Analog SFF, September 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  I waited.

  And then a whole crowd of aliens appeared: the juvenile Ah-lec-sa, followed by several others with dark skin like hers, and several more.

  I dug in my pannier and brought out the notespool, and I explained as best I could what my parent had learned. Another alien brought a larger, more complex version of the translation device, and that made the conversation a little easier. Many other aliens came. When I brought out Xinecotic's communication device, two of the larger aliens immediately moved in and took it away from me. I was too tired to argue.

  After a long while they brought it back, saying they had examined it and determined it was safe. I explained how to open it, and one of the aliens who had taken it away tried, but in the end it turned out that only Ah-lec-sa had fingers small and strong enough to work the catch. I showed Ah-lec-sa how to feed the notespool into the device's reader and how to initiate transmission.

  "You must take the device through the portal,” I said, “and transmit from there.” After so much talking, my voice was hoarse and whispery.

  The aliens argued a long time among themselves. I didn't follow the argument very well—I was drifting in and out of consciousness—but I gathered that Ah-lec-sa was the only one who could manipulate the device, and the other aliens didn't want it to go. Eventually, though, Ah-lec-sa bent down to where I could see. My vision had nearly failed. “Speaker travel (future) and return (future),” it said to me. “Listener wait (imperative) at this location."

  "I will wait,” I said. I didn't really have much alternative.

  Ah-lec-sa left, accompanied by four of the largest aliens. I slumped where I sat. Some of the other aliens asked me questions, but I was barely able to respond.

  I realized I had done all I could.

  I crawled into a corner and began to wrap myself, beginning with my tail and working up. I had waited almost too long; my skin had stiffened to the point that I could barely reach my tail with my mandibles. I did the best I could, but it took much longer than it was supposed to. I hoped my adult form would not suffer because of the delay.

  While I worked, many other aliens came, pointing devices at me that flashed and beeped. I ignored them.

  I was nearly finished, just my head and one limb unwrapped, when Ah-lec-sa and the others returned. My vision had failed nearly completely by now, but Ah-lec-sa's flavor, different from the other aliens’ though equally strange, had become familiar to me.

  "Transmission completion achieve (past, assertion),” Ah-lec-sa said. “Grand Nest acknowledge (past) transmission. Grand Nest send (assertion) soldiers, apprehend (future) criminals."

  "Thank you, Ah-lec-sa,” I sighed.

  "Listener status (query),” Ah-lec-sa asked.

  "I am pupating now,” I whispered. “You must watch over the pupa for three months. Do not let predators eat it, or let it get too warm or too cold. The soldiers from the Grand Nest will tell you what to do, and will care for my sisters."

  "Speaker talk (future, assertion) with listener in three months."

  I paused in wrapping the one remaining exposed limb. “No, Ah-lec-sa. The adult that emerges from the pupa will not be me. She will know the things I have done and learned, but I am told it is like reading a spool about the ancestors, not like a memory. She will be a different person. You will need to introduce yourself to her."

  Ah-lec-sa and the other aliens discussed this for a long time, while I continued wrapping myself. Covering my own head was the most difficult part, but I relaxed and let my instincts guide me.

  "Speaker equivalence (assertion) great sadness,” Ah-lec-sa said.

  "Do not be sad, Ah-lec-sa. The new adult will be glad to meet you. She will enjoy hearing from you what we have done together."

  "Adult feel (future, assertion) pride about listener. Listener equivalence (assertion) significant-person."

  "I would never have been significant,” I said, “if you had not taught me to be."

  I tucked my mandibles against my neck, feeling the wrappings begin to harden, and let myself relax into the long sleep.

  Copyright © 2010 David D. Levine

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Short Story: SPLUDGE by Richard A. Lovett

  * * * *

  Illustrated by Mark Evans

  * * * *

  First contact is likely to require special skills—and not necessarily the ones you might think!

