Mike Resnick - I, Alien

He tried everything. He even tried dumping his own material, since they didn’t seem to get it, and doing corny old gags about farmers and animal herders and fishermen, thinking maybe they just weren’t ready for sophisticated modern humor. Didn’t make a bit of difference. They still came to see him, more and more all the time, but they still didn’t laugh.

And this was starting to make him crazy, as you can imagine. He got so desperate he started doing magic tricks. Now I mean that’s pretty bad, when a talented performer has to reach that low. What next, I thought, he’s going to take up juggling? But these hicks absolutely ate it up. They liked the tricks even better than the comic routines; the crowds started getting really huge.

Finally the time came for his debut at the big city— well, the biggest in that part of that particular world, it wouldn’t have made a slum neighborhood here— and off he went, hoping the city audiences would be a little more hip.

He made something of an entrance, too; his twelve roadies did a really great job of getting the word out, making sure there was a big crowd to welcome him when he arrived in town. By the time he did his first show, the turnout was so big they had to hold it outdoors on a mountainside, where he gave possibly his greatest performance ever. Still no yucks, but he thought he saw a few of them smiling a little toward the end.

So things were looking up; and so my boy didn’t think anything of it, a few nights later, when a bunch of people showed up, right after dinner, and wanted him to come with them. Some kind of fan thing, he thought, and he said sure, and went along without argument, though some of his entourage tried to talk him out of it.

And when they got where they were going, he still didn’t tumble to what was happening. Not even when they started bringing up the lumber and nails. In fact he gave them a hand. He figured they were getting ready to build a stage for him. There were some cops standing around but he assumed they were just security.

By the time he found out different, it was too late.

If I told you what they did to him, you would not sleep tonight and you would have dreams for years, just as I did when I heard about it. So I think I better not go into the details. Enough to say it was a terrible, terrible thing and I’ve never heard of anything quite like it, even on the most barbaric worlds.

The shock and the pain were so great that it was three planetary rotations before he could pull himself together enough to activate his recovery circuits and get out of there. He came back here and told me what had happened—I had naturally been worried sick— and then, despite all my pleas and reassurances, he got on the next available ship back to his homeworld, and as far as I know he never got on stage again. I understand he went into the family construction business. Such a waste, and I can’t help feeling responsible.

But there was one thing I want to tell you about, because it illustrates just what kind of a person he was. Right after he got his body systems working again, he was just about to send the emergency beam-up signal when he thought of something he wanted to do. And as bad as he wanted out of that place—and who can blame him?—and as stiff and sore as he was, he stayed around long enough to put in a final appearance to his original fan club, and do a little farewell routine just for them. Now is that class or what?

You can see why it broke my heart—no, both of them—to see him go.

Well. So much for my little reminiscences. I’m sure you’ve got a whole list of questions.

So ask.

LIFE HAPPENS. It’s not my fault. When it started, I was looking at stars. The stars within my own body to be precise; so small, so many, so beautiful, so clean of contaminating Life in all their hundreds of billions! I perceived them through magnifying fields of my own devising. Bright and pristine in their many colors—the planets orbiting around them existing without blemish. No infections in me, I set a fine example. It’s good for business.

I never should have taken the call.

“Doctor? Doctor. Huh? Huh? I have another referral for you and this one is loaded! Another referral. Is a very, very good referral. Needs big help. Has much credit. Can pay lots. Reward. I get reward?”

Quarble, he’s a dwarf—a dwarf in both size and intellect. I move my perception, focus on him. He’s dancing around me as usual, sucking up to the great physician—well, so I am and it is well that he should. He has his uses. He’ll do any menial task and he does have an uncanny talent for finding patients. Some of them even pay their bills.

“Good one, good one, Doc!”

“Quarble, do NOT call me ‘Doc,’“ I said without real rancor—after all Quarble is Quarble and one should not fight that which is not worth changing.

“Sorry, sorry. Over there. Over there. He needs help. Charge lots, give Quarble some. Yes?”

I favor Quarble with a disapproving perception, but it fazes him not at all.

Quarble has been in my employ some few hundred millions of years to use units of time understood by Life (damn their slimy little, short-lived existences that I am so dedicated to eradicating). Quarble’s what they classify as a dwarf spheroidal galaxy and designated in their Messier catalog as MHO.

I know all too much about Life these days, or at least this one particularly nasty strain—lessons hard learned, but the fight is not over yet. I even know that the Messier method of cataloging us began in their year 1773 by one Charles Messier. Funny names, Life beings have—puny monikers to match their puny selves, not like ours. My name lilts through one’s grasp of reality, lovingly redolent of many hundreds of digits of prime numbers and mathematically expressed highly complex molecular chains.

“Reward, Doc, reward,” Quarble reminds.

“In a moment, Quarble,” I said, continuing to put away my force field tools and generally tidy up before exchanging perceptions with a potential patient.

Quarble does have a few good points, I must add. He is somewhat unique, being not your usual generic dwarf elliptical galaxy but one of a very few known dwarf spheroids and, to boot, brighter than most dwarf spheroids. Well, at least in light emitted.

Additionally, and in spite of his small size, Quarble, or MHO, has a remarkable system of eight globular star clusters in a halo around him. The brightest of these is called G73 by Life. Quarble is quite vain about all of that.

“Doc!”

“All right,” I said, hurrying.

I cast one final glance in a reflective field to check my appearance. I AM handsome. Life knows me as M31, the famous Andromeda galaxy. The Life unit Al-Sufi was aware of me about ad 905. Had I been aware of him at the time, he would be but a few drifting molecules of scorched gas now. I owe him, I really do. I owe all of Life. They have HACKED me off!

But I am a looker, I am.

The Life unit and famous astronomer William Hershel wrote this of me in 1785:

“…undoubtedly the nearest of all the great nebulae… The brightest part of it approaches to the resolvable nebulosity, and begins to shew a faint red colour; which, from many observations on the colour of and magnitude of nebulae… There is a very considerable, broad, pretty faint, small nebula [MHO] near it; my Sister [Caroline] discovered it August 27, 1783, with a Newtonian 2-feet sweeper. It shews the same faint colour with the great one, and is, no doubt, in the neighbourhood of it…”

Yes, Quarble is always horning in, bumbling about and getting in the way.

“Doc! Doc! Doc!”

“Where is the patient, dear Quarble?” I asked politely, now in the mode of the highly respected physician that I was until Life tripped me up and left me looking foolish. For THAT, they shall PAY!