Through The Wormhole, Literally

by David Winship

  "Yeh, or they become bitter and resentful,” Melinda agreed. “Not forgetting that many criminals are victims themselves. Or they're dysfunctional people who just need help to cope with their lives. Harrowing. I've helped many ex-convicts myself."

  Yukawa3 could remain silent no longer. "It feels like the world is ignoring me,” he said. “It is spoken.”

  It was some time before West and Melinda moved on to the more specific context of their situation. As soon as they did so, West suddenly resumed his hostility and turned on smolin9. "You consider yourselves an advanced **** civilisation. But you do this to us!"

  The events that unfolded afterwards happened very quickly. West pushed smolin9 to the ground, grabbed Melinda, produced a knife and held it to her throat. Yukawa3, for no particular reason, started running around in circles.

  "Everyone keep still and listen!" West shouted.

  Yukawa3 stopped, pointed at West and said: "Put it down! It's dangerous."

  "Shut up, you **** idiot!" West snarled.

  Yukawa3 was undeterred. "It's dangerous, I tell you. I once gripped the wrong end of one of those and cut my hand. You see? Who's the idiot now?"

  "Don't harm her," said smolin9 in a slightly tremulous voice. "Don't you see - she's the most valuable asset you've got on this planet."

  West's red gums were displayed once more as a sneering grin stretched across his face. His lips were thin and colourless. "I think she's important to you lot too, right?" he said, pressing the cold knife-blade against Melinda's neck. "Now, how do you control those robot people out there?"

  Smolin9 gestured towards his microwocky and West instructed him to summon the androids. The sporadic sparks from the force field ceased abruptly and the androids approached, uttering high-pitched monotones. "Tell them to drop their weapons!" West barked.

  A variety of plasma rifles and stun guns clattered to the ground and the other convicts moved to collect them. But before they could reach the weapons, a burst of plasma burst in front of them and polkingbeal67 emerged from a pod behind West. Having anticipated trouble of this kind, he had crawled his way into the enclosure through the sewage pipes and now stood before them covered in foul-smelling sludge. His eye-patch was all askew and his sherg-encrusted helmet was embellished with blobs of slime and scraps of tissue. "Put down the knife!" he commanded.

  West tossed the knife aside and Melinda broke free. Polkingbeal67 raised his rifle and took aim at West. Melinda screamed at him: "Don't you dare fire that thing! Don't you dare!" Polkingbeal67 lowered the weapon, the androids armed themselves once more and order was restored.

  The dwarf sun glimmered over the enclosure as West and the convicts were ushered back towards the dwelling pods by the androids under the supervision of smolin9 and yukawa3. Melinda went up to polkingbeal67 and smiled. "I love you, you big old bear," she said. "And if you didn't smell so bad, I'd hug you to bits. Literally."

  . . .

  "Well, we certainly showed them a thing or two, didn't we?" said yukawa3, as he and smolin9 and Melinda waited for an audience with the Mortian leader in one of the palace anterooms. The walls were faced with albarium and here and there were clusters of sculptured figures, Mortian war heroes, randomly streaked with a kind of verdigris. "Hell, we stepped up big time. It was just like the old days, eh?"

  Smolin9 looked askance at him. "What old days?"

  "Well, you know," said yukawa3, who had a knack for reinventing history and painting himself in a better light in the process. "The three of us, intergalactic heroes. You, me and polkingbeal67 facing challenges head-on, looking them in the eye, having blind faith in each other and refusing to blink. If they kick us in the teeth, we just bite back. With both feet. In the midst of our troubles, we just keep going straight ahead. Nothing can stop us, short of death. Or, wait, yeh, maybe a tangy vitalmados pill."

  "I don't know about blinking or going straight ahead," said smolin9, "but I do recall you fainting and running around in circles."

  "Those weren't circles," said yukawa3, indignantly, "Those were, uh, spirals. I was trying to confuse the enemy while I got closer and closer and..." He started wheeling around the room to demonstrate his reinterpreted role in the incident at the convicts' enclosure.

  "Time and place, yukawa3" said smolin9, grabbing the cadet's arm. "Time and place. And I think we all know which of us, if any of us, did anything remotely heroic."

