The Ultimate Inferior Beings (36 page)

“No,” admitted the Mamm. “I
had some on this stick, but I’ve been waiting in the queue for so long that it
went out.”

“Sorry to hear that,” said
Alistair. “Perhaps you can describe what it does?”

“It burns things!”

“Burns things?”

“Yes. It destroys them
completely, giving off smoke and water vapour and leaving behind a black,
charred mass – like the black part of this stick.”

“I see,” said Alistair. “It
destroys things, does it?”

“Yes, quite rapidly,” said
the Mamm.

Alistair sighed. “Well what
use is that??” He felt his time was being wasted yet again.

The Mamm looked timidly at
the ground. “Well, er...”

“Next!”

The next Mamm stepped
forward. He looked a bit scruffy and worse for wear, as though he’d been in a
fight or something.

“Hello,” said Alistair
encouragingly.

“Hello,” said the Mamm a
little dreamily, clearly still a little shaken.

“Can I help you?”

“My name’s Gareth. I have
invented many, many things. Many things. Many, many.”

“Go on.”

“But my last invention
destroyed them all.”

“Oh.”

“I invented explosives, you
see. They are better than the last Mamm’s fire. More effective at destroying
things because they blow them up into a thousand pieces.”

“I see.” Alistair tried to
stay calm. “And what, pray, is the use of blowing something up into a thousand
pieces?”

Gareth thought for a bit.
“Well, since we need food, we could set traps to blow animals up!” He looked
hopefully at Alistair.

“Good,” said Alistair. “So
tell me, what would you eat, once you’d blown this animal up?”

“Ah,” said Gareth. “I hadn’t
thought of that.”

“Well go away and think about
it,” said Alistair.

He turned to the next Mamm,
but then he heard a murmuring further down the queue. All the Mamms were
turning and muttering to one another. Alistair turned to see the source of this
interest and spotted Reginald slithering towards him. And, behind him, he was
dragging the carcass of a dead syphon wolf. (Evolution had converted the syphon
rats into far bigger and fiercer creatures that now resembled wolves. Hence
their new name).

“What have you got there?”
asked Alistair with interest as Reginald approached.

“What does it look like?”
said Reginald.

“A syphon wolf.”

“Close,” said Reginald,
letting the carcass drop to the ground. “More accurately, it’s a dead syphon
wolf. You’ll notice that it is stationary. Non-moving, non-running and
non-escaping. All of which are the qualities that make it ideal for eating.”

“How did you manage that?”
asked Alistair in amazement. All the other Mamms in the queue were staring at
the body of the syphon in sheer disbelief.

“I threw a brick at it.”

All the Mamms gasped at Reginald’s
ingenuity.

“Originally I thought of
throwing a brick wall at it. But I couldn’t lift it. So I thought I’d try
throwing it one brick at a time. And, in fact, one brick was enough.”

“Very good,” said Alistair,
completely impressed. “Well done.”

“I bring this syphon wolf to
you, Alistair,” said Reginald. “I give it to you to eat. You deserve it!”

“Hear, hear,” shouted many
Mamms in the queue.

“No, I couldn’t,” said
Alistair.

“Stop being modest and start
eating,” said Reginald.

“I’m not being modest,” said
Alistair. “I can’t eat that! It’s dead.”

“It’s still warm,” said
Reginald. “It’s not been dead long. Besides, this is the way to save the Mamms
from starvation, For the Good of the Species.”

“In the Light of the Dark,”
responded the Mamms in the queue. This was in the days before this meaningless
expression had dropped out of favour.

“Now eat!” said Reginald, and
several Mamms echoed this order.

So Alistair ate. It made him
feel better and worse – both at the same time. All the Mamms cheered with joy.

“We’re going to need more
syphon wolves,” said Reginald. “I’ll get more bricks. You each take one and
then hunt as many animals as you need.”

The cheering grew in volume.

So, bricks were issued. The
Mamms, hungry after millennia of starvation, went out hunting and feasted until
they could eat no more. The syphon wolves nearly became extinct overnight. Of
course, there were plenty of other animals to feast on, but the Mamms bore a
particularly strong grudge against the syphon wolves from the long-distant past.

*

So, with the food shortage
crisis over, The Period of Deep Thinking was officially over. Unofficially, it
wasn’t. Alistair, out of a warped sense of duty, was determined to see all the
Mamms still remaining in the queue. And, as it happened, a number of good ideas
resulted.

“Remember me?” asked the Mamm
at the head of the queue.

“Should I?” asked Alistair.

“I gave you my book to read,
remember?”

Alistair nodded. “Ah, yes,”
he said. “I remember.”

“Well? What did you think of
it?”

Alistair gave an embarrassed
cough. “Well, I think it was a little too deep for me. I’m afraid I didn’t get
its profound message. Sorry.”

“It doesn’t have a profound
message,” said the disappointed author. “It’s a Teach Yourself to Read and
Write book. It’s meant to teach you to read and write. Did it?”

Alistair tried to think of a
tactful way of answering this question. “No,” he said at last. “It didn’t.”

“Oh,” said the author. “That
means I’ve failed.”

Alistair felt sorry for him.

“It’s got a money-back
guarantee,” said the author.

“That’s nice.”

“But since you didn’t pay for
it, I’ll make it up to you by personally teaching you to read and write. Would
you like that?”

Alistair thought for a bit.
He looked at the seemingly endless queue in front of him and wondered whether
it would be right to leave. Then he noticed Reginald approaching, so he quickly
turned to the author. “Okay. Teach me. But let’s go somewhere quiet.”

