by Mel Gilden
'Cowabunga,' Will said seriously. 'I guess it really did have your name on it.' He looked around the room. The little statues and bottles of sand had been lined up on the fireplace mantle. Hanger was wearing a shell necklace, and Mustard was on the floor again, a plastic lei draped casually around a foot beating time to the music on a TV car commercial that was otherwise being ignored.
A little too loudly, Will said, 'Zoot, will you help us haul our traps into the bedroom?'
I slipped the necklace around my neck and flicked my tie over it. Matching Will's delivery, I said that I would be delighted, and picked up an overnight bag I could carry without dragging it on the ground. Will and Bingo and I manhandled the luggage into the bedroom. Bill walked to the Rotwang 5000 and said, 'Anybody for a quick game of Motorcycle Contra-Zombies?'
'Not right now, Bill,' I said. 'Come over here.'
He joined me at the doorway while Bingo and Whipper Will began to unpack. From the bottom of one suitcase Will pulled a folded newspaper that he handed to me. Bill looked at it over my wrist as I read the big words at the top of the front page: The Interstate Eyeball. Under it were headlines that screamed, 'Elvis is my Pool Man!' and 'Chickens From Atlantis Lay Crystal Eggs that Restore Women's Sight?' and, 'Man Attacked by his Toupee!'
'Wow!' said Bill. 'A lot happened while you were gone.'
I said, 'Yeah. A lot of creative journalism. Is this what passes for news in Hawaii?'
'Only in supermarket checkout lines. But take a look at this.' He turned a few pages, folded the paper into a compact package so that even I couldn't miss what he had in mind, and handed it back.
At the top of the page was a grainy photograph that might have been a frame out of the film we'd just seen on television. Below that, it said, 'UFO Buzzes Hawaii!' by somebody named Jean-Luc Avoirdupois, Eyeball Staff Writer. I swallowed hard. The picture was pretty clear if you knew what to look for. I said. 'I guess anything that can make an island buzz is worth a little ink.'
'Huh?'
'Read the story.'
I didn't have to read Mr Avoirdupois' story, but I read it anyway, just to keep busy. As I knew it would, it gave the same facts as the TV special. Evidently this unidentified thing had come in low over Hilo, heading southwest. Nobody knew what it was, but certain unnamed experts were sure it was a vehicle from another planet. I let my nose twitch. Nobody on Earth would know what it meant.
I folded the paper and said, 'It wasn't me, if that's what you have in mind.'
He and Bingo were watching me carefully. Will smiled a little, as if he weren't sure it was OK. 'I guess they don't have that kind of ride in Bay City.' Bill took the paper from me and began to shuffle through it eagerly. 'No. Not in Bay City.'
Will ran his hand through his long, dark hair and looked at Bingo. She shrugged and sat on the bed. Will said, 'All right. How about this? On our flight into LAX, the plane was surrounded by fog heavy enough to fill cream puffs. There were rumours among the passengers that our plane was the only one that was having this problem. A couple of folks aboard the plane had nothing but trouble. Their dinners were not only cold but crawling with roaches. The light above their seats didn't work and the air blower blew hot air instead of cold.'
'That's pretty interesting if you're just telling me about your trip. Otherwise, why should I care?
'I'm thinking that the Hilo UFO and the fog and the bad luck all have something to do with each other.'
'If they did, what would that be to either of us?' I said. It was a reasonable question, but it seemed to make Whipper Will angry.
'I thought we were friends by now,' he said. 'Since when do friends ask friends embarrassing questions?' I fingered the spine necklace. It was its own embarrassing question.
Will smiled and began to unpack again. 'If you didn't know something about all this, the questions wouldn't be embarrassing.'
'Yeah. We embarrass easy in Bay City.'
Will and Bingo kept unpacking, I took the Eyeball away from Bill, threw it onto the bed, and was about to walk out of the room when Mopsie (or was it Flopsie?) ran in and said breathlessly, 'Come see what's new on the beach!' Nobody moved, so she stamped her feet and cried, 'Come on! It's boss!' She ran away, and pretty soon our curiosity got the better of us and we followed.
