by Shoshi
to. This silly-looking guy is the one everybody’s so afraid of?
The Commander is aghast. He bows from the waist and, then, sinks to one knee. “We weren’t expecting you so soon, sir.” He is almost whispering.
“Come now, Commander,” says the Inspector. “No need for genuflections. You are not a maton.” He turns to Feena and says in a clipped, high voice she hears only inside her head--and which the Commander obviously doesn’t hear: “And neither are you.” He looks back at the Commander with the barest hint of a smile:
Feena is profoundly startled. She is afraid she’s about to get into deep trouble because apparently she has failed to fool the Inspector. He has detected that she’s not a maton. Clearly this Inspector is no ordinary visitor. It’s obvious he has mysterious, fearful powers. If he can tell she’s not a maton, can he also tell she’s human?
What makes him even more mysterious is his face. It isn’t quite there. It’s as though he were wearing a soft, featureless mask. It makes it very hard for her to guess what he’s thinking.
Even though he is now hidden in a desk in another room, Jome also senses that the Inspector seems all-knowing. He decides to break off contact with Feena to avoid revealing their relationship. “Bye,” he whispers almost inaudibly in her head.
A slight movement of the Inspector’s eyes suggests that, perhaps, he also heard this--but he says nothing. He casts his eyes approvingly around the Commander’s quarters. “I will take this for my office while I’m here,” he says. “I will also have this girl for my assistant.” He gives her a blurry wink.
The Commander bows low again while keeping his knee off the floor this time. “Whatever the Inspector wishes,” he says, but Feena can see the chagrin written on his face at the idea that he must give up the trappings of power and importance that are part of his office while the Inspector remains on this planet. She can also see he doesn’t like having him take her over completely.
“Let’s have a look at your preparations for the Visitors,” the Inspector says. “Especially for their entertainment.” He grasps Feena by the elbow and tells her inside her head: “I can’t stand this man even though I put him in charge here---but I do like you. Be sure you stay with me at all times—so I don’t have to talk to him too much.”
“Yes, sir,” she says.
“And don’t give me any of that maton bowing and scraping nonsense,” he says. “You’re human, and I know it. The Commander told us he’d killed all of you off. He may have to be punished for lying to us. So listen to me. I want you to be smart like a human--savvy is your word for it. Hide nothing from me and always tell me what you know.”
Feena can hardly believe all this. How can he tell I’m human? Did I give myself away without realizing it? What concerns her most is knowing she’s his enemy, and he’s her enemy. How long can this pretense of friendliness go on before he turns on me and destroys me?
“No, Feena, stop worrying,” the Inspector says, tuning in to her thoughts. “We’re going to get along just fine.”
She doubts it. She’s afraid she’s going to think something he doesn’t like because he’s inside her head listening in. This is so hateful, she thinks. I can’t even be myself. Oops, I mustn’t think that.
The Inspector smiles knowingly. Obviously he has heard her. “So let’s get going,” he says out loud. “Get all this over with. I tell you, Feena, I’m not looking forward to that trip back. A thousand light years. More than a thousand. Boring! Boring! Even if I go into a deep freeze and try to sleep.” He smiles a disarming, soft-edged smile. “What the heck do you have in the desk in the other room? A maton head? A battle memento?” Her heart jumps. “I didn’t know you were a warrior girl.”
This guy can actually see Jome’s head even though it’s inside a desk drawer in another room---but she says and tries to think nothing.
“And what the devil is this?” says the Inspector. He pulls the rubbery skin of the stove-pipe balloon off the hat tree. “Is this yours, Commander? What on earth do you use it for?”
The Commander doesn’t want to say and hopes against hope that the car wash freak will keep its damn mouth shut.
“Human psychologists have a name for this,” says the Inspector, “but I can’t think what it is.” Blurrily, he squinches up his face and frowns. “Wait!” he says suddenly. “I remember now. It’s called an alto ego.”
“No, Mr. Inspector,” says Feena. “Alto is a boy singer with a high voice. You mean alter ego. Another self.”
