He went out into the street, looked up at the blackening sky, and saw the last drops of rain, which caught the light of streetlamps; they were falling slowly like confetti. Then, on buying a cheap advertiser for half a curtsey, he started perusing the columns. But in vain: saviours were required for unqualified and poorly-paid work. To gnash their teeth off-screen in dental prosthesis commercials for example.
The New Neighbours
Tim Jones
High property values are the hallmark of a civilised society. Though our generation may never build cathedrals nor find a cure for cancer, may never save the whales nor end world hunger, we can die with smiles on our faces if we have left our house a better place than we found it, if we have added a deck, remodelled the kitchen and created indoor-outdoor flow.
Reaction in our street to the news that an alien family would soon move into number 56 was therefore mixed. Number 56 was the proverbial worst house on the best street, and any family who could improve it—regardless of skin colour or number of limbs—was welcome, in my view. My wife, Alison, said she’d wait and see. Josh wondered if they had any kids his age.
Others near to the action, and particularly the Murrays at number 54 and the Zhangs at number 58, were less sanguine. “But it’s not as if they need a resource consent,” said my wife to Jessica Zhang, and she was right. Having bought the house at a legitimate auction through a telephone bidder, and paid the deposit, the alien family were well within their rights to settle in our street, and the rest of us would simply have to make the best of it.
To the unpractised eye, Saturday the 12th of March would have seemed little different from any other Saturday in Utley Terrace. 8am was the usual bleary-eyed rush-hour of parents taking their children to cricket. By 11.30, when Josh and I returned to our place at number 55, there was a little more activity: a lawn being mowed, a car being washed, the postie delivering bills and special offers. All the same, a certain twitching of curtains spoke of suppressed excitement.
Hoping for a flying saucer, we were disappointed when a perfectly ordinary moving van appeared outside number 56 shortly after noon, and perfectly ordinary movers began carrying an assemblage of furniture—not well colour co-ordinated, but not notably alien—into the house. Half an hour later, a white Toyota Corolla pulled up outside, and our new neighbours, who went by the name of Thompson, got out. We stood at our lounge-room window, staring.
They looked completely human: Mum, Dad and the three kids. One appeared to be a teenager, I was perturbed to note—did aliens play Marilyn Manson loud at 3am? Dressed in good, practical moving-day clothes, they looked right at home as they took vacant possession of their new domain.
“That’s pretty boring,” said Josh. “They look just like us.”
“There’s a reason for that,” said Alison. “They’re shape-shifters.”
“Cool!” said Josh. “How many different shapes do you reckon they can turn into?”
“As many as they like, but they can’t change their mass,” Alison told him. She had this on good authority from her friend Cecile in Wellington. Cecile, said Alison, had contacts.
We didn’t usually do anything special to welcome new people to the street, but in this case we thought we should make an exception. Neither the Murrays nor the Zhangs could be expected to take the lead. The Murrays, acting on the adage that good fences make good neighbours, had already added a metre to the height of theirs. Alison and I decided it was up to us. We rang round, got a dozen or so pledges of support, and then went over the road to knock on the new neighbours’ door.
It was opened by the teenager, who looked us up and down, called over her shoulder something that must have meant “Mum!” and disappeared back inside without another word. So far, so human.
Mum came to the door. There was something unusual about her face. I do not mean that she had three eyes, or purple skin, or a ring of small feeding tentacles where her mouth should have been. Her features were quite regular and normal, but they lacked any distinguishing quirks. Her nose, her eyes, her ears, her mouth, all were in proportion, and her skin was flawless, without a beauty spot or wrinkle to break the monotony. She looked like everyone and no-one.
“Good evening. How may I help you?” she said.
“We were—some of your neighbours were …” I stumbled to an embarrassed silence, and Alison took over.
“Your new neighbours would like to meet you and your family,” said Alison, “and we thought, perhaps, we could host a little celebration to welcome you to our street. We thought we’d pop over first, say hello, and ask when might be a good time.”
“Excuse me, please,” said the woman, and returned inside.
We waited on the doorstep, straining our ears for noises within. Something that might have been music drifted from the back of the house.
“I bet they’re consulting with their superiors,” said Josh. “I bet they have an antenna in the backyard.”
There were three Super 14 games on tonight, and I had twenty bucks on the Blues by twelve or under. My feet were making small movements back from the doorstep when the woman reappeared.
“Now is a good time,” she said. “And we will host the occasion.”
“Now?”
“We possess and have studied a barbecue.”
It was short notice, and there was some grumbling amongst the invited guests at this breach of protocol, but curiosity won out and we soon had a pretty good crowd gathered in their backyard. Even Jessica Zhang popped over for five minutes before excusing herself. While I helped George to fire up the barbie, Alison inducted Myrtle into the mysteries of impromptu salads, and once a few of the lads turned up with some Speights, the party was humming.
“Do you, er, do you—make sure you keep turning them, they burn easy—do you eat our sort of food, then?”
“When we look as you do, we eat as you do,” George said.
“It’s true, then, you can change your shape?”
“We change to suit our environment.”
I took another swig of Speights. “What do you really look like?”
For a moment, something green and as broad as it was tall stood before me, balanced on an indeterminate number of legs. Bony plates clashed in its jaw.
“Watch out, mate,” I said as he returned to human form, “you’ve dropped the tongs.”
Later that night, when George and Myrtle had put Lucy and Peter to bed and shouted goodnight to the teenaged Susan through her locked door, I sat in a deck-chair in number 56’s back yard, with Josh sprawled asleep on my lap. George sat beside me. The girls were inside somewhere, looking at paint samples.
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“In your terms, it’s Carina—59°23’,” said George. He pointed, and I looked. Nothing but a faint wisp of stars.
“Must be a long way,” I said.
“It is.”
“No popping back home for a holiday, then.”
“Not in a hurry, no.”
“So why’d you come here, George?”
“To build a better future for our children,” said George.
You couldn’t argue with that.
The trouble started at school. We were proud of Rosemont Primary’s Decile 10 rating, and guarded it jealously. There may have been more Government money to be had by dropping down a decile or two, but the effect on morale would have been disastrous.