“Where do you come from then?”
“Ickieland.”
“We’ll never get anything out of this thing this way,” said Agent Agua. “He’s playing with us.”
“Agent Agua believes being nice won’t work, Louie,” I said. “I think he wants to revert to more traditional CIA methods of interrogation.”
“Oh, no, please, not that, not that, I’ll tell you anything you want to know!”
“Good,” I said, fully aware that he was mocking us. “Please give us the names of the humans you’re using to open dummy accounts here in the Caymans.”
“Smith, Brown, Johnson and Agua.”
“Fuck you, asshole.”
This was Agent Agua’s contribution. Without another word he turned and strode back to the door, motioning to one of the video monitors that he wanted to leave. After several seconds the door opened and he left.
“Impetuous sort of gentleman,” said Louie.
“If the CIA threatens to kill you unless you tell us the names of your human helpers here in the Caymans and elsewhere, what will you do?” I asked him.
“What do you think?”
“If you’re the Louie who befriended the Mortons then I don’t think you’ll help us.”
“Choose death rather than dishonor?”
“It’s all a game, Louie,” I said. “And I imagine the rules of the game that you follow demand that you not betray a teammate.”
“Hey, you’re catching on!”
“So you’ll die.”
“Beginning to look that way.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later Agent Agua returned and ordered all of us out, leaving Louie alone—except for the four video cameras and several wall lights.
Agent Agua led me to the control room where we watched Louie bouncing around the room like a ballet dancer doing practice leaps. Then he hit a switch and all the lights in the room went out. The video screens were now all black. The only thing being transmitted were the soft sounds of something like a very flexible beach ball hitting various surfaces at random intervals. Louie was to be denied light and water until he talked.
* * *
However, the next day Agent Agua indicated that he’d received orders from CIA high command to try a certain technique that might make the alien talk before he died from lack of light and water. The technique was not exactly high-tech: it involved using a chainsaw to cut off small parts of the alien until he either talked or died.
I immediately protested and took my protest to CI Rabb, my chief at Unit A. He consulted with someone higher up in the NSA and then reported to me that the CIA was to be in charge of the interrogation for the time being. He indicated that if the Protean died without talking, it was the best we could hope for; since if he didn’t talk he would be permanently out of circulation. I was not amused by the NSA’s new euphemism, “out of circulation.” It used to be called “dead.”
* * *
Agent Agua and his men found that the chainsaw tended to hit the steel wire they had used to hold the alien in place even more than it cut into the alien. So they then tried a large, extremely sharp carving knife. This they could plunge into the restrained alien but could not easily use to carve out a piece of his body. It apparently took the agents another two hours of dedicated hard work, but they finally managed to cut out two pieces of the alien; one a chunk about the size of a small fuzzy football and the other about half that size. An agent took the two pieces away to a makeshift lab they had set up to examine these alien fragments.
Louie was not giving them useful information. As he was being first chainsawed and then carved up, he simply made jokes.
“Ouch.”
“Careful, you’re getting near my penis.”
“Wow, that feels great! Do some more of that.”
“Hey, you just took away my memory of a one-night stand I had with Florence Nightingale back in Ickieland.”
Eventually, Agent Agua ordered a temporary suspension of activities. He retreated back into the mansion. He was even kind enough to consult with me about what other techniques we might try the next day. One of his men had come up with the idea of planting large fire-crackers into the alien and exploding them. The alien might realize that this was worse than death by a thousand cuts and finally tell us something.
It was an interesting idea, but we never got to see if it might work.
* * *
The safe house compound was well defended. There were over fifty motion sensors planted around the grounds, twenty floodlights, and another twenty video cameras mounted strategically throughout. In addition there were the seven CIA agents and four additional security guards hired from a private contractor. There were three separate goo guns ready for use. And all the traditional human weaponry associated with killing people.
Agent Agua was awakened at midnight: something had activated two of the motion sensors near the sea. When the floodlights came on, the agents saw a sphere-shaped alien fifty feet from the water rolling toward the mansion. Even as Agent Agua was ordering a full alert, all the lights on the grounds and in the mansion flickered and went out. In another few seconds most of them came on again, powered by a diesel generator that automatically kicked in.
The monitors in the control room now picked up two other Protean spheres rolling rapidly toward the mansion, one from the surrounding mangroves and another from near the gate. The security man on duty on the flat roof of Louie’s prison opened fire on one of the Proteans, continuing to shoot until it disappeared up close to one side of the mansion. Another guard saw the other Protean rolling rapidly in from the front gate, but it disappeared close to the house before he could get off any shots.
Agent Agua and I both arrived at the control room at the same time, and he radioed to inform all the agents of the locations of the various aliens. But then the video cameras watching the sides of the house began to go out one by one. Three of the floodlights also went out. All three of the invading aliens had disappeared.
Agent Agua ordered two of his men and one of the goo guns to the room housing the generators. He ordered two more men to take up defensive positions near the entrance to the prison room—also with a goo gun.
