Pratt informed the media. “On the one hand, we have the desire of the Byrds to emulate the instinctive behavioural patterns of their avian counterparts. On the other hand, there is undoubtedly a suggestion of – how can I say it? – aggression towards the earthbound folk. The Byrds are saying, in their own way: join us. Be natural. Take your clothes off. Otherwise we’ll do it for you.”

  “You don’t think they’re, uh, sexually warped?” asked the reporter.

  “Sexually liberated,” insisted Dr Pratt.

  The Byrds proved his point the next day, when they began to copulate all over the sky.

  It was the biggest sensation since the Great Deluge. Writhing figures filled the heavens and parents locked their children indoors and drew the drapes. It was a fine day for love; the sun glinted on sweat-bedewed flesh, and in the unseasonable warmth the still air rang with cries of delight.