Melinda got up and took a couple of paces towards the window. "What's keeping them? We've been waiting ages. And this office is so small and stuffy. You couldn't swing a cat in here."
"Why would you?" asked polkingbeal67 with artless simplicity.
An official appeared with an armful of papers and an expression of harried urgency and impatience. "So," the tall, bespectacled man said, "You say you're Sophia Gonzalez's sister?"
Melinda nodded. "Yes, we weren't very close. I, uh, emigrated and we lost touch."
The official gave her a long look of dubious indecision. "What were you told about the circumstances of your sister's death?"
Polkingbeal67 drew the conclusion that the man did not even know what had happened. "Have we come to the right place?" he asked. "Do you conduct post mortems on dead people here?"
The official sat on the desk and removed his glasses. "Oh yes," he said, with a twinkle in his eye. "We conduct all our post mortems on dead people." He bared his teeth in a slightly demonic grin. "Mind you, I personally have not conducted any post mortems. I'm not a pathologist. I'm just a liaison officer. You're probably aware that there was an inquest?" When Melinda nodded, he continued, "The pathologist's evidence was inconclusive and the jury returned an open verdict."
Sweetly and politely, Melinda interrupted. "To be honest," she said, "all we want to do now is find his final resting place so we can pay our respects. Sorry, I mean her! Her final resting place."
The liaison officer lowered his voice until Melinda could barely hear him. "I'm sorry," he said. "There was no family around at the time. We didn't know about you. The CIA got involved. They said your sister's body was potentially a crime scene. Apparently, they made some sort of link with something that happened in the States. You remember that big hoo-hah about the Voyager space probe?" He shrugged and spread his hands. "Don't ask," he said. "I've no idea. Anyway, they flew your sister's body to Washington."
Devastated that she was not going to be able to pay her respects in the proper way, Melinda began to cry. As polkingbeal67 placed a comforting arm around her shoulders, the liaison officer shuffled his papers in awkward silence for several moments before continuing, "If it helps," he said, "at the diner where she worked, her colleagues raised some money and erected a memorial bench. It's in the square just around the corner from the diner."
Later, polkingbeal67 and Melinda arrived at the square and located the bench under an impressive ash tree. They stood for some time fondly recalling their respective memories. "How do you make sense of it?" Melinda asked rhetorically, tracing the letters on the plaque with her fingers.
A gust of wind rattled some dead leaves from the tree. A puddle near the bench reflected the remaining leaves hanging like a colony of yellow bats. Melinda went on: "I suppose people live on in their children, if they have any, or in the memories of other people. In fact, if you think of famous artists and poets and musicians and statesmen and stateswomen, their lives seem more important after they die. It's like, if you want to be considered truly great at something, the first thing to do is be dead. Literally."
A solitary, shivering leaf fell right in front of them, like a feather from a tormented bird. "We are but petals on the winds of time," said polkingbeal67.
"They're leaves," Melinda pointed out. "Leaves. Not petals."
"Petals or leaves, it makes no difference. Like stars and tears, they delight or sadden us for a time. Ephemeral joy, fleeting moments of sadness. They assemble and scatter."
"And then fall without a sound," Melinda added.
They sat on the bench, lost in thought. Shadows lengthened, people came and went, colours drained away.
Polkingbeal67 broke the silence. "Have you arranged for us to return home?"
Melinda's fingers pecked at her microwocky. "Yes, it's got to be authorised, so we've got a bit of time to kill."
"And that's the thing," said polkingbeal67. "You can't kill time. We spend our lives trying to control it, trying to make sense of it, seeking answers to the questions it poses."
"But you Mortians have got that thing, haven't you? That karma thing?"
"Karma 5."
"Yes, doesn't it offer you some kind of immortality? In fact..." Her heart leapt with the sudden realisation that both smolin9 and yukawa3 had left behind mutators containing copies of their Karma 5. Yukawa3's device was now the occasional plaything of penguins on a desolate beach on South Georgia Island and smolin9's was locked away in a top secret facility in Nevada. "If we could just find..."
