by Roman, Mark
“Well...,” she started, speaking slowly as she formulated her story. “You may have noticed that I’ve been acting a bit strangely recently.”
“Anyone watching you would have noticed that you’ve been acting a bit strangely recently.”
“Oh dear,” said anaX, slightly dissatisfied with herself. “Was it that obvious?” She gave a weak little smile.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” offered LEP.
“No, it’s okay,” said anaX, looking sad, playing the victim. “It’s good to share problems.”
“I’m here for you,” said LEP gallantly.
“That’s very sweet,” started anaX, her story now fully formed in her mind. “It’s all to do with The Fourth Method.”
“Not The Fourth Method!” said LEP, sounding astonished.
“Yes.”
There was a slight silence.
“What’s The Fourth Method?” asked LEP.
anaX was slightly taken aback. “Surely you know.”
“Nope.”
“You must have read ‘Recruitment Procedures for Spaceship Personnel’?”
“Hmm,” considered LEP. “Who’s it by?”
anaX sighed. “It’s a Tenalp MIS publication.”
“Ah,” said LEP. “Ministry of Intelligence and Spying. I don’t really like their stuff. Too dry, no plot, no tension, no characterization, and definitely no jokes.”
anaX waited patiently for LEP to finish. “There’s a chapter called ‘Pregnancy and the Female Crewmember’,” she continued, “which describes the four methods used for preventing female crewmembers becoming pregnant on Top Secret Space Missions.”
“Sounds interesting,” said LEP. “Tell me more.”
“The First Method is to ensure that either there are only men on the mission, or that there are only women. However, this conflicts with the regulation stating that there must be at least one member of each sex on board.
“The Second Method is to recruit women who are, for some reason, unable to conceive, and/or men who are, for some reason, unable to make women conceive. This is largely impractical.
“The Third Method involves enforcing contraception. It is the most commonly used method, but statistics show it is also the least effective method.
“So I’ve been recruited on the basis of The Fourth Method.”
“Go on,” urged LEP eagerly.
“The Fourth Method is to employ women who are already pregnant at the start of the mission. In that way they can’t become pregnant during the mission. It’s both foolproof and failsafe.”
LEP had to think about it for a bit. “You know,” he said at last, “there is a kind of warped logic to that. I like it. I’ll have to start reading more of this stuff. Who did you say wrote it?”
anaX said nothing. She merely pressed on the shock-wheel tyre with her hand to test whether it was fully inflated. It seemed hard enough.
“Wait,” said LEP as something slowly dawned on him. “That means that... you’re pregnant?”
“Two months already,” answered the gynaecologist giving her stomach a little pat.
LEP didn’t answer for a while. The news came as a bit of a personal blow.
“Who... who is it?” he asked at last.
“Who’s what?”
“The father.”
“No one you’d know,” said anaX absently.
“Oh,” said LEP, trying to hide the disappointment in his voice.
anaX picked up the pressure gauge and went to another of the landing wheels.
“You … you shouldn’t really be doing this, you know,” said LEP.
anaX looked up with a mixture of guilt and anger. She’d need to distract LEP somehow and the perfect way was with an emotional outburst. “Shouldn’t be doing this?!?” she burst out emotionally.
LEP was taken aback.
“Shouldn’t be doing this?” she continued dramatically. “Think how I feel? Here I am... an expectant mother stuck in the middle of nowhere. On some God-forsaken planet in the Pseudogravitic Continuum, of all places! Is it wrong to want to get back to civilization? Is it wrong to desire that my child be born in a modern hospital with the most up-to-date equipment, expertise and technology? To have my baby delivered by specialists rather than have to do it here myself?”
LEP was silent for a while, cowed by this unexpected tirade. “That’s not quite what I meant,” he said meekly. “I just meant that... in your delicate condition... you shouldn’t be doing all this heavy work.”
anaX laughed, relieved. This fool of a computer wasn’t in the least bit suspicious. “I think I can manage,” she said. “Even if I am a whole two months pregnant.”
