“So, how do I make ‘em think there are aliens?”
“Cows.”
“What?”
“You know. Cows.” He held fingers up next to his head. “Moo. Cows. Cattle mutilations. That’s what aliens do.”
“We do?”
He shrugged. “Some people think so.”
And so, at three-thirty in the morning, after the bar closed, we found ourselves in Doc’s ancient and mammoth purple Cadillac, on our way out of town, looking for cows. We knew they would be “in the country,” but beyond that we were going on guesswork and bourbon. Eventually, though, the bourbon wore off, and our guesswork wasn’t looking too good.
“Hey, over there!” I shouted.
Doc slammed on the brakes, fishtailing and almost missing a tree with his fender.
“Jesus, E! You want to give me a heart attack? What are you yelling about?”
I pointed.
“Those aren’t cattle. Those are llamas.”
“But,” I said, “I haven’t seen any cattle in the last couple of hundred miles, have you?”
“Well, no. Hell, it works for me if it works for you.” He turned off the car. “You go ahead. I’ll wait here.”
“What?”
“Go ahead. You know, mutilate them.” He made stabbing motions.
I stared at him. “How?”
“I don’t know. You’re the alien.”
“But I’ve never mutilated anything in my whole life.”
He shrugged.
“Fine.” I got out of the car, slamming the door behind me. I went around to his side and looked in the window. “What do you have in the way of mutilating devices?”
He rummaged around in the glove compartment, finally pulling out a pen, a plastic spork, and an ice scraper. “Take your pick.”
“What am I supposed to do with this stuff?” I asked. “And what are you doing with an ice scraper?” I grabbed the pen without waiting for his explanation and started for the field. There were six llamas munching grass and watching me with placid disinterest. They were mostly a shaggy, dirty white, but a couple of them had brown bits as well. As I climbed the faux-rustic wooden fence at the edge of the field, Doc yelled out, “Hey!”
“What?”
“I think some of them might be alpacas, or vicunas or something.”
I looked at him. “Does it matter?”
“No, I guess not.”
I shook my head and continued on my way. I held out my hands and called, “Here, llama, llama, llama.”
They didn’t come prancing up to me, but they didn’t run away either.
Eventually, I was able to work my way up to about a foot away from the largest of them. It stared at me with soft brown eyes and kept chewing. It looked gentle and trusting. I stared at the pen in my hand, then back at the llama. What was I supposed to do, write antihuman slogans on the side of the llama? I supposed I could stab it in the eye. Would that count as a mutilation? It would certainly count as disgusting. I imagined the pen meeting the firm but spongy eyeball, finally piercing it and sending some kind of eyeball fluid squirting out all over the place. I let the pen drop into the grass. I couldn’t do it.
“Okay, llama, you’re off the hook. Live long and prosper.”
It spit at me, filling my mouth with llama saliva. “AAAAHH!” I yelled. I spit and spit again. I ran across the field to the car, leaping over the fence. “Give me a drink! Anything!”
Doc got a fresh bottle of bourbon from under the seat, opened it and handed it to me. “I take it cattle and or llama mutilations are out, huh?”
I would have answered him, but I was busy rinsing my mouth and spitting out the window.
“Well, if mutilations are out, maybe you ought to consider a couple of abductions, with some anal probes thrown in for the sake of verisimilitude.”
I looked at him. “Are you crazy?”
He shrugged. “You got a better idea?”
I thought frantically. “Not immediately, but it seems like there would have to be at least a billion ideas that are better than kidnapping people and shoving things up their rectums.”
“Okay. I’ll drive us back to town, you come up with alternatives. I don’t think we need a full billion, just whatever sounds good to you.”
* * *
“How about Tiffany?” Doc indicated our waitress with his chin. “I could see myself probing her a few times.”
“Jeez, Doc, she could be your granddaughter.”
“I don’t know, I think she’s interested in me.” He smirked in my direction. “More interested in me than you, anyway.”
“Oh, that’s hilarious, isn’t it?” I had to admit it rankled that no one had made a fuss over me when we’d entered the small-town diner to get some breakfast. It was the kind of place where the regulars sat in their regular seats every morning and ate their regular breakfasts and drank their regular coffees on their way to work at the local bank or feed store or whatever. A guy in a John Deere cap and red suspenders over his flannel shirt looked up from his fried eggs and wrinkled his forehead as he tried to recollect where he might have seen me before, then went back to sopping up his yolk with a piece of toast. We sat at the counter and the blonde waitress, Tiffany, according to the name stitched on her powder-blue nylon uniform, handed us menus and said, “Morning, boys, what’U it be?” She waited a second or two, then added, “Hey, aren’t you that alien fellow?”
Well, I suppose I could have been a horribly misshapen, mutant human, but I wondered what kind of person needed to ask that question. “Why, yes, I am,” I said, ready to sign an autograph.
“Thought so.” She nodded. “So, you want coffee?”
As I ate my English muffin and Doc plowed through his scrambled eggs and hash browns, we discussed alien abductions.
