The Road to Mars: A Post-Modem Novel (1999) (22 page)

He beamed happily in the grace of her laughter. She was so lovely. He moved towards her, but she waved him away. She needed air. He smiled and stepped back. The moment passed.

Alex showed her the swimming pool. One whole end was built as a Provencal villa, with a
terrace
off the upstairs bedrooms and a wide patio below. Real trees lined the poolside. She was enchanted with it.

“We could be in the country,” she said, delighted.

He clicked on a switch and crickets stirred. She smelled lavender. He rolled back the starscreen and suddenly there was the galaxy above their heads.

“To swim under the stars,” she said. “How wonderful. Alex, I
love
this ship.”

He grinned contentedly. “Fancy a dip?” he asked. “No,” she laughed, “I have no suit.”

“That’s okay,” he said. “I can take it.”

“I’m sure you can.”

“Hot tub? Massage? Sauna?” She giggled.

“Walk this way, madam.”

He led her beside the villa into a little garden with herbs and grass and a wrought-iron rustic table.

“How about a spot of lunch,” he said in a British accent. “Tu manges, ma petite?”

“Non, merci, monsieur. Je n’ai pas faim.”

“Oh, vachement tu es femme,” he said.

He was definitely pursuing her now, and she realized she was enjoying the pursuit. She knew if she kept still for five minutes he would kiss her.

“C’mon,” she said. “Show me the rest.”

He showed her the gymnasium with its variable gravity exercise machines, the
Jacuzzi
, the steam room, and then led her along the corridor towards the main reception area. They passed the Washing Machine coming back from the tower, relieved of her responsibilities.

“Don’t talk to me,” she grumbled. “I’ve been up there for hours. Searching for icebergs. That’s not my job. And what’s
this?
” She held out the sex doll accusingly. Alex grabbed for it. “Oh that. That’s just a toy, Mrs. Greenaway,” he said.

“She began taking her clothes off again!”

Alex was embarrassed. Katy was looking at him. He could feel himself beginning to blush.

“Then she asked me if I wanted to play with her.”

“Yes,” said Alex, grabbing it and stowing it on a shelf above the door, “she is really very friendly. I think it belongs to Lewis,” he said. “He probably got it for Tay to play with.
Thank you
, Mrs. Greenaway.”

Katy was laughing at him. He smiled.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Hey,” she said, “like I didn’t notice you were a guy?”

He led her into their den. It was an impressive, almost baronial hall, lit by a huge fireplace with a virtual fire blazing away in the hearth.

“Oh, this is lovely,” said Katy. “Oh, I like this. Is that you?”

She walked over to an oil painting which had been carefully repainted with Alex’s features.

“That’s me as Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough,” he said.

“You look good in a skirt,” she said.

“Thank you, so do you,” he said.

She was enjoying him. He was great company. So different from Emil, she thought. They lingered for a while at the Joke Box. Alex punched up some of their early routines. They leaned together over the domed top and looked down at the tiny figures below. Two tiny 3-D hologram figures of Alex and Lewis began performing in miniature. They were funny. She kept asking for more routines. She hadn’t quite appreciated the subtle balance, the long-suffering patience of Lewis as counterpoise to the mad antics of Alex. She glimpsed a hint of anguish in this patient waiting of his.

“Is Lewis happy?” she asked.

“He wouldn’t be happy if he was happy,” said Alex.

“What about Tay?”

“Oh, it’s something else he can beat himself up with.”

“No, where is she?”

“I think she’s in the games room.”

“Let’s go find her.”

“Okay. But first let’s go look at the stars. You have to see the tower.”

So they turned away from the games room.

Tay had done as she was told and returned to the games room. So, where was the bug, she wondered? Oh, there it was. In the corner. She slowly advanced on it. The ability to reproduce itself was one of the nastier features of this sophisticated destructive machine. What strangely perverted mind could have conceived of adding a womb to a smart bomb? Nevertheless here it was, going into labor. Lucky for her it was distracted, for they were deadly when threatened. It had hooked into an electronic game called Waterloo, End of an Emperor, and was sucking up massive amounts of electricity from it, swelling, its belly distended, its whole being intent and focused. It had become a miniature fallopian tube. Inside its sticky metallic interior something was growing and pushing out. Tay leaned forward eagerly to see. To her amazement something was coming out of one end. Beneath it, miniature models of Napoleon’s Imperial Guard lay in wait for the outcome of the fighting at Quatre Bois. The surface of the game was vibrating so hard she wondered if the glass would hold. Or would the tiny bug be sent plunging into another world, filled with mechanical soldiers all trying to kill each other on the Road to Brussels?