  * * * *

  Billy Whilmer wasn't sure when he realized there really were thoughts better left unthunk. Not that he believed in thought police waiting to get him. There were just some ideas that, once planted, rattled around your head until your only option was to test them. Either that, or go mad, wondering. Which, he supposed, is why there really would be thought police if anyone ever came up with a way to do it.

  Not that Billy was all that philosophical. He just liked to play with ideas.

  Whenever his epiphany came, it was after the gelatin incident. He'd been noodling around, doing nothing in particular, when the idea was handed to him in a news story. Some girl had sneaked in at night and dumped a gazillion pounds of gelatin into a high school swimming pool. The next day, she'd gotten to the locker room early so she could be there when the first victim ran out, jumped in . . . and emitted a yell, accompanied by a sucking, slurping noise the commentator rendered as “spludge."

  Billy didn't hear the rest of the story. Some ideas, once planted, really can't be unplanted. “Spludge” was the seed. He wanted to hear it for himself.

  * * * *

  It took months. First he had to locate massive quantities of gelatin at an affordable price. Nor could it be colored, lest a lemon or cherry tint give the whole thing away. A pale, swimming-pool blue, that's what he needed, whipped up with clear gelatin and a few bottles of food coloring.

  Then, after he finally found a restaurant-supply business that didn't balk when he placed the order on his father's credit card, he had to gain the janitor's trust so he could get into the building late at night. He also had to learn how the pool's water pumps worked. Ruining expensive equipment wasn't his goal.

  Practical jokes aren't for the lazy. Billy had to join the swim team and do enough six a.m. laps that by the time he was ready to lug gelatin bags around, he was already developing a physique. Billy-the-jock . . . not something he'd ever envisioned.

  He only forgot one thing: The boys and girls teams shared workout time. Technically speaking, he didn't forget. He just didn't think it relevant. Unfortunately, the first (and only) one into the pool that morning was a girl. And, while the gelatin made a most satisfying sound as she hit it in a shallow racing dive, she was wearing a two-piece suit . . . part of which kind of got left behind.

  Billy was charged with sexual harassment. The school principal wanted it upped to assault, but Billy's attorney convinced him that since she'd hit the, er—even the attorney had trouble coming up with a word, but eventually settled on “surface"—under her own power, Billy hadn't quite assaulted her.

  That rather technical distinction saved him a lifetime as a registered sex offender. But it was pretty much the only thing that went his way. If it had been a guy who'd been first into the pool, Billy might have had detention for the rest of his high school career, but it would have been academic detention. As it was, he was eighteen by the time they let him out of juvie.

  * * * *

  You might think he'd have learned. But Billy, now going by Bill, breezed through his first year of college short-sheeting beds and placing prank phone calls.

  Meanwhile, he found himself increasingly interested in science. It seemed odd; he'd always seen himself as the class clown, not an egghead. But before the gelatin incident he'd not been a jock, either, and he now worked out five days a week.

  He wasn't much of a theoretician. More like the ultimate experimentalist. But his trip to reform school and Nobel prizes stemmed from the same basic question: I wonder what would happen if . . . ? Nobel laureates were just better at constructing
controlled experiments. Bill's more often went something like this:

  * * * *

  * HYPOTHESIS: What would happen if I stuck both ends of a heavy-gauge wire into a wall outlet?

  * PROCEDURE: Wear gloves. Use insulated pliers. Stand on rubber mat.

  * OBSERVATIONS: Brief but spectacular pyrotechnics. Sparks shooting to ceiling, star-shaped scorch on outlet and wall. Globs of molten copper buried in desktop.

  * CONCLUSION: Entire dorm floor wired to single circuit breaker. Bad design, but at least nobody knows who did it.

  Another lesson came his senior year, when he realized that government agencies have zero sense of humor. He was doing a stint on the college newsblog, the Daily Truth, and one afternoon he went to the state capitol to sit in on a committee hearing. When he got back to his car, he found a ticket.

  Irritated, he plucked the bright yellow “courtesy” envelope from beneath his wiper. A box was checked: Parking in Reserved Space, $110.

