Through The Wormhole, Literally

by David Winship

  Nipkow4 discussed the matter with crew members afterwards. It seemed strange to all of them that the Naaffabs should have deployed these chemical weapons at a time when they did not need to use them.

  "I don't get it," yukawa3 said. "He's been reinstated as President and was evidently winning the conflict."

  Nipkow4 endeavoured to explain. "It's all part of a cunning plan to stop foreign intervention," he said. "You see, it works like this: Keshiak denies using these banned weapons, then he negotiates with foreign powers like us who might potentially intervene in the conflict. Using the weapons as bargaining chips, he invites inspectors to Niffis in return for promises of non-intervention."

  Yukawa3 struggled heroically to get his brain around the idea. "So he wants to invite us round for chips?"

  "No, no, not those sort of chips. Bargaining chips. Don't you see? He's worried about foreign interference."

  "I get it," yukawa3 declared. "I totally get it. Yeh, I'm clued-in. I'm in the loop. It's so obvious when you think about it!"

  "You don't get it, do you?" said nipkow4. Yukawa3 slapped his thigh and shook his head. Nipkow4 attempted to clarify his theory. "Well, to sum it up," he began, "Keshiak is trying to persuade the intergalactic community not to take punitive action against him for using chemical weapons, which it wouldn't have done anyway if he hadn't used them. And he's trying to achieve this by allowing weapons inspectors to inspect weapons he says he didn't use and doesn't have. Right? So the weapons are bargaining chips, you see?" As the look in yukawa3's eyes turned from slightly vacant to hideously hollowed out, he added: "Bargaining chips are something that someone else wants that you are willing to lose in order to do a deal. I trust that's all perfectly clear now?"

  "Perfectly clear! What it is! The penny has dropped! Wow, that's some devious cunning plan thing, isn't it?"

  "You still don't get it, right?" Nipkow4 never liked to give up on anything, but sometimes defeat is the only option. "Let me put it like this: Keshiak... is inviting us round for chips."

  While all this was going on, Muqu rebels were fleeing from the city, traversing the red sand under cover of their diminutiveness and concealing themselves in the MMBC starship. They remained undetected during the return trip to Morys Minor and during the bumpy trek to the palace of obsidian fingers and during the long hours they spent yelling at the Mortian leader at the tops of their voices while he swaddled himself in the remains of one of smolin9's tattered old 'Why always me?’ t-shirts and a trailing whirl of seaweed fronds.

  And now we are up to date and back to the moment when the Muqu rebel leader decided the only way he could attract the Mortian leader's attention was to leap theatrically into the dish of skin oil and swim backstroke like a false eyelash in a whirlpool. Eventually, the Mortian leader spotted him and called for a myrmecam to be installed. The Muqus then recited their long list of grievances against President Keshiak and the Naaffabs. Having heard them out, the Mortian leader continued his ablutions and sent for yukawa3 and Melinda.

  Yukawa3 was the first to arrive. The leader received him in his lavish private chambers and told him: "I want you to deliver polkingbeal67 from his confinement and travel with him to the city of Niffis on the planet Oov. Tell him he must prove himself as a broker for peace in keeping with the philosophy of our new covenant. We must learn to dwell in harmony with all our neighbours and he who leads an ox to drink must first wet his own feet."

  "It is spoken," said yukawa3 ingratiatingly. He had no idea what was required of him and only understood later when nipkow4 translated the message into a form of words that he could grasp the meaning of.

  "So what exactly has polkingbeal67 got himself stuck in?"

  "Space jelly," said nipkow4. "Think of it as frogspawn without the eggs, a slimy blob of goo. Polkingbeal67's craft is like a foetus in a womb and he's completely surrounded by the placenta. You'll have to use a plasma blaster to get him free." He thought about the womb analogy and made the association with polkingbeal67's quest to find God the Mother. He chuckled to himself. "You'll have to administer a caesarean section!"

  Melinda described her private interview with the Mortian leader as 'literally surreal'. Recalling the bizarre conversation afterwards, she dismissed his words as the incomprehensible ramblings of a senile, demented old fool. Smolin9 and nipkow4 thought otherwise. In their view, Melinda was privileged to have been granted an audience with a revered leader whose cryptic but wise utterances would be celebrated in time as prophetic and revelatory. When she told them he had presented her with a small bag of pebbles, dried leaves and what looked like some rotting teeth, they both backed away and swayed in sheer amazement. Nipkow4 was the first to find his voice. "You are the chosen one!" he exclaimed.

