“We are security.”
And bloody useless you are, too, I think to myself. Go, Sam, go! “Yes, but even so, there are places you can’t get to, aren’t there?” That’s what the Silicon Person said. “Things you can’t get at …?”
“Yes.” The Draconian self-consciously smooths down its ruff, and tucks the spines back inside its collar. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
It leads me back into the bar. Question No. 3: Estimate the number of surviving Population II stars in the universe. Imogen’s scribbling, glancing at her iPhone. She seems confident. The scoreboard above the television shows that all teams are tied at 20 points, except for the Yellows, who messed up on Question No. 2: Explain why stature is a reliable indicator of mean intelligence in sapients.
A crowd of decrepit residents has gathered to watch the Quiz, bobbling on their mobility chairs and having their drool wiped away by Draconian attendants.
My Draconian pal leads me around the fringe of the crowd, to the bogs.
“There,” it says, pointing down.
CHAPTER 13
No. Ah, no.
I have taken many unpleasant journeys in my time but I had hoped to go to my grave without ever taking a journey head-first down a Sagittarian toilet.
Not that there is, in fact, a toilet in the lavatorial facilities of the Nursing Home at the Core of the Galaxy.
There’s just a bright room with a stinking pond of sewage in the middle, fed by channels of fresh water from the walls. You’re meant to squat over the channels. I’m basing that guess on the elephant-size turds stuck in one of them.
“Down there,” says the Draconian, its red eyes rolling. It points into the pool. “Shaft, U-bend, cistern. Our talismans are in the cistern. We can’t fit through the shaft. We’ve tried. No good.”
“So there are disadvantages to being eight-foot warriors with the shoulder span of a rhino.”
“Hurry up, ape-face, before someone comes in.”
“Why don’t you get the Yellows to do it?” They are only three feet tall.
“They can’t swim.”
“Neither can I,” I lie half-heartedly.
“Are you going to do it or not?”
“No,” I say, unlacing my Timberlands. “Not on your life,” and I’m taking off my utility belt, transferring just two items to my pockets. “Under no circumstances,” and I’m rewarded with a Draconian grin as I dip one toe into the reeking pool. If that turns out to have been my last sight in this life, I’ll have paid for my sins before I reach purgatory.
“How would I get out again?” I say, just out of curiosity. “Swim back up?”
“Getting in is the hard part. Getting out is easy.”
“How far down is—”
I do not get to finish the sentence. I barely even get to take a deep breath.
The Draconian leans over and gives me a big push.
I belly-flop into the reeking sludge. Ah God! My head’s going under!
And I’m being sucked down, down, down. There’s some kind of suction in the shaft. A flushing mechanism. My back scrapes stone, hard enough to take the skin off.
I flip, kicking frantically, so I’m swimming head-first. If that reptilian bastard was telling the truth, I’ve got to swim around a U-bend and then—
My head ploughs into something mushy. Frantically, I feel around with the hand that isn’t pinching my nose shut. My fingers sink into what must be a year’s build-up of alien turds. The waste is trapped, as I am, on this side of a metal grille that blocks the shaft.
I’m going to murder that Draconian, if it’s the last thing I ever do—
Steady. Steady, Fletch.
I reach for the item I transferred to my left hip pocket. It’s a miracle I don’t cut my balls off getting it out.
An experienced A-tech scout never goes anywhere without his knife.
Or, as the case may be, someone else’s knife.
And this one’s metalforma.
Cuts through anything.
Eyes tight closed, lungs bursting, I hack at the grille.
Whoosh! The suction drags me, and all the solid waste, downwards. The edges of the hole I sawed in the grille snag my clothes and tear my skin. I kick madly. My tormented inner ear tells me I’m now swimming up.
I burst through the surface, gasping.
For a minute I tread water limply, revelling in the joy of breathing.
The smell of sewage is gone now. It’s pitch-dark, but I get the sense that there’s space around me, a roof above me.
An experienced A-tech scout never goes anywhere without a torch.
