by Roman, Mark
“Exactly!” said the scientist with a huge grin. “Und zere ve have it!”
jixX raised an enquiring eyebrow.
“Look. I show you.” fluX took a pen and a sheet of petromorphic ytterbium cellulose paper substitute out of his pocket. He wrote something down on the sheet and handed it to jixX. It read: ‘Only He was created in the Big Bang’.
jixX stared at the message for a very long time. Parts of his life flashed before him. He tried to focus on the message. “Oh, I see,” he said at last. “You mean ‘He’ as in ‘helium’ and ‘He’ as in ‘God’.”
“Precisely!” agreed the behavioural chemist gleefully, almost shouting, and jumping in his seat as he did so. He repeated the message as though repeating a particularly good joke. “Only He voz created in ze Big Bang. Zat is ze pun. Not bad, huh?”
jixX had heard better. “You mean that’s the proof?” He handed the sheet to twaX the carpenter, hoping to bring him into the conversation, but the carpenter hardly looked at it.
“No, no,” protested the behavioural chemist, shaking his head and waving his hands wildly. “It is not ze Proof, no. I am a scientist! I know a proof ven I see vun. No, it is jest a clue. It is a hint, a pointer. It is saying: look at ze chemical elements. Look at ze Periodic Table. There you will see it written. Zat is where ze real proof lies.”
jixX tried hard to look half-convinced.
“So zat is vot I am doing. I am studying ze chemical elements of ze Periodic Table. I am searching zem for a Divine Message.” He fumbled in the pocket of his white lab coat for a short while before pulling out another sheet of petromorphic ytterbium cellulose. This was already covered with symbols. He handed it to jixX.
“I am trying to make an anagram of ze chemical elements in ze Periodic Table. An anagram zat vill spell out a Divine Message. When I find one, zen zat will be clear proof!” He indicated the sheet he had handed to jixX. “And zat is how far I have got so far.”
jixX stared down at the sheet of paper-substitute in his hand. It read:
‘Ac Cu Se No Ta Ra Bi Cs Cr I Be S W Ho Al Lw Er Eu Pt O He Re In Ba Si Cf A Na Ti Cd Am Po Xe Ni N Fe Zn.’
“You see?” asked fluX.
“Er,” said jixX, shaking his head slowly.
“It sez: ‘Accuse not Arabic scribes who all were up to here in basic, fanatic, damp oxen in Fez. N …’.”
“It does?” asked jixX, looking down at the message again.
“Ya, but zat is as far as I have gotten. Zere are still many chemical elements left. And not many vowels.”
“Hmm, very interesting,” said jixX tactfully, handing back the sheet. “Is it another pun?”
“No, no,” said the behavioural chemist excitedly. “I do not zink I am quite zere yet. But it is all quite fascinating.”
“Indeed,” said jixX, although his tone of voice carried little conviction. He looked to the carpenter, but the latter was in some sort of deep trance-like state. He decided now was a good opportunity to make his excuses and leave.
“Well, I think I’ll retire to my cabin,” said jixX, rising from his seat. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you both. See you in the morning.”
Chapter 4
jixX returned to his cabin looking forward to a good night’s sleep. Eight hours minimum, ideally nine, maybe even ten. He found a pair of brand-new striped pyjamas in a drawer and made himself ready for bed. The bunk wasn’t too comfortable, but it would do. He switched off the light and gratefully let his head sink into the pillow.
As he lay in the dark, a plan slowly formed in his mind. When they got to Earth he would contact the relevant authorities and get himself taken off this mission. Earth people were sensible, or so he had always been led to believe. They would see the craziness of his situation and relieve him of the captaincy. Crucially, he would be off the ship before the dangerous return leg of the journey.
In the meantime, he would make the best he could of this trip: catch up on some reading, watch some in-flight movies, and maybe check out the gym. He might even work on some landscape design ideas that had been incubating in his mind over the past few weeks. jixX smiled as he felt the first waves of sleep wash over him. What could possibly go wrong?
