His heart-light grew brighter, the energy field of his group strengthening it as he neared them, all their hearts calling to him, as well as the hundred million years of plant life on board, calling danger, danger, danger.
He rushed between the sweeping lights, along the single clear path in the forest, his long toe-roots feeling each impression with exquisite sensitivity. Each tangle of leaves, each spiderweb was known to him. He felt their gentle messages, speeding him through the forest, saying this way, this way . . .
He followed, fingers trailing the soft floor, long roots dragging, wiggling, receiving signals from the forest—while his heart-light blazed, eager to merge with those hearts in the clearing where the great Ship waited.
He was ahead of the cold light now, its beams entangled in branches that had admitted him, but which denied his pursuers; branches sprang out, locked together, and blocked their passage; a low root lifted slightly, tripping the fellow with the ring of teeth, and another root trapped the foot of his subordinate, who fell face-flat on the ground, cursing in the tongue of the planet, while the plants cried run, run, run . . .
The extraterrestrial ran, through the forest to the clearing.
The Grand Ornament, Jewel of the Galaxy, waited for him. He waddled toward it, toward its serene and beautiful light, light of ten million lights. Its wondrous powers were all converging now, emitting supreme waves of radiance that reflected all around. He pushed along through the grass, trying to become visible to the Ship, to put his heart-light in touch, but his long, ridiculous toes were entangled in some weeds that wouldn’t let go.
Stay, they said, stay with us.
He yanked loose and pushed forward, into the outermost aura of shiplight, just at the edge of the grass. The radiant ornament shone through the stalks all around him, casting its glorious rainbow. He spied the hatch, still open, and a crewmate standing in it, heart-light flashing, calling to him, desperately searching.
I’m coming, I’m coming . . .
He shuffled through the grass, but his hanging stomach, shaped by other degrees of gravity, slowed him, and a sudden group decision flooded him, a feeling that swept through his very bones.
The hatch closed, petals folding inward.
The Ship lifted off as he burst from the grass, waving his long-fingered hand. But the Ship couldn’t see him now; its enormous power-thrust was being employed, blinding light obliterating all detail in the landscape. It hovered momentarily, then departed, spinning above the treetops, the lovely ornament returning to the outermost branches of the night.
The creature stood in the grass, his heart-light flashing with fear.
He was alone, three million light-years from home.
C H A P T E R
2
Mary sat in the bedroom, feet up, half reading a newspaper, half listening to the voices of her two sons and their friends, playing Dungeons & Dragons in the kitchen below.
“So you get to the edge of the forest, but you make a truly stupid mistake, so I’m calling in the Wandering Monsters.”
Wandering Monsters, thought Mary, and turned her newspaper.
How about suffering mothers? Divorced, with low support payments. Living in a house with children who speak a foreign tongue.
“Can I get Wandering Monsters called out for just befriending a goblin?”
“The goblin was a mercenary for thieves, so be grateful you only have Wandering Monsters to deal with.”
Mary sighed, folding her paper. Goblins, mercenaries, orks, you name it, she had it, down in her kitchen, night after night, as well as the rubble of a ruined city of Crush bottles, potato-chip bags, books, papers, calculators, and horrible oaths pinned to her memo board. If anyone knew in advance what it was to raise kids, they’d never do it.
Now the group broke into song:
“She was twelve when he yanked the plug.
Fifteen reds and a jug of wine . . .”
What a lovely song, thought Mary, her teeth gnashing at the thought of one of her own babies taking a handful of reds some night, or a handful of something else, LSD, DMT, XYZ, who knew what they’d come home with next? An ork, maybe?
“Steve’s Dungeon Master. He’s got Absolute Power.”
Absolute power. Mary stretched out her aching feet and wiggled her toes. As head of the house, she should be the one with Absolute Power. But she couldn’t even get them to dry a dish.
I feel like an ork.
She had only a vague notion of what the creature was like, but it seemed to approximate the way she felt. Orkish.
