“He is laughing,“ said the probe. “And he is experiencing something called hiccups. Not a life-threatening situation. There are several suggested cures — we might try startling him.“
The lizard was silent for a moment then said, “I believe we already have.“
oOo
Back at the house, Stan and the aliens had tea and cheese puffs. Then, “Arlen“ composed answers to his letters. He kept the answer Stan had made to the first of these — out of respect, he said, for their host.
Oddly, Stan wanted nothing more than to sleep. Overwhelmed, he supposed, and he surprised himself by actually being able to sleep. He curled up on his bed and slumbered deeply until his cell-phone woke him.
It was his agent.
“Well?“ he said “Did you find anything?“
Only two aliens and a wrecked space shuttle. Nothing to get excited about. “Yeah. Someone’s been using the cottage as a... base of operations. It’s not... quite what I thought it was, though. Look, I’ll have to explain it to you later. It’s... complicated.“
“Well, so’s this. I just got a call from The Tonight Show.“
“The... You’re kidding. I thought they weren’t interested in me.“
“They aren’t. They’re interested in ‘Arlen.’ A Mr. Barnett let them in on the connection between the column and Stan Schell and suddenly you’re famous — SF writer moonlights as advisor of the lovelorn. They want you to come on the show and read some of the letters you’ve gotten — and, of course, the ‘charmingly oddball’ answers.“
“But I don’t have any answers!“
“And they want you to field questions from the audience and just generally, well, be Arlen for them.“
“But I’m not Arlen! I’m Stan Schell! I write science fiction. I’ll talk to them about that all night, if they want.“
“That’s just it, Stan — they don’t want. Maybe we should just turn your trespassers over to them.“
For a moment Stan contemplated that — going onto The Tonight Show and telling them all about today. Maybe even showing pictures. There was a camera in the front hall closet. As soon as he had the thought, he discarded it. Doing that would result in one of several horrific scenarios: (1) No one would believe him; he would be labeled a crackpot; and his career would come to an abrupt halt. (2) No one would believe him but a legion of UFO chasers; he would become a poster child for ‘abductees’ and hit the talk show circuit while his writing languished. (3) Everyone would believe him, including the government; he would end up in a witness protection program or, worse, he and the aliens would become ‘guests’ of the US government.
“Look, just tell them I don’t want to do it.“
“Are you nuts? This could be —“
“Excruciatingly embarrassing, that’s what it could be. I’m a science fiction writer, dammit. A good one. Just keep getting me gigs as a science fiction writer.“
“There aren’t that many gigs for science fiction writers, Stan. At least not ones at your level. This could get you exposure.“
“Exposure? I’d rather run naked through Central Park.“
“Think about it, OK?“
“Yeah, right.“
oOo
“What is The Tonight Show?“ the lizard asked the moment Stan poked his head tentatively into the office.
“Why do you ask?“
“I have gotten an e-mail about it. I have been asked to appear on this The Tonight Show to discuss the column and ‘share some excerpts,’ but I have no idea what this means.“
Explain a night time variety show to an alien. Interesting assignment. Stan supposed he could mis-explain it, but he knew that the FRU would be able to disabuse Qtzl of any false impressions. He explained as best he could, and was surprised at Qtzl’s immediate comprehension.
“Yes, yes! We have this at home, too. People speak and sing and dance and show their prowess at game or thought. Yes, I know this. But at home, these... shows are broadcast widely. Many thousands of people can experience them. Is it so here?“
Stan nodded. “The Tonight Show is probably the most exposure a person can get in one hour. It’s been known to make or break careers.“
Qtzl’s neck frill, which had risen to the occasion, sank back to his shoulders. “But, Stan, I cannot appear on your show. If I do, everyone will see me. Then what would happen?“
Stan had no answer to that. In his books, aliens were feared, loathed, embraced whole-heartedly, worshipped. He realized he had no idea how real human beings would react to real aliens. “I don’t know,“ he admitted.
“Could you do the show?“
“How could I do it? I don’t write the column.“
“Well, you did write one reply. It was perhaps not as well thought out as it could have been — you missed a few issues... But that doesn’t matter, I could coach you. I could be in contact with you all the time you were on the show. I could put my words in your mouth.“
“How?“
The FRU chose that moment to float silently into the room.
“That’s how,“ said Qtzl.
“Damn,“ said Stan.
oOo
“Okay, okay, okay,“ said the young man in the third row. “I got one for you. There’s this girl in the group I hang with who’s real cute, but has this really disgusting habit, okay? Whenever we do fast food, she orders a hot dog, okay? And she takes a bite out of one end and then — this is gross — she turns the hot dog around so that I’m staring right at the bite and takes a bite off the other end. What can I do about that?“
“Not sit across from her?“ Stan suggested. The audience laughed and Stan felt a warm glow spread across his cheeks. Cool.
