Earth vs. Everybody

by John Swartzwelder

  I was relieved to find that there was nobody waiting for me at the top. The cops had evidently gotten bored and gone away. They were probably off throwing rocks at something else, something that made a more satisfying noise when they hit it. Damn cops.

  I made my way back to CrimeCo, took a shower, changed clothes, and got a cup of coffee. What a day. My co-workers seemed surprised to see me.

  “Hey, Burly,” one of them said, “what are you doing here? Did you sleep in and miss the double-cross?”

  “Yeah,” said another, “I thought you were being double-crossed today.”

  When I didn’t answer, another one looked at my face. “Hey, what happened to your mouth?”

  “Rocks.”

  Eventually, after enough people had expressed surprise that I wasn’t in prison or dead, I began to get suspicious. Maybe, I thought, maybe I had been set up to take the fall from the first. Maybe that’s where my code name “Fall Guy” came from. A lot of “maybes”, admittedly, but it got me thinking.

  For the rest of the day I wasn’t much of a bodyguard for Larry. I had too much on my mind. People would jump on him and start slugging him as I wandered on ahead, lost in thought. He’d say something like “Help me, Frank!”, or some such thing, and I’d come back and shoo them away. Then I’d wander away again and pretty soon I’d be thumbing absently through some magazines at the newsstand as Larry was being kidnapped and driven away screaming. I just wasn’t paying attention to my job, is what it comes down to.

  “If you weren’t the best bodyguard I’ve ever had, I’d fire you,” Larry told me.

  “If I wasn’t the best, I’d quit.”

  The next morning I noticed all my co-workers were looking at me with those sad double-cross eyes again. Uh-oh, I thought. I know what that means. Sure enough, the gang’s next caper was posted on the assignment board, and once again I was to play a key role in it. We were going to raid the weapons depot at the Armory, and they were planning on opening the gate by wedging me into the keyhole and blowing me up. My code name for this one was: “Dead Guy”.

  That’s when I realized Buzzy was definitely out to get me. It wasn’t just my imagination. It couldn’t be. I don’t have an imagination.

  I decided I’d better do something pretty quick—get Buzzy before he could get me. Fortunately, there was an easy way to do that.

  I called the police, told them who I was, said I was fine, thank you, then told them I was working for a space alien who was the head of a huge crime syndicate. And that he was the brains behind the recent Mint Robbery and many other unsolved crimes. Then I gave them CrimeCo’s address. They thanked me for the tip and told me they’d be right over. Cops like getting tips like that. Makes their jobs easier.

  But when the police arrived and I triumphantly led them into the building, CrimeCo had been miraculously transformed into an ice cream manufacturing plant. All the machinery was ice cream machinery. All the records were ice cream records. And everybody, including me, was wearing an ice cream man’s hat. It didn’t look like a criminal operation at all now. It looked more like an ice cream place. I went outside and checked the address to make sure me and the cops were in the right building. It was the right building all right. I went back in to make sure everything was still ice cream. It was. I was impressed. I knew I was dealing with organized criminals here, but, wow.

  “This wasn’t like this before, officers,” I assured them, indicating all the ice cream they were seeing. “All this ice cream you’re seeing.”

  “It wasn’t, eh?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know what the penalty is for turning in a false alarm?”

  “I ought to by now,” I said, sourly. “I’ve turned in more false alarms than... wait! There’s one thing he can’t have changed. His evil alien body. Follow me.”

  I led the cops up to Buzzy’s office.

  His secretary, Debbie, said Mr. Theremin was in, but wasn’t seeing anyone today. Especially not any cops. One of the policemen started making an appointment for early next week, but his superior cancelled the appointment and kicked the door open. We went in.

  The office was empty. The cops looked around, checking in the closets and under the furniture, but they couldn’t find anybody.

  “Look in the light socket, officer,” I suggested helpfully, as they searched. “Or maybe he’s in that electric pencil sharpener.”

  One of the cops started looking in the pencil sharpener, then looked at me. “Say, are you kidding me?”

  I shook my head. I wasn’t kidding him. I wanted him to look.

