Mary half expected them to strip off in front of her, but they didn’t. They just placed a sticky digit on each other and trembled for a second or two.
“Right,” said the one who used to be Abigail. “I’m now Roger. Why don’t you come in?”
Roger led her into the living room, which was decorated as though from the seventies. Earth’s TV signals had taken eighteen years to reach distant Rambosia, so it was understandable that this was the era in which they felt the most comfortable. The furniture was dark-colored, the wallpaper and carpet patterned, the music center one of those combined radio-cassette-turntable things, and the obligatory plaster ducks flew across the wall next to a print of The Hay Wain.
“How long have you had this bad knee?” asked Abigail, rubbing the offending joint of her body-swapped partner.
“A few days,” replied Roger.
“You should look after yourself better—and your arms feel a bit low. When did you last have a pressure test?”
“This always happens when we swap bodies, doesn’t it?” replied Roger with a baleful glare. “Nag, nag, nag.”
“If you looked after yourself, I wouldn’t have to.”
“Maybe I like having a dodgy knee—ever thought of that?”
“Sorry about this,” said Ashley.
“You’re a pompous old windbag sometimes, aren’t you?” said Abigail. “Give me back my body.”
“It would be even more confusing for our G-E-U-S-T, dear—show some manners, eh?”
“Manners?” replied Abigail, opening her already large eyes still wider. “I’ll give you 10100101 001 you, 1001 010011.”
“Oh, yes? Well, you can 1001001 001010010 0101001 00101010 1001011111100110100111 0000001010 010101101 011100100100 10001111110011100 010010010 01110 0100100 10010 0100100101111011,” replied Roger, lapsing into pure binary in his anger.
“100101010101111110011100100101010111111!” yelled back Abigail. “11 1 1001 0101001 100001010111!”
“Why don’t you just swap your thoughts back and then your clothes?” suggested Mary. “I’d not be confused—and you could then have your own bodies and be dressed human-gender-specific.”
They stopped their argument and stared at her, blinking, for some moments.
“Brilliant!” gasped Abigail.
“Such wisdom,” added Roger in awe, and they both ran off upstairs without another word.
“Good move,” said Ashley, clearly impressed. “We’d not have thought of that solution in a million years.”
Mary was going to ask how it was possible not to think of that solution when a car horn sounded outside and another alien came running down the stairs holding a spotted bow and a glue gun. Ashley looked to heaven.
“My sister,” he muttered out of the side of his mouth. “Total bimbo—IQ barely crawls into the double-century.”
“Ash!” she exclaimed in a state of extreme fluster as she handed him the bow and glue gun. “I’m sooo late! Stick this on, would you? Hello, you must be Mary. I’m Daisy. Ashley told us all about you.”
She put out her hand, and Mary shook it, catching a glimpse of a great number of aliens all crammed into a Honda Civic and chanting Monty Python’s dead-parrot sketch in unison.
“Stand still,” said Ashley as he squeezed a blob of glue onto the top of Daisy’s translucent head, then placed the bow on it and held it while the glue dried.
“Is Ash a good policeman?” asked Daisy, wincing with the heat of the glue.
“Yes, he is.”
“Then why is he data-crunching down at the NCD and not out on the beat?”
“Training,” said Mary.
“Really?” replied Daisy scornfully. “I thought it was because no one wanted to work with him.”
“You’re done,” muttered Ashley, taking his hands off the bow,
“and try and keep your 1010111010101 closed, why don’t you?”
Daisy showed Ash the finger, skipped off to the front door and went out.
“You put her bow on backward on purpose, didn’t you?” asked Mary.
“Yes. Come and meet Uncle Colin. He fought in the First Zhark Wars, you know.”
Ashley led Mary through to the lounge, where a smaller alien with a slightly wrinkled appearance was watching Man About the House on the TV.
“Hullo!” he said. “Who’s this?”
“This is Mary, Uncle. Mary Mary.”
“No need to repeat yourself, young fella-me-lad. What do you think I am, deaf?”
“How do you do?” said Mary.
“Not at all,” he said genially. “Quite the reverse.”
Mary frowned and looked at Ashley, who crossed his eyes and rotated a finger next to his head.
“I fought in the Zhark Wars, you know,” Uncle Colin continued, his eyes going all dreamy as he stared off into the middle distance. “I’ve seen things you would not believe. Zharkian battle cruisers massing near the Rigellan crossover—”
“Here we are!” said Abigail and Roger, who had just scampered back down the stairs. “Would you like a drink?”
“Thank you.”
“We’ve got most types of hooch,” said Roger cheerfully, opening the top of a globe that tastefully doubled as a drinks cabinet. “I like to keep the house well stocked. We’ve got diesel, castor, olive, groundnut, multigrade or sunflower.” He looked among the bottles. “I think we might even have some crude somewhere—that’ll put hair on your chest.”
“I told you all this earlier,” said Ashley in a strained tone.
“Humans don’t drink oil—at least, not on its own—and only organically derived.”
“Are you sure?” replied Roger, sorting through the bottles in the cabinet again, as though hoping something suitable might miraculously appear. “We’re a bit short on everything else.”
“A glass of water would be fine for me—I could have one of those.” She pointed to an array of jars on the mantelpiece.
“Ah,” said Roger with an embarrassed cough, “those are our memory jars. We like to have at least one backup.”
“Oh,” said Mary, blushing at the faux pas.
“I’ll get you a glass from the kitchen,” said Abigail and scampered off.
“… and seen the Dorf army scatter in the wake…” muttered Uncle Colin, still to himself.
“A toast,” announced Roger as soon as Abigail had returned with Mary’s water and everyone had been handed an oil of some sort and Ashley told he couldn’t have multigrade but would have to stick to olive “until he was older.” “A toast,” he said again, “to the excellent bispecies understanding we currently enjoy.”
“10001010110,” said Abigail, raising her glass and downing it in a single gulp.
“10001010110,” said Ashley, doing the same.