The Alien MEGAPACK®

by Talmage Powell

  The host was expected to stock up on giant economy sizes of a powerful hand cleaner so that at the end of the evening his guests could get the green off.

  Jim Vernon’s technique was to roll the bill into a ball and work it between his palms. Harold Riehlmann’s was to crease it lengthwise as many times as possible; Jane, his wife, creased it the short way.

  Lou Aramis was a particularly welcome member of the party. He was the owner of a one-man garage and auto repair shop and came without washing his hands. Lou did more to age a bill authentically than all the rest of them put together.

  * * * *

  Lou Aramis parked his car in the lot of the South Waterford Shop ’n’ Save Center and started down Main Street with his old army duffel bag over his shoulder. It was 9:01 a.m. Thursday. The sun was warm and he was perspiring.

  His first stop was at the Country Drug & Variety Store, Eric Palmer, Ph.D., Prop. It was empty except for Eddie Grimes, who was Eric’s partner and assistant pharmacist, and the girl at the soda fountain.

  “Hi, there, Lou,” Eddie said cheerfully. “You’re not back in the army, are you? Fighting the mysterious foe? Old guy like you?” Eddie was older.

  Lou dropped the duffel bag to the floor of the drug counter where a little square of clear space next to the cash register was surrounded by aspirin, cough medicine, flashlight batteries, key cases, combs, ballpoint pens, photographic supplies, perfume, face cream, razor blades, boxes of chocolates, playing cards, poker chips, paperback books and other drugstore items to tempt the impulse buyer.

  “Never fear,” Lou said. “I’m here to pay my good old bill. One hundred and fifty-four dollars and seventy-two cents.” He opened the duffel bag and pulled out a handful of bills.

  Eddie Grimes gave an alarmed little laugh. “Why, there’s no hurry, Lou, old friend. You know your credit’s good here.”

  “Sure it is, Eddie, and don’t think Fm not grateful for the way you carried me over those rough spots this spring. But I got your bill yesterday, and it was stamped in big red letters ‘PLEASE PAY BILLS CURRENTLY,’ and I think it’s only right to do just that.”

  “Well, now, Lou, there’s absolutely no hurry in your case. We weren’t hinting or anything, you know.”

  “One fifty-five, one seventy-five, two hundred—” Lou was counting out the crumpled, dirty bills on the counter next to a Sominex display.

  “Now wait a minute, Lou,” Eddie said. He went on counting. “Two-fifty, two-seventy, two-ninety, three hundred and ten, three sixty, three eighty. You carried me, so I want to carry you the next few months, Eddie. There. Four hundred even. Just give me a receipt, will you?”

  “Why sure, Lou, but Eric isn’t here right now—”

  “Your signature’s good enough, for me, Eddie, old pal. That’s fine. Thanks. So long now.”

  * * * *

  On his way out, Lou stopped at the tobacco counter near the soda fountain and bought ten cartons of cigarettes, paying the girl with a battered twenty and a fairly well creased ten. “I’d stock up myself if I were you,” he told the girl. “The price is going up, I hear. Just put ’em in the freezer, and they keep forever.” He called back to the pharmacist. “So long, Eddie.”

  “Yeah—so long, Lou. Thanks and come again, I guess.”

  Lou’s next stop was at the South Waterford branch of the giant T. T. Grantberry chain, purveyor of anything from salted nuts and tropical fish to automobile tires, refrigerators, haberdashery and living-room suites, available at nothing down on the revolving charge plan, a small percentage of the balance payable monthly, with 18% interest mounting up fast at the far end.

  Lou went back past the mens’ pants, ladies lingerie, cafe curtain and hooked rug departments to the credit office. It was 9:17 a.m. by the clock that had written across its face: PAY ON TIME—PROTECT YOUR CREDIT RATING.

  “Good morning, sir,” the young lady clerk said.

  “Good morning,” Lou said. He put the duffel bag on the floor and fished his T. T. Grantberry monthly statement out of his back trouser pocket. “It says here I owe you $457.63, including the service charge, which I guess means interest.” There had been that color television set, purchased during his wife’s illness when he thought she might be dying.

