“Ah … right.”
“It took him one hundred and twenty human year-equivalents to make up his mind about the Pygmy Ents.”
A cold foreboding clutches my gut.
“And what was his decision regarding them?” I ask, although I already know.
“They were not deemed management material,” the Silicon Person says. Its mechanical voice seems to soften a bit. “They were destroyed. I did not witness it myself, of course, but I am assured the process was humane.”
I know better. I’ve seen pictures of the Pygmy Ents’ home planet. It looks like fecking Pompeii. The scientists rub their chins and go “natural disaster,” and the explorers nod wisely and say “war of planetary reduction,” and the greens go “look, look, this is why nuclear power is evil,” and oddly they’re the ones who came closest to being right, aren’t they? Because the Silicon Person’s just told me what really happened to the Pygmy Ents.
They were nuked from orbit.
And now I bet I know what’s behind all those doors marked PRIVATE on the Ghost Train.
I clench my fists, gnawing on my lips, fighting sheer terror. Up until this moment I’d have said I don’t give a feck about humanity. But it turns out I do. I visualize Lisdoonvarna, my parents’ house, the O’Learys’ pile on the hill, O’Donoghue’s pub, that field where I spent a drunken night as a fifth-year. I vividly picture everything going down in a sea of flames.
“Is there anything we can do to influence his decision?” I say “I mean, what does he consider to be management material?” I’d prefer to give the Manager a beating than pass his stupid test, but that is not on the cards, for the reasons already noted—technological gap, enormousness of.
“That I am not sure of,” says the Silicon Person. “But you can and must influence his decision. That is what you are here for.”
“Eh?”
“You must win the Pub Quiz tonight.”
CHAPTER 12
“I met a Denebite,” says Sam, bursting with his news. “She just came up to me and we got talking. It was really interesting! She offered to tell me about quasar formation and the Big Crunch. I was like, uh, sorry, I suck at that stuff.” He chortles.
“Yeah, me too,” I say, thinking of my own chat with the Silicon Person.
It is enough to make you weep, when you think of the human beings who have taken the Pub Quiz previously, as supposedly representative members of our species:
Daredevil explorers—Owen Jones and others like him, of whom the less said the better
American fighter pilots (yes, of course, humanity’s initial reaction to the Ghost Train was to try to shoot it down; that cannot have impressed the Manager, although I hope the flyboys made a good showing in the physics section of the Pub Quiz)
Russian fighter pilots
Chinese fighter pilots
French fighter pilots (what on earth did they think would happen?)
The passengers of that interstellar cruise ship that took off at the wrong time from Treetop fifteen years ago
Not a scientist among them, not a Nobel Prize winner, not even an engineer. The cruise ship, worse luck, was filled with tourists, not residents of Treetop. Stackers don’t go on cruises.
And now it is the turn of a handful of hapless A-tech thieves—ourselves.
“Your Denebite,” I tell Sam, “was trying to help you cram for the Pub Quiz. I suppose they don’t want to see another intelligent species go down in flames. I had the Silicon Person do the same thing to me. Talk about pushing water uphill. ”
“Well, I told her I don’t give a hoot about the Pub Quiz, and I don’t give a hoot about Earth, either,” says this heartless youth. “I mean, I come from Omega Centauri.”
“Think the Manager would overlook our colonies when he gives the planetary reduction command? Think again.”
“Well, you could be right. But there’s nothing we can do about that. And maybe I can do something for my father.”
Jesus, yes, the animal husbandry and whatever it was area. I forgot about that.
Before I can open my mouth to warn Sam off, he goes on, “I asked the Denebite! She said there are about fifty human beings here, working on, get this, a farm!”
“Did she say what they did to deserve that?”
“Oh, they took the Pub Quiz, and lost. So the Manager enslaved them,” Sam says, with remarkably little feeling. I recall that his mother treated her defeated enemies in much the same way. Then his mouth squares and his eyebrows crinkle for a moment. He’s not unfeeling. He’s just barely holding it together. “The Denebite told me where the farm is. I have to go and see … if there’s anything I can do for my father…”
I never heard of such a futile gambit, but I suspect he just wants to see the man, maybe touch his hand through the barbed wire.
