Too Many Aliens Read online

  Maktel rummaged in his pack for a moment, then pulled out a package wrapped in golden paper. “This is for you,” he said happily.

  I tore it open and cried out in excitement. He had brought the most recent issues of three of our favorite Terror-ramas: Scum-suckers from Frizbat Twelve, The Fertile Energybeast, and True Stories of Diplomatic Errors.

  “Thank you, O Friendly One!” I cried. “I can’t wait to pop these onto my sphen-gnut-ksher and savor the fear.”

  “You’d better share,” he said jovially. Then he reached into his pack for another gift. Watching him, I thought of the Earth character Santa Claus, who is also pudgy and carries a pack of gifts.

  “Shhh-foop, this is from both me and the Motherly One,” he said, handing our Queen of the Kitchen a set of glossy purple containers.

  “Fresh spices!” she sang, twirling her tentacles with joy. “Oh, I shall make loveliness for the tongue with these!”

  For Barvgis he had brought a vibrating belly band.

  “I’ve wanted one of these since my last one broke!” cried Barvgis. He strapped the purple band around his waist, then chortled with delight as it caused his roundness to jiggle.

  Maktel turned to my bodyguard. “You must be McNally,” he said.

  “Guilty as charged,” replied McNally.

  Maktel looked puzzled.

  “It’s an Earthling expression,” I whispered.

  “Ah,” he said. “I am only partway through the learning program.” He turned back to McNally. “Pleskit has told me much about you. The Motherly One and I thought carefully about what I should bring you.” He reached into his pack and drew forth a pair of sunglasses. “I hope you will like these. You can use them night and day, since they will let you see very clearly even in complete darkness.”

  After passing the glasses to McNally, Maktel leaned to me and said quietly, “The Motherly One and I checked the technology; it is low level enough that it is permissible to give them to an Earthling.”

  I nodded in relief. I had sent an image of Earthling sunglasses to Maktel for his Motherly One to feed to the design machine. I was glad our little surprise had worked out.

  “Very cool!” said McNally, slipping them on.

  “They’ll warm up,” said Maktel. Then he made the small burp of embarrassment and said, “Oh, yes—that other kind of cool that Pleskit has told me about.”

  “Yeah, that kind,” said McNally. “These definitely qualify. Can’t wait till it’s dark so I can try them out!”

  “And now for the estimable Ms. Buttsman. The Motherly One and I thought you might like this.” From his pack he pulled a printed copy of The Complete Guide to Interplanetary Protocol, Second Revised Edition.

  “Why, Maktel!” said Ms. Buttsman, with more enthusiasm than I had ever before heard from her. “What a lovely and appropriate gift. Thank you!”

  My friend continued to distribute goodies from his pack. Beezle Whompis received some energy snacks—a welcome gift for someone who has no actual physical presence. They were blue spheres that fizzed and crackled in their bag. “Wonderful!” cried Beezle Whompis. He tossed one into his mouth, and a glow of blue energy surrounded him.

  “For you, Wakkam Akkim, I have brought this,” said Maktel, taking a small pouch made of soft green material from his pack. I could tell from the look of it that it was filled with money. This was good, as that is what holy beings like best.

  The short, feathery woman fluttered her eyebrows to show her appreciation and respect.

  “I have something for you, too, Ambassador Meenom,” Maktel said, reaching yet again into his pack.

  But the Fatherly One was gone, as was Ellico vec Bur.

  The look on Maktel’s face when he realized this startled and frightened me.

  CHAPTER 7 [MAKTEL]

  URPELLI AND INSULTS

  I was very disturbed when Ellico vec Bur spirited Ambassador Meenom away before I could present him with my guesting gift. Did the Trader(s) know I was carrying a secret message? Were they trying to prevent me from delivering it?

  The odd thing was, at that moment I was only going to give Meenom a small jar of water from the Sea of Illakamin. After all, the Motherly One had specifically told me to pass on her message only in total privacy. Even so, the way Ellico vec Bur had managed to keep me from giving anything to the ambassador made me suspicious.