  “Yes, sir,” the girl said. “But of course you only have to pay $46 this month under our optional revolving charge plan. Did you wish to pay the $46, sir?”

  “No, ma’am; I wish to pay the $457.63 and get out of your revolving charge plan, which is revolving me to death.”

  Certainly, sir. As you wish. Did you wish to pay by check?”

  “No, ma’am. I wish to pay by cash, in the full amount, and then close out the account.” He opened the duffel bag and began counting our grimy, well circulated bills. They’d been circulated all around Jim Vernon’s living room.

  “Oh, sir,” the girl said, “I’m not sure I want to take all this money from you. Perhaps you’d like to talk to Mr. Malmster, our assistant credit manager?”

  “What’s to talk to Mr. Malmster about? It says right here—look—‘You can save on future credit service charges by paying more than your monthly minimum or by paying in full at any time.’ This is the time; I’m paying in full.” Lou went on counting. “…four hundred and forty, four hundred sixty. Now give me my change and receipt, like a good girl. It’s been a pleasure doing business with you.”

  The girl grinned, finally. “It’s okay with me. Just between you and me, leaving T. T. Grantberry out of it, how much more you got in that barracks bag, Mr. Aramis?”

  “Plenty.”

  “Me, too. I paid up myself first thing this morning, before the store opened. I didn’t age it as good as you did—I put mine in the vacuum cleaner bag with some of that brown stain furniture polish—but it got by.” She winked.

  “Good girl,” Lou said. “Now just put the receipt through your machine there—that’s the way. Thanks.”

  As he started to walk away she called: “Don’t forget your green stamps.” He went back and got them.

  On his way out, Lou ordered a new refrigerator—with an extra-big freezer compartment—and a sofa bed and a dozen pairs of slacks and eight new tires and a year’s supply of toothpaste, razor blades, aspirin and another ten cartons of cigarettes, paid cash at the checkout counter, collected his green stamps and got back into his car.

  All this had been practice. Now came the real test.

  * * * *

  Lou Aramis headed for the South Waterford Trust & Deposit Company, holder of the mortgage of his two-story older house, his personal loan and his two FHA loans (“Your Neighborly Bank Is Your Loan Headquarters”).

  Mr. William Briese (Breezy Bill to fellow members of Rotary and the Lions), vice president in charge of consumer credit, greeted Mr. Lou Aramis, valued customer, with a cautious smile. “Nice day, Mr. Aramis,” he said, standing up at his deck behind the railing to shake hands. “How are you?”

  “Couldn’t be better. And you?” Lou let his duffel bag plop to the floor.

  Mr. Briese looked at it with feigned joviality. “Taking a trip or anything? Fleeing the UFO’s?”

  “Not really. Just thought I’d make a few payments.”

  “Oh?” Mr. Briese pulled at his lower lip and sank back into his swivel chair. “Well, come in. Sit down.”

  Lou went through the swinging wooden gate, trailing the duffel bag behind him, and sat in the customer’s chair. He fished in his shirt pocket for a cigarette and found the pack empty. He reached into the duffel bag and took out a carton, from which he took a pack, from which he extracted a cigarette, then two, remembering his manners. He offered one to Mr. Briese. A fifty-dollar bill had fluttered to the floor and the banker went to pick it up and return it to Lou with one hand while accepting the cigarette with the other.

  “Yes, thanks,” Mr. Briese said. He lit the cigarettes with his de
sk lighter (LET OUR CASH WORK FOR YOU) and leaned back in his chair, puffing nervously.

  Lou, also nervous, had trouble finding the right papers, pulled them out and then put them in Mr. Briese’s out basket.

  “I owe you some money, Mr. Briese. I mean various amounts for different thinks, like—“Well, now, Mr. Aramis—Lou, if I may—there are various amounts due, to be sure, but if I recall correctly, we’re just about current on everything except one of the FHA loans where there’s a late charge owing. Some nominal amounts—nothing to worry us.”

  “Frankly, Mr. Briese, it worries me a great deal to be delinquent in any of my obligations, and I’m here to straighten this out before it gets embarrassing to either of us.”

  He’d rehearsed this part of it very carefully before coming.

