A black knight descended, and a white king found his back to the wall.
“Checkmate.” Joey said with a grin.
Black and red digits that vaguely resembled fingers hoisted the white king and flung it at Joey. Joey ducked, and the white king bounced off the windshield at the front of the hollowed-out school bus and clattered to the floor. Joey chuckled, but his alter-ego the Eel stifled him: Easy. You still don’t know what this thing’s capable of…
It was true . And it was then that Joey decided to find out. He looked at the battered CPU monitor to his right, and grinned even wider to see Spike’s words filling the screen: BAAAT! BAAAT! BAAAT! VOKLU! AL! BAAAT! The gibberish went on and on, but Joey didn’t need the Docutalk writing program to decipher Spike’s language.
“Relax, Spike, it’s just a game.” He said. The headset he wore decoded his voice into the same CPU, and then into a digital code that was translated into Spike’s weird-ass language.
The gibberish disappeared, followed by the words IT IS A STUPID GAME.
Joey nodded. “I said that the first time I lost, too. But it doesn’t matter if you won or lost, it just mattered that you played.” Joey said. After a moment, he added “BAAAT is your term for the sex act, isn’t it?”
?HOW DID YOU KNOW? The words appeared.
Lucky guess, he thought, but said “Because my people have a list of your words. When we hear some of them, we launch a few hundred nuclear missiles into space just to be on the safe side.
The red and black reptilian bulk of Spike shuddered, and withdrew from him. Joey frowned, and looked at the screen again.
!YOU DARE NOT! !YOU DARE NOT! !YOU DARE NOT! !YOU DARE NOT! !YOU DARE NOT! !YOU DARE NOT! !YOU DARE NOT! !YOU DARE NOT!
Joey felt he had touched a nerve somehow, and The Eel told him to ease back.
“Yo, calm down, Reptilicus! It ain’t my finger on the trigger, anyway. Y’all shoulda done more homework before ya landed here…but listen. I’m curious. What do you guys do?”
?DO? WE EXIST, AS YOU DO.
Joey blinked at the screen. Hmmmm. “No. What do your people do? What can your people do? For occupations, for instance.”
There was a long moment of silence, and The Eel spoke darkly into Joey’s brain: OH! A tentacle-spike to the throat—that’s GOTTA hurt, Vince! Ooohh! A double-mandible disembowelment to the midsection! Baron’s DOWN! Where’s the REF? It’s TOO BRUTAL! One—Two—THREE—
After many moments, a reply appeared.
?WHOM WILL YOU TELL?
Joey thought for a moment, and replied “Everyone who’ll believe me. Both of ‘em.” He sighed and said “C’mon, Spike, I’m just curious, don’t tell me if you don’t want to; I don’t give a BAAT.”
The thing coiled in the back of the empty schoolbus looked up at him…truly looked, for he knew where its glittering onyx eyes were, now…and it responded.
WE DO MANY THINGS.
"Duhhhh. Anything specific?”
After another pregnant pause, Spike said: WE ARE PRIMARILY CARTOGRAPHERS. WE MAP SOLAR SYSTEMS AND SUGGEST TRADE ROUTES.
Awe blazed in Joey’s mind, but The Eel seemed to capitalize on it. “Ha! We do that before breakfast!”
BOVINE WASTE! YOUR BARBARIC RACE IS TOO PREOCCUPIED WITH SLAUGHTERING EACH OTHER TO TRAVEL BEYOND YOUR PRIMARY STAR!
Oh, Joey thought. It seemed that there was a limit to the amount of bovine waste he could shovel at this thinking pile of armored tentacles. But…”Well, if we’re so damned barbaric, why’d you bother showin’ up? What is your freakin’ ‘Ambassador Project’?”
There was a long pause, and Joey looked at the blank CPU screen with growing unease. “Wellll…?”
IT IS A TRADE-DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM. BUT I AM ONLY GIVEN INFORMATION ABOUT IT AT TEMPORAL INTERVALS. I HAVE TOLD YOU WHAT I KNOW UP TO THIS INTERVAL. LET US COMMUNICATE ON SOME OTHER MATTER, Spike finally wrote.
Okay, let’s lay off the Sam Donaldson routine, The Eel suggested. Joey frowned, and thought of another way to get the truth out of Spike. But first he’d humor him…it. “Okay. Y’all are cartographers. So you’re probably scouts, too, right?”
THE BEST IN SIX GALAXIES, Spike boasted.
“Okay, what else?”
