Angrily he grabbed the orange, wound up one of his long, powerful arms, and whipped it back into the night.
The Earthling cried out, and scampered away.
“Help! Mom! Help!”
Mary chilled all over. What acceleration of the aging process was she about to undergo?
“There’s something out there!” shouted Elliott, bursting into the kitchen. He turned, slammed the door, and locked it.
Mary weakened deeply, looked at the Dungeons & Dragons display, and desperately wished for a portable hole large enough for all of them. What was she supposed to do now? It hadn’t been mentioned in divorce court.
“In the toolshed,” babbled Elliott. “It threw an orange at me.”
“Oooooo,” mocked Tyler the Dungeon Master, “sounds dangerous.”
The boys got up from the game and headed for the door, but Mary got in front of them. “Stop. You all stay right here.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so.” She drew herself up, tossed her head bravely, and grabbed the flashlight. If it was a sex fiend, she’d go out and, like a mother partridge, offer herself as a decoy.
She just hoped he was a halfway charming fiend.
“You stay here, Mom,” said Michael, her older boy. “We’ll check it out.”
“Don’t get condescending with me, young man.”
Alongside her, another of the Dungeon crowd, young Greg, had grabbed a butcher knife.
“Put that down,” said Mary, and gave them her withering stare of Absolute Power. They pushed past her, opened the door, and rushed out into the yard.
She followed, hanging on to Elliott. “What exactly did you see?”
“In there.” He pointed at the toolshed.
She shined her flashlight inside, onto pots, fertilizers, hoes, shovels. “There’s nothing in there.”
Michael’s voice sounded across the lawn. “The gate’s open!”
“Look at these tracks!” shouted the Dungeon Master, rushing toward the gate.
Their gross, tangled tongue meant nothing to him, but the ancient voyager could see their forms clearly now, from his hiding place on the sandy hillside. There were the five Earth children, and . . .
Who is that exotic creature with them?
His heart-light began to glow, and he quickly covered it over.
Deftly, he waddled closer, to see more of this tall, willowy being who accompanied the children.
She did not have a nose like a bashed-in Brussels sprout, nor the shape of a sack of potatoes, but . . .
He crept a little closer.
“Okay, party’s over. Back in the house. Greg, give me that knife.”
The clang-banging syllables of her language were meaningless to him, but he sensed that she was mother to this crew.
Where was the father, towering and strong?
She threw him out years ago, said the green beans.
“Here’s the pizza,” said Greg, picking it up. “Elliott stepped on it.”
“Pizza? Who said you guys could order pizza?” Mary passed under the porch light, and the extraterrestrial gazed at her from his hiding place, thoughts of escape temporarily set aside.
Foolish heart-light, he said to that peculiar organ, which fluttered now. You belong on—on a Pizza Wagon.
Mary shooed them back into the house, satisfied that the worst had passed. Elliott had been fantasizing again, that was all, and had merely given his mother a few more frown lines. It did not justify grinding up small doses of Valium into his food each night. It was just a stage he was passing through.
“There was something out there, Mom, I swear.”
Tyler mocked. “Douchebag, Elliott.”
“Hey,” said Mary, “no douchebag in my house.” They knew too much; they were out past her at every turn. All she could hope for was some kind of standoff, but she sensed it was impossible. “All right, everyone, time to go home.”
“We didn’t eat the pizza.”
“It has footprints in it,” said Mary, desperately wishing to have quiet restored, but of course they ignored her, and began eating the stepped-on pizza. She dragged herself back toward the stairs, feeling quite stepped-on herself. She’d lie down, put some herbal pads on her eyes, and count iguanas.
She turned at the top of the stairs. “When that pizza’s done, everyone out.”
A rumbling grumble sounded from the Dungeon.
How nice it must have been when children went to work in coal mines at the age of nine. But those days, she felt, were gone forever.
She stumbled into her room, and collapsed on the bed.
Just another typical evening in the life of the gay divorcee.
Cold chills, shock, and Wandering Monsters.
She applied her eyepads and stared blindly toward the ceiling.
Something seemed to be staring back.
But that was just her overwrought imagination, she knew.
And if that damned dog doesn’t stop barking, I’m going to leave him beside the highway with a note in his mouth.
She breathed deeply and began counting her lizards, each of them shuffling toward her in a friendly sort of way.
The Dungeons & Dragons game moved, stealthily, to the playroom, everyone playing but Elliott, who went to his own room, sulking. He fell asleep, with odd dreams disturbing him, of immense perspective patterns, lines angling in to form doorway after doorway, leading to . . .
. . . space. He ran through, but more doorways were always ahead.
He was not the only one in a strained mood: Harvey the dog chewed through his leash and snuck off his back-porch post. He tiptoed up to Elliott’s room, slunk in, and pawed down; he contemplated Elliott’s sleeping form, then contemplated Elliott’s shoes, but eating them would only make waves. But he was nervous, ill at ease, needed distraction. He had not especially enjoyed his evening bark at the moon. Something weird had entered the yard and Harvey’s fur had stood up straight, little whimpers escaping his snout until he’d pulled himself together and begun yapping in the expected fashion. What had been out there? He didn’t know.
