by Joe Mahoney
It was probably just as well. I wasn’t really in the mood to talk. Once I got past my runny nose and the thought of Walter’s inevitable fate and the concept of being a prisoner and having nothing to eat or drink for the foreseeable future and certain delicate (as yet unresolved) personal sanitation issues, I found it kind of relaxing there in the tank. If the Necronians were smart they would forgo their warlike ways and turn this sort of thing into a spa—they stood to make a fortune. Determined to make the best of the situation, I settled back in the goo and closed my eyes. Within seconds I was yawning. Ah, yes—just what the doctor ordered. A bit of peace and quiet. An opportunity to catch my breath.
The top of the tank corkscrewed opened. Glaring sunlight poured in. Something slithered down the wall—I couldn’t make it out in the bright sunlight but I could hear it. My eyes adjusted just in time to see something sinewy latch onto Walter’s form. He gasped and stared at me in alarm as a thick tentacle wound about his torso. It extricated him from the goo with an audible sucking sound.
His eyes wide, Walter stretched his arms out toward me as if for a hug. His mouth opened in a soundless scream. The Necronian began to lift him out of the tank. Or tried to—the aperture was too small and the Necronian too careless. Walter’s forehead struck the edge of the opening with a sickening thud. He went limp. The creature flipped Walter over, bashing the back of his head against the wall. A brief grumble emerged from the Necronian—an oath in some eldritch tongue?
Exercising greater care, the Necronian wrapped a tentacle around Walter’s neck and began once more to lift him out of the tank—slowly, gingerly. Walter began to stir. The tank’s massive metal portal began to close. It closed on one of Walter’s ankles and jammed. Walter emitted a bloodcurdling scream that did nothing to prevent the portal from forcing its way shut with a clang.
Darkness descended in the tank. Something plopped into the goo beside me. When my eyes adjusted, I found myself afforded another opportunity to admire one of Walter’s fine black loafers—along with his severed foot.
I no longer felt particularly relaxed.
I felt a light tap on my head. My skull tingled ever so slightly.
“Can you understand me?” The voice spoke in a pleasant baritone with a decidedly mid-Atlantic accent.
It took a second or two to remember where I was. I had been asleep—I had no idea for how long. It felt like I had been in the tank for days, but it might only have been hours. I remembered Walter being taken away, but I didn’t remember anybody taking his place. I opened my eyes, expecting to find a new prisoner in the tank with me.
Instead I found myself staring a Necronian straight in its large, oblong face.
The goo around me seemed to have thickened as I slept, immobilizing me. There was nowhere to go anyway. A remarkably elastic creature, the Necronian’s bulk was spread out in the goo all around me. Its gelatinous head hovered just above mine. The goo provided just enough illumination to reveal the Necronian’s skin as tough and leathery, with tiny carbuncles everywhere. A single eye pierced me with an unblinking gaze. Beneath the eye an enormous hole gaped where any other self-respecting creature’s nose would have been. Just below that a tiny slit belied the size of the creature’s mouth.
Fear threatened to engulf me. I fought it down. According to Sebastian I would survive this encounter, but to survive it intact I would need to keep my wits about me.
The creature spoke again, this time in Spanish, or Portuguese, or maybe it was Swedish. Whatever it was I couldn’t understand it. When I shook my head the creature tried again.
“Est-ce que vous pouvez me comprendre?” This almost but not quite exceeded the limits of my high school French.
“English,” I told the filthy creature. “I speak English.”
The Necronian sighed, enveloping me in its fetid breath. I gagged and turned my head away from the stench of rotting potatoes.
“C’est dommage,” the creature said. Its basso voice reverberated throughout the tank. “I do so prefer la belle Francaise.”
“Walter,” I croaked.
“You shall have water when we’re done. If you still want any.”
I ignored the implications of this slightly alarming pronouncement. “Walter, not water. What have you done with him?”
“Walter? Oh, I sent him back home.”
“You killed him.”
“Perhaps it’s my accent. I said that I sent him back home, not that I killed him.”
“You may have sent him back home, but you sent him back dead. I saw his body. He died horribly.”
“Really? I’m sorry. I did not mean to kill him.”
“You tore off his foot!”
“An accident—surely you’re not going to hold that against me. Look, I’m sorry your friend’s dead but these things happen. I don’t have a great deal of experience transporting living creatures across time and space.”
The same could be said for me, but I had yet to kill anyone. “Next you’ll tell me you didn’t mean to send a raver through the gate.”
The creature hesitated. “Oh, you mean the—” I couldn’t make out the last word. “Of course I meant to. It was a gift. Very magnanimous, don’t you think? You’ll want to take good care of it.”
“It killed people! And a whole bunch of other people will never be the same! But you already know that, don’t you? You and your kind have a lot to answer for.”
The creature’s bulbous face morphed into an expression that might have been indignation. “Perhaps.” It leaned in closer. “But I didn’t start this.”
“What do you mean?”
“Human,” the Necronian said, “until you trespassed, I had no way of even finding your planet.”
