The assistant looked betrayed. “But at the meeting this morning-”
Semple would not have thought that Fat Ari’s face could grow any darker, but somehow it managed to when the assistant mentioned the meeting. Even Semple had realized by now that one would only be courting disaster by contradicting Fat Ari. His voice turned chill and absolute. “I said it’s the first I heard of it. You understand me?”
“Yes, I’m sorry.”
“So why doesn’t this bitch have a barcode ?”
“She’s an outlander. She has no barcode.”
“So why wasn’t she branded?”
“We thought she’d be exotic the way she was.”
“You thought?”
“Yes.”
“You shouldn’t think. You don’t have the capacity.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You thought it might be exotic to have this outlander running up and down without a barcode? You thought a piece of unregistered cooze would get the rubes all hot and bothered?”
“It wasn’t put quite like that, but yes, that was the general drift.”
“Then perhaps you’d like to tell me, when they reach this state of carnal dementia and want to make a purchase, what happens when they zoom in to bid on her by barcode?”
“They’ll find no barcode.”
“And what would happen then?”
The assistant knew he was cornered and his responses turned into a guilty rote. “The rubes will get confused.”
“And what happens when the rubes get confused?”
“The rubes stop bidding.”
“And if they stop bidding?”
“We stop selling.”
“And if we stop selling?”
“We die in agony.”
“Now do you see why you shouldn’t attempt to think?”
The assistant stared at his sandals. He seemed to be praying that Fat Ari had finished upbraiding him, but the gods of his choice had betrayed him. Fat Ari still glared down. Semple had noticed that all of Fat Ari’s entourage seemed to be shorter than he was. “So what are you going to do now?”
The assistant didn’t fall into this trap. “I don’t know, boss. What am I going to do now?”
“You’re going to take this piece of worthless protein up to Dr. M’s as fast as you can, and you’re going to get her branded.”
The assistant nodded eagerly. “I am. Right away.”
“Once she’s branded and she has a price tag, she can legitimately call herself merchandise and we can start all over again. By their prices shall ye know them.”
The assistant continued to nod. “I’ll have her branded right away.”
At the first use of the word “branded,” Semple’s every instinct of self-preservation jangled for her to do something. The third time it was repeated, she spoke without thinking. “I can’t be branded. I’d have to get a whole new body.”
Fat Ari didn’t even look at her. “Keep quiet.”
The assistant frowned. “Even if we get it done right now, she’ll still be groggy from the anesthetic when she hits the runway.”
“So do it without anesthetic.”
Semple’s horror couldn’t stay silent. “No!”
Fat Ari looked at her this time. “You be quiet. You have nothing to say in the matter.”
“I’m not being branded!”
Even the assistant seemed to be on her side. “That would be a punitive branding.”
Fat Ari swung back on him. “So?”
“It’s beyond the bounds of our authority.”
Fat Ari’s eyes were dangerous. “There are no bounds to my authority when it’s two hours to air.”
“She still might not be able to handle the runway.”
“She’d be conscious, wouldn’t she? Run her as a submissive in bondage.”
Unable to think of anything else but to play the hysterical slave, Semple fell to her knees, grabbed hold of Fat Ari’s robe, and began to scream. “You can’t brand me! It’s impossible! You can’t brand me like a steer!”
Fat Ari curtly shook himself loose. The act was an utter failure. “Get security. Gag her if you have to.”
“But we’d need paperwork for a punitive branding. The doctor could get difficult if we just march her in there.”
“Then you will simply remind Doc Mengele of what he owes me for the last two sets of twins.”
***
“The medical examination is nonnegotiable. It is required of all life-forms who board our vessels.”
Jim squared his shoulders and drew himself up to his full height. So far, the aliens had been having things too much their own way. The time was more than right for Jim to start asserting himself. He didn’t know if two skinny, yard-high aliens could be intimidated by his greater height and mass, but it was worth a shot and also about the only thing he had left. “I’ve learned that most things are negotiable, given sufficient motivation.”
The Bogart alien and the robot doctor alien stood in the single spotlight, making no attempt to approach or back away. Their huge, enigmatic eyes were directly on Jim, and they didn’t look intimidated in the slightest. “That is exactly the kind of remark we have come to expect from Earthlings.”
“It is?”
The Bogart alien took a drag on a cigarette that wasn’t there. “He’s right, pal, you’re a bunch of natural-born troublemakers.”
“We are?”
“Your statement had all the properties of the prelude to a threat.”
Although Jim would hardly admit it, the doctor alien was absolutely correct. He was certainly weighing the odds. The creatures looked frail and feeble, and it was hard to imagine what kind of a fight they could put up if Jim went in swinging like a barroom brawler. The UFO crash at Roswell indicated that they could be hurt. Hadn’t that left dead and broken aliens scattered all over the chaparral? A simple frontal assault, though, took no account of science fiction trickery like invisible force fields or concealed death rays. Obviously any being who could stand a glass in thin air and have it vanish at will certainly knew some more tricks. He decided to switch to another line of persuasion, putting a two-fisted John Wayne eruption on hold for a while. “Strictly speaking, I’m not actually a life-form. I’m dead, dig? More like a metaphysical entity.”
“You’re here, therefore you are. And if you are, the medical examination is mandatory.”
Jim wished that the damned aliens would blink or twitch or something. Anything but paraphrasing Descartes. He knew it was one of Doc Holliday’s favorite tricks and he wondered if they’d pulled the idea out of his own mind. He couldn’t shake the thought that, behind the blank masks, the sons of bitches were doing the telepath and having a good extraterrestrial laugh on his dime. “Yeah, that’s right, I’m here, but that still doesn’t make it right to be sticking probes in me. I mean, anything could happen.”
“That’s what makes it all the more interesting. We probe and then we see what happens. That’s the fundamental nature of a probe, now, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so, except . . . ”
“Except what?”
Jim was wondering if the UFO and it occupants were strictly a part of the Afterlife, or if they’d invaded this space with the same lack of by-your-leave as they did Earth. Jim decided he might as well ask. “I guess you guys are dead too, right?”
Jim couldn’t read any expression in either of their faces, but something told him that the creatures weren’t impressed. “No, we are not dead.”
The Bogart alien added its confirmation. “You better believe it, Jim. Alive and ready to probe ass.”
Jim could have sworn that the doctor alien’s face registered a twinge. “So to speak.”
“So what are you doing running around in our human Afterlife?”
“Our mission is the seek out new life-forms and new civilizations.”
“Don’t try and con me. That’s fucking Star Trek.”
“You noticed?”
“I’m no idiot.”
The doctor alien spread its hands as though it had long ago given up on humans. “It’s hard to tell. Sometimes your kind can be so fiendishly clever; on other occasions, you’re mind-boggling in your stupidity.”
Jim frowned. “Is that why you never just set down one of your ships on the White House lawn and said, Take us to your leader?”