She sat down. "Was that okay?" she asked smolin9, taking the bowl and showing her teeth in a fixed smile. "What do I do with these?"
"That was just fine," said smolin9. "And, er, they're supposed to be absorbed rectally."
"There's no way..."
"You have to. It will be a breach of intergalactic protocol if you don't."
"Well, he'll just have to settle for a symbolic gesture," Melinda snarled. She got up, placed the bowl on the blossoms, sat on it and smiled affably. The leader bowed, curtsied and smiled back.
. . .
Time went by. Well, what else would it do? But exactly how much time had gone by, Melinda was by no means certain. She did not know if a Mortian day was the equivalent of an Earth day and, anyway, the fact that there were two suns made it all so confusing. Mortians measure time by means of a numerical system that made no sense to her whatsoever.
Melinda was still struggling to come to terms with her exile from Earth. She had spent hours sitting alone, staring at a few dog-eared photographs of friends and relatives. Although she knew the only way she could mitigate some of the loneliness was to throw herself heart and soul into her new life on Morys, yet she refused to abandon hope of one day being able to return home. Her experience as a life coach taught her that clinging to such an unrealistic prospect was psychologically dangerous. She risked alienation from smolin9, and, worse, she risked slipping into a kind of existential death.
"What exactly is it about these blue blood cells that make it impossible for me to go home?" she asked smolin9, as they sat back to back on the prairie floor outside their dwelling pod. "Polkingbeal67 said something about changes to my heart tissue, but I don't really understand why that can't be fixed."
Smolin9 reached behind and placed his hand on hers. "I'm really sorry, Mel. I've spoken to our experts about this and it seems that although the other organs revert just fine, earthling hearts are different. They're just different, that's all. I'm so sorry."
"Couldn't I have a transplant or something?"
"Well, a transplant would work, but, well, would you really want us to abduct someone else from Earth to be a donor?"
"No," said Melinda. "I suppose not. What about a Mortian?"
Smolin9 pondered this for a moment. "Strangely enough, that would work. As you know, our hearts function perfectly okay on both planets and there's no reason why an earthling body should reject a Mortian heart. The thing is, our body parts self-heal almost instantly, so we live for centuries. Mortians only die when there's catastrophic trauma involved or the heart becomes incredibly old and useless. So no one would ever meet donor criteria. Anyone who dies on Morys is not going to have a healthy heart to pass over to you." He turned his head. "I'd give you mine..."
Melinda sighed and squeezed smolin9's hand. "Don't be silly," she said. "Literally."
Androids had been allocated the task of obtaining methane hydrates and separating the water molecules from the gas molecules. So Melinda had been drinking coffee, but she had eaten nothing since her arrival on the planet apart from some chocolate she had brought with her in her fake crocodile skin bag. "We've got to talk about food," she said. "I'm really going to have to eat something soon."
Both suns were high in the sky above them. Smolin9 faced the swollen giant, Melinda the red dwarf. The combined radiation produced a stellar wind manifesting itself as a series of sinuous, spinning vortexes dancing capriciously along the horizon. Weaving in and out of the twisting columns of gas and dust and heading towards them was polkingbeal67's cruiser. They sat and watched as it sped towards them, leaving red dust in its wake. Polkingbeal67 and the young cadet, yukawa3, got out of the cruiser and strolled across to where smolin9 and Melinda were sitting.
Smolin9 greeted them and introduced yukawa3 to Melinda. "You may have met briefly at the reception," he said.
"Yeh, I remember," said Melinda. Yukawa3's build was similar to smolin9's, but his mouth had a slightly pinched shape and his eyes were narrower. He sported what looked like a sou’wester rain hat. "What brings you here?"
Yukawa3 looked perplexed. "Er, I live on this planet," he said.
Melinda laughed. "No, I mean, um, anyway, why the hat?"
"Why the hat?" yukawa3 repeated, looking at polkingbeal67 with an expression of helpless bewilderment.
Melinda shrugged. The conversation had already become a bit of an ordeal. "Don't worry, it's a very nice hat. So erratic. My Aunt Vivienne has one just like it."
