by Tim J. Myers.
It was Hump Day when they came. We were hard at the evening edition when the door banged open and they all walked in, six of them, making odd little chirrups that you could hear even over the click of computer keys and the steady beeping from the screens. Everyone looked up when they stopped in front of Mr. Frasca’s desk. They were dressed like people who go out of their way to find out about Blue Light Specials. We thought they were human.
“You may be calling me Three-gut,” the tallest one said, hoisting up his crisp new pair of designer jeans. “Is this a toilet paper?” All the typing stopped. Somewhere a phone was ringing. Mr. Frasca spoke up in authoritative tones, as a city editor should.
“What?” he said.
The tall one, Three-gut, said, “Understand not it?” Then he turned to one of the others in his group. What he said came out something like the hiss of an angry cat. His friend, an eager-looking guy in a knit shirt, pulled a big New World Dictionary out of a satchel, riffled furiously through its pages, ran his finger down a column, and then answered with a sound like a cat doing something else. Three-gut turned back to Frasca.
“This is the newspaper, Evening Tribune Herald, am I right now?”
We’d all noticed, with a strange sick feeling, how turquoise-colored hair was beginning to grow at an astonishing rate from behind Three-gut’s ears. “There’s hair growing behind your ears,” Mr. Frasca said, always alert to opportunities for leadership.
Three-gut smiled and leaned toward his group with a snide look. “Kookie, Kookie, lend me your comb!” he mimicked. They all laughed; it echoed like bad pipes in an old building. That was my first clue–but I took it all wrong.
“We are the Aliens,” Three-gut announced.
“You mean–undocumented workers?” Frasca asked weakly.
Suddenly there were three security guards at the door. Someone had called them, I guess. “You there!” one shouted. The Aliens spun around and instantly grew funnel-shaped fleshy appendages out of their shoulders. The funnels poked up through their shirt collars, pointing at the guards. The guards fell. Then, as a group, the Aliens turned around nonchalantly and pointed their funnels at us. “Don’t move–we got you covered–we know you’re in there!” one shouted, and the rest howled with laughter, the shortest of them stomping his Beatle boots on the floor in uncontrollable glee.
And so, five minutes later we were all in Frasca’s office, we humans standing while the Aliens sat cheerful and relaxed in the chairs.
“Gentlemens, let us be explaining,” Three-gut began. “We are from where you call Giclas 51-15, Planet Three. We are having a mission here on this ‘Earth’-planet. We have here been coming to find this one”–he paused to consult a scrap of paper–“this one Tom Conver.” Everyone gasped and looked at me. “He is to be worker for us. You were notified some times ago.”
“Notified?” Frasca repeated, almost whispering. Then Sonia Kitrich spoke up–her usual hard-bitten-journalist schtick.
“That’s it, Chief!” she hollered, “The Arrecibo message! You guys remember–that signal everyone was arguing about last year? It must have been real!” Frasca lost his facial color and we all ran memory checks. “Yeah,” Frasca said, “I remember.” He turned to address the Aliens. “So what do you want with Tom Conver?” His renewed belligerence flagged somewhat as he noticed the shoulder-funnels again.
“Zriggitick!” Three-gut barked at the dictionary-man, who whipped into Webster again and then shot back some metal-smacking-metal reply. “Spokesperson,” Three-gut said, smiling.
I jumped up. “Mr. Frasca, this is great!” I said. “It’s got to be an exclusive! Can you think of a bigger story? The Trib will have rights–”
“Sorry I am, pilgrim,” Thee-gut broke in. “My colleague who is standing here the next to me, Stringlike-Sexual-Parts, is this Official Press Representative. Have pre-empted all story rights and copyright privileges, Terran and Giclasian. So you are the Tom Conver?”
“Yes,” I murmured, somewhat crestfallen but loath to force the issue. “So if you don’t want a reporter, what do you want me for?”
All the Aliens stood up. Three-gut’s turquoise hair had disappeared, but now they all wore satisfied looks on their faces and little bits of pink fuzz on their foreheads.
“Talk for us, you must,” Three-gut said, “to the Miss Universe Incorporated. Come now with us.”