  "Can you remember exactly what he told you?" smolin9 asked.

  "Oh, I don't know, it was all a bit erratic," Melinda replied. "He was kind of warbling. He said the sun will shine upon me and I must be sure to spread the light to others. Then there was a whole lot of other stuff, er, something about a diamond with a flaw being better than a pebble without."

  Smolin9 and nipkow4 exchanged looks. They had the advantage of knowing that the reference to the sun and sharing the light was part of an ancient ceremonial chant signifying a transfer of power from one leader to the next. "You've been appointed his successor!" smolin9 confirmed.

  "That's literally eccentric and ridiculous!" Melinda scoffed. "I'm not even a Mortian! Be serious!"

  Nipkow4 bowed reverentially. "You have a Mortian heart," he explained. "That's all that's required."

  Melinda sat down on a velvet ottoman and stared ahead, pondering this new development. Smolin9 and nipkow4 left her to her contemplation. After barely five minutes of frantic soul-searching, her mind was made up. Destiny beckoned and she would embrace it. A smile played slowly over her lips. "Yes," she said to herself. "I'll do it. I will be the next leader of Morys Minor. Literally."

  . . .

  Yukawa3 circled the space jelly a few times to study it and take some readings. Then he steadied the ship and fired several blasts of plasma until he could make out the battered hull of polkingbeal67's Mark III Zeplock mineral spotter. Parts of the jelly became spongy and shriveled up, making it possible for yukawa3 to manoeuvre close to the round hatch window. Polkingbeal67's face appeared. He looked well enough, a little chastened, a little chagrined, perhaps even a little humbled. The hull of the ship was scratched and pock-marked, displaying all the scars of the fateful encounter with the asteroid rock fragments.

  Once polkingbeal67 had been safely transferred to the main cabin of the Acubierre shuttle, yukawa3 began the daunting task of damage assessment. As he pored over the data flashing across the screen, he stole a glance at polkingbeal67 and broke the silence with a low whistle. "Life isn't fair, is it, sir?" he said.

  "Oh, it's better than the alternative," polkingbeal67 muttered darkly.

  Yukawa3 resumed his work, recording and analysing the damage caused to the Zeplock by the flying debris.

  "I can save you the trouble," said polkingbeal67, visibly steeling himself for the ordeal of parting with his precious craft. "She's beyond hope now. The navigation's gone, the hull has been mangled and all the propulsion systems are shot."

  "But surely..." yukawa3 protested.

  Polkingbeal67 was trying to be brave. "I never repeat myself," he said, grimly.

  "We can salvage some parts," yukawa3 persisted. "Y'know, for keepsakes?"

  "Like I said before, I never repeat myself," said polkingbeal67 as he fired up the Acubierre launch sequence.

  "We've got orders to go to Oov to sort out those infernal ants. Our revered leader wants you to be a broker for peace. Nipkow4 says you're being tested." He cast a searching look at his former mentor. "Are you okay with that?"

  Polkingbeal67 spoke softly and deliberately. "Yes, I understand," he said. "They're chilloks, not ants. We will go there and conduct ourselves with decency, decorum and diplomacy. It's time to put an end to the endless
cycle of tribal violence in Niffis."

  Yukawa3 stared for a second in utter disbelief, then he passed the coordinates to polkingbeal67, who punched them in and gripped the control column. Mere nanoseconds later, the two of them were climbing out of the hatch and gazing around at the eerie, shadowless landscape of Oov. Yukawa3 surveyed the desolate terrain. The only difference from the last time he had set foot there was a few additional wind-swept ripples. And one other thing.

  "Well, where is it?" polkingbeal67 asked.

  "Where's what?"

  "The city of Niffis. Where is it?"

  "I don't know," said yukawa3, "It was right here."

  "You gave me the correct coordinates, didn't you?"

  "I'm sure I gave you the exact coordinates."

  Polkingbeal67 tapped his eye patch as realisation dawned upon him. "The exact coordinates," he repeated, staring at the shuttle craft, nestled in the sand like a cat on a blanket.