Yukawa3 cast a pleading look at polkingbeal67. "She's got an amphibian that wears a hat, sir," he said.
To be polite, Melinda sought to clarify matters. "Aunt Vivienne," she said. "Not amphibian. Amphibians are literally like frogs and toads. And they don't wear hats as a general rule." She shrieked with laughter.
Yukawa3 shot a pained glance at polkingbeal67. "Sir?"
Smolin9 brought the awkwardness to an end. "Melinda's been asking about food," he said, turning to polkingbeal67. "Have we been able to sort anything out yet?"
"You bet we have!" said polkingbeal67, sounding quite excited for him. "We obtained samples of principal earthling foodstuffs, analysed them and recreated the molecular structure of most them in tablet form. And we've discovered a sustainable way of producing the tablets without raiding the Pale Blue Dot!" He noticed Melinda's vexed expression. "But you'll get all the macronutrients, micronutrients and phytochemicals you need."
"It is spoken," yukawa3 pronounced, nodding wisely.
Melinda looked aghast. "I don't want macro, micro stuff or fighter chemicals!" she protested. "And I don't want tablets. Literally." The thought of the vitalmados suppositories at her welcome reception sprang into her mind. "That's utterly harrowing! I'm not going to spend the rest of my days eating food at the wrong end! And that's that!"
Smolin9 understood. "Don't worry, Mel. We don't always eat like that. In fact, our primary tongues are here in our mouths." He demonstrated by poking a worm-like tube from his mouth and flicking it with his finger.
Yukawa3 was looking at polkingbeal67 and getting agitated. "Tell her, sir," he said. "Tell her about the coronation orbis!"
"Yes," said polkingbeal67, tapping his eye patch the way he did when he felt proud of himself. "We noticed a lot of your food is derived from organisms that have wings and fly, or have scales and swim, or have fur and run. So we analysed similar organisms that live here on our planet and discovered several that will be compatible with your digestive system. We found an earthling recipe for coronation chicken and discovered that the orbis bird is an excellent chicken substitute. So, yes, we made some tablets for your lunch. They’re in the cruiser."
"It is spoken," said yukawa3, nodding.
Melinda was less than impressed. "But this is insane!" she complained. "So if I fancy having lasagne or sausage and mash, I just get a tablet? Why can't you use your fighter chemicals to make sausages instead of tablets? Literally."
Polkingbeal67 shook his head. "It doesn't work like that. And we can't just fetch a pig from your planet every time you want a hot dog."
"Why not?"
"Really? It would be so wasteful. One pig makes 450 sausages."
"What an amazing animal!" said smolin9. "What else can you teach it to do?"
Polkingbeal67 scowled. "You crazy prokaryote! Anyway, there's no way I could justify abducting animals from the Pale Blue Dot just to be eaten."
"Earth!" Melinda insisted. "Call it Earth!" Her mood was clearly changing.
Yukawa3 felt he should break the silence that followed. "I want to say something about this," he announced. Unfortunately, his mental faculties were not up to it. "Let me think about it," he said.
Polkingbeal67, who had been urgently swiping and flicking at his microwocky, suddenly sprang to his feet. "It's confirmed," he announced. "They're all in quarantine right now."
"It was prophesied," said yukawa3, shaking his head for no apparent reason. He was not sure if polkingbeal67 was ready to reveal the news to Melinda, so he just waved
his arms around in frantic expectation. "We must be ready for an unforeseen event that may or may not occur," he said, barely able to contain his excitement. "Sir?"
"All right, yukawa3, I'll tell her," said polkingbeal67, folding his arms to lend his words an air of importance. "Melinda, you will be delighted to learn we've arranged for some of your earthling friends to live with you here on Morys."
"It is spoken," said yukawa3. "Wait, I want to come in here." Everyone waited for him to contribute, but the pressure of having to say something intelligible proved beyond him. "You think that's exciting? Well, it is. I hope that answers your question."
