E.T. The Book of the Green Planet

by William Kotzwinkle

  “Everyone’s asleep?” asked the Flopglopple.

  “Yes,” said E.T.

  “Then I’m going to race down,” said the Flopglopple, and sped off, stirring leaves and dust in a whirl. In a moment, he was skidding to a stop among the runway lights. “My first inclination,” he said to himself, “is to run amok. But this is a serious operation—” He looked up the hill, where Sinistro was leading the hijack party toward the pad. “—and so, I’d better behave, as well as I can, which is a borderline phenomenon, at best.”

  He ran into the dining hall, where all the Micro Techs and Mind Holders were snoring at their tables. “Asleep in the soup,” said the Flopglopple. He lifted up the head of a Micro Tech; noodles were attached to the pugnacious little nose, and bits of vegetable covered the technically minded brow. The Tech’s wide lemur-like eyes fluttered. “Too many volts across the sleep-fuse, causing it to blow,” observed the Flopglopple. He dropped the head back into the bowl.

  He looked at the table of the more evolved Mind Holders. “Their sleeping forms become embryos,” he noted. The shapes of the Mind Holders had curled and distended like tadpoles, into great heads and tiny appendages.

  “Big dreams, profound ones, flow through the Mind Holders as they doze,” remarked the Flopglopple, and at this moment he might have thoughtfully put a toe in his ear, but E.T. was entering the hall and calling for him.

  “Coming,” said the Flopglopple, speeding through the aisles.

  E.T. looked around at the spectacle of the drugged launch staff, snoring in their bowls. “Wasted,” he said to the Flopglopple. “I’ve wasted the entire crew, and every single technician. I, who’d never hurt a fly, have just rendered two hundred individuals unconscious.”

  “With their elbows in the salad,” said the Flopglopple.

  “However—” E.T. motioned him back toward the door. “—we have no time for talk.”

  They stepped back outside and joined the other hijackers, who were hurrying toward the ship. But the Flopglopple stopped suddenly, and turned to E.T. “Someone is awake.”

  E.T. felt it at the same moment, a beam of consciousness from close by.

  Two old botanists like himself stepped through the hatchway of the ship, where they’d dined alone in the Botanical Wing. Now they gazed in disbelief at the dark metallic creatures of the past, who were charging toward them.

  The botanists were unaccustomed to violent actions on their own planet, but they saw that their beloved ship, with all its botanical specimens, was in danger. Their protective instinct sent them down the gangplank to defend against the dark lords.

  A sound like humming wires came from Sinistro, Occulta, and Electrum, and the old botanists were repelled in a backward somersault by the magnetic field the dark lords had thrown up around themselves—a shield they could project to a great distance.

  E.T. stared aghast as his fellow botanists bounced on their heads, eyes rolling about in terror. Their glance met E.T.’s and they questioned him.

  “Is this by your order, dear colleague? Are we dreaming?”

  “No,” said E.T., “I am the dreamer, a foolish one. Forgive me.”

  He tried to show them his heart-light, but it wouldn’t go on, and theirs were hidden too, by fear. They continued to gaze at him, unable to comprehend the emotions sweeping the launch pad.

  “An ancient wind,” said one of them, “has returned to ravish the night.”

  “I’m just borrowing a spaceship,” said E.T.

  Sinistro’s armor plate opened, a long finger extended, and a stream of energy shot from it, forming itself in a magnetic coil around the two botanists and imprisoning them. Repelling their attempts to grip it, it kept them bound to the center of the magnetic field.

  The two botanists sat in their whirring magnetic prison, and stared in disbelief at E.T., their minds still unable to comprehend this display of violence. “No one,” said one of them softly, “has been forcibly restrained on this planet since—the last beginning, ages ago.”

  “Harmony, peace, and light,” croaked the other toward E.T.

  “Locking people in a cage,” joined in the first one, “is the act of a barbarian.”

  “If we are caged, if cages are in order for botanists, why aren’t you in a cage too?”

  E.T. gazed at them. “My cage is different,” he said with a groan, and stumbled around the starcruiser. Deep disorder was filling his mind, and he swayed unsteadily, bumping into guy wires and landing struts.

