Three

by Shoshi

Sometimes you just try to be hateful,” says the Supreme One. But the idea worries him. He bites savagely at his lip.

  Gailus and Feena are still talking to Jome as they lie on the beach that girdles their South Pacific isle when they hear the approach of the digi-plane. In a few moments its dark shadow coasts up from the eastern horizon.

  “Run, Feena! Run, Gailus!” cries Jome. “Run to your cave! He’s found us. Feena, my beautiful Feena---I may not see you again—but I will try.” The two young people flee to their cave and disappear inside it as the dark shadow materializes into a sleek, black-winged rocket that lands on the coral sand where they were standing.

  Out steps the somber Captain. He strides right to where the head is perched in the sand. He stops, his arms akimbo. “You know where I’m taking you,” he says. Jome says nothing. The Captain scoops up his head, stuffs it into a brown-paper bag and boards the darkling craft. It roars off into the sky towards the rising sun---now surging upward from the faraway east.

  The Captain is seated at the controls of the rocket. The head is now inside the paper bag on a seat next to the Captain. Jome is well aware of what is going on. The Captain guns the craft towards BraZilia.

  “You’ve taken a shine to that girl,” he says.

  “She’s the one I’ve chosen to be the Candidate for the Commander’s mission.” They are talking telepathically.

  The Captain is silent. Then, he says: “You know she was the one who destroyed your body with her weapon.”

  “No, it was her brother. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. My job was to find her, interrogate her and, then, pass her along to the Commander. I am doing my duty.”

  The Captain nods. “Yes, our duty is to obey without questioning. Does the Commander know she’s actually a---?”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps, not. Again, it doesn’t matter. She is by far the best choice for the mission.”

  “What is this mission?”

  “That is none of your business.”

  “You have forgotten one important detail,” says the Captain.

  “How will the Commander meet her? He’s never coming all the way out here just to look her over.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” says Jome. “I will make it happen. I am shutting you off now.”

  “As you wish,” says the Captain. “We will arrive in BraZilia in a few seconds.”

  Feena and Gailus stand at the entrance to their cave after the Captain’s takeoff. She looks wistful. “I wonder if I will ever see him again, Gailus.”

  “Hey, listen,” says her brother. “Forget about him. He had an assignment here whatever it was—and I guess he failed to complete it. The Commander will have his own brutal way of dealing with him.

  And that’ll be that.”

  Feena’s sad countenance becomes sadder still. Gailus peers at her closely. “Feena, I do believe---oh, come on. This is silly.”

  “I know,” she says softly.

  “He’s not even real. He’s a maton. And he’s minus a body. You can’t be serious.”

  “I can’t help it,” she says. “Oh, Gailus, they may hurt him.”

  “More than he’s already been hurt?” He scoffs and laughs.

  Then, suddenly her expression begins to change. She’s smiling. “Bye, Gailus,” she says mysteriously.

  Curiously the clouds overhead are starting now to drift westward instead of toward the east as they were doing before. The waves nudging into the curve of the beach are uncurling the opposite way, drawing themselves up from the water and flinging themselves outwards towards the sea—as though they were mermaids tossing their tresses behind them. The sound of the waves breaking is strangely ragged and abrupt as though it were running backwards. Because, in fact, it is. The swift black shape of the Captain’s rocket whips tail-first out of the sky and glides downward to land exactly where it took off. In a moment the backward movement of everything is happening so fast she can’t see or hear anything clearly. Then, it slows and stops.

  Now she is on the beach bidding goodbye to Gailus. She walks casually up a boarding ramp to get into the rocket. The Captain greets her pleasantly at the plane’s hatchway door as though he has no awareness of what has just happened and ushers her into the control cabin. This alternative reality is now the only reality. History has been remade. “The Commander wants to meet you,” he says. He is holding the paper bag containing Jome’s head in his hand.

  Gailus remains on the beach as he watches the black rocket bearing his sister knife back through the sky toward the East. He nods his head slowly, beginning to understand what is taking place. Now, he says to himself, Jome has used up one of his Imperatives and has just one more left. I guess it means he really does like her.

