“I couldn’t have imagined it,” said Elliott.
“Maybe,” said Michael, “it was a pervert.”
“Please, Michael,” said Mary, “don’t imprint Gertie with that sort of talk.”
“What’s a pervert, Mommy?”
“He’s just a man in a raincoat, honey.”
“Or,” continued Michael, “a deformed child.”
“Michael . . .” She gave him her silencio look. Why were children’s minds so enamored of freakish explanations? Why was every dinner conversation like this? Where was the elegant banter of refinement, as the second course, frozen fish sticks, was served?
“Well,” persisted Michael, ignoring her order for silence as he ignored all her other orders, “maybe it was an elf, or a leprechaun.”
Elliott threw down his fork. “It was nothing like that, penis-breath!”
Penis-breath? Mary sat back, eyes wide.
How had that expression come into her little family circle?
All the elements of the expression came to her slowly, then, and she had to admit it was an organic possibility, one that could even produce a certain wistfulness in a lonely divorcee’s mind, but—
“Elliott, you are never to use that expression at the dinner table again. Or anywhere else in this house.”
Elliott slouched back into the tablecloth. “Dad would have believed me.”
“Why don’t you call him and tell him?” If his phone is still connected, which I doubt.
“I can’t,” said Elliott. “He’s in Mexico, with Sally.”
Mary maintained her poise, sagging only a little way into the fish sticks as the name of her former friend, now hated enemy, was invoked. Children can be so cruel, she reflected. Especially Elliott.
“If you see it again, whatever it was, don’t go near it. Call me and we’ll have someone take it away.”
“Like the dogcatcher?” asked Gertie.
“Exactly.”
Harvey growled softly on the back porch, where he was chewing the welcome mat.
“But,” said Elliott, “they’ll give it a lobotomy or do experiments or something.”
“Well,” said Mary, “it should learn to stay out of other people’s cucumbers.”
However, it was crawling from the trees, as the town slept. It had never heard of lobotomy, but it had reason to fear being stuffed.
The aged creature’s toes carried him along quietly, toward the boy’s house. Down the hillside he went, leaving the mark of a large melon being dragged by a pair of duckbilled platypuses. The boy’s house was dark, only one tiny window glowing.
He peered over the fence, great eyes rolling up, down, around. The dog was nowhere in sight.
Let me just get my toe up on the latch, in the accepted fashion . . .
. . . and then, swing in on it.
The great M&Ms have given me my vitality back. A miraculous food. The Ship would return in a thousand years; if the M&Ms held out, perhaps he’d make it.
Stop dreaming, you old fool.
You’ll never get back—there.
He looked at the sky, but not for long, for the sadness written in it was too great. No amount of M&Ms would keep him going if the love of his shipmates was gone from his sight.
Why had they deserted him?
Couldn’t they have held on a moment longer?
He closed the gate behind him with his foot, as he’d seen the boy do. He must learn these ways of Earth if he was to succeed.
He tiptoed across the backyard. To his surprise, he found the boy asleep in a sack beside the vegetables.
The child was breathing lightly. A faint mist escaped his lips, for the night was cold.
The extraterrestrial shivered himself, and his own mist poured out of his toes, mists of worry, fear, confusion.
Suddenly the boy’s eyes opened.
Elliott looked up into enormous eyes, eyes like moon jellyfish with faint tentacles of power within them, eyes charged with ancient and terrible knowledge, eyes that seemed to scan every atom of his body.
The extraterrestrial stared down, horrified by the boy’s protruding nose and large, exposed ears, and worst of all, by his tiny little eyes, dark and beady as those of a coconut.
But the tiny sunken eyes of the child blinked, and the terror in them touched the old scientist’s heart. He extended a long finger.
Elliott shrieked and scrambled backward, clutching his sleeping bag around him; the extraterrestrial jumped in the other direction, stumbling over himself and emitting an ultrasonic squeak, which brought a bat sweeping down out of the darkness, but only momentarily, for one pass at the space monster sent the aerial rodent fluttering back into the night, teeth chattering.