  “What’s wrong with him?” asked Sinistro.

  “The enormity of his actions has staggered him,” said the Flopglopple. “The higher centers of his brain refuse to commit themselves to the night’s activity.”

  “I am a vegetable in the frost,” said E.T., his voice trembling. “Injured, spoiling inside . . .”

  “We board,” said Sinistro, pushing past E.T. Electrum and Occulta joined him at the gangplank. They started up the stairs. Suddenly Sinistro was flipped backward through the air, as he had flipped the old botanists, and Electrum and Occulta came tumbling after him.

  “The cruiser,” said the Flopglopple, “is ringed with a faint glow.”

  Sinistro was hurling himself against it again, only to be hurled back down the gangplank, his armor plate clattering. Tumbling along the ground, he came to rest at Micron’s feet. He looked up, his head and mirror eyes flashing with anger.

  “A repulsor field. We’ve got to defuse it. Quick, you. The blockhouse!” He pointed at the Ground Control Station, and Micron obeyed, and raced toward it.

  “The ships of Lucidulum are alive,” he muttered to himself as he flung open the door and entered the command post, where the ship’s remote control system was housed.

  It was a Micro Tech’s dream, and he bounced up and down with excitement. “Yes, everything is here, the heart and mind of the ship. Well, there’s a messy circuit.” He saw an area, presently under repair, a wire dangling from a control panel. He shook his head in dismay. “How can they run a launch pad with such sloppiness?”

  True to his Micro compulsiveness, he quickly finished the repair of the panel, for he hated to work in a messy environment. Another inefficient corner caught his eye, the cruiser’s remote control music center also under repair. “That will have to be repaired at once. I can’t make a flight without music, it’s unthinkable.”

  Sinistro burst through the door, head flashing. “What are you doing?”

  “Fixing the music center.”

  “The music center? You little idiot. Get busy!”

  “I refuse to be hurried.”

  Sinistro dragged him to the center of the room. “Quickly! Where’s the Repulsor Control?”

  Micron studied the wall before them—a solid mass of switches, buttons, and screens. “It’s right—here.” He reached up to the Repulsor Control and the next thing he knew he was bouncing off the far wall and crashing to the floor with a little splat, repulsed by the Repulsor Control itself. “The switch is . . . protected too.”

  His mind shifted, into its higher logic, Master Tech, and with this mode of comprehension he studied the Control. “You really have to admire what they’ve done here, it’s quite impressive.”

  “Impressive? You malfunctioning little diode! We’re committing a planetary crime of incalculable offense!”

  Micron picked himself up slowly, eyes on the wall of controls, mind still in higher logic and unable to receive Sinistro’s emotional wave length in his brain. He did receive, quite suddenly, a kick in the pants, as the dark lord booted him closer to the controls.

  “Now!” A laser pistol appeared in Sinistro’s hand. “Or I shoot.”

  Micron stared at the gigantic display before him, his wonder absorbing all his motility.

  “Beyond comprehension. A life-endowed mode. I’d always thought it was an exaggeration, a way of describing its power. But—” He looked at Sinistro. “—it is alive. It’s moving the Repulsor Program right now, hiding it deeper and deeper. See that readout
there?” He pointed to a screen. “It shows only that the program is moving, but not where. And with each move you make, it reads your intent and moves ahead of you. I must say it’s a new one on me.”

  Sinistro stared helplessly at the board for a moment, and rushed back outside, in time to see Electrum and Occulta rushing the gangplank again. Upon reaching the top, their figures shuddered suddenly, as if they’d struck an invisible wall of bricks. Following which, they were pitched backward in the air, and landed in a heap on the ground, armor muddy and draped ingloriously over their heads.

  “We burn our way through,” said Sinistro. “We’ll repair damage later.”

  He raised his laser gun and closed his finger on the trigger. A devastation beam emerged. At the same time the Repulsor Field of the starcruiser converged into a brilliant shield, which, like Sinistro’s eyes, reflected all that approached it. The devastation beam was turned back toward Lord Sinistro, and sent him diving for cover, face down in profound embarrassment. His armor petals flopped over his head and he looked like an umbrella that had been blown inside out.

