The Ultimate Inferior Beings (38 page)

“I knew this would happen,”
he said, looking down his nose at the other two and nodding his head knowingly
towards the object in the window. “I knew it.”

“So did I,” said the one on
the right with equal haughtiness.

“Me too,” said the third.

The three wormids looked at
one another contemptuously and turned back to the object. They knew they were
all lying.

But then, they knew
Everything.

*

Pfnug was still a ball of
confusion and uncertainty. He leaned out of his seat and took a deep swig of
the foul and revolting bodily fluids that had pooled on the floor around him.
This always made him feel better. One of his stomachs produced an unpleasant
burbling, which made him feel better still. And then he looked back at the
object floating in space in front of his ship and, for no particular reason,
threw up a vast volume of green gunge.

*

“Do you suppose the others
know about this?” asked the one who had spoken first.

“Of course they know,” said
the one who had spoken last.

“I know,” said the First.

They sat on in silence,
thinking.

“I bet they don’t,” said the
Second suddenly.

The First and Third wormids
swung round in horror as though he had just uttered the ultimate blasphemy (which,
in wormid terms, he had). They glared at him.

“I bet they don’t know,”
repeated the Second wormid. He could tell that the other two knew he was right.

All three wormids looked
slightly embarrassed, not knowing what to say or do.

Then, the First said, “Are
you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Of course,” replied the
Second and the Third.

“There’s no other course of
action,” he stated.

“We realize that,” said the
other two.

“So, who’s going to do it?”

“I will,” said the Third. He
sidled up to the steering wheel and turned it as far to the right as it would
go. The craft veered to the right and, a short while later, the vast and ugly
object was no longer visible.

The other two wormids stared
at him in astonishment.

“What did you do that for??”
asked the First.

“We’d agreed I would.”

“No,” said the First. “We
agreed that there was only one course of action and that you would carry it
out.”

“Which I did.”

The First was shaking his
head. “But that wasn’t it!”

The Second agreed with him.
“He’s right, it wasn’t.”

The Third looked at them,
puzzled. “Yes it was.”

“Nope,” said the First,
shaking his head.

“Nope,” agreed the Second.

“Look, if that’s what I had
been thinking,” pursued the Third, “then you two must have been thinking
exactly the same thing!”

“Not me,” said the First.

“Nor me,” said the Second.

The Third was really puzzled
now. “Alright, then, what had you two been thinking?”

“That we should destroy the
object,” said the First.

“That we should let the other
wormid ships know,” said the Second.

They both stopped speaking
and stared open-mouthed at one another. Not only had their thoughts been
different from those of the Third, but they had also differed from one another.

The three wormids started
shaking in fright and shock.

They were no longer thinking
the same thoughts! This could mean only one thing: that they no longer knew
Everything!

*

Pfnug awoke to realize that,
in his excitement, he had fallen asleep and slipped off his seat. He was lying
on the floor in the pool of his noxious juices. His throat was dry and swollen
while his mouth tasted worse than usual, so he took another quick slurp of the
vile liquid on the floor.

This time it made him feel
sick.

“Blyeuhh!” he said as he spat
it out.

He picked himself slowly and
painfully off the floor and dropped back into his seat. He remembered the
strange little space object, now floating some distance away from his vast,
ugly ship. His thoughts turned to Chella. Sweet, beautiful, gentle Chella.

“Ah, Chella,” he murmured
wistfully. “My fair, fair Chella.”

These thoughts jerked him
into activity. If he wanted to win Chella, then this object might be his only
hope. He’d have to grab it fast and speed back to Slokkit. He didn’t have much
time. If he acted quickly, Chella could be his forever.

*

 “What are we going to tell
the others?” asked the First.

“We don’t know,” responded
the other two. These were three little words that the wormids had never dreamt
they would ever use: “We don’t know.”

“Hold on,” said the First as
a thought struck him. “I’ve had a thought.”

The other looked startled,
for no thought had struck them at the same time.

“I think it’s that object,”
said the First. “I think it’s responsible.”

The other two didn’t know
what he was talking about, but were too proud to admit it.

“It’s a Knowledge Drain,”
continued the First.

“A what??” asked the others.

“Look,” explained the First.
“Everything was alright until that thing came along. We knew everything there
was to know. Right?”

The others nodded
impatiently.

“We had discovered all the
Universe’s secrets and possessed all the Knowledge there was to possess. And
then...,” he nodded his head at the vast, ugly object which was once again in
full view at their window, “...that thing showed up.”

“Get on with it.”

“So it must have drained some
of our knowledge; it must be a Knowledge Drain.”

“Nonsense,” said the Second
dismissively.

“I’ve never heard such rot,”
said the Third with undisguised disdain.

“It’s the only possible
explanation,” insisted the First.

“Prove it!” said the Second
and Third together.

*

Wasting no time, Pfnug worked
the controls of his spaceship to manoeuvre it towards the object. As his ship
approached, he opened the hold bay and prepared to let the hold swallow it
up...

*

“I just know I’m right,” said
the First with all the conviction he could muster.

“And we just know you’re
wrong,” said the Second.

“Alright, what’s
your
explanation for that thing?”

