The Road to Mars: A Post-Modem Novel (1999) (23 page)

Katy looked pale. “Alex,” she said, laying a hand on his arm.

“Don’t worry, we’ll be fine.”

“Oy vey!”

They looked up in alarm.

It was the Washing Machine. Puffing and blowing towards them.

“So, suddenly I’m chopped liver? Hours I spend keeping an eye out for you and now I’m not needed on the voyage.”

“You can’t come in here,” said Alex. “It’s only for humans.”

“What, I’m supposed to stay behind and feed the bugs?”

“Bugs?” said Alex. “How many are there?”

“If you hurry, there’ll be less,” said Carlton.

Alex urged Katy into the B cabin. She looked scared.

“I’ll be back,” he said. “Just got to deal with Mrs. Greenaway.”

He shoved the Washing Machine into a tiny closet.

“Hey,” she said, “I got news for you. I’m not staying in here. What ya think I’m just some kind of machine here at ya beck and call. Ya think I don’t have feelings?”

“That’s exactly what I think,” he said and switched her off.

“What about you?” he said to Carlton.

“Oh, I’m a machine,” said Carlton. “I’m replaceable.”

“Oh. Yeah. Right.”

“But thanks for asking, Alex. I appreciate that. Bye now.”

He slammed the hatch shut.

But he’s not a machine, thought Alex. I’d never switch him off.

The lights inside the Evac went out as Carlton screwed down the hatch. Lewis held Tay close as the bright stars leapt out at them through the tiny porthole.

“Daddy, I’m scared.”

“It’s okay, Tay. It’s going to be all right. Carlton knows what he’s doing.”

He wished he was that confident. His mind followed Carlton as he went round the ship switching off power, turning off systems, until the entire vessel lay dark and motionless. A long way away the
Princess Di
was locked onto their signal, but the problem was, the minute Carlton pulled the plug, all transmissions ceased. They would be entirely on their own.

It’s a mucky bit of the solar system, the asteroid belt. Rocks and asteroids and icebergs and all sorts of debris form a giant elliptical swathe around the sun. Some people think it is the remains of a dead planet torn apart by some cosmic event, whose debris now orbits the sun in its former path, for it is exactly where the ratio of planets to sun would predict a planet ought to be; a planet that blew itself up, which once had water, perhaps even life, as Mars once had water before it somehow lost it. How ironic that Mars’s new ocean was coming from this very icefield, which was perhaps the remains of an old ocean from a now extinct planet. Nothing dies, everything recycles.

On the bridge of the
Di
, Captain Mitchell was gazing into space, his mind wandering. Below him Tompkins was on watch. The vast glowing electronic wall map of their immediate vicinity automatically updated itself every few seconds.

“Sir, the
Ray
.”

“Yes, what of it?”

“It’s gone.”

“What do you mean it’s gone?”

“It disappeared from the screen.”

“Disappeared?”

“We were tracking them and then suddenly nothing. It may have hit something.”

The strange alchemy of comedy that takes anger and turns it into humor.

—
De Rerum Comoedia

Abandoned babies can be deadly. Carlton held the tiny baby bug thoughtfully for a moment, then slid it into the recycle fuel burner, where it was instantly vaporized, its energy converted into heat. Nothing dies in the Universe; all energy is converted into something else. Energy into matter, matter into energy, endlessly recycling. “Oh dear, what can the dark matter be?” as Alex riffed. “Nothing dies in the Universe, except the occasional joke.”

Why do jokes “die?” Carlton wondered. What a strange term to use. Is it because they are deprived of the oxygen of laughter? In fact, all comedians’ terms seemed to be life and death terms. There was hidden violence everywhere in humor. Gag means choke. A knockout gag, they said. Comedians killed an audience, slayed ’em, knocked ’em dead. They used
punch
lines, and when their comedy fails, they say they “died.” What did it all mean? Was comedy some form of surrogate violence? Like tickling. There were just so many violent terms that comedy had to be some form of passive aggression. He noticed the word “
laughter
” was only an s away from “
slaughter
,” just like cosmic and comic. What was significant about the s? Could it be the serpent? Did woman bring laughter to the Garden of Eden? Was it a sexual thing? He was rambling. Better ask Alex. If there still was an Alex to ask, he thought suddenly. Or if there still was a Carlton to ask it. He contemplated his own extinction for a moment. It wasn’t a pleasant concept. How odd, he thought—am I afraid of death? But that’s an emotion. I’m not supposed to suffer from emotions.