  Melinda noticed the wounded look that flashed across yukawa3's face. "I'm sure your spirals will eventually become the stuff of Mortian legend," she said, reassuringly.

  Smolin9 sat next to Melinda and murmured under his breath: "I'm glad you're here. You're an eyewitness and, believe me, that's the only thing stopping me from killing him!"

  Melinda patted his leg. "I want to know what we're going to tell your leader guy about what happened. Is there any way we can play down what happened? How will he react?"

  Smolin9, who seldom understood anything the leader said at the best of times, had absolutely no idea what to expect. "Oh, I'm sure he'll be fine with it. We'll let yukawa3 do all the talking."

  "Why?"

  "Because our revered leader would never believe a word he says!"

  However, before they were summoned to the leader's apartments, a special emissary, accompanied by two of the android medibots, burst into the room. "No time to lose!" he said. "Come with us immediately! We have a donor!"

  Smolin9 and Melinda had time to exchange a look of shocked amazement, nothing more, before they were whisked away in a speeding medicruiser, leaving yukawa3 to explain the fracas at nefeshchaya. Smolin9 was flabbergasted. Several days previously, he had explained to his wife that a Mortian heart donor could only be possible if someone were prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice and lay down his life explicitly to give Melinda a chance of returning home.

  Melinda's head was in a whirl. She, also, could not understand why anyone would do this. Her hazy recollections of the events of the day included a vague memory of the prairie rolling past like time lapse film footage. She remembered, for the first time, being aware of smolin9 actually having teeth, because he used them to chew at his bottom lip during the journey. And she remembered snatches of tense conversation.

  In particular, she remembered the distraught expression on his face when she asked him: "Will I be able to return to Earth immediately after the transplant?" And she remembered him being unable to reply, his voice choked with inarticulate agony.

  She remembered arriving at the medical pod and being escorted along a corridor, smolin9 in her wake. She remembered glancing into the operating theatre where the donor was lying, half-concealed by a drape. And, above all, she would never forget the adjacent table, containing, as it did, an eye patch and a sherg-encrusted helmet.

  4

  THE STOVE BOAT

  Some eons ago – never mind how long precisely – having little or no money in his sherg-purse, and nothing particular to interest him on his home planet, polkingbeal67 thought he would sail about a little and see the celestial part of the universe. It was a way he had of driving off his gloominess and regulating his metabolism. Whenever the cold methane rain swirled around the landscape of his soul, he would take to his Mark III Zeplock mineral spotter, usually with smolin9 in tow, and the two of them would go spacecombing in the Centaurus galaxy scavenging for defunct satellites and pieces of space junk. It was on one such trip that they had discovered the Voyager 1 space probe drifting aimlessly through a shifting vapour of space dust.

  Up until this point, the closest polkingbeal67 had ever come to an act of fellowship or kindness was to tackle the social problem of vitalmados abuse on Morys by confiscating it and consuming it himself. Many Mortians had felt the cold blast of his fury when they had had the temerity to question one of his odious opinions, and many had turned to him for help or sympathy only to find themselves caught in the cold, remorseless gaze of his uncovered eye (he had lost an eye during the battle of Hat Signs and wore an eye patch). So it had come as
a great shock to the Mortian community when they discovered that this battle-hardened veteran of the Jatron wars had apparently offered to donate his heart to smolin9′s earthling wife. It had also come as a great shock to polkingbeal67 himself, as he had had no idea what had been afoot and had been under the impression he was being offered the chance of a new eye.

  “I’ve been tricked!” he yelled from his bed in the post-operative care unit.

  Melinda, lying in an adjacent bed, had just spent several minutes showering effusive thanks and praises upon him for his heroic act of self-sacrifice. Having assumed that polkingbeal67′s reaction was just an attempt to deflect her gushing adoration with gruff modesty, she simply smiled and closed her eyes in blissful contemplation. Had she kept them open, she would have witnessed polkingbeal67′s wild gyrating of limbs as he descended into a frenzy of speechless rage.

