Aliens Among Us

by Gardner Dozois

  ". . . dumb bassar don't know how to make out a billa lading yet he ain't never gonna know so fire him get it over with . . ."

  ". . . gabblegabblegabble . . ." Not a word he recognized in it.

  ". . . gobblegobble dat tam vooman I brek she nack . . ."

  ". . . gobble trink visky chin glassabeer gobblegobble-gobble . . ."

  ". . . gabblegabblegabble . . ."

  ". . . makes me so gobblegobble mad little no-good tramp no she ain' but I don' like no standup from no dame . . ."

  A blond, square-headed boy fuming under a street light. ". . . out wit' Casey Oswiak I could kill that dumb bo-hunk alia time trine ta paw her. . ."

  It was a possibility. The Mindworm drew near.

  ". . . stand me up for that gobblegobble bohunk I oughta slap her inna mush like my ole man says . . ."

  "Hello," said the Mindworm.

  "Waddaya wan'?"

  "Casey Oswiak told me to tell you not to wait up for your girl. He's taking her out tonight."

  The blond boy's rage boiled into his face and shot from his eyes. He was about to swing when the Mindworm began to feed. It was like pheasant after chicken, venison after beef. The coarseness of the environment, or the ancient strain? The Mindworm wondered as he strolled down the street. A girl passed him:

  ". . . oh but he's gonna be mad like last time wish I came right away so jealous kinda nice but he might bust me one some day be nice to him tonight there he is lam'post leaning on it looks kinda funny gawd I hope he ain't drunk looks kinda funny sleeping sick or bozhe moi gabblegab-blegabble . . ."

  Her thoughts trailed into a foreign language of which the Mindworm knew not a word. After hysteria had gone she recalled, in the foreign language, that she had passed him.

  The Mindworm, stimulated by the unfamiliar quality of the last feeding, determined to stay for some days. He checked in at a Main Street hotel.

  Musing, he dragged his net:

  ". . . gobblegobblewhompyeargobblecheskygobblegabblechyesh . . ."

  ". . . take him down cellar beat the can off the damn chesky thief put the fear of god into him teach him can't bust into no boxcars in mah parta the caounty . . ."

  ". . . gabblegabble . . ."

  ". . . phone ole Mister Ryan in She-cawgo and he'll tell them three-card monte grifters who got the horseroom rights in this necka the woods by damn don't pay protection money for no protection . . ."

  The Mindworm followed that one further; it sounded as though it could lead to some money if he wanted to stay in the town long enough.

  The Eastern Europeans of the town, he mistakenly thought, were like the tramps and bums he had known and fed on during his years on the road—stupid and safe, safe and stupid, quite the same thing.

  In the morning he found no mention of the squareheaded boy's death in the town's paper and thought it had gone practically unnoticed. It had—by the paper, which was of, by, and for the coal and iron company and its native-American bosses and straw bosses. The other town, the one without a charter or police force, with only an imported weekly newspaper or two from the nearest city, noticed it. The other town had roots more than two thousand years deep, which are hard to pull up. But the Mindworm didn't know it was there.

  He fed again that night, on a giddy young streetwalker in her room. He had astounded and delighted her with a fistful of ten-dollar bills before he began to gorge. Again the delightful difference from city-bred folk was there. . . .

  Again in the morning he had been unnoticed, he thought. The chartered town, unwilling to admit that there were streetwalkers or that they were found dead, wiped the slate clean; its only member who really cared was the native-American cop on the beat who had collected weekly from the dead girl.

  The other town, unknown to the Mindworm, buzzed with it. A delegation went to the other town's only public officer. Unfortunately he was young, American-trained, perhaps even ignorant about some important things. For what he told them was: "My children, that is foolish superstition. Go home."

  The Mindworm, through the day, roiled the surface of the town proper by allowing himself to be roped into a poker game in a parlor of the hotel. He wasn't good at it, he didn't like it, and he quit with relief when he had cleaned six shifty-eyed, hard-drinking loafers out of about three hundred dollars. One of them went straight to the police station and accused the unknown of being a sharper. A humorous sergeant, the Mindworm was pleased to note, joshed the loafer out of his temper.

