by Ralph Church
“You promised you’d never tell! You said you’d never tell!” She began to weep and hurried out of the room, mumbling through her tears, “Never! Never!”
The prosecutor also rose to his feet. His face was hurt and he looked angrily at Litney. “You and Litney? Pamela,” he called after her. “I thought we were—”
Dr. Litney, frightened, grabbed his papers and mumbled, “Your Honor, I have a patient to see—” And he ran out the door, shouting, “Pamela! Pam!"
The prosecutor was also quick. “He’s not going without me,” he said. And he rushed out the door, also calling, “Pamela! Pamela!”
The judge looked at his room, with only Tilwick, Mork, Hendley, Fred, and Mindy left. Mork was the only person who seemed undisturbed by these events. “The defense rests,” he said with a slight smile.
The judge sat for a moment in stunned silence. Then he got slowly to his feet and began to walk around the table, looking with shock at the empty chairs of the prosecutor, Dr. Litney, and Pamela. He cleared his throat. “Well, I think I had better make a ruling. Now, while it is true that the defendant, Mr. Ricardo, may add a new dimension to the word ‘eccentric,’ there is no law against that. And since it appears that he is no danger to himself or society”—the judge looked at the empty chairs—”and since we have no one to prosecute or testify or even to write down what I’m saying, let’s just—oh, case dismissed!” The judge banged his gavel, and Mindy jumped in the air.
“Mork! You won!”
Hendley mumbled to himself, “We won?”
Mork put out his hand in the Orkian handshake to Hendley. “Well done. Na-No, Na-No.” And Mork twisted his ears as if they were dials. Hendley just stared.
Mindy said in a rushed whisper to Mork, “Let’s get out of here.”
Mork looked disappointed. “Couldn’t I do this as my job?” he said, while Mindy and Fred pulled him out of the building and into the beautiful sunny day.
“Let’s celebrate,” Mindy said while they walked to the car, but Fred insisted that they had to get back to the store.
“All right,” Mindy agreed. “But can we go out to a fancy restaurant for lunch and have champagne?”
Mork hopped up and down excitedly. “Will Lawrence Welk be there?”
Mindy was so happy that everything had worked out that she didn’t bother to explain Lawrence Welk wouldn’t be in a Boulder restaurant. Indeed, she didn’t bother to warn Mork about his behavior all day, not even when he played a record for a customer who mistook him for a salesman by putting his bloink down on the turntable instead of the needle.
It was a wonderful day! Fred agreed not to bother her about Mork living in her attic, and Mindy happily spent the evening cleaning it up for Mork. He watched her with horror as she vacuumed up all those webs, holding the spiders in his hands while he mumbled to them, “It’s all right. Just think of it as a hurricane, and of me as the Red Cross.”
***
22
That night, as all of Boulder, Colorado, slept, except perhaps for the lunatic Exidor, who still searched the skies for Venusians, Mork swung himself down from the rafter he had been hanging from and sat in the UdFred position. This was used by all Orkans for telepathic communication. Orson had ordered Mork to report to him once a week, and Mork thought that the events so far were worthy of discussion.
Mork held his bloink against his forehead while smoke trailed from its tip and he chanted, “Jex, Bex, ekk Yex!” for a few minutes. He was having trouble clearing intergalactic interference. “Those darned Martians,” he mumbled, “always tinkering with the Friboz waves.” He sent out a laser clearing beam and repeated his chant, finishing it by saying, “Come in, Orson. Come in, Laser Breath.”
“Watch it, Mork!” Orson’s voice boomed in his brain. “I’m only sixty million light-years away.”
“I am sorry, great Orson, but those Martians get on my nerves.”
“Mork!” Orson’s voice was harsh. “Have those humans infected you already? You don’t have any nerves.” Orson sighed. His sigh was like the wind force of a cyclone. “Just tell me what you have learned of this primitive culture.”
‘“Oh, I have learned a lot,” Mork said proudly. “So much is hard to comprehend.”
“I do not understand, Mork. How can a primitive society be difficult to understand?”
“Well, everyone on this planet is an individual.”
“What?”
“Yes, and they are proud of it!”
“Amazing!” Orson’s huge head rocked from side to side, clouds of dust rising from his head. “How can a society function if everyone’s different?”
“Well, if someone gets too different, he is thrown into a place called the ‘slammer.’” Mork sent Orson a telepathic picture of the jail cell he had been put in.
Orson frowned. “That is punishment? It seems a bit small, but rather nice.”
“Not on Earth,” Mork said. “Here, these awful places are considered pleasant.” Mork sent Orson more pictures: of Mindy’s apartment and of Fred’s store.
Orson curled his lip. “How disgusting. No dust.”
“Everything is very different. Indeed, I got into trouble because of these differences. They put me into the ‘slammer.’”
“Hmm,” Orson mumbled to himself. “Perhaps they are intelligent on Earth.” Then he boomed at Mork, “Have you found a decent place to stay?” Mork showed Orson a picture of Mindy’s attic. “How about this? It’s a cute studio, don’t you think?”
“But Mork, where are the webs for all those spiders?”
Mork sent a picture of Mindy. “The Earth girl who saved me from the ‘slammer’ insisted on clearing them away.”
“Is she hostile?” Orson asked, appalled by her clearing away the webs.
“No,” Mork said, sending pictures of Mindy defending him at the hearing and in the jail. “That is what is so confusing. She came to my defense and defied the system, though she hardly knew me.”
“Why would she do that?” Orson said, letting a spider run playfully up his arm. “Is she a clone?”
“No, no. On Earth this sort of thing occurs all the time. It has something to do with emotions.” Orson nodded and more dust trailed off his head. “Investigate this phenomenon closely. It is interesting behavior, even if it is irrational.”
Mork suddenly sent another image, that of Exidor discussing the Venusians. “Look out for this Earthling,” he said to Orson. “He is far ahead of the others, though, of course, still primitive. And also”—Mork sent images of Earth life compared to television—“our theory that the entertainment box is a fantasy world is completely wrong. It is a good guide to ordinary life.”
Orson’s voice sounded pleased. “That is a good discovery. Have you made contact with any of the television Earthlings?”
“Not yet, but I will try. I have much to do here. There are two diseases that must be cured. Humans speak of them fearfully: the common cold, and something called the Saturday Night Fever.”
“Anything else?”
Mork sent another image of Mindy. “This may sound strange, Orson, but knowing that somebody would risk her safety to defend me makes me feel”—Mork searched for the words—“feel good inside.”
Orson shook the spider off, and dust clouded his face. “Be careful! You were sent to observe, not to get involved.”
Mork snapped to attention. “Yes, sir!” He bent over and twisted his ears. “This is Mork signing off from Boulder, Colorado. Until next week, Na-No, Na-No.”
And from the deepest reaches of Outer Space, Orson answered, “Na-No, Na-No,” leaving Mork to face the confused and horribly clean world of Earth.
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