Invasion

  But calm as my boy is, both Teddy and I are staring at the couch: the silver-gray coverlet has disappeared. It’s as if both our heads are being controlled by the same puppeteer: we look from the couch to the chest and back to the couch in perfect sync.

  “What happened to that furry cover?” asks Teddy.

  Lucas looks back at Teddy blankly.

  “What cover?” says Lucas.

  Teddy looks at Lucas, then me, then goes to the couch and begins to fling off the seat cushions one by one. But after he tosses off the middle cushion, the last one suddenly explodes up into his face, almost knocking him over. Although Teddy is staggering from being hit by a flying cushion, I see Louie roll rapidly past Teddy and up the stairs.

  “What the hell?” says Teddy, stunned. “Did you see that?”

  “See what?” says I.

  “That cushion just suddenly flew at me!”

  “What are you talking about?” says I.

  “The cushion… hit me!”

  “Come off it, fella,” says I. “Cushions don’t fly.”

  “It did! It did! That creature was under there and somehow threw the cushion at me.”

  “Yeah. Right,” says I. “A pillow-throwing Arctic dog.”

  Teddy then races around the room looking under and into everything. Finally, a little breathless, stopping to confront me again.

  “It can change shapes,” he says. “It was a beach ball, a dog, a furry coverlet and God knows what it was when it blasted that cushion at me.”

  “Probably a howitzer,” says I.

  “You saw it!”

  “I saw you throwing couch pillows on the floor,” says I. “What did you see, Lucas?”

  “Same thing,” says my boy,

  “Then where’s the coverlet that was underneath your chessboard?” says Teddy.

  For a moment both Lucas and me are silent.

  “What coverlet?” says I.

  * * *

  That was it. Back in the living room we found the sheriff looking very relaxed.

  “I’m off, Sheriff,” the DC says, looking like he’d just lost a winning lottery ticket. “I don’t believe that thing is dead, but no sign of it here now.”

  “Sorry about that, Mr. Prickle,” says the sheriff, standing. “I was really hoping to see this sea dog.”

  “Can we go now?” asks the DC.

  “Sure? You coming, Teddy?”

  “I have to interview Mr. Morton first,” says Teddy.

  “Well, thanks for the drink, Billy,” says the sheriff. “If that beach ball bounces up on your coach roof again, you’ll let us know, right?”

  “Sure thing, Sheriff. I hope he does show up again. He helped me a lot with my emails.”

  The sheriff grinned, but the other two stayed dead.

  * * *

  After the sheriff and the DC had left, I offered Teddy a bourbon, and this time he accepted a beer. Normally I would have fixed myself another drink, but these days I find that I’m so mellow with just one that I worried that another might have me happily telling the truth.

  Back in the living room Teddy took the couch again and I took my rocking chair.

  “This creature shows up on your boat,” he begins, “you take it home, have it here for four days and the neighborhood kids say it can change shape, let itself be kicked, bounce into trees and seem to use a computer. You pretend it’s a dog. Today I saw it as a cover on that cedar chest and it threw a cushion at me. I’d like you to tell our readers what else you’ve learned this creature can do and what you think this creature is.”

  The kid was getting smarter and smarter, and I was liking him less and less.

  “Beats me.”

  “The children tell me that they think the creature understands what they are saying. Do you agree with that?”

  “Most all dogs understand what humans say—what’s so special about that?”

  “Did this creature use a computer?”

  “He sat in front of it and seemed to change the stuff on the screen. Don’t know if he knew what he was doing.”

  “The children report that they saw him reading Penthouse.”

  “Not sure he was reading. Might have been looking at the pictures. That’s what most of us do.”

  “Why are you hiding this creature from the rest of us?”

  I stood up.

  “Look, kid,” says I. “The creature got run over by a car and killed and I tossed it into Peconic Bay. End of story.”

  “Whose car?” says Teddy. “When? Any witnesses?”

  “End of story.”

  * * *

  After I’d managed to steer the kid out of the house without contaminating his reporting with any additional false statements, I walked back into the living room just as Lucas and Jimmy appeared from the rec room. We grinned at each other.

  Suddenly Louie appears from under the desk, bounces up, comes softly down on my head, then bounces up against the wall, then back to Jimmy’s head and finally falls to the floor. Erupts into a tall, thin egg, then back to a sphere.

  Damn show-off.

  FIVE

  (From LUKE’S TRUE UNBELIEVABLE REPORT OF THE INVASION OF THE FFS, pp. 34–37)

  James Rabb, Chief Investigator of Unit A’s Anomalous Terrorist Activity, first learned of alien creatures on Earth from Agent Michael Johnson. The first reports, from an obscure branch of British MI5, were of a strange, usually spherically-shaped creature that could morph into different forms, and could make itself invisible at will. MI5 reported that the creature seemed to manifest unusual abilities with computers and a suspicious interest in British defense policies. It was also suspicious that it had befriended an employee of a leading British defense manufacturer. On the one occasion they got close enough to attempt to question it, it bounced out a window and disappeared.

  Since the creature was unlike anything ever seen before and might be super-intelligent, the British were considering whether it might be a robot cleverly disguised as a hairy beach ball. This theory of robots remotely controlled by brilliant, probably anti-Western scientists seemed reasonable to MI5. Did Al-Qaeda or other terrorists have brilliant robotic scientists? Not that anyone had ever heard of. Had the Russians created the robots?

