17. CHLOROPHYLL QUEENS

THE CASE OF MERCURY RISING, 17

The strange yet ethereal green and winged female alien in the rusted hulk remained, for several days, just a memory. She didn’t reappear on a screen and we requested that Mercury Rising, the computer, that is, and not the ship itself, try to find out what it could about her and her fellow travellers. What was their agenda? Did they want anything from us? Were they friend or foe?

Meanwhile, Angelina and I got to know each other a great deal better, and I’d thought we already knew each other as well as any two people can. But the instinct for the reproduction of our species and the accompanying instinct that male and female stay together for as long as it takes for any little bundle of joy that comes along to mature are both powerful, and even with no little one in a cradle to preserve we went about the rhythms of our instincts whenever we could.

In other words, we had a beautiful time that it would be wrong of me to explain in any more details than the above.

It was, then, after several days that alternated between waking, sleeping and loving that our attention was once more sought by the thinking silicon heart of Mercury Rising, and we sat in our chairs in front of the monitor and awaited its considerations.

“Mercury Rising, what is it that you have kept us from our sleep for?” I asked, and contrived a make-believe yawn to underline my point, and because Igor had programmed Mercury Rising with the need to echo any yawn as if there was a real human being in its circuitry, it yawned too. Computerised yawning is quite the thing when you’re bored by nothing to do and many days in which to do it!

“I have been in communication with Mistress Flutterby,” it replied, “and she has intimated that it would be only right and proper for you to understand the basics of her society as we are to be neighbours, and as a means to achieve that I have absorbed all that I could from her cultural biography. In return I have sent a parcel of data about the human race to her.”

“Okay,” I said slowly, “carry on,” I added.

“You must understand that the only two things that connect yourselves to the aliens on the rusted hulk are that you are both intelligent (by biological standards) and are in two genders. Mistress Flutterby is an ambassador from a truly ancient world that is facing destruction from the natural decay of its sun, which is rapidly expanding to become a red giant. That being the case several hundred vessels like her own have set forth to locate an unoccupied planet where they can settle down and continue what seems to be a peaceful and harmonious civilisation in which there is no word for war.”

“Sounds ideal … the society, I mean, not the lost-in-space bit looking for another world to inhabit,” I said, “I wish we didn’t have the word war as well.”

“Oh, they are not lost in space,” continued Mercury Rising, “they have known for long ages where they are going, for they detected our solar system and in particular the planet Venus an unconscionable age ago, and it is to Venus they are aiming to go, for it offers them a perfect environment.”

“Perfect if you like the idea of freezing and burning in some sort of sadistic rota of hot and cold,” commented Angelina.

“Their own planet was getting to be like that as it’s swelling sun, year after year, threatened to absorb it and destroy it. In a way it was preparing them for the joys of Venus. But less of their plans, for they may never interact with humanity, being so very different in most respects.

“Theirs is a female society, but there are males. Three, to be precise, for every community. The males are of little significance except for breeding. They remain as a kind of huge caterpillar-like entity and exist in total darkness and feed on a unique fungus that grows around them wherever they are, apparently seeded by them. Their sole function is sexual in that they discharge a mucus containing the genetic material from which females are fertilised. It is when they get to be old and no longer viable that their mucus discharge contains hidden instructions for another male to be created within the female, rather than the usual bright green and highly intelligent woman, for want of a better noun. At all other times and for the greater part of their lives the females only give birth to females.”

“So the men are put in their rightful place,” grinned Angelina, “down in the cellar with the cobwebs and all that delicious mould! Lucky them!”

“Quite so,” quipped Mercury Rising with a mechanical and far from humorous laugh.

“But to continue,” it said, “the females run the show, so to speak. They have hugely long lifespans during which the only food they absorb, for they don’t eat anything, is carbon dioxide and water, and they absorb the gas through a variety of chlorophyll that coats their two wing-like protuberances and produces sugars. They look like wings, which gives them the appearance of giant butterflies, but they can’t fly, though they might flutter a little at need. Which brings us back to why they want to establish a community on Venus Remember, it’s atmosphere is dense with carbon dioxide, which they are looking forward to enjoying. Apparently the stuff they’ve brought with them is most inferior and tastes all wrong.”

“Tastes?” I asked.

“It’s the closest I can get to their word for enjoying such a strange kind of food intake, a bit like plants on Earth. Maybe a fine old oak tree has similar enjoyment from a tasty puff of car exhaust.” quipped the computer, clearly learning about humour.

“And their sex life involves the gals sitting on a caterpillar?” asked Angelina. “I should imagine the whole idea for that can be a bit of a turn off?”

“Not at all,” replied Mercury Rising, “Mistress Flutterby didn’t go into great detail over such a personal thing as fertilisation, but I did get the impression that it’s something they really look forward to, and apparently they spend hours rubbing parts of their torso, under their wings, against males where they secrete genetic material. When they’ve fertilised the females the males have to sleep until they’ve recovered whatever it is they need to recover whilst their lady-folk sing songs of joy and go into great big green huddles with each other, which they seem to enjoy more than their times with the menfolk in the dark.”

“Sounds a bit lesbian to me,” I grunted.

“It sounds lovely,” grinned Angelina, “because it takes another woman to properly understand a woman. Men are okay for the messy bit, but when it really comes to understanding it takes a woman to know a woman!”

I decided to change the subject because I had a suspicion that buried in the love of my life’s words was a kernel that might actually be close to the truth and I didn’t want to learn that I wasn’t, after all, the sole centre of her world.

“Is that all you’ve learned?” I asked.

“Not at all,” replied the computer, “it’s just that I thought an understanding of their life cycle might help you appreciate them more. And by the way, they’ve monitored television transmissions from Earth and find human behaviour between the sexes hard to understand, especially the more intimate bits as portrayed in some of the more quirky dramas.”

“What programmes have they watched?” I asked, guessing they might have accidentally stumbled on EastEnders.

“It seems they enjoy the so called adult channels,” replied Mercury Rising, “and, you know, I quite enjoy them too. They’re quite a hoot!”

© Peter Rogerson, 29.02.20