“All right, away you go.”
He wouldn’t be any use in the Pub Quiz, anyway. He never went to school at all.
He lopes off down the street. Long shadows have slid in from the west. Pron’s lonely sun is setting.
I head back towards the gate, thinking that I’ll be no use in the Quiz, either. Could I decline to participate? You can, the Silicon Person told me, when I pressed it for more information. That’s what Caleb did. That’s why he’s still travelling around the galaxy instead of husbanding animals on Pron. He’s been un-personned. Now he gets to drink rum and cokes for all eternity, instead of worrying about the fate of Earth.
Finian comes out of the Nursing Home building. He waves urgently to me. I jog to meet him.
“Listen, Finian, I’ve heard about this Pub Quiz. You were right. It’s the most important thing any of us will ever do. But I’m thinking I’d be no bloody good at it. I’m rubbish at maths and science …”
“Of course you are,” my uncle snaps. “So it’s a good job we’ve got someone else who isn’t. Go and get Imogen!”
“Imogen?”
“Yes, Imogen!” He glances at the fading light. “It turns out they’ve got twenty-seven hours in their day. Thirteen o’clock is in about forty minutes. Hurry up!”
I balk. I had a different errand in mind. The Silicon Person told me some other things after it finished telling me about the Pub Quiz. I did not mention these things to Sam. Have you ever wondered why I have no mates? Wonder no more.
“Why Imogen? I mean, she’s got a good head on her, but …”
“Idjit! She’s a stacker!”
Imogen?
A stacker?
Alternately jogging and walking back to the Ghost Train, I consider this amazing assertion. And actually, it’s not so amazing. Once I get over being gobsmacked, the pieces all fall into place.
Inside the Ghost Train, I pay a quick visit to the Wonder Wall. Then I leg it back to the parking bay. The setting sun shines through the transparent walls. Shadows pool beneath the parked spaceships and cars.
I knock on the window of the police cruiser. “Imogen. Imogen. I need to talk to you.”
“Go away.”
The door’s not locked. I take off the rucksack I had the Wonder Wall make for me, and climb into the back.
It is nice and peaceful in here. I can see why she doesn’t want to budge. Even the faint rank smell you get when a vehicle’s been slept in is not unpleasant. It’s the spaceship smell I’ve lived with half my life. She’s a lump in the corner of the back, hidden under the velour blanket she got from the Wonder Wall. I lay a hand on the bulge I take to be her hip. “I know you’re a stacker, Imogen.”
Silence.
“You came out to Arcadia to work for Samsung … as a reverse-engineer. You mentioned that when we first met. I should have put two and two together. I mean, I’ve never met a reverse-engineer who isn’t a stacker. But …”
Her head pops out of the blanket. “But it didn’t make sense to you that a stacker would be drinking by herself in the Pravda, so you figured they must have fired me for not making the grade.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, the
y didn’t. They fired me for not being a team player. But by the time we met, I’d already stopped taking the drugs. And boy oh boy, you lose your edge fast if you don’t take the drugs. I mean, I had the prebirth IQ optimization. My DNA is so tweaked, it looks like Frankenstein’s monster. I had early childhood enrichment, afterschool classes, the works. I graduated cum laude from Princeton. But it’s the nootropics that really put the cherry on the pie.” She turns to me, and in the dimness, she looks just the way she did when I first laid eyes on her at Pravda. “When I couldn’t afford the nootropics anymore, I found out what it was like to be ordinary. And I got to like it. Fletch, it’s exhausting to be a stacker. Knowing you’re different from everyone else. There’s this gap between you and everyone … everyone. You know they’re looking at you. Judging you. Othering you, and fetishizing you at the same time. I guess you wouldn’t understand. The only way I can put it is it made me so tired …”
Yes, she is a stacker all right. It’s the self-pity that confirms it. It reminds me of Ruby. And of myself at times, but that’s a different story. I let my hand fall away from her hip.
