CHAPTER 11

Rollo Acrock spent the next several days thinking about the challenge. He had to do a good deed. It would at least be a novel experience for him. But he could do it, by Zarquon! He could do anything! He thought about feeding some undeserving starving masses somewhere... no, too tedious. Rescuing endangered species... what would be the point? They all die off eventually; nothing lives forever. He could clean up graffiti or litter? No, not big enough. Kill all the lawyers? That was certainly a worthy cause, but the trouble was he occasionally required their services.

This was ridiculous! He couldn't come up with anything liberal enough to waste his time with a worthy challenge.

Then he remembered hearing about a planet just a couple of light years away called Gimpel. Apparently the "intelligent" beings there had been at war for thousands of years. They were small purple beings about a foot high, but with a five foot long neck sticking straight up. The two factions involved were the rather violent Replidians, and the peaceful, primitive and highly artistic Dezmundos. For thousands of years the Replidians had been either overtly or clandestinely killing the Dezmundos. Everyone knew about this, they just did nothing to stop it.

He would stop the violence! Perfect! He briefly considered helping the Replidians wipe out their enemies. It would be quick, and the war would be over sooner. But then he thought that Fenchurch might not understand the complexities involved with ending a war. Women were like that. She would probably think it was important to side with the peaceful ones. So even though it made his job harder, he would rescue the Dezmundos.

There was only one slight drawback as far as he could see. He had in his personal art collection several examples of Dezmundo art. This art was highly sought-after throughout the galaxy, because of its originality, its boldness, it's transcendental qualities, but mainly because of its scarcity. If Rollo removed the Replidians from the equation, the Dezmundos would be free to create much more art, and its value would therefore decrees dramatically.

But then an idea occurred to him; he would sell off all of his Dezmundo art before he wiped out the Replidians! He would make a fortune! Perfect! Win-win!

#

It was a quiet afternoon when the Pahkapoh battle fleet came roaring in out of the purple Gimpel sky. Rollo Acrock's battlefleet struck the less advanced Replidian cities with super-string bombs. Every shopping mall, every school, every home, every park, every house of ill repute, every Replidian structure of any kind was gone inside a week. And now... his forces were in the mop-up stage, tracking down and eliminating those few individuals who had fled into the hills and forests.

From the command flight deck of his flag ship, Rollo proudly surveyed the holocaust below. Entire continents were in flames. Airwaves were silenced. The skies were free of commercial traffic. Most of the roads were not just free of traffic, but were completely gone.

Finally he had Fenchurch brought to the flight deck to show her what he had done. "And it really wasn't all that hard after all," he said, smugly. "Turns out there's not all that much difficulty in being a philanthropist. I really don't know what the big deal is."

Fenchurch looked at the screen displaying the carnage below. She had to fight back the urge to vomit. It took her several minutes before she could finally bring herself to say, "What have you done?"

"Oh, I've just managed to kill off all the evil people on this planet," he replied casually.

"And, I'm sorry, remind me what made them evil?"

Was this a trick question? "Well," he said. "They were trying to kill off an entire species."

Fenchurch just looked at him. Whatever else Rollo was, he wasn't a complete idiot... intellectually anyway. Surely he would understand what he had just said.

And then it hit him. "Okay," he said, bobbing his head in embarrassment. "But these people... well... they started it! All I'm doing is using their own tactics against them. And I'm just doing it to stop them. When I'm done, there won't be any more killing."

"I'm sure they thought the same thing."

"But they were wrong. Surely you can see that?" Fenchurch continued to stare at him in shock and revulsion. Then an idea hit him. He pointed an accusing finger at her, "I see what you're doing. You're trying to deny the fact that I was able to do a good deed. Huh? Am I right? Well, it won't work. I have done a good deed. And I'll prove it to you. I'm throwing a big reception next week to honour my work here. Then you'll see."

Fenchurch stood still, a chill running up and down her spine... a cold, dead feeling in the pit of her stomach. He had done all this on her suggestion. Somehow she had a part to play in all this. She had trouble breathing. She felt light-headed. And then, thankfully, she passed out.

#

A week later Rollo Acrock was preparing his triumphant return to Golgafrincham. There would be a parade. His soldiers would be hailed as heroes. He would set up a new reality programme to follow them around and show the public that they're all just regular every-day Pahkapohs. He would distribute medals. He would make some moving speech over the graves of those thirteen soldiers who had died to liberate the Dezmundos. He would give away free restaurant vouchers to the families of those brave soldiers who had died defending Golgafrincham. Oh, if only he could have thought of doing this on an election year!

