Through The Wormhole, Literally

by David Winship

  . . .

  Meanwhile, smolin9 and yukawa3 had sought and been granted an audience with the revered Mortian leader at the palace of obsidian fingers. At the second sunrise of their second day at the palace, the pair were finally led to the leader's bedchamber where they found him attired in a seaweed body wrap, surrounded by heaps of discarded fortune cookies. Greetings were exchanged and a pipe of scorched vitalmados essence was passed around.

  "I have a question for you, O revered leader," smolin9 said, bowing deferentially.

  The leader closed his eyes and made a sound like a cat chewing a wasp. "Every wise man started out by asking many questions," he said. "We must bathe together." With that, he flounced from the room, a couple of subservient minions and long pieces of seaweed trailing behind him, and headed for his spa room, a specially designed bath split into six separate open-top cells like a car battery. After a short while, the three of them were joined by nipkow4 and two executives of the Morys Minor Broadcasting Corporation. When all six were settled in the spa tubs, they looked like a carton of eggs.

  The MMBC people set out their plans for a flagship series of news programmes, featuring interviews, analysis and investigative reports from around the universe, involving on the spot coverage spearheaded by an outstanding team of presenters. Smolin9 and yukawa3 were formally invited to join this elite team. "Your ability to juggle many tasks will take you far," said the Mortian leader, as smolin9 saw an opportunity to request a posting to the Pale Blue Dot.

  Yukawa3 nipped in ahead of him. "Let me do the Pale Blue Dot!" he pleaded.

  The leader shook his head. "Each day, compel yourself to do something you would rather not do," he advised.

  "What's he talking about?" yukawa3 whispered to smolin9.

  "I think he wants you to go to one of the other planets," smolin9 explained. That, at least, was his preferred interpretation.

  "But I want to go to the Pale Blue Dot! I love those sou’wester rain hats! We ought to bring some of them back here!"

  The leader, growing tired, puffed his cheeks and blew air through his thin, loose lips. "Advice, when most needed, is least heeded," he said. "Say hello to others. You will have a happier day."

  "But what about the hats?" yukawa3 protested. "Everyone said it’d be a great idea to bring them back here. And it was all my idea!"

  "An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it," the leader intoned sternly.

  Yukawa3 was assigned a mission to investigate reports of unrest in the city of Niffis on Oov. Smolin9, to his undisguised delight, was appointed MMBC correspondent on the Pale Blue Dot. Photon lights were moving in the steam from the spa, creating the impression that the water was rippling. Before too long, the leader extracted himself from his tub and began smearing his body with oils and ashes. He and smolin9 remained behind to discuss the condition of polkingbeal67.

  "I'm sure he'll pull through," said smolin9, "but I'm worried about him. He seems to be taking it all very badly and seems to be grieving for his heart with anger. He could probably do with a spell away from Morys once he recovers, but of course he can't come to the Pale Blue Dot with me as his new heart won't function there."

  The leader shrugged his shoulders. "You can't remove a fire, you have to douse it where it is," he said.

  As the conversation went on, the leader made it clear that he had granted smolin9's request to take Melinda with him to the Pale Blue Dot on condition that he return to Morys in due course with a plentiful supply of new fortune cookies. He had made such requests before and smolin9 was only too happy to oblige. He was in high spirits as he walked through to the grand vestibule, where yukawa3 was trying on a full suit of medieval armour.

  Smolin9 exclaimed, "What on Morys are you doing?"

  Yukawa3 thumped the breast plate and smiled at the echo.

  "Just like that earthling movie," said smolin9. "No heart. All hollow. But you don't know what I'm talking about."

  "Yes I do," yukawa3 insisted. "It's a film based on a book called Crime and Prejudice. Isn't this great? I love it here. It's times like this when people like us ..." He racked his brains to think of something to add, but he had overstretched himself.

  "What?" smolin9 prompted him. "People like us ... what?"

  Yukawa3 had run out of steam. "I don't know," he said. "What should we do?"

  "What you should do is get out of that suit before our revered leader sees you. Then we must go home and make our wormhole travel arrangements."