  After an hour of fruitless searching, the cops left, warning me never to call the police again. I said I sure wouldn’t, not if this was all it was going to get me. After they had gone, Buzzy began struggling out of an electrical outlet that was near the floor behind his desk. He didn’t look happy. I hurried out of the office before he could get all the way out and see me any better than he already had.

  Later that afternoon, while I was at my locker changing to go home, Shifty came up to me. He had a gun in his hand. It was pointed at me.

  “Hi, Shifty,” I said, buttoning up my sports shirt.

  “Hi, Frank,” he said cheerfully.

  “What’s that you’ve got in your hand?”

  “It’s a pistol. I’ve been promoted to assassin. The Big Boss told me to put a bullet in your brain.”

  I frowned and stopped buttoning my shirt. “Why did he tell you to do that?”

  He shrugged. “Didn’t say.” He started pulling the trigger.

  “Hold on, Shifty. Did he say when to shoot me? I mean exactly when?”

  Shifty thought about this. “No, he didn’t, now that you mention it. But I got the impression he wanted it done right away. Then I’ve got to kill…” He took a notebook out of his pocket and consulted it. “Oh, here it is: ‘Myself’.”

  I shook my head doubtfully. “I dunno, Shifty. You do what you think is best, of course, but if it was me, I’d check to make sure about the timing on all this. You know how important these little details are around here. I’d hate to see you get into trouble on account of me.”

  His cheerful smile faded a little. He started to look a little worried. “Hey, that’s right. Maybe I better check.” He pocketed his gun and walked off. “Catch you later, Frank.”

  “So long.”

  I had bought myself some time, but probably not a lot. I didn’t think Shifty’s conversation with the Big Boss would last very long.

  Figuring it still might be possible to get Buzzy hauled in on some kind of criminal charges if I could just find something incriminating enough, I snuck back up to Buzzy’s office and waited for him to leave. He finally came out, dragging Shifty along by the scruff of the neck. I started looking for a way into that inner office I knew he had. I couldn’t find any secret panels or hidden doors, so finally I just made a door with my shoulder. That’s a handy thing about being big—more doors.

  To my disappointment, Buzzy’s inner office didn’t yield anything incriminating. At least not at first glance. Just more ice cream equipment. Then I looked closer at the framed poster on the wall I had seen earlier through the window. It was a wanted poster with Buzzy’s picture on it. It said “Galactic Enemy Number Six”. The poster had darts in it, and the words “Ha ha” scrawled on it. I took it down from the wall and saw that “Ha ha” had been written on the back also. I turned it back over again and saw that there was a phone number to call to reach the Intergalactic Police in the Pleiades. It had 2000 numbers. And 23 area codes. I picked up the phone on Buzzy’s desk and started dialing.

  When I finally got through and explained that I had captured Galactic Enemy Number Six, Bernard Buzzman, aka Buzzy Barrow aka Fussy Fortesque Jr., aka Bernard Theremin, they told me to hang onto him, they’d be right there. I said great, and hung up 2000 times.

  I spent the next several hours waiting impatiently for them to show up, hiding behind various pieces of machinery so I wouldn’t be seen b
y Shifty, who was wandering through the building with his gun out calling: “Frank! Hey, Frank!” I didn’t answer. I knew better than that.

  I called the Intergalactic Police back every fifteen minutes or so to remind them to hurry up. They tried to explain to me about the vast interstellar distances involved and how the speed of light works and so on, and urged me to be patient. I said I wasn’t interested in their outer space doubletalk. And I didn’t want to take any science lessons over the phone. I wanted them to get down here right away. Never mind the excuses. They said they weren’t excuses, they were explanations—scientific explanations of… but I had hung up by then. I didn’t want to listen to any excuses, scientific or otherwise. Just get down here, stupid.

  Finally, just as I was about to give up, and maybe say “here I am” the next time Shifty said “where are you, Frank?” there was a sudden flurry of excitement outside the building. I went to look.

  I got to the lobby just in time to see the two thugs guarding the entrance being knocked aside and blasted into another dimension by a Buck-Rogers-looking-character in a silver suit, whose name coincidentally turned out to be Doug Rogers (no relation. I asked). He stormed into the lobby with his men, demanding to know where Buzzy Theremin was.