They turned toward the door. I reached for my jacket and followed them out, feeling distinctly overdressed. And that was when I got the first inklings of what was really going on.
We took a cab to Howard Johnson’s. They must have had reservations; everything was ready. When we entered the room they all sat down and just looked at me. Stringlike-Sexual-Parts was munching on some Doritos he’d bought from a vending machine, showing an eerie familiarity with its operation. I sat on the bed. Everything was quiet. For a while I studied the chartreuse carpet. Then I blurted out, “It was the television, wasn’t it?”
They all nodded, the pink fuzz gone now. Guilt welled up in me and I hung my head. All those signals, all those years, streaming out in every direction at near-light velocity! And with their home-planet light-years away, they were always a little behind, always watching shows from a decade or two ago. They’d come to punish us, to destroy us. We were all going to die or be enslaved–and for the likes of Milton Berle, David Hasselhoff, and Kim Kardashian.
“Yes, yes, TV,” said one of them, continuing pleasantly after a short pause. “I am Nasal-Master. Been very pleased to make you, Tom Conver. Already you know Three-gut and Stringlike-Sexual-Parts. To be introducing all us others: This here-over is Duodenum, this being Split-Spleen, and this one He-of-the-Lovely-Orifices. Now we are all being known to you. Questions you must have for the sure!”
With no idea where to start, I said the first thing that came to mind.
“Why the funnels, and the pink fuzz, and the hair behind the ears? Are they body parts or something?”
He-of-the-Lovely-Orifices spoke up. “Hi, Tom Conver. Right on. I am of this mission the Science Representative. Can you dig a hole. So I will be explaining. Giclasians grow these thing when showing the feelings. Like if I am getting mad I get–what are you calling them? Oh yes. Fennels. And the ear-hair when wanting to know something. This is clear as mud, yessir?”
“I think so,” I answered slowly, “but–it isn’t always easy to understand the way you talk.”
“Don’t to worry!” Orifice chuckled. “I have been the studying of America slang. This will be cool.” He gave me a huge wink.
“Okay,” I said, less than reassured. I found myself looking at the landline—but then wondered who I could possibly call. “So how did you find me, out of seven billion people?”
Orifice smiled and stepped two fingers across the naugahyde arm of his Laz-E-Boy. “Let our fingers do the walking, okay? But had to go, what all you now say, online.”
“Right. Of course.” What goes around comes around. Then I paused, hoping my next question wouldn’t violate some obscure Giclasian code of etiquette. “So why are you here? And how are you going to get people to believe you’re really extraterrestrials–I mean the people who don’t see you in person? You look human, you know.”
“Oh, for you, the why of it, that is for later learning,” Three-gut put in. “Your job to do now is call the Miss Universe managing persons and have us get a meetings with them. For tomorrow is okay; we are not being too busy then. If the Earth world wants to prove we are from this other planet, they will be knowing almost”–he stopped and glanced at the digital on his wrist, then looked up at me suddenly. “This is having a stopwatch too, do you know?” he said proudly, holding his arm up. “See? Just like on QVC! Anyway–Earth population will be proved we are from Giclas Three just almost…now!”
“What’d you do?! What’ve you done?!” I yelled, jumping up, my stomach in spasm. Scores of black-and-white movies raced through my head at cybernetic speed. I pictured the Himalayas exploding, people sizzling in radiated streets, the Fred Q. Lewis Building shattered by particle beams.
Split-Spleen looked over at the velvet bullfighter on the wall and yawned. He pointed at me. “He is been acting like Bill Bixby, is not he?” Then he mimicked me in a high voice–“Uncle Martin, Uncle Martin, what have you done?”
“I was always liking “Courtship of Eddie’s Father’ myself,” said Duodenum seriously, as he skimmed the Gideon Bible.
Three-gut looked at me. “Simply we have blacking out all these commercial advertisings,” he said. “If this is not working, we must will take away the cartoons, of the children.”
I sat in disbelief, my mouth working ineffectually.