In his ear, Ship chirped in annoyance. “Please, Stan, let Qtzl take care of this.“
“Don’t be obtuse, young man,“ said Stan after pausing to field Qtzl’s thoughts. “This... female... is obviously attracted to you and is inviting you to partake of a Food Ritual with her. In any culture this is a first level mating rite, to which there is only one response. You must lean across the table and take a nice, big bite out of the proffered end of the food item. Unless, of course, you do not find the female attractive. Do you find the female attractive?“
“Well, yeah...“
“Then you simply must bite the dog, young man. The only other acceptable response is to get up and leave the eating area. But this would leave the female with the impression that you find her repulsive and don’t wish to share her food. In fact you may have already skewed your chances with the young woman.“ (“That’s screwed, Qtzl,“ said Ship patiently.)
The audience loved it. Every off-the-wall second of it. A week later, Ship’s port bow gimbals were on their way to recovery and ‘Arlen’ had been asked to appear on The Late Night Show.
oOo
Kerwin Frees stared at the row of photographs bobbing festively from a line hung across his tiny kitchen/darkroom and flogged his brain through a tangle of seemingly unconnected facts. Fact 1: An alien spaceship had crash-landed in the Sierra Nevada. (The evidence of that hung right before his eyes.) Fact 2: The aliens were staying in Stan Schell’s Tahoe summer cabin. (Was the tangential fact that the man was a science fiction writer merely a cosmic coincidence?) Fact 3: Stan Schell knew the aliens were using his house. (Witness the series of photos, taken yesterday through Schell’s front window, of human and reptilian alien sharing cheese puffs in front of the TV.)
Then there was the information Frees had stumbled across while trying to glean information about Schell from his newspaper editor. It made an already incredible scenario absolutely bizarre: An alien ship crashes. Shortly thereafter, Ask Arlen, a demonstrably weird advice column, appears in a Sacramento newspaper. Shortly after that, it goes into syndication. About this time, Stan Schell appears in Ted Barnett’s office asking after the author of the column that bears his picture. He reveals that the e-mail address to which Barnett delivers his reader’s letters is his own. Schell goes to Tahoe, purportedly to c
onfront the face-stealing columnist. He discovers, instead, that there are aliens hiding in his summer cabin — something Frees had to assume was what he’d witnessed upon his discovery of the crash site. Schell immediately calls Barnett and ‘confesses’ that he is the source of the column after all.
OK. What did it all mean? That aliens had come to earth to write advice columns for human beings? Even Kerwin Frees’s imagination balked at that. Were we that pathetic, or was this some sort of very peculiar plan for world domination? And what was he supposed to do with the information? He had been sitting on it for nearly a month, pretending to be gathering more, all the while wallowing in this insipid state of confusion.
He shook his head. Having achieved the dream of every UFO chaser the world around, he had no idea what to do next. The police were out. They wouldn’t believe him. His UFO chasing buddies were also out. While he used them as sources of information (all of which he took with liberal amounts of salt), he wasn’t sure what they’d do with a real, honest-to-God alien. He realized he was afraid to find out.
Yet, the aliens would not be here forever. When their vessel was repaired, they would be gone, and he would have missed the opportunity of a lifetime. His options seemed to have dwindled to one. He moved to his computer, opened his e-mail exchange and carefully composed a message.
oOo
Stan Schell was writing up a storm. Whatever else this experience provided, he knew it would end up on the shelves of bookstores everywhere. Better still, it would leave the stores and find its way into homes nationwide. He had no doubt some people would actually read it. Since his face had appeared in newspapers and on TV screens nationwide, Stan’s modest sales had become decidedly immodest. His book covers were being redone — Stan “Ask Arlen“ Schell,“ they would say. The only human beings who had reason to know he had not always been Arlen had a vested interest in keeping the column alive.
To the first talk show host who speculated as to why a science fiction writer would pseudonymously write a wacky syndicated column for the socially challenged, he owed the widely-bruited tale that he had been afraid people wouldn’t accept advice from a writer of fantastic fiction. He had nodded amiably, too, when that same host suggested his mindset was a little bizarre. “A little alien?“ he’d asked when the host seemed to be searching for a word. The audience chuckled. He loved that sound.
“Do you think anyone really takes your advice?“ last night’s host had asked him.
Dear God, I hope not, he’d thought, opened his mouth and parroted Qtzl’s “Well, I should hope so. I mean, look at the (twullip, said Qtzl)... uh, crap these other columnists dish out. (“English, Qtzl,“ admonished Ship.) To take their advice is to perpetuate undesirable behavior by failing to respond to it in an appropriate manner.“
“Like neglecting to take a bite out of your girlfriend’s hot dog.“
The audience tittered.
Stan flushed, simultaneously embarrassed and pleased. “Exactly. How many nascent relationships have been chortled by such inattention to ritual?“ (“Throttled, Qtzl,“ said Ship.)
The tittering escalated.
“We should commission a study,“ said the host and cut away to a commercial on laughter and applause.