  I stepped forward to introduce myself and personally lead them to Buzzy, but before I could say anything, Buzzy raced out of the elevator dragging a suitcase full of Earth money and sweating sparks. When he saw Doug Rogers he stopped, then quickly grabbed me to use as a shield. Doug Rogers holstered his ray gun and pulled out an even more dangerous looking weapon, pointed it at Buzzy’s head, which at that moment was hiding behind my head, and started blasting away.

  Fortunately, the weird cosmic rays, or whatever they were, that came out of the special gun didn’t have much of an effect on me. I guess it was because I was the wrong species. It just felt like a BB gun to me. Just BB’s hitting my face. But after I had been nailed about fifty times, I decided I’d had enough. I dropped to the floor and rolled away into the furnace room, giving Doug a clear shot at Buzzy. The “BBs” that hadn’t been bothering me very much proved to be devastating to him. They slowed the electrical currents that his body was made of to the speed of molasses. He instantly became almost entirely immobile. After a few more shots he was flat on his back, wheezing slowly, with his electrical charge fitfully fading in and out.

  Doug Rogers stopped shooting and had his men slap a kind of metal straightjacket on Buzzy. It was like the casing for an oversized size-D battery. They picked it up, with Buzzy still buzzing weakly inside, and began carrying it to their space ship. I followed.

  When they had reached their ship and gotten Buzzy half way up the ladder, the Central City Police arrived.

  “Hold it right there, buddy,” said Sergeant Dobson. He indicated the battery casing with the feet sticking out of the bottom. “What’s that you’ve got there in the box?”

  Doug Rogers looked at the policeman for a long, appraising moment, then spoke: “You speak for Earth?”

  “I do. What’s this all about?”

  Doug began to slowly and patronizingly explain that this was an intergalactic felon, puny Earthlings, that they were the Intergalactic Police, and that they were taking this felon away to be tried on their world, if we, with our primitive minds, could grasp such an advanced concept.

  He might have been allowed to go on his way with his prisoner if it hadn’t been for his superior attitude. Our cops bristled at his snide condescending tone. Sergeant Dobson said hold on a minute there, Silver Boy. Nobody goes anywhere with anything just yet.

  That’s the thing about us Earthlings. We know we are inferior—it’s so obvious even we can see it with our puny eyes—but we don’t like having it pointed out to us by guys prancing around in silver pants. If some big bruiser twice our size wants to call us names, okay, he’s entitled. He’s bigger than us. But we don’t take that kind of abuse from just anybody. You’ve got to draw the line somewhere. We have our puny pride.

  Sergeant Dobson said this whole situation needed to be checked out thoroughly before anybody could leave. Doug Rogers protested, saying he was on a tight schedule, if we were advanced enough to know what that was. He told our cops not to meddle in things their backward Earth minds did not understand. Like law enforcement. That settled it. Guns were drawn and the space policemen were told to come down their fancy space ladder with their superior hands in the air, and bring the prisoner with them. All this would have to be sorted out downtown. Wherever he came from originally, he was our space alien now, and we would decide what was going to be done with him.

  “Very well,” Doug Rogers said finally, after eyeing our primitive, but huge, Earth weapons.

  Buzzy was brought back down the ladder and everybody started heading for City Hall.

  The rest of the day was taken up with a spirited discussion among our city leaders about what to do with this space alien we suddenly had. Some said that space aliens were dangerous, almost by definition, so let’s get rid of it. Others said we couldn’t pass up an opportunity like this. This was big. New York didn’t have a space alien. Neither did Phoenix. This could put our town on the map. Nobody could argue with that. But they did anyway, I noticed.

  While this discussion was going on, news of our exciting capture went out over the wires and soon the phones in City Hall were ringing off the hook. The whole country seemed to be interested. But it was the phone calls from reporters in distant galaxies calling to ask if the trial was going to be held here, and if it was could they get hotel reservations, that finally decided the matter. No city lets hotel reservations get away.