He began a halfhearted wash of tail-parts, soft tongue slurping, teeth rounding up a few fleas. Then suddenly, he heard the sound again.
Elliott heard it too, was sitting up in bed.
Harvey growled, fur standing stiffly, eyes darting fearfully about. He needed to bite someone, settled for skulking alongside Elliott, out the door of the bedroom, down the steps, and through the house to the backyard.
The elderly space-being had slept on the sandy hillside, but then had risen again and gone back toward the house.
The windows had all been dark. He’d found the gate latch, depressed it with his toe in the correct manner, and entered, much as an Earthling might. But his lumpish silhouette on the moonlit lawn told him he was far from being one of those creatures. For some odd reason, Earth stomachs had not evolved in the pleasantly round downward style his had, into a stomach of substance, a stomach in touch with the terrain. Earthlings were like luckless string beans, strung up on their latticework of bone and muscle to the very snapping point.
While he was a comfortable creature, low-slung and contemplative.
Musing in this manner, he waddled across the yard to have another strategy meeting with the vegetables. But his large foot depressed the hidden edge of a metal garden tool and its handle rose up toward him at a high rate of speed.
It struck him in the head and he fell backward with an intergalactic scream, then dashed into the little patch of corn nearby; moments later, the back door opened and an Earthling rushed out, with the cowering dog.
Elliott charged across the yard, flashlight on, and shone it into the toolshed.
The cold beam played over the tools again, and Harvey leapt into the fight, biting a hole in the peat bag, which made him feel much better, but left him with a mouthful of moss. He danced about, somewhat muffled, snapping at shadows.
In the corn patch, the extraterrestrial lay crouched,
clutching a cucumber, ready to do battle. His teeth were grinding fearfully, and he trembled all over.
The cornstalks separated, the boy looked in, screamed, and dove to the earth.
The space creature backed off through the cornstalks and hurried for the gate, big feet flapping.
“Don’t go!”
The boy’s voice had the edge of gentleness in it, as young plants have—and the old botanist turned to look at him.
Their eyes met.
The dog of the house was racing in circles, barking, moss flying out of his mouth.
A peculiar diet, thought the elderly space-scientist, but did not linger to investigate further. Harvey’s teeth flashed in the moonlight, but the boy collared the dog, crying again to the spaceman, “Don’t go!”
But the ancient being was already going, out the gate and into the night.
Mary woke, beneath her eyepads, and felt the house was tilted somehow, on its side. She rose, put on a housecoat, and stepped into the shadows of the hall.
Voices came to her from the playroom. Often enough she wondered what they played at in there; posters of half-naked space princesses seemed essential to their pleasure.
My babies, she sighed to herself. Then, upon nearing the playroom, she heard Tyler’s voice, and Steve’s, and Greg’s—The Dungeoners whom she’d specifically told to go home. Of course they’d ignored her command. Of course they were spending the night and would appear before their own mothers tomorrow, bleary-eyed, acting as if they’d slept in a brothel.
I can’t take much more of this.
She tightened her housecoat and prepared to attack, but the door was half open and she saw flashing red light—their homemade laser show, in time to soft music.
The effect was soothing, she had to admit.
And wasn’t it—creative?
“Look, it looks like a tit. There’s the nipple.”
She slumped against the wall. You couldn’t win. If she went in there like a madwoman, if she imprinted them with the image of mature-woman-screaming-in-her-housecoat-somewhere-in-the-night, mightn’t it inhibit their sexual development? And give them a complex?
Anyway, it’d certainly give her a headache.
Like a wounded camel, she slouched back into the shadows—just as Elliott bolted up the steps and rushed into the playroom.
“You guys?”
“Look at that—a pair of tits.”
“There was a monster in the backyard!”
“A monster? Hey, I’m getting a real topless Martian together here.”
“It was—a goblin! About three feet tall, with long arms. He was in the corn patch.”
“Shut the door before you wake Mom.”
The door closed. Mom walked slowly back toward her room. The house wasn’t tilted on its side, Elliott was. Tilted all out of shape.
Either that, or a shy sex fiend had selected her vegetable garden in which to perform unnatural acts.
Why? she wondered.
Why me?
C H A P T E R
3
“It was here, right here . . .”
The extraterrestrial listened to the voices of the men, who still paced back and forth upon the landing site. Watching from the trees, he could infer the meaning of their speech: here a wondrous craft had been, and had escaped them. Here a Ship of Wonder, such as their planet could only gape at, had descended and taken off again.
“. . . and it slipped through my fingers.”
The leader, bearing the jingling ring of teeth, turned, turned again. His subordinates nodded stupidly. Their leader entered his vehicle and departed, and they followed him. It was day and the landing site was empty.
The extraterrestrial stared mournfully at the traces the Ship had left.
It slipped through my fingers . . .
He raised a hand limply. Exhaustion had set in on him, and hunger. The powerful ration tablets he and his crewmates survived on—compressed little miracles of nutrition—were not of Earth. He had tried to chew a few bunch-berries, found them most unsatisfying, and spat out the hard little seeds. During ten million years of gathering wild plant life, he’d never found it necessary to learn which ones were nutritious, and it was late in the game to start now.
