Through The Wormhole, Literally

by David Winship

  Peppermint looked him in the eye. "Look, it's difficult meeting someone new," she said. "Sometimes their behaviour strikes you as bizarre, a bit weird, a bit, you know, freaky..."

  "You're not freaky," yukawa3 assured her. "Just unexpectedly friendly."

  "I was talking about you, you twerp!" Peppermint snapped. "You're the one that's strange! Listen, we huddle to keep ourselves warm. It's minus twenty degrees and these blinding, shrieking katabatic winds reach nearly two hundred miles an hour! It's how we stay alive, for god's sake!" She softened her tone to add, "So, you wanna huddle?"

  The line between the grey-white sky and the grey-white ice was blurred and out of focus and yukawa3 felt like he was floating. His head was swimming. As they huddled together in the biting wind, he began to tell Peppermint everything about himself. It did not take too long, partly because there was considerably less to tell than he imagined, and partly because Peppermint made it obvious that she only understood a tiny fraction of what he was saying.

  "So, are you saying you're not really a penguin and you don't have any parents?" Peppermint enquired with a look of incredulous scorn. "Yeah, right."

  "It's true," yukawa3 assured her. "I don't have parents but I have a mentor called polkingbeal67. I chose to be a penguin, but, within reason, I can be anything I like." Failing to notice Peppermint slowly backing away from him, he continued, "Which is strange when I think back. My mentor, you see, always told me if I put my mind to it I could achieve anything I wanted. The sky was the limit, he said. Well, I was really upset since I wanted to be an intergalactic explorer! So, the way I see it, life is as confusing as a..." A flurry of snow clouded his sight as he struggled to think of a suitable analogy. "...as confusing as a difficult puzzle," was all he could manage. Peppermint was gone, and so, incidentally, was the cross marking the spot where yukawa3's mutator was buried.

  . . .

  His trip to Earth having been unauthorised and clandestine, polkingbeal67 had not been privy to much data relating to yukawa3's whereabouts. The wormhole travel console on his microwocky displayed both his own and yukawa3's trips to the Pale Blue Dot (Earth) but the usual supplementary information was unavailable. Unfortunately, this always applied in the case of unsanctioned travel. The trips were marked as being subject to mandatory recall, the home planet having requested the immediate return of the personnel concerned. In short, polkingbeal67 knew that yukawa3 was somewhere on the planet and that he had adopted the identity of a penguin, but he had no access to other crucial bits of information such as his precise location.

  In normal circumstances, he would have been furious about yukawa3's breach of mutator protocol, but he figured the bizarre disguise would make it easier for him to track the fugitive down - how tough could it be to find a penguin in Glastonbury or Weston-Super-Mare? As far as polkingbeal67 was concerned, the unwritten rule of intergalactic travel was clear: if you make an unauthorised visit to a planet, unbeknown to your comrades, make it easy for them to find you by going to the place you last visited together. He made a mental note to himself to make it a written rule as soon as possible. Anyway, try as he might, he could find no trace of yukawa3 in South West England.

  Having quickly obtained employment as an aquarist-in-training at Bristol Zoo, he spent a couple of days in a wet suit, cleaning up all the poop that the tank filters could not handle, while surreptitiously trying to identify which of the waddling poop-makers was yukawa3. The zoo had not realised they needed an aquarist-in-training until polkingbeal67 dazzled them with his microwocky-generated display of data relating to penguin genealogy along with records of food consumption, medical care, mating behaviour and moulting patterns. So impressed were they that they turned a blind eye when he approached each of the baffled birds with a yellow sou’wester and asked them if they wanted to try it on. The Rubicon was crossed, however, when he eventually found a penguin that tolerated his overtures and started berating the poor bird for not talking to him. One of the junior keepers and a few of the volunteer workers looked on aghast as polkingbeal67 followed the bird as it waddled blindly around the enclosure beneath the sou’wester and then subjected it to a bizarre interrogation during which the new aquarist-in-training was overheard saying, "Yukawa3! It's your mentor! It's me, polkingbeal67! Speak to me, you crazy prokaryote!"

