The Ultimate Inferior Beings (39 page)

He leaned down and noisily
slurped some liquid off the floor.

“Yeeuuhh!” he said with a
grimace, allowing most of the liquid to dribble back out of his mouth.

“We both knew that Space
would be the answer. That there’d be far more hideous things out here than back
on Slokkit. So, we built our ships, Dork and I. The others, of course, copied
us.

“And we were right! Except
that Dork doesn’t know it, yet!!” He laughed as he reflected on the three
creatures down in his hold. “Wow. They’re the most nauseatingly disgusting
things I have ever seen in my life!”

He leaned back in his seat
and thought sweet thoughts about Chella and how she would surely be his very
soon.

*

The three wormids were back
in their craft, removing their space suits.

“That big, wet, repulsive
thing,” the First was saying. “I bet that’s the thing that took our knowledge.”

“Do you,” said the Second
tonelessly.

“I’m sure of it,” said the
First.

“What now?” asked the Third.

“Wait until it comes back,”
said the First.

“And then what?” asked the
Second mockingly. “Pounce on it? Give it a body search?”

“That’s not quite what I had
in mind,” said the First.

“What then?”

“I don’t know,” said the
First. “But remember, we used to know Everything. So we knew what we were doing
in coming here. We knew we’d get through this somehow.”

*

As Pfnug’s ship raced back to
Slokkit, his thoughts of Dork returned. Dork was good, but Pfnug knew that,
with his worm things, he could beat him. There was Slokkit now, looming up
ahead and getting larger and larger.

“Slokkit! Slokkit!” cheered
Pfnug, his eyes popping out with joy. As his ship approached, his excitement
increased, until his pulsating, wheezing, hissing body could take no more and
Pfnug once again lost consciousness, dropping off his seat with a loud splash.

*

The three wormids sensed that
the object carrying them had landed. A little while later their craft was
picked up and moved. It was carried out of the vast and ugly object that had
swallowed them up and was taken out into the open. They were on a planet and it
was night time. They gazed up into the night sky to work out where they were.
It was not good news.

“You know where we are, don’t
you,” said the First.

“Yes,” confirmed the other
two dolefully.

They were on a planet in the
Light system. A planet slightly further from the Light than their home planet,
but still a planet in the Light system.

“You know what this means,
don’t you,” said the First.

“Yes,” confirmed the other
two.

“We’re back in the Light
system,” said the First, deciding to spell it out for them anyway. “We’ve been
taken back. Which means that, when the Light goes supernova in a few hours
time... we’ll go with it!”

“We know,” said the other two
wormids sadly. “We know.”

*

“Next!” roared the Great
Tuatt from a distance.

Pfnug the Hodeus came forward
nervously, holding his find carefully, terrified of dropping it. He approached
the podium and glanced uncertainly at the Great Tuatt who was safely situated
several hundred yards away. With shaking limbs, Pfnug carefully placed the
object on the podium. He turned it a little to present its ugliest face to the
Great Tuatt. Then he withdrew, his lower limbs shaking like jelly. Pfnug knew
he had a real chance of winning Chella.

He retraced his steps until
he was back far enough from the podium to enable the Great Tuatt to approach
without being repulsed by Pfnug’s presence. Then, the Great Tuatt solemnly
slithered and squelched and hissed and burped his way over to the podium. He
leaned down to peer more closely at the object on it. He noticed the window and
looked inside. There he saw three tiny worm-like creatures jumping up and down.
He shot a questioning look at the distant ugly figure of Pfnug, but Pfnug just
smiled back revoltingly. The Great Tuatt turned to the three jumping
worm-things, wondering not only what they were, but also why they were jumping
up and down like that.

There seemed to be a pattern
and rhythm to the jumping. At each jump they nodded their heads in the same
direction. The Great Tuatt looked in the direction they were indicating, but
all he could see was the Lumen, which was the star the wormids called the
Light. Jump, nod. Jump, nod.

“Hmm,” said the Great Tuatt.
He realized the three worm-things were also emitting a high-pitched squeaking
noise. He had assumed it to be one of his stomachs, but now he knew the noise
to be coming from the worm-things. Jump, nod, squeak. Jump, nod, squeak. Jump,
nod, squeak.

The Great Tuatt made a
revolting noise in his throat. He straightened up and looked at Pfnug in the
distance.

“Repugnant,” he said and
stepped back the full hundred yards. “Next!”

*

The three wormids were hoarse
and exhausted from all their screaming and jumping. They lay on the floor of
their spacecraft and wondered why the huge repulsive thing had not taken any
notice of their warning that the Light was about to go supernova. Any minute
now. They were feeling frustrated, demoralized and sick.

Suddenly, the First jumped
up.

“That’s it!” he exclaimed.
“I’ve got it! Now I know it all!”

“You do?” asked the Second,
sitting up.

“Well no, not all,” admitted
the First. “But I think I know why we encountered the Knowledge Drain.”

“Why would that be, then?”
asked the Second somewhat sceptically.

“Self-sacrifice,” said the
First. “Look, we knew Everything. We knew everything there was to know. We knew
the Light was about to go supernova. We were leaving the Light system for a new
future, a new beginning. But we also knew about the Knowledge Drain and what a
danger it posed to our civilization. We knew we would have to destroy it –
before it destroyed us!”

The Second and the Third were
frowning as the First’s theory unfolded.

“So, we three volunteered to
encounter the Knowledge Drain. We must have known that it would first drain our
knowledge, then capture us, and finally bring us here to its home planet. Once
back here, we knew the explosion of the Light when it goes supernova would destroy
the Knowledge Drain forever.” The First lowered his head before adding, “And us
with it.”