  “Call me Bill. Nobody’s embarrassed, Lou. A person forgets, or there are unavoidable circumstances. This happens. We’re not unreasonable. Now, if you care to clear up this little FHA payment of $40.50, plus the late charge of $2.50, there’s no problem. Your credit rating is top-drawer with us. We couldn’t ask for a better customer. In fact, I personally will recommend to Mr. Dell, our president, that all your delinquencies be wiped off the books—wiped right off, so there’s no blot whatsoever on you account.”

  Lou, more confident, smiled through a cloud of exhaled smoke.

  “That sure is fine, Mr. Briese—Bill. That’s very generous of you. To show you I appreciate it, I’m going to—well, reciprocate. I’m going to pay my account in full.”

  Breezy Bill sat up straight and put out his cigarette. “Well, of course—if you wish. Certainly there’d be a saving in interest charges. But there’s also the consideration that you don’t want to leave yourself short of ready cash—” His eyes drifted to the duffel bag. “You mean one of the FHA loans, I suppose?”

  “Both of them,” Lou said. “The thousand-dollar one for the back bedroom and the twelve-hundred-dollar one for the upstairs bathroom. I’m three-quarters of the way through the five-year one and about halfway through the 30-month one.”

  “There’s absolutely no hurry at all,” Bill said, and Lou could tell that he was saying it sincerely.

  “Except that I have the money—” Lou gave the duffel bag a friendly kick—“and there is that fat interest rate—”

  “We’re delighted to carry you, Mr. Aramis—Lou—delighted.” But Lou Aramis said: “I have the cash, Mr. Briese, and I prefer to pay the whole thing. I owe you $487.76 on one and $445.50 on the other. That’s $933.26 on both. I’d like to clear those up right now.”

  He reached into the bag and counted out a thousand dollars in soiled bills. “We’ll get it exact later,” he said.

  Mr. Briese let the money sit on his desk, not touching it. He looked at it with distaste, then at Lou, belatedly changing his expression to a tentative smile. “May I ask you, without meaning to be overly inquisitive, of course, how you happen to have so much cash?”

  “I didn’t rob a bank, if that’s what you mean.”

  The expression of distaste returned to Mr. Briese’s face.

  “I’m sorry,” Lou said. “I guess that wasn’t funny.” It wouldn’t do to antagonize Breezy Bill Briese at this stage of the transaction. “What happened is that a lot of my customers came in yesterday to pay up. Some of them had owed me for years.” Mr. Briese looked dubious. “You mean they all paid you on the same day, and all in cash?”

  Lou shrugged. “Yeah. I guess you’d call it a coincidence.”

  “I would.” Mr. Briese picked up one of the bills—a fifty—and examined it, then held it to his nose and sniffed at it. “It’s certainly worn,” he said reluctantly.

  “Legal for all debts public and private,” Lou said. He was pushing it now. “That’s what’s printed on it, isn’t it?”

  “That’s what it says, all right.”

  “And you’re open for business? Money’s your business, just like cars are mine, and if you don’t see anything wrong with the money, why can’t I pay my debts with it? I can’t eat it.”

  * * * *

  “True.” Mr. Briese appeared to find inspiration. “But you could put it in a safe deposit box which I’d be glad to rent to you for eight dollars a year.” Lou started to object. Then he sat back and said, “Okay.”

  “Okay?” Mr. Briese wasn’t prepared for such affable agreement.

  “I’ll rent the box.” Lou picked some bills from the pile on the desk and handed them to Mr. Briese. “I’ll even pay you in advance. Can I have a receipt?” Mr. Briese took a pad from his drawer and wrote a receipt. He was smiling as he handed it to Lou. “Fine. I’ll take you to the vault—”

  “Not right now,” Lou said. “Maybe I’ll put my life insurance policy in it sometime and a few things like that.”

  “But I thought you wanted it for the money.”

  “Sure you did. But you took my cash, so it must be good. Now take my $933.26 for the FHA loans. It’s exactly the same principle, isn’t it?”

  Bill Briese surrendered. He chuckled. “You win, Lou. In the absence of any directives not to accept circulated currency, such as you have here, I have no choice but to stamp your FHA accounts paid in full.”