Although the mansion had barred windows on the ground floor, the second-floor windows had been left as they’d originally been built. Within three or four minutes of the first alarm, an agent reported that a Protean was in the upper hallway and had rolled down the stairs to the main floor.
In another minute, we heard gunshots and could see on one of our remaining monitors that a Protean had broken through the locked door to the generator room. The agents there began firing at the Protean, but it bounced from floor to wall to floor so rapidly it was difficult to hit it.
Then came four or five shots just outside the control room. Something slammed into the wooden door. Then silence. There were four of us in the room: Agua, myself, and two other agents.
An alien exploded through the door, knocked Agent Agua’s feet out from under him, then knocked over a second agent the same way. I and the other agent fired at the sphere, but it was moving so rapidly in such random directions that we both missed. The alien bounced off a wall into the agent’s head and knocked him out. He bounced again and hit the agent he’d spilled earlier as he tried to rise, appearing to knock him out too. I was firing at him as he bounced from wall to head to wall and this time managed to hit him twice. Then the alien smashed into the tower of the main computer, bounced off a wall to hit it hard again, and then bounced to the hole it had made in the door and away.
None of the monitors in the control room were now working: the main computer had been damaged. We could no longer see what was happening. Agent Agua recovered quickly from the attack. He and I knew that it was Louie that they were after; the control room and generator room were only sideshows.
We raced through two rooms and two hallways of the mansion to get to the prison door, hearing shouts and gunfire as we approached. Three aliens were bou
ncing from wall to floor to agents in attack and retreat, gunfire and black goo following their every bounce. They managed to level two of the guards, but when Agua and I entered and began shooting, they all three bounced and rolled past us and out into the main part of the mansion. We chased them, but in another few seconds they had escaped from the house and were away.
We had wounded all three aliens and totally thwarted their efforts to free Louie. We had triumphed.
TWENTY-THREE
(From LUKE’S TRUE UNBELIEVABLE REPORT OF THE INVASION OF THE FFS, pp. 119–123)
After the failed raid, all four FFs returned to the safe house. Molière, Gibberish, and an FF named Baloney had been hit by bullets and were feeling a bit “under the weather”: their computer and “muscle” powers were reduced by as much as a third. LT had escaped unhurt.
Baloney had gotten his name because “baloney” was his response to any comment made by a human and to most of what Louie and Molière said. Baloney somehow said it in a way that meant that what you’d said was baloney but was nevertheless acceptable because in this flawed world, baloney was about as high as we could aspire to. Even after he himself said something that was actually pretty smart, he’d always add, “Baloney, of course.” Louie told Billy that Baloney was even worse when he talked in Ickian since his saying the equivalent of “baloney” in the Ickie language usually took fifty or sixty pages.
The wounded warriors were soon joined by two new small FFs, pieces of the carved-up Louie. Because they were unprepared split-offs rather than the result of intentional birthing, they had limited skills and intelligence compared to Louie-Twoie. In effect, they were “born” with major birth defects, and would be limited for the rest of their lives. But that didn’t stop the FFs from including them as part of their family. The smaller of the two—not much bigger than a golf ball—became a sort of pet of LT’s. Compared to the elastic LT, WeeWee—that being the name LT gave him—couldn’t do much of anything in terms of changing shape, but he loved to ride around with LT, often becoming an “eye” in the middle of any head that LT momentarily created. “Chubby,” the larger fragment, was more independent.
Louie-Twoie, Molière, and Baloney now devised a plan to make a second attempt to free Louie. The plan gave LT and Chubby the most important roles. Louie-Twoie had shown his usefulness in the initial raid by rolling into the estate after the three larger FFs had attacked, and himself destroying several floodlights and video cameras. He’d also stayed after the wounded FFs had fled and used his tiny size to get into the mansion to listen to the agents make their new plan, one that involved Johnson and his men sending a two-car motorcade to the airport at eight A.M. the next morning, and then flying Louie from there to “a place of no return”—a CIA site in the Poconos of New Jersey. Once the terrorist was there they were confident he would not leave alive.
Molière gave the most important job to LT and Chubby because they were the only ones small enough to do it. The new rescue attempt would be very low-tech. It could have been pulled off by a couple of teenagers—if the teenagers had been able to reduce themselves to the size of soft balls.
* * *
At dawn the next morning LT and Chubby snuck in close to the CIA house. The FFs knew the agents were using two vehicles to take Louie to the airport. When men emerged from the mansion, with Louie in some sort of two-foot-square cage, LT waited to see which car they were putting Louie in, and which they were using as a guard car. Then he guided Chubby to roll under the guard car sedan, and then rolled himself under the sedan containing Louie. He then bounced up into the engine. Within a minute the two cars drove off.
Molière was giving LT and Chubby instructions, informing them that the guard car was taking the lead, presumably to look out for an FF ambush. When Molière finally gave the order, LT used the razor-knife he’d brought along to cut the spark plug wires. The car sputtered, slowed and stopped. LT leapt down from inside the engine and slipped into the grass of the nearby ditch.
