Too Small For Tall

by Rosenberg, Aaron

  “So they’ve been to the Alphabet Cookie Factory?” Somehow, that doesn’t really surprise me—I can just picture the Grays bouncing around out in space, piloting their little spherical space saucers with one hand and gobbling down ChocoMints and Lemon Stripes with the other.

  The sound of Tall grinding his teeth comes through the headset loud and clear. “No, they haven’t been to the factory,” he answers, and the good thing about him talking in his throat like this is his grinding doesn’t interfere at all. “But it’s on Earth, and they’ve been to Earth plenty of times. One planet is small enough, on a galactic scale, that tweaking the settings to put down somewhere else on it is easy.”

  I nod, even though I know he can’t see me. Or get vertigo from my motion, which would totally serve him right. At this rate, the next time I see him in person and he starts to nod I’ll probably flinch. I might even throw up my arms to brace myself for collision. “So like when you give a friend directions to your house but then it turns out you’re over at another buddy’s playing air hockey and you tell him to just meet you there instead and since it’s only two blocks away from your house it’s easy for him to adjust the directions, provided you gave him the right bus number in the first place?” True story. Who knew one bus went straight onto the LIE and kept going all the way through Manhattan and out to the Jersey Turnpike? Good thing it had a bathroom, that’s all I’m saying—six hours without a potty break is a bit much for anybody, let alone some poor teenager who’s sucking on a Big Gulp.

  “Exactly.” Tall goes quiet, and I amuse myself for a while watching the other people on the bus. Gawking is a lot easier when they can’t see you staring at them, or hear you wondering how their limbs can bend like that and where those clothes fasten exactly and what they would do if confronted with a large block of Limburger and a handful of crackers. Y’know, the usual sorts of questions.

  I can only stay quiet for so long, though—at least, without the aid of some duct tape. As my kindergarten teacher quickly discovered. “Why didn’t Mary and Ned come with you?” Ned had turned up right after Mary’s revelation about the powder, only to admit that there wasn’t any alien tech anywhere in the building. It’s all completely genuine and 100% human, which feels like it’s getting rarer and rarer. Anyway, when Tall announced his next stop was to investigate the mines and speak to whomever he could find, maybe get a better ID on this mystery woman, Ned and Mary had both agreed that was a good idea. But neither of them had offered to come with him, and here he was alone on the bus again.

  Well, alone except for me, of course.

  “They both have things of their own to do,” Tall says, and he sounds almost petulant. Then he crosses his arms over his thick chest. Aw, I wonder if he’s pouting, too! “I’m fully capable of handling a reconnaissance and interrogation mission on my own, you know,” he says, his usually gruff voice sounding a little whiny. “I am a trained and experienced field agent, with dozens of successful cases under my belt. I don’t need hand-holding!”

  Yep, definitely pouting.

  My initial, knee-jerk reaction is to say, “Yeah, but you aren’t exactly an agent right now, are you?” I successfully manage to quash that one before it can leave my lips. Hey, look at me, thinking about what I’m saying! That definitely calls for something to drink.

  My second thought is, “Sure, we know, you’re top-notch. As long as there aren’t any cookies around. Then you become a raving lunatic.” Again, not my most helpful.

  Finally I settle on an old classic:

  “Okay.”

  Tried and true, simple but effective.

  And it seems to work, because Tall stops griping. I’d still rather Ned and Mary were here, though.

  Eventually the train conductor gets on the horn—not literally, his chair’s actually more like a small wardrobe with clear sides all around, which I guess makes sense, since the conductor himself looks like his father was a wide-mouthed bass and his mother was an issue of TV Guide. The digest version. Good thing he’s apparently waterproof! Anyway, his voice suddenly echoes through the train:

  “We are now arriving at Galactic Center. This is the last stop on this bus. Please wait until we have come to a full and complete stop before disembarking, and make sure to check for any valuables or loved ones you might have left behind.” It’s nice of them to remind people like that—my Aunt Jerry used to forget my Uncle Tom on trains and buses and things all the time. At least, that’s what Tom always claimed, but I always thought Aunt Jerry took an awful lot of rides, and it seemed like she’d get up and leave without him every single time. Sometimes before they’d even left the station.