Reading her thoughts, polkingbeal67 took her hand. "No," he said. "It's strictly forbidden."
"But why?" she asked, linking her fingers imploringly in his. "It's transferable, isn't it? In fact, your Karma 5 was transferred to smolin9’s body, and vice versa. So, surely... Surely that's the answer, isn't it?"
"That depends on the question," he replied cryptically. "Anyway, our switch was carried out while we were both alive. No, it's not the answer. We can't bring them back. But I’m sure we'll find other ways to hold on to them in our lives."
They remained sitting on the memorial bench in each other's arms as occasional flutters of wind swirled around the square and more leaves twirled from the tree in silent surrender. Polkingbeal67 turned to Melinda as if to speak, but she put a finger to his lips. "Shh," she said. "I’m holding on."
WHEN PARALLEL WORLDS COLLIDE
One moment he was embedded up to his wingpits in the grey concrete of a pavement in Ushuaia at the southernmost tip of planet Earth; next moment there was a shimmer of green light and yukawa3 was hurtling along winding labyrinthine passageways in a totally alien environment, propelled forwards by a relentless, heaving, tumbling stream of kindred penguins. At one point, a small group of them stumbled on top of one another before scrambling upright to resume an apparently aimless stampede. As they struggled to recover their balance and dignity, yukawa3 attempted, if only for a brief moment, to catch their attention. "Where exactly are we going?" he asked with a note of bewildered irritation in his voice. Without checking their headlong pace, the penguins in the immediate vicinity threw back their heads and trumpeted loudly.
Having had the good fortune to secure his microwocky (along with his yellow sou’wester) before he had been so rudely wrenched from planet Earth, he was surprised and distressed to find the device could not decipher the sounds emitted by his new penguin neighbours. He relied upon it to provide real-time translations of virtually all the languages and dialects in the known universe, the one exception being the strange tongue adopted by chilloks. Horrified at the prospect that his 'wocky might not function in this strange new environment, he stopped to adjust some settings, only to find himself unceremoniously bundled into a wall. "Listen!" he yelled as he continued to be bumped, shoved and jostled by the surging crowd. "Why don't we just stop for a minute and, y'know, huddle or something?" He spread his wings beseechingly. "Wouldn't a huddle be good?" he asked, prompting more throwing back of heads and loud trumpeting. Difficult as it was, he managed to carry out a complete functionality check on the microwocky. On discovering that there were no faults or anomalies, he was simultaneously reassured and alarmed. "But I don't understand these penguins!" he wailed. "What are they saying?" Grabbing a passing penguin by the flipper, he yelled at the hapless bird: "Tell me what's going on! Speak proper penguinese, please!" All this intervention achieved was a multiple penguin pile-up that took some time to get straightened out. "This isn't going to work is it?" he observed, somewhat redundantly.
It was said (generally by Mortians) that nothing could confound the rational powers of a Mortian brain for long. Generally speaking, yukawa3 provided plenty of evidence to refute the assertion, but on this occasion the beleaguered cadet shrewdly concluded that there were two possible explanations - either this was not part of the known universe or the penguins were speaking the language of Formicidae chilloks. He cringed at the prospect of either scenario, so one can only imagine the anguish he would have felt if his rationa
l powers had grasped the fact that both scenarios applied.
Desperate to discover where he was and what was going on, he stepped boldly into the oncoming stream, raised his flippers and shouted: "Stop! Let's just see if we can go the other way instead!" The ensuing chaos and tribulation furnished those present with further evidence, if any were needed, of the profound shortcomings in Mortian rationality (at least as far as it applied to yukawa3).
The fact is, the Muqu chillok community had sentenced yukawa3 to what amounted to life imprisonment for his role in the destruction of the city of Niffis and they had despatched him to a parallel universe way beyond the comprehension of mere human beings.
