Aliens Among Us

by Gardner Dozois

  George didn't like to shoot him with the poison dart gun, but he had to.

  He had to kill several more before he got into the studio itself, including all the engineers on duty. There were a lot of police sirens outside, excited shouts, and running footsteps on the stairs. The alien was sitting before the TV camera saying, "We are your friends. We are your friends," and didn't see George come in. When George shot him with the needle gun he simply stopped in mid-sentence and sat there, dead. George stood near him and said, imitating the alien croak, "Wake up. Wake up. See us as we are and kill us!"

  It was George's voice the city heard that morning, but it was the Fascinator's image, and the city did awake for the very first time and the war began.

  George did not live to see the victory that finally came. He died of a heart attack at exactly eight o'clock.

  Expendable

  Philip K. Dick

  Here's a wry little story—but one with a sting in its tail—that demonstrates that sometimes our worst enemies, as well as some unexpected allies, can literally be right under our feet. . .

  A dedicated investigator of the elusive nature of reality, an intrepid explorer of alternate states of consciousness, a wickedly effective and acidulous satirist, the late Philip K. Dick wrote some of the most brilliant novels and short stories in the history of the SF genre, and is now being widely recognized as one of the major authors of the late 20th century, in any genre. He won a Hugo Award for his novel The Man in the High Castle, and his many other novels include Ubik, Martian Time Slip, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich, Time Out of Joint, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which was somewhat disappointingly filmed as Bladerunner. His most recent books, published posthumously, include The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, Radio Free Albemuth, Puttering About in a Small Land, The Man Whose Teeth Were all Exactly Alike, and the massive three-volume set The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick.

  The man came out on the front porch and examined the day. Bright and cold—with dew on the lawns. He buttoned his coat and put his hands in his pockets.

  As the man started down the steps the two caterpillars waiting by the mailbox twitched with interest.

  "There he goes," the first one said. "Send in your report."

  As the other began to rotate his vanes the man stopped, turning quickly.

  "I heard that," he said. He brought his foot down against the wall, scraping the caterpillars off, onto the concrete. He crushed them.

  Then he hurried down the path to the sidewalk. As he walked he looked around him. In the cherry tree a bird was hopping, pecking bright-eyed at the cherries. The man studied him. All right? Or— The bird flew off. Birds all right. No harm from them.

  He went on. At the corner he brushed against a spider web, crossed from the bushes to the telephone pole. His heart pounded. He tore away, batting in the air. As he went on he glanced over his shoulder. The spider was coming slowly down the bush, feeling out the damage to his web.

  Hard to tell about spiders. Difficult to figure out. More facts needed— No contact, yet.

  He waited at the bus stop, stomping his feet to keep them warm.

  The bus came and he boarded it, feeling a sudden pleasure as he took his seat with all the warm, silent people, staring indifferently ahead. A vague flow of security poured through him.

  He grinned, and relaxed, the first time in days.

  The bus went down the street.

  Tirmus waved his antennae excitedly.

  "Vote, then, if you want." He hurried past them, up onto the mound. "But let me say what I said yesterday, before you start."

  "We already know it all," Lala said impatiently. "Let's get moving. We have the plans worked out. What's holding us up?"

  "More reason for me to speak." Tirmus gazed around at the assembled gods. "The entire Hill is ready to march against the giant in question. Why? We know he can't communicate to his fellows— It's out of the question. The type of vibration, the language they use makes it impossible to convey such ideas as he holds about us, about our—"

  "Nonsense," Lala stepped up. "Giants communicate well enough."

  "There is no record of a giant having made known information about us!"

  The army moved restlessly.

  "Go ahead," Tirmus said. "But it's a waste of effort. He's harmless—cut off. Why take all the time and—"

  "Harmless?" Lala stared at him. "Don't you understand? He knows!"

  Tirmus walked away from the mound. "I'm against unnecessary violence. We should save our strength. Someday we'll need it."

  The vote was taken. As expected, the army was in favor of moving against the giant. Tirmus sighed and began stroking out the plans on the ground.

  "This is the location that he takes. He can be expected to appear there at period-end. Now, as I see the situation—"

  He went on, laying out the plans in the soft soil.

