I, Alien

by Mike Resnick (ed)

  “By the book,” I agreed. And, by the book, we did the two bigger specimens first. We had to check the manual again to make sure just where to analize them. Iffspay thought the orifice emitting the air vibrations was the one that would take the probe, but he turned out not to be right. Evolution was even crazier than usual on that planet, you betcha.

  And the manual didn’t exactly match the specimens we had. By what it said, the orifice should have been accessible once we figured out where the space fiend it was. But the locals had integuments more complicated than what the manual showed. Good old Iffspay was all for cutting right on through them. Iffspay never was long on patience, I’m afraid.

  “Let’s try peeling them instead,” I said. “That way, we’re less liable to injure them.”

  “Oh, all right,” he said sulkily. “It’ll take longer, though.”

  I was the one who got to peel them. Since it was my idea, Iffspay didn’t want thing one to do with it. I wasn’t too thrilled about it, either, not getting started. I kept thinking about gross and fine motor functions. If the locals weren’t perfectly paralyzed . . . well, they’d splatter me all over the walls of the ship.

  But I managed to peel the first one without doing it any harm I could detect—its heat signature and the kind of air vibrations it emitted didn’t change at all— and without getting hurt myself. Once I’d taken care of the hard part, Iffspay grabbed the glory. He bent the local into the position the manual suggested and threaded in the probe.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “Well, nothing,” Iffspay answered. “The computer can check me later, but there’s nothing. A big, fat, juicy nothing. So much for that.”

  “Don’t prejudge. We’ve still got two more to go,” I said, though I wasn’t what you’d call optimistic about them either.

  “Go on and peel the next one, then,” Iffspay said.

  “Why me again?” I asked him. “How come I get stuck with all the hard stuff?”

  “Because you did such a good job the last time,” he answered. Iffspay tastes smooth, no two ways about it.

  After letting out a few last bitternesses of annoyance, I got to work on the second large local. Fortunately, everything went well. In fact, it went better than it had the first time, because I’d had the practice of doing it once. I reached for the probe once I’d got the local into the position—I did it myself that time— but Iffspay already had it in his appendage.

  “This is the last lump,” I said angrily. “You’re going to peel the third one, and I’m going to do the analyzing. And if you don’t like it, I’ll talk to a lawyer when we get home. There are limits to how much you can impose on people.” I had really had it.

  Iffspay could tell, too. “Fine. Fine!” he said. “Don’t get all disconnected from your nutrient provider. You want to analyze the third one, be my guest. Meanwhile, though ...” He inserted the probe. He tried to go on as if everything were normal, but my talk about lawyers had put a bad smell in his chemoreceptors, let me tell you. After he withdrew the probe, he added, “Nothing again. Not even a hint. If you want to waste your time with the last one, be my guest.”

  “I want to perceive you peel it,” I said. “That should be funny enough to go on the planetwide sensorium special.”

  “You’ll find out.” Now I’d got Iffspay mad. I could taste it. And, of course, when he got mad, he got clumsy. I wish they would put the recording of the botch he made of that peeling job on the sensorium special. He’d have an offer to do sitcoms so fast, you wouldn’t believe it. The local’s air vibrations increased in amplitude, too. I don’t think it much cared for what was going on. After what seemed like forever, Iffspay turned to me and said, “There. All yours.”

  I took the probe. But it didn’t want to do what it was supposed to. I had to feel around near the target area. “You bumbling idiot,” I said. “There’s still a layer of integument here. The other two had this layer—weren’t you paying attention when I dealt with them? Once you get this down, then it’s pay dirt.”

  “Well, take care of it, then, if you’re so smart,” he said.

  “Oh, no. The deal was you’d peel this one and I’d probe it. You finish your job, and then I’ll do mine.”

  He made a stink about it, but he did it. I suspected there’d be some long, nasty silences on the way to the next star. Well, too bad. I know what my rights are, by the Great Eggcase, and I know when to curl up for them.

