Fredric Brown - The Best of Fredric Brown

"No, "I admitted, regretfully perhaps. "But, Ma, he told me to go to blazes. And without saluting. Me, the owner of the ship. "

Ma just looked at me. Sometimes women are smart, but sometimes they 're pretty dumb.

"Listen, he isn 't going to keep on getting drunk, "I said. "This is an occasion. Can't you see what happened to his pride and dignity? "

"You mean because he—"

"Because he fell in love with the thought-projection of a cockroach," I pointed out. "Or anyway he thought he did. He has to get drunk once to forget that, and from now on, after he sobers up, he 's going to be human. I 'll bet on it, any odds. And I 'll bet too that once he 's human, he 's going to see Ellen and realize how pretty she is. I 'll bet he 's head-over-heels before we get back to Earth. I'll get a bottle and we'll drink a toast on it. To Nothing Sirius! "

And for once I was right. Johnny and Ellen were engaged before we got near enough to Earth to start decelerating.

Miss MACY sniffed. "Why is everyone worrying so? They 're not doing anything to us, are they? "

In the cities, elsewhere, there was blind panic. But not in Miss Macy 's garden. She looked up calmly at the monstrous mile-high figures of the invaders.

A week ago, they'd landed, in a spaceship a hundred miles long that had settled down gently in the Arizona desert. Almost a thousand of them had come out of that spaceship and were now walking around.

But, as Miss Macy pointed out, they hadn 't hurt anything or anybody. They weren't quite substantial enough to affect people. When one stepped on you or stepped on a house you were in, there was sudden darkness and until he moved his foot and walked on you couldn't see; that was all.

They had paid no attention to human beings and all attempts to communicate with them had failed, as had all attacks on them by the army and the air force. Shells fired at them exploded right inside them and didn 't hurt them. Not even the H-bomb dropped on one of them while he was crossing a desert area had bothered him in the slightest.

They had paid no attention to us at all.

"And that," said Miss Macy to her sister who was also Miss Macy since neither of them was married, "is proof that they don't mean us any harm, isn't it?"

"I hope so, Amanda," said Miss Macy's sister. "But look what they 're doing now. "

It was a clear day, or it had been one. The sky had been bright blue and the almost humanoid heads and shoulders of the giants, a mile up there, had been quite clearly visible. But now it was getting misty, Miss Macy saw as she followed her sister 's gaze upward. Each of the two big figures in sight had a tanklike object in his hands and from these objects clouds of vaporous matter were emerging, settling slowly toward Earth.

Miss Macy sniffed again. "Making clouds. Maybe that 's how they have fun. Clouds can 't hurt us. Why do people worry so? "

She went back to her work.

"Is that a liquid fertilizer you 're spraying, Amanda?" her sister asked.

"No," said Miss Macy. "It's insecticide."

I AM going crazy.

Charlie Swann is going crazy, too. Maybe more than I am, because it was his dingbat. I mean, he made it and he thought he knew what it was and how it worked.

You see, Charlie was just kidding me when he told me it worked on the Yehudi principle. Or he thought he was. "The Yehudi principle? "I said.

"The Yehudi principle, "he repeated. "The principle of the little man who wasn't there. He does it."

"Does what? "I wanted to know.

The dingbat, I might interrupt myself to explain, was a head-band. It fitted neatly around Charlie 's noggin and there was a round black box not much bigger than a pillbox over his forehead. Also there was a round flat copper disk on each side of the band that fitted over each of Charlie 's temples, and a strand of wire that ran down behind his ear into the breast pocket of his coat, where there was a little dry cell battery.

It didn 't look as if it would do anything, except maybe either cure a headache or make it worse. But from the excited look on Charlie 's face, I didn't think it was anything as commonplace as that.

"Does what? "I wanted to know.

"Whatever you want, "said Charlie. 'Within reason, of course. Not like moving a building or bringing you a locomotive. But any little thing you want done, he does it."

'Who does?"

"Yehudi. "

I closed my eyes and counted to five, by ones. I wasn't going to ask, " Who ' s Yehudi?"

I shoved aside a pile of papers on the bed—I 'd been going through some old clunker manuscripts seeing if I could find something good enough to rewrite from a new angle—and sat down.

"O.K., "I said. "Tell him to being me a drink. "

"What kind?"

I looked at Charlie, and he didn't look like he was kidding. He had to be, of course, but—

"Gin buck," I told him. "A gin buck, with gin in it, if Yehudi knows what I mean. "

"Hold out your hand, "Charles said.

I held out my hand. Charlie, not talking to me, said, "Bring Hank a gin buck, strong." And then he nodded his head.

Something happened either to Charlie or to my eyes, I didn't know which. For just a second, he got sort of misty. And then he looked normal again.

And I let out a kind of a yip and pulled my hand back, because my hand was wet with something cold. And there was a splashing noise and a wet puddle on the carpet right at my feet. Right under where my hand had been.

Charlie said, "We should have asked for it in a glass. "

I looked at Charlie and then I looked at the puddle on the floor and then I looked at my hand. I stuck my index finger gingerly into my mouth and tasted.

Gin buck. With gin in it. I looked at Charlie again. He asked, "Did I blur?"

"Listen, Charlie, "I said. "I 've known you for ten years, and we went to Tech together and— But if you pull another gag like that I'll blur you, all right. I'll—"

"Watch closer this time, "Charlie said. And again, looking off into space and not talking to me at all, he started talking. "Bring us a fifth of gin, in a bottle. Half a dozen lemons, sliced, on a plate. Two quart bottles of soda and a dish of ice cubes. Put it all on the table over there. "

He nodded his head, just like he had before, and darned if he didn 't blur. Blur was the best word for it.

"You blurred, "I said. I was getting a slight headache.

"I thought so, "he said. "But I was using a mirror when I tried it alone, and I thought maybe it was my eyes. That 's why I came over. You want to mix the drinks or shall I? "

I looked over at the table, and there was all the stuff he'd ordered. I swallowed a couple of times.

"It's real," Charlie said. He was breathing a little hard, with suppressed excitement. "It works, Hank. It works. We 'll be rich! We can— "

Charlie kept on talking, but I got up slowly and went over to the table. The bottles and lemons and ice were really there. The bottles gurgled when shaken and the ice was cold.

In a minute I was going to worry about how they got there. Meanwhile and right now, I needed a drink. I got a couple of glasses out of the medicine cabinet and the bottle opener out of the file cabinet, and I made two drinks, about half gin.

Then I thought of something. I asked Charlie, "Does Yehudi want a drink, too?"

Charlie grinned. "Two 'll be enough, "he told me.

"To start with, maybe, "I said grimly. I handed him a drink—in a glass—and said, "To Yehudi." I downed mine at a gulp and started mixing another.

Charlie said, "Me, too. Hey, wait a minute. "

"Under present circumstances, "I said, "a minute is a minute too long between drinks. In a minute I shall wait a minute, but—Hey, why don 't we let Yehudi mix 'em for us? "