The Last Starfighter

by Alan Dean Foster

  “Sure, you’ve had it tough. I’ll bet you’ve spent half that time watching cartoons.”

  “As a matter of fact,” the Beta Unit replied drily, “your animated entertainments feature the drollest portrayals of primitive robotic notions I’ve ever encountered. From an archeological standpoint it’s been fascinating. The fascination wanes rather rapidly, however. Hey, what are you doing back here, anyway? I wasn’t notified of any impending return.”

  “Are you kidding? There’s a war going on up there, and if you’re on the wrong side they stick your head in an alien vegematic! How’s that for the reactions of an advanced civilization?”

  “Sadly, among organic sapients technological advances always outpace the social. A truism of advanced societies, I fear. One to which your own racial history can attest.” The Beta Unit’s eyes narrowed. “Hold it just one mimite. You mean after all this moaning and groaning about making something of yourself, about getting out of this trailer park, you get your big chance, a chance afforded very few primitives, and you punk out?” He clucked his lips. “How depressingly typical.”

  “It’s not my fight! And how did you know I wanted out of here?”

  “Centauri’s programming was very thorough. In addition to qualifying for Starfighter rating on the test machinery, a potential recruit must also be of the proper frame of mind. That is a more subjective measurement, however, and one Centauri apparently misjudged on your part.”

  Alex looked away. “Whether I want out of here or not has nothing to do with this. This war still has nothing to do with me or my world.”

  “Oh, save the whales, not the universe, is that it? And if you think this conflict between the League and the Ko-Dan has nothing to do with you, wait a few hundred years until they reach this part of your galactic arm. Of course your lifespan will have ended long before then, won’t it? You won’t have to worry about it, will you?”

  Alex turned on his double. “If you’re so hot to defend this League or whatever the hell it is, why don’t you go up there and fight, instead of sitting here running off at your mechanical mouth?”

  “First, I do only as I’m programmed to do. I don’t enjoy the luxury of free will. Though after seeing how some beings utilize it, I’m not sure I want it anyway. Second, simulacrums can’t fight, on any level. We’re not allowed. Besides which it’s been shown that we can’t respond to the needs of combat as well as organics. We’re not flexible enough in our thought-patterns.”

  “Tell them you’re me. Pretend. I won’t tell.”

  “You think it’s that simple? Externally, yes, I am you. Internally I’m a dead giveaway. If I were to try a stunt like you suggest I’d be reduced to scrap inside a week. A machine that doesn’t work right is valuable only for parts. Sure, I have a lot of you, Alex. But not the intangibles that make up a Starfighter.

  “Anyway, I wouldn’t try it. I pride myself on working right.”

  A shuffling of covers sounded from above and a small shape mumbled sleepily.

  “Alex, be quiet, willya?” Louis was half conscious, half still in dreamland.

  Alex whispered, “Sorry, Louis.” He whispered it twice, and found himself regarding himself thoughtfully.

  The truck ground to a halt outside the general store, the driver muttering to himself as dust rose from beneath the rear wheels.

  “Damn brakes. Got to get the bastards some new pads. This okay for you, buddy?”

  The hitchhiker he’d picked up down the highway nodded, opened the door on his side and jumped lightly to the ground. The driver eyed him one last time. Scruffy-looking type, the kind you might encounter on any road hoping for a lift. Looked out of place, somehow. Maybe a foreigner trying to see the good ol’ U.S. of A.

  Because he’d felt sorry for him, the driver had picked him up. It was against company rules to pick up hitchhikers. He did it as often as possible.

  It was unusual to run into somebody standing thumb-out this late at night, though. He shrugged. None of his business what the guy was up to. Just somebody else in a hurry to get somewhere. Nobody took their time anymore.

  A boxy wooden console on the porch nearby began winking its lights while emitting a series of regular, urgent beeps. The driver squinted at it.

  “Video whatzit. Hate them suckers. My oldest kid, he pumps his lunch money into ’em all week long. Thinks we don’t know. Crazy.” He gestured at the subject of his ire. “That one must be on the fritz.”