  Nightfall again, hunger again . . . He walked the streets of the town and found them empty. It was strange. The native-American citizens were out, tending bar, walking their beats, locking up their newspaper on the stones, collecting their rents, managing their movies—but where were the others? He cast his net:

  ". . . gobblegobblegobble whomp year gobble . . ."

  ". . . crazy old pollack mama of mine try to lock me in with Errol Flynn at the Majestic never know the difference if I sneak out the back . . ."

  That was near. He crossed the street and it was nearer. He homed on the thought:

  ". . . jeez he's a hunka man like Stanley but he never looks at me that Vera Kowalik I'd like to kick her just once in the gobblegobblegobble crazy old mama won't be American so ashamed . . ."

  It was half a block, no more, down a side street. Brick houses, two stories, with back yards on an alley. She was going out the back way.

  How strangely quiet it was in the alley.

  ". . . ea-sy down them steps fix that damn board that's how she caught me last time what the hell are they all so scared of went to see Father Drugas won't talk bet somebody got it again that Vera Kowalik and her big . . ."

  ". . . gobble bozhe gobble whomp year gobble . . ."

  She was closer; she was closer.

  "All think I'm a kid show them who's a kid bet if Stanley caught me all alone out here in the alley dark and all he wouldn't think I was a kid that damn Vera Kowalik her folks don't think she's a kid . . ."

  For all her bravado she was stark terrified when he said: "Hello."

  "Who—who—who?" she stammered.

  Quick, before she screamed. Her terror was delightful.

  Not too replete to be alert, he cast about, questing.

  ". . . gobblegobblegobble whomp year."

  The countless eyes of the other town, with more than two thousand years of experience in such things, had been following him. What he had sensed as a meaningless hash of noise was actually an impassioned outburst in a nearby darkened house.

  "Fools! fools! Now he has taken a virgin! I said not to wait. What will we say to her mother?"

  An old man with handlebar mustache and, in spite of the hat, his shirt sleeves decently rolled down and buttoned at the cuffs, evenly replied: "My heart in me died with hers, Casimir, but one must be sure. It would be a terrible thing to make a mistake in such an affair."

  The weight of conservative elder opinion was with him. Other old men with mustaches, some perhaps remembering mistakes long ago, nodded and said: "A terrible thing. A terrible thing."

  The Mindworm strolled back to his hotel and napped on the made bed briefly. A tingle of danger awakened him. Instantly he cast out:

  ". . . gobblegobble whompyear."

  ". . . whampyir."

  "WAMPYIR!"

  Close! Close and deadly!

  The door of his room burst open, and mustached old men with their shirt sleeves rolled down, and decently buttoned at the cuffs unhesitatingly marched in, their thoughts a turmoil of alien noises, foreign gibberish that he could not wrap his mind around, disconcerting, from every direction.

  The sharpened stake was through his heart and the scythe blade through his throat before he could realize that he had not been the first of his kind; and that what clever people have not yet learned, some quite ordinary people have not yet entirely forgotten.

  Popeye and Pops Watch the Evening World Report

  Eliot Fintushel

  Having aliens in hiding next door can be a trial ev
en in day-to-day matters, as the bizarre and very funny story that follows demonstrates. A quiet evening in front of the TV turns into an intergalactic incident of immense significance . . .

  New writer Eliot Fintushel made his first sale in 1993, to Tomorrow magazine. Since then, he has appeared several more times in Tomorrow, has become a regular in Asimov's Science Fiction, with a large number of sales there, has appeared in Amazing, Crank!, and other markets. He is beginning to attract attention from cognoscenti as one of the most original and inventive writers to enter the genre in many years, worthy to be ranked among other practitioners of the fast-paced, wild and crazy, gonzo modern tall-tale such as R. A. Lafferty, Howard Waldrop, and Neal Barrett, Jr. Fintushel, a baker's son from Rochester, New York, is a performer and teacher of mask theater and mime, has won the National Endowment for the Arts' Solo Performer Award twice, and now lives in Santa Rosa, California.

