Through The Wormhole, Literally

by David Winship

  Anyway, the shooting season had got under way and polkingbeal67 had offered six shergs to the first soldier in his troop to down an orbis bird. As they had stalked through the marshlands south of Ybesan, a covey of birds had sprung up and polkingbeal67 had blazed away with his large bore laser rifle. Disappointed at missing them, he had failed to notice at first that a couple of Trox soldiers had emerged from the marsh grass with their hands raised in surrender. When it later emerged that one of the soldiers was General Vog himself, polkingbeal67 had been feted as a hero. He had been promoted to the rank of supreme commander and a statue erected in his honour. Later, when the regiment had suffered an outbreak of disaffection and the truth had leaked out, his reputation had been so secure that many had refused to trust the new account of events. Nevertheless, he died a little inside every time he was subjected to anything approaching good-natured ridicule about the incident.

  Now, at the start of the fourteenth baktun, he was aware once more of the very same tiny punctures in his self-esteem, not enough to cause lasting damage, but perfectly sufficient to cow him into silence and inertia. Having foolishly misled everyone except yukawa3 into believing he was smolin9, he had betrayed not only Melinda and all his fellow Mortians, but also the memory of his dear departed friend and comrade. Awaiting sentence for his role in the Niffis massacre, he spent the days wallowing in caged despondency. He was not literally caged of course, but he was not at liberty to leave the planet or disclose his feelings about the case.

  Sometimes the fallout from a rhetorical volley can be at least as devastating as a shower of physical missiles. Pointed bullets and pointed speeches. Both have their uses. The trick is knowing when to use which. Melinda's courtroom eulogy had brought polkingbeal67 to his knees more effectively than any weapon he had ever faced and it had forced him to re-evaluate his career, his life and his beliefs. It was more than a little strange, then, that he barely looked up when she came to visit him the day before the sentencing.

  After exchanging awkward greetings, Melinda asked him if he had heard the rumour about someone negotiating an unauthorised wormhole transit to Earth.

  "Yes, I heard," polkingbeal67 mumbled.

  Melinda was not in the mood to spin this out. "It was yukawa3, wasn't it?"

  "Why yukawa3? It could have been anyone."

  Melinda sighed. "Are you covering for him because you feel guilty? Because you let him down at the trial? Listen, you know as well as I do, yukawa3 could do a lot of, y'know, damage wandering around Earth on his own, unsupervised. Literally."

  "Damage? What sort of damage?"

  "Anything could happen. He could, y'know, get himself hurt. You know what he's like. He's not the sharpest knife in the sky, is he? Literally."

  "Oh, actually, I think he'll be in good company on the Blue Dot," said polkingbeal67, shutting his eyes tight and opening his mouth in a silent shriek of laughter. He was still not in control of his new physical appearance, but the universal consternation about yukawa3's welfare amused him in a perverse sort of way.

  Melinda stared at him, baffled by his strange facial expression. "What are you saying?"

  "Well, the fact is, earthlings are..."

  "I don't care what the facts are," Melinda snapped. She was not prepared to listen to another one of his disdainful put-downs directed toward her own species. "The point is, how do we get him back?"

  "That's not the question we should be asking." As far as polkingbeal67 was concerned, the immediate priority was to repair tarnished reputations. He may have been primarily concerned about his own authority, but he was not so self-obsessed that he did not shudder a little at the harm inflicted on the Mortian leader and to yukawa3 and to the planet itself. The adverse publicity surrounding the Niffis fiasco would eventually fade into the recesses of people's memories, but the process would be a long and ugly drawn-out one, unless there was some way someone could engineer a momentous shift in the collective consciousness of the intergalactic community. It was time for a real leader to sweep away trivial distractions and grasp the historical moment offered by the downturn in Mortian fortunes. In short, it was time for a reborn polkingbeal67 to emerge from the shadows, shimmering with gravitas and moral conviction, looking majestic in a new battle helmet, ready to lead his followers in the fight against, well, anything really. And he was now suddenly convinced that this, beyond any doubt, was the answer.

