Good Morning Michael

by

Paul Brazier and Juliet Eyeions

Christmas Eve dawned bright and ferociously cold in London. Outside Farringdon Underground station, commuters huddled in on themselves against the cold, scurried from the stuffy warmth of the trains to the havens of their offices, and tried to ignore the cheerful vagrant who stood on the corner of Cowcross and Turnmill Streets.
  “Morning, all!” he called to a knot of commuters as they emerged from the station.
  “Have a good day, fella!” he said to a smartly-suited man, who side-stepped him neatly and averted his eyes.
  His Nativity tableau – a plastic bread tray, upturned and standing on an Evening Standard unit, and decorated with wooden dolls and rag ends of Christmas decorations – glistened with the new frost of the morning. The man dropped a coin onto it, and hurried off.
 “Mornin – Mornin’,” he hailed a cyclist and a taxi as they dashed past in opposite directions.
  “Have a nice day!” The tide of the rush hour ebbed and flowed around him, the pile of coins grew a little, and Michael continued, unflagging and undiscouraged, to offer greetings and good will to everyone he saw.

“The bloody Ark’s late!” said Cam. Although they were all feeling the cold, she was the first to say anything – but this was understandable as she was the tallest, and therefore was having the most difficulty in remaining concealed. “You’d think they would have let us know, rather than leave us out here like this”. The little group stood, huddled as close as their physical differences allowed, within a clump of trees that was still within sight of their erstwhile observatory. When they had left, they had been careful to cover their tracks as fully as possible, but they could not repair the damage to fences and cages, and when the objects of their study found them gone, waiting here undisturbed would be much more difficult.
  “They will have good reason,” rumbled Bert, shaking his mane out the better to stay warm.
  “It’s all very well for you people with the fur to complain,” said Elvis, “but my hide isn’t keeping me warm at all, for all it’s extra thickness. And my feet…” He stamped for emphasis, and the ground shook.
  “There is nothing we can do, in any case,” said Lep crossly. “We can‘t exactly go back inside to wait, now can we?” There was a general muttering of agreement.
  “Still and all, we’re beginning to look as disorganised as the humans, aren’t we?” said Cam. “We manage to put a covert observation mission down in their very midst undetected, and now, the most vital part, withdrawing without letting them know we’ve ever been here, is being bungled. I mean, look at this species I’m emulating. When it was first discovered by this so-called civilisation, they called it a cameleopard because it looked like a cross between the two: never mind that its sweet, gentle nature makes it nothing like either of the others. This fiasco makes us look equal buffoons.”
  Humphrey humphed at this. “What’s so special about your species? They’re probably late ’cos they couldn’t find a ship tall enough for you. And anyway, why can’t we change before we go back?’
  “I’ve told you before, we’ll metamorphose on subsummation. And I for one wish we didn’t have to wait any longer. I’ve had enough of this mean-minded planet.’
  “Perhaps we’re waiting for Michael Powerson,” growled Pan. “Surely they wouldn’t make the pickup until we were all present, and he for sure isn’t here yet.”
  “He’s making his own way to pick-up, and you know he has his own comms…”
  “News! News!” shrieked Monk from on high. “Nav error. Ark landed in Hyde Park. Captain requests we make our way to him. Keeping up camouflage shields and flying accurately over busiest city on planet while avoiding air traffic is beyond power capabilities. Message Ends!”
  “Did he say how we were supposed to remain concealed?” Humphrey asked sneeringly.
  “I doubt it,” said Cam. “Any suggestions?” There was a general negative muttering. These people were, after all, scientists, not diplomats, soldiers, or administrators. Cam wished briefly once more that the Powers had given her at least one professional xenologist. She had shown great skill and patience in keeping a close rein on this motley bunch of specialists while they observed this latest candidate race. Indeed, she had devised the camouflage that they had used to such efficacious ends, and, up to this point, everything had gone exactly to plan. But it was vitally important that they get off the planet undetected! Candidates for uplift must never know they had been visited and assessed, in case they were rejected. Lurid tales from her student days flitted through her mind, of one non-uplifted race who, spurred by the knowledge of the Galactic Comity to new heights of endeavour, had burst out from their planet almost by main strength, and certainly without proper preparation. Purging was always messy and unfair, and off-world it was even more difficult. Cam sighed. This was not going to be easy. For all their faults, these weren’t bad people. She hoped another purging wouldn’t be necessary.
  “Listen,” she said. “This is what we’ll do – and we might even get warm while we’re at it.”

The tide of the day had turned early, many people making the excuse of leaving early in case of heavy snow – although the sky was still astonishingly blue and the air burned in Michael’s nose and throat.
  “G‘night, fella. Happy Christmas,” he said as a commuter hurried past.
  “Standard! Standard!” cried the newseller next to him. As usual, he had had to reclaim his newspaper stand from Michael, but it was no ag, and now he called the headlines while he stamped his feet to keep them warm. “Two-hundred and seventy-fourth ceasefire breached in Bosnia! Royals latest: Queen to divorce Duke – ‘that bald git’, she calls him! Zoo broken into! Animals free in West End!”
  “Have a good weekend,” called Michael. “Merry Christmas all.” A stout man with cold-cheerful cheeks, wrapped up well against the cold, stopped in front of Michael, and handed him an envelope.
  “You have a good Christmas too, Michael,” he said. “You’ve really cheered me up just being here everyday. I’ve got to dash now. Train to catch,” and he disappeared in a flurry of red and white into the station. Michael tore open the envelope. It contained a home-made Christmas card, with a picture of some animals on the front, and lots of writing inside. He had no time to read now. He stood the card on his tableau, and returned to his work.
  “Merry Christmas girls. Happy New Year all.”

The observatory crew walked in single file down Portland Place. Traffic came to a sudden halt when faced with the prospect of vying with a menagerie (although some drivers thought that it wasn’t that different from the way some people acted on the road – just slower). Pedestrians stood and stared in amazement. The file proceeded to Oxford Circus, and turned right along Oxford Street. Crowds of last-minute shoppers stood transfixed. Some tried desperately to get away, but the pressure of bodies was too great, so mostly they just stood and boggled.
  By the time the crew reached Marble Arch, the Metropolitan Police had been informed and had swung into action. Traffic was stopped in Bayswater Road, Park Lane and Edgware Road (it had long since come to a standstill in Oxford Street). A helicopter thudded low overhead, marksmen in flak jackets with high-powered rifles lined the rooftops, and ranks of policemen with riot shields formed in an attempt to shepherd the observers into a makeshift enclosure on Speakers’ Corner. But the file of people, led by what appeared to those present to be a particularly splendid lion, passed through the ranks of uniforms and shields, and out onto the still frost-covered open grassland of the park; where they vanished!   Witnesses claimed that the light over the park appeared to twist, and then a brief rush of warm wind melted the frost into a most peculiar pattern. Despite the huge police presence, the massive disruption to both Christmas shopping and travel services, more than half of the inhabitants of London Zoo strolled across London one Christmas Eve and vanished without trace.

As night began to fall, the brilliant sky gave way to warm clouds, and the temperature rose abruptly. On the corner of Turnmill and Cowcross Streets now stood only a solitary newspaper seller, and the homegoing crowds muttered and milled and miseried past him uncheered. Somewhere above the clouds, in an invisible orbit, a Comity Convocation began its deliberations on the data that had been gathered. And it began to rain. And rain. It rained non-stop, until it seemed like it might rain for forty days and forty nights – but, twelve days later, the skies cleared, and the sun shone again.

Good Morning Michael is copyright © 1992 Paul Brazier & Juliet Eyeions

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