Earth vs. Everybody (5 page)

It
was finally decided to see if I was still down there by dropping rocks down the
shaft. Over the next two hours they dropped hundreds of them, of varying sizes,
waiting and listening after each rock had been dropped to hear if I yelled. But
I didn’t make a sound no matter how many rocks they threw down, or how hard
they threw them. This wasn’t because I wasn’t there. I was. And it wasn’t
because I was a man of iron will and discipline. I wasn’t. It was because the
first rock had swollen my mouth shut.

I finally managed
to climb out of the hole several hours later, after almost getting to the top a
half a dozen times, only to fall all the way to the bottom each time and then
having to start back up again. I guess it would have been pretty comical if it
had been happening to somebody else. Some other slob. Seeing them get almost to
the top and being so happy, and then suddenly down they go again, end over end,
screaming their guts out. I guess it was funny. I dunno. I’d have to watch
somebody else do it and see if I laugh. I probably would. Anyway, like I said,
I finally got out.

I was relieved to
find that there was nobody waiting for me at the top. The cops had evidently
gotten bored and gone away. They were probably off throwing rocks at something else,
something that made a more satisfying noise when they hit it. Damn cops.

I made my way
back to CrimeCo, took a shower, changed clothes, and got a cup of coffee. What
a day. My co-workers seemed surprised to see me.

“Hey, Burly,” one
of them said, “what are you doing here? Did you sleep in and miss the
double-cross?”

“Yeah,” said
another, “I thought you were being double-crossed today.”

When I didn’t
answer, another one looked at my face. “Hey, what happened to your mouth?”

“Rocks.”

Eventually, after
enough people had expressed surprise that I wasn’t in prison or dead, I began
to get suspicious. Maybe, I thought, maybe I had been set up to take the fall
from the first. Maybe that’s where my code name “Fall Guy” came from. A lot of
“maybes”, admittedly, but it got me thinking.

For the rest of
the day I wasn’t much of a bodyguard for Larry. I had too much on my mind.
People would jump on him and start slugging him as I wandered on ahead, lost in
thought. He’d say something like “Help me, Frank!”, or some such thing, and I’d
come back and shoo them away. Then I’d wander away again and pretty soon I’d be
thumbing absently through some magazines at the newsstand as Larry was being
kidnapped and driven away screaming. I just wasn’t paying attention to my job, is
what it comes down to.

“If you weren’t
the best bodyguard I’ve ever had, I’d fire you,” Larry told me.

“If I wasn’t the
best, I’d quit.”

The next morning
I noticed all my co-workers were looking at me with those sad double-cross eyes
again. Uh-oh, I thought. I know what that means. Sure enough, the gang’s next
caper was posted on the assignment board, and once again I was to play a key
role in it. We were going to raid the weapons depot at the Armory, and they
were planning on opening the gate by wedging me into the keyhole and blowing me
up. My code name for this one was: “Dead Guy”.

That’s when I
realized Buzzy was definitely out to get me. It wasn’t just my imagination. It
couldn’t be. I don’t have an imagination.

I decided I’d
better do something pretty quick—get Buzzy before he could get me. Fortunately,
there was an easy way to do that.

I called the
police, told them who I was, said I was fine, thank you, then told them I was
working for a space alien who was the head of a huge crime syndicate. And that
he was the brains behind the recent Mint Robbery and many other unsolved
crimes. Then I gave them CrimeCo’s address. They thanked me for the tip and
told me they’d be right over. Cops like getting tips like that. Makes their
jobs easier.

But when the police
arrived and I triumphantly led them into the building, CrimeCo had been
miraculously transformed into an ice cream manufacturing plant. All the
machinery was ice cream machinery. All the records were ice cream records. And
everybody, including me, was wearing an ice cream man’s hat. It didn’t look
like a criminal operation at all now. It looked more like an ice cream place. I
went outside and checked the address to make sure me and the cops were in the
right building. It was the right building all right. I went back in to make
sure everything was still ice cream. It was. I was impressed. I knew I was
dealing with organized criminals here, but, wow.

“This wasn’t like
this before, officers,” I assured them, indicating all the ice cream they were
seeing. “All this ice cream you’re seeing.”

“It wasn’t, eh?”

