The girl and the Mom laughed. The
girl said, "Brian's a space alien. I always knew it."
The boy nodded proudly. "I am
Splortch from Veebilzania. That is Miglick, my partner."
"Herro," said the dog, looking up
from his dish.
"How do you like the duck food?"
asked the boy.
"Good!" said the dog.
The Mom asked, "How'd you train
Lucky to bark like that?"
"He di'n't," said the
dog.
"I didn't," said the boy. "We
learned your language from your television broadcasts."
The Mom put her hand on the boy's
forehead. "I think you've been watching too much television,
mister. Do you feel all right?"
Before the boy could answer,
someone pressed the door buzzer. "I'll get it!" the girl
said.
"Oh," said the boy in relief.
"That's not the sound of you hummings blowing up our space
ship?"
The girl opened the front door,
then said, "Mom? It's the police."
"No, it's not." A fat policeman
walked into the room. "It's me, Brian."
"Rowf," said a tall policewoman,
trotting in after the policeman.
"Oh, oh," said the boy.
"Ro, ro," said the dog.
"Mom!" said the policeman, pointing
at the boy and the dog. "They're aliens and they want to kill
everyone on Earth. We have to stop them!"
As the policewoman ran toward the
dog dish, the policeman called, "Lucky! Come back here!" The
policewoman barked sadly and returned to the policeman's
side.
The Mom looked from the two police
officers to the boy and the dog.
"It's me, really!" the policeman
said. "The aliens switched bodies with Lucky and me. And when the
police showed up, I got put into the policeman's body by
mistake."
"That is not true," said the boy.
"I'm Pry-on the humming, not Splortch from Veebilzania." He pointed
at the dog. "This is a fortunate duck, not my partner Miglick. Send
away those hummings in blue clothing and let us stay with you until
we decide whether you're really people."
The Mom stared at the
boy.
The boy added, "Please?"
"Brian?" the Mom asked the boy.
"The joke's over now, understand?"
"It's not a joke!" said the
policeman. "If you don't believe me, they'll turn all the oxygen
into methane, and everyone will die!"
"Yes, they're playing a joke!" said
the boy. "But not me! I'm really Pry-on! Make the joking people go
away!"
The Mom said, "This isn't funny,
Brian." She turned toward the police officers. "And you two should
be ashamed of yourselves, playing some game like this—"
The policewoman whimpered. The
policeman said, "Oh, dang."
The girl pointed at the policeman.
"Mom, that's Brian."
The woman stared at the boy. "Then
who're you?"
"Oh, all right," said the boy,
sighing. "I'm Splortch. I traded bodies with Pry-on."
The dog said, "But where are our
real bodies?"
"Right here," said someone at the
door.
"Hey, great!" said Brandi. "Space
aliens!"
The green alien pointed a tentacle
at the policewoman, who was hiding behind the policeman. "Just
don't let me eat dog food, okay?"
"Don't worry, Sergeant," said the
policeman. "Lucky does everything I tell him to. Except when he
doesn't."
At that moment, a man in cowboy
boots walked in the front door and stared at the two aliens, the
two police officers, the two children, the dog, and the
Mom.
"Dad!" the policeman yelled,
wrapping his arms around the surprised man and giving him a big
hug. "You're home early!"
"Uh—" began the Dad.
"Roo's he?" said the
dog.
The policewoman started drinking
water out of Lucky's water dish.
The boy said, "Please tell Captain
Pran-dee not to destroy our space ship. We could put our rest stop
on another planet."
"I—" began the Dad.
"Do you live here?" said the blue
alien. "Or are you another space alien?"
"Um—" began the Dad.
"Everything's under control," the
green alien said. "But your son promised he wouldn't let me drink
out of the dog dish, and look at me now." The alien pointed a
tentacle at the policewoman, who was happily lapping up water from
the dog dish.
"Oh, sorry." The policeman released
the very confused Dad and called, "Lucky! Stop that." The
policewoman looked up from the dog dish, then ran over and crouched
beside the policeman.
The Dad said, "If I go outside and
come back in again, will this make sense?"
"I doubt it," said the Mom. "But if
it works, I'll try it too."
"We only saw your television
broadcasts," said the boy. "We didn't know you were intelligent
beings."
"Rat's right," said the dog. "We
won't take away your grr-oxygen now."
The girl gave the Dad a hug. "Isn't
this great? Everyone's in the wrong bodies, except for
us!"
The blue alien said, "Sarge, I sure
hope you'll write the report on this case," and then
coughed.
The green alien nodded, said,
"Maybe we should say we fell asl—" and then coughed,
too.
The Dad scratched his head. "This
is one of those TV shows where they trick people,
right?"
"No time to explain, Dad!" said the
policeman, running outside with the policewoman following behind
him. "C'mon, everybody!"
"Hey, our bodies!" cried the space
aliens, running after the police officers.
"Hey, our bodies!" cried the boy
and the dog, running after the aliens.
"Hey, Brian and Lucky!" cried the
Dad, running after the boy and the dog.
"Hey, Dad!" cried the girl, running
after the Dad.
"Hey, everybody!" cried the Mom,
not running after anyone. "Who's going to explain what's going
on?"
"Not now, Mom!" said the policeman,
stopping for a moment at the edge of the woods. "The aliens said
their oxygen pills don't last very long!"
"Rat's right!" said the dog. "Grr-I
forgot!"
"What oxygen breathing pills?" said
the blue alien.
"I don't like the sound of this,"
said the green alien, and then it coughed again.
"Hurry!" said the girl, grabbing
her Mom's hand to lead her into the woods.