  Before they left, smolin9 and yukawa3 were honoured with a formal ceremony at the foot of the twenty-eight white magma steps, although the parade consisted of little more than the leader and one of his minions traipsing to and fro, one trailing seaweed and the other hopping from side to side trying to avoid slipping on it. At the conclusion of the formalities, smolin9 thanked the leader for all his wise guidance and inspirational leadership.

  The leader waved a frond of seaweed and said, "Help! I'm being held prisoner in a Chinese bakery!"

  . . .

  Smolin9, Melinda and yukawa3 were supposed to have had a big send-off before they left for their respective destinations, but it never took place because the Mortian leader was away attending the sixty-eighth General Assembly and Intergalactic Conference on Bridle Berg. Nevertheless, polkingbeal67, who was still battling organ rejection, entreated the three of them to join him at the medical pod for a farewell party of sorts.

  The medibots turned a blind eye to the haze of scorched vitalmados and yukawa3 performed his herky-jerky turkey dance and joined the consultant for a kicking, hip-jerking two-man conga line, but otherwise it was a fairly subdued affair. Most of the planned festivities were hijacked by polkingbeal67 himself. Determined to exploit the opportunity to quiz Melinda about the nature and essence of the earthling human soul, he had been trying to get her attention all evening. His chance finally arrived when smolin9 was distracted by a tele-immersion call from the MMBC Earthwatch producer.

  Polkingbeal67's plan was to be casual and nonchalant and to steer the conversation in the desired direction as subtly as possible, but no matter how well the Mortian warrior paved any route with good intentions, he invariably took the first available shortcut. "So, tell me now," he said. "What is the nature and essence of the earthling human soul? I need to know right away."

  "Uh, what's that now?" said Melinda.

  "You know: the secret of what it means to be an earthling human. Is it a religion thing?"

  Melinda wrestled with the question and was surprised to find herself quite easily overpowered. "Well, it's not just... Religion is part of it, literally, but humanness is also about our intellectual ability and ..." She broke off as polkingbeal67 was staring at her in open-mouthed amazement.

  "Sorry, but there must be more," he insisted.

  "Well, y'know, the possession of a soul and that kind of thing."

  "A soul. Are we back on the religion thing? Tell me about your god. Why do you have so many religions? Do you all have different gods, or what?

  "Well, no, I suppose all the different religions lead to the same god. It's just that everyone has different ways of, uh, approaching the subject."

  "And, according to our research, you all fight like rabid goopmutts about which way is the right way of approaching it. Anyway, are you sure it's the same god? When we were studying you people, we discovered there were several contenders."

  Melinda sat on the side of polkingbeal67's bed. She could see this conversation was not going to get comfortable any time soon. "What contenders?"

  Polkingbeal67 took a deep breath and suggested a few that came into his mind. "Oh, well, there's the one you call the supreme creator and then there's the impersonal force which some of you believe is made up of all living things and holds the universe together. A bit out there, don't you think? Let me see. There's one who has something to do with elephants and costumes. And then there's others, like the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Eric Clapton, Ryan Gigs and David Beckham."


  Melinda laughed. "Oh, this is so erratic! God is an all-powerful being ..."

  If polkingbeal67 had had external ears, they would have pricked up. "All-powerful? What are his weapons? Has he got laser incinerators? Plasma tech blasters?"

  "Don't be ridiculous. He's all-powerful because, well, because he created us and everything in our world."

  Polkingbeal67 looked distinctly unimpressed. "Is that it?" He waited a few seconds. "There's more, right?"

  Melinda had never had to defend and justify God in this way before. "Look, he created the world in six days, okay. Six days!"

  Polkingbeal67 considered this. "Okay, six days is not bad, I must admit. We built and populated our third moon, Jiraqa, in just over thirty days and we had a tribe of goopmutts helping with the large masonry structures. So, fair enough, six days is a good effort. All that water was a bit of a cop-out though. You don't think he's a bit of an underachiever?"

  Melinda had had enough and picked up her drink. Polkingbeal67 grabbed her arm. "You can't go yet!" he said. "I need to know more. What does he look like and what planet does he live on? Is it just him or a whole species of gods?"

  "We don't know what he looks like and he lives in heaven. And there's only one god. Literally. God, the Father. Although he has a son who came down to Earth."

