Far-out Show (9781465735829) (12 page)

“Wowseyla gives top-most diagnostic programs
for
Whizybeam
, maybe even better than they were given. But
if I alert them to the danger they learn I have a latest version
mini-zerpy and that starts the fight to take control of it and all
that is recorded by it before we are home. I cannot ignore the
possibility that they know about the danger or are even somehow
faking it exactly to get me to let them know all that I know. More
reason for me to be angry and upset and for them not to be
truthful. Where there is money and influence to be had there is
always the playing of games.” He tapped some code into the device.
The screen filled with one of the graphs from moments before.

“I judge my return to
Whizybeam
to be
uncertain but with it not happening more likely than sure to
happen. I must act accordingly. It saddens me, audience who may
someday get to witness these words, that what was officially an
educational adventure that needed the hard sell of the
entertainment competition format to get funding and the necessary
clearances is I find full of information so much in error. It is
probably best not to air anything unless I can get the truth past
the producers who have reason to want to avoid annoying the
governors by making the truth known. That focuses me on the need to
survive – which I intend to do no matter what. I also need to keep
the existence of my mini-zerpy and its output undetected during the
return trip and through the inevitable searches on arrival. Then I
can concentrate on getting true information around the blockades of
the naysayers, which means avoiding all official channels until
copies of the material are too far spread to be suppressed and
destroyed with no chance of them coming to light to embarrass those
who wanted them suppressed. That is a lot of challenges and they
all depend on me and Wowseyla not being destroyed by the
inhabitants,
Whizybeam
’s mechanical failures, the producers,
or the guys who wield the power on Ormelex.”

He waved at Wowseyla and said, “Tuck it in.”
The keyboard and screen disappeared. He held a hand under the
device and it fell into his palm. He reached up, gave it a light
toss, and it moved to and stuck to the exact same spot on his hat
so no one would wonder how it had moved from spot to spot if they
compared recorded images of Nerber.

“I set out on an adventure but I did not
imagine how big a one.”

A short time later Nerber stood on the porch
of the Parker’s house talking through the open window to Edith and
Adam, who were in their chairs. Wilburps hovered at waist-height
beside him. Adam was using his laptop computer where he sat.

“Yeah, best you stay out there. Uh, the
hamster's loose in here and he bites. Can’t trust him an inch,”
Edith warned.

“Popped into my head this question did and
wonder about it made me think. You are goodly being to seek my
answer.”

Adam said, “It’s an interesting question. Who
if anyone could give sanctuary to a space-type alien and deliver it
to the scientists to keep it from being senselessly slaughtered by
yahoos? You can find out almost anything on the Internet. Yes! No,
I need to narrow the search. I'm not sorting through twenty-seven
thousand matches. I'll search alien species, not just aliens.”

Nerber leaned close for a better look at the
window screen.

“Hey, keep your distance, you! Ain't ya never
seen a window screen before?” Edith shouted.

“I have truly not. What is it?”

“One of man's great inventions,” she
answered. “Lets the air in but keeps the bugs out.”

Nerber nodded and gazed down at it as his
zerpy translated that directly into his head. Nerber showed his
confusion and distress when he got that translation so he
requested, “Please to excuse it, bugs are what?”

“Insects. Pests. Don't tell me you don't have
pests where you come from,” she said.

“Aha, pests are undesirable things to be
squish-ed by your foot? Squish-ed sounds like a messiness.”

Adam interrupted. “This is more like it. But
it's no real help. Only a few entries match all the criteria. They
all seem to mean there's no official preset way to do what you
asked about doing.”

Nerber laughs awkwardly, “Oh, I did not ask
for me, only as a general interesting point to talk about.”

“Whatever,” Adam said. “There's apparently no
law about it so you couldn't be arrested for hiding an alien from a
mob but you might get torn limb from limb if the mob found you
doing that.”

“Quiet, there's new news. Turn it up,” Edith
snapped.