  Electrum put his bullet head down and prepared to ram the ship. A powerful charge gathered in his body and, like some maddened toadstool, he raced up the gangplank. He collided with the Repulsor Shield, which showed no sign of feeling his attack. He, however, was deeply stunned, and wavered back and forth, his umbos temporarily flattened and throbbing terribly.

  Then, from within the ship came an ominous purring sound, and a gunport opened. E.T. stood beside the gangplank, trembling. He’d never known such armament existed on the ship. Now, like a dark mouth, it seemed to grin coldly at them, and E.T. knew that the engineers of Lucidulum had foreseen all emergencies, including those of ancient violence.

  “Go ahead, fire!” Sinistro shouted at the gunport. “If I cannot mine the stars, I might as well mine my grave.” And he straightened himself for the blast.

  “No, no,” cried E.T.

  The gunport fired. A crackling stream of high intensity light shot forth, and like a spinning lariat, encircled Sinistro, Occulta, and Electrum, imprisoning them as they had imprisoned the botanists.

  E.T. gazed in awe at the blazing cage, in which the dark lords raged, angrily opening and closing the petals of their armor.

  It has mirrored their own actions, thought E.T., and he felt the higher mind of Lucidulum at work.

  “Let us out! Kill us, but spare us this indignity!” cried Electrum, thumping up and down and rubbing his bruised, misshapen umbos. Sinistro, still resembling a blown-out umbrella, was bending his ribs back into place. And Occulta, whose mummy shroud once made him as fearful as some specter of the dead, was slumped on the ground, looking like a cheap, unraveled cigar.

  The gunport closed, like a softly smiling mouth.

  E.T. stared at the ship, wondering what mirror it would hold up to him?

  Ignorance, darkness, blindness, stupidity, nescience, incapacity, incomprehension, inexperience, illiteracy, unenlightenment, benightedness, unconsciousness, misunderstanding, and misapprehension, said a voice traveling from the ship to him.

  He lowered his head, and a sob broke inside him. Then he felt a frantic little hand tugging at his leg.

  “Come on!” Micron was bouncing up and down nervously. “Let’s get out of here before we’re caught!”

  E.T. pointed at Sinistro, Occulta, and Electrum, who were still raging in their cage, shaking their fists and growling angrily at the ship. “I can’t leave them,” said E.T.

  “Why not?” asked Micron in true Micro Tech fashion.

  “Because they will be charged with a crime that is my doing.” E.T. sat down with a little plop. “I must now go soak my head.”

  “Where?”

  “It is just an expression.”

  “Well,” said Micron, “it seems pointless for me to remain here. I’ll be more useful elsewhere. And so—”

  He took one quick step, a beam of light shot from the gunport, encircled his foot and held him precisely where he was, as the horizon suddenly filled with ships from the fleet of Lucidulum.

  C H A P T E R

  1 4

  The white cube surrounded E.T. He stood in place, looking at the blank wall. There was a sudden stirring behind it, the wall opened, and the interrogation machine rolled out on its little silver wheels. Its ocular extensions bent to and fro, examining E.T. more closely. Its high-fidelity speaker sounded. “You again! What have you to say for yourself this time?”

  E.T. looked shamefacedly at the interrogation machine. “I’ve gone to the dog,” he said, from his grab-bag of half-comprehended Earth expressions.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’ve been trash-canned. Dumped.”

  The machine was silent, but its head lights blinked in an erratic pattern, as if a translation was being attempted within. A buzzer sounded, changing the machine’s circuit, and its speaker sounded again. “You attempted to steal a grand starship of the fleet of Lucidulum. Why?”

  “To see a friend.”

  “To see a friend? Are you mad? A ship of immeasurable power and beauty, equipped for navigation to the ends of time? You take it, to see a friend? As if it were a bus?”

  “My friend lives at the end of time.” E.T. looked into one of the ocular orbs as it swayed before him. Then the speakers rumbled, spoke again:

  “You drugged the entire staff of a launch base. Some of them are still in bed. You tempted the metallic lords of the underworld into the day and rekindled the greed in their souls. And—you corrupted a Flopglopple.” The interrogation machine rolled around angrily, then reversed direction, turning on E.T. “We’ve had nothing like this in the last ten centuries. What do you have to say about that?”

