Other Aliens

by Bradford Morrow

  After I close and lock the door and before I set the controls that will stretch the fabric of time down to the warp, I ask him, playfully, how he imagines the future.

  He shakes his head at me.

  “I want to know what you imagine,” he says.

  And so I tell him, as I set the dial to the year of my two thousandth birthday, turn off the safety mechanism, and flip the switch. My words, echoing inside the pod, pattern the churning of souls as they swell and disperse, falter, and peter out, and the nuclear glow falls like a curtain over the city.

  Cartoon

  Jean Muno

  —Translated from French by Edward Gauvin

  On April 18, 1977, around 8:00 a.m., when Cecile Angenot had drawn the garnet drapes that hid the windows of her dining room, she noticed, in the middle of the lawn, between the red cedars and the edge of the decorative well, something like an oblong splash of light. An illusion, she thought, the sun in my eyes. Error: the irradiation was quite real. It was coming from a small Class 3 UFO, roughly cigar shaped and squamous in appearance; truth to tell, a bit screwball, with its tuft of slender antennae and its three crutch-like struts, one of which was patched up with a crude ligature. But Mrs. Angenot saw none of this: she had mislaid her glasses.

  “When you’ve mislaid your glasses,” she was fond of saying, “the bothersome part is you need another pair to find them.”

  Ten minutes later, as she was coming down the stairs, clinging tightly to the banister, her gaze aimed at her feet, she heard a knock. Two, in fact, quite distinct, as sharp a rap as wood on wood. Without undoing the safety chain, she opened the front door and saw no one. In back then? Not a living soul … She ventured out on the deck.

  Someone was standing down below, by the dog’s pen. A man, apparently, in motorcycle leathers all white like his boots and helmet. A biker, white from head to toe! Probably for nighttime visibility. He had his back to her and was busy imitating Balthazar, matching his every yap, trading retorts. Young people today, thought Mrs. Angenot. What breeding! And why hadn’t Balthazar alerted them?

  “May I help you?”

  No answer. Had to raise her voice.

  “Quiet, Balthazar!”

  The stranger turned around abruptly. A foreigner, South American, North African, they were everywhere these days. Beneath the dazzling whiteness of his helmet, a dark face of a singularly olive hue.

  “Pardon me, Misangenot,” he drawled. “We just plumb run dry. Could we borrow some water off you? Liquid water.”

  Borrow water? Liquid water? What nonsense! But his Belgian accent was reassuring.

  “There’s a spigot in the ivy, to your left.”

  “Don’t got a jug, Misangenot.”

  She retreated to the kitchen, locking the door behind her. Had her doubts. A small favor, sure, but stay on guard. Especially when her glasses were missing. With his “Misangenot,” he was trying a little too hard to inspire trust. Sure, he sounded like a Belgian and kept a respectful distance. But why, after reading her name off the doorbell, had he knocked at the back door? Oh, if only I could find those silly glasses!

  The blindingly white biker stood waiting, perfectly still. It considered the bizarre house, all gables, the trees with their aerial roots, the quivering nebula of spring flowers … The natives seemed gentle and naive; no doubt they could be tamed. Still, like the plantigrades of 384N7, they seemed to suffer from ophthalmic scotoma; that’d be in its report. Also the fact that their behavior bore signs of anxiety typical of oxycoicoids. Now and then, the traveler moved its head, a brusque, precise, almost instantaneous twitch, and each time, like a stinger, its tongue shot out and crackled.

  (In fact, there was no proof that it was, strictly speaking, a tongue at all, that mobile, elongated muscular organ in the buccal cavity, but the biker’s face, or rather facies, or maybe even mask, covered in tiny gray scales, made this term more or less plausible.)

  “There you go!” said Mrs. Angenot, setting her oldest pitcher on the low wall. “Remember to turn off the water when you’re done, and please don’t make a mess.”

  “Don’t worry, Misangenot. If we need an oil change, we’ll resinify first.”

  “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  “No, Misangenot. Took a wrong turn.”

  “It’s not rocket science. At the next roundabout, go right, and then right again. You’ll see a sign pointing the way out of town.”

  “Thanks, Misangenot. Very kind of you. And Mr. Balthazar too.”