  A long silence ensued, during which the two Mortians contemplated their complicity in the intergalactic crime of the century. Neither of them knew what to say or do. Eventually, yukawa3 started scraping and clawing at some of the scorched remains that had blown to the side of the shuttle during the descent, but it was no use. He began to wish he was dead. Polkingbeal67 made as if to throttle the bungling cadet with his bare hands. But this was the new, reborn polkingbeal67, the polkingbeal67 who would henceforth resolve problems by means of compromise and negotiation and pragmatism and consensus. Putting a consoling arm around yukawa3's shoulders, he said, "You do realise one thing though?"

  "What's that?"

  "We can never go back home."

  5

  EXILE AND BEYOND

  Polkingbeal67's heart was pounding. He had not expected it to do that. Having acquired an earthling human heart as a consequence of a medical blunder, he was finding it difficult to adjust to its vagaries. His own Mortian blood-pumping muscle had functioned very differently and he was now discovering that in matters of the heart nothing is quite what it seems.

  To all intents and purposes, the mission to the planet Oov to broker a peace deal between warring factions of chilloks, had not been a total failure – at least they were not fighting any more! But it had been a bit of a Pyrrhic victory – he and his former apprentice, yukawa3, had spectacularly botched the operation by unwittingly landing their spacecraft smack-dab on the city of Niffis, completely flattening it. Fully aware that they had perpetrated a heinous intergalactic crime of monumental proportions, the two hapless Mortians were staring incredulously at the scene of devastation.

  Yukawa3 scratched his head. "Maybe no one will notice?" he said in a small trembling voice.

  Polkingbeal67 batted his head in exasperation. "We've wiped out an entire city, a living historical monument to chillok arts and technology. I mean, I've done some bad things in my time..."

  "Like the time you abducted an earthling tarantula and released it in a plate of salad someone was eating in a restaurant?" yukawa3 suggested. "I hope that answers your question?"

  “What question? No, not the tarantula. Well, okay, that was quite bad. But I was thinking of some of the diabolically heroic acts of war I've been involved in."

  Yukawa3 shrugged. "Oh, those," he said carelessly, hoping that his former tutor would not feel the need to list them all with the usual wearisome level of detail. "Anyway, they were just ants."

  Ants. Polkingbeal67 considered the word for a moment, allowing each phonetic element to metaphorically crawl around his mouth, oozing formic acid over his taste buds. Then he spat them out. "Ants!" he hollered. "Believe me, I wish they were just ants. I tell you what, I would rejoice if they were ants. I'd summon a band of tone deaf goopmutts playing violins and bagpipes and I'd dance with you till my feet became as sore as a lemchin's eyeball in an Oovian sandstorm!"

  Yukawa3 shrugged again. Having worked on the MMBC documentary about the internecine conflict in Niffis, he clearly had some inkling of the enormity of the tragedy he and polkingbeal67 had perpetrated.

  Polkingbeal67 continued. "This city... This former city boasted a whole host of intergalactically celebrated inventors and philosophers." He glanced at the young cadet to see if his message was getting through. "Niffis produced pioneers in the fields of science, aerospace, engineering and communications. Their celebrated but ruthless leader, President Keshiak, who now lies crushed somewhere under the landing gear of this spacecraft, represented his people at the Intergalactic Court of Justice, Arbitration and Conciliation."

  Yukawa3 interrupted. "Excuse me, but he wasn't exactly conciliatory towards his enemies, was he? You talk about rejoicing and dancing - well, the Muqu rebels will want to rejoice! They’ll hail us as heroes and liberators.” A sly, knowing expression flickered across his face. He had no idea why. “We should think about that," he said.

  They looked at each other like two schoolboys outside the headmaster's office. Yukawa3, who felt like he had sneaked behind the bike sheds and done nothing, broke the silence. "Hah!" he exclaimed, concluding that he had made the winning argument. "It is spoken."

  Polkingbeal67, suddenly weary with the obligation of having to drum some sense into the young cadet, stepped forward and slapped him on the top of the head, crushing the yellow sou’wester rain hat he was so proud of.