  When the train stops and the faint vibration fades—I know this because the camera’s been shaking ever so slightly for hours, and it’s been driving me crazy!—Tall rises to his feet. Slowly. No sense in rushing, after all, not with the madhouse erupting all around him. It’s not like the train is going anywhere else until it turns back around.

  “Okay, where to now?” I ask as Tall finally joins the thinning crowd and makes his way through the doors and out onto the platform. “Is there another bus or something?” If so, this won’t be as bad as I thought.

  Unfortunately, he shakes his head. “No busses—too dense.” That’s right, I forgot about the first time we came out, how we had to find a ship not only willing to take us to the Matrix or tough enough and powerful “We’ll have to hitch a ride.”

  Oh, good—one disgraced MiB and one telecommuting partial duck. Who wouldn’t stop for a pair like us?

  Tall doesn’t seem deterred, however. He marches right up to this one couple that look like somebody tried to do balloon animals using a bunch of sentient tennis balls. “Excuse me,” he calls out as he closes the last few feet, “I was wondering if I could possibly get a lift? I’m heading to a place called Meribau, and my friend was supposed to come pick me up but he wound up having to work.” I heard Mary tell Tall right before he left—the Grays teleported him to the Alpha Centauri train station, which helped, at least—that nobody went to Joribau, it was supposedly shut down decades back, but Meribau still maintained an active tourist trade, mostly for its summer squash, which were filled with hot lava and basically cooked themselves from the inside out, plus offered a runoff liquid that I’m told lets you breathe fire for a few minutes. I know plenty of friends’ in-laws who must have a secret stash of the stuff.

  The tennis balls swivel toward each other for a second, then back around to Tall. Gee, it’s like staring down the barrel of an automatic server—there are just so many of them! Anyway, they all start to twist from side to side, is both fascinating and a little unnerving. I’m not sure any of my body has that much mobility, let alone all of it!

  “We’re only heading as far north as Epheseus V,” one of them answers, the sound coming from each tennis ball at once like the world’s smallest, roundest, yellowest chorus. “Afraid that’s in the opposite direction. Good luck, though.”

  “Thanks.” Tall turns away and accosts someone else, a floating flatscreen or tablet or some such. Is that a real person, or just their form of a telepresence, I wonder. Is there more of them somewhere else? If so, why send a whole tablet, and why on the bus? Why not just ship a monitor and a mic wherever they need and be done with it? And what would the telepresence of a tablet look like, anyway? Would it just be a little tablet icon on a screen somewhere? Or would the double negative somehow refract them into a real boy?

  Tall clearly isn’t worried about such deep philosophical questions as he asks the tablet for a lift. I’m pretty sure the sudden ringing like wind chimes is it’s version of laughter, as it explains to him that even if it was going in that direction, he would never fit in its conveyance. “Though your companion might,” it adds, and I swear its little camera lens swivels to focus directly on me. Eep!

  Tall tries several more “people”—definite points for persistence—but each one either isn’t going that way or can’t fit him or is in too much of a hurry to e
ven stop and reply politely. We’re starting to run out of options—he’s already exhausted the possibilities at the bus stop itself, and now he’s wandered over to Red’s and is asking random people in the parking lot there instead. A part of me wonders if this is such a good idea—I was always warned against hitchhiking when I was a kid, and this is hitching on an intergalactic scale, which even somebody as big and competent and scary as Tall might need to be careful about—but that part is safely sitting here watching all this from a distance and munching on some Golastian light-fries (“a tasty treat you can watch work its way through your system!”), so if he wants to stick his neck out, who’m I to argue?

  “I can give you a lift out that way,” a voice cuts into my inspection of the fries’ progress (the feathers make them harder to see) and I glance back up at my monitor—and nearly cough up the glowing repast from sheer surprise. Because I’m looking at—

  A bowling ball.