The Second and Third wormids
looked at the First as though he were insane. He looked back at them, nodding
slowly and sadly. “Yes,” he said. “We three volunteered to sacrifice our lives
so that the others could fly from the Light system to a new beginning – free
from the threat of the Knowledge Drain.”

The other two wormids
continued to look at the First as though he were insane, but now, despite
everything, found themselves half-believing what he was saying. After all, it
all seemed to fit. It had a warped logic to it and seemed to sort of make
sense. Indeed, it seemed to provide their lives with some sort of purpose and
meaning.

“Wasn’t that noble of us,”
said the First.

“Wasn’t it,” said the Second.

“Wasn’t it,” said the Third.

*

A long way from the Light
system, speeding to a new beginning, a new future, were millions of wormid
ships. In one of them sat three wormids, staring out through the window in
front of them. The three wormids knew exactly where they were, exactly where
they were going and exactly how long it would take to get there. These wormids,
like all others, knew Everything.

But, as they travelled, they
began to sense that something was seriously wrong. The longer they travelled
the stronger the sense of unease.

Finally, the youngest of the
three spoke. “Um,” he said, not knowing how to put his uncertain thoughts into
words.

The other two wormids glared
at him for daring to speak (even if it had only been a single ‘Um’). But then
they saw his confused expression and, allowing for his youth, forgave him this
minor indiscretion.

“Shouldn’t,” continued the
young wormid regardless. “Shouldn’t, er, the Light... er... shouldn’t the Light
have, er, gone supernova, like? Sort of... half an hour ago?”

“It should,” agreed the other
two. “We know it should.”

“Then, er, why didn’t it?”
asked the young wormid. Now this really was pushing his luck.

“Sshh!” said one of the older
wormids sternly.

But the other wormid was a
little gentler. “We knew it wouldn’t,” he said. “We know Everything. Remember?”

“I know,” said the young
wormid. “It’s just that...”

“Sshh!” said both wormids
this time. “We know Everything.”

They all turned to the vast
window in front of them and continued staring at the star-studded blackness
ahead. They all knew the young wormid had a point.

But then, they knew
Everything.

*

Back home, in his underground
lair, Pfnug contemplated the strange spherical object he had brought with him
from space. He had a little smile on his bloated face. He even allowed himself
to hum a little tune. Surely Chella was his.

Outside he heard the sound of
approaching squelches and suddenly stiffened.

“Who is it?” he called.

“It’s Frut,” came a
revolting, squeaky voice from outside. Pfnug shuddered at the sound of it. He
didn’t know any Hodeus called Frut, and nor did he want to.

“Why do you foul my ears with
the sound of your vile voice?” yelled Pfnug up the passageway of his lair.

“Oh, what grotesque noise is
that I hear?” came the response from outside. “And the stench that emanates
from this hole is the most disgusting thing I have ever encountered!”

“Leave my path unfouled, you
monstrous creature!” yelled Pfnug back angrily.

The formalities over, Frut
came to the point of his visit. “The judging is over, you vile excrescence,” he
announced. “You came a pitiful second.”

“How dare you insult me with
your presence,” said Pfnug, trying desperately to hide the hurt in his voice.
Deep inside, he was bitterly upset at the news. Second! He had lost out again.
No doubt about the winner, then.

“That foul, wretched, stench
that calls itself Dork won, I presume?” he called.

“Your conclusions are
correct, even if your voice, your smell and your domicile disgust me,”
confirmed Frut.

Pfnug was in dismay. Lost
again. To Dork! But how? How had Dork found something more disgusting than his
little worm things? He addressed the question to Frut.

Frut was so deeply offended
by the way Pfnug had phrased the question that it took him a little while to
compose himself and answer back. “That foul, wretched stench that calls himself
Dork discovered an alien so foul that there is surely no equal anywhere in the
Universe.”

“How can that be?? What is
this monstrous creature?” pleaded Pfnug.

“It has a vile name,”
answered Frut, choking on the smell coming from the entrance to Pfnug’s home.
“A vile, vile name. A vile name for a vile creature. It called itself a
humongbeyng and identified itself as twacks-decar-pintar.”

Pfnug shuddered at the horror
of these words. The name was indeed vile. Yet his curiosity got the better of
him. However vile it was, he had to see it.

“Where is this monstrosity?”
he called.

“Not here, thankfully,”
answered Frut. “Dork was instructed to remove it so as not to pollute our land
with its foulness. He took it in his spaceship to the place the vile thing
wanted to be taken to: a wooded place on a planet called Herth.”

Pfnug shook his head in
disappointment. None of this made any sense to him. All he knew was that he had
lost again and that life just wasn’t fair.

APPENDIX IV: THE PROOF

Sadly,
the Proof
of God
that fluX discovered in the Periodic Table is lost forever. Many others have
tried to rediscover it. No one has succeded. The best we have to date is given
below. It uses 59 of the 112 elements of the Periodic Table, and so is some way
short of fluX’s discovery. It reads:

Th I S Pa Ge Pr O V Es Al Li
Am He No C Ra P Be Ni Ce Fe Ar W In Dy Te Ac H Er Sc Ho Os Eu Se F U La Re As
Si Ti N Ba Ds Po Ta Nd Cr Y Ru Np At Hs Ca Tc Hf Ir Mo Ne

which translates as:

‘
This page proves All. I
am He. No crap. Be nice. Fear windy teachers. Choose useful areas. Sit in bad
spot and cry. Run paths. Catch firm. One.
’

Clearly this isn’t quite The
Message, but it’s got to be close.

Can you do better?

INDEX

a: 3, 7, 53, 61, 146, 157,
159, 233