I wrestle mine out of my pocket and shine it around, dazzling myself until my eyes adjust.
Oh.
Stone pillars rise from the water and spread like trees to form arches supporting the roof. The water lapping at the pillars over the millennia has worn waists in the stone.
When lizard-face said a cistern, I was picturing an arrangement with a giant stopcock and ball valve. Many’s the homeowner who tapes their valuables to the underside of a cistern lid in a waterproof bag. The Manager might have done the same thing with the Draconians’ talismans.
But of course, there’s this kind of cistern as well. A gigantic roofed reservoir.
Shining my torch down the water-floored avenues of columns, I am thinking more about finding the way out than finding the Draconians’ ancestral treasures. There’s an island over there! I swim towards it. My splashes echo under the roof. I drag myself out on the rocky edge of a platform heaped with boxes and containers.
Maybe this is where the Draconians’ ancestral talismans are.
But how am I supposed to know what’s what? I can’t read alien squiggles.
All these boxes probably contain treasures of inestimable value. The crown jewels of a dozen interstellar empires.
I clamber over the boxes, towards the middle of the island—and as it turns out, I have no trouble identifying the Draconian talismans at all.
A smile spreads over my face.
It’s a shame I can’t take all of them. But I think I can manage three or four in each hand … no, but then I won’t be able to swim … all right, let’s try putting them in the old cargo pockets …and some down my t-shirt … and I can put some more down my Carhartts, and tuck my kecks into my socks so they don’t fall out … and that’s the lot! Grand.
Now I’ve just got to find the way out.
The Draconian was vague about that part. It just said getting out would be easy, compared to getting in.
In the middle of the island I find a machine that reminds me of the Wonder Wall on the Ghost Train: white buttons on white. My fingers itch. I’d kill for a Pepsi right now, flat or not. But randomly pushing buttons on a machine of unknown purpose really might qualify me for the Darwin Awards. For once, prudence gets the better of curiosity.
I walk around the edge of the island, hoping for a boat. Instead, I find a causeway submerged a few inches beneath the surface of the water. I only know it’s there because the water ripples differently above it. I step down onto the hidden surface. Jesus, it’s slippery!
Slithering in my sock feet, I edge away from the island. After falling on my arse for the second time, I resort to crawling on hands and knees. The Draconian talismans drag down the front of my t-shirt and clank inside my trousers. Fatigue sets in by degrees. Shining my torch back the way I came, I can’t believe I’ve only crawled thirty yards.
Suddenly, light shoots over the water ahead of me.
A door in the wall of the cistern!
I’m nearly at the end of this!
Hope dies when the light is blocked by the hulking silhouette of the Manager.
Oh Christ, I’m done for now. There were silent alarms. Of course there were. Why would the Manager have less security than King Zuckerberg of Treetop? Or maybe the Draconian squealed on me.
The Manager splashes out onto the causeway. He’s got his own torch, a headlight-strength beam, fifteen feet up.
I sl
ide down onto my belly and roll off the edge of the causeway.
The treasures in my clothes drag me down.
I clutch the edge of the causeway with my fingers, keeping my head just above water as the Manager stalks closer.
I can smell him now.
He’s muttering to himself in Sagittarian. Maaa, maaaa, maaaa.
His torch beam zips towards me, and I duck my head under the water. If only the ripples don’t give me away—
Ow! My fingers!
He’s trod on my fingers!
But his next stride carries him past me, and by the time I surface in the wake of his footsteps, he’s halfway to the island.
My fingers! The last three fingers on my left hand feel like they’ve been sliced off.
It could be worse.
I’m right-handed.
But Christ, the pain …
One-handed, I drag myself back onto the causeway. As fast as I dare, I shuffle towards the door the Manager left ajar behind him.
He’s on the island now, muttering away. Asking a question, it sounds like. Maybe he’s operating that Wonder Wall machine. Maybe he doesn’t even know I’m here!
