How I Conquered Your Planet (4 page)

One of the men took a bottle of something down from a shelf and
opened it, then held it out to me.

“
Drink this,” he said.

“
What is it, doc?”

“
Medicine.”

“
Good, because I’m not feeling very well right now.”

I drank it.

I woke up in a shooting gallery. I was revolving slowly through
the target area, then back behind the backdrop, then past the targets again.
Pellets were bouncing off of me. As I revolved past the carnie each time I
said: “Uh… excuse me… “, but then I was gone again.

I couldn’t remember anything. I couldn’t remember how I’d
gotten there. I couldn’t remember what the prize was for knocking me over. I
couldn’t even remember who I was.

The second question was answered soon enough. The next time I
came around, everybody decided to let fly at me at the same time. I went over.
It cost the carnie almost all of the prizes on the second shelf. And it cost me
my position.

The next thing I knew I was in the back of the shooting
gallery, upside down in a garbage can.

I extricated myself and started wandering around aimlessly,
wondering who I was. I assumed I wasn’t a very important man. Otherwise I
wouldn’t have been used by the carnival as a shooting gallery target. All I had
in my pockets were a comb, a couple of clues, and some stuff I stole from the
carnival.

The carnie had no information to offer that might help unravel
the mystery. Some people had driven up and offered him a free target. That was
all he knew about it.

I left the carnival grounds and began walking the streets,
looking for some clue as to my identity. I didn’t see any statues of me, or see
my face on any stamps, and nobody was bowing down to me, so that reinforced my
theory that I wasn’t that important.

I must have stopped at every Information Booth in town, but
none of them had any information about me. I wondered how those places managed
to stay in business.

At one point I wandered through a factory which seemed to have
been built just to endanger me. There were giant saw blades, pounding mallets,
huge drills, and mechanical arms that tried to pull me to pieces when I went by
them on the conveyor belt. I nearly got killed in there. I wondered what that
factory was trying to make. I never did find out.

Finally, as I was heading back to the carnival to see if I
could get my old target job back, I ran into some people who knew me! It was a
group of teenage kids. They said my name was Frank Burly. I liked it. It was a
good solid descriptive name for a frank and burly guy like me, I felt. I asked
them what I did for a living, and they said I was their servant.

A couple of weeks later, while I was scrubbing the floors for
the young masters, the doorbell rang.

“
Junior Purple Gang Headquarters,” I told the visitors
efficiently. “May I ask who’s calling?”

It was a young man and woman who seemed to know me: Dottie and
Chuck Steak.

“
Frank Burly!” shrieked Dottie. “What are you doing here? Why
are you wearing that butler’s uniform?”

I explained that I had always worked here. I had always worn
this uniform. I had been born into slavery to these fine young men.

Instead of saying “Oh, that explains that then.” Or “Oh, yeah,
that’s right. Now we remember.” Dottie and Chuck both looked accusingly at the
young masters who had just entered the room.

One of them looked a little ashamed when he was confronted with
what he had done, but the others looked defiant, or just laughed.

My new friends told me I was a well known detective, not a
servant, and escorted me back to my office.

When I arrived, the Gremlin was sitting at what I was told was
my desk, talking on my phone, and wearing one of my suits. He quickly resumed
his position at his secretarial desk and watched me curiously.

So now I was back where I was supposed to be, but I still
couldn’t remember what I was supposed to do.

My friends knew what to do, because they had seen it on every
TV show ever filmed. A sharp blow, or brutal clout, to the head with some sort
of blunt instrument was what was needed to bring back my memory. That’s the
real danger of television you never read about. Teaching people crap like that.

Over the next week, they hit my head with everything from ball
peen hammers to television sets. Anything that would raise a lump. They even
tried hitting me with a product that was specially designed for hitting people
on the head that they saw on TV for $19.95. Unfortunately, it fell apart after
the first hit, but they did get a free Tongue Yanker with their order.

To everybody’s surprise, none of these medical treatments
worked. I was starting to remember a few things, but the memories all had to do
with being hit on the head.

But friends never give up. Not when there’s still something
left they can hit you with.

Finally, when they had started backing different kinds of cars
over my head, to see if one of those would work, my brain, in an obvious attempt
at self-preservation, started remembering things. In a rush, it all came back
to me. I remembered my misspent youth, my misspent middle age, and the time I
was misspending now. I also remembered the meeting I had blundered into – the
one with the space aliens and the maps.

This was important information. It had to be reported to the
police.

I thanked my hard-working friends, ducked a few final
sledge-hammer blows and started for the police station. The Gremlin closed up
his desk and followed me.

“
I wish to report that we’re being overrun by aliens from
another planet,” I told two bored detectives.

“
Is that so? Which planet?”

“
Uh…”

“
C’mon, we haven’t got all day.”

“
Don’t you work here all day?”

“
Wise guy, eh? What’s that got to do with it?” He turned to his
partner. “Wise guy. Asking us if we work here all day. Thinks that means we’ve
got all the time in the world.”

“
Wise guys are like that, chief. He’s got a point though, hasn’t
he chief? We do have to be here all day, whether he hurries up or not. All day
tomorrow too.”

“
In theory, yes, but…”

I broke into this discussion impatiently. “Our entire military
industrial complex is being compromised.”

“
By who?”

“
Well… by me, actually. But I’m not the ringleader. I’m just a
stooge.”

I described all the things I’d been doing for my clients. The
cops’ eyes narrowed.

