Far-out Show (9781465735829) (19 page)

Now the zerpy transmitted a bouncy bit of
country music.

“Yeah, that’s Reba McEntire. One of her
biggest hit tunes. Thanks, that’s the proof that the jammer’s
working the way it’s supposed to so I can be proud of it.”

Nerber asked hesitantly, “You make for
yourself the taking of proud in this?”

“I’m proud of the way I’m using it to give us
cover and proud that I guessed it’d be sounds that’d jostle foreign
ears. I’m not a big fan but I respect those who are since they
don’t try to force it down my... Uh, make me listen to it.”

“But you make me listen to it,” Wilburps said
with what certainly sounded like a complaining tone.

“Let’s get this straight, machine. You’re a
hazard since you can’t control all of what you do and who you’re
letting know about what. This makes you less so. While you’re on a
world that by Nerber’s admission you know little about and much of
what you thought you knew is wrong, it’s prudent for him and me to
restrict your contacts.”

Nerber turned his back to the zerpy and made
a gesture of agreement that Krinkle could see but not the device’s
sensors and recorders.

* * *

In desperation not to have her morning be a
waste of time and by process of elimination, Regimentator had
focused on the Byde-Hour Wink Wink Motel as the most likely place
for her quarry to be hiding, no matter how unlikely that seemed on
a broader scale.

She drove slowly entirely around the long,
single-story building since the paved access to the back doors made
that possible even if the area behind the rooms wasn’t wide enough
for nose-in parking and there were several signs prohibiting any
parking there with threats the police would be called and cars
towed.

She muttered like a mantra, “His car has to
be here. His car has to be here.” But she couldn’t see it.

Finally she stopped a distance from the motel
building and let out a scream of frustration that would have scared
anyone who heard it half to death but fortunately no one else
did.

She got out and stood by the open car door as
she stared at the motel talking to herself. “I know what kind of a
place this is and I have my limits. There’s no way I’m even going
into that office to demand to know what room he’s in. But he must
be here. If he’s doing any of the stuff that most of the ones who
come here come here for that is vile and unnatural to the point
that he ought to be strung up for that alone, with no chance to
make some dumb excuse for doing it.”

She closed the door and paced beside the car.
“In a decent hotel or someplace like that I wouldn’t hesitate to
listen at doors or pound on them and demand that those inside
identify themselves but this is too pervey. Be my luck some loony’d
video me with my ear to the doors and put it on the Internet along
with my name. Or I’d knock on some door and get pulled inside to be
debauched when I’m not in the mood for that. Damnation, George
Krinkle! Where are you and what are you doing?”

She got back in and drove slowly up the road
that would end at the major highway. “This is my best prospect but
I need to get some food to keep me going. I passed a convenience
store up the road a way so I’ll stock up so I can keep vigil.”

Krinkle placed the room’s two chairs facing
one another for easy conversation, sat in one and gestured for
Nerber to use the other. Nerber did so with Wilburps hovering at
shoulder-height beside him.

Nerber watched with interest and a touch of
anxiety as the man took a box from his backpack and opened it.
Inside was a loose-leaf binder and several small items in
individual clear plastic sandwich bags. “Hope you won’t mind but
I’ve thought about this happening for a long time so I’ve made
myself notes on what I’d like to ask you about. I call this my
‘Welcome, aliens’ package.”

Nerber broke out in loud but clearly forced
laughter. “You are making so big the jokes for sure, Mister George.
But please to tell me instead about this space we visiting in have
come to. There are hidden from being seen places here?”

Both this reaction and the question took
Krinkle aback. Had he completely missed a bunch of signals and this
wasn’t an intelligent being prepared to have a serious tete-a-tete
after all? That the alien was up and moving slowly around the room
looking high and low didn’t make things any clearer. Maybe the best
thing to do was to call in the Army to take over after all.

Nerber pointed to the closed closet door,
mimed turning the knob, and asked, “Is this what? Goes it to
another place?”