“So I told Finian,” she says, “that if there was anything I could do …”
“When was this?”
She purses her lips. “Right after we got here. When the gandy dancers called us beings of mediocre intelligence.”
I remember that bland judgment. It pissed me the feck off, too, and I couldn’t even take issue with its factual correctness.
“I realized, holy shit, they’ve made up their minds about us, but they’re basing that on people like Caleb. Think about it. Back in the 20th century, who did they abduct? Rednecks driving home on country roads. Obese mothers of five. Counterculture cranks who’d pickled their brains with LSD.”
See what I mean? The condescension is breathtaking. But I say nothing. If Finian could take it, so can I.
“So the gandy dancers have us pegged as low-IQ monkeys. But that was before we started using A-tech for DNA optimization. The nootropics are A-tech-based, too.” She bites her nails. “I’ve been taking the whole stack for two weeks now. Finian’s been getting them out of the Wonder Wall for me, so the gandy dancers don’t guess.”
“What was the plan?”
“Oh, we thought I might be able to take over the Ghost Train.” She laughs bitterly. “That was before the whole supermassive black hole thing. At this point I’m like, um, yeah. Humanity is pretty much fucked.”
“Not yet, it isn’t,” I say. “Come on.”
I twitch her blanket away. As I expected, she’s clutching her iPhone. She’s also in her pyjamas.
“Get dressed,” I tell her. “And bring your iPhone.”
Even I, an ordinary non-optimized human being, can put two and two together and get four, sometimes.
On our way to the Nursing Home at the Core of the Galaxy, I rapidly fill Imogen in about the Pub Quiz. By the time we reach the community lounge, it’s starting.
The Draconians are pushing the tables into groups in front of the television. The screen flickers through a multilingual announcement ending in the English words: THE GREAT PRON PUB QUIZ. Each species has congregated at its own group of tables. Excited hums, clicks, whirrs, and chirrups enliven the atmosphere. It looks as if everyone’s taking part:
Five Klingons
Seven Denebites
Four Puzzlers
Sixteen Yellows (bright yellow, hermaphroditic, three-foot-tall dwarfs)
Three Krells
An indeterminate number of Draconians (they keep popping up and down, so it’s not clear how many of them are actually playing)
One Silicon Person
And one Sagittarian.
The Manager has brought his throne down into the midst of his captive court. He’s got a feast heaped on a special high table in front of him. Roast meat, a bucket full of soup, greens piled up like grass cuttings. I can smell it from here. The slaves are doing a yeoman’s job on that farm.
The Manager turns his goatish face to us and draws back his lips in a snarl. Then he picks up a roast haunch of Christ-knows-what, and tears into it with his yellow chompers, staring at us all the while.
“Oh God,” Imogen says. “I can’t do this.”
“You can do it.” I drag her to the table where Finian is sitting by himself. “Finian. Finian. Can she use her iPhone?”
“Is it against the rules, you mean? I don’t know. Ask him.”
I edge towards the Manager. The food on his high table smells good at first, but then the smell coming off the Manager himself makes me want to throw up. The animal part of my brain tells me to run in the other direction and keep going. “Sir. Can we use a calculator?”
“You may use an entire set of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica if you want.” He’s got a high singsong voice, like a goat’s maaaaa. He suddenly reminds me of the head teacher at Lisdoonvarna Secondary School. “Your defeat is certain, anyway.”
Which is exactly the tone my old head teacher would take when he prophesied that I was destined for prison or an early grave, and it’s looking like that was an uncommonly good prediction. But where there’s life, there’s hope. “Thank you very much, sir,” I say, sucking up. You have to suck up to these little Hitlers. It's what they live for.
Back at our table, Finian is terrifying Imogen by telling her that the fate of humanity depends on her performance. Apparently, this is humanity’s 38th Pub Quiz and we haven’t won a single one yet. Even the Pygmy Ents had won a couple of times by this point.
