Far-out Show (9781465735829) (21 page)

The alien gestured to give him a minute and
unbuttoned his shirt front several buttons so his torso showed. It
was green. “I took a special pill to change me so I might not seem
so strange.” He quickly buttoned the shirt again. “The drug only
works on skin that the light is seeing. If more of me is seen by
light I will use the effect too fast and I do not have more pills.
They are nastily yuck to take. I did it to be a winner in
The
Far-Out Show
contest but not with eagerness.”

“Okay. So some of the same features can
appear in very different living types in different places. That’s
amazing and yet, by our ideas about evolution, not impossible to
believe.”

He glanced over at the TV that was on with
the sound muted. There was a news update so he apologetically drew
Nerber’s attention to that and turned on the sound.

Beth Regards was on the screen saying, “The
president is quoted as saying that organized chaos is better than
the regular kind so the states are okay to search out and deal with
any alien invaders any way they choose. The National Guard will be
called up to assist the Army in setting up check points on all
major highways. That will take a few days but everyone is urged by
the governor to stay in their homes with their doors locked and
think nice thoughts and everything will be fine. The sanitation
department will patrol the street in special dump trucks to remove
any dead bodies left outside without a lot of questions. Have a
nice day and if you’re still alive in an hour tune in for our
latest undated unchanged news report.”

Krinkle muted the set with the remote. “Can
your producers transport you back to your ship to get you out of
your real and present although not immediate danger?”

“They should be possible to do that but as
you heard Wilburps report, my contacts with them are not to be
believed as reliable. Truly to tell, they may even prefer to have
me killed since I am not obedient like they want. But only if
Wilburps can record that in the happening at that moment. Then they
will completely destroy my body or suddenly, muchness of surprises,
find they can transport it back to
Whizybeam
after all. The
lastness line of the page is not to leave my body or its parts to
be examininged by your scientists. That is on orders from our
governors who do not want your kind to learn enough to make better
your defenses if we ever return.”

“So you do think others from his planet will
be coming?”

“At the start-most time that was a maybe
plan. But now is not a likeliness though. Now we are being in the
knowing that our ideas about life here were wrong so this is not a
place of further interest to our kind. Probably.”

“I understand your ultimate disclaimer.”

“For me the hugeness of a question is how
much is the likeliness that I can stay here undetected and share
ideas in peace?”

“It may be possible but only after the
short-term scare is over. And I can’t offer guarantees either.”

“So what will we be doing?”

“Let me think about this,” Krinkle said. He
focused his attention on the radio on the bedside table. He
startled Nerber when he rushed over to turn up the volume.

The radio reporter said, “Here’s real news.
Saying ‘Who cares what the hell it is, we need to reassure the
people by rushing out and destroying something’ the president has
ordered that a science test unit on the back of the moon be used to
destroy a large object thought to be in stationary orbit back
there. We’re waiting for an official announcement to get full
details. Apparently they’ve sent a shoot-it-down signal but that
will take several hours to reach the unit because it has to go by
some kind of a relay system. Coming up in sixty seconds, the latest
sports scores.”

Krinkle turned the volume down again. “I know
what they’re talking about. They soft-landed a big machine on the
dark side a year ago to send a strong laser beam into space. Those
experiments work better blocked from the noise of energies from
earth but for exactly that reason they can’t send it signals
directly, they have to be sent and the test results from the
equipment relayed back to earth by an orbiting satellite. The
fire-the-laser-at-the-big-thing-above-you-but-close signal was sent
to the satellite and when it gets to the right position on the back
side of the moon it’ll relay the commands. Among other things, that
means when the satellite itself won’t be targeted by the laser.
That would be the plan but we don’t have a perfect record of not
making basic mistakes that mess up what we tried to do.”

“You have the making of suspicions what this
big thing is?”

“Yeah, I strongly suspect they’ve spotted
your space ship and are going to blast it with one of the most
powerful laser beams we’ve ever made. I think that means your way
home is gonna go to pieces as soon as that satellite gets to the
back side of the moon and relays the command,” Krinkle said.

He could see that this development agitated
Nerber but there was no point in denying this bit of reality and no
way he, George Krinkle, could do anything to keep that destruction
from happening. So he was back to thinking about what to do
now.

At even the best of times Krinkle was a
worrier although he sometimes still bravely or foolishly defied
Fate and went ahead and did what he was considering. In the present
situation he knew full well that the reality if officialdom found
him harboring this very foreign visitor would be harsh; what would
happen to him if it were a mob who found him with Nerber was beyond
anything he was willing to let himself imagine. Yet he still felt
driven to protect Nerber for as long as possible.

That meant they couldn’t stay here at the
Byde-Hour Wink-Wink Motel for more than today because he didn’t
have enough cash to pay for the room. They would also need food and
possibly other incidentals so he would need a wad of cash. A credit
card paper trail would bring the authorities to whatever door they
hid behind once his name and known interests came up and he
couldn’t be found to explain himself. He had never wanted that kind
of notoriety and now its down side was clearer than ever.

The understandable but hobbling complication
was that, as had became clear from the case of parking the car away
from their front door here, Nerber wouldn’t agree to be left alone
while Krinkle went to find an ATM, do food shopping, or do anything
else. The alien had good reason to worry about being thrown to or
left for the wolves - or in this case a mob of slobbering wild-eyed
crazies intent of killing something because it wasn’t like
them.

By Krinkle’s calculation of likelihoods,
risks, and consequences they needed to move to a rural area where
the isolation would reduce the chances of someone snooping and
discovering the visitor. That brought up two immediate
considerations. When should they make their move? And was there any
way to reduce the chance of Nerber being identified as alien if
they had to pass through roadblocks, military or vigilante?