  The senior curator sighed as Simon Morry, aka polkingbeal67, limped dejectedly (the penguin had bitten him on the leg) through the gate and out of view. He had never had to terminate a probationary period quite that quickly before. "Poor chap," he murmured to no one in particular. "One of those brainboxes who could probably build his own internal combustion engine but would never pass a driving test. I feel for him. I really do."

  "He was a bit wacky, wasn't he?" said one of the volunteers, a student called Neil, making a gesture with a finger against his temple.

  "Well, Neil," said the senior curator, "I don't know about his mental state. The fact is, I couldn't take a chance on him, but I have to say I feel a bit sorry for him."

  "I thought he was nuts! Did you hear him talking to that penguin? And what was going on with that hat?"

  The senior curator got up to leave the office. "He was a very clever chap, actually," he said. "Just a bit overwrought perhaps. I don't think we could have done anything with him, but it makes you think. Yes, it certainly makes you think. We always have to remember, young Neil, especially in this job, that the way we treat creatures, human and non-human, is an index of our moral being."

  When he had gone, Neil nudged the junior keeper sitting next to him and pulled a face. "Fluffy, bunny-hugging crap! I think our boss is just desperate to prove what a wonderful, caring human being he is."

  The junior keeper grinned and put down his pen. "Whatever," he said. "Anyway, he sacked him, didn't he?"

  Then it was just like the movies where the camera pans from one person to the other before zooming in on the momentous and prophetic words written on the junior keeper's pad... except that the words were: 'coffee, milk'.

  As for polkingbeal67, aka Simon Morry, he was a little chastened by the experience, but not enough to stop him applying for positions at zoos in Torquay, Newquay and Paignton, the last of which did not even have any penguins. At the end of all this fruitless subterfuge, he felt like a spy who had come in from the cold, although of course the penguins of South West England had not had to adapt to particularly chilly conditions. Far from being discouraged, he sat on the beach at Weston-Super-Mare and took stock of the situation. The tide was far out, leaving a vast expanse of mud beyond the sand. Despite several notices warning of the danger of sinking sand, a small white dog ventured heedlessly towards the water's edge. A beach patrol vehicle passed several times, apparently looking for sinking people but not sinking dogs. Ignoring the distractions, polkingbeal67 focused on the matter at hand: where might he find yukawa3 (and did he even want to find him)? Blessed with a mind as sharp as the latest cutting edge computer gizmo (actually, in Mortian terms, it was more like an early Amstrad word processor with a perished disk drive belt, not to mention a spelling malfunction), he analysed, considered, evaluated, calculated and scrutinised all the available information and then gave up and consulted his microwocky instead.

  The little white dog capered past him, now sporting a not very fetching set of brown socks. Its body language suggested it felt a little silly about its injudicious escapade. Seconds later, the microwocky revealed its jaw-dropping capabilities by suggesting a trip to the Antarctic. Just as polkingbeal67 started to reflect on this, the marvellous little device went even further, plumbing the well of the blindingly obvious before recommending direct contact with yukawa3 via one of the microwocky's peer-to-peer communications channels. Polkingbeal67 slapped his forehead. Now he knew how the dog felt.

  . . .

  A microwocky is only as good as its capacity to function and yukawa3 was unable to make his device function properly with just a couple of stiff, flat, paddle-like wings and a beak at his disposal. He could not resp
ond to calls because, like an earthling wearing oven mitts trying to operate a smartphone, he simply could not manage to prod, flick, swipe or rub the sophisticated gadget in a correct and timeous manner. Well, that, and he had blocked all incoming calls. Oh, and it was totally encased in ice and was about as much use as an inflatable dartboard.