The subterranean voices continued with their deranged dream, directly under her bedroom.
“What are these Wandering Monsters?”
“Human,” said the Dungeon Master.
“Hah. The worst. Listen to their qualities: Megalomania. Paranoia. Kleptomania. Shitzoid.”
That’s schizoid, said Mary toward the wallpaper. The way I’ve begun to feel. Have I raised my babies to be Dungeon Masters? For that, I work eight hours a day?
It wouldn’t be so bad, maybe, if my own life were as—as spontaneous as theirs. With surprise calls from my admirers.
She went down the list of her admirers, but had to admit there was something orkish about them, too.
“Okay then, I run ahead of the humans and shoot just my little arrows at them to make them chase me. My lead arrows . . .”
My youngest son, thought Mary, listening to Elliott’s thin, squeaky voice. My baby. Shooting lead arrows. She felt as if she’d been shot with one, right in the thyroid gland or whatever it was that ran her energy down into the pits where the orks lived. God, she needed a lift so badly . . .
“I run down the road. They’re after me. Just when they’re about to get me and they’re really mad, I throw down my portable hole . . .”
Portable hole?
Mary leaned off the edge of the bed to hear some more about that one. It sounded faintly obscene.
“I climb in and pull the lid closed. Presto. Disappeared into thin air.”
If only I had one, she thought. To climb into about four thirty every day.
“You can only stay in a portable hole for ten milli-rounds, Elliott.”
All I need it for is about ten minutes at the office. And maybe a little later, in heavy traffic.
She swung her feet off the bed, in a firm resolution to face the evening squarely, without any anxiety symptoms.
But where was romance?
Where was the exciting male in her life?
He was waddling down the fire road. The road was silent now, his pursuers gone, but he could not last long in this atmosphere. Earth gravity would get to him, and the ground resistance twist his spine out of shape; his muscles would sag and he’d be found in a ditch somewhere with no more definition than a large bloated squash. What an end for an intergalactic botanist.
The fire road dipped and he followed it toward the lights of the suburb below. He swore at those lights, which had so fatally attracted him, and which attracted him now. Why was he descending toward them? Why did his toe-tips tingle and his heart-light flutter? What help could there be for him there, in alien circumstances?
The fire road ended in low shrubs and bushes. He crept through them stealthfully, keeping his head low, and holding one hand over his heart-light. It fluttered enthusiastically, and he cursed it too. “Light,” he said to it in his own tongue, “you belong on the rear end of a bicycle.”
The bizarre house-forms of Earth were directly ahead, held down by gravity, unlike the lovely floating terraces of—
It was bad to think of home. Such memories were torture.
The moth-light of the houses grew bigger, and still more compelling. He stumbled through the brush and down a sandy bluff, his long toes tracing outlandish tracks there, upon a winding path that led toward the houses.
Directly ahead of him was a fence he’d have to climb. Such long fingers and toes as he had were good for getting a grip . . . on . . . obstacles . . .
> He climbed like a vine to the top of the fence, but toppled down the other side, stomach upward, feet flailing. He hit, limbs splaying in every direction, a whimper of pain on his lips, and rolled, pumpkinlike, across the lawn.
What am I doing here, I must be mad . . .
He braked himself and froze on the alien ground. The Earth house was awesomely near, its lights and shadows dancing before his terror-stricken eyes. Why had his heart-light led him here? Earth houses were grotesque, horrible.
But something in the yard was sending soft signals.
He turned, and saw the vegetable garden.
Its leaves and stems moved in shy patterns of friendliness; sobbing, he crept toward them and embraced an artichoke.
Hiding in the vegetable bed, he took counsel with the plants. Their advice, to go look in the kitchen window, was not welcome.
I’m in all this trouble, he signaled the plant, because of wanting to peek in windows. I can’t repeat such folly.