  “We’ll be in BraZilia in a few seconds” says the Captain from his seat in front of the controls.

  “Hi, Feena. I’m very glad you wanted to come along.” She can tell the voice in her head is coming from inside the bag on the seat next to the Captain. “It’s too complex to explain in half a minute,” says Jome. “Let’s just say one of my Imperatives has been very busy. By the way, the Captain cannot hear us.”

  She grins in silence. “All I know is I want you to be safe,” she says in her head, “and it seems like you are.”

  “For the moment, yes,” he says. She sits down next to the Captain and picks up the bag to hold in her lap. I never thought saving him would be this easy, she thinks to herself.

  “No, it won’t be,” Jome says in her head. “This is simply the beginning---the beginning of the beginning. Now it’s time for you to find out why I chose you.”

  “Chose me? You chose me? For what?”

  “I’ll explain everything shortly.”

  The Captain flies in low over BraZilia. Its spectacular, alabaster architecture has not been changed by the invaders. As before, the central shrine seems to grow from a pool like an opening lotus flower. The sculptured forms in front of the Commander’s offices stalk like naked white gazelles along the pool’s blue edge. The pool gives back its endless smile to the sky. The Commander loves this place.

  “Nothing like this where I come from,” he says to the stove-pipe puppet. He stares at the panorama of buildings under the marching immensity of sky outside his windows. “The Captain has fulfilled his assignment this time. He has retrieved Jome’s head. Now I must learn if Jome completed his assignment---whether he found the Candidate I require. If he did, I will have no further need for him. His head can be discarded.” The Commander stares at the car wash freak. “You look dubious, advisor.”

  “I am. How could he find someone appropriate where only humans live? This person will surely be at least partly, maybe even all human. He will not be subservient. He will have his own ideas. He will be selfish, emotional. You know how they are.” The cartoon figure pauses. “He will be dangerous.”

  “No, we will train him. We will subdue his will to follow our way. He will serve our needs.”

  “Why not train a maton? You have plenty of them. The Captain, for instance.”

  “They cannot act alone. They must be directed.” The Commander laughs quietly. “Yes, they have been somewhat useful to us here on this planet. But ultimately they are inadequate. They may look human, but they lack what the humans have but which must never be allowed to contaminate the matons.”

  The yellow balloon-man bends downward and yanks upward flopping its arms about. “But what must this Candidate achieve?”

  The Supreme One stares out at the double moons which have just risen again along the horizon. “He must attend the Inspector. Dazzle him, out-think him, out-maneuver him. A human might just be able to do that—a maton never.”

  “But didn’t you tell them you killed off all the humans?”

  The Commander purses his mouth nervously. “The Inspector must not be allowed to know the Candidate is human. He must think he is
a maton.”

  “Good luck,” says the gas station ghoul with a giggling laugh.

  “What are you laughing at?” The Commander is suddenly angry. “You doubt my plan?”

  “It won’t work. It’s pure foolishness,” says the freak. “You will never be able to hoodwink the Inspector.”

  “That is simply not true!” The Commander seems to slam closed like a steel door. “This relationship is over,” he says. He turns the blower off, causing the phantom to sag and collapse, after which he grabs a handful of its rubbery skin and throws the whole thing onto a hat tree by the door. “Good riddance,” he grumbles to himself. “Why did I ever listen to its drivel?”

  Who is this Inspector? He’s been mentioned several times.

  The Commander has been told to expect high-ranking Visitors for a recreational visit from their home base in the Zyllaton Galaxy. Everything must be just so in preparation for their arrival. If it isn’t, it could be the end of the Commander’s assignment, perhaps, even the end of him—perhaps, even the very end of the Earth itself. To ensure a good experience for all concerned, an official is coming in advance to check everything out. The Inspector’s visit is even more feared by the Commander than that of the Visitors.

  “I will take that now,” says the Captain as he and Feena leave the rocket plane. He reaches for the brown paper bag that contains Jome’s head.

  She squelches a gasp. “Jome!” she cries inside her head. “He’s taken you! What’ll we