  One of the gods leaned toward another, antennae touching. "This giant. He doesn't stand a chance. In a way, I feel sorry for him. How'd he happen to butt in?"

  "Accident." The other grinned. "You know, the way they do, barging around."

  "It's too bad for him, though."

  It was nightfall. The street was dark and deserted. Along the sidewalk the man came, a newspaper under his arm. He walked quickly, glancing around him. He skirted around the big tree growing by the curb and leaped agilely into the street. He crossed the street and gained the opposite side. As he turned the corner he entered the web, sewn from bush to telephone pole. Automatically he fought it, brushing it off him. As the strands broke a thin humming came to him, metallic and wiry.

  ". . . wait!"

  He paused.

  ". . . careful . . . inside . . . wait . . ."

  His jaw set. The last strands broke in his hands and he walked on. Behind him the spider moved in the fragment of his web, watching. The man looked back.

  "Nuts to you," he said. "I'm not taking any chances, standing there all tied up."

  He went on, along the sidewalk, to his path. He skipped up the path, avoiding the darkening bushes. On the porch he found his key, fitting it into the lock.

  He paused. Inside? Better than outside, especially at night. Night a bad time. Too much movement under the bushes. Not good. He opened the door and stepped inside. The rug lay ahead of him, a pool of blackness. Across on the other side he made out the form of the lamp.

  Four steps to the lamp. His foot came up. He stopped.

  What did the spider say? Wait? He waited, listening. Silence.

  He took his cigarette lighter and flicked it on.

  The carpet of ants swelled toward him, rising up in a flood. He leaped aside, out onto the porch. The ants came rushing, hurrying, scratching across the floor in the half light.

  The man jumped down to the ground and around the side of the house. When the first ants came flowing over the porch he was already spinning the faucet handle rapidly, gathering up the hose.

  The burst of water lifted the ants up and scattered them, flinging them away. The man adjusted the nozzle, squinting through the mist. He advanced, turning the hard stream from side to side.

  "God damn you," he said, his teeth locked. "Waiting inside—"

  He was frightened. Inside—never before! In the night cold sweat came out on his face. Inside. They had never got inside before. Maybe a moth or two, and flies, of course. But they were harmless, fluttery, noisy—

  A carpet of ants!

  Savagely, he sprayed them until they broke rank and fled into the lawn, into the bushes, under the house.

  He sat down on the walk, holding the hose, trembling from head to foot.

  They really meant it. Not an anger raid, annoyed, spasmodic; but planned, at attack, worked out. They had waited for him. One more step—

  Thank God for the spider.

  Presently he shut the hose off and stood up. No sound; silence everywhere. The bushes rustled suddenly. Beetle? Something black scurried—he put his foot on it. A
messenger, probably. Fast runner. He went gingerly inside the dark house, feeling his way by the cigarette lighter.

  Later, he sat at his desk, the spray gun beside him, heavy-duty steel and copper. He touched its damp surface with his fingers.

  Seven o'clock. Behind him the radio played softly. He reached over and moved the desk lamp so that it shone on the floor beside the desk.

  He lit a cigarette and took some writing paper and his fountain pen. He paused, thinking.

  So they really wanted him, badly enough to plan it out. Bleak despair descended over him like a torrent. What could he do? Whom could he go to? Or tell? He clenched his fists, sitting bolt upright in the chair.

  The spider slid down beside him onto the desk top. "Sorry. Hope you aren't frightened, as in the poem."

  The man stared. "Are you the same one? The one at the corner? The one who warned me?"

  "No. That's somebody else. A Spinner. I'm strictly a Cruncher. Look at my jaws." He opened and shut his mouth. "I bite them up."

  The man smiled. "Good for you."

  "Sure. Do you know how many there are of us in—say—an acre of land? Guess."

  "A thousand."

  "No. Two and a half million. Of all kinds. Crunchers, like me, or Spinners, or Stingers."

  "Stingers?"

  "The best. Let's see." The spider thought. "For instance, the black widow, as you call her. Very valuable." He paused. "Just one thing."

  "What's that?"

