How I Conquered Your Planet (13 page)

“
Okay,” said the Major. “Let’s hear your plan.”

“
What… now?”

“
Yes, now.”

“
Uh…”

I had to think of a plan quick.

“
Are you asleep, General?”

“
What? No, of course I’m not asleep. What’s the last thing
anybody said?”

“
Your plan. We’re waiting to hear it.”

I tried to think. Suddenly I remembered something I’d seen once
in the movies.

“
My plan is that we should mobilize our giant spiders…”

“
We don’t have any giant spiders.”

“
Well, crap…”

I started to suggest we attack the Martians with our zombies,
the zombies could ride our runaway robots, but they said they’d heard quite
enough from me. They told me my trial would have to wait, because they had
something big brewing, but as soon as it was successfully completed, I would be
tried and executed.

I was unhappy to hear this. “Not another trial!”

“
Silence! Take him away and teach him to have some respect for
the Underground.”

“
I think you’ll find it’s hard to teach me anything.”

They took me away and locked me up for awhile, but my trombone
imitations annoyed my jailors and eventually they turned me loose to roam
around in their underground city until it was time for my trial. They didn’t
have to worry about me escaping. They knew I could never find my way back to
the surface. They had picked up the trail of crumbs I had dropped.

The underground city that had grown up around the simple
command post was very impressive. Thanks to frequent surface raids, they had
been able to duplicate life on the surface to a surprising degree. They had
stores, roads, night clubs, even a slum area for underground people who weren’t
doing so good.

A lot of the people down there had developed large luminous
eyes. I complimented one of them on the fast evolution job he’d done. “I’ll bet
Charles Darwin is looking down from Heaven and is really pissed,” I told him.

Since I hadn’t been underground long enough to develop luminous
eyes, I was issued a pair of flashlight glasses – to aid in seeing underground.
I put them on backwards the first time, but that’s the kind of mistake you only
make once or twice. Once I had them on right, I wondered how I’d gotten along
all these years without eyes like oncoming freight trains.

“
Can I keep these?” I asked the flashlight glasses guy.

“
You can use them. They are yours to use.”

“
I know that. But what I’m wondering is, can I keep them when I
no longer have any use for them? Can I sell them and keep all the money? Are
they ‘mine’ in that sense?”

“
No. All flashlight glasses belong to the Revolutionary
Underground. They must be returned to the Revolutionary Underground Flashlight
Glasses Guy when you’re finished with them.”

I was disappointed. I could have used the money I would have
gotten for those glasses. I was in for other disappointments that day. They
wouldn’t let me sell any of their stuff.

Besides the big eyes, the main thing you noticed about these
people was that they wore plenty of thick makeup to make themselves look more
“human”. They had gotten too pasty faced and weird looking after living
underground for so long. But the makeup just made them look more grotesque.
Sometimes this made them so mad they felt like they just had to eat everybody.

For some reason, along with their deformities came an
unaccountable feeling of superiority. I wouldn’t have felt superior if I looked
like that. But they did. They told me they were thinking of destroying all
human specimens who weren’t as perfect as they were. They said they had had a
lot of time to think down here, and this is what they’d come up with.

“
You call that nose perfect?” I asked, pointing.

“
Yes. And I’ll thank you not to bring up that example again.”

I was pretty much left alone to wander around wherever I
wanted. Nobody bothered me much. Occasionally some of the residents recognized
me as being Burly the Beast and started to set off a big stink about it. But
after I assured them that everyone knew it was me and that they were in fact
the last ones to find out about it, they slunk away, disappointed.

Even though we were far underground, there was no lack of news
from the surface. Couriers were constantly moving back and forth between the
resistance fighters above ground and the ones below. One of the reports that
came down from the surface mentioned that there were Martian patrols everywhere
looking desperately for me.

I didn’t have any idea why they were so anxious to find me. I
was an escaped prisoner, but there were lots of those now that everybody had
learned the garbage truck trick. There had to be another reason. Maybe the
Martians were sorry for the way they had treated me. Maybe they wanted to
apologize and give me back my rank and privileges. This train of thought led to
the idea that maybe they wanted to fight another war with somebody and needed
good old General Burly to lead the way. I decided that this must be it.

I wrote a letter telling the Martians where I was, and bribed a
guy to take it topside and put it in a mailbox. He wanted five dollars to do
this, but I convinced him a dollar was all he was going to get.

An hour later I was in the Command Post, standing in front of
Major Zedo and the rest of the Underground leaders. Without preamble, the Major
began reading my letter aloud.

In this letter I said I’d managed to infiltrate the horseshit
Earth Underground and had a list of their physically unattractive leaders which
I would gladly trade for the Martians rescuing me and dropping all the criminal
charges they had against me. None of this went over very well, as you can
imagine. The words “physically unattractive” bothered them the most. I saw a
few of them glancing in a mirror and frowning.

I said they had read my letter out of context. You can’t get
mad at me on the basis of one isolated incriminating letter. I’m a more complex
man than that. You’ve got to get mad at the whole Frank Burly. Don’t you see
that?

They said they were mad at the whole Frank Burly. So mad they
could spit. And they were going to execute me as soon as their meeting was
over.

“
What about my trial?”

“
You’ve had your trial.”

“
How did I do?”

“
You lost.”

Ignoring my protests, and my demands to see a transcript of
this trial, they handcuffed me and sat me down in a corner out of the way.
While I sulked, they went on with their meeting.

