Chapter 5 #2
Another book he’d ghostwritten for a well-known TV chef. It had gone viral, which now made him worry. “I hope you’re not expecting too much,” Kaden said carefully and sipped his coffee.
“You’ve already exceeded my expectations. You’ve made me sound a lot more interesting than I am.”
Kaden chuckled. “That’s not true. I’m in awe of what you did when you were younger than me.
I’m nowhere near as brave. All that way and no mobile phone?
Plus, I’d cope with one night in a tent and that would be it.
First sign of a snake or scorpion and I’d have gone home.
I probably wouldn’t have stopped to pack first.”
Alistair laughed.
Kaden brought up the document on his laptop. They discussed the changes Alistair had made and Kaden amended the main file.
“Great,” Alistair said. “All done, right?”
“Almost. I’ve written this to go at the end of the blurb. What do you think? Both a travelogue and a chronicle of self-realisation, Going the Extra Mile is a captivating blend of adventure, challenge, and ultimately, self-discovery.”
“That sounds fabulous.”
“In that case, give me a moment to update the paperback file and once I’ve sent both that and the ebook doc to you, I’ll help you upload them onto the publishing platform.
We’ve already filled in most of the details needs, it’s just a matter of adding the final versions and pressing go.
Sure you haven’t changed your mind about requesting a proof of the paperback? ”
“No, I’m fine. I’ve read it all again since you last came.”
Several minutes later, everything was done. All boxes ticked.
“Okay. So now you can press the bar at the bottom and it will publish,” Kaden said.
Alistair chuckled. “Done.”
“They’ll send you an email to tell you when the book is live and you can order author copies by clicking here.”
“Right.”
“Then I think we’ve finished. I’ve had the best time with you working on this book. It’s been a privilege and a joy. Thank you for trusting me with your story.”
“Thank you! You’ve been so patient and I’ve enjoyed your company. In fact, I’ve enjoyed it so much, I wondered if you’d like another commission?”
Kaden glanced at him. “Really? You kept telling me your life was dull after your travels. You came home, went to work for the foreign office and finally retired.”
“All of which is true, but… I was a spy.”
Kaden widened his eyes. “Are you supposed to admit that? I didn’t even have to get out my thumbscrews. You must have been a terrible spy.”
Alistair laughed loudly. “I’ve never been tortured.
Fortunately. I’m not a spy now and I wouldn’t be confessing any state secrets but I thought we could perhaps write a novel together?
Loosely based on my work. Or maybe an autobiography, though I’d have to make sure nothing was included that shouldn’t be.
Any material would have to be reviewed and approved. ”
“By the government?”
“I can’t compromise current sources, methods, or anyone’s safety.”
“Which would likely mean taking out all the good bits.”
“You’re probably right. A novel then. I’ll still have to have it approved by the powers that be.”
“Alistair… You are a very dark horse.”
Alistair chuckled. “I was quite a charmer in my youth.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“You see that box over there on the chair? It contains diaries, photos, drawings, letters from my years in the foreign office. I’ve not looked at it for ages but it was where I kept everything that was important to me that wasn’t covered by the Official Secrets Act.
Why don’t you take it away, go through it and see what you think?
It might give you some ideas. Fiction or non-fiction if you prefer.
We can have a talk about it. Do you have time to make a start now? ”
“Yes.”
Kaden was intrigued. He carried the box over to the table and began to go through the contents.
“That’s the first diary I ever wrote,” Alistair said. “A very old one. I was only sixteen. Even then, I was thinking about exploring the world. But the diary will mainly be about school. The rest were written after I came back from New Zealand. We’ve already used my notebooks from the trip.”
Elsie was whining now, walking to the door and back.
“I’ll let Elsie out into the garden while you take a look,” Alistair said.
As Kaden read the diary, he could feel Joe reading along with him, urging him to turn the pages. Kaden was reading more quickly than he usually did. His fingers seemed to be flicking faster and faster, and he was shocked when he reached the final entry. He couldn’t possibly have taken anything in.
You can remember all of it.
What? But he could. Alistair’s time at boarding school, his crush on a prefect, on a teacher… His parents, their disapproval when they found out he was gay…
“Finished already?” Alistair joined him at the table.