The artichoke insisted, grunting softly, and the extraterrestrial crept off obediently, eyes whizzing around in fearful circles.
The square of kitchen light radiated outward, ominous as any black hole in space. Vertigo filled his limbs as he dropped into this unspeakable vortex at the outermost edge of the universe. His eyes came up past a plastic weathervane with a mouse and a duck balanced on it. The duck was out, carrying an umbrella.
At a table in the middle of the room sat five Earthlings, engaged in ritual. The creatures were shouting, and moving tiny idols around on the table. Sheets of paper were waved, bearing dark secrets, for each Earthling kept hidden from the other what was printed there.
Then a powerful cube was rattled and tossed, and they all watched its six-sided form land, just so. Again they shouted, consulted their tablets, and moved their idols, as their alien tongues sounded in the night air.
“I hope you suffocate in your portable hole.”
“Listen to this: Lunacy. Hallucinator insanity . . .”
“Yeah, read some more.”
“This form of malady causes the afflicted to see, hear, and otherwise sense things which do not exist.”
He sank down from the window into darkness again.
The planet was unspeakably strange.
Could he ever learn the ritual, throw the six-sided cube himself, and be accepted?
Vibrations of monstrous complexity floated out to him from within the house, intricate codes and signals given back and forth. He was ten million years old and had been a great many places, but he’d never encountered anything as complicated as this.
Overwhelmed, he crept away, needing to rest his brain in the vegetable patch. He’d peeked into Earth windows before, yes, but never from so close, never partaking so intimately of the bizarre thought patterns of the people.
But they are only children, said a nearby cucumber.
The ancient botanist let out a whimper. If what he’d just heard were the thought waves of children, what must those of the adults be like? What impenetrable intricacies awaited him there?
He slumped down next to a cabbage and lowered his head.
It was all over. Let them come in the morning, take him away, and stuff him.
Mary showered, attempting to revive herself. Then, wrapping her head in a towel, she stepped onto the bath mat, which Harvey the dog had chewed to pieces.
The ruined fringes played between her toes as she dried herself and slipped into her imitation-silk kimono. She turned to the mirror.
What new wrinkle, what tiny sag, what horrible erosion would she detect this evening, to complete her depression?
Damages seemed slight. But one never knew, one couldn’t begin to anticipate the childhood atrocities that might overtake the house at any moment—fights, drugs, unbearably loud music—to hasten her physical and moral decay. She applied some outrageously expensive moisturizing cream and prayed for peace and quiet.
It was broken immediately by Harvey the dog barking his head off, from his exiled post on the back porch.
“Harvey!” She called out the bathroom window. “Shut up!”
The animal was ridiculously suspicious of things that passed in the dark; it made her feel the neighborhood was filled with sex fiends. If he’d bark just at sex fiends, he’d be useful.
But he barked at the Pizza Wagon, at airplanes, at faint satellites, and suffered, she feared, from Hallucinator Insanity.
Not to mention eating bath mats.
She yanked the window open again. “Harvey! For God’s sake, pipe down!”
She slammed the window shut, and left the bathroom.
What lay ahead of her down the hall was not appealing, but she had to cope.
She opened the door to Elliott’s room.
It was piled with objects of every sort of uselessness, to the point of decay. A typical boy’s room. She’d like to stuff it in a portable hole.
She began.
Organizing, discarding, filing: she hung his spaceships from the ceiling, rolled his basketball into the closet. She had no ideas for the stolen street sign. She hoped he wasn’t anal or something. She suspected Elliott had much the matter with him, being fatherless, joyless, and having a penchant for hanging out with Wandering Monsters in his every free moment. Taken all around, he wasn’t even nice.
But maybe it was just a stage.
“Elliott . . .” She called to her little ork.
Of course, there was no answer.
“Elliott!” She shrieked for him, thus raising her blood pressure and deepening the shriek-lines around her mouth.
