Confused Aliens - Part Five
What is good? What is evil? What is truth? Where is the head cook? Our lovable space nuts are close to the end of their journey, which started in disaster and has only gotten funnier from there. Catch up with the earlier misadventures here, or plunge ahead to the big finish.
Very soon I have a new pair of pillowy lips and a reconstructed layer of skin on my torso. That Sassafrass. She is gifted, and I tell her as much as I am leaving the recovery room.
"I would like to mate tonight," she tells me. "I have devised a way to fertilize our union. I have successfully altered my infundibulum."
"But won't our child be a monster? An unnatural life form?"
"Of course not," she says. "And what is natural, Admiral? If there is love?"
The hoyden is right. I lean my head up against the glass plate of her helmet and gaze longingly at the black leeches attached to her face. "I will come when I can," I whisper.
On my way back to the bridge I pass the mess hall and remember that I still haven't mopped up the demure and enterprising Third Engineer Fondugrappler. Sure enough, he is there in front of the closet in puddle form, and I signal for a janitor droid. After some time signaling I see that there is no janitor droid. I open the closet and find a mop and pail. I check to see that I am being watched by several diners before beginning to scoop him up and ring him out. They know that I have been hurt, and for them to see their Admiral engaged in manual labor while recovering is pure morale gold.
When I'm through I wheel Fondugrappler into the kitchen. "Where is the head cook?" I ask. In the center of the room, workers are stirring large vats of paste with six-foot wooden spoons. One of them looks up.
"I'm the head cook here," he says. "Name's Bill Yertle."
"Tell me, Head Cook Bill Yertle. Who has access to these vats? Is this room secure? I believe I have been poisoned."
He pulls his wooden spoon from the paste and wipes it down with a towel. "Don't like the paste, Admiral?" He spits on the ground. "Then don't eat the paste."
I feel my bowels grumble. I begin to salivate. Before I can reprimand him for his insolence, one of the workers picks up Third Engineer Fondugrappler's bucket and dumps him into a vat.
"No!" I cry, running across the room. The heat has woken Fondugrappler, but being in a boiling stew of yellow liquid is making it difficult for his molecules to reconstitute. Unfortunately, they try. The shape of his incomplete, screaming face rises up from the surface with stubby, diced hotdogs lodged into his forehead. The screams are gooey and tremendous.
"Fare thee well on your voyage into the unknown," I mutter. I decline to reach out and grab the partially-formed hand that is flailing and clawing at the side of the vat. "Goodnight sweet prince."
"What is that?" asks Head Cook Bill Yertle. "Is that a person?"
"His name was Third Engineer Fondugrappler," I murmur, but my voice is drowned out by the wailing. "Demure and enterprising."
Head Cook Bill Yertle is not listening. He has moved to the vat and is stabbing at the head with his wooden spoon, stuffing it back down into the vat. "This is good," he says, leaning into it. He looks at me. "My life is a constant search for protein," he says. Fondugrappler's hand grabs at the stick, and the two fight over it. Head Cook Bill Yertle turns to his workers. "Neuter! Golliwog! Some help over here?"
I leave the kitchen just as Fondugrappler's strength is giving out, and his screams have turned to shrieks of lament. In the lavatory I have a troubled movement and sit shaking afterward, my tail wrapped around me in the fetal position. The death has pierced me, and the thought that a lowly, disenchanted, recondite diplomat sees it as his right to murder, torture, and terrorize my crew -- my people, who look to me for guidance and safety and happiness -- has driven me to apoplexy, to rage, to ravenous wrath! In the mirror I see that I am snarling and frothing from the anger, and I can feel my sacrum instinctually elongating and turning. I must wait several minutes now before it shifts back to its usual position.
I pace. What are we doing here? I suddenly want to know. Alive? As Admiral I can never say that I am confused, and yet, truly, to be honest, I know nothing at all. My memory is not so clear. I have nightmares. I have insomnia. How is it that my mind produces thought, or my body produces movement? Why is it that there is anything at all, even a universe? Perhaps I am in need of religion after all.
"Fool," I say out loud. I sit on my haunches in the corner and rest my chin on my horn. I do not even know my own age. Yet Sassafrass would like a child. Why? For what? So it can one day die in a barrel of boiling soup? Murdered? There are large mysteries afoot.
The bathroom viewscreen flicks on, and I see Lieutenant Gleegluk's face peering at me from the wall. "Sir. Everything copacetic, sir?"
"Yes, Lieutenant." Fantastic word; he learned it from me.
"Dr. Sassafrass has reported that you left the medical ward some time ago, sir. May I ask when you will be returning to the bridge? I would very much like to speak in private."
"Soon, Gleegluk. I am...looking for the diplomat. Any news?"
"The exploratory team ordered to investigate the absence of Belvetron IV have flown their shuttle into the local star, sir."
"Casualties?"
"All."
"I will return within the hour. Keep a stiff upper lip." I say this even though Gleegluk has a calcium hoop, not an upper-lip. Ha!
The screen goes blank, and suddenly I am a philosopher again. What is good, really? What is evil, really? What is truth? I have never asked these questions. But perhaps I have -- I can't remember! On the horizon of my thoughts I see a new way of life for the ship and its crew. Rational order. Complexity. A common understanding. A new mission: One that--
Before I can finish the thought, something in the corner of the bathroom catches my eye. I lean down close to the ground and squint. I crawl forward. I see a small plume of smoke rising from the tiles, as though someone has just extinguished a match.
My hearts stop beating. It is a camp. It is a very, very small camp.
Yes! I can see the tent, the flag, the fire, the...man? Yes! A little man! An angel! A seraph! A phoenix! A cherub! A prophet! Amazing! I am saved! I ask a question, and God answers! A presence is here!
"Holiness!" I cry.
I see that he is moving. It is a vision! A visitation! It is a religious apparition! A new moment in my existence! This is me to the universe, and it is God speaking! He crawls into his tent, and then emerges with a rectangular sign no larger than one of my scales. A message! Euphoria! Epiphany! Some tiny, prophetic message! I stretch my neck further, squint harder. I can just make out the writing: THE PEOPLE OF BELVETRON IV WELCOME YOU
