Robert Sheckley - The Day The Aliens Came

Especially on the day the burglars came in.

Rimb and I were out. The way I understood it, the Bayersons didn't do a thing to stop them. Didn't call the police or anything, Just watched while the burglars poked around the place, moving slowly, because they were so overweight, fat alien thieves from Barnard's Star. They took all of Anna's old silver. They were Barnardean silver thieves and their traditions went back a long way. That's what they told the Bayersons, while they robbed us, and while Mr. Bayerson was going through his eyelid exercises just like nothing at all was happening.

The way it all started, I had met Rimb in Franco's Bar on MacDougal Street in New York. I had seen a few aliens before this, of course, shopping on Fifth Avenue or watching the ice skaters in Rockefeller Center. But this was the first time I'd ever actually ever talked with one. I inquired as to its sex and learned that Rimb was of the Ghottich Persuasion. It was an interesting-sounding sexual designation, especially for someone like me who was trying to get beyond the male-female dichotomy. I thought it might be fun to mate with someone of the Ghottich Persuasion after Rimb and I had agreed that she was basically a her.

Later I checked with Father Hanlin at the Big Red Church. He said it was OK in the eyes of the church, though he personally didn't hold much with it. Rimb and I were one of the first alien-human marriages.

We moved into my apartment in the West Village. You didn't see a lot of aliens around here at first. But soon other alien people showed up and quite a few of them moved into our neighborhood.

No matter where they were from, all aliens were supposed to register with the police and the local authorities in charge of cult control. Few bothered, however. And nothing was ever done about it. The police and municipal authorities were having too much trouble keeping track of their own people.

I wrote stories for the Synestrian market and Rimb and I lived quietly with our house guests. The Bayersons were quite people and helped pay the rent. They were easygoing aliens who didn't worry much; not like Rimb, who worried a lot about everything.

At first I liked the Bayerson's ways, I thought they were easygoing and cool.

But I changed my mind the day the burglars stole their youngest child, little Claude Bayerson.

I should have mentioned that the Bayersons had a baby soon after moving in with us.

Or perhaps they had left the baby somewhere else and brought it in after they'd taken over our spare bedroom. We were never really clear on where the aliens came from, and their babies were a complete mystery to us.

The way the Bayersons told it, the kidnapping of little Claude was simple and straightforward. It was “Good-bye, Claude.”

“Good-bye, Daddy.” When we asked them how they could do that, they said, “Oh, it's perfectly all right. I mean, it's what we were hoping for. That's how we Bayersons get around. Someone steals our children.” Well, I let it drop. What can you do with people like that? How could they stand to have little Claude raised as a Bernardean silver thief? One race one day, another race another. Some aliens have №racial pride. I mean it was cuckoo.

There wasn't anything to do about it so we all sat down to watch the TV together. All of us wanted to see the Savannah Reed show, our favorite.

Savannah's main guest that evening was the first man ever to eat a Mungulu. He was quite open about it, even somewhat defiant. He said, “If you think about it, why should it be ethical to eat only stupid creatures, or deluded ones? It is only blind prejudice that keeps us from eating intelligent beings. This thought came to me one day recently while I was talking with a few glotch of Mungulu on a plate.”

“How many Mungulu make up a glotch?” Savannah asked. She's №dummy.

“Between fifteen and twenty, though there are exceptions.”

“And what were they doing on a plate?”

“That's where Mungulu usually hang out. Accumulate, I should say. You see, Mungulu are plate-specific.”

“I don't think I know this species,” Savannah said.

“They're pretty much unique to my section of Yonkers.”

“How did they get there?”

“They just pretty well showed up on my plate one night. First only one or two glotch of them. They looked like little oysters. Then more came so we had the half dozen or so it takes to generate a halfway decent conversation.”

“Did they say where they were from?”

“A planet called Espadrille. I never did quite catch where it was, quadrantwise.”

“Did they say how they got here?”

“Something about surfing the light-waves.”

“What gave you the idea of eating the Mungulu?”

“Well, I didn't think about it at all at first. When a creature talks to you, you don't right away think of eating him. Or her. Not if you're civilized. But these Mungulu started showing up on my plate every night. They were pretty casual about it. All lined up on the edge of my good bone china, on the far side from me. Sometimes they'd just talk to each other, act like I wasn't even there. Then one of them would pretend to notice me — oh — it's the Earth guy — and we'd all start talking. This went on every night. I began to think there was something provocative about the way they were doing it. It seemed they were trying to tell me something.”

“Do you think they wanted to be eaten?”

“Well, they never said so, not in so many words, no. But I was starting to get the idea. I mean, if they didn't want to be eaten, what were they doing on the edge of my plate?”

“What happened then?”

“To put it in a nutshell, one night I got sick of horsing around and just for the hell of it

I speared one of them on the end of my fork and swallowed it.”

“What did the others do?”

“They pretended not to notice. Just went right on with their conversation.

Only their talk was a little stupider with one of them missing. Those guys need all the brain power they can come up with.”

“Let's get back to this Mungulu you swallowed. Did it protest as it was going down?”

“No, it didn't even blink. It was like it was expecting it. I got the feeling it was no cruel and unusual punishment for a Mungulu to be ingested.”

“How did they taste?”

“A little like breaded oysters in hot sauce, only subtly different. Alien, you know.” After the show was over, I noticed a bassinet in a corner of our living room.

Inside was a cute little fellow, looked a little like me. At first I thought it was little Claude Bayerson, somehow returned. But Rimb soon put me wise.

“That's little Manny,” she said. “He's ours.”

“Oh,” I said. “I don't remember you having him.”

“Technically, I haven't. I've delayed the actual delivery until a more convenient time,” she told me.

“Can you do that?” She nodded. “We of the Ghottich persuasion are able to do that.”

“What do you call him?” I asked.

“His name is Manny,” Rimb said.

“Is 'Manny' a typical name from your planet?”

“Not at all,” Rimb said. “I called him that in honor of your species.”

“How do you figure?” I asked.

“The derivation is obvious. 'Manny' stands for 'Little Man'.”

“That's not the way we generally do things around here, “I told her. But she didn't understand what I was talking about. Nor did I understand her explanation of the birth process by which Manny came into being. DDs, Deferred Deliveries, aren't customary among Earth people. As far as I could understand it, Rimb would have to undergo the actual delivery at some later time when it was more convenient. But in fact we never got around to it. Sometimes it happens like that.

Manny lay in his crib and ooed and aahed and acted like a human baby would, I suppose. I was a pretty proud poppa. Rimb and I were one of the first viable human-alien intermatings. I later learned it was no big deal. People all over the Earth were doing it. But it seemed important to us at the time.