“We can’t just hold a spork or an ice scraper to someone’s head and force them into your car and drive away, you know. There’s nothing mysterious about that,” I said. “Don’t we need bright lights, and cars stalling, and watches stopping and things like that?”
Doc chewed for a bit. “Yeah, I suppose we do. How do we go about it?”
“How am I supposed to know?”
“Well, damn it, E, what do you know? You can’t mutilate livestock, you can’t handle a simple abduction. Sometimes I wonder if you really are an alien.”
I held my grotesquely gigantic head in my long, skinny, insubstantial hands. “You’re right, Doc. Mor-ty’s right. Everybody’s right. I’m useless. I don’t belong here and I never will. I wish I had been killed with everybody else when our spaceship crashed.”
Doc’s mouth dropped open. “Oh, man, E, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.” He sounded like he was worried I was going to commit suicide all over his breakfast. “You’re . . . You’re the stuff which dreams are made of. You’re a thousand books that once made my existence almost bearable, brought to life. Your very presence on this planet fills me with awe and wonder. And for myself, and for everyone else who has failed to let you know just how special you are, I apologize.”
I raised my head and blinked at him. “Gee, Doc, you sure can talk pretty when you want to. You ever think of writing that stuff down?”
He looked at me for an instant, then we both burst out laughing.
“You’re an asshole, you know that?” he said.
“Yeah, you, too,” I told him. It’s what Earth guys say when they care about each other. “But, you know what, I think you may have your uses.”
“Morty,” I told the telephone, “I want a book deal.”
“E, we’ve been there, done that. You can buy remaindered copies of your autobiography for a nickel.”
“I’m not talking about that, I’m talking about fiction. Science fiction.”
Loud cheers did not burst from the phone. “Eyul,” Morty said eventually, then more silence, then a sigh. “E. I love you like a son. You know that, right?”
“Sure, Morty.”
“So when I say this, you know I only have your bes
t interests at heart, right?”
“Sure, Morty.”
“E, you can’t write. You don’t know the first thing about writing.
“There are people who write hundreds of thousand of words, who take classes, who study, who never get anything in print. And you want me to go to some publisher, someone who may have at least tried to read your autobiography until he couldn’t take anymore, and ask him to pay money for your fiction?
“Science fiction, no less?”
“Morty, listen. This isn’t some wild scheme, I’ve given it some thought. You ever hear of a guy named Brian Aldiss?”
“No.”
“Oh. Well, apparently he writes science fiction, and he’s supposed to be pretty good. Anyway, you know why he said he became a writer? He said, ‘Because I wasn’t fit for society; I didn’t fit into the system.’ Who does that remind you of, huh? Me, that’s who. Who do you know that is less fit for society?”
“E, it’s not that easy. It takes more than just not fitting into the system. You’ve got to have talent.”
“Morty, do me a favor, okay? Just try to sell the idea. An alien writing science fiction. It’s a great concept. A one-book deal, that’s all I’m asking. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. But, Morty, it’s going to work.”
“All right. One book. I’ll see what I can do. But don’t get your hopes up.”
I hung up and looked at Doc. “Okay, now it’s your turn. Can you write something that I could have written?”
“Well, I’m not sure if I can rein in my abilities to that extent, but I’m willing to take a stab at it.”
“You have to let people see the pain, the inner torment, of being a bug-eyed monster, a freak, cut off from everything and everyone he’s ever known.”
“Okay,” he said, in an entirely too off-handed manner for my taste.
“I’m serious, Doc.”
“Relax, E. You’re going to be famous again.”
And so I am. In a few minutes, a limo is picking me up to take me to the television studio to tape another talk show. This afternoon, I’m giving a lecture to some college kids. We’re on our fifth book, all bestsellers.
We’ve got money. Doc is happy because he feels like he’s screwing the publishers that wouldn’t buy his manuscripts when he used his own name. He loves the way the critics and the academics gush over the books. His favorite was, “Eyul gives voice to that inchoate longing, that ineffable desire to belong in each of us. He reminds us that, whatever planet we are from, we are all aliens.” Sooner or later, we’ll “collaborate” on a couple of books to get his name out, then he can have his own writing career, too.
As for me, I finally found my calling. I still don’t do anything, not really. I’m just there. But it turns out, if you do it right, sometimes that’s all you have to be.
Back to Contents
PEDAGOGY by Michael A Burstein
T
HE MOMENT I WALKED into the classroom, the first thing I noticed were all the differences. To begin with, I had to duck to keep my head from hitting the top of the doorway. The classroom itself felt much smaller than the classrooms I was used to back home, and not just because I towered over humans. This classroom was packed with students; I counted twenty of them, sitting at individual desks, each with its own terminal.
The students had been talking just before I entered the room, but as I walked over to the screenboard, they quieted down quickly.
I walked over to the front desk, which sat right next to the screenboard. I took the stylus out of the top drawer and turned to the students.
“Greetings, Earth children,” I said.
Before I had a chance to say anything else, one of the students spoke. “You look like a lizard,” he said.
