The Ultimate Inferior Beings (6 page)

“That’s why you have to eat
that stuff,” said LEP.

jixX stared at the blue pill
for a long time. “I should have guessed,” he said. “The dining room looked far
too good to be true.” He popped the pill into his mouth and chewed it. “Yeugh,”
he said. “That is awful.”

“You’re meant to swallow it,”
said LEP.

The others watched as jixX
tried another pill, with similar effect. Then, fluX had a go. He lifted a
cover, swallowed a red pill lying there, and nearly choked on it, requiring
jixX to hit him hard on the back to recover.

Meanwhile, twaX the carpenter
made no move to eat. He had undergone a marked change on entering the dining
room – one that had gone unnoticed by the others. His boyish face had become
drawn and pale, his hair dishevelled, and beads of sweat had broken out on his
furrowed brow. His eyes stared fixedly in front of him and his right hand
started twitching nervously. Every now and then he would polish and repolish his
glasses, or twitchily check the pencil stub behind his ear.

It was not the sight of the
pills that had brought about this dramatic effect, nor the luxurious
surroundings. It was the sight of the magnificent hand-carved dining table that
had changed him so. The magnificent hand-carved
mahogany
dining table.

*

 “I ham trying to prove ze
existence hof God,” fluX was explaining to jixX as they were drinking coffee.

“Oh really?” said jixX,
suddenly wishing he hadn’t asked.

“It’s not easy.”

“No,” agreed jixX, glancing
uneasily at the carpenter who seemed not to have heard.

The behavioural chemist was
beaming with enthusiasm. “I hov discovered vun of His puns,” he was saying.
“Vich has to be a start, right?”

“His puns?”

“Ya,” said fluX, his wild
eyes sparkling brightly.

jixX blinked in confusion.
“Where did you discover this pun?”

“In ze Big Bang.”

“Er, go on.”

“Just leesten to zis,” said
the behavioural chemist, leaning forward. “In ze Big Bang, ze only element
created, uzzer zen hydrogen, vas helium. All uzzer heavy elements came later.
So you can say, ze only
heavy
element created in ze Big Bang vas
helium.”

jixX looked blankly back.
Understanding the accent was hard enough, but the lack of meaning behind it
made listening all the harder. “Er, yes?” he said slowly. “Apart from hydrogen,
only helium was created in the Big Bang? Is that right?”

“Exactly!” said the scientist
with a huge grin. “Und zere ve have it!”

jixX raised an enquiring
eyebrow.

“Look. I show you.” fluX took
a pen and a sheet of petromorphic ytterbium cellulose paper substitute out of
his pocket. He wrote something down on the sheet and handed it to jixX. It
read: ‘Only He was created in the Big Bang’.

jixX stared at the message
for a very long time. Parts of his life flashed before him. He tried to focus
on the message. “Oh, I see,” he said at last. “You mean ‘He’ as in ‘helium’ and
‘He’ as in ‘God’.”

“Precisely!” agreed the
behavioural chemist gleefully, almost shouting, and jumping in his seat as he
did so. He repeated the message as though repeating a particularly good joke.
“Only He voz created in ze Big Bang. Zat is ze pun. Not bad, huh?”

jixX had heard better. “You
mean that’s the proof?” He handed the sheet to twaX the carpenter, hoping to
bring him into the conversation, but the carpenter hardly looked at it.

“No, no,” protested the
behavioural chemist, shaking his head and waving his hands wildly. “It is not
ze Proof, no. I am a scientist! I know a proof ven I see vun. No, it is jest a
clue. It is a hint, a pointer. It is saying: look at ze chemical elements. Look
at ze Periodic Table. There you will see it written. Zat is where ze real proof
lies.”

jixX tried hard to look
half-convinced.

“So zat is vot I am doing. I
am studying ze chemical elements of ze Periodic Table. I am searching zem for a
Divine Message.” He fumbled in the pocket of his white lab coat for a short
while before pulling out another sheet of petromorphic ytterbium cellulose.
This was already covered with symbols. He handed it to jixX.

“I am trying to make an
anagram of ze chemical elements in ze Periodic Table. An anagram zat vill spell
out a Divine Message. When I find one, zen
zat
will be clear proof!” He
indicated the sheet he had handed to jixX. “And zat is how far I have got so
far.”

jixX stared down at the sheet
of paper-substitute in his hand. It read:

‘Ac Cu Se No Ta Ra
Bi Cs Cr I Be S W Ho Al Lw Er Eu Pt O He Re In Ba Si Cf A Na Ti Cd Am Po Xe Ni
N Fe Zn.’

“You see?” asked fluX.

“Er,” said jixX, shaking his
head slowly.

“It sez: ‘Accuse not Arabic
scribes who all were up to here in basic, fanatic, damp oxen in Fez. N …’.”

“It does?” asked jixX,
looking down at the message again.

“Ya, but zat is as far as I
have gotten. Zere are still many chemical elements left. And not many vowels.”

“Hmm, very interesting,” said
jixX tactfully, handing back the sheet. “Is it another pun?”