Chapter 3
The Magic Top Hat
COOL, groovy, jaunty-jolly, we walked through the house. No surprise, nobody was at home but us. If Flopsie (or was it Mopsie?) was so stoked about the thing on the beach, she probably wasn't alone.
The sun was making headway with the clouds; they'd parted like a curtain to let more sunshine through. The sand had dried and there were deep footprints where people had broken through the thin, fragile crust. But nobody was out on the rough water. No people, no robots, nothing but the occasional gull.
People in shorts and shades were cautiously peaking out of frame houses up and down the promenade. Some of them were wandering up and down the black public strip. A jogger went by, a radio plugged into his ears. He was sweating despite the fact the air was still cool.
We crunched through the crust of the dry sand, leaving footprints that might have been made by giants. A crowd was gathering down by the high tide line, and even from halfway up the beach we could see why. 'Cowabunga,' Bingo and Will breathed together. I just nodded. After the TV news and the article in the Eyeball, what I saw didn't surprise me much. But why here? Why now? Did it have anything to do with the spine necklace, or was my getting the necklace now just a coincidence? I wasn't so smart. The universe was filled with questions.
The thing stood about two stories high, was round, black and shiny. The surfers were there, and a few other locals, talking in small clumps and never taking their eyes off it. I heard Mustard say, 'It looks like an old Hollywood restaurant.' A few people grumbled agreement.
As we approached the thing, I did a little experiment. I said, 'What is it?'
Bill said, 'From here it looks like a top hat.'
'Top hat?'
Whipper Will said, 'Don't you have top hats in Bay City?'
'Bay City? Top hats? Sure.'
I guess I didn't sound sure because Bingo said, 'You know. Like Fred Astaire.'
'He makes top hats?' I said.
Will made one explosive laugh. Bingo just shook her head. Neither of them explained the joke.
A fat guy wearing a too-little T-shirt that said, DAMN, I'M GOOD, and a purple bathing suit he was funnelled into, picked up a handful of sand and threw it at the hat. In any crowd you can always count on somebody trying to see how much damage he can do.
In this case, the sand did no damage at all. It hit something solid and invisible a few feet away from the side of the hat, and slid to the ground. A lot of people threw sand after that, but as far as the hat was concerned, they might as well have been blowing kisses.
Carefully, as if they were trying not to hurt an injured animal, the surfers and a few other beach types began to dig down the invisible face of the force wall.
Bill ran down the beach and stirred up a convention of seagulls. Calling out insults, one of the birds glided across and landed on the hat—on the actual hat, not on the force wall—and then flew away. Waves washed up onto the hat, leaving a wet smudge like the shadow of a reclining woman. I think it was the fact that only people and their tools were affected by the force wall that, more than anything else, led to Captain Hook's mishap. I don't think it was an accident, no. At least, not so far as the hat was concerned.
Bill came back and helped us watch Thumper and Mustard, but not too closely. They were still digging furiously, evidently having a contest among themselves to see who could fling the most sand into the air. The girls and most of the crowd backed off and watched. A few people even walked away. If the hat wasn't going to whistle 'God Bless America,' what good was it? Meanwhile, Captain Hook prowled around the hat like a hyena sizing up a dead zebra.
Thumper and Mustard were down to the hard-packed, wet sand now, and the going was mu
ch slower. Thumper looked back over his shoulder at Whipper Will and said, 'I don't know, dude. This wall thing goes to Cronulla Beach.'
'Is that far?' I said.
'Australia,' Bingo said. 'The other side of the planet.' Captain Hook marched over to us as if we'd personally offended him in some way—you never knew—and said angrily, 'That thing really works me hard. I mean, I am seriously dogged.' He turned around and looked at the hat. As Whipper Will spoke, Captain Hook casually threw sand at it.
Will said, 'Don't be a full hank, Holmes. That thing doesn't even know you're here.'
'Yeah?' said Captain Hook, throwing the sand a little harder.
'Sure. It's just a fancy piece of drift wood.'
'Yeah?' said Captain Hook, throwing the sand even harder.
