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stopped laughing. But the aliens still looked like
cartoon characters.
To describe one was to describe the other. The
heads were large, like a gorilla's, with huge foreheads.
The eyes were wide-set. The nose was cute, like a little
peanut. Their hair was walnut-brown. They had a
kind of permanent five-o'clock shadow, like the cari-
catures of the first president of the United States to
have his name on a moon plaque: Richard M. Nixon.
Their complexion was a yellowish green; maybe they
had a little copper in their blood.
Their bodies were massive and looked strong. The
arms were a bodybuilder's delight. They were longer
than a human's; I'd bet they were exactly the right
proportions for a gorilla. Then again, I might still be
trying to justify my reaction; the forearms bulged too
much for the simian comparison. They were exactly
like cartoons--I thought of Popeye the Sailor and
Alley Oop. I couldn't figure out how Fly had kept
from laughing!
The big chest seemed even larger compared to the
narrow waist. I couldn't help noticing a detail that Fly
would probably miss: the tailoring of their clothes was
first-rate. They wore a sort of muted orange flight suit
with lots of vest pockets. Except for all the pockets,
the suits were surprisingly similar in design to
standard-issue combat suits, Homo sapiens model.
Some of the aliens didn't wear clothes at all, or if they
did, I couldn't tell. It was reassuring to find these
similarities to ourselves in our new-found friends.
They even had cute little combat boots so I couldn't
check on how far the gorilla comparison actually
went.
There was no doubt about these guys being friends.
"Welcome to you," they said in unison. All that was
missing was a reference to the lollipop guild. There
was some serious English teaching going on here.
"Are you brothers?" Fly asked before I could.
"We are of the Klave," they said.
"Can you speak individually?" I asked.
"Yes," they said in unison.
I was good. I didn't laugh. While I was working to
keep a straight face, Fly took command of the situa-
tion. He stood up from the relaxichair, which seemed
to sigh as he departed, and touched one member of
the dynamic duo.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"We are of the Klave."
He repeated the procedure with the next one and
received the same answer. Then he followed up:
"That's your race? Your, uh, species?"
Magilla number one looked at Magilla number two.
I think they were deciding which one would speak so
we wouldn't suffer through the stereo routine again.
One of them answered: "The Klave R Us."
"How many?"
The other took his turn. "Going to a trillion less.
Coming from a hundred more."
A general would like slightly better information. I
joined Fly. He was on one side of them so I took the
other, effectively bracketing them. Now we had a
m9nage 0 quatre.
I touched the one nearer to me and asked, "Do you
have a name separate from the other?"
"Separate?" he asked. Apparently there were some
problems with the English lessons.
"This part of we?" asked mine. I nodded.
They put their heads together. They weren't doing
any sort of telepathy. These guys were whispering the
same sentence. Sounded like a tire going flat.
Then they looked up at the same time. Mine spoke
first: "After looking to your special English ..."
"Americanian," Fly's gorilla picked up the sen-
tence.
"We are giving ourselves to a name," mine finished.
Then we stood there like four idiots waiting for
someone to say something. We'd succeeded in getting
them to speak separately, but now they played
sentence-completion games. What the hell, at least
they gave themselves a handle: "We are Sears and
Roebuck. We are your friend. We will take the battle
to all enemies, and together we fight the Freds."
Alone. Silence. She drifted down deserted streets.
In the late afternoon the temperature dropped
quickly. Jill put her windbreaker back on, but she was
still cold. She didn't like coffee, but she was glad to
have the hot cup in her hand; and she needed the
caffeine. Swirling the remains in the Styrofoam cup,
she looked thoughtfully at the light brown color that
came from two powdered creams. But it still tasted
bitter, just like coffee. At least she had managed to
find food in the abandoned grocery store.
The sun was at a late afternoon slant, making
objects caught in the light stand out from their
surroundings. She was grateful she had sunglasses.
She was less grateful that she was lost. Something
had gone wrong with Ken's plan. He'd talked the
captain of the sub into meeting her, but only if she
arrived on schedule. She hadn't. The sub was long
gone by now. Captain Ellison couldn't be expected to
endanger his crew any longer than necessary. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]