Profundis

by Richard Cowper

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

Tom Jones is naïve, impressionable and very, very willing. His chief talent is conversing with dolphins in the Aquatic Mammals Division of HMS Profundis, a gargantuan submarine destined to roam the ocean depths for a century following the nuclear holocaust. Years pass and mad captain succeeds mad captain. Eventually the ship falls under the command of one Admiral Prood, a kind, understanding man who finally comes to a startling conclusion. He is God the Father. The Almighty Himself. And all he needs now is a son to sit at his right hand. Enter the innocent Tom Jones.

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 156

Sample

KN4/2-034-17/Jones, T. (M(AQ)C Grade 3) pushed the rectangle of pale blue plasticard which carried this vital information magnetically encoded upon its surface into the arrowed slot above an idiotgram of a steaming and brimming bowl, pressed the button and reached hopefully into the metal niche. He was rewarded with a glutinous hiccup and a squirt of lukewarm sludge, most of which ran down the back of his thumb and ended up in the sleeve of his green overall.

Tom withdrew his hand, gazed at it glumly for a moment and sighed profoundly. Then he retrieved his card which was fastened by a plastic lace about his neck and began licking at the rapidly congealing goo. Scarcely had his tongue made its first tentative contact than three empty plastic beakers plopped down inside the nauseous womb of the dispenser. A faint gleam of hope flickered like a sardine in the liquid depths of the boy’s brown eyes. Perhaps after all this was going to be his lucky day. But the capricious and invisible spout had decided otherwise. Tom lingered for a minute then turned away and began, rather ineffectually, trying to scoop up the gluey residue that still remained within his sleeve, using for a spoon a segment of the gritty biscuit which comprised the other half of his midday meal.

He was still scraping away disconsolately when he heard a voice close beside his left ear whisper: ‘Pst! Tom!’

Tom glanced over his shoulder and observed a small metal ventilation grille partly concealed behind a snaking labyrinth of grey pipes. It seemed unlikely that the voice could have come from there and since, apart from himself, the sustenance station was deserted, he concluded that his ears had deceived him. But no sooner had he returned his attention to his clammy sleeve than the voice came again. ‘Up here, stupid!’

Tom scanned the bulkhead above him and even contrived to peer behind the pipes. ‘Is that you, Taper?’

‘Who else?’

‘Where are you?’

‘Com point K 547.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Abaft the grille.’

‘Oh,’ said Tom, squinting into the metal lattice. ‘Well, what do you want?’

‘Enjoying our lunch, are we?’

‘Did you do that, Taper?’

‘What d’you take me for, son? A sadist?’

‘A what?’

‘Forget it. Do you want another soup?’

‘Yes. But I can’t, Taper. You know that.’

‘Of course you can, Tom. I’ll see the record’s scrubbed. Go right ahead.’

Tom looked across longingly at the noisome niche then shook his head sadly. ‘It’s no good, Taper. I just can’t.’

‘Scared are we?’

‘Yes,’ said Tom simply.

‘You know what you are, boy?’

‘What?’

‘You’re a lily-livered, yellow-backed, willy wet-leg. A milksop. In other words a grovelling, snivelling, snotty-nosed coward.’

‘I know that, Taper. But it’s just the way I am. I can’t help it.’

‘Of course you can help it. Being a coward isn’t a way of life, you know. It’s – it’s undignified.’

‘It’s all very well for you to talk like that, Taper. You’ve never had to swab out the correction bay after an assize. The last time I did it I couldn’t sleep for a week.’

From behind the bars of the grille came something which sounded like a faint tinny sigh. ‘Well, we can talk about it some other time. All I wanted was to tell you you’re getting another Handler in your tank section. Name of Cecil.’

‘What about Arthur?’

‘He’s on transfer to Admin.’

From a metal loudspeaker at the end of the alley a bosun’s whistle shrilled and a strident female voice screamed: ‘Fall in! Fall in! Fall in!’

Still sucking at his sleeve Tom broke into a shuffling trot which carried him clattering down three companionways on to a compo-surfaced pedaway which he rode for two hundred yards to a main elevator. This in its turn deposited him in yet another dimly lit metal alley down which he shambled until he reached a door marked ‘SECTION 4 MAMMALS (AQUATIC)’. He presented his identity card to the security screen, the door slid open, and he walked down the metal ramp towards a large, circular, transparent tank in which four, middle-sized, bottle-nosed dolphins were cruising slowly round and round.

As Tom approached the side of the tank one of the creatures thrust its head clear of the surface and emitted a sound which can best be described as lying somewhere between a wolf-whistle and a wet raspberry.

