by Ralph Church
Mork stared at the bill and then ran his finger over it. “But this is nothing more than paper and ink.”
“Well, this is nothing more than sand,” Mindy answered.
Mork put his finger in the air. “Ah, but paper and ink are common on Ork. I can obtain—”
“No, no, no, Mork. There is plenty of paper and ink on Earth. But only the government has the right to print it into money.”
Mork thought about that. “But this green paper has no value of its own?”
“Well, but it is backed by things that are rare and valuable.”
“What prevents other Earthlings from making their own green paper?”
“It’s against the law.”
This impressed Mork. The law, as has been said many times, is Ork’s most precious possession.
Every citizen on Ork is a trained lawyer. That is necessary because otherwise it would be impossible to talk. An Orkan ignorant of the law would be thrown into jail as soon as he tried to speak. For example, of the six different Orkian hellos, four of them, if said to the wrong person can get you one-to-two krell on the spider farm.
“Well,” Mork said, “I have already learned many things. One, this phony voice.” He meant his announcer’s deep tones.
“Oh, Mork, I meant to tell you that you must speak just a little bit softer. I mean, lower the volume a bit.”
“Two,” Mork went on, his voice now lower, “don’t drink with my finger. And, three, don’t sit on my face.”
As they talked, Fred had slowly opened Mindy’s front door, and by now he was listening to their conversation. He was about to say hello when Mindy said, “You forgot the fourth thing, and it’s most important. Don’t tell my father that we are living together.”
“I don’t understand. He doesn’t want you living?”
Fred’s eyes got large and he felt terrible hearing his daughter conspire to fool him.
“It’s not the living he wouldn’t understand. It’s the together.”
“No, I wouldn’t!” Fred yelled, walking into the room. He had not been so upset since his wife had died. He felt betrayed and his whole life suddenly seemed wrong and unhappy. He looked at Mindy and couldn’t be sure he knew who she really was.
“Dad!” Mindy said, her heart leaping into her mouth. What had he heard? she wondered with fear.
“Greetings, Mr. McConnell,” Mork said cheerfully. He was glad to see more of other Earthlings. Orson would be pleased by his thoroughness.
Fred glared at this silly hippie and wished. He could think him away. “Don’t ‘greetings’ me, you!” He looked at his daughter, who was blushing and unable to meet her father’s eyes. “I wanted to believe you today.” He put his arms out. “And I came here hoping I wouldn’t find—” Fred was so upset, he couldn’t even say “living together.” “What I’ve found,” was the only way he could refer to it.
“You came here to check on me?” Mindy asked, outraged by her father’s lack of trust, even though she had lied to him.
“I came here to see my daughter—because I love her and I wanted to be sure that she wasn’t getting involved with the wrong people. And, instead, I find out that she has been lying to me and that she is not only involved with a wiseacre hippie who has no job, but she is living with him.”
Mindy was torn between the desire to tell her father that he had no right to talk that way and the desire to explain the truth about Mork. “Dad, it’s not that way,” she began.
But Fred, tears beginning to fill his eyes, kept talking, “I can’t bear to think of how your mother would feel about this. I have failed her. I had only one task, to raise you to be as good and true as she was, and I couldn’t.” Fred looked once more at Mindy and then he quickly turned and left.
Mork walked to the door as it closed behind Fred and said cheerfully, his voice resonant and deep, “Good-bye. Thanks so much for dropping by.”
Mindy couldn’t bear it. “Oh, Mork, stop it!” she said, unable to stop herself from crying. She couldn’t bear to look at Mork, standing stiffly, looking puzzled. She went into her bedroom to cry it out alone.
Mork thought for a moment and then took out his pad and wrote down: “Must ask why humans water their faces, and what this has to do with parenthood.”
