“The… you’re kidding. I thought they weren’t interested in me.”
“They aren’t. They’re interested in ‘Arlen.’ A Mr. Barnett let them in on the connection between the column and Stan Schell and suddenly you’re famous—SF writer moonlights as adviser of the lovelorn. They want you to come on and read some of the letters you’ve gotten—and, of course, the ‘charmingly oddball’ answers.”
“But I don’t have any answers!”
“And they want you to field questions from the audience and just generally, um, be Arlen for them.”
“But I’m not Arlen! I’m Stan Schell! I write science fiction. I’ll talk to them about that all night, if they want.”
“That’s just it, Stan—they don’t want. Maybe we should just turn your trespassers over to them.”
For a moment Stan contemplated that—going onto The Tonight Show and telling them all about today. Maybe even showing pictures. There was a camera in the front hall closet. As soon as he had the thought, he discarded it. Doing that would result in one of several horrific scenarios: (1) No one would believe him; he would be labeled a crackpot; and his career would come to an abrupt halt. (2) No one would believe him but a legion of UFO chasers; he would become a poster child for “abductees” and hit the talk show circuit while his writing languished. (3) Everyone would believe him, including the government; he would end up in a witness protection program or, worse, he and the aliens would become “guests” of the US government.
“Look, just tell them I don’t want to do it.”
“Are you nuts? This could be—”
“Excruciatingly embarrassing, that’s what it could be. I’m a science fiction writer, dammit. A good one. Just keep getting me gigs as a science fiction writer.”
“There aren’t that many gigs for science fiction writers, Stan. At least not ones at your level. This could get you exposure.”
“Exposure? I’d rather run naked through Central Park.”
“Think about it, OK?”
“Yeah, right.”
“What is The Tonight Show?” the lizard asked the moment Stan poked his head tentatively into the office.
“Wh-why do you ask?”
“I have gotten an e-mail about it. I have been asked to appear on this The Tonight Show to discuss the column and share some excerpts,’ but I have no idea what this means.”
Explain a nighttime variety show to an alien. Interesting assignment. Stan supposed he could mis-explain it, but he knew that the FRU would be able to disabuse Qtzl of any false impressions. He explained as best he could, and was surprised at Qtzl’s immediate comprehension.
“Yes, yes! We have this at home, too. People speak and sing and dance and show their prowess at game or thought. Yes, I know this. But at home, these… shows are broadcast widely. Many thousands of people can experience them. Is it so here?”
Stan nodded. “The Tonight Show is probably the most exposure a person can get in one hour. It’s been known to make or break careers.”
Qtzl’s neck frill, which had risen to the occasion, sank back to his shoulders. “But, Stan, I cannot appear on your show. If I do, everyone will see me. Then what would happen?”
Stan had no answer to that. In his books, aliens were feared, loathed, embraced wholeheartedly, worshipped. He realized he had no idea how real human beings would react to real aliens. “I don’t know,” he admitted.
“Could you do the show?”
“How could I do it? I don’t write the column.”
“Well, you did write one reply. It was perhaps not as well thought out as it could have been—you missed a few issues… But that doesn’t matter, I could coach you. I could be in contact with you all the time you were on the show. I could put my words in your mouth.”
“How?”
The FRU chose that moment to float silently into the room.
“That’s how,” said Qtzl.
“Damn,” said Stan.
“OK, OK, OK,” said the young man in the third row. “I got one for you. There’s this girl in the group I hang with who’s real cute, but has this really disgusting habit, OK? Whenever we do fast food, she orders a hot dog, OK? And she takes a bite out of one end and then—this is gross—she turns the hot dog around so that I’m staring right at the bite and takes a bite off the other end. What can I do about that?”
“Not sit across from her?” Stan suggested. The audience laughed and Stan felt a warm glow spread across his cheeks. Cool.
In his ear, Ship chirped in annoyance. “Please, Stan, let Qtzl take care of this.”
“But seriously,” said Stan and paused to field Qtzl’s thoughts. “Are you really as dense as you sound? Don’t you recognize a mating ritual when you see one? This… female… is obviously attracted to you and is inviting you to partake of the Food Ritual with her. Your response, young man, should be to lean across the table and take a nice, big bite out of the proffered end of the food item. Unless, of course, you do not find the female attractive. Do you find the female attractive?”
“Well, yeah…”
“Then you simply must bite the dog, young man. The only other response possible is to get up and leave the eating area. But this would leave the female with the impression that you don’t like her and don’t wish to share her food.”
The audience loved it. Every off-the-wall second of it. A week later, Ship’s port bow gimbals were on their way to recovery and “Arlen” had been asked to appear on The Late Night Show.
Kerwin Frees stared at the row of photographs bobbing festively from a line hung across his tiny kitchen/darkroom and flogged his brain through a tangle of seemingly unconnected facts. Fact 1: An alien spaceship had crash-landed in the Sierra Nevada. The evidence of that hung right before his eyes. Fact 2: The aliens were staying in Stan Schell’s Tahoe summer cabin. Fact 3: Stan Schell knew the aliens were using his house. (Witness the series of photos, taken yesterday through Schell’s front window, of human and reptilian alien sharing cheese puffs in front of the TV.)
Then there was the Ask Arlen angle, which Frees had learned of while trying to glean information about Schell from his newspaper editor. It severely complicated the scenario, which as near as he could tell went something like this: An alien ship crashes. Shortly thereafter, Ask Arlen, a demonstrably weird advice column, appears in a Sacramento newspaper. Shortly after that, it goes into syndication. About this time, Stan Schell appears in Ted Barnett’s office asking after the author of the column that bears his picture. He reveals that the e-mail address to which Barnett delivers his reader’s letters is his own. Schell goes to Tahoe, purportedly to confront the face-stealing columnist. He discovers, instead, that there are aliens hiding in his summer cabin—something Frees had to assume was what he’d witnessed upon his discovery of the crash site. Schell immediately calls Barnett and “confesses” that he is the source of the column after all.
OK. What did that mean? That Stan Schell was fronting for aliens who came to Earth to write advice columns for human beings? Were we that pathetic, or was this some sort of very peculiar plan for world domination? And what was Kerwin Frees supposed to do with the information? He had been sitting on it for nearly a month, pretending to be gathering information, all the while wallowing in this insipid state of confusion.