“Big deal.” Miranda was slipping her right arm into the sleeve of her blouse. “An alien.”
Kerwin chose his next words carefully. “You don’t find it somewhat unusual to be fleeing from a couple of homicidal, maybe not-human police in a borrowed van that’s being driven up into the mountains by someone not of this world?”
“Look, Keith, I mean, I’ve been around, you know?”
“Kerwin,” he corrected her absently. It was apparent that Miranda didn’t have much of a memory for names.
“Yeah, well, whatever. Like, if you think he’s funny looking you should see some of the losers I’ve been out with. I mean, sometimes I think half the men at school are majoring in post-doctorate dorkism.” She glanced toward the rear of the van. “Present company excepted of course, Brick.”
“Brock, it’s Brock, dammit! Where the hell’s my belt?”
“That’s more like it,” said Seeth. “Belts I can get into.”
“That’s good. That’s real good. Because as soon as I find mine I’m going to—ow!”
The van slammed through another pothole. The forestry road wasn’t exactly the Interstate and the unfortunate owner of the van was thrown sideways into a wall.
Kerwin was still staring in wonder at Miranda. “Amazing. Simply amazing. No surprise, no shock, no fear.”
“Why should there be? Hey, I go to the movies. So he’s an alien. So, like, none of us is perfect. What are you, prejudiced or something?” She eyed their driver thoughtfully. “So maybe he’s not a real good looking alien...”
“How would you know?” Rail sounded a bit miffed.
“Yeah, right. Hey, nothing personal like, you know? It’s been a weird night for me.”
Seeth was inspecting Rail’s true appearance. “Actually, man, I think that haircut’s far out. Who mows your fuzz?”
“I primp myself, thank you. When I have the time and when I’m not operating under the restraints of a camouflage field.”
“That the little bugger that makes you look human?” Seeth nodded toward the unwatch.
“An expensive piece of equipment, but for one in my circumstances well worth it. Particularly when one’s on the run from the authorities.” He reached down and caressed the watch anew. “As you will see, in a moment I will have reformed my human aspect.”
The moment passed, the light seemed to ripple, and sure enough, there in the driver’s chair sat a bright blue porcupine.
“No sale,” Kerwin told him apologetically. “Maybe you’d better try again.”
“What?” The porcupine frowned and quills touched the watch. The porcupine vanished, to be replaced by something like a cross between a vampire bat and a swordfish. “Drat. I think the modulator’s jammed.”
Kerwin tried to be sympathetic. “Computers at school are always going down, too.”
“This is wild.” Seeth put his hands behind his head and leaned back. “Do another one. When this is over I’m gonna try and book you on the Dick Clark show. He loves acts he doesn’t understand.”
“What’s he talking about?” Rail looked confused. “I thought I understood your language quite well. I took a crash course before setting down here, you know.”
“Don’t mind him. First of all, our language is in a constant state of flux. Second of all, so’s his brain. He usually doesn’t know what he’s saying, either. Remember, I told you he’s a member of a subspecies. They usually converse in monosyllables. Anything more complex tends to confuse them.”
Seeth threw him a finger. “Just for that, man, you don’t get any peanuts when the zoo closes.”
“That’s about enough of this!” Having sufficiently attired himself, Brock loomed in the light pouring through the back windows. “I want everybody out. You hear me? Out! Everybody out of my van except Miranda. Right now, or I start kicking ass!” He started forward.
The high-backed captain’s chair had concealed Rail from his view. Now the driver turned to look back at him. He’d managed to unjam the camouflage generator to the point where he once again looked like himself: tri-eyed and green.
Brock-boy got a look at him and his eyes got real big. He started making odd, blubbering noises.
Miranda shook her head and sighed. “Settle down, Brian. It’s only an alien.”
Brock retreated several steps, mumbling. “You mean a real alien? Like, from up there?” He gestured skyward with a finger.
