Sputnik's Guide to Life on Earth Read online

  – I don’t understand how she could possibly know about me.

  ‘You’re both from the same planet, aren’t you?’

  – But it’s a big planet.

  – ‘It might look big to you. In terms of the universe, if you’re from the same planet, that’s local. That’s more or less next door. In terms of the universe, she might as well have been sitting on your knee. Oh, and she sent you a present. She said it would make you smile.’

  He fished out of his backpack something that looked like an old red rubber ball. It had a rash of toothmarks and it was coming undone across the seam. I didn’t really want to touch it in case of germs.

  – Why would an old rubber ball make me smile?

  ‘I don’t know. To be honest I was expecting you to be a dog. She said you were her friend and I thought any friend of Laika’s is probably a dog. That’s why I morphed into dog form.’

  – So you don’t normally look like a dog? What do you normally look like?

  ‘I normally look like me. Anyway, I promised to look after you.’

  – Look after me? Why would I need anyone to look after me? I’ve been looking after myself for years. I’ve been looking after Grandad too.

  ‘You need me to look after you because you’re in incredible danger. I’m here to save you.’

  – What kind of danger?

  ‘Didn’t I mention? Earth is about to be destroyed.’

  6.

  The Companion

  ‘Now that I have proved that Earth does exist,’ said Sputnik, ‘I have to prove that it should exist. Every planet has to have a reason.’

  – Isn’t a planet just a planet?

  ‘Look up at the stars.’

  I looked again at the caster-sugar stars. If anything, there seemed to be more of them. The whole sky shimmered with them.

  ‘Space is crowded. Nebulae are pumping out new stars by the dozen, day in, day out. Someone has to make room for them. That someone is Planetary Clearance. They get rid of all the useless old stars and planets to make room for new celestial bodies. It’s called pan-galactic decluttering. So as soon as I told them I’d found the magical, mythical planet Earth, they said, “OK, we’ll be right over to shrink it.” ’

  – WHAT?! You can’t shrink a planet.

  My only experience of things shrinking was once when I put Grandad’s jumper in the washing machine on the wrong setting and it came out looking like a jumper for a toy.

  ‘Useless planets are being shrunk all over the sky. Their sun shrinks to the size of a planet – it’s called a white dwarf; look it up – and its planets shrink to the size of golf balls.’

  – But this planet isn’t useless. It’s really useful.

  ‘That’s what I said. And they said, “Planet Earth has been mythical for years. How can a place be any use if it’s mythical?” ’

  – But it’s not mythical! You proved it.

  ‘Exactly. If a planet is worth keeping, it’s worth seeing. That’s why Laika wrote her guidebook. But now we’ve rubbed out everything that was in it, it’s empty. That means Earth isn’t worth seeing.’

  – But we must be able to do something?!

  ‘We could write a new Companion to Earth. It’s just a list. You just have to find ten things worth seeing or doing, I’ll write them in the notebook and then Earth can carry on waltzing around its little sun. I’m sure you could write a great guidebook.’

  – To here? I don’t know anything about here. I’ve only been here a few days.

  ‘Not to Stramoddie, you fool. To Earth. How much do you know about Earth?’

  – Well, I’ve lived on it all my life. Plus when Grandad first started taking care of me I was still a wean. So he had to take me with him on his voyages across the Seven Seas. Remember the map? In with my stuff? That’s all the places I’ve been.

  Sputnik whistled. ‘That’s a lot of places. The Amazon, Shangri-La . . . You’ve been everywhere. What was Shangri-La like?’

  – Well, I was pretty young . . . I can’t remember the details. I don’t think it can be very nice though. Grandad used to say, ‘I hope I don’t end up in Shangri-La.’

  ‘You see? We’ve already got something not to put on the list and nothing to put on the list. We’re minus one before we’ve even started. This is a very disappointing planet. Nearly everything that Laika said was wrong.’

  – I can make a list. I’m sure I can. I’m good at making lists.

  ‘You’re sure? You’ve got all the time in the world, but there isn’t as much time in the world as you think.’

  – How long have we got?