Clearly, people didn’t know how to take Stan or his alter-ego. Was he a con man — a clever writer with his own money-making shtick, or was he a sort of a rain man, a walking malapropism, a social misfit who had somehow parlayed his cock-eyed world view into celebrity? He was fairly certain no one had arrived at the truth — that he was a struggling writer being fed lines by an alien.
Interviewers hovered between the smugness of a shared joke and the credulity born of uncertainty. Some were afraid to poke fun at him for fear, his agent told him, that he’d reveal himself to be a sufferer of Asperger’s Syndrome or some other condition it would be socially indefensible to joke about. It hardly mattered. Qtzl didn’t seem to understand when he was being made fun of and Stan, though sometimes on the verge of bolting from stage or studio, would simply deliver his prompter’s solemn responses into whatever situation he found himself. The result was always laughter, which translated into book sales, fame, fortune, and talk of him hosting his own talk show. The fact that his books tended to be rather serious in tone only added to the mystery. There was nothing of Arlen in Stan’s novels (which were now all back in print and selling briskly, thank you), which led to his emergence as a character of great complexity.
Then the fact of his electronic link to an offstage source came to light. “Legal counsel,“ he’d told the host of a much-watched day time talk show. “I have to be very careful what I reveal about the people whose letters I’ve responded to. If I were to give away their location — even the town they live in — or their real names, which they sometimes confide in me... well...“
The explanation had not been acceptable to everyone. Before long it was being trumpeted by the tabloids that there was a man (or woman) behind the scenes. Someone was feeding Stan Schell his lines. Speculation blossomed, naturally, and gave birth to a ludicrous array of ideas, the dominant ones being that (1) he was fronting for someone who was equal parts rain man and elephant man — a tragic, fragile soul who did not dare appear; and (2) his offstage prompter was a person of such fame and fortune that to reveal themselves would bring unwanted attention, even ruin. Candidates for this included the Queen of England, the President of the United States, a terminally dignified news anchor, and an ultra-right wing radio personality with MPD.
All this spawned something Stan had always thought was an oxymoron — unwanted attention. Six months after he had first appeared on The Tonight Show, mentally humming “This Could Be the Start of Something Big,“ he was beginning to whine about his “lack of privacy and personal control.“ He’d heard any number of Hollywood celebrities make that plaint and had thought them unrealistic weenies. Deeply immersed in his personal drama, his own weeniness escaped him.
One afternoon, Stan Schell took control of his life in the only way he could. He shaved off his beard, leaving only a professorial goatee. He was congratulating himself and patting his face dry when the FRU shuttled into the bathroom behind him.
“Stan,“ it said, “we have a problem.“
“Out of cheese puffs?“
“No, Stan. This is rather more serious.“
He turned to look at the FRU, vaguely disturbed, as always, that no expression could be read in the gleaming manta shell. “Not the Ship.“
“Someone has advanced the idea that you are a front for an alien presence on Earth.“
Stan burst out laughing. “Who’d believe such a ridiculous story? The person who made that up —“
“But, Stan, he did not make it up, as you well know.“
“He?“ Stan felt his pulse leap. “He who?“
Ship proceeded to tell him about the college student who had appeared one evening trying to get information about the crash of a meteorite. “I have no doubt that he witnessed our landfall.“
Stan shook his head. “Ship, think about it. Who’s going to believe a whacko tale like that?“
“Tabloids, Stan. UFO chasers. There is more. We have received a threatening e-mail. This person has said he will expose the location of this cabin to tabloid reporters if you do not — as he put it — come clean.“
“I can’t ‘come clean,’ Ship. Not without giving you and Qtzl up to...“ He realized he had no idea what he’d be giving them up to. “How soon can you leave?“
“I estimate three more days of constant work on my part.“
“Did this guy leave a return address?“
“Yes.“
“Then we’ll have to try to stall him. I’ll... invite him up here — Thursday. That will give you your three days.“
Ship hovered silently for a moment. “What will you do, Stan Schell, when we are gone?“
“Me? I don’t know. Retire. Try to make it on science fiction alone. I can’t continue to be Arlen.“
“Why
not?“ asked Ship.
“I don’t think the way he does. I’m not alien.“
“In your books you purport to write from the alien’s point of view. Is that not what writing science fiction is all about — being able to put oneself in an alien setting of some sort? To be able to report what one sees through alien eyes? You once claimed you were a ‘damn good science fiction writer.’ How can that be if your imagination fails to let you be alien?“
Damn. Out-argued by a machine. An alien machine. Stan wandered into the library and pulled one of his books from the shelf. Stepping Over Shadows the cover said — a story of aliens transported against their will to a strange new world called Earth. He perched on the corner of his desk and read the passage describing the alien protagonist’s first encounter with human beings. He skipped pages and read a paragraph or two about the alien’s voyage aboard the Earth ship. It was good, he thought. He had captured the alien’s fear and bemusement in the face of human alienness. And that had been written long before he’d met a real alien.
Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls Page 27