Chapter 11
sylX appeared to be in her element, conversing with a strange being in a strange land.
“Tell us about yourself, Chris,” she said, with genuine interest.
Chris shrugged as he slithered along. “Not much to tell, really. I’d say I’m pretty average. Green and slimy. Not too tall, not too short. That’s it.”
“What do you do? How do you spend your time?”
“I don’t do much. There’s not much to do here. I just sort of sit around a lot. Most of us do. When we get hungry, we grab a brick and hunt down an animal. A pretty unexciting sort of existence.”
“Hunt down an animal?” asked jixX, coming into the conversation for the first time. “We haven’t seen any wildlife at all, so far.”
“Yes, it’s a paradox, isn’t it,” said Chris with a laugh. “There’s nowhere for them to hide, yet you can never find one when you want one!”
“Is the whole planet this flat and featureless?”
“Pretty much,” said Chris, scanning the landscape. “Didn’t used to be. Used to have mountains, hills, valleys, you name it. But then we bricked it all up, poured tar over the top and got this. Took centuries, but was worth the effort.”
“You bricked up the whole planet??” asked jixX and sylX together in disbelief.
“Yes,” said Chris proudly.
“With bricks?”
“Of course with bricks!” said Chris. “You can’t imagine how many it took.”
“No,” said jixX, trying to visualize the monumental scale of the task. This was landscape design taken to the extremes of minimalism.
“A truly remarkable invention, the brick,” Chris was saying. “It kick-started our civilization.” He checked himself. “But I expect it was the same for you, too.”
“Er, well,” said jixX hesitantly, not wanting to be impolite. “I think perhaps the brick’s contribution has been underestimated in our culture.”
“So versatile,” Chris continued. “Don’t know what we would have done without it. One hundred and one uses for a brick. Brick weapons, brick kilns, a brick-based communication system, brick clocks, brick musical instruments, brick art...”
“Brick houses?” suggested jixX.
Chris looked puzzled.
“I expect your houses are made of bricks.”
“Houses? Made of bricks?” asked Chris astonished. “How do you mean?”
“Well...” jixX shrugged. “Two up, two down?”
Chris seemed unable to grasp what jixX was saying. “No,” he said finally. “We live in sponges. Which are super absorbent and help retain your moisture. Whereas bricks, I think you will find, are not particularly porous.”
“I guess not.”
As they walked on, Chris was shaking his head.
“Houses made of bricks,” he muttered to himself. “What an extraordinary idea.”
*
anaX was hooking the extensible, spring-coil lead of the all-purpose, high internal impedance recharger to the brass-alloy nodal-anode batteries of emergency deep-space survival module No 3. And she was doing it a lot faster than it takes to say it.
LEP was quietly singing “Daisy, Daisy” to himself. anaX took it to be a normal pastime for ships’ computers, as she had heard it somewhere before, but it wasn’t
long before this pastime started to irritate her. She looked up from recharging the batteries and said, “LEP?”
LEP stopped singing. “Yes?”
“Tell me something about yourself,” she said. “Talk to me for a bit.”
“There’s nothing to tell,” said LEP with uncharacteristic modesty.
“I’m sure there is.”
“Well, you’re quite right. There is. And every bit of it is phenomenally interesting.”
“Go on, then.” She continued with her recharging.
“I’m deeply flattered,” said LEP. “I hadn’t realized you were so interested in me.”
“I’m not. But it’s got to be better than your singing.”
*
“So, what do the three of you do?” asked Chris politely in return, as they continued to walk on by the side of the pathway.
“I’m a stowaway,” answered sylX brightly, before jixX had a chance to reply.
“A stowaway?” asked Chris. “What does that involve?”
“Stowing myself away,” explained sylX. “On planes, boats or trains, anything that moves, in fact. The past few years I’ve specialized in spaceships. Like now, I’m a stowaway on The Night Ripple.”