“It is all right, Mr. Bloke,” said Rail. “I will not harm you.” Clinging to the wheel with his left tentacles, he reached back with his right to reassure the van’s owner with a friendly caress. As no joints were involved, he didn’t have to turn his body from the road ahead. To Miranda’s boyfriend it looked like a dozen writhing green snakes were reaching for his chest.
Screaming, he staggered to the back of the van and slammed into the rear doors. The impact sprung the latch and he tumbled out onto the dirt road. Because of the bumps and ruts, they weren’t going much more than twenty miles an hour. He was still screaming as Miranda sighed again and crawled back to resecure the doors.
“Like, what a drip. I mean, he was built, a real hunk, but I guess muscles aren’t everything, you know?”
“Muscles aren’t anything,” Seeth assured her.
“Yeah. There’s always brains.” Kerwin jerked a thumb in the smaller man’s direction. “Like there’s always sewage.”
“And where would the world be today without sewage? Up to its earlobes in undigested waste, man.” His expression brightened. “Hey, that’s not a bad name for a group. Undigested Sewage. I ought to get some of the guys together. We been thinking about forming a band. Maybe we could...”
Miranda interrupted him. It wasn’t so much that she interrupted, it was as though no other vocalizations of consequence disturbed the ether in her immediate vicinity, as if there was some kind of mysterious cloud of radiation that automatically shut out all forms of communication other than her own.
“Can you guys get me back to Eighty-Third and Thunder-bird? I mean, my parents are going to be pissed if I’m not home pretty soon. They think I went roller skating. Would you believe? I mean, roller skating! Now that Bjorn has freaked out he’s liable to do something really stupid like call them up. So if you could just turn around, like right now, okay?”
Seeth was staring into a side mirror. “Better gun it, Rail. I think I see headlights again. Way back.”
“It could be someone else,” said Kerwin hopefully.
“Not on this freeway, man. Just rabbits and skunks.”
“I told you the Oomemians were persistent.” Rail accelerated as much as he dared. The transmission was starting to complain.
“They missed you when you made that last big turn. How’d they get on you again?”
“I fear they are attuned to my sumash.”
“Right, yeah. Why the hell didn’t I think of that? You AM or FM sumash?”
Miranda slumped back against one paneled wall and crossed her arms, pouting. She managed to look wonderful despite her rumpled hair and clothing, one of those unique young women who could drive the Baja 500 and emerge at the end with makeup perfectly intact. She moved in a different dimension than he did, Kerwin knew, which was why he’d never encountered her on campus. Circumstances had put them in close proximity.
“Look, as soon as we get to wherever Mr. Rail’s going and lose the people who are chasing him, we’ll take you straight home. I promise.”
“Big deal. I’m gonna be grounded for weeks after this.”
Far back on the dirt road, Brock was trying to button his shirt. A car bore down on him and he moved out into its lights, waving frantically.
“Hey, hold up there, stop!”
The car slowed. Gratefully, he ran toward it. No telling when another vehicle would come along on this isolated forestry road, and it was a long hike back to town.
“Listen,” he said excitedly as he neared the open window on the driver’s side, “those guys up ahead, they s
tole my van, and they’ve got something driving it that looks like—“ He stopped in mid-sentence as a creature with the face of a cancerous toad peered up at him.
Away from humans, the Oomemians no longer needed to waste the power necessary to maintain their own camouflage fields, with the result that Miranda’s exceedingly unfortunate date became the first person on planet Earth to see an Oomemian as it truly was. In addition to being persistent, they were also exceptionally ugly; maybe not ugly enough to win a galaxy-wide ugly contest, but gruesome enough to at least qualify for the semi-finals.
As Brock staggered away making interesting gurgling noises, the two aliens consulted and then roared off up the road, tires squealing, dirt flying into the air behind their late-model sedan. Having struck out twice on the road, Brock turned and made a mad dash for the nearest woods. At this point he would have been extremely grateful for the sight of something as normal-looking as a bear.
4
Once Rail got started it was hard to turn him off. As he talked, the green fuzz that covered his head rippled like an unripened wheat field in the wind. Kerwin suspected that each ripple conveyed a whole range of feeling, though to him it looked only like blowing grass.
