Damn. Outargued by a machine. An alien machine. Stan wandered into the library and pulled one of his books from the shelf. Stepping Over Shadows, the cover said—a story of aliens transported against their will to a strange new world called Earth. He perched on the corner of his desk and read the passage describing the alien protagonist’s first encounter with human beings. He skipped pages and read a paragraph or two about the alien’s voyage aboard the Earth ship. It was good, he thought. He had captured the alien’s sense of human alienness. And that had been written long before he’d met a real alien.
His computer screen still displayed the threatening e-mail. He read it, then sat down and sent a message to Kerfrees@shore.net. Then he called Ted Barnett at The Bee.
Kerwin Frees’s heart turned over in his chest as he read the e-mail. He was going to meet the aliens. He sat back in his disreputable overstuffed chair and stared at the pine knots in his ceiling.
Stan Schell’s message had posed one particularly disturbing question. “What do you want?” What did he want? Fame, fortune, notoriety? Or did he just want to be right? Did he just want to know that there was life Elsewhere—intelligent life, life we could shake hands with, communicate with, grow to like, even befriend as Stan Schell (damn him/bless him) had befriended his alien refugees. In three days he would know (hell, he already knew) that he was right. The question in his mind was—did he need the whole damn world to know he was right?
Stan heard the back door open and close. Qtzl came in, wearing a bright yellow sundress with orange tulips on it.
“I have come to say good-bye, Stan,” the alien said, and Stan read honest emotion in the odd eyes. “Ship has run a diagnostic and says we are able to leave here. I can return to my family—my world.” He paused and tilted his head from side to side several times as if he might shake the appropriate words loose. “I will miss having fame and fortune. It was something I never could achieve on my world.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Yes. I suppose you do.”
“But just imagine, Qtzl, what will happen when you return after all this time and tell everyone where you’ve been, and how you had to brave alien danger to get home? You’ll be a celebrity then, I’ll bet. Everyone will want to know your story. Everyone.”
“If they believe me. I have been known to… exaggerate.”
“You have Ship. Would Ship lie?”
The reptilian face brightened. “No machine intelligence has ever been known to even exaggerate, much less lie. But… may I take some Earth artifacts back with me anyway—a set of your novels, perhaps?”
Stan nodded, feeling a lump begin to grow in his throat.
“And this garment.” He fingered the hem of the sun-dress which came to just above his oddly jointed knees. “May I take this, too?”
“Sure. Sis won’t miss it. Take those pine cones you’ve been hoarding, too, won’t you? I sure don’t know what to do with them.”
Qtzl’s crest bounced up and down in pleasure. “Thanks, Stan. And now I must go. Ship is requesting my presence.”
Stan checked his watch. “Yeah. Frees will be here any minute. You’d better get going.”
They paused long enough for Stan to take a photograph of Qtzl in the yellow sun-dress. It seemed the appropriate way to remember him. Then the big lizard went to where Ship lay completely right side up on its landing struts, there to load his pine cones, books, and other Earth artifacts.
Stan waited. Not long. Kerwin Frees showed up punctually at his front door.
“Where are they?” He’d barely stepped across the threshold when the words were out of his mouth.
“They’re leaving.”
“They’re—? You conned me!”
“You didn’t leave me much choice. I couldn’t expose them.”
Frees gave him a panicked glare and bolted out the back of the cabin. Stan followed him down the hill to where Ship was overseeing Qtzl’s clearing away of the last bit of brush. It looked somewhat the worse for wear, its once gleaming sides burnt and battered looking. But it had assured Stan it was serviceably sound and quite capable of getting Qtzl home.
Frees had frozen at the bow when Qtzl, still wearing the yellow sundress, turned and waved cheerily. “Oh, hello! You must be Kerwin Frees. I’m Qtzl Fhuuii. Come to see us off, have you? How nice. Isn’t that nice of Kerwin Frees, Stan Schell?”
“Very nice.”
Frees’s voice was so desperate it nearly squeaked. “You can’t leave! Don’t you understand how important this is to Earth?”
“I think we realize how important it is to you.” Stan moved to stand in front of the younger man, making him have to dodge a bit to keep his eyes on Qtzl and the FRU. “Would you really have spilled this to your UFO-logist buddies—to the tabloids?”
Ship uttered the closest thing Stan could imagine to a mechanical sigh. “I believe he did, Stan Schell.”
Stan glanced up the hill toward the cabin. A small knot of people had appeared at the top of the trail, bristling with cameras and microphones. Someone shouted, and the knot loosened and began to tumble down the hill. Stan turned back to the spacecraft. “Good-bye, Qtzl. Good-bye, Ship. I think I can honestly say I’ll miss you.” He smiled. “Don’t forget to write.”
Qtzl’s frill bounced and his crest stood up smartly. “I shall write, Stan Schell. You’ll see. Check your e-mail often.”
“I didn’t do this,” said Frees, pointing uphill.
“Uh-huh.”
Qtzl and the FRU disappeared into the Ship.
Frees danced around, putting himself between Stan and the reporters. “I mean it. I didn’t do this.”
Ship uttered a soft, keening song, like a zephyr through the pines then, moments later, lifted itself majestically into the air. Any sound it might have made was drowned in the trampling of flora under the feet of the approaching journalists. Ship hovered above the treetops—posing, Stan thought, wryly—then disappeared in a long streak of light.
Just like in the movies. Stan tilted his head to one side. He wondered if the video currently being shot would be blurred—like the ones in those ever-popular sightings shows.
A babble of voices swamped his thoughts. Microphones thrust into his face. On the other side of them, over a tangle of arms, Frees stared back at him, face sweating.
“What just happened?”
“What did we just see?”
“What was that?”
“Can you explain what just happened, Mr. Frees?” Stan asked.
Kerwin Frees’s mouth opened and closed like a beached trout’s. “It was a spacecraft,” finally emerged. Frees’s eyes lost their glazed look. He grabbed a microphone. “It was an alien spacecraft that crash-landed here months ago and was mistaken for a meteorite. There were two alien beings aboard, which this man—” He stabbed a finger at Stan. “Which this man hid in his summer cabin. He used the aliens to parlay a successful career for himself as an advice columnist.”
It sounded so inane, Stan almost lost himself to hysterical laughter. The reporters prevented him. “That’s Stan Schell!” one of them exclaimed, and the many microphones pushed in closer.
“What do you say, Mr. Schell?” an eagle-eyed young woman peered at him from behind a red wind sock.
“And you’re from?”
“The Skeptical Examiner. We got a call saying that an alien spacecraft was sitting in this ravine. Was that what I just saw taking off?”