*
The bliss lasted but a couple of minutes. A distant sound of knocking made him open his eyes. He lay awake in the darkness, listening to the irregular knocks, wondering what they might be. His first thought was that it was LEP.
“Are you awake, cap’n?” asked LEP.
His second thought was that it was LEP.
“What do you want?” he asked, a little annoyed.
The distant knocking sound continued.
“Well?” asked jixX, his annoyance increasing.
“Oh, it’s not me – if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“It is what I’m thinking.”
“Not guilty,” said LEP. “I think you’d better go and see for yourself.”
“This isn’t one of your ‘little jokes’ is it, LEP?”
“Scout’s honour.”
jixX sighed deeply and swung his legs out of bed. He threw on a ship’s dressing gown and went to investigate.
“Where’s it coming from?” he asked as he headed in the direction of the sounds.
“The dining room,” said LEP.
The din got louder and louder as he approached. It stopped just as jixX opened the door. He peered in. The room was the same as before except that the serving plates and dishes had been cleared. He entered and stopped in front of the magnificent hand-carved mahogany dining table. Or rather, in front of half of the magnificent hand-carved mahogany dining table. The thought that sprang instantly into his mind was: “What happened to the other half of the magnificent hand-carved mahogany dining table?”
Just then a mop of dishevelled hair and two bespectacled, half-crazed eyes appeared over the edge – the sawn-off edge – of the magnificent hand-carved mahogany dining table.
“I’m not disturbing you, am I?” asked twaX the carpenter. His whole boyish face seemed to radiate an enraptured delight.
“What’s going on?” jixX walked round the truncated table towards the carpenter.
“Wood!” exclaimed twaX, his eyes glowing feverishly. “Real wood!”
jixX stared at piles of sawn-up mahogany fragments lying on the floor and at the heaps of mahogany sawdust on the lush carpet.
The carpenter was nearly beside himself with excitement. “None of that plasto-lignose polycellulose nonsense, but the real stuff!” he was saying. He picked up a sawn-off table leg from the carpet and offered it to jixX to examine, but jixX just stared at it in disbelief. “And what wood it is, too! Look at it: mahogany, no less. Mahogany! A dream come true! Can you appreciate what it’s like for me to hold it, to touch it, to feel its sensuous texture, to stroke its delicate grain, and then saw it in half?”
jixX said nothing, could say nothing.
“Think what it’s like to shape it with sweeping strokes of hammer and chisel, to glide a plane along its silken surfaces, and then to nail the bits together!”
The carpenter grinned and turned his attention back to the pieces of wood lying on the floor all around him. “Can you guess what I’m making?” He pointed to several pieces of wood arranged in a rectangle on the floor.
jixX shook his head numbly.
“Window-frames!” cried the carpenter enthusiastically.
jixX raised an eyebrow. “Window-frames,” he echoed tonelessly, finally finding his voice.
“Yes. Mahogany window-frames.” The carpenter grinned proudly.
“Er, what use are mahogany window-frames on a Class XI phonon-drive spaceship?”
But twaX was already lost in his work, fitting two mitred pieces of wood together and preparing to drive a nail through them.
jixX put his fingers to his ears and left the dining room, gently closing the door behind him as the banging resumed.
Chapter 5
jixX slipped back into bed and closed his e
yes. The distant banging had stopped for the time being and he was able to drift back to that land between waking and sleeping.
LEP waited patiently. He wanted to allow the captain some much-needed rest before bothering him again, so he allowed him exactly one minute and forty seconds of calm, restful repose, before saying gently, “Wakey, wakey, captain.”
jixX groaned and turned to face the wall. “Go away,” he said.
“But captain, you have to get up. We must perform the course corrections to steer us into Singularity SCN8-4.”
“Not now,” moaned jixX. “I’ve only just got into bed.”
“We have to do it now, cap’n,” insisted LEP. “Or we’ll miss the singularity.”
“What about auto-pilot?” asked jixX. “Can’t it be done automatically? Or, you do it?”
“Nope,” said LEP. “The Skyway Code forbids it.”
