20. LAST ORDERS

THE CASE OF MERCURY RISING, 20

When I look at Angelina when she’s sleeping I get a truly uncomfortable feeling that my attitude to the female sex has been very wrong for most of my life to date. I look at her and I see strength beyond any mere physical strength I may have, and I see wisdom beyond any perverse wisdom I may have accrued over the years, and yet she is younger than me. And so my mind keeps going back to what life must be like for the green butterfly-like folk on their way to settle on Venus, and I hope that they find the conditions suitable for their strange species. From what I’ve read it’s the hottest and most hostile rock in the entire solar system! We couldn’t cope with it, but hopefully that will be able to.

Of course, my attitude to women has two fundamental flaws to it. Firstly, like all of my gender I have been brainwashed to believe that men are innately superior, that the male line in any family is the vital one even though I also accept the apparent contradiction that a woman always knows she is genetically related to her offspring but a man, unless he has a paternity test, can never be absolutely certain. There’s always a bored housewife, and a milkman.

The second flaw is one that lies deep within our male egos, that we must be superior to the gentle ones because, hey, look, I’m mighty tough and have muscles that the fair sex would die for. They wouldn’t, of course, but we fool ourselves into believing it anyway.

All this is my way of trying to come to terms with understanding a society in which the female is not only dominant but has evolved to the extent that the males are little more than slugs that ooze genetic material and sleep. Not much of a sex life there, then, but maybe all that evolution demands...

“Snap out of it!” suggested Angelina when she saw that I was lost in my own thoughts and curious about what might be going on in my mind.

“I was just wondering,” I murmured, “I mean, what is the real difference between a man and a woman?”

“Without mentioning genitals, you mean?” she asked, grinning.

“If possible,” I replied, though, being a man, I must admit the presence of genitalia is almost constantly popping into my mind in one way or another. After all, part of the success of our species and an explanation of how we’ve flooded the market with life is more to do with daydreaming than making love. Work that one out if you can, but I know what I mean!

“Well?” she asked.

“I was thinking about the girl-only green people who are hoping to set up home on Venus,” I said, “being female only, that is, because I doubt even they spend much time thinking about their slugs … I mean, their males.”

“So that’s how you interpret what you’ve learned?” she grinned, “that the males are slugs?”

“Well, that’s how it seemed to me from what the computer told us.”

“And I saw them as caterpillars,” she told me, “lovely green hairy caterpillars with a darned sight more going on in their minds than slugs might have!”

“It can’t be much of a life for them, though,” I said, almost defensively.

“What d you mean?”

“Well, lying there, munching on fungi, dripping with genes for the ladies to rub on, and sleeping almost all of the time,” I said.

“Surely it’s all a matter or perspective,” argued Angelina, “they provide their share of the future, but the ladies are better equipped to finish the job. After all, if all you need to do in order to grow is absorb carbon dioxide and drink a drop of water then the womenfolk don't need the blokes, do they? No savage in the hunting fields with his flint-tipped arrows, no wild man in a loincloth hurling his spear at his prey and swearing because he’s missed...”

“My ancestors never missed! We’ve got keen eyes!” I put in.

“Attention,” said Mercury Rising just as our chat was showing signs of getting interesting with us starting a verbal gender war.

“We’re almost there,” it said, “now pay attention. I’ve been programmed to make absolutely certain I say this to you, whether you know it or not.”

“Go ahead then,” I said, and Angelina held my hand across the gap between our chairs and squeezed my fingers. That, I thought in a fleeting moment, is what women are for, comforting men when there’s a bit of tension in the air. Being there, not just a gender but a crutch rather than a crotch.

Mercury Rising began its speech, the first one I suppose that had been pre-programmed into it, and the monitor screen also flickered into life. It had been off quite a lot lately because one day’s view of empty space is just like any other’s and we’d exhausted the supply of old films that Igor had thoughtfully provided for our entertainment. Somehow he’d known we both enjoyed the gentle smut of Carry On films and could willingly watch most of them twice or even three times!

“We are in orbit round Mercury and keeping as far as any orbit can away from too much direct exposure to the sun, for radiation shields can only deflect so much,” intoned the computer. “There are no windows on this vehicle for that very reason. Now pay attention to Igor on the Monitor.”

The face of Igor appeared on the screen.

“So you’ve made it this far with a little luck and a fair wind,” he said, and grinned through his beard. “What follows is the expulsion of my wretched diamonds into space, and the process is quite simple. Using the principle that a wind will blow anything light enough away, you must place the small bag of diamonds into a pouch on a special lightweight cushion you will find in the locker in the airlock and then place it by the door, making sure you don’t do anything that might open that door while you’re still in the airlock. That would be truly unpleasant for you and would lead to two dead people, probably exploding as they hung in space until the sun drew them into it and consumed them. Nasty!

“Then you must leave the airlock and return to your seats. Belt yourselves in. That’s in case there’s any equal and opposite reaction to the outer door being opened automatically by the computer and the special lightweight cushion being blown out of the airlock into empty space. Please check via the monitor that you see the cushion and its little bag of diamonds drifting away from your craft. They will not seem to be hurtling towards the sun, but probably drifting slowly away from you. But fear not, they will soon become one with the sun due to gravity and the speed that has been carefully calculated to ensure that happens. And thank you very much. Once they’ve gone that will be a load off my mind and I can feel free to wander through fields of keck again!”

I looked at Angelina, and she smiled back at me.

And that smile said it all: the absolute superiority of the female sex from my own particular perspective.

“I’ll do it. Give me the diamonds,” I said, and reached towards her.

“Where’s my handbag?” she asked suddenly looking in the locker where she’d put it all those weeks ago when we’d set off, “it’s not here!”

© Peter Rogerson, 03.03.20