Alistair and the Mamm had
gone by the time Reginald reached the spot where they had been standing. He
looked about him. Seeing nothing but the long queue of Mamms he took it upon
himself to listen to their ideas and inventions in Alistair’s absence.

*

Alistair returned several
days later with the ability to read and write, and with an idea for a novel.

“How’s it going?” he asked
Reginald.

“Brilliant,” said Reginald.
“We’ve now got a planet-wide communication system, an efficient form of
transport, and even space travel.”

“Oh?” asked Alistair,
wondering why all the good inventions had come while he had been away.

“Yes. And, strangely enough,
the key ingredient to all these is...”

“The wheel?”

“No. The brick.”

“The brick,” echoed Alistair
hollowly.

“Yes, a marvellous invention,
that. I only wish I’d thought of it.” Reginald shook his head in wonder.

“Alright,” said Alistair
impatiently. “Tell me about it.”

“Right, right. Well, the
planet-wide communication system,” started Reginald. “The way it works is this.
You write the message you want to send on a piece of paper and tie it to a
brick. Then you throw the brick to whoever the message is intended for. And he
reads it. (Of course, we’re all going to have to learn to read and write now).”

“What if the intended
recipient is further away than you can throw?”

“Then you use a special brick
projector designed by Giles. It uses fire and explosives to blast the brick to
wherever you want. Pretty amazing, eh.”

“Hmm,” said Alistair, without
much conviction.

“Giles says he’s built an
even bigger brick projector that can project a spaceship, made of bricks, into
orbit. The spaceship has smaller brick projectors on the outside to allow it to
steer. It can carry up to five passengers, although I’m not sure if he’s
actually tested it yet.”

“Hmm,” said Alistair again.

Reginald then described the
efficient form of transport. This was the pulseway that could push a Mamm along
until a brick wall at the other end brought the traveller to a halt. “Takes a
bit of getting used to,” said Reginald. “But it works really well. Except
that...”

“What?”

“Except that it doesn’t work
so well across mountains and seas and things.”

“So what do you suggest?”
asked Alistair.

“Well, we need to reshape the
landscape. Make it perfectly flat.”

“And how do you propose to do
that?”

“Bricks!” said Reginald, his
eyes twinkling with excitement.

“I should have guessed,” said
Alistair, turning to leave.

“Don’t go,” implored
Reginald. “It’s a good idea, really it is. What I propose is that we brick up
the entire planet and then pour tar over the top to get a perfectly flat
surface.”

Alistair sighed heavily.
“Where would you get all the bricks from?”

“From Terry. He makes the
best. He’s a genius.”

“Alright, where is
he
going to get all the bricks from?”

“Oh,” said Reginald. “I
hadn’t thought of that.”

“Well then you’d better think
about it, hadn’t you.”

*

Back at the head of the queue
a few hours later there was no sign of Reginald. Alistair felt a sense of
relief and happily listened to the Mamms in the queue.

The first Mamm stepped
forward and held out a roundish object that seemed full of holes.

“What’s this?” asked Alistair.

“It’s a sponge,” answered the
Mamm. “I found it at the bottom of the sea.”

“At the bottom of the sea??”

 “How did you get to the
bottom of the sea?”

“I dived.”

“And you didn’t dissolve?”

“No, as you can see.”

“Well,” said Alistair,
clearly impressed by the Mamm’s achievement. “Well, well, well. That’s quite
amazing. Well done.”

The Mamm took a small, thin,
reed tube and inserted it into the side of the sponge. Alistair looked on with
interest. “What are you doing there?” he asked.

“Put your finger to the end
of the reed tube,” instructed the Mamm.

Alistair tentatively did so,
and immediately felt the slime of his finger being sucked into the tube and
then into the sponge.

“Hey, what’s going on?” he
yelled.

“It’s alright,” said the Mamm
reassuringly. “It’s sucking you up by capillary action.”

Alistair stood on the ground,
helpless. Most of the slime making up his arm was now inside the sponge and
only connected to the rest of him by a thin filament of slime in the reed tube.
“How do I get out of here??” he yelled in panic.

“Don’t panic,” said the Mamm.
“Just dribble out of the sponge.”

So Alistair dribbled out of
the sponge. As he did so, more of him was sucked up by the capillary tube into
the sponge. “Now what?” he asked.

“Keep dribbling out,”
instructed the Mamm. “Until all of you has passed through the tube and sponge.”

Alistair did just that and
fell with a slight splash on the ground. He felt dizzy and ill.

“How was that?” asked the
Mamm.

“Awful,” answered Alistair,
shaking his head groggily.

“Oh. Pity.”

Alistair fixed him with a
suspicious look. “You mean I was the first one who’s tried that?”

“Well, yes,” said the Mamm.
“But do you think one could get used to being in a sponge? Not a small one like
this, but a bigger one.”

“Why would anyone want to get
used to being in a sponge?”

“Somewhere to live. Somewhere
to call home.”

Alistair tried to stay calm.
“And what exactly would be the point?” he asked. “Would the sponge keep out the
rain? Would it cut out the Source? Would it lower our evaporation rate?”

“No,” said the Mamm.

“Then I don’t think so.”

“But...”

“Next!”

And so the Mamm went off,
looking dejected. But he was not one to be easily discouraged. He continued
diving for sponges and a made a small fortune in the property market.

*

A short while later, Alistair
noticed Reginald coming, or rather crawling, towards him.

“What’s up?” asked Alistair.

“I’ve been trying to brick up
the whole planet,” said Reginald feebly.