The Ultimate Inferior Beings (25 page)

“I wanted to help the human
save her friends.”

“Save them?” asked Randolph. “From what?”

Henry cringed a bit. “Um,” he
said, his voice almost going. “From you... and Jeremy.”

“From me??” asked Randolph astonished. “What danger are they in from me?”

“Say you prove they are The
Dogs,” Henry explained. “You will kill them, won’t you.”

Randolph
thought for a bit. “Yes,” he
answered slowly. “But what concern is that of yours? Why should you want to
stop that?”

“Because it would be the end
of everything for me,” said Henry, a small tear appearing at the corner of one
eye. He buried his head in his hands.

It was Randolph’s turn to
look completely baffled. “How?” he asked.

Henry looked up. “When The
Dogs are destroyed,” he started, “that’ll be it. That’ll be the end. It’ll be
what we’ve always waited for. No more Dogs. We’ll have saved the Universe. In
the Hour of The Lie. For the Good of the Species. In the Light of the Dark.”
Henry paused to let out a small sob. “So there will be no need for Benjaminism
any more. Our job will have been done. It’ll be the end of our religion.”

Randolph
considered this carefully.
The undersized blob certainly had a point.

“And I’d miss that,” Henry
was saying, a slimy green tear trickling down his slimy green cheek. “No more
religious ceremonies. No more insults. No more condemnation. No more abuse.”

Randolph
eyed him steadily. “You’d
miss that?” he asked to confirm that he understood correctly.

“Yes,” said Henry, wiping the
tear away. “I’d be lost if no one insulted me anymore.”

Randolph
let go of his tender hold of
Henry. “You’re telling me you still enjoy it?” he asked, his voice growing
harder. “After all these years of insult and abuse, you still like it?”

Henry nodded.

“I don’t believe it!”
exclaimed Randolph, exasperated. “And here I was thinking you’d had enough! And
feeling guilty about mistreating you!”

“No. I did it all for me.” He
grinned a feeble grin.

This made Randolph finally
lose his temper. “You did it for you?” he cried. “You did it because you like
insults? What sort of hopeless, pathetic, sad creature are you, Henry?? Here am
I, trying to offer you sympathy and understanding, and all you want are
insults! You’re warped! You’re twisted! You know that?”

Henry nodded.

But this only made Randolph lose his temper even more. “You’re impossible! You are pathetic.”

Henry grinned, lapping up the
insults as Randolph became angrier and angrier and more and more abusive.

Neither of them noticed that
anaX had entered the room a few moments earlier and was in a state of utter
shock at Randolph’s treatment of the smaller blob.

“You are sick!” Randolph was saying. “Sick, sick, sick!”

Henry continued to grin
foolishly. Then, after one final insult from Randolph he gave an expert cringe
and slithered out from under the control panel, across the room, past anaX and
out through the door.

As Randolph watched him go,
he suddenly noticed the gynaecologist observing him. His mouth dropped open and
he blanched in embarrassment.

They stared at each other
open-mouthed for a short time as Randolph tried to think of something to say.

Finally he abandoned his
search for an adequate justification of his actions. “I’m sorry about all
that,” he said with a shake of the head. “It’s just that... he’s so inferior.”

*

jixX had just closed the
inspection flap after the gynaecologist’s hurried departure when, out of the
corner of his eye, he caught sight of the now all-too-familiar scene replaying
itself: slimy green blobs hurtling along a pulseway, brick wall jumping out of
the ground into their path, sound of almighty squelch, pools and puddles of
slime twitching and throbbing, and, finally, the reconstitution of the
aforementioned slimy green blobs, a little groggy, a little dazed, but each in
one piece. Two pieces in total this time.

“Ouch!” said jixX aloud,
looking away, still unable to stomach the mechanics of the Mamms’ braking
system.

When he felt it was safe to
look he saw that one of the two reformed blobs was urgently beckoning him over.
He recognized the blob as Chris.

“Hello, Chris,” he said,
pleased to see him.

“Hello,” said Chris
cheerfully. Then, as jixX approached, he added in a whisper, “I’ve brought
reinforcements.” He indicated the other blob. “His name’s Bill.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said
jixX to Bill, trying to hide his disappointment at the numerical shortfall of
said reinforcements.

“Bill has two bricks
concealed about his person,” whispered Chris. “And he’s a crack shot.”

jixX nodded, making an effort
to appear impressed and reassured by this news.

Just then, sylX and fluX
emerged from The Night Ripple, nourished and refreshed.

Chris raised his voice so all
could hear. “First the bad news. Sir Roderick can’t make it today as he’s
rather busy. He sends his apologies.”

“Oh that
is
a shame,”
said sylX as she approached. “Perhaps some other time.”

“Indeed,” said Chris vaguely.

“And the good news?” asked
jixX.

“Well, my application to join
the Snob Blob Club has been accepted!”

“Congratulations,” said jixX,
taking this to be the right thing to say.

It was. “Thank you,” said
Chris, smiling modestly. A number of the other Mamms by the screens, who had
overheard, looked up and also offered their congratulations, apart from Jeremy,
of course.