The Inspector stares at her and smiles. “This girl’s bright,” he says. “Where’d you get her, Commander?” He doesn’t wait for a reply. “I hear all the humans have alter egos. That’s because down deep they’re all nutty as fruitcakes.” He laughs explosively.
He does have a sense of humor, thinks Feena. But will he laugh even harder when he gets around to destroying us all?
They pile into the black digi-rocket piloted as before by the Captain. As they strap themselves in, the Inspector starts to become enthusiastic. “You must show me your hunting arrangements,” he says. “The Visitors love to hunt. I’m sure they’ll want to take some human trophies back with them to Zyllaton. There are a few humans left, aren’t there? I’m sure there are. You can’t be the only one.”
The thought paralyzes Feena. Trophies? What’s he talking about? She has a sudden, frightening mental image of her head and Gailus’s head and those of their friends hanging over Visitor fireplaces—do they even have fireplaces?—back in Zyllaton. She remembers the gray-pink leather wall paper in the Commander’s quarters and suddenly realizes with a start what it’s made of.
An idea jumps into her head. “I have a much better idea, Inspector.” She flashes him a dazzling smile.
“Shark hunting?” he says, reading her mind. “Sounds sort of interesting. I’d like to try that myself.”
“It’s totally exciting,” says Feena. “You’ll love it. Can you swim?”
“You will teach me.”
“I’ll try.” She gives him another big smile.
Feena instructs the Captain where to head for. It’s not the coral speck where she and Gailus and their friends live in the Mariana Islands. It’s an island reef just off southern Australia. Within seconds their rocket plane lands on its sandy shore. “The water is deeper here,” she says. “Better for shark hunting.” What she also knows is this is one of the favored haunts of the Great White---at twenty-one feet, the biggest shark in any ocean on Earth, and the hungriest. Is she hoping that the Inspector might fall into the water while they’re hunting—or a shark will come along while he’s swimming?
The Inspector stands on the sandy edge of the island and peers into a tidal pool in which little fish and a crab are swimming and seaweed life is growing. “How wildly strange,” he says. “Show me the sharks.”
“Come on, then,” she says. But he cannot make himself take that first step off the shore into the water itself. “I do believe it will melt me,” he says—”or set me on fire.”
“Of course not,” says Feena, but she can’t get him even to trail a hand in the water.
“I can’t take a chance,” he says. “Water is an alien substance for anyone from the Zyllaton Galaxy because it does not exist on any Zyllaton planet. It might destroy me.”
Instead, she takes him for a ride in a small boat. He is amazed that it actually floats on top of this peculiar transparent material. As he leans over the bow to watch fish swimming by, it occurs to her that it wouldn’t take much to give him a little push. It would obviously solve a lot of problems.
Then, chance does it for her. He leans over too far, and the next thing she knows he has fallen into the water by himself. He shouts in panic as he flails about, but she is already pulling him back into the boat. “It hurts, it hurts,” he moans as she wipes him off with a towel. The water seems to have left behind a bright red rash where it
has touched his skin and face.
“Wow, you really are sensitive,” she says.
“It feels weird,” he says. “Sort of cool and—” He’s reaching for the right word.
“We call it ‘wet,’” she says.
“Wet,” he says tentatively. “I think I am the only being in the whole Zyllaton galaxy who’s ever touched water.”
“We should take a photograph of you,” she says laughing, “while you’re still bright red--to take back to Zyllaton. That’s what humans like to do when they go on vacation.”
He laughs. “No, I have plenty of images in my head. I will pick out a few to reproduce later for private viewing.” He stares at her a long time. “You saved my life back there when I fell in. Why? You didn’t have to.”
She shrugs and looks down. “I suppose I did. It’s just something humans do. At least most of the time.
“I’m trying to understand that,” he says. He does seem to be mulling it over. Finally, he says: “I don’t think I can. It makes no sense. It might have been better for you to get rid of me.”
Just offshore there is an abrupt change in depth as the ocean floor plunges down sharply. A giant whitish form swims slowly by them deep below the surface. It startles him. “What is that?” he asks.
“That’s one of them,” says Feena. “One of the great white sharks.” Its white mouth yawns open