Elliott’s own teeth were clicking like a bagful of marbles, while his knees clacked back and forth and the hair stood up on his neck.
Where was Harvey the Protector, dog of the hearth?
On the back porch, teeth clicking, knees clacking, fur standing up. The terrified beast crouched, sprang at the door, bounced back and chased his tail; the scent he had in his nose was like nothing he’d ever sniffed before, with aromas of far-flung spaces no sane dog would ever want to investigate. He crouched back down, only the tip of his snout sticking out through a crack in the door; more of the scent floated toward him and he cringed, and began chewing the end of a broom.
The creature from space was taking another tentative step toward Elliott. Elliott’s eyes widened in terror and he stepped backward. He had zero courage, had errands to run, homework to do, chores to perform, a thousand things, anything but this—
Monstrous eyes scanned his nature; he could feel the probes far down in himself, shooting energy through him, questioning, calculating, analyzing. The hideous creature’s lips were shaped in a frightening grimace, sharp little teeth grinding together. What did it want? Elliott felt it trying to communicate.
The ancient wanderer held out his hand and opened it. Within the huge scaly palm was his last M&M, melting.
Elliott looked down at the little candy, then looked up at the monster. The monster pointed a long finger into his palm, then pointed to his mouth.
“Okay,” said Elliott, softly. He opened his jacket, took out his bag of M&Ms, and backed slowly away, continuing to lay a trail across the yard. His knees were still knocking and his teeth still clicking violently, upsetting some expensive orthodontic work.
The elderly space traveler followed, picking up each M&M and swallowing it down hungrily. This was the food of the gods, of kings, of conquerors. Were he to survive his ordeal on Earth, he would bring a sample of this miraculous food to his Captain, for with it vast universes could be crossed, in supreme flight.
Chocolate dribbled from the corners of the spaceman’s mouth; his fingers were coated with it too. He licked it off deliriously, his strength returning; he could feel the miraculous substance coursing through his veins, bearing its secret chemistry to his brain, where blips of joy and light were going off. Now he understood the meaning of Earth life: ten billion years of evolution to produce—the M&M.
What more could one ask of a planet?
Grabbing at the little pills, he tracked his way quickly across the lawn, and before he knew it, he had followed the trail into the Earthling’s house.
His eyes revolved in terror. The alien world surrounded him on all sides now—each corner, each object, every shadow was a devastating shock to his system. But he had to endure it, in order to acquire the miraculous M&M.
He followed the trail up a flight of stairs and down a hallway to the boy’s room.
There the child rewarded him with a handful of M&Ms. He devoured them in one gulp. It seemed a rash act, but who knew what tomorrow would bring?
The boy’s voicebox sounded.
“I’m Elliott.”
The words were a jumble, incomprehensible. But anyone who would share their M&Ms could be trusted. The extraterrestrial sank down on the floor, exhausted. A blanket came around him and he slept.
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Elliott lay awake for a long while, not daring to sleep. The monstrosity was on the floor beside his bed, grotesque shape outlined beneath the blanket. Where had it come from? He only knew that it wasn’t from this earth.
He fought to understand, but it was like trying to take a handful of fog. Waves of power filled the room, visible the way heat in the desert is visible—in a shimmering dance that rises upward. Within that shimmer, Elliott felt a brilliant awareness moving; even while the creature slept, a sentry seemed to watch in its shimmer, and to study the room, and the windows, and the night.
A low whine from the hallway told Elliott that Harvey had slipped off the back porch again, and that the dog was crouched outside his door. He heard a gnawing sound of teeth on the door frame, and the thump-thump of the dog’s tail.
What’s in there? the perplexed canine was asking himself as he nervously chewed wood. The shimmer that Elliott saw was touching him too, probing his muddled dog-thoughts. The cur whimpered and pawed the door, then sank back down, not really wanting to be let in, not wanting to get any closer to the shimmering wave that pulsed like an old bone—a choice bone, an ancient bone, but one of the frightening sort, with thunder in the marrow.
