Through The Wormhole, Literally

by David Winship

  Polkingbeal67 pursed his lips and shook his head. "I don't know," he said, "I just thought yukawa3 and I could do a great job reaching out to earthlings and getting them to embrace the intergalactic community. I just thought we could put things right, you know, kind of make up for..."

  "Destroying the city of Niffis? Committing perjury? Deceiving everyone into thinking you were smolin9? Deceiving me into thinking you were my husband?"

  "I know, I know, I'm sorry. But it's not all bad," polkingbeal67 protested, "I returned the Voyager space probe to the earthling president and..."

  "And that's one of the reasons why the charges against yukawa3 were dropped. I know, literally. And it was very good of you to make sure he got the credit for it. But," she said, fixing him with a stern expression, "there's no way you should have run away before your sentencing hearing. It just looks so terrible! Literally."

  During yukawa3's trial, polkingbeal67 had arranged for the teleporting of the Voyager probe to the very doorstep of the President of the United States. The intergalactic authorities had hailed the action as a watershed moment for broader humanity. Melinda considered it a watershed moment in the transformation of polkingbeal67 from a self-styled gung-ho war hero into a more caring, thoughtful and sensitive human being.

  Polkingbeal67 raised his hand. "I'm not going back," he said.

  "Oh yes, you are," Melinda insisted.

  "That wasn't me," polkingbeal67 explained. "I had my hand up. Yukawa3 says he won't go back. And, actually, he doesn't have to. He was cleared by the court."

  Melinda turned to yukawa3. "Why would you want to stay here anyway? It's literally a nightmare. The air freezes in your lungs when you breathe. It's irrational to want to live here."

  "How dare you call me irrational!" said polkingbeal67, with his hand raised. "I might be crazy but I'm certainly not irrational. And there are definitely worse places to live."

  Melinda was in the mood for an argument. "Name one good thing about this god-forsaken hell-hole."

  "That's easy," said polkingbeal67, hand still raised. Yukawa3 thought for a moment, then another moment and then realised it was not quite as easy as he had thought. Finally, polkingbeal67 translated his best effort: "For one thing, you won't get run over by a bus!"

  Polkingbeal67 and Melinda exchanged glances and shrugged. "Name one thing you can do here, apart from huddling and fishing," Melinda persisted. "Why, you can't even play hide and seek!"

  Polkingbeal67 raised his hand once more. "But that's a good thing," he said. "No one and nothing can get lost here."

  "You lost your mutator," polkingbeal67 reminded him. Then he raised his hand and shouted: "Nerk!"

  "Nerk? What's that supposed to mean?" asked Melinda.

  "Nothing," said polkingbeal67 with his hand down. "He's just going native."

  At this point, Melinda announced her intention to pay her respects to her late husband at his last resting place. Polkingbeal67 expressed his support for the idea and insisted on accompanying her. As it happens, Melinda had no intention of letting him out of her sight in any case. "Okay," she said, "but if we're all going together, we won't be able to use wormhole travel." She knew that any requests for wormhole travel involving polkingbeal67 and yukawa3 would be vetoed unless the destination was Smolin9.

  "Don't worry. I'll get us all on the ship somehow," polkingbeal67 assured her, speaking in a low voice so yukawa3 would not overhear. At that moment, the tour party appeared in the distance on their return from Shackleton's grave at Grytviken. "I'll speak to them straight away. Here they come now. We'll have to continue with the expedition, but we'll get to England eventually."

  Melinda cast a quizzical glance over her shoulder at yukawa3. "You might have trouble persuading them to take a penguin with them. Literally."

  "I'm not worried about that," said polkingbeal67. "The problem I've got is explaining what you're doing here."

  . . .

  "Seriously," Melinda whispered to polkingbeal67, "I'm not leaving him here. Why does he insist on staying?"

  "His mutator's buried here somewhere. He won't leave without it. He'd be trapped inside the body of a penguin for ever."

  Melinda thought about this long and hard before giving up and asking: "What shall we do about it?"

  Polkingbeal67 raised his shoulders in a gesture of fake nonchalance. A flurry of ideas and thoughts came charging into his mind; most of them skidded to a halt and backed out again, but one of them persisted. "It's nearly November, isn't it? According to my research, this part of the coast should become ice-free in a couple of weeks."