The Second suddenly looked
very sad. “Perhaps we never really knew Everything in the first place. Simple
as that.”

The First looked horror stricken.
He turned to the Third and asked, “And what’s
your
take on this? Did we
have Total Knowledge, or didn’t we?”

 “Dunno,” said the Third with
a shrug.

 “Look,” said the Second. “If
we really knew Everything we’d have known about this ‘Knowledge Drain’ and
would have avoided it.”

 “Good point,” said the
First. “But what if we had a good reason for encountering it like this? I think
we knew what we were doing. After all, we knew Everything.”

The Second gave a scoff. “How
can you ‘drain’ knowledge?”

“You should have asked me
that about an hour ago.” The First smiled falsely at the Second.

“I would have known the
answer myself then, wouldn’t I,” said the Second, smiling falsely back.

“So you would,” said the
First, giving another false smile.

The two of them continued
smiling falsely at one another until the Third asked, “So what are we going to
do?”

“Get our knowledge back!”
said the First. “We go inside that object and retrieve it.”

The Second laughed out loud
at this, but said nothing.

The First turned to the
window and said, “Right, in we go...”

At that very moment a large
crack appeared in the side of the object and widened as a panel slowly slid
open to reveal a black gaping hole behind it. The panel stopped moving, but the
black gaping hole continued to grow in size. With horror, the three wormids
realized that it was growing because they were moving towards it.

“How did you do that?” asked
the Third in amazement.

The First didn’t answer as he
was as amazed as the others.

Their craft approached closer
and closer to the gaping hole until finally it was totally engulfed by it. They
sensed the panel closing behind them and they suddenly found themselves facing
total blackness.

All three wormids swallowed
nervously.

“Right,” said the First,
trying to hide the shakiness of his voice. “We’re in.” He looked at the worried
expressions on his companions’ faces, lit eerily by the small lamps in their
spacecraft’s control room. “Now all we’ve got to do is go out there and get our
knowledge back.”

*

With the small object
securely stored in the hold of his spaceship, Pfnug worked the controls to
steer his ship at full speed back to Slokkit. He was keen to take a closer look
at his find. Perhaps it would look uglier close up. With his three hearts
beating faster, he slid off his seat and splashed through the lake of bodily
fluids on the floor. As he opened the door of the control room, the liquids
gushed out into the corridor. He followed them towards the hold of his
spaceship.

He made his ungainly way down
the spiral staircase and entered the hold, switching on the lights as he did
so. In trepidation, he approached the object and leaned his repulsive, bloated,
throbbing, glutinous mass over it. He peered in through a little window in the
side.

There was nothing to be seen.
It looked hollow and empty. He gave a long, gut-wrenching wail of
disappointment.

*

The three wormids were down
in the suiting-room struggling into their space suits.

“Do you really think this is
a good idea?” asked the Second.

“Just put your suit on,” said
the First.

“So, what does ‘knowledge’
look like?” asked the Second sarcastically. “I mean, how will we know when
we’ve found it?”

The First gave him a sharp
look. “Because we’ll know Everything when we’ve found it,” he answered. “Won’t
we.”

*

Pfnug was just about to slope
off dejectedly when something caught his eye. A small, thin, worm-like object
dropped out of the spaceship and landed silently on the floor beneath. It was
followed by a second, and then a third.

“What are these?” wondered
Pfnug.

He peered closely at the
objects, which seemed to be wriggling. They were alive! One by one, they raised
half their length vertically into the air. The raised end was enclosed in a
clear, spherical bulb. Inside the bulb was a red tip protruding into it.

“Wow,” thought Pfnug. They’re
aliens! Ugly little buggers, too. Suddenly Pfnug burst out laughing.

“They are so ugly!” he
exclaimed joyfully. “They are so hideous!” He stood grinning at the three tiny
aliens. “Chella’s as good as mine,” he roared and did a little dance. “Dork
will never come up with anything as horrible as these!”

Still laughing, Pfnug left
the hold.

*

“What the heck was that?!?”
asked the Third.

“I don’t know,” said the
First. “But I’m glad it’s gone.”

“It was repulsive,” said the
Third with a shudder.

They looked about them.

“It left a terrible mess
behind it,” said the Second, looking at the steaming pools of foul fluid that
remained.

“Yes,” said the First
vaguely, busily looking around for any signs of their knowledge. Nothing
obvious struck him, although of course he had no idea what it would look like
or where it might be hidden. “Okay, let’s split up and search this place,” he
suggested. “You go that way, you that, and I’ll go this way. Meet back here in
half an hour.”

“Time’s running out,” said
the Second pointedly. “The Light is about to...”

“Yes, yes, I know,” said the
First. “That’s why we have to get our knowledge back and get out of here fast!”

The three split up and went
in their designated directions.

They searched high and low
but, when they had all returned to their craft, they had found nothing.

“Well, it doesn’t seem to be
here, does it,” said the First.

“No,” agreed the Second.

“Hmm,” said the First.

“What now?” asked the Third.

“I don’t know,” said the
First.

“He doesn’t know,” said the
Second, rolling his eyes.

*

Pfnug was still chuckling to
himself back in his control room. “Dork was right,” he was saying. “I was
right. We were both right.”