  ‘See that bunch of stars there, like a kite? When they reach the top of the sky, Planetary Clearance move in and Earth becomes a pocket planet.’

  – This is the first time I’ve really seen stars. How fast do they move? Are they going to get there in ten minutes or ten years?

  ‘You’ve got the rest of the summer. If we haven’t finished Sputnik’s Guide to Life on Earth by then, that’s it. What’s the first thing?’

  – How about this? What we’re looking at now? The stars and the moon and—

  ‘No. For one thing, stars are not on Earth.

  – No. But you can steer a ship around the world with them. Grandad taught me. See that V-shaped constellation there? That’s . . .

  ‘They’re also not amazing.’

  – What?!?

  ‘Stars are the most unamazing things in existence. The entire universe is crawling with stars and planets and comets and nebulae. Wherever you go, there’s no getting away from them. They’re everywhere. They’re usual. I’m looking for something unusual.’

  – So I have to find ten things that are more amazing than stars?

  ‘Yes. Think you can do it?’

  – Not really.

  ‘Go on! You are ideally qualified for the job. Plus you’re the only person I’ve met who I can communicate with.’

  – I don’t talk.

  ‘Exactly. You listen. Which is so much better. I talk all the time, but no one listens. You never say a word, so everyone listens . . .’

  It was true. Sometimes if I just coughed or sneezed, everyone turned to look at me.

  ‘So?’

  – I have to try. I don’t want anyone shrinking my planet.

  ‘So I’ll take care of you. And you take care of the planet.’

  – I don’t need taking care of. You just concentrate on you. Just one thing.

  ‘What?’

  – I don’t want to have to leave the planet. Actually I don’t even want to leave Stramoddie. Not yet. I’m just the kid from the Temporary. If there’s trouble, they’ll send me back there. And you are trouble.

  ‘OK. I’ll try to be good.’

  – They think you’re a dog, remember.

  ‘So I’ll be a good dog. How hard can that be? If a dog can be good, I can too. What makes a good dog?’

  – I don’t know. I’ve never had a dog. I guess a dog that doesn’t bark. Maybe it helps around the farm. A working dog.

  ‘So I should milk the cows? Drive the quad bike? Make some phone calls?’

  – No, dogs don’t do any of those things. Just be friendly. And cute. Sometimes you see a dog go and fetch the paper from the shop. That’s good.’

  ‘So we’re back to fetching now,’ said Sputnik. ‘I told you I don’t do fetching.’

  – You did ask.

  That’s when it struck me. He was asking me to save the Earth. I can’t save the Earth. I couldn’t even save my own grandad. I’m just a kid from the Temporary.

  – Wait! Wait. Earth is going to be destroyed and you didn’t even mention it! How am I going to sleep if my planet might be destroyed? Shouldn’t we be out there right now looking for things worth saving?

  ‘You need to pace yourself. You’ve got weeks to save the Earth. Get some sleep.’

  – How can I sleep if I’m facing Doom for All Mankind?

  ‘Turn around three times before you lie down.
Works every time. If you turn round fast enough, your worries can’t keep up. When your head hits the pillow, it’s empty.’

  – That’s what dogs do.

  ‘We can learn a lot from observing other species.’

  So I tried it. I turned around three times and snuggled down.

  Turning around three times might have worked for Sputnik, but it didn’t work for me.

  I spent the whole night thinking about how I was going to save the world. How was I going to impress someone who could levitate a tree? Someone who’s seen a star die. Travelled across space. The more I thought about it, the more everything on Earth seemed little and ordinary.

  I tried Googling the Wonders of the World, but all the best ones were ruined or lost.

  When the sun came up I got to thinking, Maybe he was just winding me up. No one can really shrink a planet, can they? So I Googled ‘white dwarfs’ and it turns out that, yes, suns and planets are shrinking all the time.

  I really wished Grandad was here to help. Grandad had been everywhere, seen everything, knew everything. Every night after tea we used to sit on the couch in front of the telly and shout at the news. And The One Show. And Match of the Day. And the adverts. He knew more about politics than the politicians did, more about football than the footballers. He even shouted at some of the fridge magnets, especially the one of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. ‘I could put that tower straight easy,’ he used to say. ‘It’s all about the underpinning!’