  "We have our problems. The gods—"

  "Gods!"

  "Ants, as you call them. The leaders. They're beyond us. Very unfortunate. They have an awful taste—makes one sick. We have to leave them for the birds."

  The man stood up. "Birds? Are they—"

  "Well, we have an arrangement. This has been going on for ages. I'll give you the story. We have some time left."

  The man's heart contracted. "Time left? What do you mean?"

  "Nothing. A little trouble later on, I understand. Let me give you the background. I don't think you know it."

  "Go ahead. I'm listening." He stood up and began to walk back and forth.

  "They were running the Earth pretty well, about a billion years ago. You see, men came from some other planet. Which one? I don't know. They landed and found the Earth quite well cultivated by them. There was a war."

  "So we're the invaders," the man murmured.

  "Sure. The war reduced both sides to barbarism, them and yourselves. You forgot how to attack, and they degenerated into closed social factions, ants, termites—"

  "I see."

  "The last group of you that knew the full story started us going. We were bred"—the spider chuckled in its own fashion—"bred some place for this worthwhile purpose. We keep them down very well. You know what they call us? The Eaters. Unpleasant, isn't it?"

  Two more spiders came drifting down on their web-strands, alighting on the desk. The three spiders went into a huddle.

  "More serious than I thought," the Cruncher said easily. "Didn't know the whole dope. This Stinger here—"

  The black widow came to the edge of the desk. "Giant," she piped, metallically. "I'd like to talk with you."

  "Go ahead," the man said.

  "There's going to be some trouble here. They're moving, coming here, a lot of them. We thought we'd stay with you awhile. Get in on it."

  "I see." The man nodded. He licked his lips, running his fingers shakily through his hair. "Do you think—that is, what are the chances—"

  "Chances?" The Stinger undulated thoughtfully. "Well, we've been in this work a long time. Almost a million years. I think that we have the edge over them, in spite of drawbacks. Our arrangements with the birds, and of course, with the toads—"

  "I think we can save you," the Cruncher put in cheerfully. "As a matter of fact, we look forward to events like this."

  From under the floorboards came a distant scratching sound, the noise of a multitude of tiny claws and wings, vibrating faintly, remotely. The man heard. His body sagged all over.

  "You're really certain? You think you can do it?" He wiped the perspiration from his lips and picked up the spray gun, still listening.

  The sound was growing, swelling beneath them, under the floor, under their feet. Outside the house bushes rustled and a few moths flew up against the window. Louder and louder the sound grew, beyond and below, everywhere, a rising hum of anger and determination. The man looked from side to side.

  "You're sure you can do it?" he murmured. "You can really save me?"

  "Oh," the Stinger said, embarrassed. "I didn't mean that. I meant the species, the race . . . not you as an individual."

  The man gaped at him and the three Eaters shifted uneasily. More moths burst against the window. Under them the floor stirred and heaved.

  "I see," the man said. "I'm sorry I misunderstood you."

  The Reality Trip

  Robert Silverberg

  If you're a scholar observing primitive cultures, it's best to resist the temptation to go native—because if you don't, as the wry and funny story that follows proves, you may suffer all kinds of consequences!

  Robert Silverberg is one of the most famous SF writers of modern times, with dozens of novels, anthologies, and collections to his credit. Silverberg has won five Nebula Awards and four Hugo Awards. His novels include Dying Inside, Lord Valentine's Castle, The Book of Skulls, Downward to the Earth, Tower of Glass, Son of Man, Nightwings, The World Inside, Born With The Dead, Shadrack In The Furnace, Thoms, Up the Line, The Man in the Maze, Tom O' Bedlam, Star of Gypsies, At Winter's End, The Face of the Waters, Kingdoms of the Wall, Hot Sky at Morning, and two novel-length expansions of famous Isaac Asimov stories, Nightfall and The Ugly Little Boy. His collections include Unfamiliar Territory, Capricorn Games, Majipoor Chronicles, The Best of Robert Silverberg, At The Conglomeroid Cocktail Party, Beyond the Safe Zone, and a massive retrospective collection The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume One: Secret Sharers. His reprint anthologies are far too numerous to list here, but include The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One and the distinguished Alpha series, among dozens of others. His most recent books are the novels The Alien Years and Mountains of Majipoor. He lives with his wife, writer Karen Haber, in Oakland, California.