  “I hope you’re satisfied now,” he grumped when he’d finally got the peeling right.

  “Couldn’t be happier,” I told him, just to smell him fume.

  And I meant it literally. This time, the analizer went in just as smooth as you please. I extended an appendage through it—and made contact!

  Photosensitive creatures use energy waves to talk. I suppose you could talk with air vibrations, too, though I’ve never heard of any intelligent races that do. Too much ambiguity either way, as far as I’m concerned. Taste and scent, now, those are universal languages. No doubt about ‘em.

  “Hello, there,” I said. “How are you doing?”

  “We’re fine,” came the answer. “Hooked on to the intestinal wall here, kicking back and living the life of Reilly.”

  Even universal languages have dialects. I’m still not sure what a Reilly is. But I got the point. They were happy where they were. “Do you need anything?” I asked.

  “No way, Jose,” they replied without the least hesitation. My name isn’t Jose, but I didn’t bother calling them on it. “We’re happy right here, you better believe it.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Now that we’ve finally found you, we’ll probably send you an ambassador or something before too long.”

  “Whatever. No hurry. No worries,” they said. “You guys are free-living, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, sure,” I said. “We have been for a long time. We think hooking up with nutrient when we want to is easier than staying tied to a host.”

  “We like it better this way,” they told me. “We can ease back and relax and go along for the ride. Beats working—who needs technology if you’ve got a tasty host? From what we’ve smelled, free-living makes people pushy.”

  “I didn’t know you’d met Iffspay,” I said.

  “Hey, don’t drag me into this, you flavorless, unseg-mented thing,” Iffspay said, neatly proving my point.

  “What’s an Iffspay?” the planet’s intelligent life-forms wanted to know.

  “Nothing much—he’s my partner here,” I replied, just to smell Iffspay fume. He didn’t disappoint me either. Iffspay is a reliable guy.

  The locals said, “Nice to meet you and everything, but we’d really like to get back to what we were doing. Some of our segments are going to break off and go out into the world to find new hosts.”

  Ah, the simple pleasures of parasites! It almost makes me long for the eons before we were free-living. Things were simpler then. They . . . Well, enough. When a worm starts getting nostalgic, he’s the most boring creature in the bowels of the galaxy. And so I won’t. I just won’t.

  I unthreaded the analizer and said, “Well, we’ll have to be careful placing the locals back on the ground now that we know some of them are inhabited.”

  “Tastes like you’re right,” Iffspay agreed. “Who would’ve thunk it? All these negative reports, and now this!” Then he let out a bad smell. “Think of all the forms we’ll have to fill out on the way back to Prime.”

  I did a little farting of my own, too. I hadn’t thought of that. I hadn’t wanted to think about it. “Can’t be helped,” I said, and he knew damn well I was right again. He set the local hosts back where we’d found them. Old Iffspay does have a nice appendage on the antigravity when he wants to, I will say that for him.

  And then we flew away. As we headed for the next star on the list, I started in on some of that miserable, vermicidal paperwork.

  Some things are too big to be fully comprehended. Willie and Al and Little Joe had only the vaguest idea h
ow they’d all ended up back in their duck blind in an Arkansas swamp with their pants around their ankles. What had happened to them beforehand was, mercifully, even vaguer.

  Pants still below half-mast, Willie stared up at the sky—and got rain in his face. “We are not alone,” he said . . . vaguely.

  “Yeah,” Al murmured, slowly and wonderingly pulling up his jeans.

  “Reckon the two o’ you are,” Little Joe said. “Not me.” Solemnly, Willie and Al nodded, though they didn’t quite know what he meant. Which was okay, too, because neither did he.

  Back to Contents

  ACTS by William Sanders

  W

  ELL, WELL. I tell you, this is really something. This is just amazing.

  Yes, I’ve known your parents a long, long time. All five of them, ever since we were not much more than hatchlings. In fact we used to get mistaken for brood sibs, we spent so much time together. It’s true we’ve been a little out of touch lately, but oh, the memories. The stories I could tell you.

