How I Conquered Your Planet (11 page)

Before we could get any deeper into our conversation, the band
struck up a theme. The fat man stood up.

“
My music. You’ll excuse me for a few moments, I’m sure. It
wouldn’t do to have our Martian friends think I was anything more than just a
humble entertainer.”

He went up on stage and began singing gibberish while the other
performers whacked him over the head with oversized mallets.

“
Gibberty gibberty gib-gib-gib!

That’s what I always say!

Weeza weeza weeza wheeeeee!

What do you think of me now?”

His number ended with him staggering around the stage, blinded
by the constant attacks, finally letting loose with a big roundhouse punch that
knocked his own teeth out.

He came back to the table, bowing slightly to the audience to
acknowledge the applause. Then, after removing his fright wig and skunk tail
and spinning his eyes back to where they were before, he sat down.

“
Now we can talk,” he said.

”
Maybe I should talk to somebody else.”

That’s when the Martian police came up to my table. “You could
talk to us, General Burly.”

Heads turned at the mention of my name. The fat man looked
startled.

One of the policemen reached out to grab me. I had to think
fast.

“
Get back!” I warned him. “Just one word from me and that dog
will tear you to pieces.”

“
What dog?”

I took off running. He had called my bluff about the dog. I
hadn’t seen a dog in weeks.

As I crashed through the club, knocking over tables and waiters
and people who were trying to help me, I appealed to the people of Earth to
rise up and overthrow their alien overlords, starting with the alien overlords
who were trying to grab me by the scruff of the neck.

“
Kill them!” I pleaded wildly. “Revolution! Won’t somebody stop
these dirty filthy smelly Martians?”

As the dirty filthy smelly Martians handcuffed me and started
leading me away, I told them I wasn’t a traitor. It was all a joke. They said
it wasn’t a very good joke, and I said humor was very subjective, stupid. If
they were smart they would know that. What’s funny to one person is treason to
another. And vice versa. That got us discussing comedy theory and forgetting my
treason for awhile.

Finally the leader got tired of it. “Never mind about Abbott
and Costello. Let’s go.”

My trial didn’t last very long. Martian law says you can’t
defend someone in court unless you actually believe he’s innocent. They want
defendants to get a fair trial, but they don’t want to have to listen to a
bunch of bullshit. That meant no lawyer could defend me. Everybody knew I was
guilty. So I had to defend myself.

I’m glad I’ve never had to try to make my living as a lawyer.
It’s harder than driving a bus, I think. The prosecution had me in a hole right
from the start.

“
Are these letters to the Earth Underground which refer to the
Martian people as ‘insect-faced degenerates’ signed by you?” the prosecutor
demanded.

“
Yes!”

This admission caused a sensation in the court. After I had
finished tipping my hat to the excited crowd, I realized I shouldn’t have
admitted that.

“
No further questions,” said the prosecutor.

“
Wait a minute, I meant yes, BUT…”

“
You may step down,” said the judge.

“
My sentence isn’t over, your majesty.”

I tried to explain to the court that I hadn’t finished my
sentence yet. At least let me finish my stinking sentence. But they didn’t want
to hear anymore. The admission of guilt was enough. I could step down now.

I stepped down, but I didn’t like it. What about the rest of my
sentence?

As I was walking back to my seat, the judge, with a happy
inspiration, said I would be able to finish my “sentence” soon enough. A
“sentence” of “prison time”. Then he wrecked it by laughing too loud and too
long at his own joke.

The case for the defense was hamstrung from the start by the
fact that I was guilty of all the things I was charged with, and more. Still, I
gave it the old college try.

I tried to tell the court about my troubled childhood, and how
little my parents encouraged me and how many miles I had to walk just to sneak
a smoke, or slug a smaller boy, but they grew impatient. They weren’t
interested in my past, and didn’t like me at any age. I said if they would let
me continue, I was just about to get to my troubled teenage years, some of
which were R rated. But the judge overruled this whole line of reminiscences.
He wanted to talk about the trial.

Now I’d seen enough TV shows about trials to know that you’ve
got to surprise ‘em. The lawyer who wins is the lawyer with the biggest
surprises. So I showed up wearing different clothes everyday. And one day I
stood in a completely different spot. (There’s that imagination problem I was
telling you about). These were pretty surprising surprises, I thought. But the
prosecution lawyer surprised everybody even more by how much evidence he had
against me.

When it came time for the summing up, I laid out all of my
evidence, reminded the court that I was still offering that bribe I had mentioned,
then said to the judge: “You be the judge. You decide.”

“
Guilty,” he said instantly. “Prisoner is sentenced to death.”

I thought about this. “I’ll be the judge. I’ll decide.”

“
Take him away.”

“
Objection, your honor,” I said. I objected to being taken away.

“
Denied.”

“
Well, shit…”

I was taken to a maximum security prison to await my execution.
They slammed my cell door shut, then slammed it a couple of more times until
they felt they had made their point. Then they left me alone to face my doom.

“
Objection,” I said.

My first few days of confinement in a maximum security prison
were probably the low point of my life. I had to memorize my new name, which
was 0775321, learn the daily prison routine, get the hang of my new job in the prison
laundry, meet my new cellmates, all of whom had colorful hard-to-remember names
like Strangler and Knifey, all kinds of learning and memorizing. It made my
head hurt. I wished I was dead, then remembered I soon would be. That should
have cheered me up, but it didn’t.