The Dad looked up into the trees as
they ran. "They sure hide the video cameras well."
Just as everyone entered the
clearing where the space ship stood, the two aliens fell on the
ground and began gasping desperately. The dog pressed a purple
button on the space ship's control panel, and two small yellow
pills popped out. The dog gave them to the aliens. As soon as the
aliens popped them into their mouths, they quit
coughing.
After Splortch and Miglick used
their machine to put everyone back into their proper bodies,
Splortch said, "Thank you for not destroying our ship, Captain
Pran-dee."
The girl shrugged. "Oh, that's all
right."
Splortch said, "And thank you for
remembering about the oxygen pills, Pry-on. You saved us from
having to live the rest of our lives as hideous freaks. Um, nothing
personal."
"I kind of liked being a duck,"
said Miglick.
"I kind of like being alive," said
the policewoman. "You did good, kid."
Brian blushed and shrugged. "That's
all right."
Splortch said, "After we build a
rest stop on Pluto, you all have to come and visit us."
"That'd be nice," said the
Mom.
"And bring some of that good duck
food," called Miglick as the space ship's door closed behind
him.
"Goodbye!" everyone shouted as the
space ship took off. After it disappeared in the sky, the Dad said,
"They use very long wires and a really big mirror,
right?"
"Let's go finish our lunch," said
the Mom.
Brian patted Lucky's head. "Glad to
be a dog again?"
Lucky licked Brian's face and said
"Rowf! Rowf!" And everyone knew that meant "yes!" (Though it really
meant, "You smell that dead skunk? Let's all go roll on
it!")
Taken He
Cannot Be
Will Shetterly
Things die. This is the lesson that
everyone learns. Some do not learn it until the instant before
death, but we all learn it. We pass our final exam by dying. Dr.
John Henry Holliday earned his diploma from the school of life at a
younger age than most. At twenty, he had been told that consumption
would kill him in six months, yet at thirty, he still lingered
around the campus. He supposed he was a tenured professor of death,
which made him laugh, which made him cough, which made him think
about the man they had come to meet, and kill.
He rode through the midsummer heat
beside his best friend, Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp. They had both grown
beards to disguise themselves, and they had dressed like cowboys
instead of townsmen. No one who saw them pass at a distance would
recognize the dentist-turned-gambler or Tombstone’s former deputy
sheriff, both wanted in Arizona on charges of murder.
They rode to kill John Ringgold,
better known as Johnny Ringo. Wyatt had said that Wells Fargo would
pay for Ringo’s demise, and Doc had always believed in being paid
to do what you would do cheerfully for free. He did not know or
care how much Wells Fargo might pay. He was not sure whether Wells
Fargo had made an offer, or Wyatt had merely assumed the coach line
would show its gratitude for the death of the last leader of the
Clanton gang. Doc knew Wyatt had asked him to come kill Johnny
Ringo, and that sufficed. Had anyone asked him why he agreed, he
would have said he had no prior engagements. The only person who
might have asked would have been Big Nose Kate Elder, and she had
left him long ago.
•
The brown hills stirred frequently
as they rode. The two riders always looked at motion—in a land
where bandits waited for their piece of wealth from the booming
silver mines, you always looked. They never expected more than
sunlight on quartz, or dust in a hot puff of wind, or a lizard
darting for food or shelter. Vision was simultaneously more
powerful and less trustworthy in this dry land. The eye saw far in
the parched atmosphere, but it did not always see
truthfully.
The unicorn showed itself on a
rise. Doc never thought that it might be a wild horse. Though it
was the size of a horse, it did not move like a horse, and he had
never seen a horse with such white, shaggy fur, and that long, dark
spear of its horn left no doubt, at least not in a person who lived
by assessing situations instantly, then acting.
Doc acted by not acting: he did not
flinch or blink or gasp or look away in order to look back. If this
apparition was his private fantasm, he would not trouble Wyatt with
its existence. If it was not, Wyatt would say something.
And Wyatt did. “Doc?”
“Eh?”
“What’s that
critter?”
“Unicorn.”
“Eh.”
They rode for another minute or
two. The unicorn remained on the ridge. Its head moved slightly to
follow them as they passed.
Wyatt said, “What’s a
unicorn?”
“In Araby they call
it cartajan. Means ‘lord of the desert.’”
“I can see
that.”
“‘
The cruelest is the unicorn, a monster that belloweth
horribly, bodied like a horse, footed like an elephant, tailed like
a swine, and headed like a stag. His horn sticketh out of the midst
of his forehead, of a wonderful brightness about four foot long, so
sharp, that whatsoever he pusheth at, he striketh it through
easily. He is never caught alive; killed he may be, but taken he
cannot be.’”
“Huh. Shakespeare or
the Bible?”
“Some old-time Roman
named Solinus, translated by some old-time Englishman who might’ve
supped with Master Will and King Jim.”
“I ain’t never seen
no unicorn before.”
“Nor yet. That’s a
mirage. A will o’ the wisp. The product of a fevered
brain.”
“I reckon you’re
contagious, then.”
Doc laughed, then coughed, then
said, “Well, ain’t no one known to’ve seen one before. Not for
sure. All that’s written down is travellers’ tales, ’bout things
they heard but never saw.”
“We’re the first to
spot one?”
“In centuries. Far as
I know.”
“What do you think a
circus’d pay for a critter like that?”
Doc laughed and coughed again.
“Have to catch it first. It being a bastard of the mind, I reckon
it’d race as fleet as a thought.”
“Faster’n
horses?”
“S’posed to
be.”
“We could corner it
in a box canyon, maybe.”
“That horn ain’t
s’posed to be for decoration.”