***
8
Fred walked home blindly. Though he dreamed occasionally of conducting an orchestra, he had no serious expectation that he ever would. Mindy, for almost twenty years, had been all he lived for. She had given him a few little disappointments. For one, she had never taken music as seriously as he would have liked. She didn’t keep up her piano lessons. But she had been an excellent, hard-working student. And, most of all, she had grown up to be a beautiful, tall young woman, always polite and considerate. When Fred would hear other parents complaining about their children, it was with great pride that he could think of Mindy and her virtues. But now all that was gone. In a minute of conversation, Fred had heard her confess that she had lied to him, and she was conspiring to keep up the lie with this ridiculous young man. But, worst of all, she was living with him. Even if Mork had been the sort of man Fred wanted for Mindy, to live with him unmarried was a dreadful thing. It would have broken Mindy’s mother’s heart, and it had broken his.
He couldn’t face Cora at home. She would probably make things worse by saying that Fred’s feelings were foolish. Cora approved of young people living together, and she also would probably see nothing wrong with Mork’s loud clothes and bizarre humor. No, he would go to the store. There, since 1967, he had kept an expensive bottle of champagne to drink when Mindy announced her engagement. But after tonight, such an announcement, if it ever came, would mean nothing. And, obviously, everything about her must be different from what he imagined, if Mork was the sort of man she loved.
At the store, he opened the champagne, thinking bitterly of all the happy moments he had raising Mindy: the first time he taught her the scale on the piano; the first day he let her work in the store. Fred stood on his side of the store drinking the champagne and looking at Cora’s section. There were all the nutty electronic instruments that all sounded the same, all those horrible albums that sold like candles in a blackout. He kept drinking the champagne, hardly tasting it, though when he bought it he had thought pleasantly of how delicious each drop would be.
It was just at that moment when Deputy Sheriff Tilwick, an old friend of Fred’s, walked by and noticed the lights were on. He tried the door and opened it cautiously. But when he walked in, all he saw was Fred, quite drunk, staring unhappily at his glass. “Fred?” he asked cautiously, his eyes searching for a robber. “Are you okay?”
Fred looked up stupidly. He was so drunk and miserable that even the sight of Tilwick, dressed in his well-ironed brown uniform, was unrecognizable. “Huh?”
“I saw the light on. You were supposed to be closed hours ago.”
“Tilwick!” Fred said, suddenly excited as he realized who it was. He stood up and wobbled. “My old friend, it’s good to see you. Come in and help me celebrate.”
Tilwick smiled, relieved to hear that Fred’s condition was due to a good event. Mork would have thought it strange that misery and celebration could seem so similar. Tilwick relaxed and walked eagerly over to Fred’s counter, looking greedily at the bottle of champagne.
Fred picked it up and waved it around. “I have been saving this bottle for eleven years for my daughter’s wedding.” Fred weaved on his feet and Tilwick put out a hand to steady him. “I was reading a magazine and I heard that the Pakistanis arrange marriages between children when they are as young as eight or nine. So, I said to myself, I’m going to buy the champagne for the day when Mindy finds a young man who is as wonderful as she. In that way, I’d be a little like a Pakistani.”
Tilwick reached for the bottle as Fred waved it near him, but he got only air, because Fred had waved it away again.
“Oh, her wedding!” Fred said with a silly smile. “I wanted it to be so special. Tuxedoes,
flowers, a small orchestra that I would conduct. Really classy, you know?” Fred peered at the counter for another glass, but he was too drunk to see one. “Here,” he said, pushing the bottle into Tilwick’s chest, “you’ll have to drink out of the bottle.”
Tilwick laughed. The young man must be something special, he thought, for Fred to get this bombed. He took the bottle and it felt light. He swirled it around and heard nothing. Then he peered inside. “It’s empty!”
Fred waved his hand. “Then suck the cork,” he said and giggled hysterically at his own joke.
Tilwick decided that Fred’s behavior was a little too wild to be happiness. “Fred, is everything all right?”
Fred pointed his glass at the ceiling. “A toast to the good old days,” he said, then clinked his glass against the bottle. “When values were values and morals were morals. When shacking up meant building a hut.”
“What are you talking about?” Tilwick said.
Fred’s face fell and he leaned on the counter, staring grimly. “My daughter is living with a man.”