  "What the . . . ?” he said, raising his arms to the heavens. “Where the hell does it say reserved?"

  And there it was, painted on the parking garage ceiling like a direct answer from God. Who puts a reserved sign on the ceiling?

  Of course he wrote about it. When life gives you a lemon, and all that. It was almost as entertaining as spludge and a lot cheaper than the gelatin. Not to mention legal.

  A month later he was back at the capitol. Gone were the painted “reserved” signs on the ceiling. Someone had made hundreds of shiny metal plaques and posted them in front of each and every reserved spot.

  That wasn't funny. A lot of tax dollars had been spent to ensure that no one would ever again poke fun at the parking czars.

  * * * *

  For the next several years, Bill, now going by William, stifled all public traces of humor. He took a job with the Western Times and wrote serious tweets and pod-scripts about politics, science, climate change, and why the Chinese were beating everyone at just about everything. He married a woman who made the mistake of confusing his public persona with his private one . . . and divorced him six months later.

  Then the aliens landed.

  It wasn't quite clear how they got here. One moment, scientists were reporting a new comet. Then the Chinese, Brazilians, Europeans, Japanese, Americans, and Qataris were all accusing each other of launching something big, unannounced. The next morning, LGM were walking up the lawn of the Taj Mahal.

  Why they picked the Taj Mahal was one of those things nobody ever figured out. There was also a bit of debate, later on, about whether they really were little green men. They were definitely small, lime-colored, and most emphatically male looking, in a Mayan-statuary type of manner. The question was whether this was their normal appearance or whether they had chosen it.

  Like most of the world, William watched on tri-vid, though unlike many, he flattened the 3D so the LGM's lime-green Mayan-statuariness wasn't quite so, uh, intrusive. By this time, LGW, equally Mayan in their Earth-mother attributes, had decanted from an honest-to-goodness flying saucer on the White House lawn. Maybe they were drawn by the color of the grass. There certainly wasn't any reason William could see for them to be attracted by the current president.

  Still, it was the president's job to greet them, and if he wanted to be re-elected, hiding in the Situation Room wasn't going to do it. So, to the obvious dismay of his Secret Service contingent, he was on the lawn, trying not to stare.

  One of the little green women raised a four-fingered hand in an odd V-pattern. “Take me to your leader,” she said. “Nano-nano. Live long and perspire."

  "Uh, you too,” the president said, plummeting a couple of points in the polls with each word. “I think. Whatever you say."

  The alien was carrying a large box. She reached in and withdrew a little green baby. Or maybe it was a pet. It was hard to tell. “For peace between our races,” she said solemnly, holding the tiny whatever-it-was out to the president.

  "Er, thanks."

  The president glanced at his aides for inspiration. Finding none, he reached out and took the baby awkwardly. He'd had two children, William knew, but that didn't mean he had any clue about the best way to cuddle aliens.

  The baby didn't seem to mind. It cooed—more like a dove than a child—then, just like uncounted scenes in a hundred years of bad movies—unleashed a stream of urine directed with admirable precision at the president's face.

  The aliens bounced up and down on the balls of their feet.

  The SatNet newscasters suggested they were angry at the president's inept handling of the baby, but William knew laughter when he saw it. Soon enough, the aliens would be giving everyone their equivalent of spludge.

  Meanwhile, they continued talking, the TriVee operators picking up every word. “We seek to see how good you be at caring,” the one who'd presented the infant said as the president pretended not to notice the magenta fluid dripping from his chin. “Please bring Kemrit back to us each day for checking-up."

  "Kemrit?” The president glanced at the baby. “You wouldn't actually mean. . . ?"

  The lead alien huddled with two of its coterie. A moment later, it turned back to the president. “Your language it be strangely linear. Ours does not so adapt. Mekrit? Remkit? Kermit? Pick your choose."