When the lead car was radioed and told what was happening, it made a U-turn to go back the mile or so to the car holding Louie. But that’s when Chubby attacked the spark plug wires with the tiny pair of scissors he’d been given.
While the agents were still inside trying to restart the car containing Louie, LT punctured a hole in the right rear tire. He’d barely finished and hidden again in the grass when Billy drove up and parked behind the agents’ car.
“Can I help you fellas?” Billy asked as he got out.
Agent Agua leapt out from the driver’s door and approached Billy.
“We don’t need any help, old man,” he said. “Move on.”
“Just being a good neighbor,” said Billy, standing between the two cars.
“Get out of here,” said a second agent, getting out the passenger door and drawing his gun.
“Okay,” said Billy. “But you sure you don’t need help with your flat tire?”
Both agents looked startled, noticed where Billy was looking, and came up beside him to stare at the flat tire.
“Shit,” Agent Agua said.
“That helps,” said Billy, “but you still got to change the tire.”
“Scram!” Agent Agua drew his gun.
“No need to kill me,” said Billy. “I’m not that hot to change a flat tire.”
Billy walked slowly back to his car, got in and drove off.
Molière and Gibberish had jumped out of the open passenger window while the agents were distracted. They joined LT in the high grass. When the two agents holstered their weapons and knelt down to look at the flat tire, Molière and Gibberish bounced up and bopped the two agents from behind. “Bopping” is the closest English word to an FF’s throwing out part of his body to strike at high speed.
A gunshot exploded from the inside of the car: the last agent began shooting at Molière and Gibberish, who both hopped immediately onto the car’s roof. LT rolled out of the grass in through the open passenger door and, before the agent knew LT existed, LT knocked the gun out of the agent’s hand. Molière was immediately inside the car bopping the poor man’s head.
Billy appeared again with his rental car and, within a minute, Molière, Gibberish, LT and the caged Louie were away, leaving three moaning, mostly unconscious agents lying beside the road. As they were leaving, the guard car came sputtering along, barely making five miles per hour.
Billy waved jauntily at them as the two cars passed.
TWENTY-FOUR
(From Billy Morton’s MY FRIEND LOUIE, pp. 172–176)
Four hours later they were out at sea in a sleek thirty-seven-foot Carver cruiser Molière had arranged to buy the day before when he felt certain we’d have a need for it. With the help of a human friend, he’d bought it from a local drug dealer down on his luck and impressed with the cash being offered.
Splitting with Lita and Jimmy was the hardest thing to do, but Molière and Louie convinced us it was necessary. If she traveled with both kids there was a fair chance they’d be identified. And the FFs wanted me to pilot the Carver. They’d bought it both to escape the pursuit of the CIA, and to get the millions in cash off the island.
Lita and I said our goodbyes standing near the rental car Lita and Jimmy were driving to the airport. Lucas would come with me. The boat was at a dock fifty feet away.
“What have we gotten ourselves into?” says Lita. She was dressed in a frowsy dress, with padding around her waist and a blonde wig. She looked like a fifty-year-old nanny. Her new name was Isabella Cola.
“Into trouble, sweetheart.”
“All of Louie’s plans seemed to involve danger. This is no life for the boys.”
“I know.”
“Since that time on Long Island getting prepared for coming here our family hasn’t been together for more than a few minutes. Now Jimmy and I have to go back alone while you and Lucas sail off into more trouble.”
“Sail away from trouble we hope.”
“This has got to stop, Billy.”
/> “Yep. Like to know how.”
“One way or another, when we’re back in New York, we’ve got to figure out a way.”
We hugged and kissed and kissed again, and then had to go our separate ways.
* * *
Gibberish, Baloney, and the two new little Louie fragments, WeeWee and now Chubby, who’d made it back, were not coming with us for reasons the FFs neglected to tell me. But when Lucas, Louie, Molière, LT, and I boarded the boat that evening I discovered we had another human crew member. She was a twenty-eight-year-old gal named Karen Bell that Molière had met two days earlier while cavorting in the sea. She had let him toss her into the air and ride piggyback on his porpoise shape and generally become part of the act. The crowd loved it. And so did Karen.
She’d worked for almost two years with a Cirque du Soleil traveling company as an acrobat. She was a tall, six-foot blonde, with not much fat, and what little she had was distributed exactly where if I were God I would have put it. I could see why humans might drool over her, but I assumed Molière’s only interest was in having her become a trusted crew member. She was between shows and was the sort of adventurous young gal who was free at the drop of a hat to do something stupid—namely become a crew member of a boat run by three alien creatures from another universe, and with the supposed captain an old man who at first glance looked like he’d have to spend the whole voyage being helped down into his bunk. And a kid aboard too.
Our primary purpose was to escape from the Caymans and the CIA. We figured they might suspect we’d try the sea, but since all FFs were able to swim for days underwater at pretty good speeds they didn’t really figure they’d need a boat. Our final destination was a lonely beach off the east side of Key Largo, just fifty miles south of Miami. Our ETA, assuming we didn’t blow a gasket, run up onto a reef, or get zapped by a drone: twenty hours later.