  While yukawa3 sat and nursed his sou’wester, polkingbeal67 returned to the craft to shift it from the massacre site. His mind was besieged by darts of hysterical self-recrimination over his role in the disaster and clouded with baleful portents of the likely consequences. In the judgement of the intergalactic community, the absence of malice aforethought would be woefully insufficient defence. In cases like this, and there have been several precedents, where the sheer colossal scale of the crime demands reprisal and redress, the perpetrators are invariably considered dishonourably negligent and therefore liable to impeachment, regardless of whether or not they intended or foresaw the result of their actions. In other words, any conduct resulting in mass annihilation is judged, at best, to be criminally reckless and subject to severe punitive action. The chances of getting a verdict of accidental slaughter were infinitesimal.

  The Mortian 'Opportunity' craft lifted off, hovered and nudged forwards for a few seconds before the retro-thrusters kicked in. The landing became obliterated by a cloud of dust, debris and, I shudder to report, thousands of pulverised chillok carcasses. With all the detritus of the chillok city scattered to the four winds, the culpable pair sat for some time surveying the parched wasteland, their minds as arid as the desert landscape itself. Uncomfortable with the oppressive silence, yukawa3 cleared his throat to speak, uttered a strangled choke and fell silent again. A full minute passed before he felt obliged to try again. "No one needs to know," he said, inclining his head away from polkingbeal67, lest the latter should attempt another assault on the crumpled sou’wester. "There are no witnesses."

  His companion, a veteran of the Jatron wars and The Great Retreat, continued to stare straight ahead with his steely eyes. "No witnesses, eh?" he murmured, almost to himself. "Take another look."

  Yukawa3 followed polkingbeal67's gaze, saw nothing, stood up and scanned the entire panorama and sat down again. "Nothing," he concluded. "No one. And if you think seeing is believing - well, it is."

  "Yes, it would appear that seeing and believing are both beyond your limited capacities at present," said polkingbeal67, becoming irritated. Streaming away towards the horizon, unobserved by yukawa3, were serried ranks of chilloks - survivors, witnesses and rescue workers - fleeing the decimation and ruin, carrying the bodies of the dead towards some unknown resting place in the wilderness. One of the corpses would have been Keshiak himself. For some reason, polkingbeal67's thoughts wandered back to the Jatron wars and, specifically, the funeral ceremony of a former comrade. The memory of a great crowd lining the river Qada floated into his thoughts, mourners wading through the shallow water to touch a lavishly decorated raft drifting effortlessly past emerald-green reed beds, a fl
ock of birds in a swirling vortex overhead. It only served to make his mood even more sombre.

  Eventually, even yukawa3, with his relatively dull powers of observation, managed to detect the chillok exodus. In total contrast to their earthling cousins, ants and termites, which only possess about 250,000 brain cells, chilloks boasted ten times the mental capacity of earthling humans and, since examinations of chillok brain tissue revealed a microstructure that was way beyond the comprehension of any other species in the known universe, it should have come as no surprise to anyone that these minute creatures were the first to discover all the major scientific concepts known to living beings. Not that that cut any ice with yukawa3.

  For a moment or two, he contemplated eliminating the entire procession. After all, he figured, it would be simple enough to detach a hatch door from the spacecraft, attach it to a chain and squash the chilloks as they marched. He thought better of proposing the idea to his mentor, however, and a further compounding of the tragedy was averted. Meanwhile, polkingbeal67's mind was racing. What should he do? He was sure the incident would have been logged with the Intergalactic Commission by now. An emergency session of the Oov Council would be convened before the day was out. There was no way he and yukawa3 could cover their tracks, so to speak. Obviously, if they returned to Morys Minor, they would be apprehended immediately and any prospect of release pending trial would be out of the question owing to the magnitude of the crime. If they failed to return straight away, units would be dispatched to arrest them. He racked his brain to remember if the penalty for such an offence had ever been reduced owing to mitigating circumstances.

  Yukawa3 suddenly slapped his thigh. "We should go on the run!" he urged. It was not just the idea itself that startled polkingbeal67. Could yukawa3's thought processes actually have been in sync with his own, or was this just one of the cadet’s random exclamations? "Yeh, totally, that's what we should do," yukawa3 went on. "What's the worst thing they could do to us if they captured us and brought us to trial? The absolute worst thing."