what is it?”
“Get on that stupid spaceship. Forget the Inspector. Just talk your way on. It’s going some place far, far away, and that’s where we want to be.”
The Commander is now in full panic. “Better fold me up and tuck me under your arm,” says the freak. “Make like I’m a raincoat. Otherwise they’ll ask questions and not let you on.”
The Commander looks more wild-eyed than ever. “Maybe I should leave you here. I can’t risk being denied entry because you’re with me. You understand that, don’t you?”
“I understand you!” it says.
The Commander hurries up the steps that lead to the open door of the spacecraft. A frowning maton sentry stands in the entrance. The Commander pauses. He looks back to where he has left the gas station character on the chair. You really need to stop using it, he tells himself, depending on it all the time. It’s become a seriously bad habit. No one will understand what the thing is doing under your arm when you arrive in Zyllaton.
Suddenly, he races down the stairs out to the tarmac and scoops up his rubber buddy. “Just can’t do without me, can you?” says the puppet.
“Shut up,” the Commander says under his breath. He returns to the spaceship, folding the puppet into a tight bundle as he goes. He jaunts up the stairway that leads to the entry door and feigns light-heartedness. “Such a shame it all had to end this way,” he says to the sentry. “Speaking for myself I quite enjoyed this planet. Ah, BraZilia.” He shakes his head. “Architecture to die for. I believe the Inspector has boarded ahead of me.” The maton stares at him coldly. He puts his arm across the entrance door, barring the way. “The Inspector has forbidden you to board,” he says in his matonic monotone.
“This is outrageous. I am in charge on this planet,” says the Supreme One. But his voice betrays his uncertainty. “You are merely a maton,” he mumbles. “A nobody, a nothing.” But he realizes that, in fact, he is the one who has become a nobody, a nothing.
“Leave this area immediately,” says the sentry. “These are the Inspector’s orders.” He pushes him away, making him fall halfway down the stairway.
He wanders now to the edge of one of the runways and sits dejectedly on a landing light. He stares into the evening sky glowing pinkishly in the west. The two moons are drifting along the horizon. They are no longer twins. One, the asteroid, is now much larger than the other—made to seem larger by its looming approach to the Earth.
“So this is how we end,” says the roadside hoodoo still tucked under the Commander’s arm. “I have been an absurd figure all my life—but never more so than now. That thing out there is going to make an awful mess of this place.”
“My beautiful BraZilia will be gone,” says the Commander despondently.
“Please unfold me,” says the cartoon puppet, “so I can at least have a front row seat.” The Commander complies.
Feena knows she will have to answer the Inspector’s question. She and Jome will not be able to hide from him what is happening between them. In addition they cannot hide it from each other nor do they want to.
Should she tell him the truth? Or should she fib, lie, fence with him, dodge about, evading his attempts to peer into her brain? As she speeds through the sleek byways of the huge spacecraft, guided by Jome, she knows she can’t hope to escape the omnipresence of the Inspector indefinitely—and his constant prying.
“Where are we going?” she whispers to Jome.
“You’ll see. If I tell you, then, he’ll know, too. The Code is allowing me to evade him for a short time---long enough to tell you something I need to have you know.”
“I thought you said you couldn’t access the Code,” she says wonderingly.
“I found a way to get at part of it,” he says.
“But what shall I tell him when I see him?” she says.
Jome is emphatic in his answer. “Tell him that I was the one who was talking to you,” he says. He looks at her tenderly. “Tell him I care very deeply about you, Feena.”
She catches her breath. She wasn’t quite expecting him to say that right out. They have arrived in the spacecraft’s control cabin. She sits in one of the pilot seats, removes Jome’s head from the bag she’s been carrying and places him in her lap.
She and Jome regard each other for a very long moment.
“I care so much about you, Feena, I sometimes think I’ve crossed that line the Commander talks about. The one he thinks must never be crossed by a maton. Perhaps, I’m not quite human, but I know I’m no longer a maton. You have done that, Feena.”
