Joseph Delaney - Partners

“Who does?” Mel quipped. “Oh-oh, they see me.”

“They sure do, Mel. They’re scared. They’re gathering. One of the cats is dead. I saw an alien come out of the barn holding it up by the tail. But he dropped it when you showed up and now he’s in the crowd somewhere.”

“You know what I think, Alice? This bunch didn’t come on any space ship, they’re savages. I don’t think they’re hostile, either. I think we ought to call the sheriff off, at least for now, and try to make friends with them.”

“Make friends? Mel, they’ve invaded our home. They’re after our animals. They killed our cat.”

“They might be starving for all we know, Alice. The cat was meat, and they wouldn’t know these aren’t wild animals. I’ll bet they don’t even know what a farm is, or a house, for that matter. They may not realize there’s an inside to it. I think it’s worth a try, Alice.”

“No, Mel…”

“You can cover me from the second floor window—and I’ll take the twelve-gauge. They won’t know what it is. They’ll probably figure it’s some kind of club.” Mel was already out of the tractor’s cab, and walking slowly toward the house and the crowd.

Before Alice could say anything more he added, “I’ll call you back before I get too close, Alice. I’m going to hang up and call the sheriff—tell him to surround us but not to move in. We’ll be all right, Alice.” There followed a click.

By the time Mel was within shooting range of the crowd he had finished his call and was back on the line with Alice. “They’ll cooperate, Alice. I talked to Eddie, too. He agrees this is a good idea.”

“Naturally, he would,” Alice replied sarcastically. “He’s not the one who’ll get shish-kebobbed if you guessed wrong.”

“If we don’t do it this way the government will move in and take our farm away from us. They’ll hog everything. We’ll be ruined. This way, we keep control. We can count on our neighbors, but not on strangers.”

“Maybe we can,” Alice argued, “but are they up to it? We don’t know where these people came from or how many there are.”

“Eddie thinks it’s a parallel world,” Mel beamed. “He says it’s as good an explanation as any, especially considering nobody saw anything in space. He says there’s probably a hole that’s been there for billions of years, that opens and closes periodically. That’d let things mix a little, if animals went in both directions. Eddie says that explains some of the structural similarities; animals that originated here went through and took totally different evolutionary paths from what they had here. Some that went extinct here thrived over there. All we’d have to do to find out for sure is go through and have a look around.”

“I’m not curious enough to risk becoming the widow Simmons,” Alice replied, the sarcasm gone front her tone. “You’d better find a way to warn these things that I’ll blast the first one who raises a spear at you.”

“They’d have done it before now if they planned to, Alice. Only some of them have real spears. The rest have atlatls—they can throw them. Probably coulda’ hit me a long time ago. They didn’t even raise them. I don’t think these people are looking for trouble.”

Mel continued his advance until only about 100 feet from the nearest of the strangers. He had unfolded the phone’s head clamp so he could talk with both hands free. “I’m sure this is just a hunting party now, Alice. And from here, I can see that all the weapons have stone points.” He raised his arm and waved at the strangers.

When every one of them waved back and none raised a weapon Mel was sure he was right, and he told Alice so. “You said TV was a waste of time, Alice, but I learned a lot from the nature programs, including that most primitive people usually aren’t very warlike.”

“And here I thought you watched because you liked to see the naked women,” came her riposte. “If you don’t mind, I’ll keep my finger on the trigger.”

“Fine, just don’t shoot anybody. Uh—Alice, do you think we could spare a couple of chickens?”

“Now you want to give them my chickens?”

“No. I want to throw a party, and we’ll need some refreshments. Why don’t you come on out, Alice?”

“To do the cooking?”

“The sheriff’s got the crowd covered, Alice. Every one of these guys is in the sights of somebody’s rifle by now, there’s no danger.”

“Sez you? OK, Mel, but I’m not only keeping my shotgun, I’m bringing your thirty-eight.”

“Bring some matches too, Alice. That ought to impress these guys.”

It did indeed. It scared them at first and left the savages in reverent awe of everything else Mel did afterward. He had become, in one faint spark, and with a whiff of sulfur, the most accomplished magician they had ever seen.

Alice was completely disgusted, and went off to select a couple of chickens for the feast. She too, created a sensation when she disemboweled these with a stainless steel knife and washed them under the stream of water from the backyard pump. By the time that was over there wasn’t any danger of violence, the strangers were in total awe of their human hosts.

So they sent for Eddie, who arrived in a timely fashion, shortly after the eating started. Gerald Aberg was with him. The fact that both of them agreed with all Mel’s theories disgusted Alice almost as much as the smug attitude this had produced. Mel could be insufferable at times, and this was one of them.

Nobody understood anything the other bunch said, of course, but there did turn out to be plenty of common gestures. Sticks provided the means for crude drawings, which soon appeared to confirm Eddie’s parallel world idea.

The entrance to Earth, it seemed, was like a tunnel between two soap bubbles, apparently surrounded by a halo of some sort, which Eddie believed was simply daylight showing through. “It probably works the other way, too,” he remarked, “and that would explain the glow you saw when that last monster came through. Their days are out of synch with ours.”

To confirm the theory Mel used his cell phone to call the sheriff and give him the vector. Only a few minutes later the news came back—there was indeed an opening between the worlds. Also, there being a strong probability that pesty little creatures might wander through it and infest local crops they put a guard on the hole. If it developed that the site was stationary they would later consider installing some kind of door on it.

The feast went on.

Mel and Alice had retired as soon as the aliens had bedded down for the night. Their farm was like a boy scout camp, with about half of the sheriffs posse sacked out in the barn and two men up at the site of the hole, watching for other varmints that might come through.

The geese had not had time to become completely comfortable with the situation so whenever there was any movement down below they continued to give their alarm. Alice had no trouble sleeping through this. Mel did.

He looked at the clock when the latest interruption came, groaned at the time, four o’clock, and thought about how he would feel out on the tractor in this condition next day. He still had to finish that planting that was already late.

Nevertheless, when the honking continued beyond what he thought was normal, he got up and went to the window.

There were four or five men milling around outside the barn. The sheriff was one of them. He could see Eddie and Aberg were too, and the two aliens that Eddie had begun to call the “alpha pair.” The latter were gesticulating wildly but nobody seemed to be paying any attention to them.

Mel decided to go down. He put on his robe and slippers and tiptoed out, pausing by the door to grab his shotgun.