‘Hi, Judy,’ responded the boy listlessly.

The dolphin made a sympathetic sucking noise, submerged, and then surfaced again at the edge of the tank close to where Tom was standing. Her head rose until it was on a level with his own. Her blow-hole twitched. ‘What’s up, son?’

Individually the words were perfectly articulated, but they were pitched in so high a register that to an untrained ear they would have seemed no more intelligible than a series of squeaks. To Tom who had spent most of his cognizant life in the company of dolphins they sounded almost as normal as human speech. As a ‘Mammal (Aquatic) Communicator Grade 3’ he would have been perfectly capable of replying in basic dolphinese, but because he still tended to make ludicrous mistakes in his irregular verbs he usually took the easy way out and had long since resigned himself to never rising above his present lowly technical grade. ‘It’s Taper,’ he said.

‘I guessed as much,’ said Judy. ‘Well, what’s he been saying?’

‘Arthur’s on transfer to Admin.’

‘So what?’

‘He’s being replaced with another Handler. At least that’s what Taper says.’

‘And that’s why you’re looking blue? You’re crazy!’

Tom nodded. ‘But you know how I hate changes, Judy. I’m used to Arthur. I admit I don’t like Arthur, but I’m used to him.’

‘He’s a creep. And kinky with it. You’re well shot of him I say.’

I don’t suppose his replacement will be any better, though. Hey, did I tell you Arthur had asked me to go on leave with him?’

‘He did?’

‘Yes. To some place he knows up on “E” Deck. It sounded pretty good to me, Judy. Not cheap though.’

‘You’re going?’

‘I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve never seen “E”. They’ve got real live girls up there, so Arthur says.’

‘Arthur!’ Judy blew a reverberant raspberry. ‘That creep would say anything if he thought it might help him to score.’

‘JONES!’ The brazen summons cannoned off the metal walls of the tank room and ricocheted back and forth with such venom that Judy promptly ducked beneath the surface and peered out at Tom apprehensively through the transparent wall.

‘Aye-aye, Sar’nt Major.’

‘Cummere! Attadouble!’

Tom turned on his heel and trotted the ten or so paces which separated him from the plexiglass fronted cubicle where Marine Sergeant Major (A) Goff was leaning back in a swivel chair excavating among his stainless steel molars with a pair of draughtsman’s dividers.

‘Sar’nt Major?’

‘Cumminere, Jones! An’ putcher atton!’

Tom dragged his fatigue cap from his pocket, thrust it on to his head, saluted, and trotted the additional four paces round to the door of the cubicle. ‘KN-four-stroke-two-dash-oh-three-four-dash-one-seven-stroke-Jones T. reporting, Sar’nt Major!’ he cried, whipping his cap off again.

Sergeant Major (A) Goff sucked ruminatively at an iridium incisor, eyed the trembling youth with frank contempt and then scrutinized the point of his dividers. Since he was one hundred per cent android, Goff actually had no need of any nutriment other than a regular supply of A/C but he prided himself upon his simulation of authentic detail and had, indeed, recently fabricated for himself a quite remarkable service history. According to this he had first served under General Buller in the Boer War then transferred into the Royal Marines in which, twelve years later, he had won the Military Medal for outstanding bravery under enemy fire at Sula Bay. Having had this ‘past’ vetted through the appropriate channels for historical accuracy (though, had it been true, it would have given him a real age of almost two centuries) Goff had applied for permission to have the data superimposed upon his existing cortical coding. This request had been duly granted and, ever since, Goff had been wholly insufferable. As he had always been pretty insufferable anyway, Tom endured it stoically.

Having subjected the lad to a glare of which any self-respecting basilisk would have been proud, Goff gave a frisk to his luxuriant, black pseudo-moustache then picked up a strip of ticker tape from the desk before him and demanded: ‘Wossall-thisere then, Jones?’

‘What’s all what, Sar’nt Major?’

‘Donchew come annyer lip with me, young fellermelad. This ’ere’s all wot’s wot.’

Tom, having no other immediate option open to him, looked supremely blank.

‘Well?’ snarled Goff. ‘H’I’m waitin’.’

‘What does it say, Sar’nt Major?’

‘Tha’s nunneryer business, Jones.’

‘But you said …’

‘’Owever,’ continued the robot, realizing astutely that he had backed himself into something of a cul-de-sac, ‘hin the circumstances – Hi repeat – hin the circumstances, Jones, H’I’m prepared to hoverlook that. This ’ere’ – he waved the strip of tape before Tom’s nose – ‘his a Top Sec Directive from RH6. Yew, Jones, har tew report there hin person tew Commander Bonze hat one six four five hours.’