  The hitchhiker nodded in agreement as he stared at the flashing, humming game.

  “Yeah, well, take it easy, mac,” the driver said. “I hope you know someone here. It’s a long hike to the next place to sleep.”

  The hitchhiker turned. For the first time since he’d been given a lift, he smiled at the driver. It made the driver suddenly uncomfortable. He got the feeling that one more comment, one more question, might be one too many.

  Naw, that was silly. This guy was quiet, but hardly threatening. “Don’t talk much, do ya?”

  The hitchhiker shook his head and the driver shrugged indifferently. “Suits me. I like a quiet rider now and then. Take it easy, mac.”

  He revved the engine, backed the truck up in the broad, dirt-paved parking lot in front of the motel, and headed out toward the highway. The hitchhiker watched and waited until the lights of the truck had been swallowed by distance. Then he turned to study the trailer park. After several minutes of motionless examination, he headed for the first fence.

  Behind him, the videogame continued its inexplicable electronic antics.

  Moving in a preplanned arc through the trailer park, the hitchhiker passed the first lightless mobile without incident. The second still had lights showing and he bent low to make certain he passed well beneath the line of sight of anyone inside.

  As he ducked below the last window a voice inside suddenly blared, “Drop it or you’re dead!”

  The hitchhiker froze, momentarily frightened as well as confused by the unexpected challenge. More words followed upon the first, but they were unrelated to the challenge. In fact, they made next to no sense at all. Another loud voice followed clicking noises.

  “Herrrreee’s Johnnnny!”

  Now very puzzled indeed, but considerably less frightened, the hitchhiker rose slowly until he could just peer over the window sill into the trailer. At one end of the room an elderly human sat in a chair holding a small plastic rectangle. This he kept aimed at a video device squatting on the far side of the room. Each time a button on the rectangle was depressed, frequency shifts took place within the device and a new image appeared on the primitive glass face.

  Relieved, as well as mad at himself for his reaction, the hitchhiker once more crouched below window level as he resumed his prowling through the park,

  Alex and his Beta had resumed their conversation, keeping their voices down, each conscious of the impressionable ten-year-old sleeping on the overhead bunk.

  “. . . and one other thing,” Alex was saying angrily, “what’d you do to Maggie?”

  “Maggie? Ah, the young woman. Not all primitive instincts are unpleasant.”

  “I don’t like what you’re saying, friend.”

  The Beta raised both hands defensively. “Merely an unemotional analysis of observed habits based on known mammalian standards of beauty. Nothing personal. That would be impossible in any case.”

  Alex wasn’t sure how far he should trust this character, no matter what he was made out of, much less the facile disclaimer. After all, the Beta was an exact duplicate of himself. It was only natural to wonder just how far that duplication extended.

  “What’d you do to her?” he repeated.

  “Do to her? You primitives, I never will understand you. Listen, we’re sitting outside, looking up at the stars. I’m trying to offer a little basic astronomy lesson . . . I know the names of all those stars, after all . . . and does she pay attention and ask pointed, intelligent questions? No! She sticks her tongue in my ear!”

  Alex
winced. “What did you do?”

  “I screamed. I was startled. I guessed immediately that was not the proper reaction, but I was unprepared. My programming is not one hundred percent in those areas of knowledge that were deemed peripheral to my central function, the job of imitating you.”

  Alex relaxed a little. “That explains Maggie’s reaction when I saw her. I guess she was a little startled herself when you screamed.”

  The Beta Unit nodded unhappily. “More than a little, I fear.”

  “So what do we do about it?”

  “I will apologize to her tomorrow,” the Beta assured him.

  Neither of them noticed that Louis had awakened. He sat on the upper bunk and rubbed sleepily at his eyes.

  “Like hell you will!” Alex rose from the bed, glaring at his double. “You won’t be apologizing to her or doing anything else, because you won’t be here tomorrow. You’re going back with Centauri right now, tonight.”

  As he moved toward the door he began tapping the crystalline face of his new “watch” in the sequence Centauri had shown him.

