The Ultimate Inferior Beings (15 page)

“Last attempt,” said jixX to
correct him, “definitely a first and last and only attempt.”

Chapter 10

LEP
watched anaX
as
she pumped a 50/50 mixture of ideal Fermi gas and low-pressure phonons into the
depleted tanks of the emergency deep-space survival module. He was a little
disappointed that she had now been working for over half an hour without once
speaking to him.

So he tried to attract her
attention with a polite cough. No response. He then tried a slightly less
polite one. Still nothing. So he gave a thunderous, full-throated,
lung-ripping, stomach turning, asthmatic, phlegmy expectoration that shook all
the boat-hangar’s light fittings and blew out one of the magnetostatic
capacitance loudspeakers through which his voice was transmitted. But still the
gynaecologist ignored him and LEP felt well and truly snubbed.

But anaX simply couldn’t hear
him as she was wearing a pair of degaussed ferromagnetic earplugs that she had
found in the toolbox. The high-pitched whistle of the Ultrasonic Background
Reverberation had been bothering her ever since The Night Ripple had entered
the Pseudogravitic Continuum, and indeed had given her a bit of a headache.

At least she hadn’t been
lying about that.

*

Chris looked somewhat
irritably at jixX as he slowly picked himself up off the ground. “I guess we’ll
have to walk,” he said, his tone one of annoyance.

“Is it really so far?” asked
sylX.

“Yes,” said Chris, unsmiling
and tight-lipped. He slithered off parallel to the pulseway. “Walk this way.”

The three humans exchanged
glances. sylX followed after Chris and caught up with him. “It’s very good of
you to take the time and trouble to look after us like this,” she said sweetly
to pacify him.

Meanwhile, jixX was looking
down at the damaged communicator and camera and wondering whether he could just
conveniently forget about them.

“Bonkers!” fluX was saying.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Ze aliens. Totally bonkers.”

jixX didn’t respond as his
thoughts turned to pots and kettles and the colour black.

“Vot were zey sinking?”
continued fluX, shaking his head and throwing up his arms in appalled
disbelief. “Designing such a crazy system!”

“The pulseway?”

“Ja, and ze brick wall. Zey
need to get a grip.”

Again, jixX said nothing as
he dusted himself down.

“I sink ve should leave zis
place soon. I am not comfortable with zese loonies.”

“Er, yes,” said jixX. “I know
what you mean.”

He took one last look at the
damaged pieces of equipment and decided he would retrieve them later. He and
fluX set off after Chris and sylX, increasing their pace to catch up.

“Now’s a good time to ask
him!” whispered fluX out of the corner of his mouth.

“I’m sorry?” said jixX.

“Ask him!”

“Ask him what?”

“Ask him vere he learnt to
speak English.”

“What?”

“It is important.”

“Fine,” said jixX with a
sigh.

“I hope you don’t mind my
saying this, Chris,” said jixX when they had caught up. “But you speak very
good English.”

“Why, thank you,” said Chris
with what jixX took to be a meaningful look. “You don’t speak so bad yourself.”

jixX gave a laugh. He looked
at the behavioural chemist and transmitted Chris’s meaningful look, whatever it
meant, as best he could.

They walked on in silence for
a few paces. As they did, jixX had a feeling they were being watched. He
glanced behind him and thought he saw a slimy green blob on the horizon far,
far behind them. But when he looked back a second time, there was nothing
there.

*

“By the way, I just saw one
of your friends,” said Chris.

“Friends?” asked jixX.

“He was wandering about over
that way, just over the horizon.” Chris pointed with a green slimy limb.

“twaX!” exclaimed jixX. “That
must have been twaX. How did he look?”

“Totally lost,” said Chris.

*

twaX was indeed totally lost.
More lost than he had ever been in his life.

Having realized he was not on
Earth he knew he had to get back to The Night Ripple. He feared that they might
take off without him.

But which way did the ship
lie?

He spun around and around,
trying to get his bearings, but each direction looked the same.

“Oh dear,” he whimpered.

*

“What’s Sir Roderick like?”
asked sylX at last. “What kind of …” and here she suddenly became stuck for a
word. ‘Person’ seemed inappropriate and ‘blob’ sounded rude. So she settled for
‘leader’. “What’s he like as a leader?” she asked.

“Oh, he’s a very good leader,”
answered Chris proudly. “He’s head of The Club, you know.”

“Go on.”

“I call it the Snob Blob
Club. It’s very exclusive; cigars, port, formal evening dress. The whole
caboodle, in fact.”

sylX raised an eyebrow.
“Formal evening dress? I can’t imagine you wearing formal evening dress.”

“Try,” suggested Chris.

sylX tried.

“Looks ridiculous, doesn’t
it,” said Chris.

sylX couldn’t help nodding.

“That’s why the club is so
exclusive,” said Chris.

*

anaX was checking the
tyre-pressure on the off-side hydrolastic water-damped landing shock-wheel. She
unscrewed the valve cap and put her ear to it, but was unable to hear the
hissing of the air because of her earplugs. So she made the mistake of taking
one out.

“Ahem”, said LEP.

anaX started in surprise,
wondering who was watching her. She dropped the pressure gauge and looked about
her, but there was no one to be seen in the boat-hangar. Then, realizing with
relief that it was only LEP, she picked up the gauge from the floor and
continued with her work, screwing the nozzle onto the hissing valve. “Yes,
LEP?” she said.

“I hope you don’t mind my
asking,” started LEP timidly. “But what exactly are you doing?”

“I’m checking the tyre
pressure,” she answered curtly, continuing to do just that.

“No. I meant to the emergency
deep-space survival module as a whole.”

“I’m preparing it.”

“For what?”

“For emergency deep-space
survival.”

“Hmm,” said LEP thoughtfully.
“Sounds fairly reasonable.” Then he added, “Does that mean you’re leaving us?”

“Yes.”

“But why?” asked the
computer, unable to disguise his disappointment. “Was it something I said?”

anaX gave a little laugh, but
then immediately fell silent, thinking, planning, scheming. Hmm, she thought,
LEP’s getting suspicious. I’ll have to tell him something.

“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.”