The other students made an odd sound which I recognized as their version of laughter. I tried not to look disconcerted, as I had heard this sort of thing from other Earth people, even adults. But the interruption did surprise me. I looked at the boy who had spoken and checked the name on the display screen; it read John Palmer.
“John,” I said. “It is rude to interrupt when your teacher is speaking.”
“You’re the teacher? Who are you?”
“My name is Xerpers Fromlilo.” I paused, taking a moment to remember the teacher-student protocols I had been taught. “You may call me Mr. Fromlilo.”
The students laughed again, which puzzled me.
“Why do your words come out of your neck?” John asked.
“I am wearing a translator pendant. As my ability to speak your Earth languages is limited, I speak softly in my own language and the pendant renders it into yours.”
I waited a moment. There were no more interruptions, so I said, “Let us begin.”
I turned around to start writing on the screenboard. “Everyone please turn on your machines—”
Something hit me on the back, and I turned around. I found a piece of paper sitting on the floor, folded into the shape of a glider.
I bent over to pick it up, and I examined it.
“What is the meaning of this?” I asked, holding the glider aloft and looking from student to student.
“You’re the teacher,” John replied. “Don’t you know?”
I turned one of my eyes directly at him, while the other continued to look around at the other students. “I do know. I am asking what its purpose was.”
“You’re our science teacher, aren’t you?” He pointed at the glider. “This is science.”
“It does not matter if the glider illustrates principles of science, young man. It is inappropriate to throw it at your teacher. I would suggest—”
Suddenly, John stood up and began walking toward the back wall, where there was a cabinet containing school supplies.
“John, what are you doing? I was talking to you.”
He stopped short and looked back at me. “I get distracted. All the teachers know that.”
Some of the other students giggled. I walked over to John and looked down at him.
“Please return to your seat.”
John laughed, but walked back to his desk and sat down. I returned to the front of the room and tried to start my lesson again. However, I could never get more than a few minutes into the material before John Palmer would either interrupt me, begin wandering around the room, or start fiddling with a pair of scissors and some paper.
Somehow, I managed to make it through the remaining forty-five minutes of the class.
That afternoon, Robby Greenberger, the principal of the school, called me into his office to discuss my first day.
He sat at his desk and at first I stood at attention. But then, when he looked up at me, the corners of his mouth turned down, and he pulled at his beard.
“I can barely see your face from here,” he said. “Sit on the floor.”
All of the Tenjant had dealt with this issue before, given the fact that our average height was approximately one and a half times that of the average human. I reluctantly lowered myself onto my knees so that Greenberger and I faced each other comfortably.
“I don’t know if you realize this, but I was majorly opposed to this Interspecies Teacher Training program.”
I had not expected Mr. Greenberger to start from there. I tried to formulate a response. Finally, I asked, “What made you change your mind?”
He snorted, an odd sound to my ears. “I didn’t. But what with the shortage of teachers, it was the only way to get someone qualified to handle science.” He paused and looked over my shoulder. “Although I have no idea how we’re going to handle the sex education part of the curriculum.”
My mind focused on the first comment. “You could not find a human teacher qualified to teach your science classes?”
He shook his head, the human way of-signifying negation. “Nope.”
Although I did not want to appear judgmental of my host race, I gently said, “It is not rational for a race to neglect the education of their children.”
&nb
sp; He expelled air from his lungs. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“I would be happy to do so, but I thought I was here to educate your young.”
“No, no, I meant—never mind.” He looked around the room, then back at me. “Tell me about what happened today.”
“I wish I understood. But your students are not like ours.”
“Back up, Xerpers. Start from the beginning.”
He had mispronounced my name, but I ignored that. Instead, I said, “From the beginning.”
“Yes.”
“From the beginning, I had prepared my lesson in detail.” I took out my handheld computer and showed it to him. “As you can see, my preparation was more than adequate.”
Greenberger took my computer from me and scanned through my lesson plan. Again, as before, he expelled air from his lungs. “Did you expect the children to just sit there while you read aloud from your computer?”
“Of course,” I said. “But they would also be able to read along as I wrote the words on the screen-board.”
“You see, this is why I was opposed to this program.” Greenberger leaned forward. “Look, Xerpers. Human children are not like Tenjant children. You can’t just read aloud to them. You have to reach out to them, to engage them with your teaching.”
“Does that include John Palmer?”
The comers of his mouth turned up. “Ah, yes, John Palmer.”
“He seems reticent to learn.”
“More like a pain in the ass.”
I pulled my head back. “We do not refer to our race’s offspring in that manner.”
“Yeah, well, you won’t hear me say something like that in public either.” He clasped his hands together. “Look. John Palmer is a troublesome kid. He’s a lot to handle.”
“Perhaps it would be best to give me a class without ‘troublesome’ kids.”
Greenberger barked out a grating laugh. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
His comment puzzled me. “I am an educator of my race, Mr. Greenberger. I do not make jokes about my profession.”
He leaned back. “Yeah, well. We don’t have that sort of choice around here. If I do that for you, I’d have to do that for everyone.”
I, Alien Page 5