“We were going to have,” he continued, “this–what is it? Yes, power-blacking-out–all this whole world over–but was already done in ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still.’ Did you be seeing it? Black and white, but much enjoyable.”
“Don’t be forgetting that one ‘Twilight Zone’,” Duodenum added, “when the character is clicking the magic stopwatch and the whole world is stopping.”
“So we just have made all commercial advertisings to not show on the air or Interwebbing,” Three-gut finished. “Transmitted this message up to our base on your moon’s farther no-seeing side. They did the jamming.”
I ran to a window. Everything seemed normal outside. Yet I imagined I could hear a vague but growing roar in boardrooms and offices and advertising departments across the nation: sales dropping, presidents with wrathful countenances shaking their fingers, pale ad-execs clutching graphs. Trembling, I looked at the Aliens. Miniscule lilies of innocence began to branch from their noses.
“Is not so bad,” Three-gut said, putting his hand on my shoulder, at which I felt not the slightest trace of sliminess; in a dark room I would have thought it human. “We are only hitting U.S., China, Germany, Japanese, UK, French-Fry, India, and Brazil.” He punched me playfully in the shoulder. “A smart cookie is knowing where the bucks is, eh?”
Orifice chirped up from the back of the room. “Like, who loves you, baby?” They all laughed. Duodenum crossed the room intently and switched on the set.
I learned more in the limo next day, on our way to the board meeting I’d managed to set up with the Miss Universe people. The story of the Aliens’ arrival and subsequent demands was everywhere by now, what with all commercials beamed out and the violence on Wall Street and in Beijing. The Aliens knew their economics, I had to admit–and their sociology. In one stroke they’d brought us all to heel. There was anxious anticipation in the air, even in the warm afternoon sunlight of the city.
We were on a crosstown expressway in the big rented limo–with a very white-faced chauffeur–when Three-gut told Nasal-Master to give me more “background.” Nasal groaned. “But is coming on the ‘TMZ!!'” he said pitifully, pointing to the little portable that came with the stretch. Three-gut began vibrating his ears at the reluctant Nasal. “All right, okay it is,” Nasal said with a pout, little pieces of yellow spaghetti wiggling from his chin. Then he turned to me.
“Now, Tom Conver, be listening. You is the Terran representative liaison contact person, am I correct, yes? Okay. What are these more questions you would have?”
I told him again that I didn’t know why they’d come.
“Listen, you will be knowing in a whiles. You must be realizing how deflating these too-early press leaks can be. Just now, think over this one: We are not liking so much this big image problem all Giclasians are having on this planet. Major PR turn-around–this is part of our orders.”
“What’s that got to do with the Miss Universe contest?” I asked.
“That is being the whole symbolic of the problem!” Nasal exclaimed indignantly, sneaking a look as Harvey Levin giggled his way through quick cuts of police cuffing a huge-breasted blonde and a young man urinating in a janitor’s plastic bucket.
“Then why aren’t your women here?” I said. “You do have women, don’t you? It’s for women, females–the contest, I mean. You know?”
He looked at me as if I’d tried to tell him space is a vacuum. “So I have been hearing,” he answered sarcastically. “Tom Conver, I took a full universities degrees in Competitive Programming Format. I haven’t been missing one of these beautying pageants in fifteen of years. Aren’t you knowing what kind of shares they are always getting?
“Now in being this answer to your question: You must be understanding. On Giclas Three our females is not at all the same as us males. Star-lit nebulae, they are so lovely-seeing! But not in Earth ways. They are…they look as…” He groped for words, then shot a terse exhaust-pipe cough or two over at Stringlike-Parts, who had the big New World on his lap. Tearing himself from the screen, Stringlike again riffled madly through the book, then shot back, “Insectoid…and…amphibian.” He shut the dictionary and turned back to the program.
“Those…that’s what your women are like?” I asked, trying to hide my shock. I envisioned probosces, multi-lens eyes, bubbled green skin. Images from a hundred films unfit for time slots before 11 p.m. came rushing in.
“Yes, yes,” Nasal said wistfully. “Much sexy boom-boom dimorphism in our species. We are thinking maybe not too smart-like to bring them this first trip. Being a little…pre-mature, yes.”