They were making their final plans for the big counterattack.
They were going to try to re-take the Earth. A few problems still needed to be
ironed out before they could try it though. They still didn’t have the secret
access codes to the gate at the military base, for example.

“
Oh, I know those,” I said, bored.

“
Silence!”

They also still needed a way to open the special locks at the
defense headquarters.

I yawned. “My retina scans will work on those locks. I used to
go in and out of there all the time.”

“
Somebody gag that guy!”

“
Wait!”

Major Zedo came over and, one by one, laid out all their
remaining problems. I was the answer to all of them.

“
Oh, sure, I know where that is… yeah, that guard is a buddy of
mine… that’s no problem, that alarm doesn’t work. I installed it.”

“
Can you operate a Martian saucer?” Major Zedo asked
breathlessly.

I was still feeling pretty sulky - I don’t like being executed.
I don’t care whether it’s justified or not - but I didn’t mind answering that
question. I was kind of proud of myself, to be honest. “Hell, I commanded a
fleet of those things. I know everything about them. I could probably build you
one.”

“
So that’s why the Martians wanted you back so badly.”

I blinked. “Why?”

“
You know too much.”

“
Like what?”

“
Never mind.”

“
No, seriously, do I know something?”

They removed my handcuffs and helped me to my feet. They said
they’d forget all my past crimes if I helped them pull off this counterattack
of theirs. I wondered if maybe they could add some money to their offer, just
to sweeten it a little. But they said the Resistance was having a bad year
financially so far. So there would be no cash involved in the deal. Finally, I
agreed.

Then they let me in on their plan. It had changed significantly
since I had become a member of the team. Originally they had intended to break
into the Martian Defense Compound, sabotage everything the Martians had to
defend themselves with, destroy or disable their flying saucer fleet, then
fight the Martians hand to hand until either they won, or, as was more likely,
they lost. Now that I was on board, the flying saucers wouldn’t have to be
destroyed. We could use them ourselves to win back the world from the air.

I said it seemed like kind of a half-assed plan to me. Not nearly
as good as the one with the giant spiders, whoever mentioned that. They agreed
that their plan was fraught with risks. But they said if it didn’t work, they
had a backup plan. Plan B, they called it. This plan called for setting off the
world’s nuclear arsenal and destroying the entire planet. Plan B wouldn’t be
total victory, but it would be a tie, which is considered pretty good too. I
didn’t think much of Plan B. Neither did some of the other Earth leaders. But
many defended it.

“
Better to die free than live in slavery,” said one.

“
But we’d be dying as slaves, wouldn’t we?” argued another.

“
Technically, yes, but we’d be dying as rebellious slaves. Not
docile slaves.”

“
I don’t see the difference.”

“
Hey, now I don’t either.”

This discussion was cut short by the Major. It was time to
move.

We were issued weapons and maps (waste of paper if you ask me),
then began our long march to the surface.

As we marched I led the men in an attack song.

“
We are the Earth-men, mighty mighty Earth-men!”

“
For God’s sake be quiet.”

“
Sing quietly, men,” I said.

“
Don’t sing at all you idiot!”

I nodded and gave the Major the thumbs up. Then I led the men
in a hushed cheer.

“
Three cheers for our leaders! Hush hush hurrah!”

We cautiously emerged from the three-story building that
concealed the entrance to the underground. We were led by our chief scout,
Scouty. Just our luck, there was a Martian corporal having a smoke right in
front of the building. We froze. He turned a light on us. We were all lined up
behind Scouty, as still as mice.

“
Who goes there?”

“
A private citizen out to get a smoke,” said Scouty.

This struck the right note.

“
It stinks having to come outside every time you want a smoke
doesn’t it?” asked the Corporal.

“
I’m thinking of writing a letter about it,” agreed Scouty.
“I’ve already bought the stamp.”

They smoked in silence for a moment, each probably thinking
what he might write in such a letter. Suddenly the Corporal thought he saw some
kind of movement behind Scouty.

“
Is there anyone behind you?”

“
No.”

“
Because it looks like there might be someone behind you.”

“
Of course there isn’t. If you don’t believe me, see for
yourself.”

“
I believe I will see for myself.”

“
I insist that you do.”

“
Oh you do, do you?”

“
Yes. Look behind me right now. I demand it.”

I was watching all this from the middle of the group. I nudged
the man next to me. The guy in the front wasn’t playing this right in my
opinion. My nudges were ignored.

“
If you’re using reverse psychology on me,” the Corporal warned,
“I’m gonna… ”

“
You’re gonna what? What will you do?”

They stared belligerently at each other for a moment, then the
Corporal finished his cigarette, stamped it out and turned to go. “I’ve got to
get back to my post right now, but I’ll be back.”

“
You’d better.”

He left and our group let out a sigh of relief that had the
Corporal back immediately. He looked at Scouty and his unusually long shadow
for a long moment, cocked an ear when part of the shadow hiccupped, then
abruptly turned and left again, this time for good.

We worked our way towards a rendezvous point deep in the Earth
Quarter, where we were met by resistance fighters who had been operating above
ground. They showed us the ground transportation they had arranged for us. It
was a bus. It was quickly determined that no one in the group knew how to
operate a bus. They couldn’t even get the doors open. This is where I took over
the mission. Without hesitation, I strode forward, hit the button that opened
the doors, sat down in the driver’s seat and began jingling the fare box. The
Earthmen began boarding.