by Clyde Key
* * *
Mid afternoon, Ed sat watching through his window as the blue alien and four other aliens sloshed around the perimeter of the pit in the yard at Ed’s quarters. At first, he didn’t know why, but then he realized the pit was being gradually enlarged. The aliens had some kind of machine that shaved a few centimeters from the outside wall of the pit. Since the alien pits were always made near perfectly round, he wondered what would limit the size of this one. Would they stop when they reached the trunk of the globe willow tree near the pit? The excavation had undoubtedly already damaged the tree’s roots so it would soon be dropping its leaves in the Arizona heat. Or would they somehow get past the tree and then stop when the pit reached the side of Ed’s house?
Ed was still wondering about the pit when he saw an object come sailing through the air, landing near the alien pit. It appeared to be a large piece of coarse fabric, much like a blanket, except round. Then several more of the round cloths sailed into the yard, one of them going right into the alien pit. “What the devil is going on here?” he asked, of nobody in particular, since he was alone. One of the aliens broke from the circle and shuffled over to the round cloth and began to spurt out its body’s gooey substance onto the cloth, just as if it were about to jump over an obstacle it thought was in the way. Then suddenly, the cloth snapped and the outside of it pulled together, closing it up like a bag with a drawstring. The alien skeleton then jumped near the bag that held its life substances. It jumped on the bag and probed about it for a minute or two, until its movements became erratic. Then the alien reeled about for a few seconds before it collapsed and became perfectly still. Ed mulled about the occurrence but he could not imagine what had happened to the alien.
Then one of the other aliens left the pit, after going through the usual procedure. That alien wandered over to one of the round cloths near the pit, and it also spewed goo onto the cloth. Again, the cloth snapped shut around that alien’s body fluids and it went through the same hysterics as the first before sprawling on the ground, obviously quite dead.
Ed only figured it out when he saw the blue alien coming from the pit. And he couldn’t let the second oldest common Veezee alien die. He hurried to the door, hobbling faster than he usually could. Then around the corner of the house, he saw the blue alien headed toward one of the cloths. “Stop! Don’t move!” yelled Ed. The blue alien stopped perfectly still a few meters from the cloth.
“What’s the idea?” asked Victor Herman. “I thought you wanted to get rid of the blue alien.”
Ed hadn’t even seen the magport engineer until he spoke, and now Ed had to wait until he could catch his breath before he could speak. “I’ve changed my mind. That one is useful. Inside the house, it tells us stuff we couldn’t begin to learn any other way.”
“Well, the traps are disabled now,” said Herman. He held a plastic object about 10cm long in his hand. It had a shiny metal rod protruding, and three round buttons. Herman pushed the metal rod until it disappeared into the object, then he handed it to Ed. “It’s yours, if you want it. The switch that’s labeled ENABLE turns it on. FAKE makes sonar signals that look like little ledges to step over, and TRAP makes it shut on that alien stuff, which they’ll soon die without.”
“Yeah, I want it.” Ed put the device in his pocket. “I just don’t want to use it on that particular alien.” Then Ed stepped back in the house. Herman followed him. The blue alien had also shuffled over and it followed them into the house.
Ed went to his desk and slumped in the chair. He pulled the top drawer open and offered Herman a vial of Smel-Numb. “Personally, I can’t stand it in here with the alien if I don’t have some of this.”
Herman took the vial and applied a couple of drops under his nose. “Yes, I see why you need it. I’ve never been in a space quite this small with an alien before. Why does this one come inside anyway? Most of the others that I’ve noticed stay outside or at least only go into very large buildings.”
“That’s a puzzle to me, too. How about that, Veezee?” Ed turned to the alien. “Why do you come in here but all the other aliens like to stay outside?”
“Veezee think better outside. Veezee can not do well what humans call ‘see’ inside the buildings which humans make.”
Ed was puzzled. “Exactly what do you mean? Why can’t you see well?”
“Veezee seeing is strange inside,” said the alien.
“I’ve got it figured out,” said Herman. “The sonar bounces off the walls and they get all kinds of confusing blips. It probably looks to them like the carnival mirror room looks to us.”
“Makes sense,” said Ed. “You can get out of the mirror room, but you have to take it kind of slow. That alien doesn’t get around too swift in here either.”
Then Ed thought of something else. “Hey, I’ve got something cute to show you. Follow me.” Ed walked out of the room and activated the little barricade rods behind him. Ed went straight to the door, opened and closed it, then went into the next room where they waited. The blue alien went through its procedure of disgorging goo, leaping over the rods, and then recombining, but it took a while for it to get to the front door. The alien assumed that Ed and Herman had gone outside, so it went right outside to follow them. Ed went to the door and locked it so the alien couldn’t get back inside.
“Boy! That’s not too smart!” said Herman. “I thought they were all supposed to be more intelligent than that!”
“They are,” said Ed. “That is, if they’re all connected together so they have a lot of total thought power. But when you get one in a shielded building like this, it’s not quite as smart as a dog, even if it can talk. That one tells me things in here the old boy Veezee wouldn’t dream of allowing if it knew it.”
“That could be very useful sometime,” said Herman, “but I’m sure it’s not why one Lieutenant Sharp asked me to come see you.”
“No. It’s not. Did Marilee tell you I’ve been incarcerated?”
“Uh, yeah. She did. Supervisor ankle bracelet, I believe she said.”
“That’s right.” Ed pulled his trouser leg up a bit to show the bracelet to Herman. “Do you know anything about these things?”
“I suppose you mean like, how to get it off?
“Yeah. That’s exactly what I mean. Without tripping alarms or setting off the pain generators, preferably.”
“Sure. I know how they’re made, and I can safely get it off inside here where it’s shielded.” Herman took a coin from his pocket, popped the bracelet open, and handed it to Ed.
“It didn’t zap you or me either!” said Ed. “I didn’t know it would be that easy!”
“Close it again,” said Herman. “Now when you go outside you can simply carry it with you. Or you could leave it home and then they couldn’t track you.”
“But they’d figure out it was off, wouldn’t they?”
“Yeah. But not if you’re careful. You could go out at night without it, and nobody would notice. Or you could go out for a few days if somebody would come and carry that thing around now and then so it wouldn’t look like you got away from it.”