Okay, play along until he could safely
distance himself. “Yeah, that’s a door. The closet’s inside.
Nothing in it I’m pretty sure.” But since Nerber continued to look
at the door with interest Krinkle stepped over and opened it. Yep,
as he expected, an empty and not very deep closet.

To the man’s astonishment Nerber stepped
inside, checking the walls out by touch. Then he turned to face out
– and pulled the door closed with himself inside.

Krinkle stared, jaw hanging open in surprise
and confusion.

Wilburps called, “Is what happening in there,
Nerber? Is special to see or be doing? All will want to know for
sure.” The zerpy moved up and down a bit outside the closed door as
if pacing anxiously in the wrong dimension.

Nerber opened the door and stepped out. He
gestured and the zerpy moved inside and slowly revolved to take it
all in.

Nerber stepped close and quickly tapped the
deactivation code into the zerpy. Wilburps sank to a safe soft
landing on the closet floor.

Nerber pulled Wowseyla off his hat and
scanned the seemingly inert Wilburps, careful to not touch them
together. Only partly satisfied with the readings he got he closed
the closet door and looked around the room. Wowseyla hovered by his
shoulder.

“What do you need?” Krinkle asked
quietly.

“Is maybe they have fixed Wilburps so some
soundings he still detects and sends on. Is a how-it-can-be-done on
his model. Wanting is covering for his sound-catching sensors.”

“You need to cover his ears? Something to
block sounds like our voices from getting to him?”

Nerber listened to the silent translation of
that from Wowseyla, then nodded enthusiastic agreement. That was
the problem he was looking for a solution to.

After a quick glance to be sure he had put
the security chain on the front door, Krinkle pulled the linens off
the bed and threw those on the floor. Nerber watched this with
interest but without comprehension.

Then Krinkle shifted the mattress around so
he could get a better grip on it. He stopped long enough to mime
that he would lift that and place it against the closet door.

Nerber got the idea, nodded his agreement to
the plan, then helped the man position the stained mattress upright
against the closet door – where it sagged, then folded at the
middle and started to fall to the floor.

Krinkle, arms up, prevented that movement,
using his body to hold the mattress upright and in place. He
whispered, “Hold it this way for a minute.”

Nerber stepped beside the man and imitated
his position but his doubts about the usefulness of this
showed.

Thankful that this was a cheap motel with
shabby expendable furnishings Krinkle lifted the box frame on end
to move it over to hold the mattress upright and against the door.
The headboard was screwed to the wall so it stayed put.

But both of them could see that this would be
a less than perfect solution because the inevitable sag of the
mattress and the need to angle the box frame in place to keep it
upright would defeat their purpose.

“At least it’ll do some good,” Krinkle
said.

Nerber said, “Put it back and I show you
how.”

So Krinkle put the box frame back into its
normal position and turned to see what his visitor had in mind.

Nerber gestured that this would all be okay.
Next he grabbed the mattress and lifted it, hefting it a bit as if
to test its weight. He punched a fist lightly into it as if testing
its firmness, then took a step back and released it as if testing
its overall rigidity. Next he stepped away, letting the mattress
flop over at the middle, then fall forward to complete a one-eighty
flip and land flat on the floor.

He now had Wowseyla’s deploy its virtual
keyboard and keyed in code. He held the zerpy at arm’s length and
moved it as if scanning the prone mattress.

Krinkle gasped in astonishment as the bedding
rose smoothly and flattened itself tightly against the closet
door.

“Now we are being able to talk-talk with no
hearing from inside there,” Nerber said.

“Will whatever you did to it ruin the
mattress? I’m okay with it if it will, but I’ll need to pay for it
so we don’t cheat the owner.”

“Will be not harmed when my zerpy makes
undone this for-until-I-say-to-stop-only change.”

“I won’t ask how it’s doing that.”

