Robert Butler: Mr. Spaceman

And at this moment Edna arrives. Viola is still on her arm. On her other arm is an elderly man, ARTHUR, with a great, upstanding shock of white hair and his outer arm is thrown around the shoulder of a stocky man with a footprint of shining baldness but long gray sideburns and a ponytail, and this is HANK, who has his own arm thrown around Arthur, and Edna says, “Viola and I have found Arthur, and he’d already found Hank. Hank’s the driver of the bus, but he also happens to be Arthur’s brother from a past life. Isn’t that a coincidence, Desi?”

Viola says, “What’s happening to us?”

“Your husband and Mr. Hank have not quite yet come to their senses,” I explain. “This impression of theirs will pass.”

“We’re brothers,” Arthur says.

“I’m younger in this life, but I was the older brother before,” Hank says, squeezing hard at Arthur’s shoulder and shaking him so that I hear a rattling sound from his mouth.

“I don’t remember that,” Arthur says.

“Trust me, little buddy,” Hank says.

“Are you people crazy?” Hudson suddenly cries. “What are you talking about? We’ve all been kidnapped onto a fucking spaceship.”

“Please, Mr. Hudson,” Edna says, though very sweetly. “You shouldn’t use those words. There are ladies present.”

Hudson violently shakes his head, trying to snap himself once more. But there are no more snaps available to him. This is real. He looks at Edna and then at Viola and then at me and he forces his voice into a carefully modulated tone. “You’re right. Though not because of the ladies. I have the full rich range of the English language at my command. I am a graduate of Harvard Law. No matter what the stress, I do not need to go back to the fucking streets.” He stops and growls at the sudden reappearance of this word, even in the midst of his declaration of independence from it.

I have no power of telepathy with this man, but he is a well-educated man, a self-aware man, and I feel certain he is contemplating the odd way that the words of his planet can seem to take on a kind of sentience, a will. The words are the independent entities in this place, not the speaker. Though this is not true of me. I am not a natural breeding place for words. I am unable even to express these very thoughts to Hudson in this moment, though I am sure if I could he would be put at ease, a bond would be forged between us like the bond between Hank and Arthur, a bond, by the way, that is even now dissolving, for Hank seems to have snapped and is examining his arm around this narrow-shouldered, white-haired stranger beside him.

“What the fuck?” Hank says.

Hudson snorts a short, ironic laugh, though it is a further mystery of the words of this world that Hank’s form of fuck has a soft, almost affectionate edge to it, quite different in mood from Hudson’s.

Hank withdraws his arm and then he looks at me and he recoils.

And a great and ravenous crunching begins down the table and then a loud cry of “I adore carrots!” I look and there is a supplementary “I adore them!” and both declarations are remarkably clear, given the bulge of carrots in the cheeks of the speaker, a slender woman with eyes quite attractively large for her species and knockers to rival even Edna’s. She stuffs more carrot curls into her mouth with both hands. Her name is MISTY.

Just beyond her, the couple with Asian heritage have turned and are riveted by the sight of Misty’s mouth, the carrots crowding in, the churning of the puffed cheeks. I see their name tags now. She is MARY. And he carries, overtly, a form of this group’s governing word on his own chest: LUCKY.

“Yo. Desi.” This is Hudson’s voice. “Listen up.”

A man has just arrived behind Misty. He puts his arms around her and instantly cups her breasts in his hands. She does not respond to this at all, except to address him. “Digger baby. Carrots.”

“Misty wisty,” Digger says in a tiny child’s voice, though he is a big man, as tall as Hudson. He has a heritage from a Caucasian race but his skin is quite dark. I recognize this as the effect of prolonged exposure to this planet’s star. He says, “Want to play in the dark with your wildcatter’s big old Rotary Drill?”

Misty can stuff no more carrots into her mouth. She lowers her face a little and tries to chew, seeming not even to consider Digger’s dream-state proposition.

“Desi,” Hudson says.

My attention is still caught by Digger’s hands — he is even DIGGER on his name tag. His hands squeeze now at Misty’s Full Figured Pride and Joy. Clearly she recognized those hands instantly, for she did not look over her shoulder to identify him. I think about my wife Edna Bradshaw, whether she would know her husband Desi from simply the touch of my hands on her knockers.

“ Mister Spaceman,” Hudson says.

I turn to Hudson now and I observe, “Of course she would. There are eight fingers on each hand.”

“Say what?”

This makes me stop. My observation was not intended for Hudson. “How interesting,” I say. “Perhaps words with their own wills do breed now within me.” I stop again. “Even that was not intended for you. Or that. Or that. Or that.”

I cease all my words, breathless with discovery.

“I demand to know what you have in mind for us,” Hudson says.

And a gunshot rings out.

“Jesus,” Hudson cries and Viola screams and I reach toward Edna to pull her to me, to shield her, and I will shield Viola, too, recognizing the sound from my years of study of this planet, and Hudson is grabbing at Hank and Arthur, who are nearest to him, and he says, pressing them toward the floor, “Down. Quick.” And my hands are on Edna’s shoulders and she is quiet, turning her head to look toward the sound, and I pull at her and Viola trails with her, but now, as Arthur and Hank sink down with Hudson, I can see across the Reception Hall, and before the bus stands a woman with her arm straight up, and the pistol, still smoking, is in her hand, pointing toward the ceiling. She has a puzzled look on her face.

I let go of Edna and I slip past her and glide quickly across the space. We can move very speedily when we wish, we who are the primary species from my planet, though I do not want to alarm this woman. I near her and she is compact, with a sharply tailored woman’s suit in Power Red for the Career Woman on the Go, and I calculate that if she panics from my very rapid approach and the look of me, then only I would be in peril from the next discharge of the weapon, and I find that preferable to further unaimed panic shots. I also need quickly to make a single, clear public statement to all these visitors, for I strongly suspect that this sudden noise has instantly snapped the rest of them out of their befuddled states.

And I am before her and she has lowered the pistol and is pointing it at the center of my chest, though she does not seem clearly to understand that she is doing this. Her eyes are wide upon my face. This is not unexpected. Her hand is unsteady. Her purse is open and lying at her feet. “Well then,” I say. “I see by your name tag that you are CLAUDIA.”

Technically, she is clearheaded now, but there is too much for her to take in, all of a sudden. “Your name tag,” I repeat, feeling this would be a comforting thing for her to observe. She does look down at the tag on her lapel. As she does, my hand goes out and enfolds hers.

“I suspect you do not even know you are holding this,” I say and I gently disengage the pistol from her hand, and she yields the thing readily.

“Where am I?” she asks. “What are you?”

“These are relevant questions,” I say. “Your fellow visitors are seeking the same answers.”