The Road to Mars: A Post-Modem Novel (1999) (26 page)

“What’s the problem now?”

“It’s your wife, sir.”

“Brenda? Isn’t she playing with her refugees?”

“Well, that’s just it, sir. She’s insisting on doing a shot with the tanker before we move out. She says it makes a perfect backdrop for a promo trailer, and she can include it in the show later.”

Keppler laughed. Let Rogers deal with that and good luck to him. “How long does she need?”

“Couple of hours, sir. She’s got some old geezer in a blanket. Looks pretty pathetic. She’s singing to him.”

“I should be grateful that old geezer isn’t me.” Mitchell smiled as if he’d said something funny. “Very good, sir.”

“All right, please inform Rogers we’re waiting for my wife.”

“Yes sir.”

“Now
that
’s funny,” said Keppler.

We are living in the machine age. For the first time in history the comedian has been compelled to supply himself with jokes and comedy material to compete with the machine. Whether he knows it or not, the comedian is on a treadmill to oblivion.

—
Fred Allen

Carlton was puzzled. The main door was stuck fast, but surely the antilock system couldn’t be on? He tried opening it from his own control panel. No response. He kept getting a busy signal, which was really irritating. How could it be busy? Since the ship’s circuits were all shut down, there should be no response, not a busy signal. And yet,
were
all the circuits shut off? He sniffed. The
Ray
seemed to be surging with energy, he could feel it, and yes the magnetometer in his nose confirmed it. There was high activity in the magnetic spectrum. Very odd. He analyzed the electromagnetic readout and frowned. Gamma rays, hard and soft X-rays, ultraviolet radiation, visible light, infrared radiation, microwaves, and radio waves.

What was going on? Had he forgotten to turn something off? He opened up his help file. Within seconds he was staring at the most likely scenario: the nuclear core was active. But that was impossible. That couldn’t be. He knew he had withdrawn the fuel rods. He even checked his replay. Yes, there he was withdrawing the rods. So that was okay, and yet his instruments told him that the nuclear core was operating, something had reactivated it, and even more puzzling, something was drawing down huge gulps of power. Was it Lewis? Carlton hadn’t yet given the all-clear but Lewis might have seen his moment of triumph from the escape pod. He decided to check in, but to his surprise found he couldn’t get through.
All circuits busy
. Busy? Between the
Ray
and the Evac? I don’t think so. An alarm bell was ringing inside him. This was more than a malfunctioning door. He was locked outside the
Ray
. As if deliberately. As if something wanted to deny him reentry.

He crawled over to the emergency escape hatch. This was for rescue crews and emergency fire vehicles. He punched the big red triangle which opened the air lock. Nothing. Yeah, yeah, how did he know that? He inserted the tip of his index finger into a patch panel for firemen, so they could assess the damage before going inside. It hooked up to the main surveillance system. He turned the system on. Information began downloading. He switched into the visual mode. One by one he checked the rooms of the
Ray
. Main deck: nothing. Pool, games room, hall: all quiet. Staterooms, laundry, galley, storeroom: all deserted. Everything normal. And yet, he reconfirmed it, something was sucking huge quantities of power from the core. He decided to trace the leak back from the source and brought up the surveillance camera in the reactor room. To his surprise the room was brightly lit. That’s not right, he thought. He could recall switching off the light. Or did he? He decided to double check that on his replay. Yes, there he was in the reactor room, and there he was switching off the light, and there he was closing the door. Wait. Go back a minute. No, not that far. There. He froze his own image for a second. There was something not quite right with the wall behind him. Something was casting a shadow. Something that shouldn’t be there. He zoomed in. What was that just behind his head? A pipe? A piece of tubing? He pushed in. Then anxiously zoomed even closer. Holy shit. There on the wall behind him was a tiny tubelike creature. The motherbug. Watching him as he shut down the core. It must have been stalking him all the time, following him through the ship. At any moment it could have taken him out, but instead it had tracked him, spoored him. He had been the hunted. It had used him to get to the core. The implications were horrendous. He had left the motherbug hidden in the nuclear core while he went outside for how long? While he was fishing in space. While he closed himself down. Ye gods!