  “What’s up, Alex?” Louis mumbled dazedly into the darkness. There was something not quite right about his brother’s mumbling, though Louis was still too sleepy to identify it.

  At the door Alex turned to face the upper bunk. “Back to sleep, Louis, or I’ll tell Mom about your Playboys!”

  Alex had voiced the ultimate threat. Blackmailed into total submission, Louis fell back on the mattress and stared across the dimly lit room at his angry brother.

  “Okay, okay!”

  From below the upper bunk his brother added, “You’re blowing it, Alex. You’re ruining everything. I knew I was replacing a primitive, but they didn’t tell me just how much of a primitive!”

  Just conscious enough to be confused, Louis swung his head over the edge of the bunk. Seated below, to his great surprise, was his brother. So then who had just shouted at him from near the door?

  He knew his older brother could move quickly when he wanted to. Alex had been on the high school wrestling team. But this fast?

  “I said,” the Beta told the hanging face, “back to sleep, Louis, or I tell Mom about your Playboys!” The Beta Unit had quick reactions of his own.

  The ten-year-old had had enough. He retreated immediately, taking care this time to stash the pile of thick magazines in the gap in the trailer’s inner wall, the one neatly concealed by the big Star Wars poster. Then he threw the covers over his head and began snoring loudly, lest Alex think he wasn’t taking the threat seriously.

  Still tapping on the crystal facing, Alex headed outside, as the Beta Unit debated what to do next. He was directed to remain in Alex’s place of habitation. Presently, that meant the bedroom.

  But things were not proceeding according to plan, not at all. Alex shouldn’t have returned. Didn’t his unexpected return cancel the original set of instructions? At such times the Beta was designed to operate independently, reacting as it saw fit to a new set of circumstances. It now elected to do so. Rising from the lower bunk, he followed his original outside. Alex was nowhere in sight. The simulacrum searched. Which direction?

  While the Beta was trying to make up its mind, Alex was already alongside Otis’s trailer, standing beneath the awning that had been erected to keep off sun more than rain. Monotonously and seemingly to no effect, he continued tapping on the crystal.

  He frowned, turned to face the general store. Something was flashing brightly out front, and it wasn’t the familiar erratic blinking of the old neon sign. Well, he’d check it out in the morning. He’d worked on the wiring to the big sign often enough to be able to repair it in his sleep by now. He’d begged Mom to get it replaced, but she refused, saying that those old neon signs were becoming classics. Alex knew what she was really saying was that they didn’t have the money to replace it.

  Something cold and irresistible caught him beneath the chin and wrapped itself tightly around his neck.

  8

  Alex exhaled in surprise as he found himself rising into the air. His legs kicked wildly at emptiness. Fighting for his life, he managed to turn in the powerful grasp just far enough to find himself staring into a bulging alien face. The eyes were placed far to either side of the skull, like those of a hammerhead shark, while the teeth visible in the low-slung mouth were thin and pointed and very sharp-looking.

  As he stared bug-eyed at the apparition something went snap inside his head. The alien visage was replaced by that of a kindly older man. A second snap brought back the vision of alien gruesomeness. The creature fumbled at something buried inside a shirt, cursing as Alex witnessed a recurring series of visual shifts from alien monstrosity to elderly hitchhiker.

  After several seconds of useless manipulation of the concealed device the alien gave up in disgust. It was no longer necessary to maintain the disguise anyway. He raised a pistol toward the target’s face.

  Alex saw the muzzle of the strange weapon coming up, wrenched and shoved with all his strength and managed to slide free of the single-handed grip. He dropped to the ground, stumbled back against the cold wall of the trailer. Above, the alien let out a violent hiss and realigned his aim.

  Alex jumped for the stone wall that ringed Otis’s precious vegetable garden. Something smacked against the rocks behind him as he dove. The smell of fused silica filled the air as the quartz in the rocks melted. Rolling fast, Alex ended up on his feet and ran blindly from the trailer, toward the store and the nearby ice house.