  Melinda punched him. She had been watching him run through a whole range of bizarre facial contortions and grimaces and had become spooked by it. "Stop doing that!" she demanded. "Well? What is the question we should be asking?"

  "I don't know," he said, wincing from the blow to the ribs. "I'm not... I mean, I've seen the future and I know the answer - I'm just not sure about the question yet."

  When she got back to the palace to provide feedback from the interview, she found the Mortian leader engaged in the serious business of determining what Mortians should be called now that the planet had acquired its new name. His minions had proposed ‘smoles’, ‘smolls’ and ‘smolin-niners’, but the leader was unhappy with all the suggestions. Reeking like a fishmonger's stall on a hot day, he paced up and down, mumbling to himself, "Where, oh where is the sweet fruit of my bitter patience?"

  Another suggestion was made, "What about ‘smolinetians’?"

  Melinda let out a snort of laughter which she tried to disguise as a cough. Conscious of several sets of eyes fixed on her, she made an apologetic gesture with her hands and said, "Well, I see you're making good progress with this. Literally. Maybe I should come back later?"

  One of the minions stood up abruptly and shouted, "’Smolers’!"

  Melinda could not help herself and laughed out loud. "It was yukawa3!" she declared quickly to deflect attention from her lapse of reverence. "It was yukawa3 who did the wormhole transit thing to Earth, er, the Bright Blue Dot, er, Pale Blue Dot. It was yukawa3."

  The leader dismissed the minions with a peremptory swish of seaweed. Sitting down cross-legged next to Melinda, he closed his eyes and reached outwards. "Everything happens for a reason," he said, nodding lugubriously. "When you look down, all you see is dirt, so you must keep looking up. How is polkingbeal67?"

  Breathing through her mouth to avoid the noxious odour, Melinda expressed her reservations about polkingbeal67's mental health. As she went on, she noticed the leader was starting to sway from side to side. "Do you people ever get depressed, y’know, in a clinical sense? I mean, you're obviously very advanced people, but things must go wrong with your brains sometimes, don't they?"

  The leader stopped swaying for a moment. "Well," he said. "It's possible. No man is a good doctor who has never been sick himself. But I've never encountered it personally. You should speak to an expert. But wait, I think I sometimes forget things. Does that count?"

  Melinda turned to him. "Really? Like what? Give me some examples."

  "I can't remember any," he said, resuming his rhythmical swaying. "You think polkingbeal67 needs clinical treatment? How terrible!"

  "You needn't upset yourself, your reveredness," she said. "I'm sure he'll be okay. He's the type of person who will make lemonade when life gives him lemons. Literally. But he says he has an answer without a question and he ..."

  The leader interrupted her. "There are no right answers to wrong questions, or missing questions. Tell me more about this lemonade. Is it earthling medicine?"

  "Well, no, but actually, yes. I mean, lemons have natural healing power. They kind of clean the liver and promote immunity and fight infection. They're good for you, no doubt about that. You should try some, your reveredness. But I think we're getting off the track a bit here. Literally."

  "Has polkingbeal67 been taking lemonade?"

  "I don't know what he's been taking, but whatever it is, it's either too strong or not strong enough," Melinda replied.

  . . .

  Well into his twilight years at this point, the Mortian leader was believed to have been abducted from an alien plane
t approximately two thousand earth years ago. This is disputed by most Mortians (and the leader himself), but official records show that he had ‘arrived’ on Morys Minor, by some means or other, on the Mortian date of 7.19.8.7.10.

  After graduating from altoludus, he had been immediately appointed supreme commander of the Mortian Imperial Army, despite a lamentable lack of military training and experience. Clearly being groomed for leadership, he had succeeded joking mil only a few days before the latter’s unfortunate demise at the hands of goopmutt bandits who had mistaken him for a plasma tag referee who had recently upset them. Initially out of favour with senior figures in the military for being effeminate and writing poems about ocean landscapes, the new leader had gradually wrought himself into the affections of the Mortian people with his venerable appearance and pious demeanour. He had no name as such and was referred to simply as 'our revered leader'. Although Mortians had nostrils, they did not have definable noses as such. Their leader, however, boasted a very prominent proboscis which had never been explained and which was politely and unfailingly ignored by everyone who came into contact with him.