'Look, dude—' Whipper Will began, but was cut off when Captain Hook suddenly swept an old brown bottle off the beach and angrily heaved it at the top hat. Without even a 'boink?' the bottle bounced off, followed immediately by a jab of red lightning that hit Captain Hook in the chest and crawled over him like nervous electric snakes, dropping him hard to the sand. He writhed there for a moment, then the red lightning seemed to burrow into the ground. Captain Hook didn't move.
We forgot about the hat and stared at the silent form as we stepped forward. I wondered if the red snakes were gone for good or only hiding momentarily. Whipper Will knelt over Captain Hook and listened to his chest. 'Still alive,' Will said softly. Captain Hook leaped to his feet with his hands in the air as if he'd just won a race. Surprised, Will fell back onto the sand.
The Captain was smiling. It wasn't his nasty smile or his sarcastic smile or even the smile he used when he had one up on you.
It was good natured. It had a lot of charm. Something was wrong. I think we all felt it. Even Bill looked at me and said, 'Huh?'
Captain Hook declaimed, 'Good afternoon, ladies and germs,' and waited. Nothing happened. We were all too astonished to do or say anything.
Gamely, Captain Hook went on. 'Anybody have twenty cents for a phone call?' He looked at the group earnestly, as if willing to be delighted by any answer. 'No?' he said, and strode over to me, I stood my ground, wondering if this was the moment when my curiosity would kill me.
He gripped the tip of my nose gently with one hand while he held the other under one of my nostrils. Something tinkled into his cupped hand, and a second later he held up two dimes. He laughed and said, 'You know, sir, you ought to be more careful where you keep your change.' He waited again. The fat guy in the T-shirt applauded slowly as if he were beating time. He looked more bored than entertained.
While Captain Hook enjoyed the applause and Bill stared up my nose, Whipper Will said, 'That's not the Captain I know.'
'His interest in magic is new, too, I'll bet,' I said.
'You're not just whistling "Wipeout", bro.' Then in a voice that was almost too soft for me to catch, Will said, 'The science of any sufficiently advanced race is indistinguishable from magic.'
'No lie, friend,' I said. 'Back off, Bill.' I didn't believe in magic, but I did believe in force walls. I'd seen them before. Never on a heap like this, but then, there were a lot of force walls I hadn't seen. The fact that this hat looked like the UFO in the smudge of a photo in the Interstate Eyeball just made the situation more interesting. Nobody else had noticed the similarity. But then, nobody else had my experience with intersteller heaps.
'Thank you, thank you,' said Captain Hook. 'For my next trick—'
Whatever Captain Hook was going to say next was drowned out by an approaching siren. We looked around and saw a police car booming along the beach, kicking up clouds of sand. I came up alongside Whipper Will and said, 'You'd better get the Captain out of here. Chances are he'll just confuse the issue, whatever it is.'
Will nodded and took Captain Hook by the arm. Captain Hook looked surprised but still amiable. Will said, 'Come on. Captain, I got some hats that need rabbits removed.'
'Hey, great,' Captain Hook said and went along quietly, Bingo took his other arm, which didn't hurt either. As they walked up the beach, the police car came to a stop a few yards away from us and the siren died. A couple of guys in plain clothes got out and walked our way. Behind the wheel, a uniformed cop picked his teeth while he waited.
One of the plainclothes guys was tall and the other one was short, for an Earthman. The tall one had straight blond hair lying across his forehead like rays of sunlight. He had the pleasant, open expression of a farmer who was having a lot of success rotating his crops. He never took his left hand out of the pocket of his overcoat. The short guy had a red face and a big red nose that was veined like a map of roads that nobody drove much. He was a peppery little guy who thought he was tough. I knew he thought he was tough because when he planted himself in front of the top hat, he looked around with disgust and then spit.
In a strident voice, the short, plainclothes guy said, 'I'm Police Detective Cliffy. This is Sergeant Robinson.' He took a long time studying the top hat, as if it had a written message just for him all over it. His lips even moved. He said, 'What the hell is going on here?' and looked at me. There were at least a dozen people within interrogating distance, but he looked at me.
I said, 'This thing showed up on the beach.'
'What is it?' Police Detective Cliffy said as if he thought I ought to know.
'It looks like a spaceship to me. But I'm no expert,' I said and shrugged.
Cliffy spit on the ground again. In a mild voice, Robinson said, 'If you don't know, just say so.'