  From the roof of the trailer the alien fired again, missed again, cursed again and rushed in pursuit of the target, easily clearing the gap between the roof of Otis’s trailer and the ice house.

  Alex pounded around the side of the old wooden building, frantically searching for better cover while hammering at the crystal facing.

  “Please, Centauri, come in! Centauri, help! Something’s trying to kill me!” He heard footsteps overhead and moved to his right . . . where he tripped, landing hard on his side.

  He wasn’t injured and was on his feet again in an instant. No thought of running for the bushes in the nearby wash now. Everything seemed to be in working order. Nothing sprained, nothing broken . . . unless you counted the bits and pieces of strangely colored crystal that sparkled in the moonlight. He looked at his wrist the facing had shattered on a rock.

  Dust fell on his face as he looked up. Standing on the edge of the ice house roof, aiming straight down at him, was the alien assassin.

  So this is how it ends, he thought. I retreat across half the galaxy to avoid getting involved in somebody else’s war, and something out of a bad dream shows up right here to kill me anyway. He wondered what the reaction of the trailer park’s inhabitants would be in the morning when they found his body here, sandwiched between the general store and the ice house. He only prayed it wouldn’t be his mother who found him.

  A sharp whistle split the silence. The monster on the roof hesitated, turned curiously.

  Standing nearby and thumbing his nose at the killer was the Beta Unit. The confused alien hesitated, but only for a moment. It was not easily put off by distractions. Clearly one of the two targets was a simulacrum. Well, he’d dealt with them before. Many who feared assassination used simulacrums to try and deceive their killers.

  On this backward world that would not be a problem. It mattered not which of the two was the original. All he had to do was destroy both of them.

  Again he took aim at the human face staring up at him, aiming for a clean burst through the braincase.

  A violent buzz sounded. Something exploded close to the alien. It threw him off balance just enough to make his shot go wild, passing close enough to Alex’s skull for him to feel the heat. Without waiting to see what had happened, Alex broke for the tenuous safety of the store porch. Additional explosions landed all around the alien.

  The killer recovered, kneeling on the roof of the ice house and aiming into the night, trying to find a target as brilliant light suddenly s
wept over him. Another blast sliced off an arm. The alien faltered for a second, calmly switched his weapon to his other hand and continued firing.

  As Alex came panting around the front of the store, there was Centauri’s car fishtailing in front of the porch. The old man was firing through a port in the gullwing door, his weapon letting off one buzz-blast after another.

  A weird, stifled moan floated down from above and behind Alex. Slowly and moving cautiously to his right, he edged out from underneath the porch until he could see the roof of the ice house. The alien’s other arm had been shot away. It was staggering as it searched for an avenue of escape. As it trembled another blast from Centauri’s gun struck it square in the back, spinning it around. It glared down into the parking area, the alien eyes finally locking on Alex. It was a cold, fishy stare and it went right through him.

  Then the thing keeled over on the ice house roof. Smoke or steam poured from the body. It twitched once before tumbling over the side of the building to land with a dull thunk on the gravel below.

  Centauri stepped out of his car, keeping his gaze on the steaming alien body. A quick search revealed that the fight had passed unnoticed by the sleeping citizens of the park. There were no awkward witnesses.

  Alex wasn’t as confident and searched the darkness beyond the store. Surely someone must have heard the noise of Centauri’s pistol at least.

  Then he imagined what someone like Otis would have made of the peculiar sounds. Mobile homes and trailers were not blessed with thick walls. More than once arguments flared when the sound of one television show overlapped another in the trailer nearby. If anyone had heard the late-night fracas, they’d probably ignore it, thinking it was old Mrs. Hadley watching the late-late show with the sound turned way up so she could listen without having to use her hearing aid.

  What mattered was that no one materialized to stare curiously at the unexplainable corpse, for which Alex was grateful.

  Centauri continued to aim his pistol at the smoking remains until he was satisfied that it was incapable of further movement. Then he slipped the small weapon back into the shoulder holster from which it had been pulled, trading it for a monogrammed handkerchief which he held over his nose.