“No.”

“Do you know what
the penalty is for turning in a false alarm?”

“I ought to by
now,” I said, sourly. “I’ve turned in more false alarms than... wait! There’s
one thing he can’t have changed. His evil alien body. Follow me.”

I led the cops up
to Buzzy’s office.

His secretary,
Debbie, said Mr. Theremin was in, but wasn’t seeing anyone today. Especially
not any cops. One of the policemen started making an appointment for early next
week, but his superior cancelled the appointment and kicked the door open. We
went in.

The office was
empty. The cops looked around, checking in the closets and under the furniture,
but they couldn’t find anybody.

“Look in the
light socket, officer,” I suggested helpfully, as they searched. “Or maybe he’s
in that electric pencil sharpener.”

One of the cops
started looking in the pencil sharpener, then looked at me. “Say, are you
kidding me?”

I shook my head.
I wasn’t kidding him. I wanted him to look.

After an hour of
fruitless searching, the cops left, warning me never to call the police again.
I said I sure wouldn’t, not if this was all it was going to get me. After they
had gone, Buzzy began struggling out of an electrical outlet that was near the
floor behind his desk. He didn’t look happy. I hurried out of the office before
he could get all the way out and see me any better than he already had.

Later that
afternoon, while I was at my locker changing to go home, Shifty came up to me.
He had a gun in his hand. It was pointed at me.

“Hi, Shifty,” I
said, buttoning up my sports shirt.

“Hi, Frank,” he
said cheerfully.

“What’s that
you’ve got in your hand?”

“It’s a pistol.
I’ve been promoted to assassin. The Big Boss told me to put a bullet in your
brain.”

I frowned and
stopped buttoning my shirt. “Why did he tell you to do that?”

He shrugged.
“Didn’t say.” He started pulling the trigger.

“Hold on, Shifty.
Did he say when to shoot me? I mean exactly when?”

Shifty thought
about this. “No, he didn’t, now that you mention it. But I got the impression
he wanted it done right away. Then I’ve got to kill…” He took a notebook out of
his pocket and consulted it. “Oh, here it is: ‘Myself’.”

I shook my head
doubtfully. “I dunno, Shifty. You do what you think is best, of course, but if
it was me, I’d check to make sure about the timing on all this. You know how
important these little details are around here. I’d hate to see you get into
trouble on account of me.”

His cheerful
smile faded a little. He started to look a little worried. “Hey, that’s right.
Maybe I better check.” He pocketed his gun and walked off. “Catch you later,
Frank.”

“So long.”

I had bought
myself some time, but probably not a lot. I didn’t think Shifty’s conversation
with the Big Boss would last very long.

Figuring it still
might be possible to get Buzzy hauled in on some kind of criminal charges if I
could just find something incriminating enough, I snuck back up to Buzzy’s
office and waited for him to leave. He finally came out, dragging Shifty along
by the scruff of the neck. I started looking for a way into that inner office I
knew he had. I couldn’t find any secret panels or hidden doors, so finally I
just made a door with my shoulder. That’s a handy thing about being big—more
doors.

To my
disappointment, Buzzy’s inner office didn’t yield anything incriminating. At
least not at first glance. Just more ice cream equipment. Then I looked closer
at the framed poster on the wall I had seen earlier through the window. It was
a wanted poster with Buzzy’s picture on it. It said “Galactic Enemy Number
Six”. The poster had darts in it, and the words “Ha ha” scrawled on it. I took
it down from the wall and saw that “Ha ha” had been written on the back also. I
turned it back over again and saw that there was a phone number to call to
reach the Intergalactic Police in the Pleiades. It had 2000 numbers. And 23
area codes. I picked up the phone on Buzzy’s desk and started dialing.

When I finally
got through and explained that I had captured Galactic Enemy Number Six,
Bernard Buzzman, aka Buzzy Barrow aka Fussy Fortesque Jr., aka Bernard
Theremin, they told me to hang onto him, they’d be right there. I said great,
and hung up 2000 times.

I spent the next
several hours waiting impatiently for them to show up, hiding behind various
pieces of machinery so I wouldn’t be seen by Shifty, who was wandering through
the building with his gun out calling: “Frank! Hey, Frank!” I didn’t answer. I
knew better than that.

