The Ultimate Inferior Beings (7 page)

jixX groaned and turned to
face the wall. “Go away,” he said.

“But captain, you have to get
up. We must perform the course corrections to steer us into Singularity
SCN8-4.”

“Not now,” moaned jixX. “I’ve
only just got into bed.”

“We have to do it now,
cap’n,” insisted LEP. “Or we’ll miss the singularity.”

“What about auto-pilot?”
asked jixX. “Can’t it be done automatically? Or, you do it?”

“Nope,” said LEP. “The Skyway
Code forbids it.”

“Well, can’t it wait until
morning? Why don’t we just circle the singularity until then?”

“If we do that,” said LEP,
“then, according to the Laws of Physics, we’ll travel back in time and meet our
former selves again and again and again.”

“I don’t care. I’ll be asleep
anyway,” pointed out jixX. “So will my former selves.”

“Come on, up you get,” said
LEP.

jixX lay on his back for a
while and then, with a surge of energy that surprised even himself, rolled out
of bed and made his way to the main control room.

“What now?” he asked with a
yawn as he dropped into the anti-inertial command couch. He glanced at his
spruce and wondered whether it needed watering.

“Press the little
black-and-white checked button on the panel to your left,” instructed LEP.

jixX searched for the button
and then pressed it. A small terminal flicked to life at his side. On it was a
3D image of a chessboard, set up and ready for a game of chess.

“What’s this?” asked jixX,
his suspicions roused.

“In-flight entertainment,”
said LEP. “Between course adjustments.”

“I haven’t played chess for
years.”

“No worries. I’ll give you a
few tips as we go along. You’re white. Your move.”

By the time of the first
course correction, jixX was two pawns up.

He was a bishop, two knights,
and three pawns up at the second course correction.

By the third, he was a
bishop, two knights, a queen, a rook, and five pawns up.

“I thought computers were
supposed to be good at chess,” said jixX before moving his queen and saying,
“Check.”

“Ha, you have fallen into my
trap!” said LEP triumphantly.

Two moves later, jixX had
mate.

“Do you want to resign?” LEP
asked him.

“Very funny,” said jixX.
“It’s checkmate.”

“Nonsense.” LEP moved his
king diagonally two spaces.

“Sorry, that’s not allowed.”

“In that case, I will have to
resort to the Asquith Glibbery Defence.”

“Oh yes?” asked jixX with a
patient sigh.

“It is said that young
Asquith never lost a game in his entire life after developing the defence.”

“Really? So what is the
Asquith Glibbery Defence?”

“It’s a kind of smooth sweep
of the arm, knocking the entire board and all the pieces onto the floor. Like
this.” The screen went blank. “Stalemate. Honours even.”

jixX rolled his eyes. “Next
game,” he said.

*

For the rest of the night jixX
and LEP played draughts, backgammon, mastermind and dominoes. LEP proved to be
a bad loser and an even worse cheat.

“How about a card trick?”
said LEP.

“No thanks.”

“Here’s a perfectly ordinary
pack of playing cards,” LEP said, as a picture of a perfectly ordinary pack of
playing cards appeared on the screen. “Pick a card. Any card.”

Before jixX could say
anything the nine of spades appeared on the screen.

“Now memorize it,” instructed
LEP.

jixX sighed wearily.

“Got it?”

“Yes,” said jixX, bored.

The screen went blank.

“Okay. Now I want you to
concentrate on your card. Concentrate very hard and I will use my extra-sensory
telepathic powers to tell you what the card was.”

jixX yawned.

“Are you concentrating?”

“With all my mind.”

“Alright... I’m beginning to
get something... Something’s coming through... Keep concentrating... the mist
is lifting... Yes, I have it! Your card was the nine of spades. Correct?”

“Amazing,” said jixX.

“It’s a gift.”

jixX raised an eyebrow. “In
that case I suggest you return it and ask for your money back. Or ask for
something more useful, like a pair of slippers.”

“Do you want to know how I
did it?”

“No, LEP. That would spoil
the illusion.”

“You’re right.”

Just then the door swished
open and fluX entered the main control room. The anti-inertial command couch
squeaked as jixX turned to face him.

“You’re up early,” he said.

“I hov bin up all ze night,”
said the behavioural chemist, looking very much as if indeed he had.

“Oh?”

“Ya. I hov bin vorking on Ze
Divine Message.”

“Ah,” said jixX, the smile
fading from his face. With an effort, he managed to fix an interested look in
its place. “Your proof of the existence of God? How far have you got?”

The behavioural chemist
handed him a sheet of petromorphic ytterbium cellulose and looked on excitedly
as jixX read it. ‘At Ru I Sm Li Fe S Al La W As Te C Au Se O Ne Ca N No Tc He A
Ti Ta Nd Th U Si Ge Tm Yb Ac Ku P H Er Eu Po Ni Cr Y Be Ba Dy Es’.

On seeing jixX’s puzzled
frown, fluX translated. ‘A truism: Life’s all a waste ‘cause one cannot cheat
it. And thus I get my back up. Hereupon, I cry, “Be bad! Yes.”’

“Hmm,” said jixX.

“I particularly like ze
‘Hereupon, I cry’ part. It is poetic, no?”

