His only error of the day was remaining in standby telepathy with Elliott. His full attention being on the Speak and Spell, he forgot about Elliott, but fine telepathic connections remained, and they gave Elliott a very difficult time, for Elliott was supposed to be cutting up a frog in biology class.
The teacher was about to begin. But one of his students was receiving an incandescent message, concerning the schematic of a Speak and Spell.
“We’re going to peel back the skin . . .” The teacher pointed to the tub of live frogs. “. . . and take a look inside.” He picked up one of the frogs and made a red line down its belly. “We’ll make our incision line—Elliott, just what do you think you’re doing?”
The teacher stared down at Elliott’s lab report, which Elliott was furiously covering with diagrams of highly sophisticated electronic circuitry, his hand moving as if it were writing automatically, as if controlled by a ghost.
The ghost, of course, was the extraterrestrial in Elliott’s closet, his mind overriding Elliott’s with the mysteries of digitized speech and programmable memory.
But the teacher didn’t know this. His student, always something of a problem, was ignoring the lesson completely, was writing so feverishly that his brow was covered with sweat, and everyone in the room was suddenly watching him.
“Elliott—”
The boy wrote, right off the edge of the paper, onto the desk. His arm wrote in the air. He walked to the front of the room, snapped up the frog anatomy chart, and began writing in chalk on the blackboard.
Tyler, Greg, and Steve stared in amazement. Tyler stretched his long legs out under the biology bench and tapped Greg on the ankle. Then he pointed at Elliott and made a whirling screw-loose sign with his finger near his head.
Greg nodded, copious amounts of excited saliva collecting at the corner of his mouth, as he watched Elliott scribbling like a maniac on the board, weird diagrams flowing from his chalk like the insides of a radio or something. A nervous bubble formed on Greg’s lip; it was to blow such bubbles that he saved saliva. He had never succeeded in actually getting a bubble to float off his lip into the air, they always broke when he tried to blow them away, but a perfect specimen suddenly launched itself and sailed off toward the teacher, breaking on the back of his head.
The teacher didn’t notice; he was screaming at Elliott. “Young man, sit down at once!”
He grabbed Elliott’s arm, but it was infused with a power far beyond that of a boy; it felt like a pulsating rod of iron—and its cryptic creation was quickly covering the board and creating pandemonium in the classroom.
“Class dismissed! We’ll continue this next week. Elliott!”
The chalk snapped in Elliott’s finger and fell to the floor. He turned toward the teacher, his eyes fogged, mind carrying the combined expertise of a corporation’s full computer staff, all of it having descended on him at once, out of nowhere.
“. . . analog to digital . . .” he muttered, and the teacher yanked him into the hall, a tiny drop of blood at the end of Elliott’s nose.
Steve took his winged hat out of his pocket and put it on; he fluffed out the wings and shook his head, as he watched Elliott being dragged toward the principal’s office. “He’ll be cleanin’ erasers for a month.”
“He’s crackin’ up,” said Tyler.
“Maybe he found Mary’s diet pills,” said Greg. “Didn’t she used to have some pretty good uppers?”
“Listen,” said Steve, “this is because of all those mud pies he’s been makin’. I know what a little sister can do to you.” He smoothed back his wings. “She can wreck your life.”
Gertie sat up from her coloring book and wondered why she was coloring at all, when she had the monster to play with. But something had moved her out of the closet and sent her down the hall into her own room. Now she had popped awake and wanted to play with the monster some more.
She walked back down the hall to Elliott’s room and went in. As soon as she entered, she remembered more about the dream she’d had the night before: she and the monster had been off at the faraway place, sliding down a waterfall, hand in hand.
She opened the closet door. The monster was playing with her Speak and Spell. She looked into his big, funny eyes and she saw the dream-waterfall there, every color in the rainbow shining as the water danced.
The old traveler set the Speak and Spell aside. His mind was satisfied now, having swallowed whole the complicated circuitry, the best mental meal he’d eaten since he’d come to the planet.
But he’d completely forgotten the children, and he mustn’t do that, for they were absolutely necessary. Without them, his work could not succeed. From the tiny hands of this child he’d received the all-powerful Speak and Spell. What other gifts had she in store for him?
“Come on, Monster. The coast is clear . . .”
Gertie led him by the hand, her fingers dwarfed in his immense palm, upon which was written the fate of a star-man—that three children of Earth would help him back to the stars. But the line of fate is the hardest of all to interpret, as he knew, and the creases crossing his were many, leading up—or down.
Gertie toddled along in front of him, across the room and into the hall. “Come on, you’ll like this . . .”
He could nearly understand the child now, having spent his afternoon inside the reproduced wave-form of speech, in the Speak and Spell. Yes it was time to try a little of this new language . . .
“Spell mechanic.”
Gertie looked at him. “M-E-C-H-A-N-E-X . . .”
“That is incorrect.”
“You know how to talk!” She dragged him along after her into her mother’s bedroom, where the extraterrestrial picked up the full wave of the willow-creature. It was lovely at the center, but edged with loneliness.
Young willow-creature, Mexico is just a blip in the much greater screen—and there is a handsome admirer nearby . . .