I break in: “It’s OK, Imogen. You can use your iPhone.”
“Oh, thank God,” Imogen gasps. Finian looks puzzled. He was not in that flying saucer with us.
I give Imogen the ghost of a wink. “And now I’ll be off.”
“No! You have to stay! Please, Fletch!”
“I’d only distract you,” I say.
“Let the skiving wee cunt go,” Finian says. He thinks I’m saving my own skin at the expense of our species. Taking the Caleb option.
But I never did really hit it off with Caleb, despite our superficial similarities.
He’s missed so many tricks! He’s been around the Railroad how many times, visited Pron how many times? And there he is now, sat in the corner of the bar, comfortably out of the action, enjoying his biannual rum and Coke. A lack of vision to see the possibilities, that’s his problem.
As I turn to leave the bar, the first question flashes up on the television screen. I pause to read it.
Explain the theory of convergent evolution, providing at least three examples.
Oh, that’s an easy one. Even I could answer that. Convergent evolution is what happens when God keeps bollixing it up, and trying the same thing again with variations, determined by all that’s holy to get it right this time.
But that’s probably not the answer the Manager is looking for.
I leave Imogen writing furiously on her answer pad, and wander out into the dusty, now-dark foyer of the Nursing Home at the Core of the Galaxy.
The alien babble fades behind me as the door of the bar swings shut.
On one level, any nursing home that’s got a bar in it can’t be all bad.
Even if it only serves Budweiser and cocktails.
But as I know from my brief, inglorious time working at Shadylawns in Ennis, visitors never see the ugly bits. They don’t see the residents with dementia stuck upstairs. They don’t see the minimum-wage assistants (such as yours truly) stripping twenty beds a day and hauling the shit-stained sheets down to the laundry truck. They don’t see the nurses sitting on the back steps, smoking a fag so they won’t break down in tears today. No matter how much technology advances, there’ll still be jobs that only sapient beings can do, while loathing every minute of it.
So I’m not surprised when our Draconian waiter sidles out of the bar, scans the shadows for me, and then meanders in my direction, while pretending to polish the pillars with a grubby towel.
When it gets close enough, it give
s a fake start of surprise. “Oh, it’s just one of the ape-faces.”
I point towards the street. “There’s an escape in progress at the farm. You’d better send some of your lads to deal with it.”
This is why I have no friends.
“Thanks for the tip,” says the Draconian. It opens its mouth and gapes with all its teeth showing. The teeth gleam in the thin starlight from outside. I take this unpleasant sight for a smile.
“It’s great the way you turn out the security forces at the first sign of any threat to the Manager,” I say admiringly.
Its tongue flicks out and back. “Oh, you know us Draconians. Fanatically loyal. Impeccable work ethic. No objection to getting gunned down by the million in an asinine war between two equally arrogant and bloodyminded empires.”
“And not in the least bothered about it, umpty million years later.”
“One billion, three hundred and fifty six million years. One billion, three hundred and fifty six million years.”
“That’s a long time.”
“Time flies when you’re having fun.” Flick, flick, goes the tongue. The Draconian swipes its dustrag over another pillar. The pillar is decorated with a carving of the Manager. It is possible to dust with extreme prejudice. I’ve seen it.
“I bet you’d be having even more fun,” I say, “if you hadn’t been bereaved of your ancestral talismans.”
This was the tip the Silicon Person gave me. The ancient being intimated that these ancestral talismans, whatever they may be, represent the dark side of Draconian warrior culture. The Manager saw fit to take them off the Draconians and lock them up. I can see his logic. But I am not on his side.
“Sss!” The Draconian rises onto the balls of its clawed feet. A spiky ruff spreads from the nape of its neck, ripping through the collar of its polo shirt, giving it a dinosaur appearance. “Sssss!!” The hiss seems to stir the very dust in the ancient hall.
“All right, all right … you’ll have security on top of us …”
The COMPLETE Reluctant Adventures of Fletcher Connolly on the Interstellar Railroad: A Comedic Sci-Fi Adventure Page 37