Mike Resnick - I, Alien

The walls melted. My head became a spray of huckleberries. The huckleberries grew and morphed into an office with a few inspirational wall hangings, a potted plant from the Dehutan sector, a desk, and, sitting at it, Remsee, my superior.

I use that last term lightly. You see, Remsee was a Wiee—a form of life evolved entirely from hand puppets. It was called inanimate evolution and it was all the rage some centuries ago. Manufacturers had started it to get their products to improve themselves by natural selection. They’d introduced accelerated recombinant evolution into household objects, then let nature take its course. The craze had ended in a flurry of lawsuits when a politically active band of intelligent suppositories attacked a ladies’ historical society luncheon, but certain vestiges remained.

“Xzchsthyl!” Remsee said. “It’s great to see you!”

I stayed wary despite this pleasantry. It was said the Wiee had no innate intelligence and so derived mental nutrition from the minds of everybody they conversed with. The process was not fully understood, but every time I talked to Remsee I had the distinct impression I was getting dumber.

“Where are you?” Remsee said.

“On Earth. Remember? I was sent to catch the Naag?”

He tipped his head to one side, making his eyeballs jiggle. “Oh, right. I hear they’ve got some wonderful hands on the planet.”

“I’m a poor judge,” I admitted.

“Fantastic knuckles,” he went on. “Very good bone structure. Some of the fingernails can snag, I hear, but wonderful overall.”

“Right. Listen, Remsee, I caught the Naag.”

“An aunt of mine got a job there working with a ventriloquist. Totally freaked everybody out. What did you say?”

“I said I caught the Naag. I’ve got him in custody.”

He looked thoughtful. He managed that by scratching the red fur of his forehead. “Right, right,” he said. “Xenoformer, isn’t he?”

“One-hundred plus worlds,” I said.

He nodded. “I remember. Thing is, Xzchsthyl, you’ve got to let him go.”

I couldn’t get sense out of that comment any way I looked at it. It was like drilling for orange juice inside a goat. “Did you say, ‘let him go?’ “

“I did.”

“But he’s a known xenoformer. And he plans to xenoform the Earth. Under article six million three hundred thousand eight hundred and fifty-two, any planet hosting indigenous intelligent life—”

He was nodding like people do when they can afford to concede your point because theirs is bigger. “And the human race does not meet the criteria for intelligence.”

I was mouth breathing by then. “Come again?”

“The council held a special meeting,” Remsee said. “They cited strip malls. Overdevelopment. Pollution. And Minnesota.”

“Did you say Minnesota?”

“Mmm. The council thought Minnesota was a particularly dumb idea.”

All the strength went out of me. It was obvious enough what had happened. The Naag had bribed someone. It wouldn’t be the first time. Only a year ago, for example, I’d nailed him for xenoforming a small reddish-brown world out by the Crab Nebula, and the judge had thrown the case out, saying the witnesses for the prosecution were a bunch of no good clowns. He had a point—they were second-rate performers from the victim planet. Kept snapping the bailiffs suspenders and throwing cream pies at the jury. But the Naag had also bribed the judge, and the larger issue was, the Naag had money. In the face of that, a mere bureaucracy is helpless.

“You’re to return to base immediately, Xzchsthyl,” Remsee said. “And bring a couple of hands back with you if you get the chance.”

I tried to talk some sense into him, but he was adamant, and by the time we disconnected I could not remember how to tie my shoes.

After my talk with Remsee, I stood looking through the bathroom window. In the playground near my building, a little crowd of children played. They were singing, laughing, jumping rope. One of them pushed another’s face into a mud puddle. They reminded me of another child, on another planet, many years ago. That other child was me. Granted I’d had several limbs, an exoskeleton, and had propelled myself around by means of air expelled through one giant nostril, but I’d been just as oblivious and innocent.

The Naag had xenoformed my homeworld all those years ago. His modus operandi then had been to move in, drive up the property values, slaughter 98 percent of the indigenous population, and then experience vague guilty feelings afterward and let the survivors open up casinos by way of partial restitution. My family had only made it out by becoming excellent croupiers, although I never mastered that particular skill myself—a fact that almost killed my father. Literally. The dice we used weighed several tons and I fumbled one and dropped it on his thorax.

I’d been chasing the Naag ever since, with gills one month and tentacles the next and feathers the next until I could not remember what I had originally looked or felt like. And finally, I had begun to see that I would never catch him. Because xenoforming paid well. Because he could afford the bribes. Because (as they also say on Earth) money talks, and there’s another corollary concerning ambulatory bovine fecal matter.

But I decided, then and there, looking out my rented bathroom window at those laughing Earthling children—playing, jumping, sticking chewing gum in one another’s hair—well, I decided Earth was off limits to the Naag. And if I couldn’t stop him legally… .

I went back to the living room and aimed the psychological injector at his head.

“Call it off,” I said.

“Call what—”

“The bribe.”

“What bribe?”

“I mean it, Naag. I’m not afraid to use this.”

He took a second, apparently to gauge how serious I was. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll help you. But I can’t call off the bribe. It’s too late for that now.”

I paused, my finger trembling on the trigger. “I’m listening.”

“The human race. You can get them legally protected.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “They produce the cure for chronic ullnik.”

Chronic ullnik. A terrible and fully hypothetical disease. It attacked organs that its victims had never bothered to evolve. The phantom pain was said to be excruciating.

“The human race produces the cure,” the Naag went on. “By accident. It is a mix of waxy yellow buildup, unsightly nail fungus, and household soap scum. I came across it by accident in a public lavatory.”

“And you expect me to believe that?”

“I’ve got proof. It’s with my partner.”

“What partner?”

He answered rapidly, possibly because I’d put the injector’s business end in his left ear. “The Sublukhar,” he said. “I’m working with the Sublukhar.”

I shuddered when I heard that. I knew the Sublukhar as well. Another xenoformer, huge and sluglike, brutally efficient.

“She’s outside of town,” the Naag went on. “At a place called Breakneck Mountain. The Earthlings call it that because a cow fell off it once and broke its neck. If you ask me it is a lucky thing for the local civic organization that it didn’t break its reproductive organs. That would not have sounded half so rustic.”

“What’s she doing there?” I said.

He shrugged his shoulders. “You know how Sublukhar are. Temperamental, but excellent with machinery. She’s setting up the xenoforming equipment. And doing other things.”

I grabbed my jacket and a blaster. “What kind of things?”

“Unnatural things. With monkeys. But I don’t ask questions where the Sublukhar is concerned.” He frowned. “You’re not going to leave me here, are you?”