I repressed the images. “Okay, so I’ll wait to find out what you want me to do,” I said. “But I have to know one other thing. Why the hell me, out of all the millions of reporters on this planet?”
“Oh, is easy,” Nasal laughed. “You are living near the Miss Universe office-places, for the one thing. Convenient. But more being important, it was what you were writing back in the five years ago. Now where may be that clipping?” He turned to Stringlike again, belching something out. Without taking his eyes off the screen, Stringlike removed a yellowed newspaper clipping from his madras jacket and passed it over. “May I be reading it to you?” Nasal asked me politely. I nodded. “You remember yes the writing of your doing for the pageant of the year when Miss Argentina won?” I nodded again. “Then well,” Nasal began, and read it out loud, like a schoolboy from a history book: “This year’s pageant was a disaster of cosmic proportions. Surely there must be talented and beautiful women somewhere–anywhere! This year’s winner is as plain of face and mind as any female being in the Orion Section of the Milky Way…” He folded up the clipping and smiled at me. “Then well,” he said, “you surely are figuring out the rest. We were finding ourselves muchly impressed by you. And right you are being! Some of these females in the Orion Section planets–whew, I am remembering bad about it I can tell you! Ugly is for the sure!”
In a haze of confusion and disbelief I looked out the window. Buildings along the expressway blurred past. I felt scattered, helpless, unable to grasp what was happening. But suddenly my thoughts crystallized. “Wait! I’ve got it!” I yelled–disturbing none of the “TMZ” fans whatsoever. I’d just realized they were frauds, and that I had proof.
“It’s your English!” I blurted out. “I knew something was off! Listen, if you watch all this Earth TV and study and take degrees and all, why are your word patterns so weird? Explain that one if you can!” I sank back in the seat, reveling in my sudden triumph.
“Nasal, zingin nish kipockop!” Split-Spleen shouted over to us with delight. “They are showing this starlet getting out of limo, without of the underwears!” Nasal snuck a hungry look at the tube, glanced nervously at the still-hypnotized Three-gut, then turned back to me.
“Now, where were we being?” he said. “Oh yes.” He gazed at me in obvious confusion, a small patch of little tan flakes sprouting slowly from his right temple. I knew sincere confusion-flakes when I saw them, no matter what I wanted to believe. And of course he had the answer.
“Oh, Tom Conver,” he said, “You are making the ache in my brain bones. On Giclas Three, television is only up on the air some of the times–we are picking up only what we could! And TV sets doesn’t grow on trees, you are knowing! Besides of the which, there is lots of good TV coming from the no-English countries here on this Earth. I me personally love those Japanese monstering ones. Those are being great! My mother is the liking of Scandinavian public television–she has write many articles of it. Someday swearing I will read one. So when we are being students we are doing the work on all of the other language also. Have you once watched the funny funny commercials on the Johnny Carson? Aren’t you cracking up when all this little Japan boy are making the gas bubbles in the bathtub, of the hind end? I could be telling you!”
As Nasal chuckled over that one we pulled in under the canopy of the Rissendorf Towers, where the Miss Universe offices were. But none of them would even get out of the car until TMZ was over and the evening news began.
They weren’t big on the news.
I’d never seen a Bert Parks in person before, not a real one, but there he was–and without a tux. This one was Bert the Fifth. He looked more like the original than any of the others had. Maybe he’d last longer too. But whatever happened, the name would endure, its marketing value and drawing power intact, no matter who ritually assumed it–and the cosmetic surgery–in the pageant’s almost pharaonic succession.
The lines of Bert V’s mouth were pulled taut. All of the Miss Universe officials looked as pale as he did, sitting ramrod straight in their high-backed chairs. The room was big and half-dark, with pale sunlight at curtained windows. There were no reporters but me, the rest of my breed all processing away at whatever embellishments they could lacquer onto what was, so far, the non-story of the century. I found myself recalling Nasal’s descriptions of Giclasian females; if my colleagues thought it was tough to find a human-interest angle at this point, they were in for an even bigger shock.