  The president made an odd noise that dropped his ratings another couple of points. “Kemrit,” he eventually managed. “I like Kemrit. The other's too gree—” Then political correctness stopped him. The aliens were again bouncing.

  Moments later, William was online, booking a flight to D.C. When it came, the spludge was going to be impressive.

  * * * *

  Writing serious stories hadn't been a waste of William's time. He knew someone who knew someone who knew the president's assistant press secretary, and that was good enough that the next day he was among the reporters on the White House lawn.

  "Barry expanding gratitude to female sheep,” the lead alien said as the president arrived with the baby. William laughed. Their English was getting worse with each meeting, a sure sign they knew exactly what they were doing. But the president had spent too many years dealing with humorless government agencies. Again he sought refuge in his favorite word. “Er?"

  He handed the baby to the lead alien, who took it into the spaceship. “Our wharf must examine to make sure you know how to care good,” another said.

  A few minutes later, the alien doctor reemerged. “Much good,” she said. “Kemrit well do."

  Every day for nearly two weeks, the ritual was repeated. Each time, the president brought out the baby, and the aliens, after finding ever-new ways to slaughter the language, retreated with it for a check-up. “Our goodly relations are increasing in prospecutuity."

  Kemrit was clearly thriving. He was visibly larger, and the president, his ratings expanding as well, hadn't said “er” in days.

  That was when William knew what the aliens were up to. “Oh, crap,” he told his editor's editor. “The baby's a turtle."

  The editor-in-chief was one of the best in the business. That meant he saw no reason to join the president in trying to look more intelligent than he felt. “I thought it was a frog."

  "Trust me,” William said. “It's a turtle.” He then explained the most famous practical joke in history, in which the joker gave his landlady a baby turtle, then swapped it, each day, for a slightly bigger one. “One of these days, they'll reverse the process and the baby will get smaller. We can't let that happen."

  For a week, William wracked his brain trying to figure out what to do. How do you beat a practical joker? Ideally at his own game. He ordered a new copy of World's Best Practical Jokes (his own thumb-worn edition was back home, in his apartment), but found no inspiration. Squirty fountain pens and clown handkerchiefs weren't going to do it, and nobody was going to let him close enough to the aliens to try something like that anyway.

  By this time, the baby had expanded enough that even the most obtuse had noticed. Right-wingers, left-w
ingers, new-wingers: All were preening about what great care “we” had taken of the infant and how the aliens would soon, surely, open to us the secrets of the Universe, whether they be of godlike enlightenment, warp drive, antigravity, or a cell phone that never dropped calls.

  William winced every time he heard it. If he were the aliens, he'd already be starting to shrink the baby. Maybe they were and the president's advisers were already fretting.

  William tried talking to the press secretary's assistant but got nowhere. Why would the aliens play a gag on us? There was no way the assistant was going to suggest such a thing to her boss, and even if she did, her boss would never suggest it to the president. Briefly, he thought of asking why she thought they'd showed up looking like caricatures of the most grotesque sex toys. But there was no point. Politicians, like bureaucrats, have no sense of humor.

  What would the aliens do when they found us easy marks? Have a good laugh and go find someone else to play with? Or conclude we deserved anything else they might do, like steal our planet? Maybe they'd just give us what we wanted—with a twist. A hyperdrive that blew up in our faces? Sorry about that. An antigrav unit that lofted its user into outer space? Oops. Hope she had life insurance.

  If he could write his own script, William would turn the tables and make the baby expand when it should be contracting. But the only way to do that was to raid the aliens’ store of . . . whatever. Babies. Turtles. It didn't really matter. Somewhere there was a whole bin of them.

  Except . . . the obvious. It couldn't be done. Not without breaking into the alien ship, which might not be the worst idea unless they were too heavily armed, but which nobody was going to do. What was needed was the type of technology everyone was hoping to get from the aliens. A turtle transporter would do nicely. Beam one in and another out, day by day. Nano-nano, live long and perspire, and all that. Defy them to complain.

  Except, of course, the transporter didn't exist either.