Robert Silverberg - Amanda and the Alien

Grimly she went on to the finish. They rolled apart, panting, sweating.

“Well?” the alien said. “Did the earth move for you?”

“Yeah. Yeah. It was wonderful—Charley.”

“Oregano?”

“Sure,” Amanda said. She handed the spice jar across. “I always keep my promises, babe. Go to it. Have yourself a blast. Just remember that that’s strong stuff for guys from your planet, okay? If you pass out, I’m going to leave you right there on the floor.”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“Okay. You have your fun. I’m going to clean up, and then maybe we’ll go over to San Francisco for the nightlife. Does that interest you?”

“You bet, Amanda.” The alien winked—one eye, then the other—and gulped a huge pinch of oregano. “That sounds terrific.”

Amanda gathered up her clothes, went upstairs for a quick shower, and dressed. When she came down the alien was more than half blown away on the oregano, goggle-eyed, loll-headed, propped up against the couch and crooning to itself in a weird atonal way. Fine, Amanda thought. You just get yourself all spiced up, love. She took the portable phone from the kitchen, carried it with her into the bathroom, locked the door, dialed the police emergency number.

She was bored with the alien. The game had worn thin very quickly. And it was crazy, she thought, to spend the whole weekend cooped up with a dangerous extraterrestrial creature when there wasn’t going to be any fun in it for her. She knew now that there couldn’t be any fun at all. And in a day or two the alien was going to get hungry again.

“I’ve got your alien,” she said. “Sitting in my living room, stoned out of its head on oregano. Yes, I’m absolutely certain. It was disguised as a Chicana girl first, Concepcion Flores, but then it attacked my boyfriend Charley Taylor, and—yes, yes, I’m safe. I’m locked in the john. Just get somebody over here fast—okay, I’ll stay on the line—what happened was, I spotted it downtown, it insisted on coming home with me—”

The actual capture took only a few minutes. But there was no peace for hours after the police tactical squad hauled the alien away, because the media was in on the act right away, first a team from Channel 2 in Oakland, and then some of the network guys, and then the Chronicle, and finally a whole army of reporters from as far away as Sacramento, and phone calls from Los Angeles and San Diego and—about three that morning—New York. Amanda told the story again and again until she was sick of it, and just as dawn was breaking she threw the last of them out and barred the door.

She wasn’t sleepy at all. She felt wired up, speedy, and depressed all at once. The alien was gone, Charley was gone, and she was all alone. She was going to be famous for the next couple of days, but that wouldn’t help. She’d still be alone. For a time she wandered around the house, looking at it the way an alien might, as though she had never seen a stereo cassette before, or a television set, or a rack of spices. The smell of oregano was everywhere. There were little trails of it on the floor.

Amanda switched on the radio and there she was on the six a.m. news. “—the emergency is over, thanks to the courageous Walnut Creek high school girl who trapped and outsmarted the most dangerous life-form in the known universe—”

She shook her head. “You think that’s true?” she asked the cat. “Most dangerous life-form in the universe? I don’t think so, Macavity. I think I know of at least one that’s a lot deadlier. Eh, kid?” She winked. “If they only knew, eh? If they only knew.” She scooped the cat up and hugged it, and it began to purr. Maybe trying to get a little sleep would be a good idea around this time, she told herself. And then she had to figure out what she was going to do about the rest of the weekend.