Melinda rose to her feet as she struggled to digest what polkingbeal67 had said. "Did I hear you right?" she asked. "My friends? Coming to live here? Are you serious?" A pang of joy was instantly suppressed as she realised anyone from Earth would be doomed to permanent exile just as she was. "Oh my god, what have you done?"
Melinda's tone of voice put polkingbeal67 on the defensive and he made a dismissive gesture with his hand. "I went to a lot of trouble to do this. You have no idea," he said. "It costs millions of shergs to transport people by wormhole. You're just lucky our revered leader has taken a bit of a shine to you."
"It's not some can... It's not can thing... It's not something you can dismiss lightly," said yukawa3, tripping over his words. "But it doesn't matter really. It's done now and you should be grateful. No question about it, but I ask myself..."
Melinda had had enough. "Shut up!" she snapped. "Sorry, literally, but shut up! You're jabbering like a hyena. I want to know who's been brought here and what's happening with them."
"They're with the medibots. You should be celebrating," said yukawa3. "You've got earthling friends here and you'll be meeting them soon. You should be partying. This is a joyous occasion and you should be dancing and laughing, not attacking us!" He tried prompting Melinda by giggling maniacally. "Who's the hyena now?" he said. At this point, polkingbeal67 slapped him on the top of the head.
Smolin9 put his arm around Melinda's shoulder while polkingbeal67 explained that the new earthling immigrants were not actually known to her. They were a dozen young adults, six men and six women, abducted from various prisons in the vicinity of Melinda's home. In his wisdom, the Mortian leader had judged that their incarceration rendered them expendable.
Melinda was dumbfounded. "So basically," she said, "you've got hold of a bunch of criminals, possibly dangerous criminals, and you've brought them here for my benefit. And they're all stuck here forever. And they're all going to blame me for it! Well, what could go wrong? So, do tell me, what knucklehead halfwit donkey came up with that idea?"
Appalled at this blatant slander, polkingbeal67 turned on his heels and left. The cruiser accelerated away, trailing a plume of dust behind it. Yukawa3, who had been nursing his crumpled hat, gestured in the direction of the speeding cruiser. "That knucklehead halfwit deserves to be kicked to death by a donkey," he said, keen to ingratiate himself with the sobbing Melinda, "and I'm just the one to do it."
. . .
"Remember," said the Mortian leader, as Melinda left the palace to join smolin9 and yukawa3 in the cruiser, which was humming like a monk at the foot of the steps, "eagles are unsociable and don't flock like other birds. But we rejoice when the eagle soars. It is tempting to look away from the sun as it is bright and may hurt your eyes. But you should draw no comfort from the world of distorted shadows."
Smolin9 gave Melinda a quizzical look as the cruiser hovered and lurched forwards with yukawa3 at the controls. "What was that all about?" he asked.
Melinda shrugged. "Yeh, it was a bit erratic. Maybe it will make sense eventually. Right now, you need to explain to me why these people are being held in a prison camp. They may have committed crimes on Earth, but you Mortians have no right to lock them up."
The three of them were on their way to the earthling prisoners' camp on the far side of the vast methane lake known as nefeshchaya. A patrolling company of androids marked the boundary of the enclosure, but security was actually assured by means of an invisible force field that occasionally erupted in tiny sparks and crackling plasma fountains. The twelve convicts had been provided with dwelling pods, a colossal greenhouse with a closed earth-like ecosystem, some dairy animals, a food processing facility, an ice house and a random assortment of equipment, tools and materials plundered from farms and factories on Earth. There were water extraction kits and even a fully sustainable sanitation system. Some of the convicts had begun to make the best of their situation. They spent time at the camp perimeter and exchanged gossip and information with the androids. Others fumed and plotted and schemed.
By and large, the Mortians had gone the extra mile to make the earthlings feel comfortable and empowered. They were perhaps understandably upset when the convicts dubbed the enclosure a 'living tomb'.
"Why do they call it a tomb?" yukawa3 asked as the androids ushered them through a temporary portal in the force field close to one of the dwelling pods. "What is a tomb?"