“Part of the problem is that we Prufillians are a very gentle race. We don’t like it when someone else tries to set themselves up as lords of the universe. Besides, the Oomemians have no sense of humor. If there’s anything a Prufillian can’t stand it’s a race with no sense of humor.” He smiled. His teeth were thin and short.
“That’s one reason why I have enjoyed my stay on your world so much. Your kind has a wonderful sense of humor—when you’re not giving vent to your homicidal urges.” He glanced into the rearview mirror. “They think they’re so smart, they do. Cleverer by half than anyone else, especially a lowly Prufillian. They don’t have me yet. We’ll show them a thing or three.”
Seeth continued to leer at Miranda. “Want me to show you a thing or three, creamkiss?”
She was working with her hair. “No thanks. One boring date a night’s enough. Why don’t you just leave? Go on, get out.”
“And where would you like me to get out to, honeylips?”
She made a face. “Don’t tempt me.”
“Why are they after you?” Kerwin asked their driver as the van turned down a narrow track leading through the trees. Something went spang beneath the van. Miranda’s ex-boyfriend wasn’t going to get his machine back in like-new condition.
“Oh, a little of this and a little of that.”
Kerwin couldn’t tell if Rail was being deliberately evasive, was just concentrating on the road ahead, or was actually telling the truth.
“I’m what you’d call a freelance espial.”
“A what?” He turned back to Seeth, who continued to stare over the back of the captain’s chair at Miranda. “You know what an espial is?”
“Sounds like an abbreviation, man. Hey, you’re the college boy. Isn’t that one of your pet words? Some people have dogs and cats, you have words.”
“Not this one.”
“A word you do not know, in your own language.” Rail shook his head and Kerwin assumed it meant the same thing on Prufillia it did on Earth—unless you were from Bulgaria. “That’s something else I love about you humans. Your linguistic diversity. Of course, it has mucked you up no end but I’m sure you’ll straighten it out soon. Who would have thought that any one race could create so many words that mean so little? Could construct elaborate sentences that contradict themselves and yet appear to actually mean something? When you join the galactic community you will make wonderful diplomats.”
“Galactic community?” Kerwin swallowed. “You mean there are others out there besides you and the Oomemians?”
“Certainly. Intelligent life is as common as dirt. There are hundreds of sentient races, maybe thousands. I don’t know the actual number at last count, but there’s an entire administrative department whose job it is to keep track. Occasionally an intelligent race will be bypassed or overlooked by the Development and Integration people. Then they tend to extinct themselves. Terrible waste. Hard to get credit if you extinct yourselves. Bureaucrats.” He shook his head again.
“You’d think advanced computers would be able to keep track of everything, but sometimes they just make it more confusing for us poor organics. Though when you’re trying to keep track of an entire galaxy, you don’t have much choice but to make use of them. You give machines artificial intelligence, next thing you know they want to use the same bathroom. If it was up to me—but nobody asks my advice. Nobody wants to listen to a lowly espial.”
“That still doesn’t tell us why the Oomemians are after you.”
Rail smiled wanly. “It’s all a misunderstanding, of course.”
“Oh. Good. Then you haven’t actually done anything bad.”
“Naw,” Seeth sneered. “He’s innocent as a newborn juniper. Come on, man! Who’s kidding who here? He’s guilty as sin. It’s written all over his face. Or maybe I should say mowed. He’s guilty, I’m guilty, we’re all guilty.”
“Not me,” said Miranda with perfect self-assurance. “I’m not guilty of anything.”
“No? How about being too beautiful?”
“Nobody can be too beautiful.” She said it without attempting to argue his compliment.
Rail dimmed the van’s headlights. “I suppose from the Oomemians’ point of view it’s not a misunderstanding. But I assure you that to the rest of the civilized galaxy I am as innocent as the driven frooflak.”
“So what do they call this misunderstanding?” Kerwin pressed him.
The green fringe on his head moved south. “Not much. Kidnapping.”