  The moment of awkward silence when I realized the ambassador was gone was broken by Shhh-foop, clapping her tentacles together and warbling, “Snacks! I have snacks for the weary traveler.”

  And not just any snacks. Shhh-foop is famous throughout the Hevi-Hevian diplomatic community for her finnikle-pokta. My kirgiltum began to twitch at the very thought of them.

  After we had eaten, Pleskit showed me to my room. The scurry-bots had already delivered my luggage.

  “You looked disturbed at not being able to present your gift to the Fatherly One,” Pleskit said as he helped me unpack.

  “I do not entirely trust Ellico vec Bur,” I replied. “I suspect they were trying to keep me from passing anything to your parental unit.”

  Pleskit made the stinky smell of cynicism. “I have no love for those Trader(s). Even so, I think you are being too suspicious, Maktel.”

  “And just why don’t you like them?” I asked.

  “A bad experience quite some time ago,” he replied evasively. “But that is old history.”

  “Old history or not, it seems to me that suspicion is justified. You yourself said that your Fatherly One is concerned about an unexpected and unexplained amount of traffic in the Earth area.”

  “I don’t see what that would have to do with Ellico vec Bur,” said Pleskit. “Let’s talk about what we’re going to do while you’re here. The first thing is, I’ve invited Tim to come over tomorrow.”

  “Good! I will be glad to finally meet him.”

  Though I said this enthusiastically, I was filled with trepidation. So I was ready, probably, to view Tim with a critical eye.

  I suppose it is possible that was part of the reason our meeting the next day went so badly. However, I think the bulk of the blame must go to Tim.

  It was late morning when he arrived, and Shhh-foop kindly offered us some snacks.

  To my disgust, Tim was undiplomatically fussy about this.

  “I haven’t had terribly good luck with alien food,” he explained.

  “Ah, yes,” I replied. “I remember reading how you… what is the Earthling word? Oh yes! Puked. I remember reading how you puked finnikle-pokta all over the evil Mikta-makta-mookta. I thought that was very funny.”

  “It wasn’t funny at the time,” said Tim grimly. “I’d been wondering what you thought of the stories of our adventures that Pleskit has been sending you. We’ve been through a lot together, eh, Pleskit?”

  I felt a twist in my gnorzle.

  “You were asking me the other day about how I sent those stories,” said Pleskit quickly. “Maybe Maktel should tell you. He’s very good at that kind of thing.”

  He was obviously changing the subject, though whether it was to keep from embarrassing Tim, himself, or me, I could not tell. But it was a good change. I know a lot about interstellar communication, and I was happy to share my knowledge.

  “The system works a little like what you Earthlings call the Internet,” I said. “We have hundreds of thousands of stations that forward communications according to a master routing program. But standard transmissions can only flow at the speed of light, of course. That’s fast enough for local things—ships that are only a few million miles apart, even planets that are part of the same solar system. But it would be impossibly slow for interstellar distances. Can you imagine? Sending a message from Earth to the nearest star and getting a reply would take more than eight of your years. And to send a message from one side of the galaxy to the other and get a reply would take hundreds of thousands!”

  “So what do you do instead?” asked Tim.

  “Our ships make time/sp
ace jumps through twists in space that we call urpelli.”

  “Is that something like a wormhole?” asked Tim.

  I glanced at Pleskit. He closed his eyes, and I could see he was searching his brain for a reference. “Close enough,” he said after a moment. “Not quite the same, but the idea works.”

  “Well, anyway,” I continued, “we also send messages through the urpelli. But even that would leave many areas of the galaxy long separated and deeply isolated, if it were not for the Grand Urpelli.”

  “What’s that?” asked Tim eagerly.

  I smiled, warming to my subject. “For some reason—no one knows why, exactly—many urpelli are linked to a single giant urpelli.”