  Popeye and Pops kept a dead raccoon in a busted fridge outside the tin hut they called home. When I asked where the bathroom was, Pops said, "You wanna take a bath?" He laughed beer smell right in my face. Popeye was kinder. He explained that I must mean the toilet, and he showed me outside to the ditch by the windbreak.

  They called them, "staygrants" in Orleans County, migrants who had come up from the South in buses and car pools to harvest the apples, peaches, plums, and pears, and then stayed on through the winter, working at the cannery or doing odd jobs. They settled in, somehow. They got hired for pruning in the spring. They drank. People began to take their presence for granted in Holley, in Albion and even in Brockport, and the staygrants were careful to stay predictable. Popeye and Pops were like court jesters, for example. People in town thought they were crazy and harmless, and so they let them be. They let them work and drink and jabber about their magic poojum.

  Myself, I never thought they were crazy or harmless. From the beginning, I believed that Popeye and Pops knew something that I desperately needed to find out. One day when my girlfriend was at a dance class, I invited Pops into my rented farmhouse on North Main Street Road. He was timid at first, but once inside, he acted like he owned the place, and me.

  "Why you let someone plant those flowers around you?" he said, taking another pull of his Budweiser. "Don't you know they making a grave for you?" It gave me a shiver. I always felt a little funny about those tulips. "Sure," said Pops. "You can't let a body plant flowers around you. Hey, some folks put flowers around me, my man, and I still here a thousand million year later." Pops said crazy things. He liked my house, he said. He could see how it might come in handy one day. He wanted to know whether I had a TV, not for now but for later, he said. Then we sat outside on the front porch to have some coffee.

  A hundred yards away down Main Street Road, my middle class neighbor was talking to a friend. Pops cocked his ear and started talking to them the way a baby talks to angels, bobbing his head and staring into space. "Yes, yes," he said, "Those pool chemicals got to be changed! That's right! Keep that water clean, clean! You better, hear? That's right! What for lunch, honey? Honey that lunch up, Mister! You gonna have flowers round you just like my man here. Mm-hmm!"

  He was just like a voodoo man. Near and far meant nothing to Pops—that's how I saw it. The night after I met them, I dreamed of Popeye and Pops in that tin hut that Leland Bower let them use while they worked his orchards. I dreamed that Pops lay awake nights like a huge satellite dish, picking up gossip from seven counties and sending more gossip back, while Popeye guarded the door and chanted magic words to keep me and the townies away.

  One night I was lost in the snow with Corinne in the wide marshy field that separated our place from Leland Bower's house. Our electricity had gone out and we were sure it must be a blown fuse, but we didn't know where to look for it, and we didn't have a phone. Leland would know what to do, and he liked to talk to college students like me. But in half an hour Corinne and I managed to get ourselves lost, soaked to the bone, and howling mad at each other for not remembering the way.

  That's when we bumped into Popeye and Pops. I thought I heard a voice coming from the windbreak—"They here!"—and then we saw them. They were doing something awful in the middle of the frozen stream. Pops was holding something dead. Popeye had his face in it. They were doing something that people used to do long ago, before we forgot how or got taught not to. Corinne pretended not to see; in fact, I never got her to admit that she'd seen anything out of the ordinary that whole night.

  Pops looked up at me and grinned. He knew that I recognized something. "This could be for you," he said.

  "Don't mystify him," Popeye told his friend. "Don't mystify that boy." He was cleaning the thing's blood off his face with a handful of snow and wiping it on his sleeve. Pops shoved the dead thing under his torn cloth coat. "I'll fix your electricity," Popeye told me.

  "How did you know it needed fixing?" Corinne asked him.

  There was a still moment. I could hear branches scraping and creaking in the chill wind. I could hear the moon rising. Then Popeye said, "Look! Your lights is all out." Pops started laughing so hard, he had to slap a hand over his mouth and nose to hold the laughter in.

  "You follow me," Popeye said. "You don't need no Leland Bower. I'll fix you." He started walking, and we followed behind.

  "What makes you think we were headed for Bower's?" Corinne asked.

  "I just guessed, Miss," Popeye said uneasily.

  There was another peal of wild laughter at our backs. Pops was rolling in the snow, snorting and howling.

  "Is he drunk?" Corinne asked me.