Elliott’s footsteps thundered on the stairs, then rumbled along the hall. He whipped around the door frame, all four feet of him, adorable in some respects, none of which were visible at the moment, as he looked suspiciously at what she’d done to his collection of trash.
“Elliott, do you see what this room looks like right now?”
“Yeah, I won’t be able to find anything.”
“No dirty dishes, clothes put away. Bed made. Desk neat . . .”
“Okay, okay.”
“This is what a mature person’s room is supposed to look like all the time.”
“Why?”
“So that we won’t feel like we’re living inside a litter basket. All right?”
“Yeah, all right.”
“Is that a letter from your father?” Mary pointed to the desk, to the handwriting she knew so well, from all the Master Charge slips it’d appeared on. “What did he say?”
“Nothing.”
“I see.” She tried, casually, to change the subject. “You want to repaint in here? It’s getting grungy.”
“Sure.”
“What color?”
“Black.”
“Cute. A healthy sign.”
“I like black. It’s my favorite color.”
“You’re squinting again. Have you had your glasses off?”
“No.”
“Mary!” The Dungeon Master called from below. “Your song is on!”
She leaned her head out the door. “Are you sure?”
“Your song, Mom,” said Elliott. “Come on.”
She heard, faintly, the sound of the Persuasions coming from the kitchen. She followed the beat, down the stairs, Elliott in front of her. “Did your father mention you guys coming for a visit?”
“Thanksgiving.”
“Thanksgiving? He knows Thanksgiving is mine.” But when had he ever been consistent? Except on the bottom line of charge slips, where he’d worn out numerous ballpoints. Buying parts for his motorcycle.
She thought of him, zooming somewhere, moonlight on his heavy-lidded eyes, and sighed. Oh, well . . .
She’d have Thanksgiving dinner at the Automat. Or the Chinese restaurant, the turkey stuffed with MSG.
Elliott ducked away from her, and Harvey started barking again, at an approaching car.
The extraterrestrial dove between rows of vegetables and flattened himself out there, arranging a few leav
es over his protruding shape.
There’s nothing to fear, said a tomato plant. It’s only the Pizza Wagon.
Not knowing what a Pizza Wagon might be, the extraterrestrial remained in the leaves.
The Wagon stopped in front of the house. A door in the house opened and he saw an Earthling emerge.
That’s Elliott, said the green beans. He lives here.
The extraterrestrial peeked over the leaves. The Earthling was only slightly taller than he was. But the Earthling’s legs, of course, were grotesquely long and his stomach did not hang on the ground in the elegant manner of certain higher life forms—but he was not too terribly frightening to behold.
The boy went down the driveway and out of sight.
Go around the side, said the tomato. You’ll get a good view of him returning.
But the dog—
The dog is tied, said the tomato. He ate Mary’s overshoes.
The extraterrestrial scampered out of the vegetable patch and circled the house. But the lights of the Pizza Wagon suddenly swept the yard as it turned in the drive and he panicked; wrenching himself along, he leapt onto the fence and started to climb over. One of his long toes accidentally depressed the gate latch and he found himself swinging back into the yard.
The Earthling was near, was looking his way.
Quickly he covered his heart-light, dropped from the gate and dove into the toolshed, where he crouched, fearful mist surrounding him.
He’d trapped himself, but there were tools in the shed, a digging fork with which to defend himself. In many ways it resembled tools from his Ship, for gardening is gardening. He gripped its handle in his long fingers and prepared to meet his attacker. A cornered intergalactic botanist is not someone to trifle with.
Don’t stab yourself in the foot, said a little potted ivy.
He braced. From the garden he felt the mental wave of a nearby orange tree, as one of its fruits was plucked by the Earth child.
A moment later the fruit hurtled into the toolshed, and struck him in the chest.
The little old being tumbled backward, sinking down on his large squashy bottom, the orange bouncing off him onto the toolshed floor.
How humiliating, a botanist of his stature, pelted with ripe fruit.