“All that,” he said when I finished, “suggests easy success in the field.”
“Except for this,” I said, pointing to my screen. “Sometimes I regret the invention of electronic communication.”
He regarded me questioningly.
“Look at my situation,” I said. “I’m headed into vast danger. Now shouldn’t I set out with the knowledge I can return to outstretched arms—or at least favoring glances—or, failing that, at least a date with an esteemed member of the sex opposite?
“But no. Here I set out, with this devious arrow through the heart.”
“It’s tough,” he said.
“Think what it would have done to modern literature,” I said, “if they’d had this stuff back in the first war. Imagine Hemingway heading for the Italian front, only to receive e-mail to the effect that his devoted nurse might not love him anymore. Wouldn’t his prose have limped then? That fine, athletic style, in a sling and with a crutch!”
“I don’t think Hem met the nurse till he was wounded, Benny,” Wipp said.
“But you get the point.”
“But suppose she wants to test you. To see if you’re tough.”
“How do you mean?”
“She’s seen you in fine form with an alien once, right? So she tightens the screws. Makes it a challenge to you. See if you still cut a good figure.”
The words sounded plausible. “So I have to convince her I’ve withstood being unmanned, is that it? Presuming I do, that is.”
“Benny,” he said. “Consider. You are head of this expedition to Hock’s farm, yes?”
“Yes!”
“Consider, then. Doesn’t it happen that news-people sometimes find themselves in a position requiring action? Sometimes one must step in, abandon objectivity, and take center stage—because no one else is there to take events in hand, right?”
“Wipp, you inspire me. I should be one, in such a situation, you’re saying?”
“The opportunity may arise,” Wipp said. “So what I think, Benny, is that if we can get a holo of you on the front screen of this Special Edition, engaged in the fearless defense of Mother Earth and Farmer Hock, then A. Jones will lack any reason to question your stalwart nature.”
“Stalwart! Wipp, with you at my side—”
“At your side? I forgot to mention my blind.”
“Blind?”
“I carry it around for bird photos. I’ll have to use it here. Otherwise the aliens might attack—approach, that is—me, instead of you. If they approached me, how could I catch a holo of you defending Mother Earth?”
With that we swung off the road and under the sign of Hock’s Hoggery. The addenda scrawled beneath those large letters—bits of levity such as, “Knowledge is power,” which I recognized as Bacon—failed to lift my heart, however, as the vision danced before my eyes of one Benny Fogg confronting the alien horde in a solitary way, so solitary that it might be characterized as being very, very alone.
“If we may ask a few questions,” Wippett said to Farmer and Mrs. Hock, who stood one behind the other at the door of the farmhouse, being of proportions unsuited to standing side-by-side in any confined space. “It might help us out.”
“What kind of questions?” Farmer Hock’s round face had such a rubescent flush to it I suspected he perched on the edge of explosion at, say, someone who happened to rap at his door with firm, reportorial fist.
“Well, we’re here to look into this situation—”
“I want them out!”
“We’re reporters, sir.”
“Out! Now! I don’t care who you are!”
I remembered Wipp’s injunction to welcome any opportunities for heroism, and said, with hope within me, “Well, Mr. Hock, we’ll do what we can. I notice you don’t seem to have suffered any violence from them, at least.”
“No violence! How about being knocked out from behind!”
“You said it was gas, dearest,” Mrs. Hock said. She looked much like the farmer, with the same roundness of face and body, and even similar overalls, although of a daintier cut and design, being brightly floral. In personality, however, she seemed much the sweeter.
“All right, they gassed me!” Entering a worked-up state evidently provoked huffs and heefs from Farmer Hock, who was taking on the appearance of a steam-driven tractor of yore, regularly venting and gnashing and in general looking intimidating. “Gassed me! Yes! And they didn’t do it once, they’ve done it every time I’ve wandered into that pen! And I’d just dumped fresh slop loaded with fifty buckets of rotting potatoes and apples in the trough, so it’s just crying out for some pigs. But every time I get near, to let them in—wisstf—they gas me, and I wake up naked! First pen there, beyond the shade. Aw-huff. Heef! Naked!”
“Naked?” I shaped a picture of the enemy. If they gassed first, answered questions later, it could lead to an awkward interview.
“Naked as a pig, that’s how they leave me. They’ve probably taken twenty sets of suspenders in two days.”
“They want your clothes?”
“Hell knows what they want. They lurk around back there, aw-huff, waiting for me. They take my clothes and wear them!”
I took this in with a twinge of panic. I had hoped for guidance from the farmer. Farmers, in general, know how to deal with vegetables. I had expected a tip or two. Thus aided, I would have approached the aliens with the kind of bravery and fortitude that has characterized the Fogg line since grandpa, old Beezer Fogg, earned the Purple Heart at the Bulge.
The farmer a-hooted. “It’s no way to treat a man.”
“Well, at least there’s room in the closet, now,” said Mrs. Hock.
Around the house we obtained a view of the sheds. The two largest met by means of a tin arch, which created a sheltered place that gave shade against such days as this. To the left we saw a few rotund creatures. Some grubbed around the fence or thrust their heads ear-deep in muck, grunting their contentment.
Through the arch, in the sunlight beyond, marched a row of figures I recognized by the antennae and overalls. They moved in formation, bob-bobbing and occasionally hooting.
“It all comes clear, Wipp,” I said. “Here’s the plan. I’ll go through the arch, but I’ll wait a moment there while you go and find a good vantage point—say, the top of that shed. Look, there’s a ladder The trough Hock mentioned must be on the other side.”
“And the purpose for being on the shed?”
“Station yourself there, in your blind.” I prided myself for remembering to include it. “Then set out a remote, to hover in midair, to get shots of me approaching the aliens. You can shoot the rest from your position up there. It’ll be great, Wipp.”
“And what exactly are you going to do?”
“I’m going to use my big flapper. It’s what I’m best at, Wipp. I’ve just decided that. And I figure I have a simple message to deliver to these aliens. I’ve reviewed the facts of the case and see that now. What did our poor alien Extwizl want, after all? Our leader! Do we have one? No! At least I don’t think so, unless you count Mr. Wire, and who would travel across interstellar space to find him? These guys must have a simplistic political philosophy, and think everyone’s like peas in a pod. So all I have to do is go up to them and say I’m the leader.”
“You?”
“Why not? That’ll buy me time to reason with them, as I did with Extwizl.”
“And they’ll all commit suicide? But you don’t even know why Extwizl did it!”
“I’m sure to hit on it. Just talking seemed to wilt Extwizl a bit. And if they’re pliable, they might do anything. It’s like you can make a limp stalk of celery do all kinds of table tricks a fresh one won t. Maybe they’ll just leave. But that’s the plan, Snolligan! Let’s to it!”