I’d seen some of the morning papers. The Chinese and the Russians were sucking up as bad as we and the Mexicans were: “Great Leap Forward,” “A New Age,” “Galactic Cultural Exchange,” etc. But all of the international ballyhoo seemed wildly incongruous, and very far away. I was sitting with a committee’s worth of petrified boobeaucrats and a bunch of aliens who looked and acted more like members of a summer bowling league. I knew I was witnessing an earthshaking event–but it sure didn’t feel that way.
The Aliens sat on one side of the big polished table. Split-Spleen rubbed a finger across its gleaming surface and then sniffed at the finger; I heard him whisper to Duodenum, “Lemon Pledge?” They all looked, as usual, well-rested and cheery, talking quietly among themselves, sometimes in English, sometimes like quiet little garbage disposals with spoons in them. The five Miss Universe people, including Bert V, sat in stiff sartorial elegance across the table, looking more like cadavers than executives. The Aliens looked like Midwestern farmers playing tourist at a wax museum. Split-Spleen’s stone-washed jeans and Duodenum’s leisure suit only confirmed the impression.
The pageant people had what seemed to be a battery of experts standing behind them. I guess they figured anything might come up.
“Gentlemens and the ladies,” Three-gut began in expansive tones, “we are from the planet as you know Giclas Three and we are having this business proposition for you. This man Tom Conver here is our Terran spokesperson guy, who is to be telling us if we are, as you say in American, screwdriving up our wordings. But you are to please be…be…Itzikotta! Trigdish mensippitat!” He turned to Stringlike-Parts, who whispered back after some hectic searching, “Patient!” “Yes,” Three-gut resumed, “you must being patient with us and our speaking of English. We have the knowing of course this dictionary is slow, but our Off-system Translator is not in the working. We have done the ordering of new parts at the Apple Store, but for the now we must all be the patients.”
“Commander….Three-gut.” A silver-haired man with a deep suntan spoke up from the midst of the Miss Universe group, in the tentative tones of someone who had once graciously assumed leadership but no longer wished so fervently to do so. “Mr. Three-gut, I’m Edmund Donalto, Chairman of the Board here at Miss Universe. These are the other board members. Yes, well. We’re a little in the dark about all this, you see. The phone call from the President was quite a shock, to say the least. But we certainly will cooperate! Uh…just what is it that you…have in mind?” Mr. Donalto sounded fairly cogent and controlled, but when he looked over at Three-gut I could see the fear plain in his eyes.
Three-gut leaned on the table. Two little teeth began growing out of his cheeks. “I am the wondering of how to say this,” he began. “Be pardoning us, if you please will.” With that, he made a gesture to either side and the Aliens huddled to confer. After a moment, Three-gut cleared his throat and began again.
“The problem is it the Miss Universe beautiful pageant. We on Giclas Three are thinking it is…not so good…about females…–it is not how you here say …’fair?'” He looked tentatively across the table.
Before anyone could reply, Bert V was suddenly on his feet. “I knew it!” he bellowed, and the Aliens immediately grew beards.
“I knew it! I’m so sorry, so very sorry!” Three-gut looked at him in complete consternation, unbearded but temple-flaked by this time. “We knew it was wrong!” Parks continued hysterically. “We all did! Everybody here–oh yes we did! We knew! Listen, my wife said if I ever treat her like some beauty queen she’d let me have it–right in the kisser! And she meant it! ‘You can act like a sexual ringmaster in public,’ she says, ‘because I don’t mind the six figures and the Caddy and the south of France. But just don’t pull any of that crap at home!’ God, I knew she was right! We all did! And the feminists howling! But the people wanted it, the American public, the world audience! We had a forty-share! Our Nielsens were through the roof! The network treated us like kings! My mother loved the show! She was so proud of me…oh, all right, she’d complain when Miss USA didn’t at least make runner-up, but…” Here he paused, then seemed to come to his senses. He looked around the table, suddenly trembling uncontrollably. No one spoke. At that he sat down quickly and buried his well-constructed face in his hands.