Thinking about that made him realize that his
own costume might attract unwanted attention. His attire was in
fact so unique and remarkable, many would say bizarre, that it
could be used to identify him even from a distance if any alert to
locate him were issued. But going around in public without any
clothes on would be worse. He had no others with him and Byde-Hour
didn’t provide guest bathrobes. Drive-up window food was standard;
drive-up window clothing was unheard of. And taking Nerber into any
store sent the risk of discovery sky rocketing. He pondered the
risk and consequences of being caught raiding a charity clothing
donation box and decided against that.

It all came together in the same problem –
how to do things without himself or Nerber leaving the relative
security and obscurity of the car. Find a drive-up ATM and he could
get out his daily maximum which would tide them over for a few
days. Maybe he could find a sidewalk sale with suitable clothes on
racks so he could sit in the car, point out items and have them
brought to him. Neat idea but not likely to happen, starting with
the problem of knowing where to look for such a sale. Where would
he find clothes that wouldn’t be associated with him and where his
own current outfit would seem less remarkable? He needed clothes
that no one had seen him in earlier today.

Then it hit him – a costume shop! The people
there would expect unusual outfits and would not only have a range
of one-size-fits-all outfits for him but also for Nerber, in case
those the alien talked to earlier could describe his appearance. A
costume shop would give them much of what they needed.

Now that he was thinking along these lines he
could envision ways to substantially change Nerber’s appearance so
he could even pass through Army check points with little risk of
being recognized as worth a closer look. A few items from a
hardware store would take care of that.

He startled Nerber who had been watching him
and waiting for his decision by saying, “The shopping center we
passed back up the road before we crossed the railroad tracks. I
saw signs for a Halloween costume shop and a hardware store in
there. We’re in business. We change what we look like, hit an ATM,
and go hide in the sticks. This is gonna be okay.”

That challenged Wowseyla’s translation skill
but at least Nerber got the idea that his protector had ideas for
making them more secure.

Those ideas resolved the one of timing. They
needed to get to the stores while they were still open and while it
was light so they could find a place to stay out in the country
since that would become much harder in the dark.

“You’ll need to put on your boots and wig and
get the Wilburps thing out of the closet so we can go,” Krinkle
said. “The longer we wait, the more crazies there’ll be on the
streets. By tomorrow they’ll have lost interest but we can’t stay
here that long. Be sure to take everything you brought in away with
you.”

Nerber stared at his boots for a long moment,
not relishing the thought of squeezing his feet back into them.

“Do you need help with anything?” Krinkle
volunteered. He hoped the answer was no since the prospect of
getting close to those scaly appendages definitely didn’t excite
him but he felt it was a necessary politeness to offer.

Nerber gestured that he could deal with this,
then as Krinkle watched in amazement while trying not to stare and
gawk, one at a time the Ormelexian distorted his feet in ways not
possible with human feet, and inserted them into the boots. He then
put his wig and hat on, and attached Wowseyla to the hat.

The two put the now normal seeming limp
mattress back to the bed and tossed the bundle of linens on top. He
was content to let the maid amuse herself speculating about what
did or didn’t happen in here.

Then Nerber opened the closet door and
retrieved Wilburps.

When it was released from its state of forced
inactivity the zerpy vibrated almost violently as it, or more
exactly those remotely controlling it, tested all its systems.

The strongest kinds of protests are
presented. The ever patient producers are forced to seriously
consider disqualifying you for repeatedly staying outside the
effective range of my sensors, Nerber
.

“Tell them to
jigplink
it out their
zamtrucks
large time, Wilburps. If I am disqualified there
is no reason for me to let you record any further events. I will
turn you off to keep interference from you out of my way. With
great danger not far away that will spare them the sights and
sounds of battle and victoriousness or vanguishment. They will
never know. They seem unwilling or unable to move me to safety so
what does it matter to me if they
neprist oglimp vinx
crupsmimp
.”

The producers recognize that you are under
great stress and are makening not much sensible talk-talk so they
are forgiving your mistake and not making you be disqualified. We
should make to going on like that was not happening what was
recently did
.

“Accepted for now. We are on the move.”

The positions of things around this space
might mean I missed out on some fighting or chasing or something.
You are required by your contract to give a detailed account of
these being dones.

“Maybe later.”

It is in your contract term so that is not a
maybe.

“The maybe is from what is only possibly for
doing if I am living by the end of this revolution of the planet
here. I am repeating for the
dunkipfeck prisdinks
on
Whizybeam
that I am being chased to be killing me by many of
the inhabitants.
Dre!
”

No need is calling for saying shaming
names for others
.

“Enough. Concentrate I must, so protest more
and silence you I will. Be cautious and alerted.”

Krinkle had watched the alien closely through
this. He could only hear one side of it but grasped the general
tenor of the get-off-my-case interchange. He was impressed with
Nerber’s take-charge ways.

* * *

Outside in the motel parking lot Gorilla and
Sparker, the nasty looking dudes that Regimentator had noticed,
prowled the area looking for cars with items inside that might be
of value to someone else if offered to them for cheap sale. Gorilla
got his name from his shambling size and general
Do it, don’t
think or talk about it
attitude. Sparker was small, sly, and
often called a feral sleazebag which he didn’t take as a personal
slight. The two complimented one another, muscle versus small space
access, so they often worked together without being close.

The recent brief but heavy rain shower had
left the area wet with a few puddles to avoid. No cars parked by
the rooms showed anything worth the risk of breaking into so they
were moving on when they spotted Krinkle’s car parked in a
vulnerable spot off to the side. It was too old and beaten up to be
worth stealing for parts itself but it would only take a minute to
check it out. Sometimes the junkers had good stereo systems they
could easily be relieved of. Always a market for those.