Like many new experiences, it took me a while to adapt. Page and I emerged from a disused building upon a pier in a place which we later learned was called 'Clacton-on-sea'. From the smell of the air, it was some time in late March.
Page had decided upon smart dress so that we ought to look fairly inconspicuous, and I was also wearing a pair of dark glasses to conceal my eyes. There were quite a number of other young people in similar attire so it seemed that we had chosen well.
Our first priority was to obtain some of the local currency. This could have been easier. We did eventually manage to find a pawnbroker willing to take the gold which we had brought with us, but he was rather suspicious of where we had obtained it and I could see in his mind that he was intending to report us to the police after we had left.
I'm not really into terror - after all, it usually involves killing - but suspicion with a little hint of fear is something I can rarely resist. "I don't think you will," I said quietly, in answer to his unvoiced decision to call the police. Taking off my glasses, I stared into his eyes. The fact that mine were amber did not make him happy at all. Slowly my face began to take on a more canine appearance as I relaxed my disguise a little.
The pawnbroker's reaction to that was absolutely beautiful - he went sheet-white, and I smiled, exposing a set of teeth which were almost entirely unlike his. "That's better," I told him. "Good day."
"Yak, what the Hell were you playing at?" hissed Page as we marched swiftly back towards the seafront.
"He thought the gold was stolen," I pointed out, since Page didn't have the ability to read thoughts. "He was going give the authorities our description. Now he thinks I'm a 'were-wolf', which suits me just fine since no-one believes they exist, rather like humans in our world. I don't believe he's going to tell anyone about us now. Besides, his fear was tasty."
"Well I guess it's easy enough for you," grinned Page. "But I need a more physical sustenance. Shall we look for a cafe?"
We didn't have to look far, since the town was a seaside resort, after all. Page was hungry and I was curious to try the local cuisine. After the showdown with the pawnbroker, I was pretty sure that we wouldn't have any more problems - selling mysterious gold was by and large the riskiest part of the exercise.
I popped into a newsagent first, to buy a newspaper or two, since that would give us valuable information about the world. Scanning the headlines, I saw that my hunch about the season was right; by their calendar it was the 29th of March, 1964.
I could smell the hide from the black jackets which many of the patrons were wearing as we entered the cafe. Their thoughts were peaceful enough - until they saw us sit down. "MODS!" yelled one of them, and the others all looked up. Many of them rose, brandishing impromptu weapons.
My natural reaction would have been to raise my hackles, bring out my tentacles and snarl a lot. Doing so would certainly have impressed these humans, but it would also have impressed the police with the urge to shoot us on sight, which was not quite the idea. So I did the next best thing. "RUN!"
It seemed like a good idea at the time.. after all the beach was full of other people in suits just like us, I'd thought that we could lose ourselves in the crowd. It didn't occur to me until afterwards that the black leather people and the suit people were natural enemies in the wild.
I suppose it could have been worse - we did after all manage to lose the people with the jackets. When we returned a few years later, I looked up the event in the old newspapers held by the local reference library. Apparently there were 44 arrests.
However, we had not yet completed our mission, which was to obtain details of the human technology which powered their lights and other artifacts. A solution to this problem soon presented itself however, as we found our way into a library, but this presented new problems of its own.
First of all, the librarian treated us with extreme suspicion. Reading her mind I discovered that most of the local men of our apparent1 age were the leather-jacketed ones known as Rockers.
Mods, which were the people we had dressed as, were the natives of an important and distant town known as Lun'Don, and they had come here for a short pilgrimage to the sea. Since we were quite obviously not local, we were unlikely to return any books which we borrowed, hence the Librarian's distrust. Sadly, she was entirely correct, but the books we were 'borrowing' would be going a lot further afield than Lun'Don.
Meanwhile, Page, his physical hunger replaced by a hunger for knowledge, had found the shelves of the library containing all the technical reference books. He gave a short "psst!", producing yet more frowns from the librarian, and I hurried over to where he was. Looking across the shelves, I found two encyclopedias, for children and for adults. I put both on a desk and began to leaf through the children's one, since finding out how the lighting systems worked would be a good start. As I had hoped, it gave a good overview, explaining much that an adult from this time would have taken for granted.
"Electricity!" I cried, annoying the librarian. "That's what their power source is called. Look for books on that." I strode over to a switch on the wall, and pressed it, turning the lights on and off a few times with an expression of wonder. The librarian's face was incandescent by now, so I went into her mind and devoured her rage, leaving her glassy-eyed for a few seconds.
I looked back at the children's encyclopedia and tried to find out what electricity was and what it was made from. This proved to be an inspired move, since it immediately gave me a design for a small power source which used vinegar, copper coins and zinc-coated nails. I showed it to Page and he almost wept.
Wordlessly he passed me an ancient book entitled "Principles of Electromagnetism". My eyes widened as I flicked through it, and I carefully placed it on the pile as well.