  Not just any bowling ball, though. No, this one is floating at about the height of Tall’s shoulder, though it quickly adjusts and ascends until it’s eye level. It’s one of those swirling, iridescent patterns, green but with hints of silver and blue and even purple, and as I watch I see something small and bright dart into view, like a lizard’s tongue flicking out to taste the air except this nearly breaches the surface of the globe. There’s a faint glow to it as well, and I don’t think I’m imagining the sound of a single musical note, like the whole thing’s been struck with a tuning fork. I’m pretty sure I saw this thing in a movie or three once, only it was smaller and more silvery and there were several of them and they kept popping out these nasty-looking blades and ramming into people at high speed. Less like a glowing bowling ball and more like a bunch of flying circular saw blades with artistic pretensions.

  I guess Tall hasn’t seen those movies, though, or he just doesn’t care, because he says, “Great! Thanks! I’m Tall.”

  “I can see that,” the Glowing Ball o’ Doom agrees. “Most folks call me Heidi.”

  “Heidi?” Tall repeats.

  “Well, high B, really, but I don’t like to brag.” The evil sphere chuckles at its own joke, which makes its surface turn more yellowish and causes the swirls to accelerate. “Come on.”

  Why is it, I wonder as Tall follows the clearly demonic globe across the parking lot, that a lot of the aliens we’ve met have what I’d consider to be Southern or Midwestern accents? Is it because all our old TV shows got broadcast out into space, so all of these aliens have seen shows like Gunsmoke and Bonanza and Maverick and use those as references when dealing with humans? Is it just my ear, translating their actual dialogue into something I can understand and using the old movies and TV shows I watched as a kid for a guide? Or is Dixie really some kind of universal language?

  And another thing—why do the smallest people, things, recreational equipment, whatever always have the largest vehicles? I wonder this as “Heidi” stops beside what I at first think is some kind of small fortress, or maybe the biggest, most impressively fortified valet station ever built. And then he spins counterclockwise, brightens through a series of lights like a one-ball Simple Simon, and the giant iron-black edifice beeps and a section of it slides open. Heidi doesn’t hesitate, it just floats up and in.

  It’s like the intergalactic equivalent of the tiny little old lady driving the mammoth pickup truck and barely being able to see over the steering wheel. Which always allows a real clear view of the shotguns and hunting rifles mounted on the rack across the truck cab’s rear window. There’s a reason everybody waves politely and gets out of the way when Granny Deerstalker comes barreling through.

  “You sure this is a good idea?” I ask Tall as he grabs a handhold along the side—which looks an awful lot like the kind of heavy manacle you see in medieval dungeons in all those “knights and adventurers battle evil wizards and demons and the Devil” sorts of movies—and begins to haul himself up. “Climbing into a death machine the size of a small planet with a crazed bowling ball you barely know?”

  “He offered me a ride,” Tall replies under his breath, saving most of his energy for the climb. “Besides, I can take care of myself.”

  Sure, I think as he reaches the opening and maneuvers through it, the camera showing me nothing but blackness within. So could the Old Man in the Sea. He still got swallowed by a whale.

  Or was that Jonah? Or Geppetto? I get them all mixed up.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Traveling light . . . speed, that is!

  “So,” Heidi asks once Tall’s strapped in. “What’s taking you all the way out to Meribau?” Now that the camera’s had a chance to adjust I can see that this oversized ship isn’t just a big empty shell containing some kind of deep, dark void. Tall’s sitting next to Heidi in an actual cabin or cockpit or whatever you call that part of the ship, and it’s . . . nice.

  If you like black velvet.

  Which Heidi the Chatty Bowling Ball apparently does.

  Seriously, I feel like I’ve been transported to an 80s disco lounge. Or a 70s strip club. And why is it that’s the second time something else has made me think of strip clubs? I’ve got a girlfriend, damn it! Maybe it’s just a holdover from the fact that I was pretty much banned from every club in Manhattan, and a few in the outer boroughs, as well. The official reason is because my noggin’s so big it blocks everybody else’s view. Personally, I think they’re still pissed about that one guy, but he kept shoving past me to stuff bills into Lindsay’s G-string and she kept telling him to back off and he was seriously annoying me, and it’s not like his arm didn’t heal eventually, even if it hangs a little crooked now. Serves him right, anyway, for telling me “Back off, Donald, or I find Daisy and turn her into a Peking dish” when I told him he was bothering Lindsay.