“Very lyrical,” said jixX,
nodding.

“But I am still not zere
yet,” said fluX, grimacing in frustration. “Zis cannot be right. God vould not
be telling us to ‘be bad’.”

“I think I have to agree with
you there,” said jixX, trying to smother all traces of sarcasm from his voice.

“But,” continued the
behavioural chemist. “Here ve hov 46 of ze 112 elements. Last message had 37.
So I am getting closer, no?”

“Oh, definitely,” said jixX,
nodding vigorously and handing back the sheet of petromorphic ytterbium
cellulose.

There was a silence as the
behavioural chemist fidgeted with the sheet. “It is hard vork,” he said at
last.

“I can well imagine.”

“I hov a lot of tiny squares
of petromorphic ytterbium cellulose. Each viz a chemical element written on it.
I lay zem out on ze table and shuffle and rearrange zem. Make zem into vords
and make ze vords into sentences.”

jixX was nodding
understandingly, wondering where this was leading.

“Sometimes zey drop on ze
floor, and I hov to pick zem up. Sometimes I sneeze. Zey go everywhere, and my
work is undone. Sometimes I zink my English is not good for zis. Sometimes I
feel like giving up.”

fluX became quiet.

“Go on,” urged jixX.

“Vot I really need...” he
started.

“Yes?”

“Is a computer...”

“No,” piped in LEP instantly.

“A computer can vork out all
ze permutations and combinations.”

“Not me,” said LEP.

“A computer can hov a dictionary
lookup.”

“Count me out,” LEP was
saying.

“And zis is probably ze most
important discovery ever made,” said the behavioural chemist, looking
pleadingly to jixX for support.

jixX coughed. “Er,” he said.
“Well, right now LEP is rather tied up. He’s helping me make the necessary
course corrections. I’m afraid that work directly related to our mission has to
have priority. Sorry. Maybe later.”

“Ya,” said the behavioural
chemist, nodding gratefully. “Later is good.”

jixX smiled and nodded back.
“Have you had any breakfast?” he asked by way of changing the subject.

*

 “Thanks,” said LEP when fluX
had gone.

“Don’t mention it,” said
jixX.

“No, seriously, you saved my
bacon there. I owe you.”

“As a computer, aren’t you
supposed to be capable of some degree of parallel processing? Couldn’t you have
put his problem as some kind of background task?”

“That’s not the point.”

“What is, then?”

“He’s completely barking
mad.”

jixX laughed. “Which reminds
me,” he said. “What’s the current state of the mahogany dining table?”

“The mahogany dining table is
no more,” announced LEP. “Long live the mahogany window-frames, mahogany book
shelves and mahogany occasional table.”

“He’s had a busy night,
then.”

“Both as mad as hatters,”
said LEP. “And no sense of humour.”

jixX looked up with a
surprised laugh. “Look who’s talking.”

“What do you mean?” LEP was
ready to take offence.

“I’ve met pocket calculators
with more wit than you.”

*

Up on the second floor, in
the ship’s library, the lights flickered on as anaX entered. She paused, looking
around, before heading to one of the 3D data terminals. Checking that no one
had followed her, she sat down and activated a search. Her fingers skittered
across the screen as she homed in on what she was looking for. But no sooner
had she found it than a login procedure thwarted her. ‘Classified Information,’
it read. ‘Security Level 2 clearance required’.

She swore under her breath,
again checking behind her.

She sat thinking for a short
while before keying in some characters.

‘Invalid password!’ said the
screen.

anaX swore again.  She sat
back, thinking. She stared up at the ceiling for inspiration, narrowing her
eyes and lightly tapping her mouth with her slender fingers. Then she jerked
forward and tried another combination.

This time she was in.

Her eyes widened as the
terminal displayed what she had been looking for. There, in front of her, were
the 3D plans of The Night Ripple. She searched them this way and that,
examining every room, every corridor, every piece of machinery. Finally, she
focused her attention on the forward engine room, zooming in and studying it
very carefully.

After a few minutes of study,
she flicked the terminal off and left the library looking pleased with herself.

Had anyone been watching her
actions, they would have been mystified by her behaviour. For, the whole time
she had been logged on, she hadn’t once checked her e-mail, surfed the web or
played a game of Solitaire.

PART THE THIRD: GROUND

Chapter 1

jixX
made the
final
course correction and The Night Ripple lurched into SCN8-4 – a small, localized
space-time singularity.

“We have entered the
Pseudogravitic Continuum,” announced LEP.

The view through the main
control room’s observation windows changed very slightly.

LEP felt he should add
something informative and educational. “If you were a dog or a bat,” he
started, “you would hear a very high-pitched whistle right now.”

“But I’m not.”

“No,” said LEP. “But if you
were, you would hear the Ultrasonic Background Reverberation that permeates the
Pseudogravitic Continuum. It’s high-pitched because of the partially
non-Euclidean geometry here.”

“Why are you telling me this,
LEP?”

“I aim to educate as well as
entertain.”

“No comment. So tell me, how
long are we going to be in here?”

“About minus 46 seconds.”

jixX raised an eyebrow.
“Minus?”

“That’s right. Time travels
backwards here, and at a slower rate relative to our Universe.”