  About to step back into the kitchen, Cecile stopped short. Mr. Balthazar! Really, did he think he was in some kind of children’s cartoon?

  “You and Mr. Balthazar sure make a good pair. Plain to see.”

  What a boor! What an oaf! Oh, if she’d only had her glasses, goodness gracious, she’d give him what for!

  Later on, during the few weeks when, not yet recovered from her fright, Cecile would blather on nonsensically, we would hear her say, “I was worried right off the bat, you know. Why didn’t he ring at the front door, like everyone else? Fine, so he was a foreigner; that’s slightly more understandable. In some countries people live on top of each other. But take him and the dog, for instance—I could tell there was something abnormal going on. A kind of fraternizing, if you will, an intimacy. When I walked out on the deck that first time, I had the clear feeling I was interrupting them. Yes, interrupting their conversation! Go ahead, call me crazy! But that man, I mean, that … creature! His voice … well, it wasn’t coming from his mouth, but somewhere lower, straight from his throat—his chest, even. To put it simply, it was like hearing a radio with faltering reception, fading in and out. Of course, when I found my glasses again—silly me, they were right in my good old apron pocket—and I saw that things were normal, I told myself I’d been dreaming, my nearsightedness had been playing tricks on me. Oh! We all just want a logical explanation, don’t we?”

  No trace now of the biker in white. Nor of his “oil change.” If the old pitcher hadn’t been set right back on the wall, she’d have thought she’d been seeing things. And yet he’d said, “We’ll resinify,” she was sure of that much. She could still hear the metallic timbre of his voice. Maybe Pascal also resinified his old motor oil, but that wasn’t the word he used. She couldn’t have come up with it.

  Cecile went about her chores: putting the dishes away, making the bed, sorting the laundry. Don’t forget to water the papyrus in the dining room! From time to time, she would go into the kitchen and scribble something down on a pad. The radio provided unobtrusive company, coming and going like a pet … Words, music, words again … fighting in Kolwezi … a strike in the public sector to protest … two farmers in Pas-de-Calais confirmed having seen … Cecile cared not a fig for what they might have seen; her thoughts turned to organizing her day, her virtuous day as a model housewife, which didn’t really begin till Irene showed up. Then she’d give instructions and the work would start in earnest. Work that was its own religion, one of whose fundamental laws was not to hinder the whims and predilections of the masters of the house, its Lares, but rather to honor them, anticipate them devoutly. Oh, if Pascal had only been home this morning, the visitor might have seemed less bizarre!

  Irene should have shown up ten minutes ago. The clock on the kitchen wall, the grandfather clock in the foyer, the alarm clock in the bedroom all confirmed her tardiness. “With what I’m paying her!” Mrs. Angenot sighed. As she did whenever she was upset, which was rarely, she lit a cigarette. Irene came from town on a moped; every morning she’d go round the house and park her moped by Balthazar’s pen, and he would start barking. A minute later, she was in the kitchen, tossing out her “Hello, Mrs. Angenot!” even if no one was there to answer.

  At least, that was how things should have gone a good quarter of an hour ago—seventeen minutes, to be exact. Now, really, thought Mrs. Angenot. This time she’s gone too far! And to show she meant it, she threw a shawl over her shoulders and went to station herself at the
prow of the deck, lookout and judge … What was that strange smell? Her cigarette? No. It smelled like roses … better, even! Subtler, rarer, more … fetching, that was the word! But she couldn’t seem to put a name to it. Surely the smell of springtime, what else? It had been ages since spring had smelled so powerful, so youthful, so … edible! Balthazar was sitting in a splash of sunlight, like a dog made of porcelain, at once silent and ceremonious. True, he was smiling, maybe because of the smell? It was enthralling, like a memory …

  But over there, in the grass … Why, there was Irene’s moped! Abandoned. Toppled on the grass like scrap on a landfill. Now, really! Was her backyard to be a gypsy camp?

  “Irene? Irene! Where are you?” Smooching in the bushes? For this long? Impossible! “Irene!”

  Or maybe at the far end of the yard, hanging laundry? Loafing, goofing off! Because of a sweetness in the air, that terrible aroma of spring, so unexpected.