  "Don't worry about Pops," I said. "He's just like that."

  "That's the truth," Pops said, suddenly very solemn, "Pops is just like that. Miss." Then he laughed again.

  "I think we should still go to Mr. Bower's," Corinne said. "These guys are nuts."

  "Shush," I said. "Pops hears everything."

  "I don't give a damn what Pops hears. I'm telling you I want to go to Mr. Bower. What does Popeye know about electricity?"

  I shrugged. I said, "I think he knows something."

  "You're not going to Bower's with me, then?" She was fuming. She looked at me with disgust. She knew she couldn't find her way across the field alone. Corinne stomped away toward Popeye, who hadn't noticed that we'd dropped behind, and after that she made a point of keeping twenty yards between us.

  Pops tagged behind, poking me and giggling every now and then. "We gonna fix your lights," he said.

  It was slow going. The ground was not completely frozen yet; we kept sliding down into trenches of mud, and scrambling up, wet and shivering, into another snowdrift. When we reached the road, Pops grabbed my coat and held me at the edge of the field while Popeye and Corinne crossed over to our dark house.

  "Let me go. I'm freezing," I said. He held me. Pops looked almost sad as he reached into his coat and took out the dead thing to show me.

  "We not from here," Pops said. His face was troubled. He wanted something from me, but I couldn't understand what it was. "Looky," he said. He let go of me so he could cradle the thing in both hands. He lifted it tenderly right up to my face. It smelled a little like ether, a smell that seemed to slice through my nostrils and the side of my head and speak directly to my nerves and brain. It was a smell deep in memory, cellular memory, electrical memory, before the womb, before the egg, before the chromosome.

  I don't know what the thing looked like. I was overwhelmed by that odor. I just kept staring in amazement right into Pops's bloodshot eyes. Pops stared back and nodded. I wanted to bury my face in that thing.

  Then Corinne called out. Pops pushed the dead thing back in his coat and laughed hard. "Let's git." The lights had gone on. I crossed the road with Pops, and we entered the cold house. Popeye was splitting wood with the hatchet I kept by the wood stove. He had already gotten a small fire going. Corinne had started some water boiling on the hotplate for coffee.

  "Let me take a hot shower here," Pops said.

  Corinne looked at
him like it was the craziest thing she had ever heard a human being say. I said. "We don't have a shower, Pops."

  "You got a wash tub and a pail?"

  "I'm going to bed." Corinne turned away. "You men do whatever the hell you want to do. Thanks for fixing the fuse. Don't let the water boil over, okay?"

  "Don't go to bed, Miss," Popeye said.

  "What?"

  Pops said, "The man said, don't you go to bed. Miss."

  "She's tired." I said. "I'll make the coffee."

  "She's not tired," Pops said.

  "Don't put words in her mouth," Popeye told Pops. Then to Corinne: "Are you tired, Miss?"

  "No," she said, "as a matter of fact I'm not. I just don't want to be in here with you because I think your friend is out of his mind, and my boyfriend isn't man enough to kick him the hell out of here. You've been very nice, Popeye, but I'll be grateful if you finish rubbing your sticks together and go home." Corinne stormed into the bedroom and shut the door.

  "This is bad," Popeye said. "She's can't go to sleep."

  "Don't fret about it," said Pops. "No way she gonna sleep now."

  "What are you guys talking about?" I said.

  "Did you show him?" Popeye asked Pops.

  "Just started," said Pops. "Where's the tub?"

  "In the little room off the kitchen," I said, "but why do you need Corinne?"

  "We don't need her," Popeye explained. "We just need that she don't sleep."

  Pops was dragging the tub in close to the woodstove. "I needs a bucket and hot water."

  I started drawing hot water for him from the kitchen sink. The pipes had frozen and burst a few days earlier but were working well enough now.

  "I'm glad you like Corinne's company," I said. "So do I."

  "We don't like no Corinne's company," Pops scowled. "Ask him if he still gots the TV," he said to Popeye.

  Popeye said, "Pops wants to know do you got a TV?"

  "Sure." I went into the bedroom, where Corinne was curled up under four blankets. "I'm taking the television in to Pops," I whispered.