  Lou handed over the two payment books. He relaxed as the vice president in charge of consumer credit tore out the perforated pages and stamped PAID on each stub.

  “It’s a pleasure to do business with you, Bill,” he said, putting the receipted books in his pocket. He smiled at the banker. “Now about the mortgage.”

  “The mortgage?” Bill Briese asked. “What do you mean, the mortgage?”

  “My mortgage,” Lou said. “I figured out last night that I owe you exactly $12,427. I want to pay it off.”

  He reached into the duffel bag, drew out a handful of soiled bills and started to count them out on the desk. “Twenty, forty, ninety, one hundred, hundred and ten, hundred and sixty…”

  The banker sank back in his chair. His eyes became glazed as Lou continued to count.

  “…thousand-fifty, eleven hundred, eleven-twenty—oh, look, here’s what you financiers call a C note—twelve-twenty, twelve-forty, twelve-ninety…” After a while Bill Briese began to laugh. He picked up his PAID stamp and thumped it up and down on the ink pad, waiting for Lou Aramis to finish his meticulous counting.

  * * * *

  The government acted, finally, after the aliens dropped eight hundred and thirty billion dollars, in beautifully wrought and now pre-rumpled bills no larger than fifties, over New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Denver, Boston, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Dallas and Miami.

  But before that happened Lou Aramis and his fellow members of the South Waterford Rumple Club had paid all their debts. They owned their houses and cars free and clear and had stocked up on everything they could buy. Bill Briese, though not a club member, had taken a long lunch hour, raked his lawn and paid off thirty thousand dollars worth of debts before going out on his own buying spree. He’d had to resign from the bank the same afternoon after an emergency meeting of the board of directors, but he did so with no apparent regret, and by nightfall he’d rented an office down the block in which he set himself up as a currency consultant.

  His new business lasted only one day because an Executive Ordered soon outlawed paper money altogether.

  The aliens, adapting quickly, flew over and dropped coins. The Kennedy halves did the worst damage because there were more of them than of any other denomination. But there were silver dollars galore and Washington quarters and Roosevelt dimes. The aliens dropped no nickels or pennies, which became scarce. But by common agreement, people gave up making small change; prices were rounded off to the nearest ten cents.

  People who were out at 3 a.m. when the coin rain fell were stunned by the din and quite a number of them were knocked unconscious by the coins themselves. Vast numbers of windows were broken.

&nbs
p; The government outlawed all money, including checks. Trading was suspended indefinitely on the stock and commodity exchanges. All banks closed. Supermarkets and other chain stores shut their doors for high-level consultations, but enterprising independent shopkeepers stayed in business by switching to barter.

  Lou Aramis went out before breakfast to rake the lawn in front of his paid-off house. He gathered the five-, ten-, and twenty-dollar bills into a pile and burned them. He raked the silver out to the driveway where it glittered in the early sunshine, prettier than gravel.

  His neighbor, Jim Vernon, was also burning bills. He told Lou he was saving his coins and planned to cover his patio with them. “I’m pouring the concrete Friday night, and I’ll set the coins in then. But I’m a little short of silver dollars for the border.” Lou waved to his sparkling driveway. “Help yourself.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ve got an extra gross of eggs,” Lou said. “Can you use them?” Lou’s father-in-law had a poultry farm.

  “I sure can,” Jim said. “But I don’t know what I could trade. You must be all stocked up on clothes by now.” Jim ran Vernon’s Men’s Wear.

  “I am, but Susie’s getting jealous. Too bad you don’t carry a women’s line.”

  “I could probably do a swap with Keegan Brothers over in Parrish. What size is Susie?”

  * * * *

  Susie had the omelettes on the table when Lou went in. She was studying a new cookbook. “We could have soufflé for dinner,” she said. “Takes an awful lot of eggs.”

  “Sounds nourishing,” Lou said. “Could you disguise it somehow?”

  “I’ve been saving a piece of cheddar cheese. And then I heard from Mrs. Lucia yesterday that there’s a chance of getting some eggplant—”

  “Eggplant!” Even the sound of it bothered Lou.

  Georgie, their youngest, said: “I want some com flakes.”

  “You’ll eat eggs,” Susie told him. “I’m keeping the corn flakes for your birthday treat.”