He was inching his way slowly down the corridor from the hatch of the Evac. The humans were safely locked inside. Lewis held one emergency eject button, Carlton had the other. If either pressed their buttons, the tiny evacuation vessel would be shot away from the
Ray
, perhaps fast enough to escape any explosion. Fat chance really, if it detonated without warning. Whatever was waiting for him here in the sudden darkness of the ship was programmed to take them all out. What were his chances of finding it before it decided to explode? Not good, he swiftly calculated. He moved forward, pondering the mysteries of imminent extinction.

All the lights were off, all power was off, the pool was sealed, the artificial gravity shut down. Now he turned off the oxygen. No sense in wasting it. He didn’t need it and they had their own supply in the Evac, though that was about all they had. It was going to get cold in there if he didn’t hurry. At least now the power was shut down, the bug could no longer breed. For that it needed a secondary energy source. It was a parasite. So what would it do? He thought about its options. Since it needed a power source to replicate and everything was switched off, it would be forced to shut down and wait. Unless it could get to the nuclear generator. He had pulled the fuel rods out, but you can’t just simply switch off a nuclear reactor; some heat and energy would inevitably be generated down there. So if it is tracking for power, this is the way it would go. I’m onto you, he thought, lifting a hatch and sliding from the oak-paneled past into a nightmare world of cables and tubing and pipes. He experienced a kind of thrill as he stepped into this underworld and slowly began to stalk the bug. I’m hunting, he thought.

Hunting had occupied his attention during his anthropological research into the origins of comedy. It had occurred to him that comedy might have evolved in hunting; now here he was on a hunt. (If only he could recognize irony.) What would be the use of comedy in such a situation, he wondered as he advanced along the crawl space, carefully stepping over great snakes of cable. Hysteria in the human, he knew, was a common response to danger. It could be as small as a nervous giggle, which would be a healthy release of tension, or it could be a full-blown paralyzing hysteria which shuts down all defenses and renders its victim helpless. Perhaps this was the point. Perhaps it was simply a preparation for death, a merciful paralysis for the prey while it released calming endorphins into its body in anticipation of the end. So this kind of hysteria would be useful. In a group, on the other hand, hysteria was always unwelcome, for it instantly demoralizes, spreading panic and defeat through the ranks. In which case comedy could be a defense against hysteria. But isn’t laughter itself a form of mass hysteria? The audience becomes literally paralyzed with laughter. “It was hysterical,” people said about the comedy of Alex and Lewis. Hysterical, hysteria, from the Greek
hystera
, meaning a womb. And what is
that
connection, wondered Carlton? Humans are born in fear, blind, howling, hungry, and gasping for air, at the mercy of a hostile world. Was comedy then some kind of defense against fear? What happened in the ape’s evolution that transformed the snarl into a grin, and the bark into a laugh? Why in a few short millennia did aggressive animal danger signals turn into sit-com? He was back to the basic chimp problem.

He paused at the entrance to the main deck. If anything was waiting for him in there, it would be behind this door. He tensed and tried to imagine the tiny deadly bug lurking on the other side. Its steel metal coils poised to spring at him, its detonators waiting for the right moment. Instant oblivion. He hesitated, wondering what to do. There was really nothing for it but to go on. He slowly pushed open the door. Up ahead he thought he could hear a faint sound. Anxious now, he walked forward into the darkness. One pace, two paces. Then suddenly something touched him on the head. He leapt almost nine feet into the air. He screamed and flapped wildly at the bug, which somehow evaded him and jumped onto the floor. He resisted an impulse to run. It lay frozen on the floor at his feet, waiting to leap at him. This was his chance. “Gotcha,” he shouted, leaping at it. He was about to pull its head off when it said “Yo, Mama” in a little voice, “you wanna see something hot?” and he saw that he was throttling the sex doll. “Oops,” he said. And giggled. In sheer relief. Every alert system in his body was pounding as he sat on the floor and began to laugh.

What was he laughing at? Himself? Why was he laughing? In sheer joy that he was still alive? Well, he wasn’t technically alive, was he? But he wasn’t yet extinct, and that thought cheered him as he carefully swept the main deck for bugs. Every now and then he would look up at the sex doll, sitting on the command module, and giggle again. What was so funny about it? That he had been so terrified for an instant, so certain that he was dead? That he was mistaken, and in hindsight his blind panic appeared funny to him? He had been anticipating one thing, when all the time it was another. Was this then how comedy evolved?

