Far-out Show (9781465735829) (6 page)

Opting to start anew Taylor pulled out his
device and proudly showed it off. “I’ve got an fancy phone with a
bunch of apps. Whatever I want to know I can check right here. It’s
the newest model. I stood in line all night to be among the first
to buy one.”

Nerber leaned over for a closer look but made
no move to touch the device. “I am familiar with small
communication devices. I am a...”

Caution, Nerber. He likely does not know
what zerpies are and you are not authorized by the governors to
tell any inhabitants about those. Especially not details of how
they work or what they can do. Remember the cautionary lecture for
explorers
.

Understood. You did well to stop my
mouthing before I made such a bad stumbling blockage.
To Taylor
he said, “I much admiring your technologies am. You are of interest
with this. Please, are apps like your abs?”

Taylor drew back a bit in surprise and
concern, then made the connection and relaxed with a giggle. “You
meant everybody’s abs. I thought for a moment you were coming on to
me saying something about mine.”

Fail to react but look pleasing. He will
probably get beyond some confusion and get backwards to your
questioning
.

Taylor did now remember the question. “No,
apps is short for ‘applications’. Programs that let this kind of
phone do special stuff. Abs are your belly muscles. Part of your
body.” He pointed to his own midsection to clarify that.

“Please to be telling me about your apps that
are not abs.”

Taylor hesitated as he analyzed the situation
but concluded that the stranger had understood the distinction and
was asking about his phone’s add-on capabilities. “There are a
whole lot of apps you can get. Some you pay for but some are
freebies. I like the ones that let me stay up to the minute.” He
touched a key and a panel of icons appeared showing the options he
could tap into. He held the phone out for Nerber to see those.

Again Nerber looked with interest but made no
move to touch the device. Taylor seemed okay with that and made no
special effort to hand the thing over.

“I can find a restaurant and even check the
menu. Or I can play a bunch of games. It’s good to have the latest
handhelds. It show’s I’m on top of things.”

I am checking through the files as fast as
I can but this talk-talk is pushing my limits. Nothing of a problem
has been said but there may be things to say to be fitted in that I
cannot relay to you yet
.

So Nerber nodded in friendly and interested
fashion to Taylor but said nothing.

“I have a bunch of pictures of people I know
on here.” He held out the phone showing an older woman with a
disapproving scowl. “That’s my mom. She doesn’t smile very often.
If I ever do see her smile I’ll take her picture right away betcha
on that. I can do that with an app. Do you want me to take your
picture to show everybody that I met you?”

“No. Thanking you muchly but that would make
me nervous.”

You beat me to it. I was about to
recommend that answer
.

“I understand. My neighbor Trudy’s camera shy
too.”

“What other powers are you apps to do, Mister
Matt?”

Taylor was too flattered at being called by a
title to wonder if he was missing an attempt at a play on words.
“Uh, I can check the latest news from all around the world. That
could be important in a crisis. If everything else is off the air
right nearby because of the damage.”

“I am grappling that to you news means new
information, this is yes?”

Taylor was glad to find a topic of obvious
interest to the stranger even if there was some stumbling over
words. “Sure, the news is the most up-to-the-moment version of
what’s happening. It’s usually a repeat of what they said an hour
ago but if nothing’s changed they call it an update anyway because
they sort of tell you that by not telling you what’s different from
the last reports.”

The first part means you can ask what is the
latest information. Do not bother about the rest.

Nerber looked at the device in Taylor’s hand
as he asked, “You can be told what is the news on special visitors
to your world by this...”

I cannot permit you to refer to it as a
zerpy.

Taylor touched an icon and a somber-looking
male reporter at a news desk appeared on the screen. A crawl at the
bottom of the picture was tiny letters but Taylor was able to
report, “They’re getting more organized about searching for alien
invaders but that’s politics, we all know it’s a fake. If they had
any real leads on such critters they’d be reporting nonstop about
that.”