Blip-blip . . .
He looked out the window and saw her, just pulling into the driveway and parking, near her vegetable garden. A kindred soul, after all, was she not? Loving vegetables as he himself did? Was this not the basis for a more extended, more intimate . . . relationship? Dare he show his eggplantish profile to her?
No, it seemed insane. She could not understand his presence in her son’s closet. It would be too difficult to explain, even in his new-found mastery of her language.
That is correct. Now spell nuisance.
“Mommy’s in the garden,” said Gertie. “She can’t hear us here.”
Gertie tiptoed over to the TV and turned it on. A prancing Muppet appeared, eyes boggling much in the fashion of the extraterrestrial.
He moved closer to the screen.
“Can you count to ten?” asked the bug-eyed Muppet.
“Yes,” said Gertie.
“One . . .” said the Muppet.
“One,” answered the monster.
“Two!” sang out Gertie, rushing ahead. “Twenty, thirty, forty, fufty!”
“Fufty,” repeated the monster.
The Muppet danced upon his big feet. Gertie looked down at the intergalactical paddles on the space-being.
“Are you a Muppet?” she asked.
“No.”
“Apple,” said the Muppet.
“Apple,” said Gertie.
The monster was edging toward the back of the TV, wishing to see its components more closely. His scanner was probing—the UHF tuner was what he needed, to multiply his Speak and Spell signal to the microwave frequency.
That is correct. Now spell beacon transmitter.
Here it was, he had only to remove it. However, it belonged to the willow-creature. He felt her attachment to it, to a certain program involving a man who flexed muscles and bounced around madly, an idiotic grin on his face.
Nonetheless, I must borrow it, temporarily.
Gertie, however, was playfully shrieking, and before the genial old scientist could remove the UHF tuner, she slapped a cowboy
hat on his head, to match her own cowgirl’s sombrero.
“Now we’re both cowboys.”
“B,” said the Muppet.
“B,” said the monster.
“I see by your outfit,” sang Gertie, off key, “that you are a cowboy . . .”
“B. good,” said the monster.
The high spirits of the shrieking child were sure to attract the mother. The old monster shuffled to the window and looked out. The garden was empty.
He pushed the cowboy hat out of his eyes and pointed to the hallway, toward his room. “Home.”
“Say it again,” said Gertie.
“Home.”
Gertie shrieked with laughter.
The willow-creature’s voice echoed from below. “Gertie, do you want to see the biggest pumpkin of your life?”
“I’m playing, Mommy. With the—with the—”
“B. good. B. good,” said the monster.
He took her doll and twisted its arm. It acted like some sort of switch, he knew, to turn her off.
And at once she was quiet.
He led her quietly down the hallway, but then stopped to peek over the railing at the mother below, who was at the hall table, looking through mail.
Her gentle aura of rainbow light flowed out in every direction, and he lingered in the fringes of it, momentarily.
“Come on, monster,” whispered Gertie.
She dragged him the rest of the way down the hall, into Elliott’s trash-littered room. The closet door was open and Gertie pushed him inside, just as Elliott’s voice came from downstairs.
“Hi, I’m home.”
Gertie entered the closet with the monster. She picked up her Speak and Spell and pressed the letter B. What appeared on the display was a letter like none seen on earth before. And the voice that spoke from within the box no longer said the good old letter B. It said—blip.
Or something like that, something very strange in any case, and the old computer wizard smiled his great, turtlish smile.
“I wonder what’s wrong with my Speak and Spell,” said Gertie.
“Nothing,” said the old being. His rearrangement of the signal was satisfactory; he’d broken the links in the chips and reprogrammed them with new vocabulary.
The closet door opened and Elliott entered.
“Elliott,” said the monster from his pillows.
Elliott’s mouth fell open.
“I taught him how to talk,” said Gertie.
“You talked to me!” exclaimed Elliott. “Say it again.”
“Elliott . . .”
“E.T. Can you say that? You’re E.T.”
“E.T.,” said the extraterrestrial.
A knock came, three times on the door of the room. “That’s Michael,” said Elliott, and opened the closet. They stepped out into the room as Michael entered.
The monster looked at him. “Spell mechanic.”
“M-E-C-H—what?”
Elliott smiled. “We taught him how to talk.”
“I taught him,” said Gertie.
Michael took one step closer. “What else can you say?”
“Spell nuisance.”
“Is that all he can do? Tell you to spell things?”
The old wanderer shrugged modestly. He still couldn’t understand the children very well, but he knew he could communicate the essentials. They would have to steal their mother’s UHF tuner, while keeping him supplied with cookies.
The ringing telephone interrupted their talk, and Mary’s voice floated up the steps. “Elliott, it’s for you.”
Elliott stepped into the hall, picked up the extension phone, and trailed it back into his room by its long cord.
“Hello, Elliott.” Shrill, nasal tones filled the earpiece. “This is Lance,” Elliott felt the dangerously inquisitive probe behind Lance’s voice—Lance, who never called him except to lie about how high his score had been in Asteroids; Lance, now suddenly talking about Saturn, and Mount Olympus on Mars, and other strange space things, “. . . yes, Elliott, space, space, space. I seem to have it on the brain. Isn’t that strange? Don’t you feel something strange going on? I do . . .”