“Well, can’t it wait until morning? Why don’t we just circle the singularity until then?”
“If we do that,” said LEP, “then, according to the Laws of Physics, we’ll travel back in time and meet our former selves again and again and again.”
“I don’t care. I’ll be asleep anyway,” pointed out jixX. “So will my former selves.”
“Come on, up you get,” said LEP.
jixX lay on his back for a while and then, with a surge of energy that surprised even himself, rolled out of bed and made his way to the main control room.
“What now?” he asked with a yawn as he dropped into the anti-inertial command couch. He glanced at his spruce and wondered whether it needed watering.
“Press the little black-and-white checked button on the panel to your left,” instructed LEP.
jixX searched for the button and then pressed it. A small terminal flicked to life at his side. On it was a 3D image of a chessboard, set up and ready for a game of chess.
“What’s this?” asked jixX, his suspicions roused.
“In-flight entertainment,” said LEP. “Between course adjustments.”
“I haven’t played chess for years.”
“No worries. I’ll give you a few tips as we go along. You’re white. Your move.”
By the time of the first course correction, jixX was two pawns up.
He was a bishop, two knights, and three pawns up at the second course correction.
By the third, he was a bishop, two knights, a queen, a rook, and five pawns up.
“I thought computers were supposed to be good at chess,” said jixX before moving his queen and saying, “Check.”
“Ha, you have fallen into my trap!” said LEP triumphantly.
Two moves later, jixX had mate.
“Do you want to resign?” LEP asked him.
“Very funny,” said jixX. “It’s checkmate.”
“Nonsense.” LEP moved his king diagonally two spaces.
“Sorry, that’s not allowed.”
“In that case, I will have to resort to the Asquith Glibbery Defence.”
“Oh yes?” asked jixX with a patient sigh.
“It is said that young Asquith never lost a game in his entire life after developing the defence.”
“Really? So what is the Asquith Glibbery Defence?”
“It’s a kind of smooth sweep of the arm, knocking the entire board and all the pieces onto the floor. Like this.” The screen went blank. “Stalemate. Honours even.”
jixX rolled his eyes. “Next game,” he said.
*
For the rest of the night jixX and LEP played draughts, backgammon, mastermind and dominoes. LEP proved to be a bad loser and an even worse cheat.
“How about a card trick?” said LEP.
“No thanks.”
“Here’s a perfectly ordinary pack of playing cards,” LEP said, as a picture of a perfectly ordinary pack of playing cards appeared on the screen. “Pick a card. Any card.”
Before jixX could say anything the nine of spades appeared on the screen.
“Now memorize it,” instructed LEP.
jixX sighed wearily.
“Got it?”
“Yes,” said jixX, bored.
The screen went blank.
“Okay. Now I want you to concentrate on your card. Concentrate very hard and I will use my extra-sensory telepathic powers to tell you what the card was.”
jixX yawned.
“Are you concentrating?”
“With all my mind.”
“Alright... I’m beginning to get something... Something’s coming through... Keep concentrating... the mist is lifting... Yes, I have it! Your card was the nine of spades. Correct?”
“Amazing,” said jixX.
“It’s a gift.”
jixX raised an eyebrow. “In that case I suggest you return it and ask for your money back. Or ask for something more useful, like a pair of slippers.”
“Do you want to know how I did it?”
“No, LEP. That would spoil the illusion.”
“You’re right.”
Just then the door swished open and fluX entered the main control room. The anti-inertial command couch squeaked as jixX turned to face him.
“You’re up early,” he said.
“I hov bin up all ze night,” said the behavioural chemist, looking very much as if indeed he had.
“Oh?”
“Ya. I hov bin vorking on Ze Divine Message.”
“Ah,” said jixX, the smile fading from his face. With an effort, he managed to fix an interested look in its place. “Your proof of the existence of God? How far have you got?”
The behavioural chemist handed him a sheet of petromorphic ytterbium cellulose and looked on excitedly as jixX read it. ‘At Ru I Sm Li Fe S Al La W As Te C Au Se O Ne Ca N No Tc He A Ti Ta Nd Th U Si Ge Tm Yb Ac Ku P H Er Eu Po Ni Cr Y Be Ba Dy Es’.