  “Irene! I’ve been calling your name for the last ten minutes!”

  No answer. Something must have happened to her. And me too, if I keep pressing forward, something will happen to me … I’m past the well now, and I can feel it … Like that other time, with Pascal, in the Bay of … We knew there was a sudden drop, that we’d lose our footing, but we kept pressing forward anyway, and surprise! Suddenly, we were floating! Side by side, without lifting a finger, just Pascal and me. The water, filled with sunlight, buoyed us aloft!

  Cecile had passed the well, the red cedar, and was heading down the great sloping lawn, in a fragrance that grew ever more intense, as if lovingly simmered at length in the gentle sun—so enthralling, really, that she stopped, spellbound.

  “Good Lord!” she said. “Goodness gracious me!”

  Later on, she would say, “I couldn’t believe my eyes! But this time I had my glasses on! No more lawn, just a big circle of dirt! And in the middle of that burnt patch, a huge pile of … I don’t know, Jell-O, bluish jelly, shining brightly in the sun. I didn’t see Irene at first. She was on the other side of the mound, flat on her back on that … stuff, which was sagging softly under her weight. Seeing her like that, you’d have thought she was dead, though, to tell the truth, the thought never crossed my mind …”

  Another time, still during those aforementioned weeks, she would say this (and we can all see how such words might lend credence to rumors of menopausal confabulation): “That smell! I could feel it in my belly, it was pulling me closer, it was like a kind of vertigo. At the same time, I wanted to touch things, to be a little girl again—the one who, at the village grocery, when her mother wasn’t looking, would surreptitiously plunge her hands into the big sacks full of dried green peas, cool as springwater, and sink her arms in all the way up to the elbow! Irene was far from dead; she was smiling, all smeared with blueberry jam, drunk on jelly! Goodness gracious me, what a child! And so lovable … How happy I was to see her like that, and happy the encounter that morning hadn’t been a dream, and that this … this! Was their oil change, this … opulence, this royal jelly, this … turquoise afterbirth! Forgive me, I wasn’t myself anymore, the thought of afterbirth seemed delectable to me, shameful and delectable …”

  Almost evangelically, Mrs. Angenot caressed her maid’s brow: those peacefully shut eyelids, that naive smile of a medieval Virgin. “My poor child … Who will do all our chores? What will the man of the house say? Come now, on your feet! If we have time, we’ll come back later, when everything’s shipshape …” Come, come, my darling little girl, my humming girl whose sleepy hands are dreaming in Jell-O blue as deep water in a well … a well of green peas … Up, up! You’ve no right to come over to my house and dream without me! My serving girl, my serving darling, in that sad little green dress you wear every day.

  Cecile knelt down. That aroma! Good Lord, that aroma! I’m in it up to my elbows! Green peas, green peas … She raised her hands to her face, as if to pray; her features hardened, her face took on a ferocious expression, the grocer’s dried green peas! Then suddenly, fingers spread, body abandoned, she dove into the indulgence.

  Dove right in.

  When the man of the house came home two hours later as usual, he was surprised to say the least. An empty, messy house, windows open to the four winds. Admittedly, there was a smell of something cooking, but it wasn’t coming from the kitchen. Curious, thought the man of the house. Strange, even a bit outlandish. The radio, which was playing for no one at all, was like a glimmer of light at the end of a mine shaft. He turned it off, and the silence seemed menacing. Thoughts of kidnapping, of ransoms, crossed his mind.

  And yet, to smell it, there was something invigorating about that aroma. Leaning out the upstairs window, Pascal was astonished to find the entire backyard redolent as a richly laid table. Was there a picnic surprise in store for him? A banquet, even—legs of lamb, pâtés en croûte, truffles and melons, stuffing and beignets, rare sauces, exquisite cheeses … That vast aroma had a little bit of everything. Beverages too: fine wines, precious liqueurs … with a deliciously robust hint of staleness he would have been hard put to name, a pinch of rot … “How hungry I am!” sighed Mr. Angenot, who at that moment thought he glimpsed a bright splotch (linens? a dress?) between the low boughs of a pine.

  “Cecile! I’m home!”