“Hey, I gotta go . . .” Elliott hung up the phone and wiped his forehead. Lance was closing in, he could feel it.
So too could the telepathic old voyager, who’d monitored the call. The vibration was still inside him, of a too-curious child, of the kind that might—spell trouble.
And so, there was no time to lose. He pointed to the phone, and then to the window.
“Huh? Whattaya mean, E.T.?”
Again he pointed to the phone and the window, and the immensity of the sky. “Phone home.”
“You want to—phone home?”
He nodded. “E.T. phone home.”
C H A P T E R
8
“No, Elliott, calling your teacher a fruit is not a good enough answer.”
“I don’t know why he got so mad. I was just fooling around.”
“What’s come over you lately?”
“I’m okay, Mom. It’s just a phase I’m going through.”
“Please don’t talk like a psychiatrist.” Mary selected a dietetic cracker and crunched into its tasteless shape. It was mealtime, madness time, and if she gave into her real desires, she’d eat an entire loaf of buttered bread with raspberry jam, to soothe her nameless anxieties as well as those that had names, like Elliott.
“Do you ever meet monsters, Mommy?” asked Gertie.
“Frequently.” What is more, thought Mary, I married one.
“I have a friend who’s a monster,” said Gertie, at which point Elliott picked up her doll and twisted its neck.
“Elliott!” screamed Gertie. “I’m sorry, I forgot . . .”
“Elliott, please,” said Mary. “Don’t be sadistic.”
Gertie sniffled, and stroked her dolly. Elliott glared at her. Mary took a piece of bread, buttered it heavily, and glopped on several spoonfuls of jam. Moments later, with this in her stomach, she felt bloated and gross, so she had another slice, same style, to comfort her.
“Mom,” said Michael, “you’re eating your way through a loaf again.”
“Shut up,” said Mary softly, and tried to eat on, but Michael took the bread away, Gertie took the jam, and Elliott hid the butter.
She looked at them. “Thank you.”
“The Mother Who Ate the World,” said Michael.
“Right, right,” said Mary, and plunged blindly toward the dishes, breaking the jelly-bread spell. “Don’t let me near the stuff. Put it far, far away.”
They did. They put it behind their backs, carried it upstairs, and fed it to E.T.
The inside of the Speak and Spell was exposed, its guts rewired, a few strands containing traces of raspberry jam. Instead of mechanic, nuisance, and other Earth words, the machine now said doop-doople, skiggle, and zlock, approximately, and much more no human ear could understand.
The boys sat beside him. He demonstrated, pressing the buttons.
“That’s your language, E.T.?”
“E.T. phone home.” He pointed out the window of the closet.
“And they’ll come?”
He nodded.
But this was only part of his transmitter, this was only his message-maker. It must be set beneath the stars, and be made to run constantly, on and on, night and day, though no one be there to push its buttons. For this he needed a driving force, a thing to cause repetition, over and over.
He led them out of the closet, to the record player. By hand signs, half-sentences, and grunts he indicated his wish.
They stared, stupidly.
He pointed at the turntable and pantomimed putting down his own record.
They stared at him stupidly.
Frustrated, he paced back and forth, then spun around, opened his mouth, and tried to sing:
“It’s onnn-leee
rocks and roll-ing . . .”
His voice, thought melodious in certain spheres of the universe, s
eemed to produce only snickers and giggles from the children. He glared at them. “E.T. make song.”
They looked at him, still puzzled.
“Song, song, E.T. make song.” He picked up a record and waved it around.
“You want to make your own record?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Out of what?”
“Out of—out of—” He did not know out of what. He could only describe something round, a circular shape, which he made with his hand.
“You want something round?”
“Yes, yes.”
“And you’re gonna put a song on it?”
Michael stepped forward. “This isn’t a recording studio. It takes a fortune to make a record.”
E.T. pointed to his own head. “Spell mechanic.”
“M-E-C-H—wait a second, whattaya mean? What does he mean, Elliott?”
Elliott looked at the monster. “You mean, you’re a mechanic?”
“Yes, yes, spell mechanic.” He turned the record player over and pulled out a handful of wire.
“Well,” said Michael, “goodbye to that machine.”
E.T. held up the wire. “More.”
“You want more wire?”
He nodded.
“He wants more wire.” They looked at each other, still wondering exactly how to humor their guest, but he was pacing the room on his paddle feet, intent on the higher solution.
To make his own rocks-and-rolling record he needed so much.
His mental whirlpool was showing him the device, again and again, each time filling in another little piece. He needed . . .
. . . a coat.
He walked over to the closet, pulled out a coat, and put it on.
A fairly good fit, for one who had shoulders like a chicken, and of course, the button was a little tight over his great cannonball of a stomach. However . . .
He turned in it, wondering what in the name of the cosmic seas his dressing up in a coat had to do with a beacon transmitter.
No, you old flytrap, not the coat.
The coat hanger.
He stared at it, eyes clicking, brain whirring. The wooden coat hanger seemed to glow and swing, its shape hypnotizing him. He would bolt it to the record player, and then . . .