Perhaps that last remark is a trifle unfair - at this stage in intergalactic history even earthling physicists were entertaining the notion of detecting quantum information and were vaguely developing nanotechnologies to manipulate matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Indeed, they were already using tools such as particle colliders to analyse the structure of the subatomic world and the laws of nature governing it. As for Mortians, they certainly understood the concept of multiple universes, but lacked the intellect required to locate and navigate to one. Their knowledge of subquantum strings was still only theoretical. No, it may have been difficult for humans to accept, but chilloks remained the only species capable of crossing through trans-dimensional portals. Assuming, dear reader, that you are a human being yourself, you will of course find it baffling that these diminutive creatures could be endowed with such superior intelligence. After all, in common with other members of the Formicidae family, an individual chillok brain has about 250,000 brain cells compared to the 100 billion neurons in an earthling human one. As a matter of fact, an earthling adult human brain loses more cells in an earthling month than a chillok brain possesses in total. The answer to the conundrum is the chillok capacity for telepathic networking on a colossal multi-universe scale.
Not that any of these deliberations mattered to yukawa3 right now. Having been flattened and battered during his attempt to go against the tide, he had since been swept up and held aloft as the great surge continued unabated. But gradually, the twists and turns of the passageways became less and less aggravating and he found himself drifting into a shallow, dreaming sleep.
He dreamed he was back on his home planet, Smolin9 (formerly Morys Minor). Everyone was assembled in the gardens of the leader's palace in preparation for some sort of ceremony. The atmosphere was solemn and reverent. People talked in hushed tones. He spotted polkingbeal67 and Melinda deep in conversation.
"It's so erratic to have a funeral service without a body," said Melinda in a sombre, almost inaudible tone. "It's like having a wedding without a bride. Literally."
"Whose funeral?" yukawa3 enquired. "Whose body? What's happened?" Neither Melinda nor polkingbeal67 could see or hear him, so he tugged at Melinda's sleeve. She felt nothing. In fact, his hand passed straight through as if Melinda's arm did not exist.
An open casket containing a yellow sou’wester served as the central focus of the ceremony that now occupied everyone's attention.
"Why are they burying a sou’wester?" yukawa3 mumbled to himself, having realised that his presence could not be detected. "How do they know it's dead? How do sou’westers die anyway?"
Melinda turned to polkingbeal67. "Why did he always love those daft hats?" she asked. "I never did understand what was going on there. Did he have a reason for collecting them?"
Polkingbeal67 shrugged his shoulders and sighed. "He didn't need a reason. He just needed a head."
Finally, the penny dropped. "They're talking about me," yukawa3 muttered to himself before declaring aloud, "You think I'm dead! I'm not dead! I'm here! Look! I'm alive!" He attempted to clutch polkingbeal67's arm but his hand passed through without meeting any resistance. "I'm just not feeling very, y'know, physical, at the moment," he said. Mortians do not possess eyelids but even if they did, no one would have batted one.
"Shouldn't we say a few words about him?" polkingbeal67 suggested, squeezing Melinda's arm reassuringly. "Do you want to go first?"
"What should I say?" Melinda asked, more than a little agitated.
"Well, there was the incident at nefeshchaya, remember? The earthling prisoner insurgency?"
"I remember the incident well enough," said Melinda, perplexed, "but what exactly did yukawa3 contribute? All I remember is him running around in random circles."
Yukawa3 could not have been more indignant. "What!" he exclaimed, for no one's ears but his own. "Those circles confused the enemy and left them exposed to polkingbeal67's counter-attack! Don't you understand? I'm a space guerilla! It was a classic military tactic!" Staring at Melinda with a look of defiance and triumph in his eyes, he added, "I hope that answers your question!"
"Okay," said polkingbeal67, "what about his broadcasting work for the MMBC?"
Melinda frowned. "I don't think so," she said. "I don't have to remind you how that all ended. Literally."
"Right, yes." Polkingbeal67 scratched his chin as he tried to dismiss the painful memory of the spacecraft flattening the chillok city of Niffis. "I see what you mean. Well, maybe we should just stick with the Voyager space probe thing," he said reflectively.
"I know he got the credit for it, but the truth is, it was all your doing," Melinda pointed out.
"I know. But as far as all these people are concerned, yukawa3 arranged for it to be returned to the earthling president. And it was his sou’wester that was attached to the probe in place of the golden record."