Tilwick frowned and shook his head. He tried to picture Mindy throwing herself at some young punk. “Mindy? Naw, that can’t be.”
“It’s true,” Fred said. He was slurring his words so badly that “true” sounded like “shrew.” “I heard her say it myself. I heard her,” he said, trying to bang the table, but almost losing his balance instead, “tell the slob not to let me know.”
Tilwick had a daughter Mindy’s age; in fact, the two had gone to school together and were friends. He had always envied Fred’s daughter a bit. She was always a little better at everything than his daughter. But it gave him no pleasure to hear that Mindy had fallen so low. It meant his daughter might fall even lower. “I can’t believe it,” he said, putting the bottle to his lips, forgetting that nothing was in it.
“I’ve done my best,” Fred said. “It wasn’t enough. But it was the best I could do.”
“That’s not the Mindy I know,” Tilwick said.
“The way things are today,” Fred said, “no matter how good a father you are, it doesn’t help. Nothing can be done.”
“I can do something!” Tilwick firmly put the bottle down on the counter.
Fred, still weaving, stared at his friend, puzzled. “What?”
“I’m a cop. I represent law and order.”
Fred frowned at him. He grunted. “The boy hasn’t done anything illegal, though his head should be chopped off.”
Tilwick grabbed Fred’s arm. “Yeah, but I can go over there and scare the daylights out of him. You know: ‘Hit the road, you hamburger’—that sort of thing.”
Fred hung onto his friend, his eyes shining with gratitude. “You would really do that for me?”
Tilwick patted him on the shoulder. “Tomorrow morning when I’m off duty.”
Fred threw his arms around Tilwick. “Really?” he asked in a pathetic voice, like a starved creature who has been promised food.
Tilwick patted Fred on the back. Poor man, he thought. That boy’s head should be chopped off. “Don’t worry, Fred. I’ll scare that boy so badly he’ll wish he were on another planet.”
***
9
Back at Mindy’s, Mork had waited patiently until she came out of her bedroom. She had cried for a long while, both out of guilt and anger. Her father hadn’t trusted her, and that made her lie to him. There didn’t seem to be a way that she could behave so that Fred would approve of her. She had done none of the things he accused her of, not really. After blowing her nose, she called home to talk it out, but Fred wasn’t there. Mindy didn’t feel like hearing Cora insult Fred, so she didn’t confide in her. There were so many problems, and Mork was the cause of all of them. It was bad enough that she didn’t know where he could stay, or how he was going to make money, but now she had to figure out whether or not to confide in her father. Fred had acted so wildly that Mindy worried what he would do if she told him who Mork really was. If Fred couldn’t stand her living with a hippie, how would he feel about her, living with a spaceman?
Why had this happened to her? Moving out of her father’s home had taken months of talking and reassuring. Mindy still believed that Fred wouldn’t have let her move if the apartment she found hadn’t been in such a quiet, lovely old house. Fred loved old houses as much as he liked old music, one might say.
When Mindy finally returned to the living room, she found Mork watching television. He was sitting upside down, on his face, looking between his legs.
“Mork!” she yelled, shocked that he had already forgotten.
Mork was laughing his duck laugh, and he kept it up in spite of Mindy’s order.
“Mork, I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t sit like that.”
“Oh, oh,” he said, leaping to his feet by jumping clear over the back of the couch. “I am contrite.” Mork pointed to the television and it turned off. “Ha! Ha!” he said. “A pie in the face. How original. How unique. How do you Earthlings think of such things?”
Mindy mumbled to herself, “My life is crazy.” And then she said aloud to Mork, “I don’t think we should go out for dinner. So I thought I would just make some spaghetti.” She looked at Mork and saw that he had no reaction. “I hope you like spaghetti.”
“Why wouldn’t I? Just because I’m from another planet doesn’t mean I’m that different.”
“You just say that,” Mindy answered, “because you’ve been watching ‘The Gong Show.’” She began to laugh at her own joke, but Mork nodded.