  Perhaps I should also mention that from the moment the Mortian authorities had rejected his application for an official assignment on the Pale Blue Dot, he had not given the tiniest seed of a thought to polkingbeal67 or anyone else from his home planet. He was, in fact, happy with life close to the frozen tip of Earth, huddling, trumpeting and foraging to his heart’s content. Adjusting well to the social interaction and the general patterns and rhythm of life on the ice, he had mastered crucial techniques like the ‘tripod’, whereby penguins rock back and rest their entire weight on their heels and tail, reducing contact with the snow and ice. Of course, there had been one or two clumsy mishaps in the beginning, like a spectacular early attempt at the tripod when he had pirouetted about like a drunken waiter crossing a polished floor and ended up overbalancing and falling sideways on to the ice with a thump. But he had managed to turn this sort of thing to his advantage. Now, the entire penguin community of South Georgia Island was pirouetting around on the ice, theatrically flinging themselves sideways like salmon during the heroic upstream swim. They were all doing the ‘yukawa3 tripod dance’ and it was the biggest craze on the southwest side of South Georgia since the Great Huddle of 2010. They loved the dance and they loved him.

  Peppermint, in particular, was enthusiastically assessing yukawa3’s viability as a potential mate. One morning, tired of waiting for him to take the initiative, she went up to him, rubbed her bill against his and instructed him in the art of penguin seduction. “Come on, she said, huskily. “Hold your flippers out and point your bill up high.”

  “No,” said yukawa3, believing it was a ruse to make him the butt of some joke or other. “Why?”

  “Just do it!”

  Tentatively, he extended one flipper, then the other and jerked his bill upward, keeping his eyes on her in case she head-butted him or tickled him under the flippers.

  “Feel anything yet?”

  “I feel pretty silly. Okay if I put my flippers down now?”

  “No,” said Peppermint, scowling. “Put them back up! Now, do you feel like, y’know, huddling or anything?”

  “It’s not actually so cold this morning.”

  Peppermint pursed her bill. “You’re making this very difficult. Listen to me! Raise your bill, stick your flippers out parallel and make a loud, trumpeting call! Then waddle behind me! Go on, do it!”

  Yukawa3 complied with all the enthusiasm of a limp lettuce in yesterday’s salad. “I feel ridiculous,” he complained. “I feel like a scarecrow in a soul band and…”

  “I give up!” declared an exasperated Peppermint. “Don’t you want to, y’know, reproduce?”

  Yukawa3 reeled back in astonishment. “Reproduce? Reproduce! Certainly not! I’m asexual.”

  “A sexual what?”

  “No, I said asexual. Agamogenetic. As in… that is to say, I don’t have any sex.”

  “I’m not surprised, the way you carry on!” huffed Peppermint as she trudged off to seek solace with Mothballs, Lemon, Musky, Floral and the others. They, however, paid scant attention to her as they were having a whale of a time practising the yukawa3 tripod dance.

  Penguins usually tried to avoid expressions like ‘having a whale of a time’, and for good reason, given the truly dire and distressing threat posed by the orcas circling menacingly offshore. Having sloped off towards the water’s edge, yukawa3 spotted one of them getting up close and personal with a seal pup in the shallow surf. Horrified at witnessing this, he retreated with all the alacrity of a gazelle – a gazelle made of blubber, leaping majestically through the air on two stubby, duck-like webbed feet.

  In the short time he had been exposed to the perils of life on the Sub-Antarctic Islands, yukawa3 had heard terrifying accounts of penguin-eating creatures such as leopard seals and orcas in the sea, and giant petrels, fur seals and skuas on land. As if that was not worrying enough, he had discovered that his penguin mutation was not protecting him from the complex seizure disorder with which he had been afflicted prior to his flight to Earth. If anything, the condition had worsened, to the point where the deja vu episodes were threatening to merge into a single continuous stream, which was ridiculous since he could not possibly have had any previous experience of life as a penguin in the Antarctic. He felt like his life was being subsumed somehow into a narrative that seemed curiously familiar – familiar enough to be recognised as it unravelled, but not familiar enough to foresee. As he stood there, contemplating all this, the sun rose and the glaciers started to glow pink. Gradually, his thoughts returned to Smolin9 (formerly Morys Minor) and his comrade, polkingbeal67. Perhaps, he thought, this life as a penguin, despite all the fishing, was not, after all, the panacea he thought it might be. And it might just be nice to touch base with his old mentor and catch up with news from the home planet. But where had he left his microwocky?

