Young Tales of the Old Cosmos (2 page)

“I was merely stating the name of today, the day that Pluto was demoted.”

“But in what language were you speaking?”

Earth blinked nonchalantly. “The language of my fleas.”

“What did you call them?”

“Fleas. They call themselves ‘humans’ but I call them fleas. My parasites. I’ve lived with them long enough to realise they aren’t like the dinosaurs. In fact, by wiping out the dinosaurs but leaving some life unscathed, that one courageous asteroid seems to have made matters worse. I’ll tell you why.”

“Do so, if you must,” grumbled
Neptune
.

“They are intelligent! My fleas, I mean. Not intelligent in the way planets are, of course, with a deep philosophic understanding of the cosmos, but intelligent in a very selfish and dangerous way. Mars quoted a saying at me, “It’s the thought that counts.’ I’m in a position to reveal that my fleas have formulated an identical maxim.”

“So what? Coincidences happen. That example doesn’t indicate an awareness of reality or the stirrings of any true wisdom, let alone an egotistical consciousness. After all, even your dinosaurs had proverbs. I recall you quoting some of them at us. How we laughed! ‘Pride comes before a rahrahgnarrah!’ was one, and ‘A stitch in grrrungrhungh saves time’ was another. But they weren’t very clever.”

Earth regarded
Neptune
sadly. “You misunderstand again. It’s not that my fleas have invented proverbs independently, but that they utter them without believing them!”

“That
is
sneaky,” whistled Jupiter, “and much more serious.”

“What has any of this got to do with me?” bellowed Pluto. “I suppose that because I’m now a dwarf you feel I ought to be ignored?”

“By no means,” said Earth, “and in fact my fleas also have a saying about dwarves. How does it go? ‘Dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants can see further.’ Something along those lines, anyhow.”

“What are they talking about now?” asked Saturn.

“No idea. I can’t hear a thing. I’ll ask Venus,” answered Mercury.

But Venus wasn’t entirely sure. “I think Pluto wants to stand on Jupiter’s shoulders, so he can see further. I find that hard to believe.”

“Jupiter doesn’t have shoulders,” sniffed Saturn, aggrieved because he did, though the others always referred to them as rings.

“Don’t be aggrieved with me, I’m just the messenger,” said Venus.

Meanwhile
Neptune
was yawning ostentatiously. “I’m bored with hearing about your fleas.” Then he stopped and squinted. “Having said that, I wonder if your fleas have fleas of their own? No, that’s too absurd a concept to entertain! Besides, I’ve just thought of a witty response to your dwarf quote. Here it is. A dwarf on the shoulder of a giant can only see further than the giant if he’s taller than the giant’s head…”

“Oh, very droll!” approved Mars.

“It certainly is,” beamed
Neptune
, “and maybe we can end the subject on that note?”

Earth blushed greenly above her
Arctic Circle
with a crackling aurora borealis and there was an undertone of spite in her next statement. “You’ll be sorry you didn’t heed my warnings when my fleas jump across interplanetary space and infest the rest of you. Believe me, they’ll soon be able to do that. They can already journey beyond my atmosphere for short periods and they seem to have an implacable desire to push outwards. They even managed to land on my pet a few decades ago.”

“Your pet? Luna! How terrible!” sympathised Uranus.

“Yes, Luna, my moon,” nodded Earth, “but they couldn’t sustain a colony and retreated to my surface shortly afterwards. Not enough food for them there, I guess. All the same, it was a worrying development.”

“I remember all the fuss,” said Jupiter, “and when Luna started barking my own moons quickly joined in. The din was horrendous. Do you suppose our pets are able to communicate with each other intelligibly?”

Neptune
burst into laughter. “What a suggestion! Pets talking to each other! Moons are very loyal and very dumb, that’s the truth.”

“You’re right, of course,” acknowledged Jupiter.

“I think they’re talking about pets now,” Venus said to Mercury and Saturn. “It’s a topic I don’t much care for, as you well know.”

“They are an encumbrance,” agreed Mercury.

“Oh no!” protested Saturn. “I think pets improve the quality of life. I have more than fifty now and I’m always willing to take in strays.”

“I have no time for moons,” sniffed Venus, “and like Earth said, they are an attraction to fleas, so it’s just not healthy.”

“You also believe the parasites might spread?” Mars gasped at her.

“That’s females for you!” cackled
Neptune
.

Before Venus or Earth could respond to this provocation, Pluto shouted across the void in his most dismal voice, “I doubt the fleas would ever want to settle on me, and not because I’m too remote, but because I’m a
dwarf
. What parasite would want to inhabit a dwarf!”

“Nobody is going to be infested with anything,” growled
Neptune
. “There’s no way that Earth’s disease can ever spread to any other world.”

“You’d be surprised at the ingenuity of my fleas,” asserted Earth.

“In what way exactly, pray tell?”

“Well, they are already working on a new type of propulsion drive much more powerful than the crude rockets they used to reach Luna. I’ve already hinted at their mastery of proverbs and in fact they are working on a so-called ‘proverbial drive’ right now. It’s based on the saying ‘More haste, less speed.’ If that maxim is true, and all our experience and sagacity suggests it is, then the inverse must equally be true: ‘Less haste, more speed.’ That is the principle my fleas hope to exploit to enable them to colonise the entire solar system!”