“Quite true,” he said. “I was going to ask Orson if there are any other Orkans down here. From that show, it seemed there might be several.”
Mindy began to boil water. “Wait till you see ‘Saturday Night Live.’” Mindy laughed again, especially when she saw Mork making a note to himself to watch it. “Mork, why don’t you set the table?”
Before Mindy could explain, Mork pointed his bloink at the old oak table and lifted it several feet in the air. “Where do you want me to put it?”
“That’s okay. It’s amazing when you do that. Just set it down.”
The table fell to the floor with a bang.
“Tomorrow is going to be a big day. We’re going to find you a place to live.”
“Why can’t I go on living here with you?”
Mindy sighed and so did Mork. She began to laugh again. That was one good thing she could say about Mork—he made every little event exciting. “Because my father is puritanical, conservative, prudish—uh, oh, what’s the word I’m looking for?”
“Your primitive language is so inexact. And it sounds so foolish. He is a nimnul.”
“That’s it. How did you know?”
“Nimnuls are very common throughout the universe.”
“Yes,” Mindy admitted. “They are very common here on Earth. Do you have many on Ork?”
“Bin, bin, we have nuls and guls, but we haven’t had a recorded case of a true nimnul in many bleams. We eliminated the need for them when we began breeding clones.”
“Clones?” Mindy was fascinated. “You mean, an exact copy of another Orkan?”
“Yek,” Mork said, using one of the Orkian yeses. This was for evenings only. “Oh, nothing is as nimnul as a clone. Do you know how many clones it takes to close an egg?” Mork asked, shaking his head with disappointment. “One uses his bloink and the other two wiggle it up and down.”
Mindy laughed uproariously and Mork became alarmed. “You mean you tell clone jokes on Ork?” she said, still laughing.
Mork began to look around the room and whispered frantically, “Biz-but, biz-but. That was not a joke, Mindy-Earthling. I could be in much trouble if Orson thought I had told a joke.”
Mindy saw that Mork was serious and she covered her mouth. “I’m sorry. I thought you meant it as a joke.”
“Impossible for an Orkan to mean something different from what he says. I was merely describing how nimnul clones are.”
“Well,” Mindy said, “I’m
afraid that my nimnul is going to force us to find somewhere else for you to sleep.”
Mork went to the window and pointed outside. “I saw a nice perching object right outside,” he said, meaning the. big maple right outside Mindy’s apartment. “I could hang out there tonight.”
“Wouldn’t you get cold?” Mindy asked.
“No. I had my shots before I came here.”
Mindy began to laugh again, but when Mork’s eyes widened with fear, she stopped. Why are you worried that this Orson, if he is a person, can hear what’s happening? Isn’t he on Ork?”
“Mindy,” Mork said with what would have been scorn if Mork were human, “it is nothing for my superior Orson to overhear what goes on when he is a mere sixty billion light-years from a place. It’s our ability to do that that made it possible for me to arrive here so well prepared.”
“Mork,” Mindy said, now adding the spaghetti to the boiling water, “I don’t think you came here too well prepared. I admit it is your first visit, and I suppose you’re no worse prepared than Columbus was.”
“I do not know who this Columbus is, but I was on your planet before.”
Mindy was disappointed at first to learn that she wasn’t the first human to have met an Orkan. But she realized, while listening to Mork’s account of his visit with the Fonz and Laverne, that they had been unable to deal with Mork as well as she had. That cheered her up considerably because up until then he thought she had made a mess of it.
She served the spaghetti and canned meat sauce with an apology: “I’m sorry that this is going to be your first Earth dinner. It’s not exactly the best food to eat on our planet.”
Mork stared at the white-and-red mass. “You mean, I am to ingest this?”
“Oh, that’s right, I was so upset, I forgot. You eat only coffee and flowers, right?”
“Yek, but I can adjust.” Mork pointed his index finger at his stomach and a hum began to fill the room. Mindy noticed that Mork’s stomach began to glow, pulsating white and red. He snapped his fingers and it halted.