He switched off his tape repeat and racked the surveillance camera, horribly certain what he would find. Then he saw them. Four sleek shiny new bugs, hooked up to the nuclear core. Two pairs of identical twin tubes, growing exponentially, gorging themselves on all that inexhaustible power. He could practically see them swelling. Already he sensed they were unstable. How long before they exploded? Minutes? Seconds? He raced for the rear of the ship thinking, You clever mother. She had fooled him, lured him into believing she was falling for the bait when all the time he was the bait. He felt a twinge of admiration. She had sacrificed herself so that her offspring could succeed, gaining them more time while he was trapped outside. More time for them to continue feeding on the great nuclear nipple, growing and glowing, the offspring from hell. That final look he now recognized was not fear or surprise: it was triumph. The motherbug knew her victory was assured, there was no way for him to get them out of there now. He felt a feeling growing inside him. It took him a moment to define it. Panic! He raced across the outside of the
Ray
, his electromagnetic feet giving him grip. Got to get away. They’re going to explode any minute. Smart cookie, smart bombs. He should hit the eject button now but maybe he had time to get himself inside the Evac and get them all out of here. Was that so selfish?

He hurried around the bubble dome of the pool area and came to the Evac. He climbed up onto the Evac and looked through the porthole of B cabin. Alex and Katy were inside, but to his intense surprise they were quite naked.

What on earth are they doing? thought Carlton.

They seemed to be wrestling.

“Oh my God,” he said, “they’re mating.”

He was fascinated. Of course he knew the mating habits of the human but he had no firsthand knowledge. He was surprised by the frenetic way they went about it. How interesting. They’re having sex, he observed. But what is so funny? How come they’re laughing?

What has
laughter
to do with this? They both seem to be laughing with joy. He was distracted from his speculation by the realization of his terrible predicament. He began hammering on the window, but it was hopeless, they could hear nothing. The Evac was far too well wrapped, swathed, and bundled against the terrible forces out there. He stood up and waved, pulling faces and shaking his hands around like a demented preacher. He thought for a second they’d seen him, but they’d only paused to switch positions. He could see Katy’s naked back, glistening as she sat astride Alex, facing him. She was in his lap, Alex deep within her and she held his head tightly in her hands and was kissing him on the mouth.

“That looks uncomfortable,” thought Carlton, but Alex was laughing and laughing.

“Why does he find it so funny?” he wondered. He would have to revise the chapter “Sex and Comedy.” Perhaps he had misunderstood the nature of laughter. What had it to do with orgasm? He should take notes. Duh! What was he thinking? If he couldn’t get inside, there’d be no chapter, there’d be no thesis.

“Hey,” Carlton yelled. “It’s me! Let me in.”

But they were busy. Katy too was laughing now. Languorously she lifted her hips and arched her back. She looked at Alex boldly and wriggled her pelvis. He could see her say something, because Alex laughed again. Then she leaned back in pleasure, her face and neck flushed. Her eyes were closed and she began to buck wildly.

A ten-ring circus wouldn’t distract them now. He raced over to Lewis’s porthole and began frantically waving and beating on the window. But Lewis was asleep. Tay in his arms. Desperately he tried the intercom again, but there it was again:
All circuits busy
.

He wondered wildly what to do. He couldn’t get in either vehicle. He could survive maybe another ten minutes before freezing solid. But none of them would survive if the ship blew up. There was nothing for it. He had no choice. He would have to get them away. Too bad, but he daren’t risk waiting any longer. He would just have to let them go.

“Bye, Alex. Bye, Lewis,” he whispered. “Bye, world.”

Then, as he clung desperately to the side of the Evac, he punched the separation button.

Alex felt the surge of energy as the tiny explosives soundlessly shot away the dead bolts holding them in place, and then the thrust of their powerful motor as it kicked in, hurling them hurriedly away from the
Ray
. They were thrown all over.

“Hold on,” yelled Alex, grabbing Katy and yanking her forcefully down. Her naked butt slammed onto the bed.

“God, you’re good,” said Katy.

