“Your mother was a dog,” Miguel said.
The stranger’s nostrils pinched together slightly, but he ignored the remark. “I come from another world,” he said. “My name is—” In Miguel’s mind it sounded like Quetzalcoatl.
“Quetzalcoatl?” Miguel repeated, with fine irony. “Oh, I have no doubt of that. And mine is Saint Peter, who has the keys to heaven.”
Quetzalcoatl’s thin, pale face flushed slightly, but his voice was determinedly calm. “Listen, Miguel.
Look at my lips. They are not moving. I am speaking inside your head, by telepathy, and you translate my thoughts into words that have meaning to you. Evidently my name is too difficult for you. Your own mind has translated it as Quetzalcoatl. That is not my real name at all.”
“De veras,” Miguel said. “It is not your name at all, and you do not come from another world. I would not believe a norteamericano if he swore on the bones often thousand highly placed saints.”
Quetzalcoatl’s long, austere face flushed again.
“I am here to give orders,” he said. “Not to bandy words with-Look here, Miguel. Why do you suppose you couldn’t kill me with your machete? Why can’t bullets touch me?”
“Why does your machine of flight fly?” Miguel riposted. He took out a sack of tobacco and began to roll a cigarette. He squinted around the rock. “Fernandez is probably trying to creep up on me. I had better get my rifle.”
“Leave it alone,” Quetzalcoatl said. “Fernandez will not harm you.”
Miguel laughed harshly.
“And you must not harm him,” Quetzalcoatl added firmly.
“I will, then, turn the other cheek,” Miguel said, “so that he can shoot me through the side of my head. I will believe Fernandez wishes peace, Señor Quetzalcoatl, when I see him walking across the valley with his hands over his head. Even then I will not let him come close, because of the knife he wears down his back.”
Quetzalcoatl smoothed his blue steel feathers again. His bony face was frowning.
“YOU must stop fighting forever, both of you,” he said. “My race polices the universe and our responsibility is to bring peace to every planet we visit.”
“It is as I thought,” Miguel said with satisfaction. “You come from los estados unidos. Why do you not bring peace to your own country? I have seen los señores Humphrey Bogart and Edward Robinson in las peliculas. Why, all over Nueva York gangsters shoot at each other from one skyscraper to another.
And what do you do about it? You dance all over the place with la señora Betty Grable. Ah yes, I understand very well. First you will bring peace, and then you will take our oil and our precious minerals.”
Quetzalcoatl kicked angrily at a pebble beside his shiny steel toe.
“I must make you understand,” he said. He looked at the unlighted cigarette dangling from Miguel’s lips. Suddenly he raised his hand, and a white-hot ray shot from a ring on his finger and kindled the end of the cigarette. Miguel jerked away, startled. Then he inhaled the smoke and nodded. The white-hot ray disappeared.
“Muchas gracias, señor,” Miguel said.
Quetzalcoatl’s colorless lips pressed together thinly. “Miguel,” he said, “could a norteconericano do that?”
“Quie’n sabe?”
“No one living on your planet could do that, and you know it.”
Miguel shrugged.
“Do you see that cactus over there?” Quetzalcoatl demanded. “I could destroy it in two seconds.”
“I have no doubt of it, señor.”
“I could, for that matter, destroy this whole planet.”
“Yes, I have heard of the atomic bombs,” Miguel said politely. “Why, then, do you trouble to interfere with a quiet private little argument between Fernandez and me, over a small water hole of no importance to anybody but—”
A bullet sang past.
Quetzalcoatl rubbed the ring on his finger with an angry gesture.
“Because the world is going to stop fighting,” he said ominously. “If it doesn’t we will destroy it.
There is no reason at all why men should not live together in peace and brotherhood.”
“There is one reason, señor.”
“What is that?”
“Fernandez,” Miguel said.
“I will destroy you both if you do not stop fighting.”
“El señor is a great peacemaker,” Miguel said courteously. “I will gladly stop fighting if you will tell me how to avoid being killed when I do.”
“Fernandez will stop fighting too.”
Miguel removed his somewhat battered sombrero, reached for a stick, and carefully raised the hat above the rock. There was a nasty crack. The hat jumped away, and Miguel caught it as it fell.
“Very well,” he said. “Since you insist, señor, I will stop fighting. But I will not come out from behind this rock. I am perfectly willing to stop fighting. But it seems to me that you demand I do something which you do not tell me how to do. You could as well require that I fly through the air like your machine of flight.”
Quetzalcoatl frowned more deeply. Finally he said, “Miguel, tell me how this fight started.”
“Fernandez wishes to kill me and enslave my family.”
“Why should he want to do that?”
“Because he is evil,” Miguel said.
“How do you know he is evil?”
“Because,” Miguel pointed out logically, “he wishes to kill me and enslave my family.”
There was a pause. A road runner darted past and paused to peck at the gleaming barrel of Miguel’s rifle. Miguel sighed.
“There is a skin of good wine not twenty feet away—” he began, but Quetzalcoatl interrupted him.
“What was it you said about the water rights?”
“Oh, that,” Miguel said. “This is a poor country, señor. Water is precious here. We have had a dry year and there is no longer water enough for two families. The water hole is mine. Fernandez wishes to kill me and enslave—”
“Are there no courts of law in your country?”
“For such as us?” Miguel demanded, and smiled politely.
“Has Fernandez a family too?” Quetzalcoatl asked.
“Yes, the poors,” Miguel said. “He beats them when they do not work until they drop.”
“Do you beat your family?”
“Only when they need it,” Miguel said, surprised. “My wife is very fat and lazy. And my oldest, Chico, talks back. It is my duty to beat them when they need it, for their own good. It is also my duty to protect our water rights, since the evil Fernandez is determined to kill me and—”
Quetzalcoatl said impatiently, “This is a waste of time. Let me consider.” He rubbed the ring on his finger again. He looked around. The road runner had found a more appetizing morsel than the rifle. He was now to be seen trotting away with the writhing tail of a lizard dangling from his beak.
Overhead the sun was hot in a clear blue sky. The dry air smelled of mesquite. Below, in the valley, the flying saucer’s perfection of shape and texture looked incongruous and unreal.
“Wait here,” Quetzalcoatl said at last. “I will talk to Fernandez. When I call, come to my machine of fight. Fernandez and I will meet you there presently.”
“As you say, señor,” Miguel agreed. His eyes strayed.
“And do not touch your rifle,” Quetzalcoatl added with great firmness. “Why, no, señor,” Miguel said. He waited until the tall man had gone. Then he crawled cautiously across the dry ground until he had recaptured his rifle. After that, with a little searching, he found his machete. Only then did he turn to the skin of wine. He was very thirsty indeed. But he did not drink heavily. He put a full clip in the rifle, leaned against a rock, and sipped a little from time to time from the wineskin as he waited.
In the meantime the stranger, ignoring fresh bullets that occasionally splashed blue from his steely person, approached Fernandez’ hiding place. The sound of shots stopped. A long time passed, and finally the tall form reappeared and waved to Miguel.