The Ultimate Inferior Beings (10 page)

*

twaX, his hair ruffled, his
sweaty right hand clutching his favourite axe, his sweaty left hand clutching a
large metal toolbox, his left ear sagging under the weight of a hinged,
extensible rule, and his mouth bristling with several six-inch nails, blundered
into yet another dead-end passage. He swore through the six-inch nails and
tried another passage at random. At the very end he found the dioxystable
modulo-cystometric airlock.

“At last!” he thought. He
turned the handle, but nothing happened. He swore through the six-inch nails
again, at which point a small red voice asked, “Beep, beep?”

twaX had no idea what the
question was. “No,” he answered.

“Beep, beep, beep,” continued
the small red voice.

“Open this flipping door!” said
twaX through the six-inch nails.

“Beep!”

The carpenter gave the
door-handle a more forceful turn and this time it came off in his hand. He
sighed in frustration but, on pushing the door, found that it slowly creaked
open. Quickly he stepped into the airlock. The outer door gave way without a
struggle and he found himself standing outside the spaceship. He discarded the
door-handle and gave a huge grin. He breathed in the air, filling his lungs to
the brim, and then coughed vigorously to clear them again; the atmosphere had
both an unpleasant smell and an unpleasant taste.

He was standing on solid,
black ground, which was flat and featureless as far as the eye could see. twaX
looked about for any signs of trees towering magnificently over the landscape,
but there were none.

He shrugged. It wouldn’t be
long before he found one. Forgetting to close the airlock doors behind him, he
chose a direction and set off, slowly at first, and then faster and faster. He
broke into a run and, had anyone been watching him at that moment, they would
have seen him running off into the distance, waving his axe over his head and
muttering wildly to himself.

*

In his cabin, fluX filled in
the final figure in the final column of a pageful of numbers. The figure was a
‘-2’. All the other figures in the final column were ‘-2’. He nearly jumped out
of his skin with joy, punching the air victoriously.

“I hov done it!” he cried. “I
hov jolly-vell done it! Zis is probably ze most important discovery in ze
history of Humankind!”

“Really?” said LEP’s presence
in the dark cabin.

“Ya. Hold on.” fluX
frantically searched through the pile of petromorphic ytterbium cellulose
sheets strewn haphazardly over his desk. The sheets were covered with tables of
figures, small multi-coloured graphs and rapidly scribbled calculations. On
finding the sheet he was after, he neatly copied out an equation from it onto a
blank sheet. He underlined the equation twice and ringed it in red. Then, in
large lettering, he wrote above it: ‘THE EQUATION OF STATE’. This, too, he
underlined several times. He drew a box encircling it in red. He gave the box a
thick red border. Then he drew four large arrows pointing to the four corners
of the box. He enlarged the arrows and added pillars on either side of the box.
Finally, he sat back to admire it.

“Very nice,” said LEP. “But
is it Art?”

“Vot?” asked fluX, looking up
from the sheet.

“Never mind,” said LEP.

“You vant to know vot zis
is?”

“No,” said LEP quickly.

“I hov just come even closer
to proving ze existence of God!”

“Oh dear,” said LEP,
wondering how to change the subject.

“Some years ago I inwented
the new Science of Quantum Semantics,” fluX started explaining. “I derived it
by applying ze laws of Quantum Mechanics to ze English language. My ideas vere
videly scorned and ridiculed.”

LEP said nothing.

“But now I sink I vill have
ze last laugh! I sink zat Quantum Semantics may be ze answer to proving God
exists! After all, ze proof is in ze English language; in ze very vords ve
speak.”

fluX beamed ecstatically.

“Let me explain,” he said.
“Ze Science of Quantum Semantics says zat all ze letters of ze alphabet are
related. Indeed, zat zey are all merely different states of ze same basic
particle: ze alphabeton. And vot I have just done is to derive ze Equation of
State for ze alphabeton. And here it is!”

He indicated an equation
written on the sheet of petromorphic ytterbium cellulose. It read:

A - [P + T + E(1 +
C)] + (-1)V(L + V - 3) exp(A - L - 2) x 106 + 2 = 0

“And it works!”

“Fascinating,” said LEP, not
without a trace of sarcasm.

“You see, all zese wariables
stand for ze warious quantum numbers of ze letters: A is ze number of angles in
ze letter, P is its number of wertices, V is ze letter’s ‘vowel number’, and so
on.”

“Interesting.”

“And all ze letters satisfy
zis Equation of State.”

“Intriguing.”

“Zis means zat if you give me
any symbol, I can count up ze number of points it has, its curwature number,
and so on.”

“Spellbinding,” said LEP, now
choosing his words from a thesaurus.

“Substitute ze walues into ze
equation and, if ze equation is satisfied, zen ze symbol must be a letter of ze
alphabet!”

fluX looked at his equation
with the pride of a father viewing his newborn child.

“Beguiling.”

“You agree it is important,
ya?”

“Er, what did you say the
equation was for again?” asked LEP.

fluX gave a look of
exasperation. “It lets you vork out vether a symbol is an alphabeton – a letter
of ze alphabet!”

“Can’t you tell this just by
looking at it?”

“No, you are missing ze
point!”

“Sorry.”

“Zis equation allows me to
discover
new
letters of ze alphabet. Previously unknown letters of ze
alphabet. For, any symbol zat satisfies zis equation must also be an
alphabeton!” He shook his head in sheer wonder. “Can you imagine vot
discoveries I can make vis zis?”