Giggling in the darkness.

It was Alex. He was becoming hysterical. His body shook next to hers. Rocked with laughter.

“That is an inappropriate response to danger.” Katy could hardly contain herself either.

“I think not.”

“Yes it is. You are supposed to be conserving energy.”

“Oh, I’m conserving it all right.”

Actually, he was growing it.

“Stop it, Alex.”

“It’s not me. I can’t help it.”

Lying there in the dark next to the warm body of a beautiful woman, it would have taken a saint not to become aroused. Danger is an aphrodisiac. After all, it may be your DNA’s last chance to reproduce. They were young, healthy, and strapped together in a dark cabin with nothing else to do and hours stretching ahead of them. What would you do?

They hadn’t been lying in the dark for more than five minutes before Katy became aware of, how shall we say, Alex’s interest in her.

“I see you’re armed,” she said.

Pistol pocket—how long has that line been around?

“It’s purely for personal defense,” said Alex, blushing in the darkness.

Soon she was giggling too.

Was comedy then a way of dealing with terror, Carlton wondered? Fear and laughing? He had carefully checked the nuclear core, flicked on the emergency light, and looked around cautiously. It was all shut down. He flicked off the lights and went upstairs to check the staterooms. Nothing. He searched the swimming pool, the main hall, the sick bay, the galley, the games room, and the main deck. There was no sign of the bug. Whilst he swept, he had carefully scrutinized his reactions to the sex doll. He was certain that laughter and fear were inextricably entwined. He was also certain that mankind discovered comedy, and did not simply invent it. It had been there all along waiting to be used. There was so much danger in mankind’s past. People had evolved through fear, and perhaps the conquering of it. The tribe defended itself and its territory against attack from invaders. They hunted massive animals with spears. They lived in that state of watchful alertness in which animals live. Occasionally they emptied their bowels in sheer terror. This involuntary evacuation of the bowels during moments of great danger would be seen as something shameful, as revealing fears which the war paint, the tribal masks, and the military uniforms were designed to hide. So when they got home from the battle, or with the kill from the hunt, and after they had filled their bellies and sat around the fire telling each other tales, perhaps they were emboldened to laugh at their own fear, for they had survived. They could go on living and hunting. Comedy then was some kind of survival tool. It would be very useful to have something to help you deal with danger, some distancing mechanism so that you weren’t always terrified…ahhh! He almost leaped out of his metal skin. There was a bug right in front of him. Another step and it might have blown the entire ship to pieces. Was that funny? Shit no.

He stooped to pick it up, and then frowned. He held it at arms length and carefully examined it. It was different from the other one. It was hollow. It was unfinished. Then he realized. It was a decoy. Holy shit. A decoy?
It knows I’m after it!
He pondered the enormousness of this for a minute.
It’s playing with me
.

What should he do? Now the motherbug was alerted to his presence, it could crawl into any tiny space and wait him out. It could be behind the next corner waiting to pounce, or it could be hidden away, able to survive for years. How long did they have in the Evac? Two, maybe three days before intense cold would drive them out or kill them. Hypothermia. And there was another problem: The bug could scent his electrons. It would “paint” him as a power source. In which case he would suddenly become the hunted. How would comedy help him now?

Carlton inched slowly through the darkness. His night vision was good, though the star field provided some background illumination. His silhouette passed in front of the big picture windows. If he stayed away from them, he couldn’t easily be seen in the visible range, but he was horribly aware that the motherbug was lighting him up like a Christmas tree. Internally his electrons glowed to anything capable of seeing in the magnetic spectrum. It would be picking up both heat and energy sources. He was uncomfortably aware he was a sitting duck. That was a thought. Why not let the bug come to him? Lure it with bait and then trap it. He thought of Lewis and his strange hobby. Lewis loved fishing in space. Yes, I know there are no fish in space, but
catching
fish is not at all the main point of fishing. Ninety percent of the activity is sitting with rod and reel just simply mulling things over. Lewis spent hours in a space suit sitting on top of the
Ray
with his line dangling, contemplating the sheer beauty of the Universe. Once for a gag Alex had snuck out and put a frozen herring on his hook, which had almost given Lewis a heart attack when he reeled it in. But he refused to be laughed out of what he enjoyed. For him it was a perfectly reasonable sport. Once a fisherman, always a fisherman.