  The enduring legacy of his prosperous reign was assured across the entire galaxy owing to the dramatic expansion of the Mortian space programme. During his tenure, by means of everything from the early cigar-shaped mother ships to the latest in traversable wormholes, explorers from Morys Minor had peered into the very darkest recesses of the known universe. But it could have all turned out very differently. In the early period of his leadership, he had commissioned, at great expense, an exploratory project to study various planets in the constellation of Tense Minor. A number of probes had been launched and they all blew up before they had even left Mortian atmosphere. When news of the fiasco leaked out, the leader managed to salvage his reputation by outrageously claiming the explosions had been successful missile weapon tests!

  In recent years, his leadership had lapsed into inertia and his role as oracle and guiding force had diminished to the point where he could only regurgitate the contents of Chinese fortune cookies abducted from Earth. Recognisable by the seaweed garlands hanging around his neck and the sickly, heavy odour of rancid oils and aromatics, he nevertheless continued to appear at carefully selected public functions and intergalactic conferences and events. No longer required to sit on the more prestigious intergalactic courts, it would be fair to say that his function was now largely confined to ceremonial duties. Despite this, he continued to command universal respect for his apparent sagacity and unimpeachable integrity. Amid failing health and a paucity of fortune cookies, he had devoted the last part of his life to grooming Melinda as his heir apparent.

  When news of the Niffis massacre first broke on Morys Minor, its impact on the leader's reputation had been devastating, not least because he had been playing host to a delegation of chillok Muqu rebels seeking intergalactic condemnation of Naaffab atrocities. Berated by the chilloks for failing to apprehend polkingbeal67 and yukawa3 at the outset, he became the object of almost universal vilification for his ill-advised decision to send smolin9 in fruitless pursuit of the two fugitives. Charges of negligence, incompetence and corruption had been levelled against him and had only been dropped when the Intergalactic Court of Justice, Arbitration and Conciliation ruled that he did not appear competent enough to have issued any plausibly intelligible commands to his subordinates.

  So, when polkingbeal67's escape to Earth became public knowledge just a few hours before his sentencing hearing was scheduled to start, it came as no real surprise that the Mortian leader locked himself away in his privy chamber with orders that he was not to be disturbed on any account. It was the second unauthorised wormhole transit to Earth in two days, a serious security breach worthy, in itself, of the strongest intergalactic condemnation, but the most unpalatable aspect of this otherwise farcical gaffe is that it involved the same two culprits once again. Polkingbeal67, in particular, had shredded what little credibility the Mortian administration had left. It was difficult to see how the leader, now reduced to a gibbering wreck, could ever recover from such a blow.

  Melinda, only too aware that the Intergalactic Court was enraged by these developments, remonstrated with him using one of his personal attendants as a conduit. She prevailed upon him to take up the mantle of leadership once more and guide his devastated people to the right path, but it made as much impression as an ant stomping on a rug. Her attempts to lure him out with seaweed and fortune cookies failed dismally. So finally, frustrated and impatient, she pushed past the attendant and hammered on the thick, heavy door of the inner sanctum. "This is a crisis and you need to man up and sort things out!" she yelled. "Now! Literally!" There was no sound from the other side of the door, so she hammered again and shouted, "Are you going to come out?"

  A scrap of oil-stained paper emerged from under the door and fluttered slightly in the draught. Melinda picked it up. "No," it read.

  "Why not?" she shouted. "What's wrong with you?"

  A short pause and then another piece of paper appeared. "I just need a bit of 'me' time," was scribed in shaky, hurried handwriting.

  "This is ridiculous," Melinda muttered to herself before hollering at the door, "Listen to me! This is not the behaviour one expects of a planetary leader! Do you hear me? You are not acting like a leader!"

  In a few seconds, she snatched up the next piece of paper which read, "The man on the top of the mountain did not fall there."