“Your device shows nice things. The pictures
are clear even when the letters are very teensy wee.”

Taylor touched the screen and magnified the
view of the crawl so it filled the space. “You can make whatever
part you want to see better bigger. It’s all touch-screen.”

“Ah, so your techs can make that happen
too.”

Caution, Nerber. That slipped out before I
censored it. Do not compare their technology to ours. This is
not-not topic territory.

“Understood. Uh, here is a fun topic, Mr.
Matt. Tell me about your planet's defenses. This would mightily
interest me.”

“Earth's defenses?”

“So this you do call earth, no?”

“Yeah, of course this is earth. What are you,
like the space alien invader in the news?”

React with amusement or he will worry that he
has nailed you on the head. A strange saying. They have nails on
what they call fingers and toes so why would they hit them with a
tool? Anyway, laugh off his statement.

Nerber made a big show of laughing and
slapping his knee. He said, “That was a goodly one for likely
sure.”

Taylor glanced down the street, then looked
distressed. His mother, a stocky sixtyish woman who radiated
disapproval from every pore, was stomping this way. “Oh, here comes
my mom. She doesn't like me talking to strangers.”

Full stage alarm, Nerber. This is walking
trouble that we do not need and might not survive.

Nerber grabbed up the zerpy and headed for
the gazebo saying, “I must go now.”

Taylor gave a half-hearted wave, picked up
his newspaper, then reluctantly headed over to meet his mother.
When they met she berated him enthusiastically and he muttered his
responses but they were too far away for Nerber and Wilburps to
hear them.

Nerber said, “Time is elapsing with little
useful residue. I must find more inhabitants to be meeting. I want
to do what is possibilities for testing if the challenges can be
done to completing here the way I find the situation. If the Matt
one is correct my arrival has been detected and there is concern
about where I am and what I am doing. Ah, here comes another for me
to meeting with.”

* * *

Debra Ipanema, twenty-seven, a buxom but not
too smart streetwalker, sashayed up and sat on the bench facing the
street while she checked her makeup and hair in a mirror of the
compact she took from her large handbag.

She looked Nerber up and down when he
approached, sat his “backpack” where it faced them, and stepped
closer. She shrugged her resignation as she stood and thrust out
her bosom as nonchalantly as she could muster for such an effort.
“Ya lookin' for a good time, Charlie?”

Nerber looked around to see who else was here
saying, “This could be of interest. Where please is this
Charlie?”

“I meant you. I call all johns Charlie.”

“John and Charlie are both names, no? They
are too different but mean the same, yes? This is odd and
strange.”

“It's all just words. You looking to get it
on or not? Hey, you're not a cop are you? I know the rules, you
have to tell me if you are if I ask or you can't take me in.”

A wisp of smoke rose from the zerpy as Nerber
touched his head in pain because of the confused messages from
Wilburps.
What was all that? I melted a processor trying to
follow
.

“What was the question again?” Nerber asked
her.

“You a cop?”

Nerber muttered mostly to himself,
“
You
in questioning tone.
Cop?
A feel does not
process. A copper? Not a metal but an officer with the law. Ah, am
I a police personage.” To Ipanema he said brightly, “No.”

She rolled her eyes but shrugged and thrust
out her bosom as she said, “You like?”

Nerber had no idea what this meant since he
wasn’t of a species with anything like mammary glands. With a shrug
he thrust out his own chest asking, “What is to like? Means to do
this?”

“You playin’ games wit’ me, Mac?”

Nerber looked around for this person Mac.

After a moment Ipanema realized why he was
confused. “Forget that, you lookin' to get physical or not?”

Nerber threw up his hands in delight and
called, “Wilburps, are we in full view and ready. I meet the
challenge right now.”

Now it was Ipanema’s turn to look around for
someone who had been mentioned by name but was not seen.

“Yes, be pleasing to have us
get
physical
together,” Nerber shouted eagerly. He stepped up
belly-to-belly with her, but then looked confused.