Elliott turned on his side, and put one arm under his pillow. Sleep was after him, though he wanted to watch, to stand guard. But his eyelids were heavy and he was sliding into home plate, sliding, sliding, down, down, down.
He landed on a Parcheesi board, the one he cheated on, and his feet seemed mired in it. But then he saw a trail of little candies, each one glowing like gold, the trail of M&Ms he’d laid for his monstrous friend, and the trail became a beautiful road through the world, and he took it.
C H A P T E R
4
The extraterrestrial woke next morning, not knowing what planet he was on.
“Come on, you have to hide.”
The space creature was pushed across the room into a closet and shut in behind its louvered door.
In a few more minutes the rest of the house woke. The creature heard the voice of an older boy, and then that of the mother.
He huddled in the closet as the mother entered and spoke.
“Time for school, Elliott.”
“I’m sick, Mom . . .”
The extraterrestrial peeked through the louvers of the closet door. The boy had returned to bed, and seemed to plead with the tall, willowy creature. She placed a tube in the boy’s mouth and left the room. The boy quickly held it up to the light above his bed, heated the fluid within it, and placed it back in his mouth as the mother returned.
The old scientist nodded. A trick known around the galaxy.
“You have a temperature.”
“I guess I do.”
“You waited outside last night for that thing to come back, didn’t you?”
The boy nodded.
The woman turned toward the closet. The extraterrestrial shrank back into the corner, but only her hand entered, going to a quilt that lay above him on a shelf. She placed it upon the boy. “Think you’ll live if I go to work?”
She thought he was probably conning her again, but he had been having some rough nights lately; she hoped it wasn’t weird drugs that were making him crazy. His eyes looked a little strange, but his father’s eyes had been frequently dilated, with delusions of one thing and another. Maybe it was hereditary. “Okay,” she said, “you can stay home. But no TV, understand? You are not to disintegrate in front of the box.”
She turned and went through the doorway, then paused, looking down at the door frame. “Has that damn dog been chewing up here again? I’m going to have his teeth capped with rubber.”
She marched off down the hall, but after a few steps she tilted, as if a wave had washed over her; she steadied herself and felt her forehead. A faint ripple ran across it, like fairy fingertips touching her. But a moment later it was gone.
She opened Gertie’s door. “Rise and shine . . .”
The child sat up, blinking, then cheerfully put her legs over the side of the bed. “I was dreaming about the pervert, Mommy.”
“Oh, really?”
“He had a long, funny neck and big, bulging eyes . . .”
“Was he wearing a raincoat?”
“He wasn’t wearing anything.”
It certainly sounds like a pervert, thought Mary, but she couldn’t slow down for further speculation. “Time for breakfast. You go and help Michael.”
She continued onward into the bathroom, for a brief morning wash with some ridiculously expensive soap that melted faster than ice; the bar, full-sized two days ago, was now a teensy-weensy, transparent sliver. But a friend had told her it prevented wrinkles, blemishes, pimples, and warts.
She lathered up, the soap vanished completely, and that was that, another six-dollar bar of nothingness down the drain.
She dried off—and a dream of the recent night rose out of her morning fog: a dream about a man, but a very short man, with an enormous potbelly and a funny, waddling walk.
Must be the pervert.
She continued on toward breakfast, which was the usual blur, and then out of the house to the driveway, where Michael was practicing his driving, backing the car toward the street.
“Here you go, Mom,” he said, stepping out.
“Thank you, dear,” she said, getting behind the wheel and gripping it with her regular grim determination; she popped the clutch, gave it too much gas, and squealed away from the house, Michael cheering her.
Elliott, hearing the departure, got out of bed and opened the closet door. The extraterrestrial shrank back.
“Hey, come on outa there,” said Elliott, extending his hand.