“Kidnapping?” Kerwin drew back. “Hey, I don’t know how they evaluate crimes where you come from, but here on Earth kidnapping’s not just a ‘misunderstanding’.”
“Relax, my friend. It is what the Oomemians call it, but I am not guilty. Just accused.”
Kerwin breathed a little easier. “Okay then.”
“That’s why they’ve sent those two trackers after me, because they know they haven’t a chance of proving their case to any court. It would be much better for them to avoid the publicity an open trial could produce. In an open proceeding they would have to admit to some things they would prefer to keep secret. In other than an Oomemian court their accusations wouldn’t hold a sorbil.”
Kerwin mulled this over as he took another look in the sideview mirror. Only rarely could he glimpse a glow that might come from pursuing headlights. Rail hadn’t been kidding when he’d told them the Oomemians were persistent.
“If you’re not guilty, we’re going to help you all we can. I don’t like the idea of somebody else picking on an innocent traveler no matter where he’s from.”
“So you didn’t kidnap anybody?” Miranda had finished with her hair and was slipping on her shoes.
“Of course not.” Rail smiled broadly. “I liberated something. You can’t really call it someone.”
Kerwin’s expression fell. “Hold on. You mean, you really did kidnap somebody?”
“I said liberate. Admittedly, it would be up to a court to draw the requisite distinctions. Wonderfully duplicitous, your language.”
“So who or what did you liberate?” Seeth asked him.
“Izmir the Astarach.”
“Got to get a group together. Can’t waste all these names. You got whoever this Izmir is stashed out in the woods somewhere?”
“I refer to it as a he because it makes for simpler semantics. No, he’s right here. He has accompanied us all along.”
Kerwin’s eyes searched the van. “You mean you’ve kidnapped somebody invisible?”
“Hardly. Come on, Izmir, reveal yourself. We’re not playing that game anymore.” With his right foot he nudged the bowling ball that lay close to his leg. It rolled forward slightly and bounced off the engine housing. For the first time all night Seeth and Kerwin wore similar expressions. Ke
rwin stared hard at their driver.
“Let me make sure I’ve got this straight. These Oomemians have tracked you across no telling how many light years and are trying to kill all of us because you’ve kidnapped a bowling ball?”
“Don’t be absurd.” Rail did not appear particularly upset. Maybe, Kerwin thought, he was used to the question. He nudged the ball again. “That’s enough, Izmir. Game’s over, finished.”
“Blitheract,” said the bowling ball quite clearly.
Kerwin gaped at it. He was sure it was the ball that had spoken and not Rail, not unless he was some kind of interstellar Edgar Bergen. Reaching down hesitantly he touched the shiny, almost iridescent curved surface.
“Glumelmerk!” the ball snapped.
Kerwin yanked his hand back. The surface of the ball rippled and flowed, extending a thin black pseudopod that encircled his right wrist. It was as gentle and strong as a baby elephant’s trunk.
“Leave him alone.” Rail added something in an entirely different language. It sounded like radio static.
Obediently, the tendril freed Kerwin’s wrist. He clutched it with his other hand. It tingled from the brief contact. As the three humans looked on, the bowling ball levitated soundlessly and settled down on the drink-holder tray that covered the engine console. As soon as it made contact it silently commenced to explode, surfaces shifting, running down the front of the console, rising toward the ceiling. Tiny explosions were visible within this flexible matrix, small bursts of intense energy.
As the malleable surface continued to flow, the color changed from black to a deep navy blue. The tiny explosions changed from pure white to red, blue, and tangerine, began to run together in glowing strips. The result was something that looked like a giant, animated candy cane. A single large blue eye appeared atop the cylindrical shape. A pair of short arms, each ending in four fingers, extended from the main body to push off from the console. It floated in the space between the chairs, its base rippling like a skirt blowing in the wind, and gazed intently at Miranda.
A few minutes passed before she spoke. “Hey, give it a rest, will ya? First Bowen, then this joker,” she jabbed a finger in Seeth’s direction, “and now you—and I don’t even know what you are.”
Glory Lane Page 6
