The True Meaning of Smekday (17 page)

J.Lo didn’t answer.

“We’ll figure out something new,” I said. “Maybe your people and my people will figure out some new way together.”

J.Lo smiled a little, quickly, then faced forward again. “We haveto drive more north. We are having to put more space between us and the Nimrogs.”

“Right,” I said. “What?”

“We haveto drive more—”

“There are Nimrogs now, too?” I asked. “Who are they?”

J.Lo fiddled with the tape player to tilt his seat back. “All Gorg are Nimrogs. All Nimrogs are now Gorg, also, but they did not always used to be.”

“I can’t even imagine what we’re talking about.”

“We are talking about the Nimrog race. Tip says she is going to get rid of them.”

“Yeah,” I breathed. I suddenly felt like I’d promised to lift a horse over my head. “But…what is Gorg…like, a nickname?”

“Oh, no. Gorg is their real name. Gratuity is Tip’s real name,” he said, then he made a noise like a drowning yodeler—“OOOlahluhlaaharlHEEdoo is J.Lo’s real name. Taker is their nickname. They have many other nicknames; they are given them alls the time. Some people call them poomps, pardon my languages.”

I tried to stay calm. “So all the Nimrogs…all of them…are named Gorg?”

“Yes.”

“All of them?”

“Alls of them, yes.”

“How…how many are there?” I asked.

“How many Nimrogs?”

“How many Gorg.”

“They are the same thing.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“There are many, manys Nimrogs. As many as they are wanting. They can always make more.”

“I swear I will crash the car into a coyote if you don’t start making sense.”

“Ah,” said J.Lo. “Hm. Ahhh…long ago, before perhaps Tip was born…How many years are you?”

“Eleven and a half.”

J.Lo wheezed and sat upright. “Eleven! You have only eleven years? When I was eleven I was barely out of my inflatable training clothes.”

“Back to the Nimrogs,” I said.

“Yes. The Nimrogs had once many names. Like the Boov. Like the humans. But the Nimrogs, these are so awful they can not to even get along with themselfs. They fight each other—over land, over ideas. When alls the land belongs to one group of Nimrogs who think the same ideas, they find reasons for fighting one another. The right-handers fight the left-handers. Then the left-handers who enjoy musical theater fight at the left-handers who do not enjoy musical theater. And sos on. One day only two Nimrogs remain, named Aarfux and Gorg. Aarfux falls for the old your-shoelace-is-untied trick, and then there is only Gorg.”

“Gorg,” I repeated. “There was only one Nimrog named Gorg.”

“By this time, yes. Beforethen there were many Nimrogs named Gorg. Gorg was a popular boy name, like Ethel.”

I was aching to mention that Ethel was neither popular nor a boy’s name, but I felt we were really getting somewhere.

“But then…did the Gorg…did the Nimrogs always…” I trailed off. “How did Gorg make more Gorg?”

“He cloned. With teleclone machines, likewith I make the gasoline.”

“But you said that was impossible.”

“Impossible for the Boov,” sighed J.Lo. “The Nimrogs found a way. They took the Boovish telecloners and changed them up.”

“How did they get Boovish telecloners?”

“We…gave them.”

“J.Lo!”

“I know, I know.”

J.Lo explained that it was good strategy at the time. A lot of the early Nimrog wars were over resources like fuel. It was common for the Nimrogs on the losing side of battle to destroy their food and fuel and whatever so it wouldn’t fall into enemy hands. The Nimrogs eliminated everything good on their planet this way. So different groups started raiding other planets, stealing what they could. The Boov thought teleclone machines could stop all that—if the Nimrogs could clone what they needed, they wouldn’t need to leave home. So the Nimrogs got the machines by promising to stay in their own neighborhood. It worked for a while, but somehow they managed to start cloning and teleporting complicated things. No one knows how they did it.

“At firsts they cloned and teleported only dead things, like food. No one Nimrog wanted to be the first to try. But when Gorg was left onto the planet by himself, he had not anything to lose,” said J.Lo. “Gorg became the worst kind of enemy. He had outlived all other Nimrogs. He was the most tough and strong. He could not get sick, and would not ever tire. And he had only to set one teleclone booth onto your planet, and soon there could there be a thousand Gorg, or a million. They could have Gorg everywheres. They could even cover their ships with them.”

“Wait,” I said. “You lost me.”

“Yes?”

“Cover their ship—?” I said, then gagged. I remembered the way the big Gorg ball seemed to move on the surface. Its skin seemed to crawl, I thought, just like mine is crawling now.

“You don’t mean they…”

“Yes,” said J.Lo. “The shipskin is made of Gorg. Mixed-up Gorg, like from a blender. Is not even that hard—not hard like Boovish metals or plastics—but it heals. They can keep onto making more and more skin for replacing the old—”

J.Lo stopped talking when he saw the look on my face. I wanted to escape from the tight little car and run for it, now more than ever, but there would still be a whole black ocean of stars all around, pressing close, closing in.

“That is the grossest thing ever!” I shouted at the clear desert morning.

I’d gone to sleep thinking about a ship covered in skin and woken up the next morning thinking about a ship covered in skin. In between I’d dreamed of being captured by Gorg, who all looked like Curly from Happy Mouse Kingdom. They demanded to know what made Slushious float, so I popped the hood, and the engine had changed to guts and organs, pumping and growling from hunger. I’ve had better nights.

“The grossest thing!” I said again. “Look at it. Look at it back there. It’s closer than yesterday, isn’t it.”

J.Lo, who was driving, glanced at the rearview mirror.