  "If he doesn't shape up, I swear I'm going to literally push him down his blessed mountain," Melinda thought, before shouting at the door again, "You're the leader of your people and they want to look up to you! Now come out here and listen to what your people are saying! Get your ears to the ground! Literally. Don't you want your people to look up to you?"

  . . .

  It was not easy being a penguin. Yukawa3 felt like a fish out of water (or sometimes in the water), dressed in a tuxedo and waddling about in totally naff footwear. The first problem he encountered was coping with those stiff, flipper-like wings and the difficulty of carrying a microwocky and a biomimetic mutator at the same time. He simply had to have the microwocky with him, so he buried the mutator in the snow, using his beak to mark the spot with a large cross.

  There had been no extensive Mortian research into the lives and habits of earthling penguins. Antarctic exploration had been confined to one low-profile mission by smolin9: officially, he had abandoned his investigation owing to extreme weather conditions, but actually he had got fed up after trudging around for a couple of hours finding nothing but walls of blue-white ice and a few penguins doing nothing but huddle together.

  As yukawa3 completed his cross, one of the king penguins, a female known as Peppermint, waddled over, cocked her head and said, "What are you doing? Me and Mothballs noticed you burying something there. What is it?"

  Yukawa3 made a twitchy gesture with his wing. "Oh, it's nothing," he lied. "You know, just putting some fish in the freezer for later."

  "Oh," said Peppermint. "Why don't you just eat it? Wanna share? Wanna huddle?"

  Yukawa3 was astonished at how forward these creatures were. "Well I..." he mumbled as Peppermint drew closer, so much closer that they were almost touching each other. "Maybe later. I'm new around here and I..."

  Peppermint puffed up her feathers a little. "It's cold," she breathed. "Just huddle!"

  "Oh my word!" yukawa3 exclaimed. "Oh, that's close..." He flinched slightly as Peppermint opened her beak. He could feel her breath on the side of his face. "Oh my word!" he said. "I guess I've got to get used to these things... Oh, that's very cosy. So much for personal space, eh? If you think that's close... well it is." Before he knew it, Mothballs, Lemon, Musky, Floral and a few others had joined in and he was in the centre of a tight cluster of penguins sharing their body heat. Questions tumbled around in yukawa3's head like socks in a washing machine. "What the hell is going on?" was one of them. Others included: "What am I expected to do? Why are they crowding me like this? A
re they friendly or is some other thing going on?" As the temperature increased, more questions arrived, damp and deformed from the spin cycle, sometimes tangled together and other times drifting apart. "Why are they rubbing out my cross? What if I can't find my mutator? Are they expecting me to say something? Is this some kind of initiation ceremony? How do I get out of here?" His heart was racing and his throat was getting tight, the way he felt when he was about to have a panic attack. With a howl of desperation, he lowered his head and bulldozed his way out of the huddle. Tottering quickly away with his wings jerking rhythmically, he looked like a cheap clockwork toy about to wind down, and he was well clear of the group before he stopped and turned round to survey the situation.

  Peppermint was padding towards him. He knew it was Peppermint because the wind was blowing from behind her and he caught a whiff of her body odour which was redolent of, well, peppermint. There were flecks of snow in the air and, for the first time, yukawa3 noticed the water-sculpted ice cave on the horizon. Aware, again for the first time, of the mystical, breath-taking, expansive beauty of the scene, he let down his guard a little. Impressed that this warm-hearted little creature appeared to have singled him out for special attention, he tried to smile and then realised, again for the first time, that bird beaks cannot change their form or length, so he fluffed up his feathers and shuffled towards her. Then he stopped and pulled himself together. He had known well enough that mutating into a non-humanoid life form was strictly prohibited by the Mortian authorities and he had heard the portentous warnings about the possible consequences. But yukawa3 considered himself wise enough and level-headed enough to cope with any complications a few dumb penguins might present. He recognised the danger of sentimental anthropomorphism and tried to maintain his cool and detached exterior (not that he could do anything about his exterior anyway).