  And now here’s their youngest, coming around wanting to interview me for a big entertainment magazine yet. Who would believe it?

  Of course, another thing that is to me incredible is that anybody would want to hear about me and my business. The glamorous life of a performers’ agent? It is to exfoliate already.

  And Hnb’hnb’hnb knows it’s not like I’m some big success. I swear if I was a yingslaagl people would stop gn’rking . .. but okay, I see, you’re not just interviewing me, right? This is something, you’re asking different people in the business? Like a survey?

  All right, I can see that. In fact I could maybe give you a few tips before you leave, who you should make sure and talk to. And who not, if you know what I’m saying. Like a certain client-stealing party right here in this building, two floors down, his eyestalks should only drop off. Or another certain individual whom I will not name, over at Galactic Artists and Performers. A real bloodsucker—and I know he says he can’t help it, it’s a dietary requirement of his species, but I still say feh.

  But listen. Now I think of it, this is a good thing. This is a chance, I can maybe say some things that need saying. Maybe this is an opportunity to educate people a little about what it means to be an agent. I’m sorry, but believe me, they have no idea.

  They think it’s so easy. They look at somebody like me and they’re thinking, what a racket. Just look at this bum, sitting on his tail crest, you should pardon the language, in a fancy office, making such a good thing for himself off other people’s work. Maybe makes a few calls, sends out a few messages, does lunch with some big shots, for this he takes twenty percent of the poor struggling entertainer’s pay?

  Sure, right. It should only be so simple.

  Leave aside for the moment all you really have to do, which believe me is plenty, you wouldn’t believe the hours I put in sometimes ... do you have any idea, my dear youngster, what an agent has to know these days? The sheer amount of information he has to carry around in his head—or heads, as the case may be, hey, I’ve been accused of many things, but nobody can call me a bigot—just to function at all in this business?

  All these different worlds, all these different races, they’ve all got their tastes and their customs and they all assume theirs is the only possible way and surely everybody else knows about it so of course they wouldn’t bother to tell you anything—and so you have to learn it all. Have to know it all from memory, there’s no time to be pulling up files and studying background when you’re negotiating with some promoter on the other side of the galaxy who needs an act yesterday if not sooner. Which, by the way, I hate, retro-relative time shunts are more work to set up than you’d believe and when you mention the extra charges, they go h’nogth on you. But I digress.

  I was going to say, you have to know all this stuff, easily as much as any cultural scientist, just to operate. Operate shmoperate, to stay out of trouble, which, believe you me, there is plenty of just waiting for you to make one little mistake.

  And I mean big trouble. Not just the ordinary stuff, like the fact that on Z’arss any kind of music in three-four time is considered pornography, or that doing impressions on Uuu will get you two hundred to life for personality theft. I’m talking nova-grade catastrophe.

  Like this certain former colleague whom I used to see at the agents’ conventions, nice enough young fellow if maybe a bit on the smart-alecky side, who made the mistake of booking a Xee wizard for a big simultanous-live-and-vid appearance on Kabongo. He was really excited about that, because the Xee homeworld was still a recent discovery and this was going to be the first offworld performance by one of their wizards, which nobody really knew anything about except that they were supposed to be extremely hot stuff. So my colleague figured he’d pulled off a real coup in signing this one up, and for a time there, up until show time, he got pretty hard to take.

  Hah. And again hah. Ever seen a Xee wizard work? No, of course you haven’t, ever since what happened on Kabongo they’re banned from performing off-world, and you better be glad of it or you might be permanently blind and deaf and paralyzed like all those poor devils on Kabongo. I understand the insurance lawyers are still appealing the judgment, but that’s not much help to Mr. Smart Guy. Who had broken one of the most basic rules: never book an act you haven’t personally seen.

