Read Online Rock n Roll Babes from Outer Space by Linda Jaivin - Free Book Online Page A

in.
    ‘G’day.’ The tobacco-stained voice of George, his neighbour, cut into Jake’s thoughts. George’s dark little eyes shined brightly from under circumflex brows that lent his wide, leathery face an air of perpetual amazement. His thin lips twitched—George often appeared to be chewing something. In fact, he was chewing
over
something. What he was chewing over—and had been for years, in fact, ever since the death of his wife Gloria—were the twin issues of the end of the world and the arrival of aliens on Earth. George was a man obsessed. He was convinced—no, he was absolutely
sure,
he
knew,
he was
dead certain
—that human civilisation was preparing to take its final bow. This was something predicted by the ancient Mayans and confirmed by the daily newspapers.
    He also knew that, when it came time for that final tick of the earthly clock, benevolent aliens would save those who believed in them. He knew that when this happened there was a good possibility that he would be reunited with Gloria in another dimension. He knew this because he subscribed to magazines like
Millennium Watch
and
UFO Quarterly.
He corresponded with women in the Dandenongs and policemen in Gladstoneand other people who’d actually seen flying saucers, including one mysterious dweller of caravan parks in South Australia who was in regular contact with extraterrestrials disguised as dolphins. It all pointed to one thing, really. The need to Be Ready for Anything. Specifically, Be Ready for Uplift.
    George was ready. His entire yard was a metre deep in dead and dying electrical appliances. Where some urbanites in their rural nostalgia might have planted frangipanis or ferns, farmer George sowed rows of Cuisinarts, electric pencil-sharpeners, cyclostyles, transistor radios, daisy-wheel printers, and fondue pots. A snowy river of old washing machines and fridges snaked along the side of the house; the roof was thatched with stacked television aerials. Why exactly this was the way to prepare for the apocalypse, George couldn’t have said—it all came down to intuition, really.
    His intuition told him that all was not quiet on the alien front. For one thing, the papers were full of signs that the end of the world was nigh. The government had recently announced it would service the national debt by selling off most of the country’s environmental and cultural resources—including all World Heritage areas, the Opera House, Uluru, half a dozen dance companies and a stand-up comic or two. It was directing shipments of nuclear byproducts through urban electorates in which there were too many artists and homosexuals and women who used words like ‘chairperson’. It had cancelled reconciliation with Aboriginal Australia because it was considered a ‘politically correct’ thing to do, and the government didn’t want to be caught doing anything that could be misinterpreted as correct. It was also turning the ABC, the national broadcaster, into a commercialenterprise cum hamburger franchise. Elsewhere, American teenagers were swearing to remain virgins until marriage while their parents pledged to kill gays for Jesus. The one ethnic group left in the world that was not trying to kill off another ethnic group had all perished in a bus accident. Barges of toxic wastes were drifting aimlessly on the oceans, occasionally tipping over into the mouths of whales. And that was just last week.
    Tick. Tick. Tick. The good news was that there had been a flap of UFO sightings around the world with at least a dozen reports from all over New South Wales the day before. General Jackal somebody-or-other in the Pentagon had issued a formal statement blaming errant weather balloons, lubbock lights and other IFOs. He’d failed to comment on an international bumper harvest of new crop circles in the shape of CDs, vinyl records and cassette tapes.
    Then there was the matter of that strange dream last night. In it, George was strolling through the bush when he came