  The Mayor announced that nobody was taking our space alien anywhere. Our space alien would be tried right here in good old Central City where Businesses Were Sound, Housing Was Affordable, and The Mayor Was Running For Re-Election, or he wouldn’t be tried anywhere.

  Doug Rogers frowned when he heard this, fingered his ray gun for a moment, then got on his communicator to his superiors in the Pleiades. He talked for quite awhile, explaining the situation—I heard the words “puny”, “primitive”, and “childish” several times—then he told our Mayor that if the Earth insisted on being the site for the trial, so be it. On two conditions: The Intergalactic Police would continue to guard the felon to make sure he didn’t get away. And special prosecutors would have to be flown in from the Lawyer Nebulae to try the case. The primitive monkey-like lawyers we had here wouldn’t know how to do it. That was acceptable to the Mayor and the City Council. The lawyers present chattered in protest, but they were overruled. So it was agreed. The trial would be held here in two weeks.

  All this was tremendously exciting to the people of Central City, of course. This kind of thing didn’t happen every day. In fact, only the oldest and least truthful residents could remember it happening here before at all.

  I was excited too, but for a different reason. With Buzzy out of the way, my job at CrimeCo would be a pleasure. From now on, if I hid behind machinery it would be because I wanted to. I could hardly wait to get back to work. But when I got back to CrimeCo I discovered that there was a pink slip waiting for me. I had been fired.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I marched angrily into Larry Laffman’s office and demanded to know what the meaning of this pink slip was. I thought it meant I was fired. But I could be wrong. I wanted an answer. And I wanted it now. Or I was going to keep working here forever. He said I was fired all right. I asked why.

  “You broke the rules.”

  “What rules did I break?” I asked, hotly. “Name me one rule I broke.” I hoped he wouldn’t remember all the rules I had broken since I started working there. Or noticed the five rules I broke on the way to his office.

  He handed me the CrimeCo Rule Book. “Page 1,” he said. “Rule 1. The one that’s in capital letters and has all the exclamation points after it.”

  I read it aloud. “DON’T TURN YOUR BOSS IN TO THE POLICE!!!!!!!!*” I frowned. Well, hell, I had broken that
rule, all right. They had me there. Then I noticed there was an asterisk. “It lists some exceptions here at the bottom of the page,” I pointed out.

  “None of the exceptions apply to you.”

  “I’ll read through them myself, if you don’t mind,” I said stiffly. I read through them. They didn’t apply to me. I threw the book down.

  “Do you have any other questions?” Larry asked.

  “No. Just that one about me being fired.”

  I noticed he was cleaning out his desk. I asked him why. He said he was fired too. He had been forced out by the stockholders. He said the crime business was a lot like show business in that way. When the big guy goes down, most of his team are usually given the boot too. That way a whole bunch of new people get to move up, to bring the company a fresh perspective, and to get the boot themselves later on. The stockholders had wanted the company to move in a new, less funny, direction for a long time anyway. So now he was out and they’d brought in a hit man from back East to take over the top spot. There were rumors that the company’s name might be changed too, to KillCo. And the company logo—a pratfall wearing a mask—was definitely out.

  I asked Larry what he was going to do now. He said his agent would line up something. In the meantime he was going to go to Vegas and do a few weeks there. I said maybe I’d go to Vegas with him. We could perform on stage together. I could be his straight man. Or he could be the straight man and I’d be the funny one. It didn’t matter to me. As long as we were together. He said he worked alone. And he didn’t like me all that much anyway. I said maybe I’d just go home then. He said that sounded like a good idea to him.

  I went back to my detective office. It looked even worse than it had when I left it. Everything was covered with a thick layer of dust, several windows were broken, and, unless I was mistaken, some vermin were missing. On the plus side, one of the lamps had been fixed. But that didn’t make up for all the things that were worse. I started to clean the place up, grumbling.

  My business was in terrible shape too. Clients had moved on, or died of neglect in my waiting room. My subscription to Lousy Detective Magazine (the only magazine that would let me subscribe to it) had lapsed. And the bank said my checking account was a checking account no more. I started making some phone calls to see if I could get my business going again, but my phone service had been cut off. I started writing some postcards.