  Polkingbeal67 looked suspicious. "What about God the Mother? A son, but no mother?" As the conversation went on, the Mortian warrior misinterpreted Melinda's increasing discomfort as evasiveness. He became convinced that she was hiding something from him. Perhaps there was a mother god and she was the key to unlocking the secrets of earthling humanity. "So, he said, "If, just by chance, I wanted to visit heaven, how would I find it? What are its coordinates? What kind of place is it? Have you been there?"

  "Excuse me?" Melinda was now looking around the room for an excuse to get away. "Listen, this is getting silly. Of course I haven't been there. It's heaven. You can't just set the controls and fly to it! Literally."

  "If I were to take you with me, would you be able to find it?"

  Melinda squealed. "What! I'm not going to heaven before I die!" She noticed his uncomprehending expression. "We go there when we die. If we've been good, that is. Otherwise, we go to the other place."

  "What other place?"

  "Hell."

  "What's the point of going somewhere when you're dead?" said polkingbeal67, perplexed. "And who decides which one you go to? And what difference does it make, if you're, y’know, dead?"

  "God decides," Melinda's patience was wearing thin. "Where is smolin9? Look, heaven is a higher place, with a capital ‘H’ and, er, ‘P’. It's a holy paradise kind of thing. Literally. Hell is an inferno."

  Polkingbeal67 thought about this. "So the good people get the holiday of a lifetime when their lifetime is over, and the bad people just get cremated."

  Melinda beat a hasty retreat and found smolin9 crushing a vitalmados lozenge. All of a sudden, she burst into tears. Smolin9 wrapped her in his arms and implored her to forgive him. "I was going to offer you some, honestly," he said.

  "It's not you," Melinda sobbed. "I just had the most erratic conversation with polkingbeal67 and I realise I betrayed my people and misrepresented them." She dabbed at her eyes with her sleeve. "He asked me to explain the nature of the human soul, but I got sidetracked by his questions about religion and I never mentioned courage, art, love and determination. Or how we're always pushing the envelope. The way we encourage and inspire each other. Or how we believe in doing to others as we would have them do to us. I never mentioned empathy and compassion. The power of a smile. The ..."

  Smolin9 interrupted. "Yeh, it's probably just as well you didn't say all that. He'd have called it stumcrust."

  "Stumcrust?"

  "Goopmutt excrement."

  Back at polkingbeal67's bedside, yukawa3 was discovering that the power of a Mortian smile made as much impact as a dollop of custard. "What's wrong, p?" he asked his former mentor.

  Polkingbeal67 fixed him with a vacant stare. "Hmm? Oh, I've found out some interesting stuff about earthling humans and what makes them tick. I've been learning about their god." He proceeded to tell yukawa3 all the information he had gleaned from Melinda.

  Yukawa3 looked distinctly bewildered. "Now that I have that knowledge, what do I do with it?" he asked. "I can't be doing with all those religious things. Mind you, I like the sound of the elephants and costumes."

  Polkingbeal67 took hold of his arm. "Promise me you'll forget everything I just told you," he said. "And don't mention any of this to smolin9 or Melinda. The thing is, as soon as I'm fit enough to get out of here, I'm going to get the old mineral spotter serviced and I'm going for a little trip." He set his lips in a grim line. "I'm going to heaven and I'm going to find and destroy God the Mother!"

  . . .

  Tele-immersion producer, nipkow4, was drumming his fingers on the magma blade that served as a table in his office at MMBC Headquarters. He had failed to convince yukawa3 that there was anything glamorous or exciting about their imminent departure for the planet Oov. "Listen," he said, "When I was a young journalist like you, I had to prove myself by covering local stories for provincial news stations about things like pod boundary disputes and corruption and methane storms. You don't know how lucky you are to be sent to inhabited planets."

  "Oov is inhabited by ants," yukawa3 complained sulkily.

  "Chilloks are not ants."

  "They look like ants."

  "I know it's easy to confuse the two. Chilloks are social creatures with node-like structures and they tunnel through soil to form honeycombed mazes and they pile the excavated soil into mounds above the soil line."

  "So how are they not ants?"