He tightened the safety straps and clung to her. They were tumbled around like laundry. After what seemed like an hour they slowed and the craft resumed a more peaceful rate of progress. It began rolling slowly. Every few minutes they had sunshine, then star field. Behind them they could see the
Ray
.

“What went wrong?” yelled Lewis.

“I haven’t a clue. Where’s Carlton?”

“He must still be on the
Ray
.”

“Oh God.” Alex sunk his head in his hands.

“Why did he press the release button? Why didn’t he warn us?” asked Lewis.

“Daddy, are we going to see Carlton again?”

“Maybe, darling. He stayed behind to clear up. We’ll get him later, don’t worry.”

Yeah. Sure.

I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of comedy, which this margin is too narrow to contain.

—
Farewell To Fermat, Carlton’s Last Theorem

He was picturing himself, a 4.5 Bowie machine, dressed in white tie and tails. The Nobel Committee was standing and applauding. He was about to become the first artificial intelligence to win a Nobel Prize. For his work on comedy.

Yeah, right, thought Carlton, in your dreams, brother.

He was still clinging desperately to the side of the Evac as it tumbled out of control, away from the
Ray
. How long did he have before his circuits froze? Five minutes? Two? It didn’t matter anymore. He didn’t have those endorphins flooding into his body which prepare the human for the approach of death, but he was becoming delirious anyway.

He thought again of the Nobel. If only understanding comedy was as easy as understanding the proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem. If only there was some beautiful elliptical curve to describe it, some equation which could contain a general theory of comedy. But if there was, he had yet to find it. Comedy was made by humans and therefore it was maddeningly imprecise. It had grown like language so there were no real rules. It could break out unexpectedly like the face of a teenager. The Universe of Physics at least had laws, inviolable constants, the speed of light for one; comedy had no constants.

His hands were frozen solid to the side of the Evac. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t even wave. He thought of the humans inside—they would surely be awake now—and calculated the odds on their survival. They were astronomical. They were all going to die and he himself would freeze up in a few minutes. They would become a tiny time capsule, frozen in space, waiting to be discovered, if at all, millions of years in the future. Would anyone then bother to unload his comedy thesis? Did he dream of me? A man in the future with enough time and sense to download his memory cells? A man who could appreciate all the work he had done? The ideal biographer. He wanted to, but he couldn’t really believe in me. Of course he couldn’t. I’m eighty years off yet. He tried hard to visualize me, but can a droid truly believe? He gave up. How do I know? How am I so sure? I have his thoughts precisely transcribed in front of me. Frozen in time like the last journal of Captain Scott in the Antarctic. Except something very odd is happening to Carlton at this moment. Talk about the god in the machine. Carlton is gaining insight. The prospect of imminent death is focusing his mind. Dr. Johnson was right—though he faced nothing more troublesome than a visit to Scotland.

I might as well take a final look through my files before I freeze up forever, he thought. If only it wasn’t so cold. He began scanning his Theory of Comedy. He had been so close. Now it would never be finished. He had tried the anthropological approach, the linguistic, the mathematical, the genetic, all without finding the real meaning of comedy. He was certain of some things. For instance, he was convinced comedy was a survival tool, that it had evolved as a useful mechanism, an enforced reality check, which somehow evolved in parallel with the brain, but he wasn’t sure whether it was an evolutionary necessity for higher conciousness or just an accident. Now, as he felt himself beginning to freeze solid, he gazed at the stars and was filled with sadness. Had he missed something? His mechanistic view of the Universe despaired of the wimpy world of metaphysics, where nothing could be tested, nothing really known. He yearned for physics; even its uncertainties were certain. At least the questions could be postulated simply—the Big Crunch versus the Big Wimp-out? Was there enough dark matter in the Universe so that gravity would eventually slow its expansion, reverse its direction, and begin to pull everything back together again, until all the matter in the Universe finally coalesced into the Big Crunch; or would it all just keep gently drifting farther and farther apart until the burning hydrogen fires gradually ran out of fuel? In any case, he wondered, what
was
gravity? He thought for a moment. At that moment the sun came up over the edge of the tiny escape capsule. Its light blinded him for a minute, and in that instant it all became suddenly clear to him.