  It was hours later when he found the device in the tender care of a particularly ferocious-looking fur seal a mile or so further up the coast. The seal had nursed it so well in its dense underfur that the microwocky had thawed out. Not only that, but random contact with the animal’s guard hairs had switched it on and unbarred all incoming calls. Yukawa3 was sure he could hear polkingbeal67’s voice emanating from the underside of the bulky greyish-brown creature. In fact, it sounded as if the seal actually was polkingbeal67 in disguise. Just for a split second the thought crossed yukawa3’s mind that that might indeed be the case and he started forward with what might have been a grin on his bill, only to be greeted with a high-pitched whine. Then the seal lunged and slashed at him with its sharp fangs, missing him by inches. Slithering forward in the effort to attack yukawa3, it had inadvertently cranked up the volume on the microwocky which suddenly bellowed: “Yukawa3! It’s your mentor! It’s me, polkingbeal67! Speak to me, you crazy prokaryote!” The seal, spooked by polkingbeal67’s loud, reverberant voice, uttered one more unearthly howl and slipped away towards the sea, leaving the microwocky behind.

  Yukawa3 waddled up with a look of utter delight on his face and then discovered, once again, that he could not manage to prod, flick, swipe or rub the device in a correct and timeous manner. Polkingbeal67’s call went unanswered.

  . . .

  When problems become so formidable that you cannot even focus on where to start, most people give up and walk away. Polkingbeal67 was not one of those people. Mind you, to be scrupulously correct, he did do a fair bit of walking away to enjoy the renowned attractions of South West England, including a couple of tours exploring Arthurian legend and the sites of epic battles of the Dark Ages. But because he had not entirely given up on finding yukawa3, the problem did not recede into the distance - it followed him around like the smell of a mildewed magic carpet (it had to have been a magic one, otherwise it could not have followed him around). He may not have succeeded in establishing two-way communication, but his unanswered microwocky calls had secured one vital piece of information, namely yukawa3's precise location. But, try as he might to view this in a positive light, the prospect of retrieving the cadet from the inhospitable, frozen wastes of South Georgia was daunting to say the least, particularly as direct contact was proving impossible. Without the complicity of a third party on Smolin9 (formerly Morys Minor), wormhole travel and wormhole communication were out of the question, which left him with the prospect of a conventional expedition to the Sub-Antarctic island. But what kind of expedition? He could not contemplate embarking on such an adventure by himself, so the options were confined to a scientific, tourist or privately chartered expedition in the company of earthlings - people who were yet to come to terms with the existence of wormholes, who had yet to set foot on any other planetary body apart from their own moon and
who still thought it acceptable to ride on the backs of other species for the purposes of transport. To put his trust in the extraordinarily crude forms of earthling transportation was anathema to him. Indeed, his misgivings were such that, at first, he simply could not face it at all and he disappeared on yet another trip to research the legend of King Arthur and Merlin.

  As it happens, it was the Arthurian legend of the Holy Grail that ultimately encouraged and inspired him to go ahead with an expedition. He had often thought of yukawa3 as a vessel of mystical emptiness, so, in his mind, the analogy was not far off. According to his initial research, there were no airstrips on South Georgia, the only access was by boat and the passage was almost invariably a rough one. But this did not discourage polkingbeal67 any more than it had discouraged Galahad on hearing that other knights had returned badly wounded, or worse, after attempting to seek out the Grail.

  To his surprise, he managed to find a global adventure travel company who had had a late cancellation on a 56-day Antarctic expedition following in the footsteps of legendary British explorer, Sir Ernest Shackleton. The object of the high profile, partly commercial, partly scientific venture was to raise awareness of environmental changes and the need to protect the Antarctic. Polkingbeal67 would leave from London at the end of the week on a 25-30 hour flight to Ushuaia, on the tip of Argentina. From there, he would board a research ship by the name of 'Malvinas Explorer' that would chart a course along the Antarctic Convergence to South Georgia. He stopped listening when the travel co-ordinator explained the rest of the itinerary and ignored the warning about bringing appropriate medications for seasickness.