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See, gentle reader, the inky black of the vast Cosmos! The peace of God's Creation and the silence, infinte majesty of His Works...
But Behold! This tiny dot is glowing a violent and angry red! It expands! This star, this other Sun, so like our own, consumes its planetary companions like tiny morsels in its final moments - a fiery death for all...save one.
From the very heart of the blaze there tumbles a dandelion seed of purest Adamant, the fundemental substance from which the Hammer of God is made, and in it, a newborn, a refugee, thrust by his mother's hand into the care of the Infinite...
Through space it falls like a comet, until finally, by chance, smashing to the surface of a world far, far away, in the deep countryside of the most powerful nation on Earth...
Great Britain.
***
A lonely road, a late night, and an elderly and childless aristocrat is returning with his wife from a ruthless coktail party. The lines of his face are worn with care as he guides the motorcar through the winding roads of his estate.
The burning star flashes over head! His Grace Matthew West-Poges brings the car to a halt, and moments later, he and Helena stare downward into the glowing dandelion.
"My Goodness, Matthew, it's just a child!"
"That'll be gypos."
"Matthew, don't be silly, he's from space."
"Yes, yes. Well, space gypos, then."
She shushes him, and her eyes are soft with gentle emotions.
"Darling, we need a baby. Let's have this one!"
His Grace surveys the infant from afar. It has no obvious congenital defects, is plainly of acceptable parentage, and possesses the immense advantage of not requiring him to perform conjugal duties for which he had no appetite as a young man. A gentle, reserved and sorrowful man, this Heaven-sent refugee cries out for his protection - and he conceals unmanly delight behind a gruff facade.
"All right, all right. But if I see so much as a tentacle or a third eye, I shall be extremely unhappy."
The baby curled a tiny hand about the Duke's finger, and clung on.
"Oh, I say. Chipper little tyke. My, yes..."
The Duke's smile is genuine and deep. And the deal is struck - Muhu Hah, the boy from space, will be raised as the heir to West-Poges.
In time, with training in the finer things, he will become Blake Chipper, the Duke From Space!!!!
To Be Cont'd...
Posts: 657 | From: London | Registered: Jun 2001 | IP: Logged
Sax
Member
Member # 1088
posted 21-11-2001 11:34 AM
Many years later...
"Florrie! Florrie!" His Grace's voice rings out proud and valiant, like the roar of a stag in rut, or the brave call-to-arms of a fearless general urging his troops over the top one last time to what will surely be their inevitably and rather bloody death.
"Florrie! Where's that bloody son of mine?"
Lady West-Poges looks up from her macrame - a work in progress of the Relief of Mafeking - and indicates that her husband should lower his voice a decibel or two, given that they are both in the drawing room and not in the field hunting servants with pop-guns.
"Now, dear," she smiles, attempting to regulate the volume with hushed tones. "What do you want? The whereabouts of our dear, dear son, Chipper?"
"Precisely!" thunders His Grace. "I sent him for my breakfast curry more than three bloody hours ago! I'll have made my toilet, brushed my teeth and shot a brace of negroes before I've tasted the muck!"
"Well," says Florrie calmly. "You did insist that he went to Madras for it. It is an awfully long way, isn't it, dear?"
At that moment there is something of a commotion from the courtyard, followed by the rather regretful sound of what can only be His Grace's favourite Rolls Royce Corniche being mangled into enough scrap metal to make one of those frightful modern sculptures out of.
"Chipper's back!" says Florrie brightly.
Her husband groans into his handlebar moustache. "And thrashed my car, by the sounds of it. I wish he would learn that when he's flying at twice the speed of sound, he really should begin to slow down on his approach back to the house. Last week it was the big stained glass window in the chapel, the week before that he killed the stableboy who was having it off with that girl from the village in the barn, which Chipper landed on. Now my car. I swear, Florrie, if he didn't have the strength of a hundred Arabs I'd tan his hide."