  Nipkow4 sighed and squinted at the microwocky in front of him. "You know as well as I do they have highly sophisticated antennal lobes and exhibit intelligence way beyond even our understanding." He began drumming his fingers again. "And they've colonised almost every landmass in the known universe. If they were bigger, you and I would be their slaves. And you certainly wouldn't want to be caught calling them ants."

  Yukawa3 leaned forwards. "I know," he said, “but polkingbeal67 always told me not to stay too much inside my comfort zone. He said it’s like a bubble and I must push the skin of the bubble before it contracts and suffocates me. And I happen to know that he’s about to embark on a really interesting mission! MMBC really ought to cover it."

  "You can tell me about that in a moment," said nipkow4 sceptically. "But you've got to realise that good journalism is not about taking a massive risk to produce one attention-grabbing piece of work."

  "What if it's so big, it could launch my career and make you head of MMBC?"

  Nipkow4 wagged a finger at yukawa3 and raised his voice a little, sounding a little aggravated. "It still wouldn't prove you're any good at your job," he said. "If you want to succeed in this industry, you need to do good work, no matter where you are, no matter what the story. Putting yourself at risk on some hostile planet as a fast track to fame is not how we do things here. You've just got to knuckle down and put in some hard graft." He looked at yukawa3 with an expression of benign paternal tolerance. "I know you're impatient to make your mark in this field and I fully understand you're anxious to get ahead of the competition. But competitiveness is not necessarily the best approach to everything. In my opinion, there's only one person you should try to be better than and that's the person you were yesterday." He paused for a moment to let his words sink in. "Now tell me about polkingbeal67."

  Polkingbeal67 should have thought twice before telling yukawa3 of his plans. It was an injudicious mistake. His former cadet was about as discreet as a stampede of goopmutts.

  Nipkow4 was astonished to hear such a preposterous scheme. "But heaven is an earthling fantasy planet!" he spluttered. "And even they don't believe in a female deity!"

  "You think that’s hard to believe? Well, it is. I'm just telling you what he told me."

  "Well th
en, I have to tell you that you cannot, you just cannot, apply reason and logic to earthling belief systems. Their worldviews are contradictory and you simply cannot, must not, give intellectual credence to things like the virgin birth and Mohammed leaping from Mecca to Jerusalem on horseback in the course of one single night! Do you know what I find really surprising about all this?"

  Yukawa3 nodded and then shook his head. "Is it the leaping thing?" he said. "The last time I went to the Pale Blue Dot, it was religious Christmas and I really enjoyed it. Will it be Christmas on Oov?"

  Nipkow4's eyes widened. "What?" he said. "It's Oov. They're not earthlings!"

  "Oh," said yukawa3 heedlessly.

  "Anyway, what I find surprising is that polkingbeal67, of all people, is coming out with this stuff. If you'd told me this about smolin9, I'd have believed it and laughed it off. But polkingbeal67..." He shook his head in despair. "Something's seriously wrong."

  Dismayed as he was, nipkow4 did not have the luxury of hindsight and took no action whatsoever concerning polkingbeal67. Instead, he and yukawaw3 became completely engrossed in preparations for the trip to Oov. Eventually, all the equipment checks were duly completed and homeodynamic disruption antidotes were administered to all personnel. Nipkow4 consulted his microwocky for details of the rematerialization conditions at the destination site. "No problems," he said. "Warm. Twenty five dreebs. Broken clouds."

  Yukawa3 seemed a little agitated. "I hope they're going to fix them," he said.

  . . .

  Melinda's return to Earth was delayed for several days by unfortunate circumstances, not least of which was her reluctance to leave Morys until polkingbeal67 showed verifiable signs of recovery. For reasons that defy any rational explanation, however, the stricken heart donor was not cooperating with anyone, including the medical staff, so it was difficult for them to assess his cardiovascular health. Then suddenly one morning, he woke up, got out of bed, arrayed himself in full Mortian battle dress and discharged himself from the medical pod.

  As chance would have it, he bumped straight into Melinda as he walked through the main pod door. "Well, look at you!" Melinda exclaimed, throwing her arms around him and kissing him on the cheek. "You're up and about and everything! Literally. That's erratic and totally wonderful! How are you feeling?"