“Is it a game?” asked Chris.
She gave a little laugh. “No, it’s a profession,” she said. “It’s my job.”
“Your job?” put in jixX, surprised.
sylX put her hand to her mouth and gave a little giggle. “Oops!” she said. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that. It’s meant to be a secret. But – yes, I’m employed by the Tenalp Ministry of Intelligence and Spying.”
“They pay you?”
“Well, if you can call it that!” said the stowaway with a playful little grimace. “It’s a long story.”
“I’d be very interested to hear it,” put in Chris.
sylX shrugged. “Okay,” she said. “But don’t tell anyone else. Promise?”
“I promise,” said Chris.
She looked at the others, and they nodded in response.
“Well,” she began with a sigh, casting her mind back. “It all began when I was a little girl back in England on Earth. I used to play truant from school. And, when I did, I’d go riding on buses and trains without paying.
“In those days it was a game. I’d crawl under ticket barriers or jump over turnstiles. I’d hide in train toilets when the ticket inspector came; all that sort of thing. But then I went onto bigger and more dangerous things and it started getting out of hand. And then, one day, I realized that I was addicted.”
“What happened?”
“I stowed away aboard the Isle of Wight ferry,” said sylX. “It was my first ever ship and I was seasick the whole voyage. But as soon as we had reached the Isle of Wight, I just had to do it again, and again. I couldn’t stop myself!”
They walked on a few paces before sylX continued.
“It was all fine until, one day, I got caught.” She gave a shrug and shook her head at the memory of it. “So stupid, you wouldn’t believe it. I was stowing away on a bicycle, of all things!”
jixX looked at her. “A bicycle?” he said. “How can you stow away on a bicycle?”
“Not very well, obviously,” answered sylX with a broad smile. Then she said, “It’s another long story. Do you want to hear it?”
“Yes, please,” said Chris.
“Well,” started sylX. “Completely crazy. It wasn’t an ordinary bicycle but a ten-seater tandem. And it was on a sponsored, record-breaking, round-the-world tour. My boyfriend, Jim, was one of the riders. I was following in the support car. About halfway round, Jim cut his finger open – quite badly – while fixing the chain. It became severely infected and he couldn’t continue. So, rather than jeopardize the whole venture, he asked me to take his place. You see, he knew what a good stowaway I was.
“What could I do? I knew how much it meant to him. What with the world record at stake, and all that money the sponsors were due to pay to charity. I couldn’t say ‘No’. Plus, it was a bit of a challenge. So I dressed up in his cycling gear, put on a fake moustache and started off in his place the next day. Even some of the other riders weren’t aware of the switch.”
“What happened?” asked Chris.
sylX’s face became grave. “Ah, well. When we arrived in Australia, the customs men stopped and searched us. I figured that, as long as they didn’t do a body search, I’d be okay. But they started finding stuff on the bike. Drugs, alcohol, watches, cameras, munitions. I think there was even a rabid pet or two. It turned out that the whole ride was a front for a major international smuggling ring! I was furious.
“And, of course, as soon as they started the body searches the game was up. All the riders were thrown into jail for smuggling while I was thrown into jail for stowing away.”
They walked on. Chris sniffed.
“What happened to your boyfriend?” asked jixX.
“Oh, he went to prison, too. His infection spread, but then it got better. He served his time and came out. And that’s when I dumped him.”
*
anaX was still recharging the batteries. The conversation with LEP had fizzled out. LEP watched her as she continued about her business, the fires of passion burning fiercely somewhere in the depths of his circuitry. He started singing “Daisy, Daisy” to himself again, quietly at first and then with increased gusto as he got into it.
anaX stopped her work and looked about her with a frown, apparently thinking hard.
LEP noticed her worried expression and stopped singing. “What’s the matter?”
“I’m trying to remember where I put those earplugs,” she answered with a meaningful look.