I called the
Intergalactic Police back every fifteen minutes or so to remind them to hurry
up. They tried to explain to me about the vast interstellar distances involved
and how the speed of light works and so on, and urged me to be patient. I said
I wasn’t interested in their outer space doubletalk. And I didn’t want to take
any science lessons over the phone. I wanted them to get down here right away.
Never mind the excuses. They said they weren’t excuses, they were
explanations—scientific explanations of… but I had hung up by then. I didn’t
want to listen to any excuses, scientific or otherwise. Just get down here,
stupid.

Finally, just as
I was about to give up, and maybe say “here I am” the next time Shifty said
“where are you, Frank?” there was a sudden flurry of excitement outside the
building. I went to look.

I got to the
lobby just in time to see the two thugs guarding the entrance being knocked
aside and blasted into another dimension by a Buck-Rogers-looking-character in
a silver suit, whose name coincidentally turned out to be Doug Rogers (no
relation. I asked). He stormed into the lobby with his men, demanding to know
where Buzzy Theremin was.

I stepped forward
to introduce myself and personally lead them to Buzzy, but before I could say
anything, Buzzy raced out of the elevator dragging a suitcase full of Earth
money and sweating sparks. When he saw Doug Rogers he stopped, then quickly
grabbed me to use as a shield. Doug Rogers holstered his ray gun and pulled out
an even more dangerous looking weapon, pointed it at Buzzy’s head, which at
that moment was hiding behind my head, and started blasting away.

Fortunately, the
weird cosmic rays, or whatever they were, that came out of the special gun
didn’t have much of an effect on me. I guess it was because I was the wrong
species. It just felt like a BB gun to me. Just BB’s hitting my face. But after
I had been nailed about fifty times, I decided I’d had enough. I dropped to the
floor and rolled away into the furnace room, giving Doug a clear shot at Buzzy.
The “BBs” that hadn’t been bothering me very much proved to be devastating to
him. They slowed the electrical currents that his body was made of to the speed
of molasses. He instantly became almost entirely immobile. After a few more
shots he was flat on his back, wheezing slowly, with his electrical charge
fitfully fading in and out.

Doug Rogers
stopped shooting and had his men slap a kind of metal straightjacket on Buzzy.
It was like the casing for an oversized size-D battery. They picked it up, with
Buzzy still buzzing weakly inside, and began carrying it to their space ship. I
followed.

When they had
reached their ship and gotten Buzzy half way up the ladder, the Central City
Police arrived.

“Hold it right
there, buddy,” said Sergeant Dobson. He indicated the battery casing with the
feet sticking out of the bottom. “What’s that you’ve got there in the box?”

Doug Rogers
looked at the policeman for a long, appraising moment, then spoke: “You speak
for Earth?”

“I do. What’s
this all about?”

Doug began to
slowly and patronizingly explain that this was an intergalactic felon, puny
Earthlings, that they were the Intergalactic Police, and that they were taking
this felon away to be tried on their world, if we, with our primitive minds,
could grasp such an advanced concept.

He might have
been allowed to go on his way with his prisoner if it hadn’t been for his
superior attitude. Our cops bristled at his snide condescending tone. Sergeant
Dobson said hold on a minute there, Silver Boy. Nobody goes anywhere with
anything just yet.

That’s the thing
about us Earthlings. We know we are inferior—it’s so obvious even we can see it
with our puny eyes—but we don’t like having it pointed out to us by guys
prancing around in silver pants. If some big bruiser twice our size wants to
call us names, okay, he’s entitled. He’s bigger than us. But we don’t take that
kind of abuse from just anybody. You’ve got to draw the line somewhere. We have
our puny pride.

Sergeant Dobson
said this whole situation needed to be checked out thoroughly before anybody
could leave. Doug Rogers protested, saying he was on a tight schedule, if we
were advanced enough to know what that was. He told our cops not to meddle in
things their backward Earth minds did not understand. Like law enforcement.
That settled it. Guns were drawn and the space policemen were told to come down
their fancy space ladder with their superior hands in the air, and bring the
prisoner with them. All this would have to be sorted out downtown. Wherever he
came from originally, he was our space alien now, and we would decide what was
going to be done with him.