Nerber sat down. “Likely it is that you would
not understand my say how it is without much time to be learning
our systems any the ways. Tell me of your welcome things and we can
talk-talk for good stuff, no? I will in twisting of your kind’s way
of saying ‘let my hair off’ to be eased.”

Krinkle hurried back to his chair. “You
probably mean let your hair down. Sure, I want us both to be
relaxed so we’re confident to talk.”

But to the man’s surprise Nerber meant what
he said literally – to the extent that he now removed his hat and
then his wig saying, “Okay this is? It will make me feel more
better about being as open and as honest as possibly it is for me
to be.”

Krinkle stared in spite of himself. Nerber
understood that in a similar situation he would have done the same
when seeing a foreign type in its true form for the first time.

Finally Krinkle said, “You betcha. Uh, I’m
confused though and I might as well say so upfront. Why don’t you
want the other zerpy to know what we say?”

“I do not want Wilburps to see how I make to
be this exposing my realness either. Makes it sense to you that on
Ormelex we make the playing of for serious games in the how we make
dealings with others?”

“Humans do the same thing here on Earth. For
better or worse it’s standard practice to play games about
important decisions and ideas.”

“Okey-my-dokey then. I make big game playing
with the ones who aim to be totally exploitationing of me.”

“The producers of the show you’re a
contestant on.”

“Position to the one side on the top of the
money! From before I made to apply to be on the show I made plans
for what to be doing if I survived this far. I am adapting as I
must do, but I have long time in the thinking before this plans in
the over-most part. I am not so much the blank recording unit as I
maybe let them tell themselves I am.”

“Got it. You’ve let the show’s producers
convince themselves that you’re a blank slate that they can
manipulate to do whatever will profit them the most but too bad
about you. What did you mean by ‘if I survived this far’.”

“Getting here is our experimentation in
making a show to be amusement for the masses but the trip of
contestants and crew and equipment to here is a bigger and far more
important testing of systems. Never before have our kind traveled
beyond our planet, let alone our own galaxy. Unless that is some of
the much do-not-be-telling-to-the-citizens stuff. This makes for
pretty nice big the doubt though since such successes would be
stuff to make boastful crowing about, not for hiding from us. Is
crowing
okay for to say it there?”

“It’s an expression I understand and it fits
the context. Your little zerpy translates even better than the big
one.”

“And Wowseyla I trust. That is for because
they do not know I have it but for adding to that because I know
it’s inside how to make things happen and can completely control
it.”

“Then we can talk openly and honestly with
one another. I, George Krinkle, want to personally welcome you to
our planet if you come in peace. I have no official status but I
believe I represent the thinking of the best of my species. It will
be a great satisfaction if we can get to know about one another’s
planets and people…uh guys.”

“I, Nerber of the planet we call Ormelex, do
personally gratefully accept your kindliness welcoming. I share the
hope that we can learn to do better how we make things happen by
sharing some thinking about its results.”

“That’s my formal and sort of ideal world
greeting,” Krinkle said. “I have to pretty quick though do a
reality check and admit that many of my fellow humans aren’t open
to the idea of visitors from afar. Not even from just across the
nearest land border if the truth is to be told. I add that so I
don’t set you up to misunderstand the true situation.”

“For to be honestly talk-talking I must say
that my trip here is to record me making contact with some of your
kind which will be shown to my kind. The under the working surface
goal that is only supposed to be known to the few who are inside
the secret plan-making programs though is that our leaders want to
find out if our kind could come here and take whatever we want with
your kind not able being to stop us.”

Krinkle gasped. “So you are the scout for an
imminent invasion by forces hiding behind the moon!”

Nerber gestured him to stay calm. “That is
for real I think the long term aim but no, there is only one ship
for long through-space travel use near your planet. And that one,
which brought me here, has only for the truthness the what is
needed to make an entertainment show to beam home to keep the
masses amused so they will stay under control. I am a visitor, not
an invader. There are no weapons on
Whizybeam
, the ship I
came on, and no way for the few on it to attack your world.”