WE SELL SINGLE-USE SPACECRAFT. NOT THE SCULPTED-METAL VERSIONS OF YOUR FANTASIES, BUT SIMPLY HOLLOWED-OUT ASTEROIDS EQUIPPED WITH OUR ENGINES. Joey stared at the screen as the revelations continued. ON SOME WORLDS, WE WORK AS EXCAVATORS. WE CAN DIGEST MOST MINERALS, SO MINING COMES NATURALLY TO US. There was a pause. WE COULD DO THE SAME FOR YOUR PEOPLE, IF YOU WERE NOT SO WARLIKE…
Joey felt his hackles rising. “Hey, c’mon! We’re not all freakin’ Vikings, y’know!”
TRUE! SOME OF YOU HAVE MORE EFFECTIVE WEAPONRY THAN THE NORSEMEN.
“Oh, and y’all are just as meek an’ mild as lambs, right? The Deadheads of space, only without the love-beads. I seem to recall you burstin’ up out of the sewers and snatchin’ me like a rapist! Not to mention all your cute and cuddly spikes…” Joey snorted derisively.
Spike seemed prepared for the retort. MY ORIGINAL STRATEGY WAS TO OFFER TO PURCHASE A BEVERAGE FOR YOU, WHICH YOU OBVIOUSLY WOULD HAVE ACCEPTED WITHOUT CARING ABOUT MY APPEARANCE. HOWEVER, I HAD NOT YET CASHED MY VOYAGER’S MARKS…
“Traveler’s checks, Malaprop. And your low self-esteem about your looks isn’t my problem. The point is that y’all can throw down when you have to…”
?THROW DOWN?
“Fight.” Joey said.
AGREED. BUT NOT AS MUCH AS YOUR PEOPLE! YOU ARE THE THIRD MOST VIOLENT RACE IN KNOWN SPACE.
The statement stunned Joey at first, then he relaxed. He’d seen violence, naturally, and cruelty, evil and hate. But he’d also seen beauty, and friendship, and love. If humankind was the third most violent race in the universe, then beyond Earth, the universe must be a peaceful place indeed.
“Well, bad publicity’s still publicity. So…what’s the most violent race?”
WE ARE…NO, JUST GOATING. ARCTURIUM IS THE MOST VIOLENT RACE.
“Arcturium is a race? That sounds like a metal…”
THEY ARE. ARCTURIUM IS A MINERAL LIFE FORM, SILICON BASED INSTEAD OF CARBON BASED. IMAGINE A METALLIC VERSION OF YOUR AMOEBA, ONLY A TRILLION TIMES LARGER.
Joey’s eyes widened. “Whoa. When are they comin’ to dinner?”
?COMING TO DINNER?
“Never mind. What I meant to say was, they’re not planning to visit Earth anytime soon, are they?”
HOPEFULLY THEY WILL NOT VISIT ANY WORLD. WE HAVE SURROUNDED THEIR HOMEWORLD WTH EXPLOSIVE ASTEROIDS. IN ANY EVENT, THEIR WORLD IS MANY PARSECS AWAY. BY THE TIME THEY ARRIVED, YOUR GREAT-GRANDCHILDREN WOULD HAVE TO FIGHT THEM.
“Would my great-grandchildren win?”
I CALCULATE YOUR CHANCE OF SURVIVAL AT FOURTEEN PERCENT.
“Swell.” Joey muttered.
?SWELL? A STRANGE REQUEST, BUT IF IT AMUSES YOU, I WILL TRY…Spike wrote, and then the not-so-ancient astronaut began flexing its immense bulk, sucking in air through its myriad pores and gills, getting bigger. Joey looked, realized what Spike was doing, and choked back laughter.
“No! I didn’t mean the verb ‘swell’, I meant…never mind, I was only ‘goating’.”
YOUR LANGUAGE IS A PAIN IN THE WASTEGLAND, it wrote.
“Remind me to bring you a few more books. So, who’s the other heavy hitt—er, who’s the other race more violent than us?”
YUJATE. THEY LIVE ONLY TO HUNT, AND TO SPAWN MORE HUNTERS. IGNORANT VERMIN! THE ONLY REASON THEY NO LONGER HUNT MY PEOPLE IS THEY CONSIDER US TOO SLOW TO BE AMUSING SPORT!
Joey sneered up at Spike. “Ah-HA! So THAT’S why you’re here! To find somebody to fight them for you, right? That’s your damned ‘Ambassador Project’…”
The screen went blank for a while—and then:
YOU WOULD NOT FIGHT THEM FOR US. YOU WOULD FIGHT THEM ANYWAY, OUT OF SHEER PARANOIA. AS YOU WOULD FIGHT ARCTURIUM, OR MY PEOPLE, OR ANYTHING ELSE THAT DID NOT RESEMBLE YOU.
The words stung Joey, until he realized that Spike was right. And the statement struck another chord in him.
“Is there anything out there that does look like us?”