“I skipped through getting a feel for things.”
“Take it all home with you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. There’s little value in my scribbles or pictures. Give me a call when you want to come back. You can tell me what you think.”
“Okay.”
Kaden carefully slotted the box into his backpack.
“I’ve put the final payment in your bank account. You’ve done a wonderful job. I couldn’t have done it without you. I hope I have another book inside me.”
“Are you allowed to tell me where you were a spy?”
“Russia, mostly.”
Kaden smiled. “Ya lyublyu russkuyu istoriyu.”
Alistair raised his eyebrows. “You love Russian history? Do you speak Russian?”
“Da, ya govoryu po-russki. Not brilliantly, but well enough. Have you read Nelson DeMille’s The Charm School?”
“I have. If we can write a book even half as good as that I’ll be happy.”
“I’ve read a lot of books set in Russia, so…”
Alistair smiled. “Same fee as before? No, no, you’ll be having to work harder. Another fifteen percent?”
“That would be great. Thank you. I’ll go through everything and come up with some ideas for us to talk through.”
Kaden left the house after he’d said goodbye to Elsie. It would be no hardship spending a few more months working for Alistair. He headed towards the Tube.
I like him.
Kaden sighed. “Me too. Thank you for not talking in my head while I was chatting to him. I needed to concentrate. So what did you mean about me remembering all of that diary?”
You just will. Everything you read or watch while I’m inside you, you’ll remember, assuming you want to. I can be useful. The sooner I increase my knowledge base, the sooner I can quit your body.
Kaden thought about that. “Would you like to go to the library? There are shelves full of books on all sorts of subjects. You can pick what you’d like to know about. It might be easier than me suggesting topics to look up on the computer.”
Yes. There’s so much I want to know. The human body. This world. Your seas. Your poles…
It sounded as if Joe knew a lot already but Kaden went to Canning Town library, answered more questions on the way, then spent the next three hours in a semi-daze while Joe sucked up information at…
superhuman speed. Kaden had turned the pages far too quickly for him to read more than a few words but he could feel the information building in his head.
He had a slight wobble over whether it was a good thing to be giving an alien access to so much data, but it wasn’t as if any of it was a secret.
This was a public library! And if Joe had managed to get to this planet in a spacecraft, his race was already far more advanced than humans were.
If they wanted to invade, they would. Except they had to be really tiny.
Learning about different types of volcanoes isn’t going to lead to an alien invasion.
Kaden felt his cheeks heat.
Why have your cheeks warmed up?
Kaden looked around to check no one would see him talking to himself, though the assumption would be that he was on the phone. “Embarrassment. I’ve had enough now. Can we leave?”
Yes. I checked your temperature because I thought you might be ill.
“No, not ill.” Kaden put the books they’d been reading back on the shelves. “Were you looking for planets to colonise?” He should have asked that question sooner.
When Joe didn’t answer straightaway, Kaden wondered if he was going to lie. How would he know?
I won’t lie to you. First and foremost, we were looking for resources.
We’d been to five planets before we saw the Earth and had sent back many transporters with material.
As we approached the Earth, our craft lost power and guidance, which led to us being captured by this planet’s gravity and dragged down to the surface.
I think the captain and chief engineer managed to reduce our speed a little, but not enough to save the craft.
Kaden shouldered his backpack and left the library. “Why hasn’t that been in the news? I know you’re little, but you must have made a big hole. How did anyone survive?”
Those who did survive were in the control room, the most protected part of the ship.
Each important crew member had someone like me assigned to them.
I was a protector and supposed to bond with Lanu, a hunter as well as being the chief engineer.
But the ship yawed and I was pulled away from him. We crashed before we merged.
“Where did you crash? How did you end up in the tank in Lixian?”
The ship hit the ground at the edge of a place where vehicles were parked.
I know now that it was Lixian’s car park.
It was nighttime. We waited until it was just light, then flew to the coat of one of the employees as he exited his vehicle, and hid under his collar.
Then we flew into the tank when he took the lid off to add material.
The captain thought we’d be able to get out but once we were inside and the lid was on, we were trapped.
“You flew? And how small are you? I mean, the blue stuff was a culture medium, right? And there were archaea in there too.”