On the TV reporter Beth Regards said,
“Vigilante mobs are forming in several areas to search the city for
alien invaders. Check the list at the bottom of your screen for the
mob scene closest to you. Happy hunting. Now back to our reruns in
progress.”

“My, look at the timing, I must go,” Nerber
said as he turned to head for the steps.

“Yeah, there's no safety with us,” Edith
called after him.

Nerber hurried off the porch and up the
street, Wilburps close behind him and trying to seem like his
backpack but a close look showed that the two were not in contact
and that the carrying straps hung empty against the boxy zerpy.

“What’re you thinking, Momma?” Adam
asked.

“Whatever the heck that fellow is, it seems
there should be some way to make this pay. He’s peculiar enough to
seem like he could be a far-out invader critter so it wouldn’t be
crying wolf,” Edith replied as she stood at the living room window
watching Nerber move out of sight.

“You could get famous by calling to have the
police, heck, maybe even the president’s people, check him out,”
Adam said.

“Nah, then they get the credit and give
themselves bonus money. Unless of course there’s a reward being
offered now,” she replied.

Adam’s fingers danced across the keyboard of
his laptop and he scanned several different sites before he
answered. “Nothing yet. Bunch of people looking for leads on
anything suspicious but they’re all private people, not
government.”

“You tell ‘em what you saw and they report it
and take the credit. Suckers are all around us. Maybe later as
people get more scared and the politicians get the most scared that
someone’s gonna say they didn’t do enough there’ll be some offers
to consider.”

“There are several news companies offering
money but they want pictures, especially video, not just a say-so
that you think your neighbor’s a weirdo.”

Edith turned to look at her son with real
interest saying, “Yeah, pictures. That makes sense. You don’t have
to risk anything trying to cage it or tie it up, just click the
camera and make a pile. That means fame and something you can take
to the bank.”

“You’d still have to prove what’s in the
pictures.”

“Adam, some days I think you were born just
yesterday. Not that I’d go through all that grunting and pushing
again.”

“We’ve agreed not to keep going back through
that, Momma. I wasn’t in control of my own birth. What did you
mean?”

“Two things pop right out of my head. First
thing, this is news company shark attack stuff. They want to be the
first to get anything on the air or on their pages, they’ll worry
about saying exactly what it is later. And second, they won’t care
what it is as long as it looks odd. They get the attention they
want and move on to the next distraction without worrying about
being correct in what they said might be. Note that
, might
be
. Only government or groups you don’t want to succeed have to
prove their claims to many people.”

“You’re probably right.”

“The smart game of course is to put some
blood in the water and see how big the bites’ll be.”

“I’m not clear on what that means,” Adam
admitted.

“You got pictures, you don’t sell ‘em to the
first one that offers you ten dollars for all the rights to them.
You take bids and you let ‘em all know that’s how it’s being done
and that it’ll all be old news quick so if they want the first and
exclusive they need to pay for what you’re offering. You’ve got the
goods and they’ll pony up top dollar when they see you’re not gonna
be a fool and give ‘em away.”

“So you want to send emails to these
different companies saying we have pictures and the bidding war has
started?”

“Hell no. We need to keep what we have secret
for now.”

“But you just said we need to be the first to
have pictures to sell.”

“Exactly.”

Adam waited for her to clarify that but she
was back to looking out the window, pressing close to the glass in
an effort to see if Nerber was still in sight, which he was
not.

“Exactly what?” he finally prompted.

“We need the pictures first. They’ll want
them lickety-split and if we say we’re gonna go try to get them now
that we have the bids it won’t go good,” she replied. “Even more
though, as soon as we say we have ‘em there’ll be a hundred others
blanketing this whole area with their cameras. As soon as a bunch
of people have pictures the value of all of ‘em falls fast. We
can’t tell anybody what we have until we have it and can deliver on
the instant when the best price is agreed to.”