“Ah,” said Tay. “A baby.”

Think of a scorpion, a tarantula, a baby shark; but there is nothing remotely lovely about a newborn baby bomb. Tay stared at it, fascinated. It seemed so helpless, no more than two inches long, and its little antennae sniffed the air uncertainly.

“Oh, it’s so cute,” said Tay.

She reached forward and touched it with her finger. With a shock she realized that it was still warm. It recoiled from her touch and its antennae searched for the source of this alien contact.

“Where’s your mommy?” said Tay. “You want your mommy, don’t you?”

But Mommy had gone. Abandoning baby at birth, momsy had scurried off to find other energy sources, for it was programmed to reproduce every twenty minutes. It was a very sophisticated self-replicating automaton.

“You poor thing,” said Tay. “I’ll be your mommy.”

She picked up the tiny bug and held it in the palm of her hand. It waggled its antennae uncertainly. It was not programmed for this. It had no concept of friend. It recognized only concepts like threat, enemy, kill, destroy. It began to vibrate, emitting a high-pitched sound at the extreme edge of the audible range for the human ear. Tay giggled.

“You’re tickling,” she said delightedly. But the bug was not tickling, it was activating its molecular structure. It was preparing to explode.

“Don’t move,” said a voice behind her. “Whatever you do, don’t move.”

Does comedy prepare us for our own extinction?

—
De Rerum Comoedia

It was Carlton. He stood at the doorway in horror. He had finally traced the leak to the games room. Enormous amounts of energy were being drawn down. When he tested the circuit, he found to his surprise it lacked the profile of a game, it was using way too much power, sucking in great gulps of electricity. He decided to check it out. He reached the door of the games room in time to see Tay holding something in her hand. Something he recognized as a newborn baby bug bomb.

He spoke softly so as not to frighten the little girl.

“Tay, I need to take that from you.”

“It’s mine.”

“Tay, it’s deadly.”

“It’s just hungry.”

“That’s okay, I know how to feed it.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“Well, all right then.” She stretched out her hand towards him. Very slowly Carlton moved towards her. The bug scented his movement. It turned to face him.

“It’s okay, it’s smelling the electricity.”

She handed him the bug. It moved slowly on to Carlton’s outstretched hand. He let it nibble at a console.

“See, it needed to eat.”

“It eats electricity?”

“Yes.”

“Wow. Can I have it back?”

“Listen, Tay, it’s very important I find its mom.”

“Just let me hold it.”

“Where did its mom go, Tay?”

“Oh, she left,” said Tay, “right after the birth.”

Disaster, thought Carlton. He was rapidly calculating their chances. It could give birth every twenty minutes, so on the assumption (oh please, God) that this was the firstborn, they had a chance, but he had to act fast; otherwise the ship would be crawling with bugs. If he could get the humans into the Emergency Evacuation Vehicle and power down, there was a possibility that he could get them away alive. Otherwise they were dead meat. Something like pity crossed his mind. He remotely activated the emergency alarm. The harsh wail of klaxon echoed throughout the ship.

“All right, Tay, I want you to come with me. Now. This is very important.”

“But I—”

“No buts. We have to leave
right now!
”

Lewis was deep in conversation with the shrinkbot when the siren sounded. He had been recalling bitter feelings towards his mother.

The shrinkbot was talking. “Early emotional abandonment, Lewis. That’s the problem. And of course, as you know, these are the conditioning factors that trigger comedians.”

“What?”

“I think I quote correctly: ‘Comedy is a childlike response to the lack of parental comfort. Specifically maternal. The comedian struggles to seduce the world, to attract the admiration of strangers, to replace the lack of love and warmth by the noisy embracing bark of comedy.’”

“Who said that?”