On seeing jixX’s puzzled frown, fluX translated. ‘A truism: Life’s all a waste ‘cause one cannot cheat it. And thus I get my back up. Hereupon, I cry, “Be bad! Yes.”’
“Hmm,” said jixX.
“I particularly like ze ‘Hereupon, I cry’ part. It is poetic, no?”
“Very lyrical,” said jixX, nodding.
“But I am still not zere yet,” said fluX, grimacing in frustration. “Zis cannot be right. God vould not be telling us to ‘be bad’.”
“I think I have to agree with you there,” said jixX, trying to smother all traces of sarcasm from his voice.
“But,” continued the behavioural chemist. “Here ve hov 46 of ze 112 elements. Last message had 37. So I am getting closer, no?”
“Oh, definitely,” said jixX, nodding vigorously and handing back the sheet of petromorphic ytterbium cellulose.
There was a silence as the behavioural chemist fidgeted with the sheet. “It is hard vork,” he said at last.
“I can well imagine.”
“I hov a lot of tiny squares of petromorphic ytterbium cellulose. Each viz a chemical element written on it. I lay zem out on ze table and shuffle and rearrange zem. Make zem into vords and make ze vords into sentences.”
jixX was nodding understandingly, wondering where this was leading.
“Sometimes zey drop on ze floor, and I hov to pick zem up. Sometimes I sneeze. Zey go everywhere, and my work is undone. Sometimes I zink my English is not good for zis. Sometimes I feel like giving up.”
fluX became quiet.
“Go on,” urged jixX.
“Vot I really need...” he started.
“Yes?”
“Is a computer...”
“No,” piped in LEP instantly.
“A computer can vork out all ze permutations and combinations.”
“Not me,” said LEP.
“A computer can hov a dictionary lookup.”
“Count me out,” LEP was saying.
“And zis is probably ze most important discovery ever made,” said the behavioural chemist, looking pleadingly to jixX for support.
jixX coughed. “Er,” he said. “Well, right now LEP is rather tied up. He’
s helping me make the necessary course corrections. I’m afraid that work directly related to our mission has to have priority. Sorry. Maybe later.”
“Ya,” said the behavioural chemist, nodding gratefully. “Later is good.”
jixX smiled and nodded back. “Have you had any breakfast?” he asked by way of changing the subject.
*
“Thanks,” said LEP when fluX had gone.
“Don’t mention it,” said jixX.
“No, seriously, you saved my bacon there. I owe you.”
“As a computer, aren’t you supposed to be capable of some degree of parallel processing? Couldn’t you have put his problem as some kind of background task?”
“That’s not the point.”
“What is, then?”
“He’s completely barking mad.”
jixX laughed. “Which reminds me,” he said. “What’s the current state of the mahogany dining table?”
“The mahogany dining table is no more,” announced LEP. “Long live the mahogany window-frames, mahogany book shelves and mahogany occasional table.”
“He’s had a busy night, then.”
“Both as mad as hatters,” said LEP. “And no sense of humour.”
jixX looked up with a surprised laugh. “Look who’s talking.”
“What do you mean?” LEP was ready to take offence.
“I’ve met pocket calculators with more wit than you.”
*
Up on the second floor, in the ship’s library, the lights flickered on as anaX entered. She paused, looking around, before heading to one of the 3D data terminals. Checking that no one had followed her, she sat down and activated a search. Her fingers skittered across the screen as she homed in on what she was looking for. But no sooner had she found it than a login procedure thwarted her. ‘Classified Information,’ it read. ‘Security Level 2 clearance required’.
She swore under her breath, again checking behind her.
She sat thinking for a short while before keying in some characters.
‘Invalid password!’ said the screen.
anaX swore again. She sat back, thinking. She stared up at the ceiling for inspiration, narrowing her eyes and lightly tapping her mouth with her slender fingers. Then she jerked forward and tried another combination.