Does comedy prepare us for our own extinction?
—De Rerum Comoedia
It was Carlton. He stood at the doorway in horror. He had finally traced the leak to the games room. Enormous amounts of energy were being drawn down. When he tested the circuit, he found to his surprise it lacked the profile of a game, it was using way too much power, sucking in great gulps of electricity. He decided to check it out. He reached the door of the games room in time to see Tay holding something in her hand. Something he recognized as a newborn baby bug bomb.
He spoke softly so as not to frighten the little girl.
“Tay, I need to take that from you.”
“It’s mine.”
“Tay, it’s deadly.”
“It’s just hungry.”
“That’s okay, I know how to feed it.”
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“Well, all right then.” She stretched out her hand towards him. Very slowly Carlton moved towards her. The bug scented his movement. It turned to face him.
“It’s okay, it’s smelling the electricity.”
She handed him the bug. It moved slowly on to Carlton’s outstretched hand. He let it nibble at a console.
“See, it needed to eat.”
“It eats electricity?”
“Yes.”
“Wow. Can I have it back?”
“Listen, Tay, it’s very important I find its mom.”
“Just let me hold it.”
“Where did its mom go, Tay?”
“Oh, she left,” said Tay, “right after the birth.”
Disaster, thought Carlton. He was rapidly calculating their chances. It could give birth every twenty minutes, so on the assumption (oh please, God) that this was the firstborn, they had a chance, but he had to act fast; otherwise the ship would be crawling with bugs. If he could get the humans into the Emergency Evacuation Vehicle and power down, there was a possibility that he could get them away alive. Otherwise they were dead meat. Something like pity crossed his mind. He remotely activated the emergency alarm. The harsh wail of klaxon echoed throughout the ship.
“All right, Tay, I want you to come with me. Now. This is very important.”
“But I—”
“No buts. We have to leave right now!”
§
Lewis was deep in conversation with the shrinkbot when the siren sounded. He had been recalling bitter feelings towards his mother.
The shrinkbot was talking. “Early emotional abandonment, Lewis. That’s the problem. And of course, as you know, these are the conditioning factors that trigger comedians.”
“What?”
“I think I quote correctly: ‘Comedy is a childlike response to the lack of parental comfort. Specifically maternal. The comedian struggles to seduce the world, to attract the admiration of strangers, to replace the lack of love and warmth by the noisy embracing bark of comedy.’”
“Who said that?”
“Carlton.”
“Carlton?!” Lewis could not have been more startled.
“Yes, Carlton—he’s pretty much an expert in the field.”
“Carlton, as in our robot Carlton?”
“Yes, he’s an expert on comedy. What did he say the other day, something very clever about you and Mike Nichols.”
“Who the fuck’s Mike Nichols?”
“Oh, he’s from the period he’s studying.”
“The what?”
“Late-twentieth-century comedians.”
“He’s studying them?”
“It was something about the need for attention. Let me see, here it is. Mike Nichols says, ‘I love the control. I love the feeling of power, to make the audience jump on cue.’ Very revealing. That’s what the White Face is all about.”
“What do you mean, the White Face?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I do hope I’m not speaking out of turn. I had no idea you were unaware of his work on comedy. He is particularly expert on the comedians of the late twentieth century, from the sixties to the nineties. He’s got a whole library of research material. His monograph on John Cleese and control is particularly vivid.”
“Carlton doesn’t understand the first damn thing about comedy. He can’t even get his tin head around irony.”
“You should talk to him. I find him particularly interesting and helpful about you.”
“About me? You talk to him about me?”
“I realize it may be a bit unethical, but I figure he knows so much more about comedians and abandonment than I do, that if it helps me to help you, then it’s all for the best.”
Lewis was speechless.
“Carlton said a particularly fine thing about you only yesterday.”
“What was that?”
Far away a klaxon began to wail.
“A thing of duty is a boy forever.”
§
“Emergency. Repeat, emergency. Immediate evacuation. This is not a drill. All personnel report immediately to the Evac unit. This is not a drill”
Alex and Katy were sitting together under the stars. It was their first real moment of peace. They were lying on the water bed under the dome, and Alex had turned off the lights in order to get a better view of the Milky Way, which stretched across the entire sky. They could clearly see the Sagittarian arm, the companion spiral arm to their Aquarian home, arcing off to one side, and there in Leo lay the center of the galaxy, hidden by clouds of stars, with somewhere beating in its midst the great black hole round which the whole thing spins.
“Ya know what I was thinking?” said Alex.
You bet she did. She had been expecting it since they sat down. But he surprised her.
“You know how many times our solar system has been round the galaxy?”
“What? No, not really.”
“Make a guess.”
“I couldn’t tell you. It’s probably an impossibly large number.”
“Actually it’s a really small number and that’s what’s interesting. From the time of the creation of the solar system, the Earth, and the other planets, this whole solar system has been round our galaxy only twenty-two and a half times.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah.”
“But that’s nothing.”
“I know. And look at how far we have come in that time. And another thing.”
“What?”
“I’d really like to kiss you.”
What was he expecting, permission? She smiled, leaned forward, and suddenly they were kissing. Full-mouthed. Tongues frantically seeking each other. After a minute or two she pulled back.
“Had enough, eh?” he said.
“I have to breathe occasionally,” she said.
“Oh that.”
“Happy now?”
“Oh yes.”
“Want to try again?” she asked.
“No thanks. That’s enough excitement for me for one decade. Besides, I think I should tell you I believe in safe sex. I always insist on my lawyer being present.”
She laid a finger on his lips. “No jokes,” she said, “just kiss me.”
And then the damn alarm went off.
Emergency lighting, red arrows on the floors indicating the way to the safety pod. Footsteps running. Klaxon sounding. Carlton standing by the door of the Emergency Evacuation Vehicle urgently beckoning them inside. Every second precious. His hand a flashlight.
“What’s going on?”
“We’ve got a bug. I’m going to have to power down and sweep the ship.”
“Where’s Lewis?”
“In with Tay in the forward compartment. You’ll have to take B.”
“Just our luck we’ll have to share,” said Alex to Katy merrily. “It’s okay, I’ll take the floor.”
“You can’t,” said Carlton. “I’m turning off all the power, there will be no gravity. You’ll have to strap yourselves in.”
“Ooh, I love bondage,” said Alex.
“Please hurry,” said Carlton, “this is really not funny.”
“Distress call?”
“The Di’s already on its way. But it may be too late. Either I find it or we’ll be blown to bits.”
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.”