I managed to keep my spirits up by singing loudly in my cell
all night long. And imitating a trombone. I learned Latin, which I’ve always
been meaning to do, but never had the time; then forgot it, which I always
figured would happen.

But no matter how high my spirits got, they always came
crashing down again when I noticed the calendar. The date of my execution had
already been set, and the more I sang in my cell, the more they moved it up. I
decided I’d better stop trying to make the best of things and start trying to
get the hell out of here. But I knew it wouldn’t be easy. If it was easy, I
would be alone in here. Everybody would have escaped already.

I asked around. The other prisoners didn’t know of any way to
escape off hand, but said if I found one they would appreciate being told about
it. Otherwise they’d kill me. The warden was no help. He wouldn’t even discuss
the subject. So I asked a guard.

“
Settle a bet for me,” I said casually, pretending this was just
a gambling question. “If someone wanted to knock your stupid head in and escape
– this is a hypothetical question, you understand…”

“
Yes, go on.”

“
How would he do it? When do you usually look the other way? And
what’s the quickest easiest way out of here once you’ve been disposed of?”

The guard wasn’t very helpful on this score. He didn’t think
knocking him on the head would work. Even if a prisoner did get past him, there
were other guards. And locked doors. And searchlights and vicious dogs. The
prison was escape-proof. Knocking him on the head would just be a waste of
time, in his opinion. He advised against it.

I realized I needed a better mind than mine working on this
problem, so, as many people have before, I turned to the great minds of
Hollywood. I went to the prison library and checked out an old 16mm copy of
“The Great Escape”. I had the prison projectionist run it over and over, while
I took notes, occasionally asking him to run it back so I could watch various
tunneling scenes again, and get ideas on shooting guards. I watched it so many
times my captors started speaking a little German. Just a few words they had
picked up like “schnell” and “raus”.

Once I had a pretty good idea of how to proceed, all I needed
were the proper tools.

One of the great things about being in prison is you can get
practically anything from the guards in trade for cigarettes. Of course the
guards aren’t supposed to be providing this service, but everyone knows it’s
going on. It’s an accepted feature of prison life everywhere. If a prison didn’t
have it, it probably couldn’t compete.

When I told one of the guards I needed a shovel, he looked in
all four directions to make sure no one was within earshot. Then, just to be
sure, he looked in a fifth direction I hadn’t noticed before.

“
That’s rather a tall order 0775321. What do you need a shovel
for?”

I had to think fast. “I collect them,” I said.

“
May I see your collection?”

“
No.”

“
Well, what particular kind of shovel do you need for your
collection?”

“
Doesn’t matter.”

“
Hmmm.”

“
Better get me some dynamite too.”

He looked at me questioningly.

“
For my collection,” I explained. “I might need to blow up my
collection.”

It ended up costing me 475 packs of cigarettes, but I finally
got my shovel. The guard was nervous about being found out, but he felt it was
worth the risk. He now had enough packs of cigarettes to retire.

The first tunnel I dug went under the prison showers, breaking
all the pipes. So there was no more hot water in the showers. Just hot water
everywhere else. Everybody was pretty mad about that. The next tunnel went
straight into the warden’s bedroom and up his right leg somehow. I was very
embarrassed when I climbed out of that tunnel carrying my suitcase. I had a lot
of explaining to do.

As my execution date grew closer, I dug more frantically. I
even paid other prisoners to dig, and was negotiating with a local construction
company. We had tunnels going everywhere. Eventually, as each tunnel was
discovered, it had to be sealed up, with a guard posted in front of it, and
another guard posted inside the tunnel in case you got past the first guard.

There were piles of dirt, busted up concrete, and broken pipes
everywhere throughout the prison.

One of the guards tried to reason with me. “We realize you
don’t want to be imprisoned here,” he assured me, “but we have problems too.”
He indicated all the debris he had just climbed over to get to me. “All this
debris. And these pipes. All this construction equipment. It just makes
everyone’s life more difficult.”

I said I was truly sorry, copper, and gave him my word I’d stop
digging tunnels. But I didn’t stop digging. I dug faster. I guess my word isn’t
worth much.

The other prisoners were as inconvenienced by all the
construction work as the guards were, and made remarks to me I won’t repeat
here. Even the prison chaplain said I was a jerk. He said this wasn’t just a
personal opinion. He said he could prove it. He said he had found something in
the Bible about it. That was disconcerting, but it didn’t slow me down.

The more I tried to escape, the more everyone except me looked
forward to the day of my execution. That’s why it surprised everybody when I
executed myself.

The one place in the prison that wasn’t guarded at all was the
execution chamber. It was felt that guards weren’t necessary. Prisoners did not
want to go there.

So one morning I just strolled in, stripped to my underwear,
put my clothes in the electric chair and turned on the juice. When the clothes
started to give off a nice charred smell, I turned off the current, got
dressed, sat down in the chair, took a deep breath, and played dead.

I didn’t have to wait long to be discovered. Electric chairs
eat up a lot of current. When you fire them up, even for a few moments, every
light in the prison dims under the load. Soon guards and prison officials were
running into the death chamber from every direction. When they saw me in the
chair, my clothes scorched, my body reeking, they knew I was dead.

They were wrong, but not by much. Back when I was living on
Mars, I had worked hard to learn to cloud men’s minds like all the other
Martians could do. But every time I tried to do it, my mind would stop. Then my
entire body would shut down and start to give off an intriguing smell. It
happened so often, eventually my body got used to being shut down for awhile.
So when the prison doctor checked me out, I appeared to be quite dead.