  To be fair to polkingbeal67, one can understand how he had got hold of the wrong end of the stick. He had arrived at the medical pod after suffering respiratory problems during the incident at the earthling prisoners’ camp at nefeshchaya. The head consultant at the medical facility had been under pressure from the planet’s revered leader to find a solution to the dilemma Melinda was facing, and he had frivolously asked polkingbeal67 if he might be interested in organ transplant surgery. Wires got crossed during the conversation because polkingbeal67 took this to be a reference to his eye and replied that he was definitely interested. While medibots were assembling for the heart transplant, polkingbeal67, feeling a tad uncertain about things, had tapped his eye patch and asked the consultant, “You’ve got a new one for me, yes?” The consultant had looked confused but replied in the affirmative. And now, there he was, still groggy from the anaesthetic, a transplanted earthling heart beating rhythmically in his chest and a shiny new patch stretched across his empty eye socket.

  At this point, smolin9 and yukawa3 appeared, just in time to see polkingbeal67 flailing his arms around.

  “You see!” yukawa3 exclaimed. “I told you they’d both be fine. Just look at him waving his arms! He’s celebrating!” Roused into high spirits, yukawa3 seized smolin9′s arm and danced around the beds singing an impromptu and very inharmonious rendition of a song he half-remembered from a party he had been thrown out of long ago: “Wave your hands up in the air! Wave ‘em like you just don’t care! What it is, what it is!” He rounded up a few android medibots to continue his spontaneous celebratory song and dance routine, while smolin9 and Melinda hugged each other close, savouring the moment.

  “I can really go back to Earth now?”

  “Any time you like,” smolin9 confirmed, nodding like a parcel-shelf dog.

  “This is so erratic! I can’t tell you how grateful I am. Literally. I’m going to devote the rest of my life to being the absolute best version of me I can possibly be. I’m going to find my inner princess, literally! What can I do for this wonderful old bear, polkingbeal67? Is he going to be okay?”

  Smolin9 continued to nod in trance-like euphoria. Polkingbeal67 sat up, cleared his throat and shouted at no one in particular: “I’m not okay! I’m not okay! Okay?” Having got everyone’s attention, he thumped the bed and continued, “I’m sorry if I’m ruining the mood here, but I’ve been cut up like a piece of earthling meat, I can never visit the Pale Blue Dot again, I’m no longer one hundred percent Mortian and, horror of horrors, I’ve been given an earthling heart! This is the greatest insult since the goopmutts were credited with building the Supreme Palace of Toston Pinnacle! So, no, I’m not okay!”

  An awkward silence fell like a lead blanket. It was finally broken by the muffled sound of yukawa3’s voice emanating from the inside of a kind of CT scanner: “Wave ‘em like you just don’t care! What it is, what it is!”

  . . .

  When smolin9 and yukawa3 left, the pink and orange streaks of the first of Morys Minor's two sunsets were already reflected on the crystal wash basins and the blades of gleaming white magma that served to partition the ward into quadrangles. In one of those quadrangles, Melinda propped herself up in bed as the rays of the second sun splintered and scattered around the various dispensers, appliances and glass receptacles. Three of the android medibots, attired in crisp tunics and crisp attitudes, whirred industriously around the beds, irritating polkingbeal67 in the process. "Why do they wear tunics anyway?" he grumbled. "They're androids. They don't need uniforms. We know who they are and what they do."

  Melinda graced him with an insouciant smile. "It's about hygiene," she said in her sweetest voice. "After all, it's not like they can take a shower or a bath. Literally." She thought for a second. "They'd rust!" she added, shrieking with laughter. "They'd be rustpital workers!"

  "Oh please," said polkingbeal67, rolling his good eye and folding his arms.

  Melinda gazed at him with a tranquil expression. She was not persuaded by his protestations about the heart swap. "You know what?" she said. "You can say what you like about being tricked and all the rest of it. I think you're totally, totally wonderful and I'm forever indebted to you. It's freaky, but I literally don't care what you've got physically beating away in there - as far as I'm concerned, you've got a big old heart of gold. Totally."

  Polkingbeal67's expression clouded. "Gold? What use would a heart of gold be to me? It may be important on your planet, but gold is just a shiny metal with little value besides what is assigned to it by people who trade with it. To me, a gold heart is no more use to me than the stool sample on that shelf over there." He closed his eye and pulled the sheet over his head.