*
twaX felt like he’d been walking for days, without seeing anyone or anything. But now he had spotted something in the distance and was hurriedly making for it. He couldn’t make out what it was. It looked like a building or a large machine or something.
As he approached he slowed down, trying to make out what the object might be. It was as large as a house, but strangely coloured and contoured. It was like a gigantic and really ugly work of modern sculpture. If it was meant as a work of art it was a truly awful one.
As he got nearer, a part of it started to open. He stopped to watch. At first, he looked on curiously, then with a grim fascination, then with a growing sense of unease, and finally with a look of horror.
What happened next happened in a flash. twaX had no time to think, no time to act. Within seconds it was over and twaX was gone. The spot where he had been standing showed no sign of him ever having been there, apart from a single six-inch nail lying on the ground.
PART THE FOURTH: THE BENJAMINITES
Chapter 1
There were Ten of Them. The smallest was in the middle and the other Nine surrounded him, taking it in turns to hurl insults at him. It was an ancient and hallowed ritual.
“You oaf,” called one.
“You fool,” called another.
“You dog,” called a third.
The One in the middle cowered and shrank at each insult, particularly the last.
There was a silence and then a further volley of abuse.
In the distance another Mamm was slithering urgently towards the circle going as fast as the viscosity of his green slime would allow. His name was Jeremy and he skidded to a halt at the edge of the group, panting heavily.
“Masters!” he shouted once he had managed to get a little of his breath back. “I bringeth Bad Tidings from afar.”
The others turned towards him, a little taken aback at the interruption of their ritual, and not best pleased to see that it was Jeremy interrupting them.
“Oh, wisest Elders,” continued Jeremy, still panting. “I bring bad, bad news. Prepare thy selves for the Worst. The prophecies of yore are about to be fulfilled. We are about to enter Dark, Dark Times.”
“This better be good, Jeremy,” muttered Randolph, the tallest of the Mamms.
“No!” in
sisted Jeremy, shaking his slimy green head. “It is not good. It is Bad. I just told you it was Bad.”
Randolph gave a deep sigh. “Let’s hear it, then,” he said.
“Oh, thou most Wondrous Superiors...”
“Look,” said Randolph with rising impatience. “Can you cut the crap and just get on with it?”
“Tragedy hath befallen us,” continued Jeremy, lowering his head. “Benjamin’s prophecy is about to be realized. We must now do what is Wrong in order to do what is Right.”
Randolph stared hard at Jeremy. “Say what you have to say, and make it snappy.”
But snappy was about the last thing Jeremy was going to make it. Not now, now that he had their undivided attention. “I shall tell you. I shall tell you the bad news straight out. I shall not try to soften the blow in any way. I will not try to lessen the full horror of my news.”
Jeremy paused for dramatic effect, but this merely made the other Mamms glower at him menacingly.
“Okay, I shall tell you now,” he said. Jeremy took a deep breath and announced, “They are here! I have seen them.”
He waited for the other Mamms to at least recoil in horror, but there was no reaction from them other than a few puzzled glances.
After a short silence, one Mamm asked the question no one dared ask for fear of Jeremy actually answering it. “Who’s here?”
Jeremy looked at the Mamm in disbelief. “Who’s here??” he repeated. “Who’s here? Why... they are here: The Dogs!” He paused to make sure the message had finally sunk home. “I have seen them with my own eyes!”
This time he was gratified to see that the others, while still not stepping back in horror, were at least looking a trifle disconcerted.
“We must now do what is Wrong in order to do what is Right,” he continued. “In the Hour of The Lie. For the Good of the Species...”
There was a silence. In days gone by, the Mamms would have answered with the traditional response of “In the Light of the Dark!” But this meaningless phrase had suffered a dramatic loss of popularity in recent times; and, besides, their silence was intended to snub Jeremy.
Jeremy glared at the other Mamms, feeling their snub.