After a heavy silence Three-gut shook his head, as if shaking his thoughts back into place. “Be pardoning us, good persons, we must be consultating about all that…” he said, and again they huddled. This time it took a full five minutes. There seemed to be some disagreement on the semantics of Bert V’s statement. Stringlike-Parts kept hissing insistently about the word “sexist,” “sexist” this and “sexist” that, while Orifice came back with equal force each time about “sexy.” Finally Three-gut put an end to the argument by growing a little smoking tendril out of his index finger and pointing it at the two disputants. They sat back, still mad but obedient. Then Three-gut addressed the whole room again, laying his hands flat against the shining tabletop in a shaft of light from the window.
“You are misunderstanding,” he started. “We are not meaning to say that exactly. Hey, like you are knowing, this is not the Oprah program! What we are not liking is the name of this beautifying pageant. You people are calling it the ‘Miss Universe.’ We are thinking this is not…not…acupuncture.” He gave everyone a quizzical look. “Is that a right word?”
“‘Accurate,'” I said quietly.
“Oh yes. Think you, Tom Conver,” Three-gut said, smiling at me. “Accurate I am meaning. This name of it is not accurate. Like your own language is saying, this universe is being a big place, no small potatoes, Home of the Whopper, am I being right?”
At this the officials, in turn, stared across the table in bewilderment, then huddled quickly together, talking low and fast, a shrillness discernible even in their whispers. Nasal-Master, in the meantime, had signaled to one of the distinguished types standing behind the officials’ chairs. A dark-haired woman in a silk business suit came over when he beckoned her, her features rigid and lips pale. “Has anyone been telling you you look much like Alice on ‘The Brady Bunch?'” Nasal whispered to her, a kindly and interested look in his eyes. It struck me suddenly that he really meant it, that he was reaching out–or at least trying to hit on her. Maybe it was their usual singles-bar opening gambit, the equivalent of “Don’t I know you?” The woman smiled tightly, stood there for a moment not knowing what to do, then nodded stiffly at him and returned to where she’d been standing before–apparently in defiance of Giclasian custom, judging by Nasal’s green-lipped perplexity.
Just then I noticed Donalto and the others conferring hurriedly with a slender professorial type. The man kept nodding as they talked. There were tasteful oval patches on the elbows of his jacket and a university air about him. After a minute or two, during which the Aliens amused themselves with paper clips and their digital watches, Donalto spoke up to resume the proceedings.
“Mr. Three-gut and…gentlemen. We believe we understand now what it is you’re trying to express. We think so, anyway. So I’ve asked Professor Stavig here, who is a well-known anthropologist, to speak to this issue on our behalf. Professor?”
Stavig stood and looked across at the Aliens, somewhat like a deer caught in headlights. I could see a lot more of the whites of his eyes than I supposed would otherwise have been the case.
“Sirs,” he began, settling down a bit as the words came, “our planet has endured a long history of shoddy thinking, and nothing better exemplifies this narrowness than the very problem you have set before us today. For centuries man has defined himself by his own confined native territory, limiting himself to the status quo of insulated concepts and parochial institutions. Even as global contact proliferated, this narrowness of outlook persisted, simply moving into newer forms and assuming variant parameters. Some of our greatest minds have been relentlessly persecuted for daring to question basic human myopia, for reaching, as it were, for a cosmic Gestalt. Galileo, Copernicus, Huygens, Carl Sagan–we are a backwards race, though we have produced such as these. And now in our own solipsism we have given offense to a great galactic civilization…”–here I noticed Duodenum rolling his eyes and whispering to Split-Spleen, “PBS!” “We can assure you,” Stavig continued, resonant now as a big drum, “that a new phase of human history has dawned today, here in this room; a new interface has, in fact, been established; a new artifice constructed; here in this very room a template, a paradigm, a Weltanschauung, a…a… Well, there will be no more geocentrism, no more ethnocentrism, no more anthropocentrism. You have our solemn pledge…”
Stavig suddenly stopped short, like a tape being punched off. Sudden tension ran through the room as everyone looked up. I could see Stavig quivering, his eyes fixed on Three-gut, who had just lifted his arm. I had a hunch Stavig was thinking about life insurance. Three-gut, clearly confused at the sudden pause, followed the professor’s gaze to his own arm. “Oh, I am being sorry,” he said, “my head was having some of an itch. But I am glad you have come to a stopping. Because I am not understanding this exactly too much, meaning no offensives. Could you tells us the exactly of it?”
