Raising an eyebrow at the jibe, Jim looked to the far end of the chamber. What could only be described as a circular translucent membrane, some four feet across, had appeared in the center of the circular end wall. Its outer surround was a beveled ring of shiny, copper-colored metal. The membrane itself was filmy and insubstantial, a pulsing, mother-of-pearl gauze. Tiny sparkles of bright energy danced up from it and vanished, like bubbles from a fresh glass of champagne; Jim couldn’t tell whether the thing was solid, liquid, a heavy vapor, or something else entirely.
“You want me to go through that?”
“Unless you intend to remain here in the lock. If you do that, you will probably become exceedingly uncomfortable. Hungry, thirsty, claustrophobic, resentful-all the things that afflict humans when they think they’re not getting enough attention.”
“Okay, okay, I get the picture.”
“Okay, okay, you get the picture.”
Jim knew he had no chance of beating the helium parrot, so, taking carefully measured steps, he gingerly crossed the chamber until he was standing in front of the membrane. He leaned forward and peered closely at it. It seemed vaguely moist. “I’m supposed to climb through this?”
“You’re supposed to climb through that.”
“It’s all a bit Freudian, isn’t it?”
“This is all a bit Freudian, isn’t it?”
Jim tried another tack. He shouted as loud as he could. “Hey, Long Time Robert, are you in there?”
The membrane vibrated and a large pair of lips, more than a foot across, appeared in three-dimensional relief on its surface. The lips formed words and shouted back at him. “Hey, Jim Morrison, are you out there?”
The air temperature was dropping, the smell of battery acid growing stronger. Jim had no choice. He wondered what the aliens might bring into play next if he continued to resist. He was feeling distinctly like a B. F. Skinner lab rat, without the benefit of any jolts to the pleasure centers. For all he knew, the next item on their menu might be direct cortical shock, or something even more unpleasant. It was becoming clear that, no matter how he might twist and turn, the ETs were going to have their way with him.
The lips of the membrane pouted sexily. “That’s right, Jimbo. We’re going to have our way with you.”
The chill in the chamber was deepening. Jim knew that aside from staying where he was and being freeze-dried, he was out of options. “Okay, you win. I’m coming through.”
The lips’ pout turned into a happy smile. “Okay, we win. You’re coming through.”
Jim hesitated. “Only. . .”
“Only what?”
“You’ll have to lose the lips.”
“You don’t like the lips.”
“I’m not climbing into a mouth. Not even the illusion of a mouth.”
“Does it make you feel too much like a human blow job?”
“You read my thoughts, damn it.”
“Of course we did.”
The lips vanished. Jim placed the palm of his hand flat against the membrane, but then quickly pulled it away as a sharp jolt of static twitched painfully up his arm. “Damn!”
The Mickey Mouse voice was back, and with a definite contempt in its tone. “You’re not going to let a little shock stop you, are you?”
Jim snapped back. “To hell with this.” He didn’t bother to feel his way. Suddenly angry, he violently punched his entire forearm clear through the membrane, and fuck the aliens if they didn’t like his attitude. The membrane resisted slightly, but he continued pushing until his arm had penetrated right up to the shoulder. At that point, the resistance seemed to reverse itself and the rest of him was jerked through by a sudden, wet kiss suction. He experienced a moment of panic as the stuff of the membrane closed around his face, but then he was through and into another moment of complete disorientation and darkness.
Jim was outraged. “Wait a fucking minute, will you?”
A bright white overhead spotlight snapped on. This light wasn’t at all diffused or hazy and its source was clear and obvious. Jim, though, didn’t have time to waste considering light sources. An alien-Jim Morrison’s very first-was standing in the exact center of the beam. Jim’s alien was barely three feet tall. Its skin was gray. Its body was slight, fragile, and resembled that of a long-armed fetus. It had only three fingers on each hand. Its head was huge, hairless, with no ears and only the slightest approximation of a mouth and nose. Its eyes, in total contrast, were huge and ancient, without iris or pupil, like the eyes of some vast, distant, super-intelligent mega-guppy. It was the classic extraterrestrial of abduction paranoia, dubious amateur video, autopsy hoaxes, and tabloid reportage, the gray alien that was the bad guy of UFO folklore. At least Jim now knew what he was dealing with. Unless, of course, the familiar form was simply a new level of deception.
The alien was holding a small vial filled with blue-green liquid in one of its three-fingered hands. “Wanna drink, pal?”
Mercifully, the alien’s voice was a far cry from the helium squeak. In fact, its tonal tailoring was coming from entirely the other end of the spectrum. The incongruity of a pint-sized alien using a voice from the staccato school of Mickey Spillane/Humphrey Bogart wasn’t lost on Jim, but he reserved comment. “Do I what?”
“I’m offering you a drink, kid. Don’t you want it? Isn’t that what’s been gnawing at your guts since you took it on the lam from Doc Holliday’s?”
“I’d say gnawing at my guts was something of an overstatement. I’d like a drink, but . . . ”
“We understood you were a world-class alkie, kid.”
Jim was starting to have trouble with this tough-guy voice coming out of the slight spindly frame. “That was then, this is now.”
“You telling me you weren’t as drunk as a skunk back at Doc Holliday’s? Or at the orgy before that?”
Jim really didn’t like the direction the conversation was taking. “What the fuck are you running here? Some interplanetary twelve-step inquisition?”
The alien’s face didn’t alter, but the voice took on an aggrieved tone. “Listen, pal, all I was trying to do was offer you a drink.” It held out the vial again. “You want it or not? It’s good stuff. I kid you not. Make you see stars.”
Jim suddenly laughed. “Ah, what the hell.” The alien was only offering him a drink. The gesture was culturally fundamental. Why not take it on face value, even if the face in question was an unreadable ovoid the color of a button mushroom, with a texture to match? He took the vial and threw the contents back in one gulp, like a lumberjack downing his first shot after a hard day’s logging. The instant the booze hit his metabolism, Jim saw not only stars but also suns and ringed planets. For a moment, it seemed as though the top of his head had lifted off of its own accord, flipping up like the lid of a pedal bin, to relieve the intolerable pressure in his brain. He doubled over, his throat burning and his stomach contemplating convulsion. As a confirmed shot-and-beer motherfucker, Jim had always found cocktails a little too Dorothy Parker. He’d been around the block enough times, however, to know that what he’d just consumed could qualify as the transcendentally perfect gin martini. The only mistake was that the stuff had the impact intensity of drag strip accelerant. When he finally straightened up again, his voice was a rasping wheeze and he had tears in his eyes. “Sweet God Almighty! That was intense.”
“Kinda strong for you?”
“Maybe the recipe needs a bit of rethinking.”
“But you feel better?”
Jim took a couple of deep breaths. The battery-acid smell seemed to have stayed on the other side of the membrane. “Yes, I definitely feel better.”
The alien nodded. “That’s good. We like to make you humans feel at home.”
Jim looked at the empty vial. “You certainly do.” The alcohol burn had given way to a warm and not unpleasant glow. “Yes, you certainly do.”
He handed the vial back to the alien, who took it and placed it in thin air beside him, as though he had set it on an invisible shelf. The vial remained standing for a few seconds and then vanished. Jim maintained his cool, refusing to look surprised. “That’s a pretty neat trick.”