“Okay, I follow that. I see two really big
problems with the plan though.”

“I know, I know. You and me won’t know when
to say yes ‘cause the offer’s the best we can get. We’ll pay your
cousin Barry the lawyer to do that part. His mom’s always bragging
about what a hard-nosed negotiator he is. I usually think
snot-nosed snob but if he can go it better than we can for his
standard fee we should go with him,” Edith said.

“Yeah, that’s a third thing. My first thing
though is that we don’t have a decent camera. My second thing is
that as soon as it gets known that the alien suspect was in this
house the government may insist on taking everything we have away
to burn it up or something in case it’s got foreign contamination.
Maybe they’ll even make us go and live in a special isolation booth
in case we caught alien germs.”

“You watch those silly old movies too
much.”

“So do lots of people,” he answered a bit
defensively. “That’s why they’ll demand that be done with us and
the house. You certainly know that ‘be reasonable’ doesn’t cut it
when you decide to worry about something. No matter who or how many
experts assure us everyone there’s no danger, people still feel
it’s the right and expected thing to do to beat up on somebody
else.”

“You can never trust experts. Common sense is
what protects us all,” Edith insisted.

“And what’ll put us in plastic bubbles in a
secret laboratory for the rest of our days to be certain there’s
not even a tiny chance we can make lots of people sick with
contamination.”

“I think you’re over-worrying it but if it’ll
make you feel safer we won’t tell anybody it was even on our porch.
We can say all the details’ll be in our book and then not write a
book. That’d deal with it.”

“The neighbors’ll want in on some of the
attention so they’ll tell.”

“Did you tell anybody? I didn’t. There,
nobody knows.”

“You could tell about almost everybody who
has visited every other house within sight out that window,” Adam
said.

“I’m only protecting the area from
strangers.”

“So are the others watching out their windows
without making themselves obvious. If you want to worry about all
that, go ahead but do it on your own time. Right now we need to
deal with your first thing. You need a camera to take the
pictures.”

“All we have is that ‘use it once and turn it
in to be developed’ thing that we got last year in case the family
up the street had a noisy lawn party and I wanted to complain with
proof. That won’t do,” she insisted.

“Why won’t that do?” he asked.

“You have to get close to get a decent
picture and with Nerber now on the run that’s not likely to
happen,” Edith noted.

“Right. Plus I’m not taking the chance that
if I get close to do that I might get sprayed with his poison or
something.”

“He sprays poison? That’s terrific as a
selling point.”

“Don’t go saying things we don’t know are
accurate, Momma. The point is that we don’t know what he can do but
in the old films the alien monsters sometimes can do things like
that so there must be some reason to think it can happen.”

Edith responded with a derisive snort.

“Or you can be the one to get close and take
the snaps, Momma. Then you can be famous as the first one to be
specially destroyed by the government to contain the
contamination.”

“We need a better camera. Solve that
problem,” she said.

“Cameras are expensive.”

“We only need it for this one time so find a
cheap one.”

“That’d be a
one-use-and-turn-it-in-to-be-developed type.”

Adam went into the next room and Edith went
to the front door and stepped out onto the porch to see if she
could see Nerber up the street from out there but he was not in
sight.

Adam returned with the Yellow Pages phone
directory. He started to sit on the sofa but stopped in mid-motion,
glanced at that item of furniture, then moved over to his regular
chair. He glanced back at the sofa warily. When Whiskers the
hamster poked his head out from under the sofa to look around Adam
gave a sad shake of his head. How much risk was he willing to take?
How much of their stuff would have to go to be sure they weren’t
contaminated? Animals should probably be at the top of that list.
Oh well, they were tired of the hamster anyway.

“Well? What’s in the book?” Edith asked as
she returned to her chair. “We can probably borrow one since we
don’t want it except for today.”

Adam’s fingers did the walking to the
appropriate page and then guided his eyes down the listings. He
said, “There are a bunch of camera stores...”