“
How did they get you to do these awful things you said you have
done?”

“
Well, they paid me handsomely.”

“
Is that all someone has to do to get you to break the law? Pay
you?”

“
Well, that’s the first thing they have to do. There might be
some other stipulations. Working conditions and so on.”

Then I started telling them about Arthur Gremlin and the
strange things I’d seen at the meeting in the magic shop. But before I could
get very far into my story, I found myself stuffing billy clubs and police
badges into my mouth. Then my mouth snapped closed and appeared to slowly zip
itself shut. I yanked part of my mouth open and tried to keep talking, but my
mouth kept biting my hand and threatening me.

The cops watched with that kind of deadpan watchful look cops
have, as I rolled around on the floor, fighting with my own mouth. Finally I
hit my mouth hard enough to disable it and it just hung there loosely. But I
couldn’t talk anymore. Nobody wanted me to anyway. We’d all had enough.

The Gremlin was outside the police station, watching me as I
came out, pulling police equipment out of my mouth. He didn’t look happy. I
didn’t care. I wasn’t happy either. Neither were the cops. Nobody was happy
today.

As I walked home, with my mouth muttering apologies I wouldn’t
listen to, I saw a sign shaped like an arrow. It was pointing to a door.
Written on the arrow was the word “Clues”. Of course a detective can’t pass up
clues. Clues are gold. Even if you can’t use them yourself, you can always
trade them to other detectives or send them in to Detective’s Weekly for a
chance to win a prize. A box of sea monkeys or something. I checked to make
sure there wasn’t a sign that said “Trap”, then opened the door and walked in.

The moment I got into the room, the door slammed shut and was
bolted from the outside.

I tried to get it open, but it wouldn’t budge. I looked around
the room. It was filled with people seated in rows facing a stewardess. I
recognized some of them. Former clients of mine. “Hiya Merko, Professor
Future.”

They looked up at me, then went back to their in-flight
magazines.

Suddenly the room shuddered and began to rise into the air
making outer-spacey sounds and emitting sparks.

Then the captain came over the intercom saying there would be
no smoking until we had reached our cruising altitude. This was Flight 723 to
Mars.

As the space ship roared up through the stratosphere, I tried
repeatedly to get off. There had been a mistake, I felt. I wasn’t supposed to
be in the stratosphere. I was a ground kind of guy. I was asked several times
by the stewardess to sit down and quit opening the door, as I had caused
several passengers to be sucked out into the void. I told her I seemed to have
gotten on to a flying saucer somehow. No harm done, but when could I get off?
She informed me this was a nonstop flight. We’d be landing on Mars in a week.

That was not acceptable to me, I told her. I wanted this vessel
turned around, and I wanted it turned around now. If it wasn’t turned around
now, there would be big trouble.

Unfortunately, we were beyond the Earth’s gravity by this
point, and it’s hard to threaten people when you’re bobbing around in front of
them, sometimes upside down, sometimes sideways, and nearby passengers are kind
of playing with you, batting you back and forth across the aisle to each other,
and keeping a running score of who’s ahead.

“
You’re laughing now,” I told the stewardess, sternly, “Laughing
so hard you can hardly see straight, but you won’t be laughing for long.”

The passengers played with me for a little while longer, then
grew tired of me and batted me back towards my seat.

I sat there for awhile, fuming, then raised my hand with a
question for the stewardess. “Does the pilot of this vessel carry a weapon of
any kind?”

“
Yes,” said the stewardess.

I put down my hand. There went my kill-everybody-and-run idea.

Since threats weren’t getting me anywhere, I tried bribery. But
neither the stewardess nor any other member of the flight crew would accept
money for not doing their jobs. Finally I accepted the stewardess’ $20 bill to
sit down and shut up for the rest of the voyage. Am I the only one who takes
bribes anymore?

For the next seven days I killed time as best as I could,
trying to read their magazines, watching the in-flight movies – some of which
featured has-been American actors along with the mostly Martian cast – and
trying to get more money from the stewardess for all the sitting down and
shutting up I was doing for her. I said the $20 she had given me wasn’t enough.
I needed more now. She said she didn’t have any more.

On the seventh day, I could see a red planet out of my window.
It was Mars, all right. Okay, that does it, I thought. I’ve got to get out of
here.

I got out of my seat, crossed to the hatch and started yanking
on it. It took several members of the flight crew, and several more $20 bills,
to get me back to my seat.

“
I’ve got to get out of here,” I explained, reasonably, to
anyone who would listen.

They said everybody would be getting out of here in a few
minutes. Just be patient.

Sure enough, the saucer’s speed began to slow dramatically, and
we began our descent into the Martian atmosphere. Fortunately for me, I was
pretty ignorant about science. Otherwise I would have been worried about the
lack of oxygen, the freezing temperatures, the harmful cosmic rays, the low
atmospheric pressure, the wildly elliptical orbit, and all that other stuff. I
didn’t know planets could be different like that. A scientist would have been scared.
Me, I didn’t give a shit.

And I was right not to worry, as it turned out. Once we had
landed and I had gotten off the saucer, I noticed things didn’t seem all that
different here. The elliptical orbit bothered me a little bit at first, but
that’s all.

I tried to breeze through security at the terminal, like all
the other passengers were doing, but there was a problem with my identification
papers – the problem being that I didn’t have any. They asked me for my
passport. I didn’t have a passport. Then they asked me for my official Martian
ID card. I told them I didn’t eat that kind of cereal. More security people
gathered around me.