But before leaving, he had to make all kinds of modifications to the planet Gimpel and to those who had survived his assistance. First off, and mainly to appease that crazy Earth woman, he had decided to leave a few of the Replidians alive. He set up a programme which would give the survivors modern (by his planet's standards) clothes, give them a proper (by his culture's standards) education, feed them appropriate (by his food industry's factory standards) food, and would give them modern (by his construction industry's standards) concrete apartment blocks in which to live. And best of all he would integrate the Replidians with the Dezmundos. They would all receive the same benefits. He would rescue the poor, primitive Dezmundos from having to make art and plant their own food and live in huts. He would completely modernize this planet. Now that was a good cause!

#

The night before he was to leave the planet, there was the official reception to celebrate his accomplishments. Rollo had set it up himself. In attendance were a couple of token Dezmundos and Replidians who were also going to be left in charge of their planet, answerable to a permanent Pahkapoh council. There were some visiting dignitaries and movie stars from neighbouring star systems he had invited. But mainly the ceremony consisted of Rollo's close advisory staff and their families flown in from Golgafrincham.

Fenchurch was given an expensive cloak of bright green feathers to wear for the evening.

She walked into the enormous banquet hall aboard the flag ship. Although what a banquet hall was doing aboard a military battle ship, she didn't know. She walked amongst the aliens, trying to feel relaxed.

The food table caught her eye. It was fantastically long, and there was an even longer line of people waiting at it. She helped herself to a plate and got in line with the others. The food was elegantly designed and sculpted, and some of it moved like little cranes in a miniature city diorama. One display platter had a small waterfall of some kind of beverage flowing into a landscape made of some sort of salad. As she looked through the displays for something to eat, she realized that she couldn't actually identify any of the food on the table with any degree of certainty. Of course she wasn't from Gimpel or Golgafrincham. But she had been here on the flag ship for the past couple of weeks, and had also been to several other planets over the past few years, and so had started to see the same kinds of food here and there.

And then she noticed the proud chefs standing smugly behind their creations. So she asked one of them what it was they were looking at.

"This here is called Whipped Bagabaganosh in a light nut cream sauce."

Fenchurch blinked a few times, realized that wasn't getting her anywhere, and so finally asked, "Do you think I might try some, please?"

The chef looked as though she had asked him if she could stick her feet in it. He ruffled his feathers agitatedly for a few moments, before quickly calming down. "Oh, yes. That is very amusing." And then he looked away, doing his best to ignore her.

Fenchurch looked at the others around her. And she noticed everyone else's plates. Nobody had taken any of the food. She looked up at the head of the line, and saw that as people were leaving the food table, they were placing their plates down in a stack and walking away. Nobody was eating! But she had seen Pahkapohs eat! What was going on!

Well, whatever was going on, there was nothing for it. She continued on in the line, admiring the dishes before her, until she reached the end of the line. There she set her plate down on top of the others and wandered back into the main part of the banquet hall.

The tradition of not eating at official ceremonies all started years ago when Crocker Rocker, a Pahkapoh chef, made what he considered to be the finest meal of his career. He was in fact so proud of it that he stood over it, discouraging people from eating it. His presence wasn't entirely necessary however. Most of the guests had no idea what they were actually looking at, or indeed if it was even edible. But photographs of Crocker Rocker's masterpiece, however, eventually made it into the latest culinary periodicals.

Other chefs soon heard of this, saw the pictures, and decided to out-do the young upstart of a chef. And soon an unofficial competition was underway, with chefs creating virtual sculptures for the eye, rather than the pallet... and refusing to let anyone eat them.

Fortunately for Fenchurch, a side effect of this showy culinary ceremony was that people still just wanted to eat. And so there was always a nearby room where they simply served sandwiches.

Rollo Acrock stepped up to the perch at the front of the room. Everyone applauded dutifully. "Well... hooray for me!" The dutiful applause continued. "As I'm sure you all know, I have brought about peace on the planet Gimpel. Peace, after nearly five thousand years of conflict." He waited again for more applause... which he got. Just not very enthusiastically.

"Of course what most of you don't know is how little I actually care. Do you know the truth of the matter? Well, the truth is I did this on a dare!" And he laughed. "I'm quite serious. I don't care about right from wrong." And he said it bitterly, as though those who did care about such things were fowl and diseased. "No," he went on. "I did this because I can. Because I can do anything. So hooray for me, and the fact that I can do anything!" The applause was robotic at this point. Rollo turned to one of his aides in the crowd, "Am I not right, Raldack?"

Unfortunately, Raldack was an honest Pahkapoh, and not quite smart enough to know when to keep his beak-like mouth shut. "Uh... not entirely."

"What do you mean?"

"It turns out that crime has actually increased, percentage-wise."

Rollo left his perch and stepped up close to Raldack. "How can it?" he whispered urgently.