It took a few seconds for the implications of that to sink in. If the Necronians really had received the gate from me then it was true that I could be said to have started this whole chain of events by providing the Necronians with the means to attack Ansalar, an attack that in turn had prompted my trip to C’Mell, prompting the Necronian attack on Ansalar, prompting my trip to C’Mell, and so on ad infinitum. But in such a temporal hall of mirrors the question of who started it all was really nothing more than a question of which came first, the chicken or the egg. There was no correct answer.
Even if I were to concede having started this whole business (which I did not), I had done nothing to provoke such a nasty attack on Ansalar. Trespassing (a trumped up charge if ever I’d heard one) certainly did not justify it. As near as I could tell, attacking Ansalar had been an act of sheer maliciousness. Of pure, unmitigated evil, if you will.
Unless…
Unless the Necronians had had no choice in the matter.
I had tried to save my sister, but she had already died in a future that I knew had come to pass, so I could not save her.
I had travelled to C’Mell in response to attacks that had already taken place, from my perspective. But from the Necronian perspective, the attacks had not yet happened, so my arrival appeared unprovoked. However, the attacks had happened. So the Necronians had no choice but to attack Ansalar, whether they wanted to or not.
Right?
Were the Necronians evil if their will did not enter into it?
If will did not enter into it, was there even any such thing as good or evil?
Of course, I was hardly the first to ask these sorts of questions, and I wouldn’t be the last. They weren’t questions I was capable of answering as I lay there in the dark, staring into the face of something that, if not evil, at least greatly resembled evil.
Just in case the Necronian really was evil, I coughed in its face. The cough evolved into something of a fit. When I was finished, I was pleased to see beads of human spittle clinging to the creature’s face.
“Sorry,” I said.
The Necronian wiped its globular face dry with a tentacle. “Not feeli
ng well, are we?”
“Air’s a little dry in here.”
“You wouldn’t be trying to make me sick, would you?”
I tensed, and braced myself for a retaliatory gesture.
But the Necronian only issued a low gurgle. “You should know that I’ve had my shots.”
“You don’t say.” I did my best to conceal my disappointment.
“I will just add ‘germ warfare’ to your list of crimes.”
“Crimes?”
“Germ warfare, trespassing—”
“Trespassing?” I interrupted. “How can you say that? This isn’t even your planet.”
“I govern this planet.”
I was not impressed. “You invaded this planet.”
“Your point?”
“You’re saying that might makes right.”
“I am saying that whomever this planet belonged to yesterday, today it is mine. You, my friend, are trespassing.”
“So—am I on trial here then? Is that what this is?”
“Oh, there’s no need for a trial. You’re guilty, all right.”
“What about due process?” I asked, clutching at straws, guessing that the Necronian was familiar with the judicial concept given its obvious grasp of the English language, a mastery suggesting a familiarity with Earth that was more than a little troubling. Just how had it come by such knowledge? Had it probed my mind as I slept?
The Necronian jiggled as it gurgled. “Look around you. Does this look like a human court of law to you? No, it doesn’t, does it? This is just you and me, my friend.”
“What are you going to do?” I braced myself, as if the Necronian were a doctor or dentist about to perform an unpleasant procedure. Was the Necronian going to punish me? If so, how? My blood went cold as I remembered poor Walter Estevez, or what was left of him, lying prone on a table in my laundry room: hideous, dead, and missing a foot.
“I’m so glad you asked. I thought that I would start by dissecting you. Bit by bit.”
I became aware of a lump in my throat the size of a ping-pong ball. I tried to swallow—a mistake. For several horrible seconds I struggled to perform what should have been a simple, autonomic function. Had my limbs not been trapped in the goo I would have flailed wildly. As it was I managed to complete the swallow, but afterward the lump was still there. Briefly, I lived in fear of having to swallow again.
The Necronian registered my distress with an expression resembling glee. “Relax, human. I was joking. Breathe. Let your worries seep away. Let’s just talk and get to know one another a bit. Okay? What do you say?”
Something about this overture of friendship was even more disturbing than the threat of imminent dissection. What was the Necronian up to? Relieved to learn that the creature wasn’t about to torture me, but confused and frightened just the same, I found myself suppressing an inappropriate urge to giggle.
“I have a few questions,” the Necronian went on. “I’m sure you do too. So let’s just play a little game. We’ll take turns asking questions. There are only two rules. One, we must answer each question. Two, we must not lie. You first.”
“How many questions do I have?”
“One less. What’s your name?”
I did not particularly want to play this game, but I could see no harm in telling the creature my name. “Wildebear,” I said. “Barnabus J.”
“Pleased to meet you, Wildebear Barnabus J. Your turn.”
“What about you?” I asked reluctantly. “You have a name, I suppose?”
“You wouldn’t be able to pronounce my name. Tell you what—just call me Jacques.”
“Jacques?” It was impossible to keep a note of incredulity out of my voice.
“Perhaps you would be more comfortable with ‘Jack’.”
