Stranger Things

Jabalpur Johar

It was the sort of day when your shadow appeared and disappeared around you in a surreptitious dance designed to test your powers of observation. Above, floating in a rippling violet sky, fleets of white clouds clustered together before breaking away in little flotillas and whisking themselves off toward the shallow curve of the horizon.

Against regulations I'd removed my breathing gear. Jabalpur Johar had the habit of making us break the rules, it was in the planet's nature it seemed. Reaching the top of the knoll my skin prickled up in the heat of the sun and the back of my shirt ran slick with the effort of the climb. Breathless I stopped and turned.

The forest canopy dipped away below me in a floating field of golds and umbers that turned one way then the other as the breeze caught the tree tops. Down in the valley the nose of the Beagle, brightly glittering in the vibrant sunlight, poked its nose inelegantly though the tree line.

I turned my head and listened. Over the rush of the breeze I could hear the bangs and shouts of Ogilvy and Kitt as they set up the testing gear.

As I turned to climb higher, I jumped. Standing behind me was a man who I'd not heard approach. He was small, elderly, with a shock of white hair and skin brown as autumn and crinkled as a windblown leaf. His yellow tunic, neatly buttoned his chest to his neck, embroidered with brightly coloured birds seemed as out of place here as my tear proof drenlon suit.

'Who are you?' my voice fell in doubt at coming across anther human so unexpectedly.

He smiled, white teeth bright against his dark skin. Not a smile of humour but of suggestion. He cocked an eye and bent his head as if expecting me to say something more.

It sort of jumped into my head, I knew the name, after all it was the same as the planet's and I dug it from the dimmest recess of my schoolboy days. 'Jabalpur Johar? You're Jabalpur Johar?'

His smiled widened, he pressed his palms together as if to say a prayer and bobbed his head.

'What on earth....how are you here?' I floundered. 'Were you left by a ship, are you with anyone.'

'I'm quite alone,' his voice was so soft I had to lean toward him to hear. 'I have a camp,' he raised a thin fingered hand and pointed up the hill. 'Why don't you get your friends and come and join me.' He turned and slowly made his way across the grass. Almost as an afterthought he turned and called, 'I'll make some food, you'd like that?'

'Yes, sure.' I called and watched as he slid into the foliage and disappeared.

'He said what?' Ogilvy was sweating, beads of perspiration forming like little jewels in the lines on his forehead, as if rewarding him for his exertion on climbing the hill.

'Food, he said he'd make us a meal, for god's sake Ogilvy take that breathing gear off, it'll kill you in this heat.'

'Regulations,' Ogilvy muttered back at me through his mask.

'Roast chicken, I hope, with stuffing, you did ask him for that?' said Kitt cynically as he causally reached up and snapped off the catch that held the mask to Ogilvy's face. Ogilvy stumbled and cursed and tried to put the mask back on. Kitt held up the catch and grinned. 'Give it up, Ogilvy, then he lowered his voice and whispered, 'Don't worry, we won't tell on you, you won't lose your bonus for ducking a regulation.'

'Better not,' Ogilvy relented and rubbed his face before turning to me. 'Jabalpur Johar?'

'Yes, I told you.' Out of the corner of my eye I caught Kitt making little whizzy shapes round his head with one finger. 'I'm not crazy, Kitt. I saw him here.'