  No answer. The yard lay still, silent, unmoved by his cries. Seized with genuine panic, Pascal ran downstairs, dashed through the kitchen, and sprinted toward the bright splotch. The sight of the massive jellyfish brought his headlong hurtle up short. What on earth? Cecile and the maid lying side by side, lolling higgledy-piggledy in the stuff. Asleep. Intoxicated! You could see their underwear and, on Irene’s immodest thighs, petals from the cherry tree clinging like glitter. This detail put the finishing touch on Pascal’s embarrassment.

  “You should be ashamed,” he whimpered, bending over his wife.

  She opened her eyes, staring at him fixedly, unblinking. “It was ready,” she said, her voice thick, “so we started without you.” Meanwhile, Irene, no doubt the devil on his wife’s shoulder, began murmuring even as her thighs shivered with pleasure, “I’m a fly, a giant flutter-fly, naughty, poopy fly! Irene, queen of the flies, naughty fly, poop-poop-de-doop!”

  “You make me sick,” said Pascal Angenot. With difficulty, he had straightened up and was now removing his accountant’s vest. “Frankly, you make me sick, both of you!”

  “Blue poop, gold poop, the battle for the golden poop!”

  Now he was in his shirt, his undershirt, and then, still repeating, “You make me sick! You should be ashamed!” he was naked. In his age-worn, donkey-like skin. And now he was taking off his shoes without even bothering to untie them.

  “I’m a fly, a fly to poop, a poop to flies, fly to fly … how I want you, you blue poo! Poop of gold, you’ll never get old!”

  “Debauchery and depravity,” said Pascal Angenot with grim conviction. “The decline of moral conscience!” Even as his pants slipped down, revealing the bloodless tubercles of his hairy legs.

  “Come, my man of the house! Meatfly mine!”

  Later, when his sense of decorum had wholly returned, he would confess, “I lost my footing, I’ll admit. But it’s a long way from losing your footing to falling for some childish science fiction. Look, we’ve all known forever there are such things as stimulants, even euphoriants. I, for one, am still convinced the labs will give us an explanation once they’ve thoroughly examined that suspect substance. What else can I say? Maybe they’ll even find it’s some phenomenon resulting from pollution that produces an effect like running amok. You’re up, science! Ball’s in your court!”

  But during this time, Cecile would tell her seamstress, her podiatrist, the women in the PTA, my wife, myself—in short, anyone at all: “When I saw Pascal next to me, I felt fulfilled. Before then, I’d felt remorseful. I told him, ‘Pascal dear, you’ll catch cold.’ And he replied, ‘Let’s slip inside, dear Cecile.’ He was right. We got inside the Jell-O, only our heads sticking out. Did we feel
good! Nothing could happen to us now, nothing better or worse. It nourished us, protected us; we were at home. Like two maggots, two huge maggots cozy inside food!”

  What a shameless image! And she said it unabashedly, the wife of the town comptroller! With such evident retrospective relish. People were embarrassed for her. Especially us—my wife and I—who only meant her well.

  That was where things stood on April 18, 1977, when chance and a sense of professional duty threw someone into the mix—someone who should never have been there, who belonged even less than everyone else. Firmin had always elevated discretion to the status of a sacrosanct principle. “It’s nobody’s business but your own” was his favorite expression, and unlike everyone else, he never used it to preface malicious gossip. True, sometimes his job as a mailman got in the way of his fondness for happy innocence. In fact, on the day in question, he had a certified letter for Mr. Pascal Angenot, 4 Turtledove Lane.

  After ringing at the front door and waiting a reasonable amount of time, Firmin went around the back of the house and into the yard in hopes of finding someone. Five whole minutes went by before he reappeared, but given the circumstances as we now know them, that mere reappearance was a kind of miracle in and of itself. Pensively, he got back on his bike and pedaled hard, all quite as usual, except for one thing: he was riding the opposite way from his normal route.

  When Firmin walked into the little post office in Malaise less than fifteen minutes later, Antoinette was in the middle of doing addition, her mouth full of figures.

  “There’s a problem,” he said.

  “Forty-seven … fifty-two … what? Carry the two …”

  “Certified letter. Pascal Angenot, Turtledove Lane … undeliverable.”