  Or take what happened to a very dear friend of mine only last year. One day he gets a call from Keshtak 37, over in the next arm, wanting a whole lineup of acts, price no object. Seemed the Emperor of the Oomaumau had passed away, and they wanted only the best for his funeral festivities, which would go on for weeks because the Oomaumau believe in giving a ruler a first-class sendoff.

  So my friend is naturally very pleased to get to handle something that big, and as soon as the contract is signed he starts calling around, seeing who’s available. But then he happens to do a bit of research, to see what kind of acts the Oomaumau might like, and finds out something extremely disturbing. The Oomaumau, it develops, have another unusual mortuary custom: the performers at the royal funeral are given the honor of accompanying the Emperor to the Hereafter, so his spirit shouldn’t get bored.

  Yes, that’s right. Well, not strictly speaking; they just bury them alive beneath the royal mausoleum.

  My friend is not really to blame for not knowing about this, which is not well known outside learned sociological circles because the last time an Emperor died on Keshtak 37 was well before the memory of any living person on this world. Long-lived race, the Oomaumau, especially the royal family . . . but ignorance, as they say, is no excuse before the law, and the contract had already been signed.

  And the Oomaumau were not about to let my friend out of it. Though he tried hard enough, went so far as to travel personally to Keshtak 37 to plead for a release. He was so desperate he even got an audience with their spiritual leader, the Papa Oomaumau, at the great temple of the goddess L’vira. No go. A contract is a contract and if he reneges, they tell him, he will find himself up to his nictitating membranes in litigation with the Emperor’s attorneys.

  Yes, that was what my friend asked. Turns out it’s not at all unusual for dead people to file lawsuits on Keshtak 37. Don’t ask me.

  My friend doesn’t know what to do, but then while he’s there, he picks up another bit of information. The only entertainers who don’t get interred with His Imperial Awesomeness are the ones who perform so badly that they are deemed unworthy of the honor. Yes. On Keshtak 37, when you stink at the Palace, you don’t die at the Palace.

  So my friend rushes back here and starts calling in all the lousiest acts he can find. Which takes very little searching, because every agent knows plenty of hopeless no-talent losers; they come around begging you to represent them, and they’re so persistent and so pathetic you take their names and information down just to get rid of them and then they call you every few days for the rest of your life wanting to know when you’re going to get them some work.

  In almost no ti
me my friend has assembled a collection of the worst stinkeroos in this part of the galaxy. Tone-deaf musicians, stumblebum dancers, comics unfunny enough to induce suicidal depression, he’s got them all. He said he had to open the office windows to air the place out after they all left.

  No, he didn’t tell them. He felt bad about that, but it really wouldn’t have done to let them in on what was going on. Entertainers and artists, you see, are very touchy people that way, and the bad ones most of all. The worse they are, the greater they believe they are and the harder they believe it. If he’d told them the truth, they’d have been furious, and chances are they’d have walked out on him.

  So off they went to Keshtak 37, and—ah, yes, I’m seeing this look on your face, you’re way ahead of me, aren’t you?

  That’s right. The thrill of finally getting a professional gig, and a prestigious offworld one at that, got them so worked up they barely needed a ship to get to Keshtak 37; they could have gone into warp by themselves. And by the time they went on at the Imperial Palace, they were so inspired that they performed, all of them, better than they’d ever done in their lives.

  Or ever would again, in what little was left of them ... my friend was very upset. Not that anybody would miss that particular bunch, but the Oomaumau buried their paychecks with them and he never did collect his cut.

  But listen, don’t misunderstand, I’m not disrespecting my colleagues. It’s not like I’ve never made any mistakes myself. How I only wish . . .

  Let me tell you about the comic.

  Or rather tell you what happened, I can’t really tell you about him. Can’t do justice to his talent with a simple description, you’d have had to see him in action to fully comprehend just how great he was. And yes, great I said and great I meant. All these people like to think of themselves as “artists,” but in his case it was the simple truth. A genuine comic genius is what he was, and he could just maybe have been the greatest ever, if only—but I’m getting ahead of myself.