  He also knew everything about cooking. It was Grandad who showed me how to chop vegetables really fast. Maybe that would impress Sputnik. Maybe I could make him a big paella, the way Grandad showed me. I bet they didn’t have paella where Sputnik came from.

  Or fish stew. Grandad made amazing fish stew. Or he did before he started forgetting things. Such as when he forgot to turn the cooker on and tried to make us eat the fish stew raw. Or when he forgot people’s names and tried to hide it by calling everyone ‘bud’, including my form teacher. Or when he forgot that it’s OK to shout at your own telly, but not to shout at other people’s. He shouted at the one in the post-office queue, which was showing a film about how to claim your pension. He shouted at the ones in the window of Wilson’s Electrical on George Street.

  It was just after that that they took him away. The man from the Children’s Temporary Accommodation said, ‘I’m afraid your grandad can no longer look after you at the present time.’

  I was going to say, ‘He doesn’t look after me. We look after each other,’ but I didn’t. I asked if he was going to get better soon. He said, ‘We can but hope.’

  I thought I spent all night worrying about these things. I couldn’t imagine having a nap when you were supposed to be trying to save the Earth. But I must have fallen asleep in the end because I remember being woken up by the wind blowing through the broken window.

  I looked around the shed.

  Sputnik had vanished.

  7.

  1kg Plain Flour, 1 Tub Margarine, 500g Mushrooms

  I checked that we were back on the ground before opening the shed door. The air was fresh and cool, which made me realize I really needed the toilet.

  – Come on, Sputnik, let’s go in.

  No sign of him in the yard.

  Or on the lane.

  Or in the field.

  He was gone.

  Maybe he was upset that I had told him off for introducing deadly weapons to the birthday party.

  The tree was standing tall. In fact it looked as though it had always been there. Maybe the tree falling down had been a dream.

  Surely the floating shed was a dream.

  As if a gravity eddy could ever be a thing.

  Maybe I didn’t need to save the world after all!

  I opened the kitchen door.

  The dad walked up and down and bit his lip and talked for a long time about how bad bad bad it was that a strange dog was loose somewhere on the farm.

  ‘I brought the cows in for milking this morning,’ said the mum. ‘They didn’t seem unusually agitated. And the chickens are fine.’

  ‘Actually the big red one is missing,’ said Ray.

  ‘That’s because I killed it,’ said the mum. ‘For Sunday dinner.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘So he’s not bothering any of our animals.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said the dad, but then added, ‘No, that’s bad. If he’s not bothering our animals, maybe he’s bothering someone else’s. Maybe he’s worrying Dougie’s sheep? Or maybe he’s down at the caravan site. He could be creating all kinds of havoc down there.’

  I wanted to tell them that they didn’t have to worry about things like that with Sputnik. But how could I say, ‘Calm down. He’s not a dog. He’s a wee alien in a kilt and goggles’?

  The mum was at the computer. ‘First thing we do,’ she said, ‘is Facebook everyone to keep an eye out for him. Put him on the Farms Forum too. Now, has anyone got a photo we can post?’

  They all went through the photos on their phones. They had pictures of the party, the cake, the fallen tree. But no one had a picture of Sputnik.

  ‘I know I took pictures of him.

  That’s weird.’

  ‘Never mind.

  We can just describe him.

  What would you say?

  Black-and-white mongrel, mostly collie

  dog, pleasant temperament . . .’

  So . . . when I looked at Sputnik, I saw a wee lad in flying goggles and a kilt with a yellow backpack.

  And when the Blythes looked at Sputnik they saw a dog.

  But every Blythe saw a different kind of dog!

  How can you organize a search for someone you can’t describe?

  They were all still shouting the names of breeds of dog at each other when I heard the doorbell go, just like it did on the night he arrived.

  ‘Is that the doorbell?’ said Ray.

  ‘We don’t have a doorbell,’ said the mum.