  Yukawa3 overheard this. Polkingbeal67 raised his hand and relayed the cadet's thoughts: "So my mutator would be lying on the beach in plain view!"

  Melinda and polkingbeal67 looked at each other. "That's it, then!" said Melinda decisively, "I'll come back to get your mutator. Literally. You're right, p, I swear it's feeling warmer already. And look! There are insects around!" She flicked away what she thought was an ant from yukawa3's back.

  Yukawa3 started trumpeting with wild abandon. As the expedition party approached, he broke into a joyous tripod dance. The forty or so weary trekkers, all clad in waterproofs, ski gloves, sunglasses, boots and hats, would have arrived sooner but for the distraction of a black-browed albatross appearing above them with its long, narrow wings held out stiffly as it wheeled and glided elegantly along the shore. Streaks of sunlight on the horizon prised open a band of low black cloud, cloaking the restless, rippled sea with a tattered gown of gold silk.

  The captain of the Malvinas Explorer was a man of few words but, as the cliché goes, when he spoke it was worth hearing. At least it may have been worth hearing if you understood Argentine Spanish. Anyway, judging by the effect his words had on his crew, he appeared to speak with the authority that can only come from real experience, like maybe someone who was blinded by conker shrapnel as a schoolboy and who then spent his life lecturing at schools about the dangers of playing conkers. As a matter of fact, though, he was not too hot on health and safety issues. Pedro Fernandez, for that was his name, was notorious in nautical circles. Stories of his outrageous exploits were legion. A few years before he secured his current position as captain of the Malvinas Explorer, he had skippered a high-speed ferry when it failed to navigate a narrow inlet channel and collided with a tug. His crew had been impressed with his cheerful and philosophical reaction to the incident and had gratefully gulped down the whisky he had offered them. No one noticed that the skipper's glass had remained untouched during all the camaraderie, but the reason for this dawned on them when the Argentine Coast Guard arrived.

  Fernandez had the letter 'P' tattooed on the back of his left hand and the letter 'S' on his right. Some thought the letters stood for his two daughters, Paula and Stefania. A popular but uncharitable joke doing the rounds after the ferry debacle was the alternative suggestion that the letters stood for 'port' and 'starboard': an aide memoire for a bungling navigator. For all his faults, he was considered by many to be a very personable and affable man. Acquaintances said he was the sort of person who could tell you to go to hell in such a suave and agreeable way that you found yourself preparing for the trip with relish.

  Pipe and tobacco in hand, he stood before Melinda, polkingbeal67 and yukawa3 with an expression of placid kindness mingled with well-disguised remonstrance. He mumbled something in Castellano, which Jorge proceeded to translate: "He say 'como andas'. Who this lady? Why she here?"

  "How do you do?" said Melinda. "I'm Melinda Hill from Glastonbury in England. I'm here because..."

  Distrustful of Melinda's ability to think on her feet, polkingbeal67 interrupted. "She's... she's a stowaway! She's a penguin expert specialising in the field of, er, bird communication. She lost her funding from the, er, National Science Gang and couldn't buy a ticket, so, as she was desperate to join the expedition in the name of science, she hid in the undercarriage..."

  Jorge was wide-eyed with astonishment. "National Science Gang?" he parr
oted. "She hide in what?!"

  "I think he means the, um, cargo hold," said Melinda hesitatingly. "Yeah, literally, the place where you hold your, er, cargo?"

  The captain's arms were folded in barely-concealed hostility. As if enveloped by the tension in the air, the black-browed albatross soared past really low and dipped a wing into the water before flying off again.

  "Hokay," said Jorge, trying to diffuse the situation. "We sort this out back on ship."

  They all turned and started walking back towards the Malvinas Explorer, yukawa3 included. When Fernandez realised the penguin was accompanying them, he stopped in his tracks, gesticulated towards yukawa3 and directed a stream of voluble invective at polkingbeal67. No translation was necessary.

  Melinda was not inclined to beat about the bush. "He's coming with us!" she declared. "The penguin is coming with us and that's that. Literally."

  Jorge shook his head in silent but firm objection. "No possible. He is cold-weather pinguino," he remonstrated, picking up a handful of snow to illustrate his point. "He like snow. He like ice. Si?"