  "Now you're just being grumpy," Melinda said. "You know I don't mean a heart of gold in the literal sense. Literally. Back on Earth, part of my job as a life coach involves school visits. Well, I'm going to tell you a story I like to tell the kids." Polkingbeal67 groaned loudly, but Melinda continued, undeterred. "There are these two sisters, Jawad and Fahim. Jawad is a kind and generous girl, while Fahim is selfish and greedy. One day, they're walking in the forest with their father when he suddenly disappears. Literally. They look all around but there's no sign of him. The girls are utterly heartbroken and they sit on the ground and weep. Then an angel comes down and replaces their broken hearts with golden ones. She promises to return with their real hearts as soon as she can get them repaired."

  The medibots switched on the ambient photon lights and parked themselves at the nursing station. Polkingbeal67 could be heard grunting from time to time as Melinda went on: "So the two girls do what they have to do to survive in the forest. Jawad suffers and becomes weaker and weaker because every time she performs her little acts of kindness, like rescuing animals and feeding the hungry birds, it costs her a piece of her golden heart. Literally. Eventually, when she runs out of gold and lies on her deathbed, the angel reappears carrying their mended hearts. Fahim refuses to return her golden heart and runs off, never to be seen again. The angel restores Jawad's mended heart. At that very moment, the girls' father stumbles through the trees and he and Jawad are reunited."

  Morose and petulant as he was, polkingbeal67 felt obliged to say something when Melinda had finished. "I have no idea what point you're trying to make, but I'll tell you what - I'll take my old heart back right now and you can have a stupid gold one."

  "I know you don't mean that," Melinda said.

  Polkingbeal67 rolled on to his side so that Melinda could no longer see his face. "I'm going to sleep," he said.

  Over the next couple of days, they had plenty of time to exchange stories, fables and anecdotes. In a case of life not imitating art, Melinda, who was recovering well, spent her time performing little acts of kindness and took on the role of nursing polkingbeal67 while he slipped into a gradual decline. The consultant was worried about a series of complications that might be symptomatic of organ rejection.

  A couple of days later, the medibots were preparing Melinda for discharge when polkingbeal67, now enveloped in a dark cloud of bitterness and resentment, launched the most acrimonious of his fables.

&nb
sp; Melinda, excited at the prospect of leaving the medical pod and making arrangements for her return to Earth, paid only scant attention. "A Mortian elder sees a gold goopmutt in a shop window," polkingbeal67 growled. "He goes in and says he wants to buy it. The shopkeeper offers to explain the story behind it, but the elder is impatient and just wants to buy the gold goopmutt. He leaves the shop and notices straight away that he is being followed by a couple of real live goopmutts. Then a few more appear. And a few more. After a short while, hundreds of goopmutts appear and they all follow him down to the methane lake. But when the elder stops at the water's edge, the goopmutts keep going. And they drown. The elder returns to the shop and the shopkeeper says, "So, you've come back to hear the story of the gold goopmutt?" The elder says, "No, I've come back to ask if you have a gold earthling!"

  "Hmm, what?" Melinda said, applying her eyeliner and mascara. "I lost you when the guy went into the shop. What are goopmutts? Anyway, I just want to thank you for everything you've done for me. I'll never forget it. You take care now. Literally. I'll come and visit you every day until I go back to Earth. I'm totally behilden, mabolden, oh, what's the word? Bahooden, whatever, I'm melindahillden to you!"

  "That isn't even a thing," polkingbeal67 complained.

  "Well, it is now," said Melinda. She walked across to his bed and kissed him on the cheek.

  Polkingbeal67 squirmed like a worm on a hook. He liked to think of himself as an autonomous intellectual who used analytical reason and independent critical faculties to make sense of the universe. Frankly, the tendency for human earthlings like Melinda to crave empathy and allow themselves to be drawn into the perspective of others was anathema to him. Having witnessed this appalling weakness afflict smolin9, he was all the more determined to fight it, lest it might seep insidiously, like a slow poison, into the Mortian character. At this moment, he resolved to identify the core of whatever it is that constitutes the soul of a human earthling, and destroy it.