  I am at a reclamation project for her. She lives on my floor of the hotel, a dozen rooms down the hall: a lady poet, private income. No, that makes her sound too old, a middle-aged eccentric. Actually she is no more than thirty. Taller than I am, with long kinky brown hair and a sharp, bony nose that has a bump on the bridge. Eyes are very glossy. A studied raggedness about her dress; carefully chosen shabby clothes. I am in no position really to judge the sexual attractiveness of Earthfolk but I gather from remarks made by men living here that she is not considered good-looking. I pass her often on my way to my room. She smiles fiercely at me. Saying to herself, no doubt, You poor lonely man. Let me help you bear the burden of your unhappy life. Let me show you the meaning of love, for I too know what it is like to be alone.

  Or words to that effect. She's never actually said any such thing. But her intentions are transparent. When she sees me, a kind of hunger comes into her eyes, part maternal, part (I guess) sexual, and her face takes on a wild crazy intensity. Burning with emotion. Her name is Elizabeth Cooke. "Are you fond of poetry, Mr. Knecht?" she asked me this morning, as we creaked upward together in the ancient elevator. And an hour later she knocked at my door. "Something for you to read," she said. "I wrote them." A sheaf of large yellow sheets, stapled at the top; poems printed in smeary blue mimeography. The Reality Trip, the collection was headed. Limited Edition: 125 Copies. "You can keep it if you like," she explained. "I've got lots more." She was wearing bright corduroy slacks and a flimsy pink shawl through which her breasts plainly showed. Small tapering breasts, not very functional-looking. When she saw me studying them her nostrils flared momentarily and she blinked her eyes three times swiftly. Tokens of lust?

  I read the poem
s. Is it fair for me to offer judgment on them? Even though I've lived on this planet eleven of its years, even though my command of colloquial English is quite good, do I really comprehend the inner life of poetry? I thought they were all quite bad. Earnest, plodding poems, capturing what they call slices of life. The world around her, the cruel, brutal, unloving city. Lamenting the failure of people to open to one another. The title poem began this way:

  He was on the reality trip. Big black man,

  bloodshot eyes, bad teeth. Eisenhower jacket,

  frayed. Smell of cheap wine. I guess a knife

  in his pocket. Looked at me mean. Criminal

  record. Rape, child-beating, possession of drugs.

  In his head saying, slavemistress bitch, and me in

  my head saying, black brother, let's freak in

  together, let's trip on love—

  And so forth. Warm, direct emotion; but is the urge to love all wounded things a sufficient center for poetry? I don't know. I did put her poems through the scanner and transmit them to Homeworld, although I doubt they'll learn much from them about Earth. It would flatter Elizabeth to know that while she has few readers here, she has acquired some ninety light-years away. But of course I can't tell her that.

  She came back a short while ago. "Did you like them?" she asked.

  "Very much. You have such sympathy for those who suffer."

  I think she expected me to invite her in. I was careful not to look at her breasts this time.

  The hotel is on West Twenty-third Street. It must be over a hundred years old; the facade is practically baroque and the interior shows a kind of genteel decay. The place has a bohemian tradition. Most of its guests are permanent residents and many of them are artists, novelists, playwrights, and such. I have lived here nine years. I know a number of the residents by name, and they me, but I have discouraged any real intimacy, naturally, and everyone has respected that choice. I do not invite others into my room. Sometimes I let myself be invited to visit theirs, since one of my responsibilities on this world is to get to know something of the way Earthfolk live and think. Elizabeth is the first to attempt to cross the invisible barrier of privacy I surround myself with. I'm not sure how I'll handle that. She moved in about three years ago; her attentions became noticeable perhaps ten months back, and for the last five or six weeks she's been a great nuisance. Some kind of confrontation is inevitable: either I must tell her to leave me alone, or I will find myself drawn into a situation impossible to tolerate. Perhaps she'll find someone else to feel even sorrier for, before it comes to that.