I crawl up the steps up to the door. Staying low, so he won’t spot my shadow, I flop across the threshold. The door is twenty-five feet high and must weigh several tons. I’m violently tempted to slam it shut on him. But then he would know I’m here …
Where am I, anyway?
Furs, and bones, and heaps of straw litter the floor of a vast vaulted room.
This must be the Manager’s bedroom! Goats like to sleep on straw, and I suppose omnivorous hyer-intelligent ones are no different. I gag at the putrid smell.
But the most extraordinary thing about this room is the walls.
They’re covered with carvings, like most of the walls in this city. But these carvings do not depict Sagittarians. They show gandy dancers.
Thousands of them, all the way up to the ceiling, on the ceiling, all their little limbs tangled together, carved at different depths. Some are just the barest suggestion of domed heads. Others look like with a bit of encouragement, they might step straight out of the wall.
There’s no accounting for taste, I suppose.
Clanking at every step, I hurry past the eerie carvings. It’s a good thing the floor is covered with straw so my wet footprints don’t show.
The door on the other side of the room leads to a dark hallway. I hear the noise of cheering from the bar. Thank God! I follow the sounds down a Sagittarian-sized stairway—jump, clank. Jump, clank.
I’m halfway down when a long-drawn “Maaaaa!” drifts from the darkness above me.
You hear about the howls of wolves, which used to be the most terrifying sound in the universe for our ancestors. I am here to tell you that not even the most ferocious canid could compete with the howl of a goat.
I jump down the rest of the stairs in a blind panic. At the bottom, the light of the bar television seeps under fringey hangings, and I know where I am.
I flatten myself against the wall.
The Manager strides past me, thrusting the hangings out of his way, and I get an instant’s glimpse of the bar.
The hangings fall back. I lie down on my stomach—trying desperately not to clank—and crawl under the mossy folds of material, out onto the Manager’s dais … right underneath his throne.
He’s not in it.
Peeking out from under the throne’s heavy skirt of fur, I see that the crowd’s closed in around the contestants. Only four teams are still in the game: the Denebites … the Silicon Person … and the Manager. He’s back on his special bar stool, writing on his high table, the debris of his feast pushed aside.
The fourth surviving team is us.
The scoreboard reads:
Deneb: 140
Ggxkt’va: 170
THE EMPEROR OF THE MILKY WAY, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING: 170
Earth: 170
Holy feck! Imogen is holding her own with the two most intelligent species in the history of the galaxy!
I’d cheer my throat raw, if I dared to make a sound.
I have to get off this fecking dais, but it’s fifteen feet high and if I come out from under the throne, I’ll be in full view.
The Draconians are all hanging around in the far corner by the entrance to the bogs. It’s as if they think I’ll be coming back that way.
I try to catch their eye, without catching the Manager’s eye, but it’s no good—they’re all staring at the scoreboard, which is updating as the computer processes the contestants’ answers to Question No. 25 (Explain why the solipsistic philosophy fails, and summarize an argument that convincingly rebuts it).
Deneb: 140
Ggxkt’va: 180
THE EMPEROR OF THE MILKY WAY, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING: 180
Earth: 180
Ha, ha! So much for the Denebites’ famed intelligence! Eat human dust, beak-faces!
With no realistic chance of winning, the Denebites withdraw from the quiz. It’s just a trivial amusement to them, anyway. It makes no difference to them if they win or lose. Their home planet is already dead.
Ours isn’t, but its fate hangs in the balance, and the tension escalates while the remaining teams wrestle with the next four questions. I forget that I’m lying under the Manager’s throne with half a ton of hardware inside my sewage-soaked clothes. I almost forget to breathe. I’m riveted to the sight of Imogen bent over her answer pad. Her dark hair falls on either side of her face, exposing the white nape of her neck. She’s so calm, she might as well be alone in the room. I’m reminded of the way she looks when she’s piloting a ship. She makes it look effortless. Sometimes she looks things up on the iPhone.
Finian pretends to be helping her, but I think every sapient being can see it’s her doing all the work.
Just as long as they don’t guess it’s actually the iPhone doing it.