Stavig looked as if he were about to cry. “Yes, yes, of course,” he said in a little voice. “We’ll be happy to scrap the pageant.”
The Aliens sat straight up in shock, and their eyebrows all turned neon magenta. “Scrap?!!” Three-gut intoned in horror. He turned to Stringlike-Parts but saw him already well into the dictionary, flipping the pages crazily. “Yes, yes!” Stringlike spurted, as if the worst and least likely possibility was in fact quite true and perfectly imminent. “Yes! ‘Scrap: to do away with, to abandon, to consign to the junkhip’!!” Three-gut turned to the officials again, conspicuous shoulder lumps struggling under the collar of his turtleneck sweater. “This must NOT!” he growled, slamming his fist on the table. “This must NOT!”
The directors sat in terror, like frogs just pithed, mouths slack and eyes bulging. Stavig had closed his eyes and was weaving in tight little circles where he stood. The Aliens sat sternly, like terrible wrathful deities out of Greek myth–except that Duodenum was wearing Disney sunglasses and Split-Spleen was still popping his gum. A fate-laden hush settled over the room. The impasse had terrified everyone; I knew it was my time to speak.
“Pardon me. May I interrupt?” I said it quietly, though there was no one to interrupt; I still wasn’t sure Three-gut’s bunch hadn’t stashed particle-beam weapons somewhere in their Levi’s.
Three-gut turned to me, his anger cooling slightly. “Yes, Tom Conver, speaking you may be. Just have in your remembering that you hold the…the…”–he whispered something vaporish to Stringlike-Parts and nodded glumly when the latter replied–“the fate of this planet Earth in your digits.”
That of course took all the pressure off, so I started right in. “Gentlemen, ladies,” I said, “I think we have a real communication problem here.” Lots of heads started bobbing very fast. “Just like ‘Cool Hand Luke’!” Duodenum said excitedly; Three-gut silenced him with a glance.
I went on. “If I could arbitrate a little–only verbally, I mean–it might help. I could start by asking the Miss Universe officials–do you stand by your offer to terminate the Pageant?”
Suddenly all their heads were moving side to side, not a whit less energetically than they’d gone up and down before. Bert V’s face was just a shade more marmoreally white than everyone else’s.
“That will be very helpful,” I said, then turned to the Aliens. Glistening multi-colored salami rolls of relief were sprouting from their forearms. “Whew!” Orifice said, mopping his brow; “I’m have had no such bad feelings since they were deciding to cancel ‘Taxi’!”
“Three-gut,” I continued, “I think I could clear up some of the other problems if you’d allow me to consult privately with your group…?”
And so, after five minutes in a sideroom with the Aliens, I came back to my chair feeling deep relief and listened with satisfaction as Three-gut announced, “Ladies and sirs, we are having only this one thing to asking you: Why not have our women been official invited?”
That feeling of relief was still with me three days later, at the airport.
It was a wonderful sensation. I’d felt it when I took the Aliens to Baskin-Robbins for a binge. I’d felt it when we visited the local TV studios. I’d felt it as I led them through the big new luxury shopping mall uptown, and then to a suburban Target, where they seemed to feel more comfortable. I’d felt it when they were asked dramatically about their journey to Earth–when they just looked at each other and shrugged, Nasal-Master saying brightly, “One thing was being certain–all the time as closer and closer coming, our reception was getting this lot better!” And I’d felt it when they would ask me to explain some recondite passage in People or the National Enquirer or Cosmo. So I stood there feeling it some more as I waited at the terminal windows watching their 747 streak down the runway on its way to L.A.
I could let the guilt slip away, the guilt I’d been carrying for the whole race, and the shame of what we might look like in a purer light. Because it wasn’t just us, the human race; we weren’t the only ones. All those TV signals! At last I knew we couldn’t be the only ones accused of littering–at least not by the Giclasians.