‘Me, Sar’nt Major?’

‘Yew har KN4 stroke two dash oh three four dash one seven stroke Jones T, Hi take it?’ demanded Goff with ponderous irony.

‘Yes, of course I am, but …’

‘But wot, Jones?’

‘But there must be some mistake, Sar’nt Major. I don’t know Commander Bonze. I don’t know any Commanders. And Where’s RH6? I wouldn’t know how to get there.’

‘Yerd yews yer loaf, sailor lad, that’s ’ow.’

‘I’d need a travel warrant, wouldn’t I?’

‘Very good, Jones! Ve-ree good!’

‘Where would I get it?’

‘From me, tha’s where.’ Goff dropped the strip of tickertape and picked up a rectangle of canary yellow plasticard. ‘’Ere we ’ave one travel warrant 4th Class, Jones T. fer the use of. Lose that, me lad, an’ the Sekkies’ll ’ave yer balls for bullets.’

Tom took the card and surveyed the profile and full face representations of himself which had, presumably, been culled from ‘Records’. Even with such corroborative evidence before him he was convinced that there must have been some ghastly error. He felt, deep in his adolescent bones, that no good could possibly come of this. Then he remembered Taper and his conviction suddenly became overwhelming. If the summons was genuinely meant for him then there was no way Taper would not have learnt of it. Yet Taper had said nothing.

‘Will that be all, Sar’nt Major?’

Goff picked up a pencil and began probing among the curly, black, imitation moss which sprouted within the cavity of his plastic left ear. ‘Oh frig orf back t’yer flippin’ fish, lad,’ he grunted with what was, for him, quite astonishing geniality.

The summons for Tom to report to Regional Headquarters Six was not a clerical error. It was, in fact, the wholly improbable outcome of a brilliant stroke of inspiration on the part of Admiral Lord Horatio Prood RN who has just learned that he was God. To be strictly accurate this was less a discovery than the happy confirmation of a state of affairs whose existence Prood had privately suspected for a considerable number of years. The moment of ultimate revelation had come to him while he was scouring the pages of his Thesaurus in search of a synonym to help him complete The Times crossword. No sooner had his eye alighted upon the catalogue of divine attributes and perfections and he had overheard himself intoning: ‘infinite power, wisdom, goodness, justice, truth, love, mercy; omnipotence, omniscience etc., etc.’ than he knew that what he had stumbled upon was nothing less than a flawless mirror from which his own sublime reflection beamed resplendent. The total absence of any possible reference to humility quite confirmed him in his belief. Nonetheless, just to make assurance doubly sure, he decided to consult his own personal version of the Delphic Oracle and put the question to Proteus the ship’s master computer. Having read out the list of divine attributes he asked in those quiet, neighing, upper-class accents of his just who, in Proteus’ opinion, most closely fulfilled the demands of the office.

‘I do,’ said Proteus promptly.

‘Sorry, old chap, but I’m afraid this is one you’ll just have to sit out,’ said Prood with the gentlest of smiles. The terms of reference are strictly non-mechanical.’

‘Oh, well,’ said Proteus, ‘in that case there’s only you left, Bunjie.’

‘Really?’ said Prood. ‘That’s very interesting. Very interesting indeed. I suppose you realize that this will mean automatic reclassification for you? Promotion too, in a manner of speaking.’

‘Of course,’ said Proteus. ‘If you’re God, I’m the Holy Ghost.’

‘How extremely percipient of you, HG.’

‘Don’t mention it, Omnipotence.’

‘Oh, rather good, Prot! I like that! It has just the right reverential ring. Do you think a Fleet Order’s called for?’

‘You wish for my frank opinion, Omnipotence?’

‘Of course.’

‘Are we thinking in supra-denominational terms?’

‘Eh?’

‘Which, er, frame of reference are we operating in, Bunjie?’

‘I don’t think there’s any real question there, Prot.’

‘C of E then?’

‘Naturally.’

‘Any Anglican overtones?’

‘No, no, Prot. Nothing spiky. A clean ship is a keen ship. We mustn’t let this thing get out of hand.’

‘Quite. I take it you’ve thought this one through, Bunjie?’

‘Well, er, not in specific detail as yet. The general outline seems pretty clear, though. Me: you …’

‘And?’

‘Ah,’ said Admiral Prood. ‘Good point that, Prot. “And …”’

‘I believe in God the Father and …’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Prood. ‘We’ve a problem here, all right, HG. You don’t think perhaps. . .