“Carlton.”

“Carlton?!” Lewis could not have been more startled.

“Yes, Carlton—he’s pretty much an expert in the field.”

“Carlton, as in
our robot
Carlton?”

“Yes, he’s an expert on comedy. What did he say the other day, something very clever about you and Mike Nichols.”

“Who the fuck’s Mike Nichols?”

“Oh, he’s from the period he’s studying.”

“The what?”

“Late-twentieth-century comedians.”

“He’s studying them?”

“It was something about the need for attention. Let me see, here it is. Mike Nichols says, ‘I love the control. I love the feeling of power, to make the audience jump on cue.’ Very revealing. That’s what the White Face is all about.”

“What do you mean,
the White Face?
”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I do hope I’m not speaking out of turn. I had no idea you were unaware of his work on comedy. He is particularly expert on the comedians of the late twentieth century, from the sixties to the nineties. He’s got a whole library of research material. His monograph on John Cleese and control is particularly vivid.”

“Carlton doesn’t understand the first damn thing about comedy. He can’t even get his tin head around irony.”

“You should talk to him. I find him particularly interesting and helpful about you.”

“About me? You talk to him about me?”

“I realize it may be a bit unethical, but I figure he knows so much more about comedians and abandonment than I do, that if it helps me to help you, then it’s all for the best.”

Lewis was speechless.

“Carlton said a particularly fine thing about you only yesterday.”

“What was that?”

Far away a klaxon began to wail.

“A thing of duty is a boy forever.”

“
Emergency. Repeat, emergency. Immediate evacuation. This is not a drill. All personnel report immediately to the Evac unit. This is not a drill
”

Alex and Katy were sitting together under the stars. It was their first real moment of peace. They were lying on the water bed under the dome, and Alex had turned off the lights in order to get a better view of the Milky Way, which stretched across the entire sky. They could clearly see the Sagittarian arm, the companion spiral arm to their Aquarian home, arcing off to one side, and there in Leo lay the center of the galaxy, hidden by clouds of stars, with somewhere beating in its midst the great black hole round which the whole thing spins.

“Ya know what I was thinking?” said Alex.

You bet she did. She had been expecting it since they sat down. But he surprised her.

“You know how many times our solar system has been round the galaxy?”

“What? No, not really.”

“Make a guess.”

“I couldn’t tell you. It’s probably an impossibly large number.”

“Actually it’s a really small number and that’s what’s interesting. From the time of the creation of the solar system, the Earth, and the other planets, this whole solar system has been round our galaxy only twenty-two and a half times.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah.”

“But that’s nothing.”

“I know. And look at how far we have come in that time. And another thing.”

“What?”

“I’d really like to kiss you.”

What was he expecting, permission? She smiled, leaned forward, and suddenly they were kissing. Full-mouthed. Tongues frantically seeking each other. After a minute or two she pulled back.

“Had enough, eh?” he said.

“I have to breathe occasionally,” she said.

“Oh that.”

“Happy now?”

“Oh yes.”

“Want to try again?” she asked.

“No thanks. That’s enough excitement for me for one decade. Besides, I think I should tell you I believe in safe sex. I always insist on my lawyer being present.”

She laid a finger on his lips. “No jokes,” she said, “just kiss me.”

And then the damn alarm went off.

Emergency lighting, red arrows on the floors indicating the way to the safety pod. Footsteps running. Klaxon sounding. Carlton standing by the door of the Emergency Evacuation Vehicle urgently beckoning them inside. Every second precious. His hand a flashlight.

“What’s going on?”

“We’ve got a bug. I’m going to have to power down and sweep the ship.”

“Where’s Lewis?”

“In with Tay in the forward compartment. You’ll have to take B.”

“Just our luck we’ll have to share,” said Alex to Katy merrily. “It’s okay, I’ll take the floor.”

“You can’t,” said Carlton. “I’m turning off all the power, there will be no gravity. You’ll have to strap yourselves in.”

“Ooh, I love bondage,” said Alex.

“Please hurry,” said Carlton, “this is really not funny.”

“Distress call?”

“The
Di
’s already on its way. But it may be too late. Either I find it or we’ll be blown to bits.”