"It's a burial chamber," Melinda explained as the convicts came towards them. "Literally. It's where our people used to bury the dead. Like in pyramids and stuff."
Yukawa3 whimpered pathetically, fell to the ground and adopted the foetal position.
Smolin9 shrugged. "He'll be fine. He's been watching a lot of old earthling movies about zombies."
Yukawa3 recovered, sprang to his feet and puffed out his chest. "Sorry," he said. "I felt a little faint. Haven't eaten today. These living dead earthlings don't actually look very dangerous. No match for battle-hardened space guerrillas like me and smolin9! Pah!"
"Well," said smolin9, "We're not armed. What do you suggest we do if it turns ugly?"
"Let me think about it," said yukawa3, sucking his lips. "I've got it - shout for help, of course!"
Melinda attempted to introduce herself to the convicts, but one of them interrupted her. "Yes," he hissed menacingly. "We know who you **** are." He spat on the ground. "You're the **** who's responsible for getting us into this. Do you realise what you've **** done?" This man, Joseph West, self-appointed leader of the twelve-strong convict community, had been serving time back on Earth for grievous bodily harm and had had previous convictions for drug dealing, racially aggravated common assault and burglary.
Yukawa3 attempted to spit, but could only produce a feeble whistling sound and a small globule of saliva that dribbled down his chin.
"It's not her fault," said smolin9. "Melinda had no idea about any of this: the blue blood cells, you people being abducted, none of it. And don't forget you were in confinement on your own planet."
"So what is this? The new **** Australia?" West countered. "At least on Earth we only had to serve our **** sentences and then we'd be free. But this... this is a living **** tomb."
"How long was your sentence?" Melinda asked.
“Eight words,” yukawa3 interjected helpfully.
West spat again. "None of your **** business."
Melinda persisted in the hope of engaging the convicts in some kind of meaningful dialogue. "What were you in for?"
"Doing my **** Christmas shopping early," West lied.
"But surely that's not an offence," said smolin9.
"Yeh, well, it is if you do it before the **** shop opens!" said West with a sardonic grin that revealed red and inflamed gums. "All right, I kicked the **** out of someone. I'm no **** angel. But I don't deserve this. None of us do! It's bad enough on Earth in the **** prison. If you stick an animal in a **** cage and don't feed it properly or exercise it or nuthin', people call you **** cruel and barbaric. I mean, if a dog does a **** job on the carpet, you shout at it, right? But then you try to teach the poor **** devil another way. It might take a few times, but eventually most of 'em learn. So why the **** can't we do it with people?"
West's anger and frustration continued to simmer as he and Melinda discussed general issues concerning incarceration.
"You see," Melinda told him.
"I agree with you that there are lots of alternatives to longer and longer prison sentences, but I guess it's easier for society to say: 'Take them away, lock them up and keep them away from me.'"
Yukawa3 interrupted. "I want to come in at this point," he said. "You think that's easier?" He racked his brain but only came up with: "Well, it is."
"You can't **** imagine what it's like to be confined to a small space and narrow routines for years and **** years, maybe until death," said West. "Okay, nothing terrible happens, but then nothing great happens either. There are no real dramas of any kind like in real life. It's just day after day of nothing. It's the **** nothingness that kills you."
"I totally understand that, literally," said Melinda. "And I believe people can be made better."
"Right," said West. "It's just **** wrong to strip away great chunks of a person's life, together with their relationships and mental well-being and their..." He searched for the right word.
Melinda supplied it. "Humanity?" she said.
"Yeh. In some ways, I think flogging is better. If you've got to punish people, then flog them!"
Melinda frowned. "I don't know. I think flogging is barbaric. Literally."
"It may be barbaric, but punishments, by definition, are supposed to be unpleasant, aren't they? Given the choice, I'd rather be flogged than spend time in **** prison. And justice is then seen to be done. You'd be surprised at how prison terms make people worse. They come out and feel they need to make up for everything jail took away from them. So they resort to lying and cheating and stealing to make up for lost time."
Through The Wormhole, Literally Page 10