“Yes. Closer, I am thinking.”

We’d found our way through the desert brush to another wide, western highway. Down a six-lane road with a concrete divider big enough to have its own gift shop, we passed plaster box buildings and signs for chain restaurants. On the side of an antique mall, which I suppose was either a mall that sold antiques or else a really old mall, was a quote spray-painted in slashing letters:

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

T. S. Eliot

It made me feel strange.

“What happens when the Gorg get closer?” I asked. “What are they going to do?”

J.Lo sighed. “When they arriveto Smekla—to Earthland, they will take some of the young and strong as for slaves, and some of the less young and strong for furniture.

I looked again at the Gorg ship. It was definitely closer. But the Boov seemed to have done some damage—there were long red scars and a scattering of something like bits of toilet paper stuck with blood all over its surface. In the near distance I could also see schools of Boov ships kicking through the air like shining octopi.

“The Boov willto hold them offs as long as is possible. Could be weeks, could be months.”

“Make the next right,” I said.

“Yes.”

We passed out of the town and into the great wide nothing again. I wasn’t even sure what state we were in, until a sign passed that read
ROSWELL
50
MI
.

“Huh. That’s funny,” I said.

“Funnies strange or funnies ha-ha?”

“A little of both. That sign just said we’re gonna pass through Roswell.”

“Yes?” said J.Lo, watching the road. “This is a city?”

“I guess so. It’s just that it’s famous for being where a UFO supposedly crashed like…sixty years ago or something.”

“What is ‘you if oh’?”

It was crazy that he didn’t know this. “It stands for ‘Unidentified Flying Object,’” I said. “A flying saucer. An alien spaceship.”

J.Lo hit the brakes. I was dumped off my seat and hit my head on the dash.

“Ow!”

“Seat belts,” said J.Lo.

“What was that for?”

“We have to stop in the Roswell! We canto see the spaceship!”

I winced. “Yeah…except…I don’t really think there ever was a spacesh—”

“You said! Tip saidto it crashed-landed!”

“No. No, it’s…there’s no proof. It’s just something people say, but there’s no proof. Like with Bigfoot, or Nessie.”

“Bigfoot? Nessie?”

I sighed. Then I explained about Bigfoot, and about the blurry photos. And I told him about the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland, and about the blurry photos of that. Then I had to explain where Scotland was, and he asked what was a loch, and I didn’t know so I made something up.

Finally he sat still and nodded his head. “So no Bigfoot. No Nessie.”

“Probably not,” I said. J.Lo sounded sad. It was sort of sad, come to think of it. Sad to admit that there wasn’t really anything so mysterious and great. And then I remembered for the eight hundredth time that I was talking to a space alien. I was trying to explain to a space alien that there were no such things as monsters.

“If something that big lived in a lake in Scotland,” I said, “I think we’d have found it by now.”

“Yes. It would haveto be very big to be a lochniss monster.”

“Yeah.”

“Bigger even than the snakewhale.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Bigger than the what now?”

“The snakewhale,” he said. “That lives in waters near Scot’sland. I am not knowing the right name for it.”

“Well,” I said, “I guess I don’t either. I don’t know much about Scotland.”

J.Lo began to drive again.

“One of the Boov ships,” he explained, “it wasto collecting interesting Earthland animals, for like a zoo. The Boov had elephants, and the armadillo, and many bugs and fish. Many other things.

“Say,” he said with a grin, “like your Noah’s arkboat.”

“Yeah. Sort of. And this snakewhale was one of the fish?”

“Yes. I am sorry I do not know the reals word. I only remember it was captured near your Scot’sland. Very pretty. Sixty feets long, if you are counting the neck.”

I looked out at the road for a moment, mouthing the words
Sixty feet long. Counting the neck.

“Can you draw it?” I asked.

J.Lo stopped the car, and I fished out his paper and pencils. And he drew the snakewhale:

I stared at it for the longest time. I stared so long I must have hurt J.Lo’s feelings.

“It is…not very good,” he said. “I made the flippers too small.”

“No,” I said. “’Sfantastic. I bet it looks just like her.”

Maybe there really was a spaceship, I thought. Way back then.

“Could one of your Boov ships have visited Earth so long ago?” I asked.

“I am doubting it. Earthland is not in a very nice neighborhood. Maybies it was the Habadoo. Say, do you wants to hear a funny joke about the Habadoo? It seems that a Boov, a KoshzPoshz, and a Habadoo all are walking inside a mahahmbaday. And the Boov sa—no. Wait. I am forgetting to say the KoshzPoshz is carrying a purp. So the Boov—no. The KoshzPoshz says—”

I wasn’t really listening. I was thinking about the whole UFO craze. It felt ridiculous, now that we’d been invaded twice, to think about all the Top Secret alien visitors we’d supposedly had all these years. It was all crop circles and mystery, when the truth turned out to be as obvious as a giant purple ball you could see from five states away.

“…So then the Habadoo, he says: ‘That’s not your purp, that’s my poomp!’” J.Lo hiccuped with laughter.

“Uh-huh,” I said.

“You are not a fan of ethnical jokes, ah? Look, is okay if I tells it, I am one-sixteenth Habadoo—”

“Y’know, I don’t want you to get your hopes up too much about seeing a crashed spaceship. I was just thinking about all those old UFO stories, and they all agree that the army or NASA or someone hid the spaceship someplace called Area 51. I don’t know where that is.”

“N’aasa?”

“Yeah. NASA.”

“In Boovish, ‘n’aasa’ means soft and beige.”

“That’s not what it means here. It’s a name,” I explained. “It stands for something else.”