of my co-workers suspected, I was from Sweetwater Flats, Iowa, and not a small planet in the Alpha Aurigae system.
I turned to go back to my room – I still had to straighten up from today’s activities (Mother’s Day macaroni cards, two chapters of Captain Underpants, drawing the electron clouds of the first six elements in finger paints, and a handy little demonstration of Erwin Schrödinger’s contribution to quantum physics using the class hamster). Tomorrow we would finish with Captain Underpants, and I was torn between starting a book about a flatulent dog or one of Stephen Hawkings’ later works. (The class had enjoyed his “A Brief History of Time” last semester.) I had just reached the door when a hand caught my arm.
I turned to find Mrs. Weinbaum, the elderly school crossing guard, at my side. “Yes?” I asked politely, gently freeing myself from her liver-spotted grasp.
She leaned close to me, giving me a whiff of Ben Gay, and whispered, “I saw what you did.”
For a moment, I didn’t grasp her meaning, but then it sank in. She had seen me save Joey? But I was on the far side of her corner! It had never occurred to me that a myopic octogenarian would have spotted my subsonic (but only just) passage across the road, or that she would have believed her eyes if she had.
“I don’t know what you mean, Mrs. Weinbaum,” I tried. “Have you had a recent change in your medications?”
“Don’t try to snow me, chickie,” she snapped. “If you don’t want my cell to buzz News of the World and the other supermarket tabloid crapmeisters, you’d better come to my house at 5:30.” She waggled a finger at me menacingly and shuffled away.
Then she stopped and turned back. “And bring a nice crumbcake. I’ll make tea.”
Thus it was that at 5:28 that evening, I was walking up to the Weinbaum residence with a box of Entenmann’s in my hand. To call it a “house” would be inaccurate. Mrs Weinbaum lived in a trailer park, and her double wide was a classic example of the genre. Green astro-turf “lawn” out front with two folding chairs. Several artificial flamingos in various hues, three wind chimes, four giant pinwheels, and a plastic duck in an Uncle Sam costume decorated the front walkway.
I tapped at the doorframe, moving the crumbcake to my left hand in order to have ready access to the disintegrator in my purse. If possible, I planned to make Mrs Weinbaum’s imminent death appear to be due to natural causes, but if necessary, the disintegrator could be relied upon to reduce her to a small pile of ashes, and my Dustbuster was in the car.
Not that I was looking forward to killing the old woman, but she had stumbled onto my secret, and I didn’t dare risk exposure. I had selected Earth for the precise reason that it was such a remote backwater that the natives didn’t think interstellar spaceflight was even possible, much less believe in the existence of extra-terrestrial aliens. Still, it would do me no good to be “outed” in a tabloid; even if no one really believed the story, it would be enough to get me fired. No one wants to read about their children’s kindergarten teacher while waiting in the checkout line.
“Come in!” called Mrs Weinbaum, and I stepped up into the trailer. After the late afternoon sunshine, it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim light inside. Once they did, I blinked, then blinked again, wondering if my eyes were still dazzled.
Mrs Weinbaum lay stiffly on the ground, toes pointing straight upwards in a most unnatural position. I dropped the cake box on the table and hurried around the couch to see if she were all right.
No. Definitely not all right. Human heads are not supposed to part in the middle like that.
I took a deep breath. Well. On the one hand this could be viewed as quite serendipitous, but on the other hand, it did pose some complications. Now what should I do? Dispose of the body? Start screaming for help? Pretend to be a loving co-worker dropping off some goodies for dear Mrs Weinbaum? It wasn’t like I wanted the crumbcake myself…
Then I caught myself. It was true that human bodies don’t bifurcate from the top of the skull to the mid-torso like that, but they are rather, well, juicy on the inside. Surely if something had cleaved Mrs Weinbaum like that, there should be a puddle of goo in the vicinity, not those smooth, pristine edges that looked almost… plastic? Hey, wait a second.
I jerked my head up and finally realized that the glow in the far corner was not due to a flickering fluorescent lightbulb, but to an iridescent insectoid roughly the size of… Mrs Weinbaum.
“So, chickie, where you from? Aurigae Prime? Rigel? Spica VII?” the bug asked chattily in Mrs Weinbaum’s voice. “Did you get the regular crumbcake or the blueberry? I really like the blueberry.”