And I’d come to like them–a lot–in spite of all the shallowness in my world they’d forced me to look at. And that felt good too.
But standing there in the airport I got cocky. You’ve got them pegged, I thought to myself; Now you can close the book. It took a while longer to understand the whole situation.
After their trip to Disneyland and Universal Studios and the rest, they came back to town. Nasal-Master stopped by alone to see me–“to finish this conversation earlier being started,” as he put it. We sat in my cramped office, smiling at each other as stray reporters glanced furtively at us through the glass partitions as they passed. I felt a little funny without the rest of them there, especially Three-gut, and I thought Nasal did too–but I found out there was another reason for his uneasiness.
“Tom Conver, are you chancely remembering when I was the telling you of Giclasian females?” he began carefully. When I nodded he paused, then went on.
“Of doubtless you remember of which we had been talking” (he’d been boning up on his English, I could tell) “and of how much there are differences in the genders of my species. Ours women are much unlike yours…ours are more different of us males, as I was saying–and it’s more than just the breasts, the generals and this sub-cute-anus fat–”
He stopped, noticing the laugh I tried to suppress. “Am I said it wrong?” he asked.
“It’s ‘subcutaneous,'” I said. “‘Anus’ is…well, it’s not a polite word.”
“Funny-strange is that one,” he mused, looking off for a moment, “I am hearing just now a man saying it of someone down in the street. Well, anywise: Dearly Tom Conver–please don’t be getting of me wrongly. You know we will return for Miss Universe Pageant. And–I must be speaking of these topic because problems might still be hatching when we come back about it. We have been wondering if you maybe might help us again, with Earth people, and their thinking.”
I’d convinced myself that I understood them, and I was sure I knew what he was driving at. But I despaired of being any use to them this time. How could I help prepare humanity for the creatures it was going to have to face–and compete with in beauty pageants? But what he said next surprised me more than anything they’d ever said or done–even more than their coming in the first place. And then it all made sense.
“Please, Tom Conver. It is not a cases of us disliking these Terran women. It is only–only we know that much must need happen before you of Earth are truly ready for our women coming. Much aesthetic and physiological advance would be helping…but there willn’t be so much of time for that.”
My God, I thought suddenly–he’s talking down to me! He feels sorry for us! Because…our women…are–ugly!
“So–Tom Conver. I have no knowing about how to preparation of the people of this Earth. But there is maybe you can help your people by the hinting of they should not be setting too high the sights–like, not to being embarrassed. We are the talking of many millions of evolution years, be remembering, to get to the Giclasian femalehood.”
It grew very quiet. “Nasal,” I said softly, as he sat with his head lowered, imagining no doubt the suicides of scores of Playboy bunnies and super-models, “Nasal–are you so sure they’ll be well-received?”
He looked up like your grandfather does when he has an ice cream for you behind his back. “You never have been seeing the curving graceful of a South Giclasian tentacle, Tom Conver! I am having the envy for you, truly. The first time, to see them–falling in love it will be for you, like a new springtime.”
He got up to leave after I’d assured him–with all the sincerity I could muster–that I’d do what I could. But what could I possibly do or say that would make any difference? As he stood at the door I suggested they tell the whole story themselves, to the entire population of Earth. I knew they had the technology. He shook my hand warmly and said they’d talk it over.
But nothing happened before they left: no statements, no press conferences, no leaks. And by the time they’ve returned to their distant sun it will be too late. Giclas Three is 15.5 light-years away, and next year’s pageant is only ten months off. As Nasal said, they’re certainly not planning to miss it–especially not after all the trouble they took to invite themselves. And even with their mind-boggling tachyon-drive ships, even with their impossibly huge transmitters, they won’t be able to get a message this far in so short a time–if they even decide to send one. So no one on Earth but me will know until they get here.
Now that will be a story. And do you think the Miss Universe people have the foresight to put Jacques Cousteau and Marlon Perkins on their judges’ panel?
Besides, the newly christened Miss Third Galactic Arm Pageant is all over the world media by now. God only knows who else might show up.
I’ll get that exclusive yet.
END