Robert Sheckley - The Day The Aliens Came

One day a man came to my door. He didn't quite look like a man, although he did walk on two feet. There was something wrong with his face. It looked as though it had been melted in an oven and then hastily frozen. I later learned that this expression was quite common among the group of aliens called Synesters, and was considered by them a look of especial beauty. The Melted Look, they called it, and it was often featured in their beauty contests. “I hear you're a writer,” he said.

I said that was so. Why lie about a thing like that?

“Isn't that a bit of luck,” he said. “I'm a story buyer.”

“No kidding,” I said.

“Have you got any stories you want to sell?” He was very direct. I decided to be similarly so.

“Yes,” I said. “I do.”

“OK,” he said. “I'm sure glad of that. This is a strange city for me. Strange planet, too, come to think of it. But it's the city aspect that's most unsettling. Different customs, all that sort of thing. As soon as I got here, I said to myself, “Traveling's great, but where am I going to find someone to sell me stories?”

“It's a problem,” I admitted.

“Well,” he said, “let's get right to it because there's a lot to do. I'd like to begin with a ten thousand word novelette.”

“You've as good as got it,” I told him. “When do you want it?”

“I need it by then end of the week.”

“What are we talking about in terms of money, if you'll excuse the expression?”

“I'll pay you a thousand dollars for a ten thousand word novelette. I was told that was standard pay for a writer in this part of Earth. This is Earth, isn't it?”

“It's Earth, and your thousand dollars is acceptable. Just tell me what I'm supposed to write about.”

“I'll leave that up to you. After all, you're the writer.”

“Damn right I am,” I said. “so you don't care what it's about?”

“Not in the slightest. After all, I'm not going to read it.”

“Makes sense, “ I said. “Why should you care?” I didn't want to pursue that line of inquiry any further. I assumed that someone was going to read it. That's what usually happens with novelettes.

“What rights are you buying?” I asked, since it's important to be professional about these matters.

“First and second Synestrian,” he said. “And of course I retain Synestrian movie rights although I'll pay you fifty percent of the net if I get a film sale.”

“Is that likely?” I asked.

“Hard to say,” he said. “As far we're concerned, Earth is new literary territory.”

“In that case, let's make my cut sixty-forty.”

“I won't argue,” he said. “Not this time. Later you may find me very tough.

Who knows what I'll be like? For me this is a whole new frankfurter.” I let that pass. An occasional lapse in English doesn't make an alien an ignoramus.

I got my story done in a week and brought it in to the Synester's office in the old MGM building on Broadway. I handed him the story and he waved me to a seat while he read it.

“It's pretty good,” he said after a while. “I like it pretty well.”

“Oh, good,” I said.

“But I want some changes.”

“Oh,” I said. “What specifically did you have in mind?”

“Well,” the Synester said, “this character you have in here, Alice.”

“Yes, Alice,” I said, though I couldn't quite remember writing an Alice into the story. Could he be referring to Alsace, the province in France? I decided not to question him. No sense appearing dumb on my own story.

“Now, this Alice,” he said, “she's the size of a small country, isn't she?” He was definitely referring to Alsace, the province in France, and I had lost the moment when I could correct him.

“Yes,” I said, “that's right, just about the size of a small country.”

“Well, then,” he said, “why don't you have Alice fall in love with a bigger country in the shape of a pretzel?”

“A what?” I said.

“Pretzel,” he said. “It's a frequently used image in Synestrian popular literature. Synestrians like to read that sort of thing.”

“Do they?” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “Synestrians like to imagine people in the shape of pretzels.

You stick that in, it'll make it more visual.”

“Visual,” I said, my mind a blank.

“Yes,” he said, “Because we gotta consider the movie possibilities.”

“Yes, of course,” I said, remembering that I got sixty percent.

“Now for the film version of your story, I think we should set the action at a different time of day.” I tried to remember what time of day I had set the story in. It didn't seem to me I had specified any particular time at all. I mentioned this.

“That's true,” he said, “you didn't set any specific time. But you inferred twilight. It was the slurring sound of your words that convinced me you were talking about twilight.”

“Yes, all right,” I said. “Twilight mood.”

“Makes a nice title,” he said.

“Yes,” I said, hating it.

“Twilight Mood,” he said, rolling it around inside his mouth. “You could call it that, but I think you should actually write it in a daytime mode. For the irony.”

“Yes, I see what you mean,” I said.

“So why don't you run it through your computer once more and bring it back to me.” When I got home, Rimb was washing dishes and looking subdued. I should mention that she was a medium-sized blond person with the harassed look that characterizes aliens of the Ghottich persuasion. And there were peculiar sounds coming form the living room. When I gave Rimb a quizzical look, she rolled her eyes toward the living room and shrugged. I went in and saw there were two people there. Without saying a word, I went back to the kitchen and said to Rimb, “Who are they?”

“They told me they're the Bayersons.”

“Aliens?” She nodded. “But not my kind of aliens. They're as alien to me as they are to you.” That was the first time I fully appreciated that aliens could be alien to one another.

“What are they doing here?” I asked.

“They didn't say,” Rimb said.

I went back to the living room. Mr. Bayerson was sitting in my armchair reading an evening newspaper. He was about three or four feet tall and had orange hair.

Mrs. Bayerson was equally small and orange-haired and she was knitting something orange and green. Mr. Bayerson scrambled out of my chair as soon as I returned to the room.

“Aliens?” I said, sitting down.

“Yes,” Bayerson said. “We're from Capella.”

“And what are you doing in our place?”

“They said it would be all right.”

“Who said?” Bayerson shrugged and looked vague. I was to get very accustomed to that look.

“But it's our place,” I pointed out.

“Of course it's yours,” Bayerson said. “Nobody's arguing that. But would you begrudge us a little space to live in? We're not very big.”

“But why our place? Why not someone else's?”

“We just sort of drifted in here and liked it,” Bayerson said. “We think of it as home now.”

“Some other place could also feel like home.”

“Maybe, maybe not. We want to stay here. Look, why don't you just consider us like barnacles, or brown spots on the wallpaper. We just sort of attach on here. It's what Capellans do. We won't be in the way.” Rimb and I didn't much want them, but there seemed №overpowering reason to make them go. I mean, they were here, after all. And they were right, they really weren't in the way. In some ways, they were a lot better

than some other apartment-dwelling aliens we came to know later.

In fact, Rimb and I soon wished the Bayersons would be a little less unobtrusive and give a little help around the apartment. Or at least keep an eye on things.