'I thought if I didn't know, Cliffy would spit in my eye.'
'I hate tough guys,' Cliffy said and vigorously rubbed one finger under his nose. He chuckled at a funny idea he had. 'Maybe you aren't so tough. And maybe you're a guy who knows a spaceship when he sees one.'
'Not many spaceships in Bay City,' I said. 'I was just cracking wise.'
'Cracking wise,' said Bill.
'Yeah, well, this is a public beach and this thing can't stay here.' He nodded at Robinson, who began to wave his hands at the crowd as if he were shooing chickens. 'All right, folks. Move along. Nothing more to see here.' People began to mill around and back away, but nobody actually left. Robinson looked at Cliffy as if he expected help.
Before Cliffy could explode in his face, a second car arrived, this one driven by a tweedy guy wearing thick glasses. He spoke with Cliffy and Robinson, all the while looking at the top hat and licking his lips. Robinson helped the tweedy guy unload all kinds of electronic equipment from the trunk and back seat of his car.
'What's happening, dude?' Thumper said to me. 'They're going to take its temperature.' As if it were some kind of show, we watched the tweedy guy point things at the top hat, and touch it with probes. He took readings and made notes. After a while, he got around to throwing sand at the thing, just like everybody else. Cliffy and Robinson watched him impatiently. Cliffy spent a lot of time on the two-way radio in his car.
While the tweedy guy was throwing his fourth or fifth handful of sand, loud, mechanical roaring came at us from across the beach. Big yellow machines were coming our way.
The machines were driven by robots. Surfing Samurai Robots if the trademark rags around their foreheads meant anything. SSR was the biggest manufacturer of robots in the world. Their advertising claimed that each of their robots had the agility of a surfer and the loyalty of a samurai. In my experience it was true. Unthinking manufactured loyalty was one of the things that finally tripped up Heavenly, the daughter of Knighten Daise, the man who owned SSR.
Surfbots designed by SSR were slick, muscular things that had a rakish grace designed into them. The robots driving the machines approaching now were big, industrial jobbers with arms like pistons and heads like toasters. They looked about right for this gig.
'All right, folks, back off, back off,' said Robinson. This time he had help from the slow advance of the big machines and everybody cooperated. Cliffy and Robinson got into their car, and looked about ready to
leave.
'Howdy, boys,' Bill said to the workbots.
The workbots were not quick, but I guess they were programmed to have some basic social skills because they waved hands the size of garbage can lids and grunted, 'Howdy,' back to him without being very excited about the introduction. After that, Bill watched them closely as they worked, but didn't try communicating again.
Under the tweedy guy's direction, a bulldozer tried to big deep enough to get under the hat. The bulldozer's engine made a lot of very impressive, powerful growls, but the blade kept slipping. Evidently the big robot driving the rig had the same problem Thumper and Mustard had had earlier. The force wall seemed to go to the centre of the earth. Then a crane, shrieking laboriously, tried to lift the hat, but there was nothing to hook onto, or to catch a rope around.
Under the tweedy guy's direction, the robots tried a few more things, none of them very successful. After a while, the uniformed cop drove Cliffy and Robinson back the way they'd come, leaving long, delicate waffle tracks in the sand.
The tweedy guy talked things over with the workbots, which must have been like talking things over with your refrigerator. People straggled away. Pretty soon, I straggled away myself.
Chapter 4
A Fist Full Of Rabbit
THE house smelled funny when I walked into the kitchen. The stench was subtle enough at the moment, but I had the feeling that under the right conditions, it could grow to be a ripe old monster, with fangs and particularly with hair. It was an acrid odour that reminded me in an unpleasant way of the laboratory where Heavenly Daise kept her experimental animals.
In the living room somebody was singing a simple melody over and over again. But he was singing it fast and breathlessly, singing it as if it mattered. Down at the beach's high tide line, optimistic heavy machinery was making animal noises from the dawn of time.
I took a step forward and stopped when a small furry creature with long ears hopped into the kitchen. When it saw me, its nose twitched in a provocative T'toomian way. Instinctively. I twitched back till I caught myself. The creature might have been moulded from one of the clouds outside.