  “Well, it’s not really a giant,” interrupted Pleskit. “No one can figure out the exact size of an urpelli anyway.”

  “That is true,” I said, feeling a little cranky and wishing I had finished the language program before arriving. “The point is, most urpelli have two ‘ends’ at two different points in the galaxy. The weird thing is, almost all of them also connect to the Grand Urpelli.”

  “So how do you know which place you’re going to come out?” asked Tim.

  “It took a long time to figure that out. But we now have ships and message devices that can handle that. As a result, because so many of the urpelli link to the Grand Urpelli, the vastness of the galaxy is tamed. In fact, the longest communication time in the galaxy is no more than about fourteen of your Earthling days. It makes any other way of trying to communicate seem quite primitive.”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” said Tim.

  He suddenly sounded a little sullen. I figured this was due to him being jealous because his planet is so far behind us.

  “Do not be downhearted,” I said consolingly. “Your people will come along eventually.”

  “So we can be just like you?” snarled Tim. (Pleskit insists it was not a snarl, but it certainly sounded that way to me.)

  “Don’t worry,” I said coolly, not responding to his vicious tone. “You have a long way to go before that will happen.”

  Pleskit cracked his knuckles in disapproval, a signal that Tim would not understand.

  His gesture startled me, and I realized, with some surprise, how insulting I had been. I cursed myself, hardly able to believe I had said something so undiplomatic. The Motherly One would not have been proud. Unfortunately, the damage had been done, and I was caught in a relationship web I could not break at the moment.

  Tim left not long afterward.

  Our parting was cold and unpleasant.

  After he was gone, Pleskit looked at me angrily. “What was that all about?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were needlessly insulting,” he said, farting the small but pungent fart of disapproval.

  “Who cares what such a primitive being thinks anyway?” I snapped.

  Then I fled to my room, feeling stupid, ashamed, and very, very far from home.

  CHAPTER 8 [TIM]

  REGRETS AND CONFUSIONS

  I walked away from Pleskit’s room wondering how he could possibly have a creep like Maktel for a friend. To be honest, I was having a hard time not crying.

  Then I saw something that startled me—an alien I had never met before. I knew everyone on the staff. Was it possible the embassy had another visitor that Pleskit had not mentioned? Or—and this thought chilled me—was this some spy or invader?

  The alien was blue, with a face that was fairly human except for his beard, which was made of finger-thick tentacles that seemed to move on their own. He wore an elegant jacket and a golden breastplate, and carried an ornate walking stick. Mounted on his head was a bronze cap with two weird things that stuck out from the front, angling toward the back of his head. They looked like long crab legs. A “knee” toward the back of them bent them so that they stuck directly into his ears.

  The blue guy smiled when he saw me, and motioned for me to come closer.

  I wasn’t sure what to do. Much as I have always been fascinated by outer space stuff, after my visit with Maktel, I had had enough of aliens for one day.

  “You are Tim, are you not?” asked the alien.

  I nodded.

  “Then we are very pleased to meet you. We are Ellico vec Bur.”

  “We?” I asked, curious in spite of myself.

  I almost squawked when his bronze cap opened its eyes and said in a high, scratchy voice, “Well, there are two of us here, even if we are in a permanent state of union.”

  The blue being smiled. “We take it you’ve never met one of the vecciri—the, ah… joined ones. Bur and I are life partners. I provide locomotion.”

  “And I provide enhanced intelligence,” said Bur.

  Ellico looked a little annoyed. “Anyway, we did not stop you to discuss biology.”

  “Why did you stop me? And how did you know my name?”

  Bur made a little noise that I took to be disgust at my stupidity, though maybe I was just feeling sensitive at the moment. Ellico said, “The ambassador mentioned we might see an Earthling youngster wandering around the embassy. He also told us a little about you. He spoke very highly of the support and help you have given Pleskit.”

  I began to feel a little better.