"Isn't there anything else we can say? Are there no other highlights of his life and career?"
Yukawa3 felt he should break the silence that followed. "I want to say something about this," he said. Unfortunately, when it came to it, he could not come up with anything at all. Not that it would have mattered - no one would have heard him anyway. He consoled himself with the thought that he was not actually dead yet, so there was still time to create some highlights.
As the casket was lowered into the ground, Melinda sniffed and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. The planetary leader, draped in long ribbons of seaweed that trailed behind him, shuffled forward like Marley's ghost to say a few words himself. "There is many a good man to be found under a shabby hat," he said in a fragile, tremulous voice. A dignified silence fell.
"That's right," said yukawa3 gratefully. "It is spoken."
Crepuscular rays streamed through gaps in the clouds. As he delivered the rest of his eulogy, the leader's words were slurred with tiredness, emotion and a little too much vitalmados. "Here lies... taken too soon... sorrowful occasion... but the saddest thing, my friends... the saddest thing is the death of the hat, er, heart of a dear friend."
As the sou’wester disappeared from view, tears welled up in yukawa3's eyes and he turned to embrace Melinda and rest his head on her shoulder, only to glide straight through her and fall headlong into the grave on top of the casket. At this point, as he clutched the sou’wester and the first shower of dirt swept through him, yukawa3 could not have been more uncertain whether he was dead or alive.
"Stop! I'm alive! I'm alive!" he yelled in a tortured scream that should have echoed up from the grave and reverberated like Gabriel's trumpet call throughout the palace grounds (except, of course, it could not be heard at all).
It was a voice that echoed from somewhere deep in his subconscious when he finally emerged from his dream and found himself still being carried aloft by penguins scurrying manically from passageway to passageway. Realising there had been no change in his situation, yukawa3 threw back his head and trumpeted loudly.
. . .
Polkingbeal67 and Melinda were strolling through the grounds of the leader's palace immediately after the memorial service. The secondary sun was totally obscured and pale beams from the primary sun barely penetrated the thick cloud cover. Off in the distance, over the clicking and thudding of people's footsteps and the distant hum of spacecruiser traffic, the plaintive jabbering
of orbis birds lent a melancholy tone to the late afternoon. Although the rituals had finished, a few mourners were still lying prostrate on the ground, arms extended above their heads, palms outstretched.
"I thought that was very worthwhile," said polkingbeal67. "A really fitting tribute, don't you think?"
Melinda glanced back at the grave where the commemoration casket had been buried. "Uh-huh, I suppose so," she said. "Are all funerals like that here?"
"Well, first of all, like I keep telling you, it wasn't a funeral service - it was a commemoration service. And second of all, people hardly ever die here. We live for hundreds, sometimes thousands of your Earth years, so we just don't have these sort of services very often. This one was actually based on your earthling ceremonies. Third of all, it's not finished yet - tonight there's going to be a laser show complete with sonic blaster concerto."
"Laser blaster what now? Is that like a fireworks show?"
"Fireworks?"
"Yeah, y'know, Guy Fawkes and all that. Er, yeah, so he was this guy, ha, who tried to blow up the country's rulers."
"Well, why didn't he?"
"What – blow them up? I can't remember. Maybe his lighter didn't work or something," Melinda said abstractedly, contemplating polkingbeal67's face, which was actually the face of her late husband. "Can I talk to you about something that's bothering me? I know it's not your responsibility, but I don't understand - we've just had a service for someone who's disappeared and is presumed to be dead. Literally. But we haven't had any sort of service for my husband, who we know for sure is definitely dead. Why haven't we had any sort of funeral or commemoration thing for smolin9?"
"But we had a grand ceremony when the planet was renamed in his honour."
"That was supposed to be a funeral service?"
"Memorial," polkingbeal67 corrected her. "It was a special event to solemnly honour his life."
"I didn't realise." Melinda looked at the ground uncomfortably. "That's eerie. I wish someone had told me. I thought it was a purely celebratory thing. I would have done stuff very differently."
Through The Wormhole, Literally Page 29