  Melinda was adamant. "He's coming with us, even if we have to keep him in the fridge!"

  Polkingbeal67, fearing they were in danger of losing the argument, stepped forward and tapped yukawa3 affectionately on the bill. "This, ladies and gentlemen," he intoned theatrically, "is no ordinary penguin. This is an especially receptive animal whose unique cognitive and emotional processes are particularly attuned to Melinda's extraordinary communication skills. Please allow us to demonstrate. Melinda will talk to the penguin and I will translate his responses for you. I will raise my hand to signify when I am speaking the penguin's words." As the passengers and crew gathered around, intrigued, Melinda squatted down on her haunches and looked yukawa3 in the eye. She spoke with exaggerated clarity: "Tell these people - will you behave yourself on the ship?" Yukawa3 cocked his head. Polkingbeal67 raised his hand and said, "Yes."

  The group of onlookers immediately looked sceptical and one or two of them laughed. "Well, hokay, how we know pinguino iss saying 'yes'?" Jorge scoffed. "How we know really?"

  Melinda quickly tried to retrieve the situation. "Does one and one make three?"

  "No," said yukawa3. And that certainly piqued the interest of the passengers and crew. They drew closer still, listening with rapt attention.

  "Is Paris the capital city of Russia?" asked Melinda.

  "No," replied yukawa3. Some of the passengers applauded. One of them, a tall American, asked: "What's going on here? Are you a ventriloquist or something?"

  "No, I'm not a ventriloquist, literally," Melinda assured him. She wondered how long she could carry on asking yukawa3 questions that would elicit the word 'no' in response.

  The American could evidently read her mind. "Make him say something else," he prompted suspiciously.

  Melinda was on top form. Without batting an eyelid, she instructed yukawa3 to nod his head and, to the delight of the assembled company, the penguin duly obliged.

  "Flap your wings!" ordered Melinda, now really starting to enjoy herself. The group clapped their hands and laughed heartily as yukawa3 moved his flippers up and down, finishing with a real flourish by spinning around, first one way and then the other.

  "Dance!" commanded Melinda, whereupon yukawa3 launched into his tripod dance, entertaining everyone with the zaniest rendition he could muster. The passengers and all the crew had been won over. They were enraptured, their faces aglow with wonder. By now, even Pedro Fernandez was applauding. A smile snaked across his face. It was a smile that suggested more than mere amusement. It was the smile of a man for whom life held no innocent joy, just opportunities to exploit and control. Putting his pipe and tobacco back in his pocket, he motioned towards the ship and everyone followed him.

  . . .

  It goes without saying that yukawa3 was the centre of attention during the remainder of the expedition cruise. From time to time, the ship stopped and everyone converged on the bridge deck to witness him take to the water to swim, fish, perform tricks and generally show off. Retrieving him from the icy, rolling sea was a challenging exercise involving the use of a specially adapted fine mesh net, but it gave Fernandez a break from his main chore - navigating the ship through the hazardous Antarctic waters where small icebergs known as growlers lurked only a few feet above the ocean's surface.

  On one of the rare occasions when he had time alone with polkingbeal67 and Melinda, yukawa3 chose to confide in his mentor about the strange deja vu episodes he had been experiencing.

  "Yes, I've heard about this before," said polkingbeal67, uncharacteristically sympathetic as he spoke in a low, quiet voice. "If I remember rightly, it's something to do with a defective adjustment to time dilation caused by an inadequate dose of HDA subsequent to wormhole travel. At least, that was the diagnosis put forward by the lead researcher." He raised his hand to signal that he was now speaking the words yukawa3 was conveying telepathically: "I don't understand a word of that. The medibots gave me a reset back on Smolin9, but it hasn't done any good. Have you heard of any other diagnoses? I really think I might prefer a different one."

  "Could be something you ate," Melinda chipped in.

  "Yeah," said polkingbeal67 with his hand still raised, "I prefer that diagnosis. The trouble is, I get the symptoms all the time."

  "You might be allergic to fish!" exclaimed Melinda, clapping her hands together. "Literally!"

  "Really?" said polkingbeal67, still speaking as yukawa3. "Do you think that might be it?" Scowling, he lowered his arm and muttered: "That's ridiculous! Melinda, please stop filling his head with nonsense!"