The thought of calling a hideous alien monster Jack made the inappropriate giggle I had been suppressing bubble briefly to the surface.
“Jacques is fine,” I said hastily in an effort to conceal the nervous titter.
Jacques either didn’t notice my reaction or didn’t care. “Tell me, Wildebear Barnabus J. What are you doing on my fine planet?”
“I came to close the gate.” I decided to take the game seriously. Jacques was probably hoping I would inadvertently offer up some choice morsel of information. If I was careful and clever, maybe I could learn a thing or two without giving too much away. “How is it you speak English so well?”
“Simple. I used your quantum portal. Spent some time on Earth getting to know the place.”
“Is that so?” The thought that Necronians could assimilate human languages in a matter of days or weeks, languages I imagined were radically different than their own, concerned me. Such linguistic skills suggested a formidably intelligent adversary. “How much time?”
“A little over two hundred and forty-six terrestrial years.” Jacques’ grasp of human facial expressions equalled its facility with English: it looked decidedly sheepish.
I was relieved. “That’s a long time. It’s hard to believe you could go all that time undetected.” I regarded Jacques’ bloated hide doubtfully.
“Oh, I had no problem with that.” Reality skewed. Jacques shrank in scope, dwindling into something roughly the size and shape of a human. Now, instead of sharing the tank with a hideous Necronian monster I found myself in the presence of a hideous middle-aged human male. Reality shifted again. Above me now loomed a hideous pimply adolescent male. Reality shifted once more—now a hideous matronly woman hovered above me. And then Jacques was back in all its glory, or lack thereof.
“You can change shape,” I observed.
“Mostly you just think I’m changing. If I want to look old I kind of hunch down a bit, and if I want to look young I kind of perk up a bit, and if I want to look attractive I kind of—” it made a motion like an attractive woman flinging her hair back. Briefly I found myself in the presence of a hideous playboy centrefold. “Your brain does the rest.”
“You can affect my thoughts?” I asked, distressed again. “Like a raver?”
Jacques moved its skin in an approximation of a human shrug. “Enough to get the job done. It’s how I convinced you your quantum portal wasn’t operating earlier—I bet you were wondering about that. So, Wildebear Barnabus J., are you a soldier? Have you come to destroy me?”
“What? No! I’m a teacher.”
“A teacher.” Jacques sounded sceptical. “Why aren’t you off teaching somewhere?”
“It’s summer. I’m on vacation. We don’t teach during the summer.”
“So this is your idea of a tourist destination, is it? Travelling to distant planets closing multi-dimensional portals?”
“No. This is just something I kind of got caught up in.”
“All right. If you’re a teacher, who do you teach?”
“Whom,” I said, unable to help myself.
“I beg your pardon?”
“It’s whom, not who. If you can rewrite the sentence as “Do you teach him?” then you say whom,” I explained.
“Be that as it may, who do you teach?”
I sighed. “Teenagers, mainly. The young.”
“The young. And what do you teach them aside from useless distinctions in a soon-to-be defunct language?”
“I teach them—excuse me?”
“What?” Jacques asked.
“You said ‘defunct language.’ What did you mean by that?”
“Nothing. I didn’t mean anything.”
“You’re planning to invade the Earth!”
“Well, yes.”
“When?” I asked, alarmed.
“Today, tomorrow, later this afternoon. It’s hard to say. Now that I have your quantum portal it’s really only a matter of time, isn’t it? Answer my question, please.”
“I teach English. Literatur
e, grammar, that sort of thing.”
“And what, pray tell, is a teacher of English literature doing gallivanting around the universe closing quantum portals?”
“It’s a hobby of mine.”
“You’re forgetting the rules of our game.”
“Sorry. I told you, it’s just something I got caught up in. Why would you want to invade the Earth? What have we ever done to you?”
“Natural resources. Revenge. Because you didn’t answer my questions properly. Why does anybody ever invade anybody?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “Why did you invade this planet?”
“To get some answers, among other things. Why are you really here, Wildebear Barnabus J?” Jacques’ tone was casual, the question anything but.
“I told you. To close the gate.”
Jacques waited, a technique I knew well enough from teaching, yet still I fell for it.
Feeling compelled to fill the silence, I said, “And to find my nephew.” I was disgusted with myself afterward for volunteering the information.
“Your nephew? What would your nephew be doing here?”
“He was—taken. I’m here to get him back.”
“Who took him?”
I was getting into hot water now. Did the Necronians know about Iugurtha? I didn’t want to say anything to compromise her struggle against the Necronians. Doing so could have serious consequences for Ridley, not to mention everyone else involved.
“One of your enemies took him,” I said. “Speaking of which, what do you have against the T’Klee?”
“The T’Klee?”
“You know—the ones that look like cats. The ones you’re busy murdering. You were on Earth long enough to know about cats, right?”
“Of course. I was very fond of cats. Delicious creatures. But I am not murdering the T’Klee, as you call them. They are my guests here.”