LEP tried, but failed.

Chapter 5

“
What did they
have to say?” asked sylX breathlessly.

“Who?” asked jixX.

“The aliens,” said the
stowaway, her pale blue eyes sparkling with excitement.

“Oh, them.” jixX was still
unsure whether to reveal mission details to her. “You’d better ask LEP. I’ve
got some tests to run,” he said, pressing buttons at random on the control
panel in front of him.

“Well, LEP?” asked sylX,
flashing her pretty smile.

“Not really. I feel a bit
weak right now. And you?”

sylX laughed. “That wasn’t
the question, LEP, and you know it,” she said charmingly. “The aliens. Who are
they? What are they? What do they look like? Are they dangerous? What do they
eat? What do they believe in? How technologically advanced are they?” Her eyes
literally twinkled as she spoke.

“Er,” said LEP a trifle
uncertainly. “We’ve thought of a name for them: the Mamm aliens.”

“Go on,” urged the stowaway,
bursting with curiosity.

“Er, that’s pretty much it,
so far,” admitted LEP. “Except that they can fire bricks through spaceship
windows from a great distance.”

“Bricks!” exclaimed the
stowaway. “What, you mean like this one?” She picked up the brick from the desk
where jixX had left it. ‘Landing permission granted,’ she read and looked up.
“Wow, this is fantastic! They can do joined-up writing!” She showed the brick
to anaX who had just entered the control room, but the latter seemed
preoccupied.

“This is so great,” said
sylX. “During all my years of stowing away I’ve been dreaming of this moment.
To meet aliens! A first encounter with an extraterrestrial species. I’ve been
on so many ships – and nothing. And now, at last the big moment has come!”

jixX gave a slightly
embarrassed nod, not quite knowing what to say. He pushed a few more buttons.
There followed a long, pregnant pause, which was suddenly broken by the sound
of a door swishing open.

jixX heard a gasp of
astonishment from anaX, followed shortly by one from sylX. He swivelled his
anti-inertial command couch and he, too, let out a gasp.

Slowly entering the control
room with a quiet squelching sound was a round, slimy, green blob of about knee
height. It slid to the middle of the room leaving a sticky green trail in its
wake as drops of slimy gunge exuded from it. Everyone held their breath as it
came nearer and nearer.

“Hello,” it said, which made
them all gasp again. “My name’s Chris. Welcome to Ground.”

jixX, sylX and anaX looked at
each other. Not only was the slimy green blob speaking perfect English, but it
had a posh, Oxbridge accent.

“I happened to be passing,”
continued Chris, “and saw your front door open; so I thought I’d just pop in to
say hello.”

“Hello,” responded three
uncertain voices.

“You’re new here, aren’t
you,” continued the slimy green blob.

jixX was about to respond
when there was a loud click in a corner of the control room. “You’re new here,
aren’t you,” repeated an indistinct, crackling metallic voice from a
piezzothermal inductance loudspeaker. It made everyone, including the blob
Chris, look round, startled.

“I say, an echo,” said Chris.

“I say, an echo,” repeated
the indistinct, crackling metallic voice from the piezzothermal inductance
loudspeaker.

“No,” explained LEP. “That’s
ALI – the Alien Language Interpreter.”

“No,” repeated the
indistinct, crackling metallic voice, but in a slightly more refined accent than
before. “That’s ALI – the Alien Language Interpreter.”

“It’s triggered by the
presence of an alien life-form,” continued LEP. “It records the alien’s speech
and uses cryptographic analysis to learn its language. When it’s learnt enough,
it automatically switches on and starts acting as an interpreter.”

“It’s triggered by the...,”
started ALI and went on to repeat precisely what LEP had just said, but using
the refined accent.

“But this alien life-form
speaks English!” said jixX, wondering whether the term ‘alien life-form’ might
be slightly insulting to Chris.

“But this alien life-form
speaks English!” repeated ALI in more refined tones.

“That’s why ALI switched on
so soon,” explained LEP.

ALI translated this for the
benefit of the alien life-form.

“Is there any way to turn it
off?” asked jixX.

“Is there any way to turn it
off?” translated the machine.

“Yes,” said LEP.

“No,” translated the machine.

“Just press the red button on
its control panel,” instructed LEP.

The machine said nothing,
although its loudspeaker continued to crackle. It became even more silent when
jixX had pressed the red button.

“Sorry about all that,” said
jixX to Chris. “Technology gone mad.” He gave a sheepish smile.

“That’s alright,” said Chris.
“No need to apologize.”

“The name’s jixX,” said jixX.
He made to offer the blob a handshake, but then thought better of it, and sort
of waved at it instead. “I’m the captain of this ship.” He introduced the slimy
green blob to the other two and to LEP.

“Where are you from?” asked
Chris, trying to make polite conversation.

“Tenalp,” answered jixX.

“Ah, Tenalp,” said Chris.

“You know it?” asked jixX,
surprised.

“No. Never heard of it.”

“Ah.”

The slimy green blob looked
about the main control room. “Nice place you have here.”

“Yes, we like it,” said jixX,
not realizing what he was saying. He gave the two others a nervous smile as
though afraid they might contradict him.

“Well,” said the Mamm alien.

“Indeed,” said jixX.