From the Jaws of Defeat
by Grey Rollins
Illustration by Arthur George
The day dawned like any other June morning, which is to say that Martin swatted the alarm when it went off, pulled the covers over his head, and was back asleep before the echoes died.
Mind you, it had nothing to do with the fact that it was June—he has the same problem during the other eleven months of the year. Martin’s father was a mattress; his mother was a pillow… and he was clearly reluctant to leave the bosom of his family.
My thankless task was to get him out of bed in spite of himself. Unfortunately, he had grown inured to my usual methods. A fresh approach was needed.
Anything by Sousa had become a cliche. The William Tell Overture was out for the same reason. There are certain portions of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth that work wonders when reproduced at maximum volume, but I needed something less lengthy than a hill symphony. Wagner was capable of writing rousing brass lines into his work, but I was beginning to worry that I might permanently damage Martin’s hearing if I continued blaring fortissimo trumpets into his ears.
Softly, I began. Using Mussorgsky’s Night On Bald Mountain, I conjured a quiet village nestled in a valley. Slumbering spirits awoke, drifting through the night air to summon others from their graves. Infernal demons gathered, disjointed bones came together and danced by bonfires, the very mountain itself joining in…
And Martin awoke, sitting bolt upright, eyes staring. Sweat threaded down his temple.
He stared at me, eyes wide. “Victor! You wouldn’t believe the nightmare I just had! I was—”
Perhaps I was trying to look overly innocent. Perhaps he had finally learned to read my alien facial expressions. Perhaps it was the fact that I was still rendering the music, using my tympanum to recreate all the proper orchestral selections; alas, I am limited to monophonic reproduction, as I have only one set of vocal apparatus.
He scowled darkly at me, then used a corner of the sheet to mop his brow. “Victor…” he began, then paused to regain his composure. “I know you mean well, little buddy, but can’t you just imitate the sound of an alarm clock, or something?”
“I tried that one time,” I reminded him. “You tried to turn me off—the bruise lasted nearly three weeks.”
He had the grace to look guilty. “Uh, right.” He shook his head in defeat. “Maybe I ought to get a normal nine to five job where I could punch a time card like everybody else.”
“The result would be the same. You would oversleep, get to work late, and be fired. Then you would have to go back to being a private detective because that’s all you know how to do. Since you already are a private detective, why don’t you pry yourself out of bed and we’ll go down to the office and see if anyone needs any privates detected.”
He flopped backwards on the mattress, arms spread wide. ‘You go without me. Call me if there’s anything doing.”
“As you’re well aware, Martin, I can’t drive a car. They don’t give extraterrestrials driver’s licenses. In addition to that, my legs are scarcely longer than your hands… certainly nowhere near long enough for me to reach the pedals. Besides,” I added maliciously, “I’d have to steer using my tongue and the wheel would be covered with slime—”
“Say no more!” Martin cried, bounding off of the bed. “Ten minutes to shower and shave. We’ll pick up doughnuts on the way in to work.”
He was as good as his word, almost, and we arrived only three minutes late. Even so, we were clearly not there early enough to satisfy the man impatiently tapping his foot on the worn linoleum outside the office door bearing Martin’s name. Frankly, I was amused to see someone tap his foot in real life. After all, you hear the phrase often, but never see anyone do so.
Martin mounted the stairs carrying me much the way another man might carry a briefcase to work. Since I lack a handle, he had me tucked under his right arm.
The man at the door stopped tapping, blinked and asked, “Can’t Victor walk? Is he all right?”
I looked at him from my sideways perspective and replied, “I’m fine, thank you, but with legs no longer than pencils, stairs are difficult.”
“Perhaps it would help if your legs weren’t so fat, Victor,” Martin said. “Then they would bend more easily.”
“Fat?” I cried indignantly.
“Yeah. I think it’s real cute the way you’ve got those little dimples where your knees are supposed to be. Reminds me of a baby’s legs,” Martin offered, reaching for his keys. He gently placed me on the floor, then unlocked the door, motioning our client through.
I kicked his ankle. “My legs are supposed to look that way, you idiot. Tomorrow I’ll just let you sleep in and be late.”
Martin did not give me the satisfaction of acknowledging that he had heard me. Just as well—it’s unseemly to bicker in front of potential clients.
The potential client himself was dressed in a three piece suit, impeccably tailored. The suit alone was probably worth more than the archaic collection of chrome and corrosion that Martin chose to call a car. Then there were the accessories. What he had paid for the shoes would have bought a month’s worth of groceries. The watch would have fed two for a year. No doubt our visitor’s car was equal to the gross domestic product of a small third world country. I could practically hear the cash register in Martin’s head as he tried to decide how much the traffic would bear.
Martin promptly ushered the man into his inner office. I stayed out in the front room, ready to take up my secretarial duties for the day. The man stopped just inside the door into Martin’s office and gestured back towards me. “Is Victor not going to hear what I have to say?”
Sometimes I am present at the initial briefing, sometimes not. I leave it up to Martin to decide what is appropriate. Some people are uncomfortable around aliens, although I am told that, of the extraterrestrial races currently resident on Earth, I am one of the least repulsive to human eyes. Naturally, this must be taken in context—it took me the better part of twenty years to get used to the way humans look, much less become adept at telling them apart.
Actually, I was a bit surprised to hear the man ask if I was going to listen in. I had already come to the same conclusion as Martin. He had the look of one who has been pampered and sheltered. Not like the kind of person who was used to dealing with the less prosperous members of his own race, much less a member of one of the alien species.
Without comment, I waddled into Martin’s office and took up a position next to the desk. Martin, for his part, gestured towards the visitors’ seat, then sat behind the desk. As he sat, the springs in his dilapidated office chair gave off a horrendous metallic shriek. It sounded like nothing so much as the sound effect for a pterodactyl in a cheap science fiction movie.
Our visitor began apologetically, “I hope this doesn’t disrupt your normal mode of operations. It’s just that I had heard that Victor had been of material assistance in several of your other cases and I wanted to be certain that the two of you bent every effort to help me.”
“It’s no problem at all,” Martin assured him. “Why don’t you start at the top? Tell us everything.”
“My name,” he said, “is Sebastian Michael Grombaugh III. And I am afraid that I have been… shall we say, indiscrete.”
“Then there’s a woman involved?” Martin prompted.
Ruefully, Grombaugh nodded. “No ordinary woman, this one. Hair the color of summer sun. Eyes to put sapphires to shame. A smile to make you forget all your troubles. Unfortunately, it seems that she also has the fingers of a pickpocket, the heart of a barracuda, and the scruples of a snake.”