“I don’t quite follow,” confessed Uranus.

Earth adjusted the ozone hole that had slipped off her chin. “My fleas intend to seal a very lazy man, perhaps the laziest example of the species, into a metal room. Inside this room the lazy man will do nothing at all. Hence his
haste
will be virtually zero. With such a fractional level of haste, his consequent
speed
will be tremendous! It follows logically from the aforementioned proverb. The metal room containing this man will be connected to a spaceship…”

“I don’t like the sound of that!” boomed Jupiter.

“Bah! This ‘proverbial drive’ sounds like a semantic fantasy. It’s a load of cometswallop and I’m not concerned in the slightest,” said
Neptune
.

“But maybe my fleas have
already
taken over,” darkly intoned Earth.

“What are you saying?” shouted Mars.

“I don’t mean physically but on some subtle psychic level,” continued Earth. “I keep picking up certain vibrations that seem to represent an active outpouring of willpower and this enigmatic force appears to have its origin in the opinions and desires of my fleas. For instance, where did the decision to demote poor Pluto actually come from? Has anyone asked that question yet?”

“From Galactic Central, naturally!” exclaimed
Neptune
.

“Are you certain about that? Or is it just an assumption? We know it’s impossible to work out the direction of such radiated orders. Has anyone ever communicated directly or even indirectly with Galactic Central? I thought not! Who among us has even spoken to our own sun? Nobody! The real reason I don’t take my complaint of sexual discrimination to Galactic Central is because I don’t think I would be understood there at all. Are planets even regarded as sentient beings by the stars?”

“You’re suggesting we are just the pets of the sun!” blurted Uranus.

“Even lower than that…”

Jupiter interrupted her with a voice so deep it made her icecaps crack and her lines of latitude squirm. “So where did the order for Pluto’s demotion come from? You can’t possibly mean it was somehow issued by your tiny parasites?!”

Pluto suddenly burst into frozen methane tears…

Far away from this pitiful scene, the supermassive black hole that lurked and throbbed at the hub of the Milky Way was engrossed in deep conversation with the black hole at the centre of the Andromeda galaxy, its nearest neighbour. The Milky Way was clearly distraught and Andromeda was doing her best to provide comforting words but without imparting false hope. Eventually the Milky Way stopped crying.

“But the other galaxies don’t have to be quite so tactless about it. Flying away from me in all directions as if the expansion of the universe was speeding up!”

“They are scared of catching your disease,” pointed out Andromeda.

“But my fleas are harmless enough!”

“What did you call them?”

“Fleas. They call themselves ‘planets’ but I call them fleas.”

Andromeda stretched her spiral arms and said, “I wonder if your fleas have fleas of their own? No, that’s too absurd a concept to entertain!” She paused. “I wonder what would happen if a giant stood on the shoulders of a dwarf. I wonder…”

“You wonder too much,” said the Milky Way.

“I seem to be overrun with clowns,” said the moon.

“Are you serious?” blinked Ganymede.

“Of course I am. When have you known me to be otherwise? I always mean what I say and I’m never frivolous.”

“Really?” smirked Ganymede. “What about that time a few years ago when you decided to become a radical lesbian and have nothing more to do with the male members of the solar system? You even planned to withhold moonbeams from slanting on heterosexuals on the surface of the Earth! One week later you were back to normal.”

“I was just going through a phase,” said the moon.

“My point exactly! Sometimes you’re not serious!”

“I’m afraid Ganymede’s right,” spoke up Callisto, “but that doesn’t mean we think you’re a liar.”

“Just rather too imaginative,” said Ganymede.

“Charming!” huffed the moon.

“You can’t blame us for being sceptical,” pointed out Titan, peeping through the rings of Saturn, “considering the unlikelihood of your claim. What makes you think clowns have colonised your barren surface?”

“I don’t
feel
any heavier,” admitted the moon, “but I saw something recently that provided irrefutable proof. I didn’t actually observe clowns landing on me, the visual confirmation of my statement was more indirect than that, but convincing nonetheless. I’ve deduced that I’m covered with clowns and the conclusion makes my geology crawl.”

And she twitched by way of demonstration.

“Lunatics!” sniggered Titan.

“I assure you they are clowns,” said the moon.

“No, I was referring to muscular spasms. Your tics. You are Luna, the Earth’s moon, so your tics must be lunatics.”

“Oh, I see. A play on words.”

“Maybe your clowns are just ordinary astronauts with painted faces?” suggested Europa.

“I’m afraid not,” sighed the moon.

“But why would authentic clowns choose to forsake the circuses of Earth to start a new life on an airless satellite utterly devoid of audiences?” persisted Titan with a sly wink at Ganymede.

“There’s a compelling reason, a crazy one in many ways, but I’ll have to tell you a story to outline it properly,” replied the moon.

“Go on then,” prompted Callisto.

“But make it short. I’ll be out of range soon!” cried Oberon.