Chris turned to sylX. “Do I
get a kiss?” He stood smiling expectantly.

sylX blinked her eyes in
surprise. “Me?” she asked, turning back to Chris. “You want
me
... to
kiss
you
??”

“It would make my day.”

sylX looked at the others,
her mouth open.

“Go on,” said jixX, hiding a
slight smirk. “Make his day.”

“Ya,” agreed fluX, nodding
vigorously.

The stowaway looked daggers
at the pair of them. “Alright,” she said reluctantly, kneeling on the ground.
“But just a kiss, mind.”

Whilst Chris puckered his
lips, everyone else found themselves wondering what exactly the stowaway had meant
by that.

sylX slowly inched closer and
closer. Chris did not strike her as particularly kissable, and he became less
so the nearer she came to him.

Then, summoning all her
resolve, she gave him a quick peck on the green, slimy lips. She pulled back, surprised.
It had been no worse than kissing a big wet jelly, but no better, either.

“Thank you,” said Chris,
giving a little tremble. “That was wonderful!”

jixX exchanged amused glances
with fluX. “How was that for you?” he asked the stowaway.

She shot him a killer look.

Chris turned to the two men.
“Now it’s your turn,” he said to them.

The smiles dropped from their
faces.

“You can’t be serious,” said
jixX.

“I am,” said Chris.

“But we’re men!”

“It’s all the same to me,”
said Chris, puckering his lips again. “Now come on, give us a kiss.”

The two men turned to sylX
for support, but she was the last person on the planet likely to give any.

“Go on,” she said simply,
crossing her arms and smiling mockingly. “Make his day.”

Chapter 9

anaX
was, once
again,
alone in the main control. She switched the ship’s power back on and blinked as
the lights flickered back to full brightness. Control panels here and there
sprang into action, some silently and some noisily. Display screens showed
scrolling messages as they rebooted. The hum of the phonon engines became
louder.

LEP’s circuitry took a little
longer to warm up. anaX tapped her foot as she waited for any signs of life
from him. Then, finally, LEP spoke. Unfortunately, his opening line was so
lacking in wit that it cannot be reproduced here.

*

Randolph
emerged from The Night
Ripple just in time to catch sight of jixX and fluX giving Chris a kiss. He
found the sight slightly disturbing and gave a shudder, but said nothing.

“Thank you,” Chris was
saying. “I shan’t wash my face for a week.”

The two humans looked
distinctly unamused as they wiped the slime off their lips.

Randolph
gave a cough to announce his
arrival, and Chris turned towards him. “I’ve been elected a member of The
Club,” he explained proudly.

“Not the Snob Blob Club!”

“The very same.”

“No!”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s fantastic.
Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” said Chris. He
toyed with the idea of asking Randolph for a kiss, but decided against it.

“Can’t be many non-members
left now, can there,” said Randolph shaking Chris’s slimy green limb.

“There aren’t,” said Chris.
“I was the last. Apart from you lot, of course.”

sylX looked down at Chris
thoughtfully. “You mean every slimy green blob on this planet is a member of
the club apart from the Benjaminites?” she asked.

“Correct,” said Chris, still
beaming his contented beam.

“Not a very exclusive club
then, is it.”

“It excludes the
Benjaminites,” said Chris with flawless logic.

*

Meanwhile, Jeremy, behind the
screens, was continuing to stand perfectly still, bored out of his mind. What
was worse were the continual itches, here, there and everywhere, that were
plaguing him. Once this was all over, the first thing he was going to do was to
have a good, long scratch. But at least he knew he was doing the right thing.
For the Good of the Species. In the Light of the Dark.

And then... all of a
sudden... he moved! Not intentionally, but because of an involuntary twitch; a
twitch that would normally go unremarked.

But the six Mamms watching
the screens certainly remarked on it.

“You moved!!” they yelled
simultaneously.

Jeremy looked at them in
disbelief, wanting to protest, but completely unable to.

Randolph
came over. “Okay, Jeremy,”
he said. “Not a bad time. Good try.”

Jeremy stayed where he was,
protesting silently.

“Come on out, or else I’ll
have to disqualify you.”

Jeremy reluctantly walked out
from behind the screens, mentally muttering to himself about the way he was
being victimized.

Randolph
turned to jixX. “Your turn
now,” he said.

jixX gave a weak smile. This,
he realized, was it. Not only was he representing the crew of The Night Ripple,
but also the whole of the Human Race. He stepped nervously between the
knee-high screens and stood in a puddle of Jeremy’s slime. He realized that,
because of the height of the screens, he only really needed to keep his legs
still. Unfortunately, his legs were the part of him that trembled most.

“Ready?” asked Randolph.

“Yes,” said jixX bravely,
with the look of a martyr, trying to control the shaking in his legs.

The others wished him luck.

“Steady?” continued Randolph.

jixX took a deep breath and
closed his eyes.

“Stop!”

He froze, hardly daring to
breathe.

A second passed. Then two.

“You moved!!” screamed all
six of the watching Mamms.

jixX looked round at them in
surprise, but realized that they were probably right. He felt very disappointed
with himself. “Not too good, huh,” he said to Randolph.