  ‘Oh yeah.’

  They all carried on talking over each other.

  I answered the door. I knew who it was. There’s only one person on Earth who carries his own doorbell round with him.

  Sputnik went straight past me, carrying a shopping bag. ‘Did you miss me?’

  – I was worried about you.

  ‘I left a message for you outside the shed. Didn’t you tell them?’

  – I didn’t see a message.

  ‘You don’t see messages. You smell them.’

  – Oh.

  Then I realized what he was talking about. When dogs pee on lamp posts and gateposts, that’s their way of communicating. Other dogs come along and sniff the wee and they know whose territory it is or whatever.

  ‘Exactly. I was told the most popular form of communication on the planet was urine.’

  – For dogs. Not people.

  ‘So you didn’t get the message?’

  – No. I don’t speak pee. I was worried that you’d run away because the planet was going to be destroyed.

  ‘This planet is not going to be destroyed. Sputnik and Prez are unbeatable. We will save this planet. Probably. Possibly. Look! You told me to be good. And I’ve been good. The Sputnik is a creature as good as his word. I fixed the tree and now I’ve done this. They’re going to love it.’

  He swung into the kitchen, waltzed up to the mum and handed her a newspaper.

  ‘Oh! You brought me a newspaper. I thought dogs only did that in cartoons. What a clever, clever dog you are.’ She scratched him behind the ear. ‘He must have gone all the way down to Dmitri’s shop on the caravan site.’

  Sputnik winked at me.

  ‘That is clever,’ said the dad. ‘I’m still not happy about him just wandering off though. You two were supposed to be responsible.’ He gave me and Jessie a hard stare.

  Then Sputnik plonked his shopping bag down in front of him. The dad looked inside. ‘What’s here?’ he said. ‘Oh. A bag of plain flour, a tub of margarine, mushrooms . . . This is everyt
hing that was on my shopping list.’ He looked at the fridge door, where the shopping list should have been. It wasn’t there; it was stuck to the top of the margarine tub. ‘Right,’ said the dad, ‘I’ll cook a chicken-and-mushroom pie then. Nice work, Sputnik.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Ray. ‘Sputnik couldn’t have done that. One of you two did it really. You’re playing a trick on us. You took him to the shop and did the shopping.’

  ‘Not me,’ said Jessie. ‘I thought he was missing.’

  ‘Prez then?’ said Ray.

  I didn’t even know there was a shop on the caravan site. I didn’t even know the way to the caravan site.

  ‘Just a very, very clever dog,’ said the mum.

  ‘With a bank account?’ said Ray. Everyone looked at him. ‘Or how did he pay for it all?’

  ‘That’s a wee puzzle,’ said the mum. ‘Which I’m sure Prez will solve for us when he’s ready. Meanwhile I’m sure we’re all glad that Sputnik is making himself useful.’

  ‘No problem.’ Sputnik smiled. He shook hands with everyone again. Whenever he shook hands with them they all forgot to be worried or puzzled about anything. They just loved those handshakes.

  But when he came to shake my hand, I thought . . .

  – How did you pay for it?

  He just winked.

  8.

  Milk

  I didn’t want to think about how Sputnik might have got those groceries. I just thought, The sooner I save this planet the better. I didn’t have Grandad to help me, but I did have his map. He’d drawn it himself in blue ink, and written all the place names in lovely slanty handwriting, then drawn a fancy compass in the top right-hand corner, an inaccurate dolphin in the bottom left and a scroll, with ‘The Travels of Prez and His Grandad’ written on it, unfurling across the top. Then he’d rolled it up and tied it with ribbon. It really was like a proper pirate map. When I unrolled it, it smelt of our flat in Traquair Gardens. I looked at all the places I’d seen and somehow forgotten. Shangri-La. Pisa. Murmansk. I Googled them on Ray’s computer. It made me feel better. They were all amazing. In Murmansk there were giant ships with factory-sized icebergs floating past them. Huge walruses lolled around, their tusks as big as me. Up the Amazon, giant snakes hung from the branches of the trees. The white domes of lost cities rose out of jungles.