He took a step back and wiggled as if rubbing
bellies with her as he asked, “It will work with you in the
covering?”

Ipanema snorted out a guffaw. “We'd get
arrested for sure doing it here where people can see and you ain't
likely gonna pay me enough to make that worth my while. Which
brings us to the matter of making it worth my while before we do do
anything.”

Nerber was straining to make sense of this so
it took him a long moment to respond. “What will make it worth your
while?”

“Cold hard cash of course. This ain't a
charity event.”

Nerber listened to Wilburps's analysis, then
got it. “So, cash is your money. I get your money and give to you
and you give to me...”

“Hey, not my money, your money. Give me a
hundred big ones and I give you relief from the pressure.”

Nerber listened to the silent translation of
that. “Okay, I am now filled with understanding. Is a problem since
I have no amount of your kind of money. Could we maybe - is this a
right way to say this, take it out in trading?”

“That's what I'm doing, Doofus, but you ain't
offered me nothin' worth my while in trade. And now you tell me
you've been wastin' my time ‘cause you ain't got no money
anyway.”

“Is not good for you just to do it?” He made
the rubbing-our-bellies-together move again.

“Are you from Mars or something?”

Nerber looked around nervously. “Uh, Mars is
where, please?”

She waddled off down the street in heels too
high to walk in sensibly but that had the desired effect on her
backside since a passing driver tooted his horn at her and laughed.
“Weirdo aliens. Should run 'em all outta town,” she grumbled.

“Wilburps, did that go good? No, I thinked
not either. Oh well, back to the sketchening surface. There is so
much they did not tell me to prepare me for the challenges.”

“Things are not well in Glocca Morra,
whatever that is.”

“What have I done to twisting around an axis
things up? The talk-talk here can be so confusing even when
graphic.”

“It is not you, but it may affect you,”
Wilburps said. “Messages from the producers have been going on and
then not on again
fritzerish
for a short time. Some messages
are lost to me with no way to know if they were important.”

Nerber considered that, then looked worried
and gestured for Wilburps to levitate himself to Nerber’s head
level to make it easier to inspect his control signals.

Wilburps did not react. Instead he said,
“Caution. The indicated action will make me conspicuous to any
inhabitants able to visually inspect us. That might not be for the
best.”

Nerber’s response was to silently repeat his
gesture.

When Wilburps did as directed, Nerber stepped
close and touched several spots in sequence which returned the
zerpy’s exterior to the metallic-with-strange-markings
configuration. Then he looked hard at the stripe around the boxy
device that allowed a zerpy of Wilburps’s type to view and record
everything around it. It could take in whatever seemed of
importance in any direction, three-sixty on the horizontal plane
with additional detectors on the bottom and especially the upper
surfaces to let it keep tabs on what was there. Ormelexian
technology included more than a few wonders, like zerpies that
could record in all directions and then process the input to
produce fine-focused images at any distance from it up to an earth
half city block away, all without moving parts.

Nerber kept his face close to the zerpy and
muttered to himself knowing that when he was so close his mouth
could not be seen by the visual system and since he was actually
muttering nonsense sounds even the zerpy’s acute auditory system
could not pick up signals it could translate into meaningful sounds
to report to the producers.

“The signal has cleared and you are told to
step back so you can be understood or you are useless for the
program,” Wilburps said.

“That must have been interference with our
signals due to factors in the planet’s atmosphere or the
inhabitant’s technologies that the producers did not anticipate.
Surely it will be a learning opportunity for them. You appear to be
working okey-my-dokey now.”

“Is there something you want to confide to
me, Nerber?”

“I am on an adventure of discovery but there
is some stuff I came with anticipation for. Be ready, be ahead, be
the winner.”

“Pithy but obscure. Request you put the
pieces in a row to make them all show your meaning with no secret
stuff.”

“Secrets make for more
I-must-see-each-episode-to-know-what-will-happen show material.
Every group guessing is good Pacification By Distraction With
Entertainment.”