His face becomes drawn and sad. “You probably don’t feel as strongly as I do. I can’t blame you. How can you make a life with me? I am not even physically whole. I am still only a partial person, a pretend person, you might say. I can’t even hold your hands, Feena. I would give anything to hold just one of your hands.” He becomes intensely earnest. “We cannot be. I must accept that. But you and your people have a chance to take back this planet and start again. You who are whole and hale and able—and human. The Zyllaton beings are—evil. A deadly poison. I want to end their minions’ ugly domination of the Earth.”
Feena can guess what he is about to say, but she doesn’t want him to say it. She puts a hand over his mouth. “Don’t,” she whispers. “Don’t.” She knows as he does that they are not to be, that too much stands in the way of it. But she also knows now how she feels. “All I want to think about is that---I care deeply about you, too.” She leans down and kisses him gently on the lips, then, kisses him again.
“You must let me do this,” he says, “because I can. I’m the only one now who can. This is what I know the Code can help me do, and so I’m going to do it.”
Suddenly, there is a wind in the cabin as though a great window has been opened. They both sense what is coming. With a quick move Feena hides Jome’s head under a seat blanket.
“What’s going on here?” says the Inspector harshly as he appears out of nothing in the cabin. “Never mind. I know exactly what’s going on. You’ve made up your mind not to leave, Feena. But you must. You are coming with me to Zyllaton. I insist on it.” He hesitates, fumbling words—as though he is embarrassed to reveal such deeply personal thoughts.
“I need your human mind, your steady human hand---to keep those people away from me, to keep me safe from them, to keep my vision of things clear.”
Feena begins to realize that the Inspector does not seem to know that Jome is in the cabin with them. He has somehow managed to use the Code to keep his presence hidden--but the Code is not strong enough to keep him hidden any longer. The Inspector senses Jome’s head is in Feena’s lap—even before she tosses aside the blanket. He immediately understands the real reason why she does not want to go to Zyllaton.
“This is impossible. This cannot be,” he rasps.
It is time, she realizes, to make him hear the truth. Then, she says what she never thought she’d ever be brave enough to say to this grimly powerful being from another world. “You ask me who I’ve been talking to. I’ll tell you. I’ve been talking to—someone—I love. I can never go to Zyllaton with you, Inspector.”
He is beside himself with fury. “No one turns me down,” he roars. “No one. You choose to stay with someone who has a head but no body? This is intolerable. I can offer you whatever you wish on Zyllaton. As my assistant you can have unlimited powers!”
“But not love,” she thinks.
“I heard you. Love? What is it? A demeaning, disgusting emotion that only humans feel. It has brought the Earth to its low state and kept you from a destiny that could have been yours.”
He is truly losing it, she thinks.
“Is this what it means to be human? To completely desert me? You are vermin to me now. We were right when we tried to destroy every one of you.”
“Enough of this,” says Jome quietly. “Goodbye
, Feena. Whatever happens I will never forget you.”
“Wait, Jome. This is so insane. It can’t be happening.”
She has never felt such overwhelming anxiety.
“We’ve run out of time, Feena,” he says. “I must act.” They stare at each other for a last, long moment. The cabin fills suddenly with an intensely brilliant light and a brief instant of suffocating heat. Feena is gone. Left behind on one of the pilot seats is Jome’s head.
The Inspector is contemptuous. “A very stupid use of your second and last imperative—teleportation. You will be sorry you didn’t save it for yourself. And what now, Mr. Jome? You are the one coming with me to Zyllaton? Wait till you see what’s in store for you. You will scream for mercy, but I will make sure you get none.”
“We are not going to Zyllaton, Inspector.”
“We are if I say so. Where is my pilot?”
“He is not coming with us. I am the pilot.”
“You---a head without a body? You cannot possibly fly a spaceship.”
“The Code will fly it for me.”
“The Code? What do you know about the Code? You’re a mere maton. You know nothing about the Code.”
“It resides inside me, placed there for safe-keeping by the Commander.”
“This is intolerable. I was never told this. But it is no matter. This space ship is going to Zyllaton under my command.”
Jome regards the Inspector with a thin smile.