Question No. 29: Summarize the principles of imperialism and give the most common reasons for the collapse of empires.
She refers to the iPhone repeatedly on this one.
The Silicon Person holds a stylus in one of the tentacles it can extrude from between its middle tiles. It completes its answer in a few seconds, puts down its stylus, and goes back to floating impassively on its gravsled.
The answers pop up on the screen. Imogen and the Manager have both written essays, but the Silicon Person’s answer is just two words long:
Fuck This.
Howls, chirrups, squeaks, and hisses of laughter rock the room.
The Manager cuts the mirth off with a glare. “The Ggxkt’van has withdrawn from the Quiz,” he bleats in that awful piercing singsong.
The Silicon Person floats away through the crowd, and I can’t suppress a smile. Who knows what is passing through its old mind? But I imagine it is experiencing satisfaction.
It has probably guessed that Imogen is on the verge of winning the Pub Quiz thanks to her iPhone, which absorbed the entire collective wisdom of the Ggxkt’van race during its moment of freefall above their ex-planet.
Broadband wireless data transfer capability, baby.
Petabytes of information.
Here comes Question No. 30—the last. If Imogen aces this one, and the Manager fails it, we’ll have won. If the Manager answers correctly, too, I suppose it’ll go to a tiebreaker. But when I see the question, I relax.
Define hubris, and explain the role it plays in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, particularly with regard to the poet’s mythologization of Julius Caesar.
We’ve won.
Imogen won’t need the iPhone at all for this.
She starts scribbling joyfully.
The Manager scowls at the television. He’s got the hump altogether.
I have a feeling—just a feeling—that he came up with the questions himself, and this one was meant to be the cruellest cut of all. He’d have expected us to be left in the dust by now, unable to answer even the simplest question about galactic formatio
n or the theory and practice of managing interstellar empires. Then—a question about human culture! What, you can’t even answer that? Off to the farm with you, while your intellectual superiors enjoy a chortle at your expense.
It is a fair bet that previous human participants in the Pub Quiz did not know Ovid from their left elbow.
But Imogen did her degree in classical literature. She’s actually giggling as she writes.
The Manager’s got no idea what to put. Ha! He probably just copied that question off some internet source trawled up by the Ghost Train.
He rises. Everyone flinches out of his way. He’s striding towards the dais, his goatish lips working, and suddenly the truth dawns on me.
This’ll be the second time he’s left the bar during the Quiz.
I don’t stop to think. I wriggle out from under the throne and stand up. “He’s cheating!” I howl. “He’s away upstairs to look up the answer on the computer! He had to look up the answer to that other question, too—the one about philosophy!”
Everyone except Imogen stares at me in shock.
The Manager’s face—on a level with mine, since I’m stood on the dais—contorts into a snarl.
“Cheat!” I screech. “You’re a cheating piece of shite and we’re not having it, are we lads!”
The response from the crowd is muted. Oh, dear. They all knew he was cheating. They just weren’t going to say anything.
The Manager strides forward. An enormous hand lashes out. I dodge, but he’s faster. He seizes me around the middle. He’s got nails like yellow shovels, hair on his hands and arms like a mangy black carpet. I’m petrified, sure he will literally rip me in half, but instead he hurls me across the bar.
Like a human cannonball, I sail over the resident aliens’ heads …
… and twenty-five lightsabers cascade from their hiding-places inside my t-shirt and trousers.
CHAPTER 14
I’d no reason to suspect that the Draconians’ ancestral talismans would turn out to be lightsabers. Well, except for one little thing: me and Finian found our lightsabers on the Draco spur. So I was hoping against hope. These overlaps sometimes turn out to be coincidences …
… and sometimes, they don’t.
The Draconian waiters, busboys, and nursing aides scrabble on the floor, snatching up their ancestral weapons with hisses of joy.
The COMPLETE Reluctant Adventures of Fletcher Connolly on the Interstellar Railroad: A Comedic Sci-Fi Adventure Page 38