“No, no,” said the
behavioural chemist excitedly. “I do not zink I am quite zere yet. But it is
all quite fascinating.”

“Indeed,” said jixX, although
his tone of voice carried little conviction. He looked to the carpenter, but
the latter was in some sort of deep trance-like state. He decided now was a
good opportunity to make his excuses and leave.

“Well, I think I’ll retire to
my cabin,” said jixX, rising from his seat. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you
both. See you in the morning.”

Chapter 4

jixX
returned to
his
cabin looking forward to a good night’s sleep. Eight hours minimum, ideally
nine, maybe even ten. He found a pair of brand-new striped pyjamas in a drawer
and made himself ready for bed. The bunk wasn’t too comfortable, but it would
do. He switched off the light and gratefully let his head sink into the pillow.

As he lay in the dark, a plan
slowly formed in his mind. When they got to Earth he would contact the relevant
authorities and get himself taken off this mission. Earth people were sensible,
or so he had always been led to believe. They would see the craziness of his
situation and relieve him of the captaincy. Crucially, he would be off the ship
before the dangerous return leg of the journey.

In the meantime, he would
make the best he could of this trip: catch up on some reading, watch some
in-flight movies, and maybe check out the gym. He might even work on some
landscape design ideas that had been incubating in his mind over the past few
weeks. jixX smiled as he felt the first waves of sleep wash over him. What
could possibly go wrong?

*

The bliss lasted but a couple
of minutes. A distant sound of knocking made him open his eyes. He lay awake in
the darkness, listening to the irregular knocks, wondering what they might be.
His first thought was that it was LEP.

“Are you awake, cap’n?” asked
LEP.

His second thought was that
it was LEP.

“What do you want?” he asked,
a little annoyed.

The distant knocking sound
continued.

“Well?” asked jixX, his
annoyance increasing.

“Oh, it’s not me – if that’s
what you’re thinking.”

“It is what I’m thinking.”

“Not guilty,” said LEP. “I
think you’d better go and see for yourself.”

“This isn’t one of your
‘little jokes’ is it, LEP?”

“Scout’s honour.”

jixX sighed deeply and swung
his legs out of bed. He threw on a ship’s dressing gown and went to
investigate.

“Where’s it coming from?” he
asked as he headed in the direction of the sounds.

“The dining room,” said LEP.

The din got louder and louder
as he approached. It stopped just as jixX opened the door. He peered in. The
room was the same as before except that the serving plates and dishes had been
cleared. He entered and stopped in front of the magnificent hand-carved
mahogany dining table. Or rather, in front of
half
of the magnificent
hand-carved mahogany dining table. The thought that sprang instantly into his
mind was: “What happened to the other half of the magnificent hand-carved
mahogany dining table?”

Just then a mop of
dishevelled hair and two bespectacled, half-crazed eyes appeared over the edge
– the sawn-off edge – of the magnificent hand-carved mahogany dining table.

“I’m not disturbing you, am
I?” asked twaX the carpenter. His whole boyish face seemed to radiate an
enraptured delight.

“What’s going on?” jixX
walked round the truncated table towards the carpenter.

“Wood!” exclaimed twaX, his
eyes glowing feverishly. “Real wood!”

jixX stared at piles of
sawn-up mahogany fragments lying on the floor and at the heaps of mahogany
sawdust on the lush carpet.

The carpenter was nearly
beside himself with excitement. “None of that plasto-lignose polycellulose
nonsense, but the real stuff!” he was saying. He picked up a sawn-off table leg
from the carpet and offered it to jixX to examine, but jixX just stared at it
in disbelief. “And what wood it is, too! Look at it: mahogany, no less.
Mahogany! A dream come true! Can you appreciate what it’s like for me to hold
it, to touch it, to feel its sensuous texture, to stroke its delicate grain,
and then saw it in half?”

jixX said nothing, could say
nothing.

“Think what it’s like to
shape it with sweeping strokes of hammer and chisel, to glide a plane along its
silken surfaces, and then to nail the bits together!”

The carpenter grinned and
turned his attention back to the pieces of wood lying on the floor all around
him. “Can you guess what I’m making?” He pointed to several pieces of wood
arranged in a rectangle on the floor.

jixX shook his head numbly.

“Window-frames!” cried the
carpenter enthusiastically.

jixX raised an eyebrow.
“Window-frames,” he echoed tonelessly, finally finding his voice.

“Yes.
Mahogany
window-frames.” The carpenter grinned proudly.

“Er, what use are mahogany
window-frames on a Class XI phonon-drive spaceship?”

But twaX was already lost in
his work, fitting two mitred pieces of wood together and preparing to drive a
nail through them.

jixX put his fingers to his
ears and left the dining room, gently closing the door behind him as the
banging resumed.

Chapter 5

jixX
slipped back
into bed and closed his eyes. The distant banging had stopped for the time
being and he was able to drift back to that land between waking and sleeping.

LEP waited patiently. He
wanted to allow the captain some much-needed rest before bothering him again,
so he allowed him exactly one minute and forty seconds of calm, restful repose,
before saying gently, “Wakey, wakey, captain.”