I took a deep breath. So much for eradicating a nosy human. Insectoids looked fragile but were nearly impossible to kill in hand to hand combat (ever tried to squish a cockroach with your bare feet?). I still had my disintegrator, but it would likely take several shots – those things are fast – and someone in the trailer park would probably notice large gaping holes in Mrs Weinbaum’s home. On balance, it was probably better to try negotiation first.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. If it were here to kill me, it could have done so long since.
“Nu? I could ask you the same. So sit, cut us each a slice of cake and let’s have a glass of tea.”
What else could I do? Humans were easy to control – their brains are so underdeveloped they don’t even believe in mental powers and so take no precautions against them – but insectoids are not susceptible to mind tricks. Something about how they developed from a hive consciousness. Anyway, I cut the cake, poured the tea, stepped over Mrs Weinbaum (or at least the prosthesis that I had heretofore thought of as Mrs Weinbaum), and made myself comfortable on the couch. “I didn’t think there was anyone else on this planet,” I admitted. “Other than the natives, I mean.”
“Ditto! When you did your little super-save this afternoon, you could have knocked me onto my tush with a feather!” She paused. “It was nice, what you did. Joey is a cute little boy. And his father – gevalt! Such a sweetie. Always with the ‘Good morning, Mrs Weinbaum’, ‘Thank you, Mrs Weinbaum’.”
“Joey is one of my students,’ I replied rather frostily. “I am not about to allow any harm to come to them.”
“This is how you pay for living here?” she asked shrewdly, surprising me with her insight. “By caring for the native children?”
I shrugged. “It‘s easy work. The children are less likely to notice any -- irregularities -- in my behavior, and even if they do notice, and talk about it, who will believe them? I am able to help quite a few. These humans are relatively poor parents. Even the ones who try can be quite inept. It’s amazing the species has survived. Would you believe that they don’t even start teaching physics until after puberty?”
“Hmf!” She seconded my opinion with a dismissive flip of her wings. “Meshuga. What do you expect of such a primitive world?”
“So what brought you to this remote ball of dirt?” I asked again. “Don’t tell me it’s been discovered as a new spot for eco-tourism?”
“Nah, nah. I don’t think anyone else in the galaxy even knows this place exists,” she scoffed. I tried not to let my relief show. “I ended up here by accident. Rheumatism, you know.”
“Rheumatism?” I echoed blankly.
She wiggled all seven pairs of legs and both sets of wings. “Joint pain, chickie. Okay, so we don’t call it rheumatism, but you don’t strike me as a orthopedic specialist from home. My joints were killing me, comprende? None of the quacks on my homeworld could cure me, and the pain was getting worse. I figured better to go out in a blaze of glory among the stars, so I said all my goodbyes and took my little singleship and headed for parts unknown. I had pretty much come to the end of my fuel reserves when I noticed this little planet. It looked interesting, and the climate scans showed it was a nice warm place, just what my aching bones needed. So I came down for a look-see, and next thing I know, I’m feeling better than I had in a decade! But – as you have figured out – the locals, they don
’t exactly encourage intergalactic immigration, so I figured I’d better come incognito, as they say.” She gestured towards her prosthesis. “Not the most attractive body in the world, but it suits my needs.”
I was still mulling over her words, trying to work out what the possible impact to my plans might be, when she once again startled me with an astute observation. I had been away from civilization so long, I had forgotten how intelligent the bugs were.
“Now what about you, chickie? You’re obviously humanoid or you couldn’t do that superstuff. Mind control, that speed of yours – all that says you’re from one of the Harbor systems, right? You’re not the survivor of a wreck, or the first question out of your mouth would have been whether my communications gear is intact – it is, by the way. So you’re not a castaway, what are you?”
I opened my mouth, but the question was rhetorical. Mrs Weinbaum went on without a pause. “A researcher, studying the natives? No, those types are real strict about not revealing themselves or interacting too much with the natives. A tourist? No, you’ve been here too long. Oh yes, Miss Daisy Buttercup. I asked around about you. Oy, you couldn’t come up with a better name than Daisy Buttercup?”
“My research was a bit rushed,” I admitted stiffly. “It sounds like you have become