  But Melinda was adamant. "No, seriously," she insisted, "I've got a cousin who's got a fish allergy. We always had to go to a chip shop where they cooked the fish and chips in separate dedicated fryers, y'know, to avoid cross contamination." Noticing polkingbeal67 scowling again, she continued: "Okay, funny story time! You'll laugh, literally. We went on holiday together once, and after a long day on the beach, we went to the local chippy and Alice, my cousin, asked them if they had a dedicated fryer for the fish and chips. And the girl behind the counter said yes, they did, but he didn't start till half past six! Ha ha!"

  Polkingbeal67 drew a deep breath and released it slowly. He did not have time to respond before Melinda started talking again. "Oh yeah," she said, "and can we drop this whole 'hand up, hand down' thing now? It's driving me mad! Literally. And anyway, thinking about it, why don't you just say 'he says' when you're speaking for yukawa3?"

  Desperate to learn more about his condition, yukawa3 besieged polkingbeal67 with more and more questions. Melinda, who could tell by the glazed look in polkingbeal67's eyes that the pair were communicating psychically, became irritated by their failure to bring her into the conversation and demanded to know what was going on.

  "He says he wants to know what other diagnoses have been considered and I say they're not important and he says he still wants to hear them and I say he'll be sorry he asked and he says go ahead and I say are you sure and he says yes and I say well if you're sure and he says..."

  Melinda sighed. "Okay, do the 'hand up, hand down' thing."

  "Well," said polkingbeal67, with his hand lowered. "I heard some speculation that these kind of symptoms suggest interference from a parallel universe, a characteristic effect of quantum entanglement." Raising his hand and glaring at Melinda, he said: "No, no, I like the fish allergy best."

  The penny dropped and Melinda finally saw where this was going. She started back-pedalling furiously. "I'm sorry I mentioned it. Look, you're a penguin. You have to eat fish. Literally."

  Yukawa3 shrugged his flippers in tacit apology. He was now emphatically resolved to stop eating fish and krill, and once he had made up his mind he seldom wavered.

  Polkingbeal67's face darkened. "This is your fault," he accused Melinda with a look of stern disapproval, like a judge who has just stepped in something unpleasant. "You talked him into it. Now you can just talk him o
ut of it!" With that, he stalked off towards his cabin.

  "Where are you going?" asked Melinda. "I can't talk to him without you here, you know that."

  "It's your problem now. I've got stuff to do. Good luck."

  "Okay," said Melinda, "you just go! Literally. Run away! I guess you're predisposed to it anyway."

  Polkingbeal67 stopped and turned round. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Well, it's what you do," replied Melinda. She did not want to fall out with him but was becoming increasingly frustrated and annoyed by the whole situation - not just yukawa3's behaviour and polkingbeal67's unhelpfulness, but the general lack of progress in her mission. No, this was about more than just the mission. Emotionally, she was no longer handling things particularly well. Settling on a new planet and then losing smolin9 had caused her to tumble through euphoria into a deeply buried anxiety. A piece of her soul had been torn out of her and it had not had time to regenerate. In a curious and perverse way, spending time with polkingbeal67 only served to inflame the conflicting emotions she had been struggling to reconcile. There was a momentary pause while the two of them exchanged hostile glares. "What did you do when your space craft flattened the city of Niffis?" Melinda asked. "Did you stay and, y'know, make reparation?"

  Chastened, humbled and conscience-stricken, polkingbeal67 did not know how to respond and waited for Melinda to finish her point. "When you realised the full implication of what you'd done, did you turn yourself in straight away to face the music? No, you went on the run. And when, eventually, you faced trial, what happened? Right before the sentencing hearing, you ran away again! Like I said, it's what you do!"

  The muscles in polkingbeal67's face tightened as he struggled to avoid looking as devastated as he felt. He said nothing. Melinda also said nothing, bit her lip and dropped her gaze to the floor. Yukawa3 made a short honking sound and span around in a tight circle. A whole minute passed before Melinda's face crumpled. Stepping forward, she took polkingbeal67 in her arms and sobbed as though her heart was broken. First-time experiences can be daunting, but slowly and tentatively, polkingbeal67 reciprocated the hug with one arm, and then, finally, the other.