  “Far out.”

  “Far out? Out where?” The machine spun around, bumped into the wall, spun back again.

  “An Earth expression.” E.T. twiddled his long toes nervously.

  The machine rolled under his nose, sputtering to itself. “You no longer speak the sublime and perfectly evolved language of the planet, which even I, a programmed machine, can speak. You have changed. Your flow is no longer that of the Higher Mind. What is wrong with you?”

  “I’m—I’m—” E.T. struggled, “—a fathead.”

  The sides of the interrogation machine opened and a calipers came forth; it elongated, measuring E.T.’s brow. “Your head is not fat. It is of the correct size.” The calipers were withdrawn and the machine rolled away, hit the wall again, and rolled back. “I repeat—what is wrong with you?”

  E.T. struggled within himself. He was a master of interstellar philosophy, a Doctor of Botany, a learned, differentiated, higher being. He must give an answer commensurate with the depth of his wisdom. The machine’s ocular orbs bent over him and the speakers sounded. “Well? What is wrong with you?”

  “I’ve—flipped my lid.”

  The machine looked around, orbs twisting. “I see nothing flipped, nor flipping. Answer my question.”

  “Discombobulated. Lobotomized. Out of it.”

  The machine started whirring internally, trying to translate. It sputtered again, blew a fuse, and fell silent—motionless and short circuited.

  “Wasted,” said E.T., touching it gently.

  “Ah,” said the Flopglopple, “the chamber of Botanicus.”

  It was a place he liked immensely. The chamber was a golden-hued gourd framed by two pillars of sculpted vegetable marrow, marbled with veins of living membrane.

  “You must behave yourself,” said E.T., as they walked beneath the arch of gnarled vines.

  “Ancient vintage,” said the Flopglopple, gazing at the woven twists and turns of the hoary old wood of the arch. From within the vines, tiny lizards poked their heads out and scrutinized the Flopglopple suspiciously.

  E.T. led the way, through the arch and into the hall.

  “Fluorescents,” said the Flopglopple, looking at the glowing petals of the luminous flowers that lined the hall. When E.T. wasn�
�t looking, he quietly plucked a few of the petals and surreptitiously swallowed them. A moment later his toenails lit up, most conspicuously. He quickly hid them in the moss carpet that covered the hall, a ruby-colored mat edged with amber fringe. “Its softness and beauty are unequaled,” he said nervously, digging his toes in.

  E.T. nodded dully. The luxurious pattern of the carpet, its smooth silken texture and the lovely pattern of the moss, as well as the Flopglopple’s glowing toenails, were lost on him. He was sunk in gloom and regret.

  “Can I cheer you up?” asked the Flopglopple.

  “There’s only one thing in the universe that might comfort me now.”

  “Your Flopglopple hanging around your neck?” The Flopglopple poised himself for the move.

  “No,” said E.T. “It is small, round, and brightly colored, the treasure of time and space.”

  “Is it a pellet of deuterium for propelling a spacecraft?”

  “It is Reese’s Pieces.”

  The Flopglopple scratched his head with his glowing toe. “And where do you get it?”

  “Elliott alone can supply it.”

  E.T. stepped through the next doorway, to the innermost part of the chamber. There Botanicus sat, in a chair woven of vines and flowers. Little lizards were seated on the arms, basking in his thought, and the flowers themselves were all turned tropistically toward him, as if he were their source of light. E.T. shuffled forward, his step mired in failure; his creased old fingers trailed limply along the floor.

  Botanicus leaned forward in his chair of living green. “Demoted again.” He shook his head and said, “You cannot steal the fire of the Fleet. Not only is it forbidden, it is impossible.”

  “What am I to do then?” asked E.T.

  “Ponder another solution.”

  “My solution is far, far away, beyond the Ocean of Lights.” E.T. rubbed his brow with his leathery hand. “My head holds many whispers from Earth. My heart holds a feeling. I am bound to Earth, and to Elliott, forever.”