We now had a description of what the humans' power source was and probably enough information to attempt to recreate it at home, but there was one thing which still intrigued me - Page's wild reports of moving pictures and sounds being recorded. I found some references to it in the encyclopedia, and it seemed there were several ways of going about it, but all the systems described required electricity to amplify the sound. Evidently there was more to this electrical magic than simply using it as an energy source.
'Electronics' was a word that I had overlooked at first, thinking that it simply referred to the use of electricity as a power source, but it seemed to me that this was part of the key. Looking around the shelves I found a book entitled 'Basic Electronics' and added that to the pile as well.
By now we had seven books on the table, plus the one Page was reading. It hadn't really occurred to either of us to Scry the books, since it was considered rude in our homeworld. (That we were probably not going to return the books for a hundred years was a moral contradiction that didn't register at the time.) Besides, we would probably not have been able to write out the contents of all eight books afterwards before the synthetic memories created by the Scrying spell faded away, and the glowing-eye effect it caused while operating would be hard to conceal, even with sunglasses.
The problem now was to sneak the books out of the building in front of the already-suspicious Librarian. If I had the skills I do now, it would have been a simple matter of making the books invisible, or even hiding behind a shelf and teleporting out, but my powers were fairly basic back then so we had to use other means.
The library had a separate exit and entrance, so I took all the books and moved them onto a table close to the exit. Then I left, leaving Page behind.
I morphed myself into a Rocker and went back inside. The librarian watched me with a suspicious eye, this time suspecting me of intending vandalism rather than the theft of her books, and this gave Page time to snatch the pile and leave quietly through the exit while she was distracted. Taking one more circuit of the library, I pretended to look at a few books and then left to rejoin Page, reverting back to the Mod outfit once more.
Page was getting very hungry now, and it would soon be time for the Gate to materialise on the pier. We visited a corner shop, where I bought a small electric torch and some batteries for it, along with a small tool set. The carrier bag proved handy too as I was able to put the books in it. Finally, we went to a small chip shop and purchased some food.
Sitting down at a stool within the shop, Page began to devour the fish greedily. I took a small chunk of it myself to see what it was like, and and ate a chip or two on the side. It was when we stood up to leave that the spell inside the patch on Page's arm suddenly wore off.
Page reverted to leopard form in an instant, including the suit which turned into a small piece of paper. There was a scream from behind the counter as someone saw him. "Get down!" I hissed. "Down on all fours! We'll make a break for the pier." The woman who had screamed had now fainted, aided in part by my own telepathic ability. At a glance from behind, Page looked a little bit like an oversized Labrador retriever although his feet and hands were something of a giveaway, the spots were a bit of a no-no and the wings on his back were most horribly, horribly wrong.
We ran towards the pier, and I discovered that the peculiar rotating gate which had been quite happy to let us out would not now let us back in. Page crawled under the turnstile to a chorus of horrified yells as people realised there was a huge alien feline on the loose. I suddenly noticed the coin slot and fortunately had the correct coin in the change from buying the torch.
Perhaps I'm too honest most of the time, or perhaps I just didn't want to cause any more panic on top of what Page had already caused. While I fumbled with the turnstile, Page had reverted to two legs and, running in a most un-leopard-like way, was now halfway to the hut where the Gate was scheduled to reappear.
However, there were a number of humans chasing him. I joined in the pursuit, catching up with Page by virtue of the fact that I was naturally faster and stronger than most humans. I used a psychic attack on all the nearby humans, a very basic spell that most Beings can block, but it took most of the humans down, and when they awoke they would have forgotten the last five minutes.
Together we entered the hut and plunged through the gate which had appeared just in time.
Safely inside, I put the books on the desk and after changing into my usual clothes, reverted back to my natural lupine form. It had almost been a disaster, but the prize we had won more than made up for the mess we had caused. And my Gods, what a prize it was! There was enough new technology in the few books we had stolen to keep us busy for years, more likely decades.
Page looked at me with a triumphant expression. "We are going to get busy on this tomorrow, Jakob. A short rest to recover and we can begin.
We'll build lightbulbs and a generator to take power from the river.. my Gods.. I'll be famous for this! And so will you, Jakob."
Page looked at me with an expression of admiration that I'd never seen on his face before. "Three times you could have fled back there and saved yourself, but you didn't. From this day on, we are equals. Half of my city is yours, Jakob, and we shall rule it together."
'Cubi are extremely emotional creatures, and being made joint lord of Ha'Khun was an extremely emotional moment. I was so grateful I began to hug him2, when a small, bewildered voice behind me said "..demons.."
We turned around in surprise and saw one of the security guards from the pier, crossing himself as he stared back at a pair of tall, winged, humanoid animals.
1 Jakob at this point was nearly four times older than the town itself
2 Page is something of a father figure to Jakob. Anyone who implies that Jakob is gay for Page will be modded down.