Posts: 236 | From: Oop North | Registered: Oct 2001 | IP: Logged
Whisky Priestess
Member
Member # 113
posted 21-11-2001 05:29 PM
“Darling” his wife reminded him gently, adding another severed head to the carnage on her macramé, “My name is Helena. Florrie is your dog.”
West-Poges shook his greying head with the irritable gesture of a thoroughbred stallion bothered by a fly.
“Never mind that, dear. The point is, the boy’s a menace. To life and limb.”
Helena quailed.
“I mean it this time, Florrie. It’s time to send that boy to University.”
“No!" she yelped, stabbing herself involuntarily in the thumb, “You can’t mean it! Remember what happened last time . . “
[ 21-11-2001: Message edited by: Whisky Priestess ]
Posts: 433 | From: salubrious King's Cross | Registered: Jun 2001 | IP: Logged
Clever Clogs Todd
Member
Member # 342
posted 21-11-2001 06:35 PM
Many, many years earlier...
Deepest, Darkest Africa
A pleasure craft lazes its way down a placid river. The teeming jungle crowds up against the riverbed. The calm green walls belie the restless sounds one can hear from behind them.
Duke and Lady West-Poges lounge on the deck of the boat, being shaded by two nubile, topless natives. Their countenances mirror the tranquilly of their surroundings. Lady West-Poges gently clacking knitting needles provide accompaniment for the melody provided by buzzing jungle flies. From time to time the girls lean over and swat these fist-sized flys away from the peers. Suddenly, His Grace sits bolt upright, jutting his pith-helmeted between the sweat-sheened bosoms of his servant.
"By God's mighty balls, Florrie. I haven't killed anything in near two hours! What kind of a safari is this? A papist one?"
"Now dear, I'm sure the Jeusits have nothing to do with your lack of game to slaughter."
"Are you mad woman? What good can come of missionary work? Tell these savages about God, and soon they'll be wearing clothes, washing before they eat, and attending our best universities, when what God made them for is shading us from this ghastly sun, thrashing about in the brush to stir up rhinos, and maybe do a little dance for us sometime."
"They ARE a musical people."
"Too right."
The Duke pulls a silver piccolo from his breast pocket and blows a short trill. A small troop of pygmies, of all ages and sex, emerges from below decks.
"You lot, dive into the water and make some noise. That's it, take a nice dip, you dirty things."
The pygmies slip into the calm water. Immediately, the river comes to roiling life. A dozen 15 foot long river submerged river crocs attack the hapless pygmies.
"Hah, hah look at those snapping jaws! They'll look smashing mounted above the mantle. Lord Bess-Eaton will be so jealous."
The Duke fires his carbine expertly into the fray, killing several crocs right off. It soon become apparent, however, that there are too many of them. The pygmies whoops of funs become the shrieks of the maimed and the shrieks of the to-be-maimed."
" Do something Matthew! Those poor creatures are being eaten alive."
His Grace's face turns grim.
"Get me some more ammunition Florrie! There's a good lass"
Screams fill the jungle air and Gunpowder smoke swirls about as the t Duke futilely tries to save the pygmies.
Finally, his ammunition spent, he places his knife into his teeth and dives into the water. The last croc is bearing down on a young pygmy boy, who's clinging to the mangled corpse of his father.
"Take that, you stygian beast. And that!"
The croc vanquished by the timely strokes of the Duke's trusty knife, he collects the young pygmy boy and climbs back on bored.
"oh Matthew! That was so noble of you!"
"Someone has to defend these savages against a world that is bound to defeat them."
The boy starts bawling, calling for his dead relatives.
"Matthew, he must be only 4 or 5 years old. And an orphan! Isn't there something we can do?"
His grace lifts the boy up, staring at him right in his eyes. The boy falls silent.
"I'll be damned if I let the papists get a hold of him. We'll make you a fine Englishman, my boy."
And with that, the young pygmy lad became Neville West-Poges... |
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