Oh, for one tiny ration tablet, loaded with energy.
He slouched back in the brush, weak, depressed, and itching all over from a species of trumpet-creeper he’d sampled. The end was near.
Elliott pedaled along the street toward the far hills. He did not know why. The headlight of his bike was like a magnet heading for iron, buried in the hills. Yes, the bike seemed to know where to go and he rode with it.
Elliott was what is generally called a twerp. He cheated at Parcheesi. He had a shrill, screeching voice that came and went like a genie in a bottle, but always said just the wrong thing, in class or at home during dinner.
Whatever he could avoid in life, he avoided, hoping Mary would take care of it for him, or Michael. There were other things, the list was long, including thick eyeglasses that made him feel like a frog in a bottle. All in all, a blossoming neurotic, a twerp. His path in life led nowhere, but if a place could be pointed to on a map of the soul, Elliott’s destination was mediocrity, miserliness, and melancholy; the sort of person who falls under a train. Something of this sort awaited him a child psychologist would tell you, except that Elliott’s path had veered today—into the hills.
He followed the bike’s urgings, up to the fire road. He climbed off and walked it over the cut foliage. His bike was dented and rusty from his having tossed it aside so often, abandoning it to rain, but today it seemed light as a feather. Today it seemed to shine like new, right through the rust.
It led him through the forest, along a winding path. Elliott came to the clearing, and knew something incredible had been there. Everything seemed to bear the memory of the Great Ship. Squinting through his glasses at the imprinted grass, he could almost discern the shape the Ship had been.
Elliott’s heart was beating loudly, and were there a light in it, it would have been on. His forehead seemed to be on fire, caught in the afterglow of an immense power that still lingered in the clearing.
The old space being in the nearby bushes did not reveal his presence, for the boy’s unpleasant dog might be sniffing about too, with hopes of biting a distinguished scientist on the ankle.
But no—the youth seemed to be alone. Still, it was best to remain unnoticed. An extraterrestrial was about to expire in the underbrush and there was no point in involving strangers.
The boy, however, proceeded with a peculiar series of acts. He brought a bag from his pocket, from which he took a tiny object. He placed the object on the ground, walked a few paces, placed another, and another, and another, until he was out of sight, far along a hidden path.
The ancient traveler crawled feebly from the bushes. Curiosity was his worst character trait, but he was too old to change now. On hands and knees, he entered the clearing to see what the youth had deposited there.
It was a small round pill, bearing a remarkable resemblance to a space-nutrition tablet. He turned it over in his palm. Upon it was printed an indecipherable code:
M & M
He put it in his mouth and let it dissolve.
Delicious.
In fact, exquisite. Indeed, he’d never tasted anything like it anywhere in the galaxy.
He hurried along the trail, eating one pill after another, strength returning, hope surging in his heart. The trail led him to the boy’s house once more.
Mary served dinner. It was one of her better meals: raw wheat germ sprinkled on canned macaroni and cheese, with a handful of cashews tossed in to give a last touch of class. “Eat your supper, Elliott.”
He was hunched as always over the main course, as if preparing to snorkel his way into it.
I have raised a depressed child.
Mary’s mind flashed to previous dinners, those of another period, when Elliott was younger and she and her husband had
thrown butter knives at each other. An entire chicken had bounced off the wall, and mashed potatoes had hung from the ceiling like stalactites, dripping gravy onto Elliott’s tender young head. It could not have been good for him. She tried to brighten this present meal with chatter.
“Well, how is everyone going to dress up for Halloween?” The dread evening was approaching fast; her house would be visited by several hundred children singing off key, and then staring at her.
“Elliott’s going as a goblin,” said Michael.
“Up yours,” snarled Elliott.
“Young man—” Mary rapped her fork on Elliott’s glass “—eat your macaroni.”
“Nobody believes me,” said Elliott, and gazed still more glumly into their gay repast. Mary stroked his hand.
“It’s not that we don’t believe you, honey . . .”
“It was real, I swear.” Elliott looked at her from behind his thick lenses, over-large eyes filled with pleading.
Mary turned to Gertie, the last child in the family, five years old and already asking for her own apartment. “Gertie, honey, what are you going as on Halloween?”
“Bo Derek.”
The image of her infant daughter parading naked and wet down the block flooded Mary’s taxed mind. She fumbled with her macaroni and tried to think of another subject, but Michael was circling back in on Elliott.
“Maybe,” said Michael, in his superior-brother way, “it was an iguana.”
“I’ve got the iguanas,” said Mary softly, into a cashew.
“It was no iguana,” said Elliott.
“Well,” said Michael, “you know how there are supposed to be alligators in the sewers?”
Alligators, thought Mary. I could start counting alligators. As a change.
She closed her eyes and a great big one appeared, teeth sparkling.
She turned back to Elliott. “Elliott, all your brother is saying is that you probably just imagined it. This happens. We all imagine lots of things, all the time . . .”
I imagine myself entering the sale rack and finding a displaced Dior, for two dollars. I make a stunning entrance, into McDonald’s.