Another long pause. NONE THAT LOOK EXACTLY LIKE YOUR RACE. THERE ARE MANY BIPEDS, BUT I THINK THE SELENTIIS ARE THE ONLY ONES YOU WOULD WANT TO BAAT.
Joey watched the screen and laughed. Gibberish filled the screen, and he knew that Spike was laughing, too.
Later, when Joey drove home with a fresh supply of ‘Breakers, there was a girl waiting across the street for him.
It’s wasn’t Kelly Lambert. Or Jane LeDoux, or Holly Merrow, or Laura Eisen, or anyone else who would have cheerfully blown him for one of his brain-candies.
The girl was a petite young blonde in a black leather jacket and skintight jeans. Joey saw the Zodiac symbol airbrushed on her leather as he pulled to the curb, but he didn’t recognize it.
But he recognized her.
The hair, the supermodel features. It was Jesus’ Sister, the ‘Yearbook Photographer’, leaning casually against an expensive Triumph motorcycle. Joey knew it was time to get acquainted. He shoved the cache of Jawbreakers into the glove compartment, locked it, got out of the truck, locked it, and looked at her.
She smiled, barely. “’Evenin’.” She said in a deliberately too-loud voice.
“Yes, it is.” Joey replied, trying to sound nonchalant. He shot a quick glance at his father’s house, but his father’s car wasn’t there. Hmmmm. “So…are you movin’ into the neighborhood?” It was idiotic, but he didn’t know what else to say.
“Already did.” The girl said. She kept her half-smile as she stepped across the street towards him, hands in her jacket pockets. “Just developed your photos. They came out pretty well. Want to see ‘em?”
She was under the street light now, and he noticed two things: her beauty…her almost perfect beauty…and her eyes. They were a clear, brilliant blue, but they seemed to be looking past him. Her eyes looked like she was bored with him already, even before the introduction. But that half-smile on her lush red lips remained.
“Keep ‘em. I’m a little old to be in the yearbook.” Joey said.
“But not too old to date a High School Senior.” She said.
“Yeah, that’s right. And you are…?”
“Why don’t you call me…Gem.” She said, her smile growing as the distance between them decreased.
Remembering the Zodiac sign, he put two and two together. “Short for Gemini, I take it…”
“Correct.”
She was an arm’s length away now, and Joey caught a tart scent of perfume…and something else. Something that made him want to tackle her and rape her, right there on the damned street. Soft hairs rose in his nostrils, and on the back of his neck.
“What—ah—what can I do for you?” He stammered. He tried to summon The Eel, but it was useless. Every cell in his body was concentrating on her.
“Oh, you’re too kind. Most guys want to do something to me. Here you are offering to do something for me.” She unzipped her jacket slightly, showing a miraculous expanse of pure skin and cleavage, but no shirt whatsoever. Reaching inside, she withdrew a small envelope. She met his gaze, smirked, and zipped her jacket shut again, relishing the noticeable disappointment in his eyes. “Actually, this is about what I can do for you. Or to you.”
She held out the envelope. Joey reached for it, and made contact with her hand as he did. There was a soft rush of heat against his skin, and it felt like he was laying next to her on a beach blanket…and then the sensation was gone, as she withdrew her hand. He clutched the envelope, blinking numbly at her.
“W-what is this?” He whispered.
“The beginning of a beautiful friendship.” She sighed. “My associates and I are inviting you to a party. Afterwards, if you’ve got a spoonful of brains, you’ll be making a lot more money.”
“I don’t suppose I have a choice…” Joey began.
She raised a perfect, downy eyebrow. “Of course you do. Everyone has a choice; the only problem is making the right one. You could hook up with us, and next month your father could be driving a Lexus instead of that old Volvo.”
Joey felt his skin temperature drop a few degrees.
“You choose not to meet my associates, and that would be where the ‘to you’ part comes in.” She said, and his skin temperature dropped a few more degrees.
She winked at him and walked away, back to her motorcycle. Joey watched her get on; it was poetry in motion.
“Nice meeting you, Joey.” She said, slid her helmet on, revved the throttle of the bike and roared away down the street.
He could only nod and stare after her. After a moment, after his heartrate had slowed, he opened the envelope.
There was a glossy black business card covered with a ring of astrological symbols, at the center of which was the word GUEST in gold print.
There were two hundred-dollar bills with a sticky note attached: DRESS CODE: UPSCALE CASUAL, WITH SEPARATE BATHING ATTIRE.
There was a piece of paper that read 9 pm SAT, 4/4. FRONT DOOR OF PINE CASTLE BOWLING ALLEY. JUST YOU.
There was also the photo she’d taken of him and Kelly Lambert, at the High School.
Only Kelly’s face had been burned out of the photograph, probably with a cigarette…