  Ellico vec Bur glanced around, then leaned toward me a little. Lowering their voices, they said simultaneously, “We are here to discuss some business with the ambassador. We won’t be around very long. Even so, we’re a little concerned about how things might be going for Meenom. Keep your eyes open for anything suspicious happening around the city, would you?”

  “Like what?” I asked, intrigued now.

  The Ellico part raised an eyebrow and said, “We think there may be other off-worlders here, up to no good.”

  “Shouldn’t I just tell Meenom if I think I spot anything like that?”

  “Of course,” said the Trader(s) quickly and simultaneously. “We’re not suggesting you keep anything from the ambassador. We just wanted to ask you to stay, as you Earthlings put it, ‘on your toes.’ Very pleased to meet you, Earthling Tim.”

  And with that they tapped me gently on the head with their cane and strolled past.

  They were whistling, though since I was behind them now, I couldn’t tell which of them was making the sound.

  Maybe it was both.

  * * *

  Ralph-the-Driver took me home in the embassy limo. He didn’t say anything along the way. He never does.

  As we drove, I tried to think about the conversation with Ellico vec Bur, which seemed important. But to be honest it was the way things had worked out with Maktel that was really on my mind. Clearly he was a snot and a snob, and the two of us weren’t going to get along.

  * * *

  I tried to slip into the apartment without Mom noticing.

  No such luck.

  “How’d it go, hon?” she called from her bedroom.

  I went to her door. She was sitting at her sewing machine.

  “Okay,” I said.

  She knew immediately that the whole thing had rotted, of course. She’s like that.

  “So, what went wrong?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Maktel’s a booger.”

  She actually laughed, which I didn’t appreciate. “Don’t take it too hard, Tim. Three can be a tricky number when it comes to friendship. It just seems to be human nature.”

  “Nice try, Mom, but Pleskit and Maktel aren’t human.”

  My mother sighed. “You know what I mean.”

  I did, but I didn’t want to talk about it. Besides, when she starts with “you know what I mean,” there’s not much point in talking anyway, since she’s got her mind made up. Fortunately, she changed the subject on her own. “Look,” she said proudly.

  She held up a little bag made of white mesh. It had a drawstring at the top, and two black straps.

  “You made it!” I cried.

  She smiled. “It seemed like a good idea.”

  The purpose of th
e bag was to let me keep the oog-slama close to me. According to the little booklet Pleskit had printed out from volume 4,658 of the Encyclopedia Galactica, carrying the Veeblax-to-be around would help it bond to me.

  “Come on,” said Mom. “Let’s see if the bag is the right size. Then I’ll help you strap it on.”

  We went to my room and tucked the oog-slama into the little bag. It fit perfectly. Mom showed me how to put on the straps—one over my shoulder, one around my chest, so that the oog-slama was nestled slightly above my armpit.

  “It’s just right!” I said happily. “Thank you!”

  She gave me a little hug. “Glad you like it.”

  She had only been out of the room for a few minutes when the oog-slama wiggled. I was really happy when that happened. But it also made me a little sad, because I didn’t feel I could call Pleskit to tell him about it.

  Why didn’t he do something to help? I asked myself, which was when I realized that I was almost as mad at him as I was at Maktel.

  I tried to stuff that feeling down. Pleskit and I had already had one bust-up, and I didn’t want to go through it again. Besides, if I got mad at him now, he had Maktel to hang out with, so maybe he would just forget me as a friend altogether.

  Of course, Maktel wasn’t here permanently; his visit was only supposed to last three weeks. Once he left, Pleskit would be on his own again. Let him come crawling back looking for a friend then! Ha!

  Except I knew I would still be glad to be his friend. Which confused me, since it almost made me wonder if what he had said once when he was upset—that I was just being his friend because I’m so crazy about the idea of aliens—was true.

  But I knew it wasn’t; I liked Pleskit just for who he was.

  Which meant I should probably do the best I could to get along with the brat Maktel while he was here.