Mike Resnick - I, Alien

“Yeah?” I said innocently. “I was just going to the meet with DiNardo.”

“Yeah, with a wire, I’ll bet,” Jerry added.

“Huh?” I said.

“You know what I’m talking about,” Juliano told me. He heaved a big sigh. “Christ, I hate it when I know the guy.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“But you don’t leave us any choice. I don’t know what got into you. What the hell did get into you, anyway?”

I played dumb, always a good policy. I shrugged and said, “Jeez, I dunno.”

“Okay, I can understand the midlife crisis thing. Your ma dies. Your brother goes to jail. Your wife starts fooling around. Then she bails on you. I can understand all that.”

“Yeah,” I said. I couldn’t believe this. This was too much. I started to laugh. The irony.

Jerry was appalled. “What, you think this is funny? You think I’m kidding? This is just a warning, or what?”

I shook my head. “Nah. I know it ain’t no warning.”

“We gave you warning. Christ, how many times? You don’t steal from us. That’s one thing you don’t do. We don’t care that you run a perfectly good dry-wall business into the ground. We gave you the best contracts, we cut a deal with the union. City contracts, county contracts. All the business you want. And then you don’t pay the withholding, you skim that off, you shortchange on all the paperwork—and we do a surprise audit and what? What do we find? Company’s practically bankrupt. And then what? Do we take you out? Do we whack you? No. We give you a second chance. And then a third chance. And Christ, if everyone don’t start talking about giving you a fourth. Finally, we gotta throw in the towel. Right?”

“Yeah,” I said, shrugging almost apologetically. “Yeah.”

“I even put in a good word for you,” Jerry said. “But I mean how many times do you go to bat for a guy and he goes on screwing you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And then we get the word. You’re talking to the feds.”

“Hey,” I said. “When the feds talk to you, you gotta talk back.”

“Yeah? They talked to me, too. I told ‘em to take a cab.”

“That’s you. I strung ‘em along, is all.”

“Christ.” Juliano let out another sigh. “Don’t you think we have people with the feds? People who feed us info? Did you think you could get away with it?”

“With what?”

“Forget it. Okay, get driving. Take the Expressway east.”

“Okay.”

I started laughing again. It was just too much.

Jerry was annoyed. “What the hell is with you?”

I turned the key and the big car’s motor hummed to life.

“I think you’re nuts,” Jerry said. “I always thought you were a flake.”

I shot a grin into the rearview mirror.

“Cut me a break,” was all Jerry Juliano had to say.

I pulled out of Long John Silver’s, drove slowly to the Expressway ramp, and pulled onto it. As I did, I sent a furtive right hand to rummage in the cardboard box bearing the fried fish lunch.

Instantly, the barrel of the revolver was up against the side of my head.

“Don’t go rocket scientist on me all of a sudden,” Juliano said tightly.

“I just wanted a hush puppy.”

Cocking the handgun, Jerry took a look over the seat. “Go ahead, get it.”

I picked up one of the warm balls of deep-fried corn meal batter and popped it into my mouth. I had come to love them.

“I don’t believe you,” Jerry said.

“I’m hungry,” I said. “Haven’t had my lunch.”

“You and fish.” Jerry shot a quick look back to see if anyone was following, then sat back. After a moment, he took note of the opulence around him.

“Nice interior,” Jerry said.

“Thanks. It’s real leather.”

“Yeah. I’m squeakin’ back here in this jacket. But it’s nice. I never thought of a Lincoln.”

“They’re nice cars.”

“They gonna keep makin’ them or what?”

“I dunno. I ain’t heard anything. It’s got computers all over the place. Look at this dash.”

Jerry leaned forward. “Nice. Go ahead and eat if you want to.”

“Thanks.”

I pulled out a huge piece of fish and bit off a big piece of it with a startling crunch.

“Smells good,” Jerry said.

“Have some. I got the three-piece.”

“Not now.”

“Where we goin’?”

“Out east,” Jerry said simply, reaching over the seat back and rifling the box. He came away with a fry and munched it.

“How far out?”

“Far enough.”

“What’s far enough? Montauk?”

“Don’t make this any harder than it has to be.”

“Sorry. You better put on your seat belt.”

“Don’t worry about the seat belt,” Jerry said. “Drive.”

Polishing off two of the fish and most of the fries, I drove east, and east some more.

“What the hell ever did happen to you, Charlie?” Juliano said. “You went wonky on me. I heard all kinds of crap. Like the alien thing.”

“Alien?” I said, still playing dumb.

“Yeah. You were seeing UFOs, or something. Something about aliens taking over your body. Stress, I guess. That right?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” I said. I saw no reason to keep anything from him now. “My body was taken over by an alien intelligence from across the galaxy, thousands of light-years away.”

“Yeah?” Juliano said, chuckling. “How’d they do that?”

“Matter transmission. Transferring bits of alien nucleic acid, supplanting the subject’s. Fairly soon, the host subject is transformed into an alien being, retaining the guise of the subject’s morphology.”

“Huh,” Juliano said, impressed. “Where’d you get that, from Star Trek?”

“It’s true. I was taken over by an advanced alien being. But I’m okay now.”

“You were taken over by the FBI, asshole.”

Juliano lurched forward, his arm looping around my neck. His hand ripped the front of my shirt open and grabbed inside. The wires hurt as he yanked them savagely, ripping them out.

He dangled the tiny mike in front of my eyes. The compact transmitter was still nestled at the small of my back.

“Aliens, huh?” he said. He threw the mike and the wires at the dashboard with great disgust and vi-ciousness. “Aliens, my ass.”

The suburbs thinned, and Jerry said nothing for a long time. Then he said, simply, “Turn off the next exit.”

“Pretty far out in the boonies,” I said, chewing a last fry.

“I was thinking of doing it in Bloomingdale’s, but I thought, nah, too many witnesses.”

I laughed. “There’s another piece of fish left. You want it?”

“Lost your appetite?”

“No, go ahead, you take it.”

“I don’t want it.”

I shrugged. “Going to waste.”

“Never mind about the goddamn fish. You eat it, fer crissake.”

“I’m not hungry anymore. You eat it.”

“Jesus. Awright.”

Jerry leaned over the seat, opened up the lid of the cardboard box and looked in.

At that moment the Lincoln hit the concrete Jersey barrier that I had suddenly and deliberately swerved toward. It was sitting by the side of the road, angled oddly out, left by a road crew that had not taken great pains to straighten up after themselves except for putting up a flimsy wooden horse with a flashing amber light, barely visible in the bright sun. For all that, the thing was no great hazard, unless you deliberately drove straight at it.

The car hit the thing at a little over 30 mph. The impact was enough to throw Jerry over the front seat and head-first into the windshield, cracking it. He ended up a fetal huddle on the floor in front, his neck bent at an odd angle. The windshield bore a small circular wound like a star with rays of cracked glass.