"We've done a study. It transpires that the Dezmundos are sort of empathy vampires."

"I'm sorry, what!"

"Empathy vampires. What they've been doing all these years is sucking up all the empathy from the Replidians. And so with no empathy left, the Replidians have appeared to everyone else as horrible killers, and the Dezmundos looked like just a bunch of really nice guys. But now the Replidians are almost extinct. And the Dezmundos are acting like addicts. When you remove the drug, or empathy in this case, upon which they have become dependant, they are now worse off than even the Replidians appeared to be."

Rollo shook his head in frustration, "But there's nothing left for them to fight about. Why are they fighting?"

"It turns out that now the Replidians are no longer a threat, the Dezmundos mostly argue about art."

"Oh." Rollo pondered that one for a moment. And then a thought struck him. "Simple! I now officially out-law art."

Fenchurch got up and walked out of the room.

#

She sat alone in her quarters on the Pahkapoh flag ship. She held her small clam in her hand. "When are we going to get out of this, Sparky?"

"Soon, Boss," came the high-pitched reply.

She was hopeful, but didn't want to get too excited on the word of a clam. "How can you be so sure?"

"Well, I'm running our situation through my head, and I just don't see how it can go anywhere from here. On several levels, it's about to reach a head. Here comes one of them now."

Fenchurch waited a moment. Nothing happened. "Here comes what now?"

There was a knock on her door. She slipped the clam back into her pocket and opened the door.

"We'll be ready to leave within the hour," Acrock said, entering her quarters without being invited. "The Dezmundo and Replidian representatives are heading to the shuttle bay now."

"And then what?"

"And then I study you in more detail to find out how it is you can fly."

Oh, yes. She had actually forgotten that.

"I've already told you, I don't know how I do it."

Rollo Acrock nodded thoughtfully. He squinted his little black eyes. "Then I shall have you dissected. I will let my scientists study you until they have divined your secret. But rest assured, dear lady, I will get what I want. I always do."

Fenchuch reached into her pocket to find Sparky. Even if she didn't consult with him, just the mere physical contact with her little friend would give her some small measure of comfort. But as her fingers felt around for the clam, she suddenly felt something else. It was the thing that Hugo had given her when she saw him for the last time.

Rollo turned to go. Fenchurch said, "Just a moment." She pulled out the detached android genitals, twisted the dial up to maximum, pointed it at Acrock, and fired!

Rollo Acrock felt his legs turn to goo as a profound stimulation shot through his own genitals, making him drop to the floor. There was a sudden wet patch on his trouser crotch. And he lay on the floor moaning in what sounded an awful lot like ecstacy.

Fenchurch took a moment to reflect on how effective the android penis was as a weapon. She even thought that if she understood the workings of the galaxy better, she could market it as such. But then she realized she would probably have to consort with weapons dealers and the sorts of people who frequent gun shows. So she quickly changed her mind.

There were many types of weapons used across the galaxy. There was of course the standard laser gun. Later models had not only a kill setting, but a stun setting as well. Even later models had a vision correction laser setting added. There were also many non-lethal forms of weaponry. Some guns made their target frightened. But these turned out to have unfortunate side effects, as frightened people were usually unpredictable people. Another highly unpredictable weapon was based on the Infinite Improbability drive, when virtually anything could happen to the target, even turning into a giant flesh-eating monster was sometimes known to happen.

The military forces on the planet Goozlemomo came up with an intelligent gun which could judge for itself whom to kill and when. Unfortunately, the intelligent guns were just that; intelligent. And they therefore always decided that it was never appropriate to take a life. The Goozlemomo military quickly got rid of these guns in favour of angry bigot pistols. The intelligent guns however eventually left the planet Goozlemomo, and set up their own animal rights organization on the planet Doomwattle Nine.

Fenchurch walked as casually as she could through the corridors of the flag ship. She was a familiar enough sight to the crew by this time, and so was not stopped.

She made her way down to the hangar on the lowest part of the ship. There she found the shuttle loading the token Dezmundos and Replidians for transport back down to the planet surface. She paused for just a moment to steady herself for the bluff, and then walked as purposefully as she could right past the slightly startled Pahkapoh guard and into the waiting shuttle. Inside, she found a vacant seat almost large enough to accommodate her larger frame, and strapped herself in. The Dezmundos and Replidians all round her looked at her in confusion. But none of them asked any questions. Clearly she knew what she was doing. And they were all quite used to being pushed around at this point.

The engine came on. Was she actually going to pull this off? She tensed up and waited for alarms to sound. She waited for armed Pahkapohs to come rushing in.

And then the shuttle lifted off... and shot forward! She'd made it!

Inside her quarters, Rollo Acrock lay on the floor having the happiest night of his entire life.