Reluctantly, the old monstrosity waddled forward, out of the closet, and looked around. A wide variety of objects met his gaze, all of them queer-shaped, most of them plastic. The only familiar item was a desk, but too high for one with such short legs as his own. And did he think he might write a letter and mail it to the moon?
“What am I gonna call you?” Elliott looked into the great flashing eyes of the monster, where tiny blossoms of energy kept blooming and fading, to be replaced by others. The creature was sensing his way around, and Elliott stood back to give him room. “You’re an extraterrestrial, right?”
The extraterrestrial blinked, and Elliott felt the great orbs answering him somehow, but the message was just a buzzing in his brain, as if a fly were inside his head.
Elliott opened the bedroom door. The monster jumped back, for the nasty little beast of an Earth-dog slavered on the other side, stupid curiosity in his eyes, unfriendliness on his tongue.
“Harvey! Be good! Don’t bite or anything. Nice dog. Nice Harvey . . .”
“. . . errrrrggggggggg . . . errrrrrrggggggggg . . .”
The dog’s speech was lower down the communication chain than the boy’s, sounding like a space cruiser stuck in reverse.
“See, Harvey? He’s okay. He won’t hurt you. See?”
A faint wisp of mist came from the monster’s toe. Harvey put his nose into the mist and saw dog-dimensions he wasn’t prepared for: a great soup bone of light, hurtling through the night, flashing, flashing, with a howling sound descending into ancient echo chambers of space.
The dog cringed, his mind reeling. A fearful moan came from his lips. He backed off, nose down.
The monster came forward.
“Do you talk?” Elliott snapped his fingertips up and down like a yakking mouth.
The elderly scientist blinked again, then moved his own fingertips, making galactic-intelligence patterns, the cosmic super-codes of survival, ten million years’ worth.
Elliott blinked stupidly, as the whizzing fingertips described delicate orbits, spirals, angles of physical law.
The old creature dropped his hands in frustration, seeing that nothing was grasped, and recollecting again that this was just a ten-year-old child.
Well, what am I supposed to do? The aged monster studied the situation. His brain was
evolved so far past the boy’s powers of comprehension, he could barely think where to begin.
I’m too specialized, thought the monster. Let me see, let me see . . .
He tried to scale himself down to the crude bumblings of Earth mentation, but wound up merely twiddling his digits. How could he hope to sign the great equations, those supreme insights born of wandering super-segments of time? He could barely ask for an M&M.
Elliott walked over to the radio, turned it on.
“You like this tune? You like rock ’n’ roll?”
A sound such as the space-wanderer had never heard before was pouring out of the radio; telepathically, he received the image of rocks rolling down a hillside. He covered his sensitive ear-flaps with both hands and crouched low.
Elliott looked around, trying to think of other important things a creature from space should know about. He fished a quarter out of his bank. “Here’s some of our money.”
The ancient traveler stared at the boy and tried to comprehend his speech, but the tongue of Earth was a blur of dull articulation.
“Here, see—it’s a quarter.”
The object offered was small, flat, round, with a shiny coating, different-hued from the M&M, but possibly this was even stronger survival food.
He bit down.
A piece of junk.
“Yeah, right,” said Elliott, “you can’t eat that. Hey, are you hungry again? I’m hungry, let’s go have something to eat. Harvey . . .” Elliott admonished the dog. “. . . out of the way.”
Harvey whined and tiptoed aside, then followed Elliott and the monster downstairs to the kitchen. He crouched by his dog-bowl and signaled Elliott that he wanted some Alpo to settle his nerves, a whole canful, which he’d gobble down in one bite. But Elliott ignored the request and Harvey had to settle for toothing the edge of his dish.
Elliott was opening drawers, taking out the ingredients of his favorite breakfast. “Waffles,” he said, and started stirring up some batter. “They’re my specialty. You ever have them?”
The elderly botanist watched as peculiar items appeared, none related to space travel. He watched, great eyes revolving, taking in increments of incomprehensible action, except that a long tentacle of goo was flowing off the cupboard onto the floor.