  Anyway, the cabin’s not big, maybe the size of my living room, ceiling’s maybe seven feet up, the chairs are more like zero-g lounge chairs, there are panels and screens and displays and stuff all along the front, and everything except the actual monitors and buttons and gauges is covered in black velvet.

  I feel like I’m sitting in a giant Victorian waistcoat.

  Tall, of course, doesn’t sound the least bit concerned as he replies, “I hear they’ve got a killer summer squash.” Dude, if you try eating one of those and melt your internal organs you’re on your own. I am all in favor of new culinary experiences, but being turned into a convection oven? I’ll pass.

  “Yeah, it’s good stuff,” Heidi agrees. “Great for those cold nights, too, really warms you up.” It swivels toward Tall and there’s a second of silence. “You, you might wanna give it a few minutes to cool down before you try it. Poke a hole in the top to let the steam out—that’s one of the best parts, but you’d do yourself some serious damage if you tried inhaling that.”

  Wait, what? Is Heidi the Wrecking Ball is now giving food advice? He/she/it doesn’t even have a mouth! What’s he do, squash it flat—yeah, yeah—and then roll around on top of it like a pig wallowing in its mud or a dog who’s found something good and stinky?

  Sometimes, despite what anybody else might suggest, I think I think too much.

  Yuck.

  “Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind,” Tall replies, and damned if he doesn’t sound like he’s seriously grateful for the tip. Then again, I’ve seen Tall eat—if anybody’s gonna go trying to actually consume a miniature volcano disguised as a harvest vegetable, it’d be him. “You’ve actually been there, then? Can you drop me at Meribau itself, or just somewhere nearby? Either way, I appreciate it.” This is about the most un-gruff I’ve ever seen Tall—or at least heard him, since the only reflective surfaces in here are Heidi itself and the various consoles and screens, and all that dark upholstery and dim lighting is making everything really muted and distorted—and I can’t tell if it’s just because he’s tired or because he’s playing along or because he’s suspended and so definitely not on the job, or some combination thereof. Or maybe he’s just happier talking to peop
le who don’t have their own faces. Or hands. Or clavicles. I don’t know.

  “Sure, I can take you to Meribau,” Heidi says. “You’ll want Meribau City, I’m guessing, that’s where most of the tourist trade is.” Its surface suddenly shades a bit darker, and more purplish. “Now, you’d better hang onto something.”

  And then the whole disco lounge . . . shimmies. That’s about the only way I can describe it. There’s a low hum, like a growl but more pleasant, maybe a big dog warming up, and the entire cabin sort of blurs and seems to shift a little to the right. And keeps shifting. It’s like it’s always just a little to the right of where I’m looking, somehow, like a pencil that keeps rolling just out of reach, or a little kid hiding in your shadow and stepping back fast enough that you never quite catch a glimpse of him as you turn, but you almost see an afterimage of him a few times. This is a whole lot like that, actually, including being just as maddening.

  The Bowling Ball O’ Doom is obviously used to this, however. It’s the only thing in the place that isn’t blurry right now, and it’s glowing mostly blue. I can’t help thinking that means it’s content. Or maybe just moody. “Should be to Meribau in about an hour, the way you judge things,” it says. “You are human, right?”

  “I am.” I can tell from his voice that Tall’s having trouble adjusting to the weird shimmying, too.

  “Right. And judging from your suit, I’m betting I know who you work for.” Tall hasn’t exactly had time to change his clothes since busting out of MiB prison. Then again, I’m not entirely he owns anything but black suits. I think I may have seen him in a charcoal pinstripe once, but I could’ve been hallucinating. Or maybe it was laundry day. “So what’s a MiB want with Meribau? And don’t tell me it’s ’cause you’re suddenly a wee bit peckish.”

  “Ah.” Tall clears his throat, coughs, clears his throat again. Damn. The guy may be an incredibly competent field agent, like he said, and Lord knows he’s saved my butt any number of times, and not just because I keep almost sticking my tongue into various electrical outlets, but one thing he’s not good at? Lying.