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Three Penguins South
"Are we having fun yet?" muttered Fai as the snowfall dissipated. Ithil Umudurasha waddled to the edge of the ice floe and peered into the dark green ocean. "Bill Griffith. Cartoonist. America, seventies and onwards. His character 'Zippy the Pinhead' used to say that. The expression was later stolen by Ziggy, Garfield and Bart Simpson. But it was Bill Griffith's." Fai rolled her eyes as best a penguin could. "I know. I know I know OH GOD WHY ARE METAMORPH CONVERSATIONS SO BORING?" she squawked, flapping her wings angrily. "Because a large amount of what you know is taken directly from the -" " - from the Metamorph net. Yeah. The knowledge we all share." Ithil waddled back to the hole Fai had dug for them. "Want to play the Reference Game?" Fai turned to look at the other penguin. "The what?" "Hah! That one isn't on the net, but it refers to it. I'm surprised you haven't played it - most newbies are instructed in retrieval techniques and told how to play. You were an emergency conversion so they may have skipped it. It goes like this: one player presents a quote and the other player - or the next - has to search the net and find the context, or complete the phrase. The one who completes it gets to pick the next one. Usual polite intervals between Query and Response. I'll go first! So... uh... 'Rex Nemorensis'." "Easy. 'King of the Woods.' My turn. 'There is no spoon.'" Ithil squawked and ruffled his neck feathers. "Easy easy utterly easy-peasy! Neo, from 'The Matrix', about to jump off that building. Now. Hmm. The head-dress of Kamajaya?" Fai: "Um." Ithil: "Heh." Fai: "Don't rush me! I've only got one nanogravitic link, so my bandwidth is dreadful... uh, Javanese puppet theatre, Kamajaya... gelung supit urang with sumping but no diadem. No hair curl. So. 'The devil is clever, but - '...?" Ithil: "But God doesn't love him. Maxim Gorky, 'My Apprenticeship'. Ok. 'A little song, a little dance -' ...?" Fai tilted her head. "Can you be more specific?" "Nope. That's the game: any metamorph can look stuff up on the net. The hard part is guessing what I'm thinking." "Ah. Then my guess is 'A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.' From the euolgy for Chuckles the Clown, 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show.' Okay. 'Terror, like charity, begins at home'?" "'You Sound Like Louis Burdett', by the Whitlams. My turn. 'The dead don't die...?'" "'The dead don't die, they just look on and help.' D.H.Laurence. Um..." There was a quiet splash and a third penguin joined them. It bellied across the snow-gritted ice with half a large fish in its beak and slid into the hole, knocking the other two penguins over. "'The tygers of wrath' - " Fai managed, head buried in snow. "' - are wiser than the horses of reason'. William Blake." chirruped the new penguin. "Hey. I found a data fish." Ithil had been prepared to ignore the new penguin for the moment but his exasperation won through. "Blake. That was going to be my guess, Nine Three." Nine Three blinked. "Hey, take my turn. I want to read the data encrypted in this fish." It pecked at its find. Ithil preened and after a pause suitable to convey his disdain, quoted "'A vengeance on her, said these wise men, we did not make our hedge high enough!'" There was another pause while the wind picked up, blew snow about, keened over the ice. Nine Three ate the fish. "Beats me," said Fai, who had lost interest in the game. "Oh. Well. 'The Wise Men of Gotham Attempt to Entrap a Cuckoo Within a Circular Hedge So That They May Hear It Sing All Year 'Round." Nine Three made an authentic-sounding penguin chittering noise. "I think you made that one up." Ithil fluffed up indignantly. "I don't recall the exact context. Something about early English broadsheets." Fai shuffled about impatiently. "Nine Three. What news from the mainland?" "Hang on, still unpacking... well, the war is still on. Most of China is gone. America is in three pieces... the Soviet Union attacked itself! Can you believe that?" Fai shook her head. "I hope Wensicia got her trolls out of Archangelsk before that." "I'm sure they did," purred Ithil. "Has the Dominion stepped in?" "Not yet. They are in the area, though - blindside orbit behind the moon. We've tried to contact them. They haven't deigned to reply." Fai glanced up nervously. "And in the meantime we hide out at the wrong end of the planet disguised as penguins, hoping that the Dominion doesn't descend upon us and kill us. And the humans are wreaking thermonuclear devastation on themselves." Ithil stole a piece of fish tail from Nine Three and gulped it down. "I like being a penguin. It's uncomplicated." Fai squawked. "It's COLD! I want to SUN-BAKE again! I am sick of the taste of fish!" Nine Three turned away and politely extruded a small square shape from its other side: a 300 ml.Big M flavoured milk drink (banana). Fai dipped her beak down and looked at Nine Three, which was as close to a smile as a penguin could get without altering the structure of the beak. "Thank you! But are you sure we should be doing energy work, with the Dominion watching?" Nine Three glanced up involuntarily. "Their tech is as good as ours. Better, if you recall that fucking debacle in hyperspace." Fai closed her eyes and checked this reference. A group of Metamorphs had gone into hyperspace, looking for others of their kind. The Dominion had found them and killed them, presumably in retaliation for the mistaken attack on their outpost in the asteroid belt. The survivors of the Metamorph fleet had scattered, and word of their trials had only just gotten back to Earth. After this the Metamorphs had gone into hiding until a negotiation could be effected. Unfortunately, the Dominion wearen't replying. So three Metamorphs - Fai, Nine Three and Ithil Umudurasha - were pretending to be penguins. Other Metamorphs were disguised as humans (or near-humans; the Maracites were poised to take over Melbourne), as forests, as buildings. The two elephants in the African enclosure of the Toronto Zoo, for example, were more than they appeared to be. Most Metamorphs pretended to be human. Fai jabbed her beak into the carton, up-ended it and spilled yellow milk down her front. "Damn it!" she spluttered. That's it. I've had enough of this particular Limiting Game. I'm going to become a... " she paused. "A tribes-woman of the Tunguska swamps. Anything. Something with HANDS." "You mean the Evenks?" "Yeah. Them." "I think I'll join you," said Ithil ("She needs a guide, I think"). "Me three," said Nine Three ("They both need guides."). "Although I think I'll stay as a penguin." "That'll excite the ornithologists. The first recorded observation of the rare Tunguskan Penguin." --- Wed, 25 Aug 1999 |
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