  There were also several preliminary reports coming into Unit A of other strange, non-human creatures appearing in Kenya, Brazil, and Poland. As reported in the local media these creatures seemed to assume many different shapes—four- and six-legged creatures, snakes, only without eyes or mouths. Most of them spent much of their time entertaining and interacting with children, just as had the creature in Siberia. These creatures seemed to put on performances of various kinds—dances, acrobatics, water tricks, games with balls. Their activities seemed utterly harmless, and not that intelligent.

  At first the idea that the Russians had created the robots made a lot of sense to CI Rabb, until Agent Johnson suggested that it was doubtful that the Russians would bother to create robot beach balls to play games in the slums of Kenya.

  Although CI Rabb found most of the reports of these creatures a little incredible he knew that no report should be considered too stupid to follow up, especially since he had the money and manpower to do so. He assigned agents to fly to London and Brazil and try to see what was behind the reports.

  A week later Unit A received a second report from “a Russian source” that the Russians were now dealing with a similar creature in St. Petersburg. There it was associating with known dissidents and in vague ways seemed to be supporting their operations. The fact that most of these spheres seemed intent on eluding the authorities was clearly prima facie evidence that they were up to no good.

  And then came the break that CI Rabb had been waiting for. Agent Michael Johnson came barging into his office more excited than he’d ever seen him. He presented a news article in a small Long Island newspaper of some strange creature living as a pet with a local fisherman’s family, crippling a neighbor’s child and then eluding efforts by a sherif
f and dog catcher to examine it. It too was described as spherical but with the ability to change shape. The article indicated that although the local fisherman claimed the creature was some sort of dog and had been run over by a car, the reporter was certain that the fisherman was hiding the creature. Boys in the neighborhood claimed the creature spent a lot of time on a computer. And the reporter himself indicated he had seen the creature disguised as a small rug that eventually threw a large pillow at him.

  Since the article didn’t seem to indicate any terrorist activity, and was on the face of it pretty far-fetched, CI Rabb didn’t see why Agent Johnson was so excited. He assumed that Johnson had brought the item to him because of similarities in the description of the Long Island creature and of those in other places. But then Agent Johnson dropped his bombshell: “Now get this, Chief,” Johnson said. “Three days ago, our unit monitoring cyberattacks followed up on the attack of the CIA’s Special Investigations Division to try to determine the perpetrator. Late yesterday Sub-unit 3 in charge of counter-hacking reported that our Unit A was being hacked. And when I put our men in touch with that special NSA unit they reported that the signatures of the two hackers were identical, and they worked from the same computer!”

  CI Rabb narrowed his eyes.

  “Go on,” he said carefully.

  “Chief,” Agent Johnson announced, “twenty minutes ago they were able to determine that the hacker was operating from a computer in Greenport, Long Island. They’re narrowing it down more as we speak.”

  “Greenport,” said CI Rabb. “Why does that ring a bell?”

  “The fisherman!” said Agent Johnson. “A pet that kids said used a computer!”

  “Oh, my God!”

  “Exactly, sir. Exactly!”

  SIX

  (From Billy Morton’s MY FRIEND LOUIE, pp. 32–40)

  After Teddy finally left, I marched back into the kitchen and poured myself a good drink. I knew that Teddy was going to get something published about Louie and an avalanche would hit us. Good hider or mediocre hider, I knew Louie was in trouble.

  “This isn’t going to work, boys,” says I when Lucas and Jimmy joined me in the kitchen, their drinks being a Yoo-hoo and a Dr. Pepper.

  “What do you mean, Dad?” asks Lucas, leaning against the fridge. “Louie hid good and then managed to disappear.”

  “He can elude one person,” says I, “but not dozens. And that’s how many will be after him when that kid reporter publishes what he knows about an Arctic superdog beach ball place mat.”

  “We can hide him,” says Lucas.

  “We gotta get Louie out of here,” says I. “Get him back to sea where he’ll be safe.”

  “No,” says Jimmy.

  “Scratch that one, Dad,” says Lucas.

  Kids always put heart before head, and I felt I knew better.

  “Louie and I are going to the boat,” says I. “You two can come along or not.”

  “But, Dad,” says Lucas, “FF is part of our family!”

  “He’s our friend, all right,” says I. “And we got to keep him out of danger.”

  And I marched off and out the kitchen door with Louie rolling along behind, and two sad kids trailing along after me.

  * * *

  Out on the water headed toward the sound, the boys just sat on the port-side coaming and looked gloomy.

  “Nice day out today,” says I, always the brilliant conversationalist.

  “Where are we going?” says Lucas.

  “Gonna take FF back to his other friends,” says I.

  “Back to his fish friends?” says Jimmy.

  “Yep,” says I.

  “He’s got human friends,” says Jimmy, looking up at me.

  “It’s the humans I’m worried about,” says I. “When humans discover something they don’t understand and they think might be important, they want to poke it, prod it, dissect it, and generally cut it up until they know everything about it, including why it died.”

  “But Louie won’t have as much fun with fish as he has with us,” says Lucas.

  “Well, that may be, but the sea’s gotta be his home, because humans are not going to let him live with us anymore no matter what we say or do.”

  Finally, a mile out into Long Island Sound, I slowed old Vagabond and shifted her into neutral.

  “Time to play with the fishies again,” says I.

  “Please, Dad,” begins Jimmy.

  “We like you, Louie,” says I. “We know you’re a lot smarter than we are, so you must know that we can’t protect you from the stupid things humans do with things they don’t understand. You’re a lot safer out here swimming with sharks than you would be back on land swimming with humans.”

  “No!” says Jimmy.

  Well, Louie rolled off the coaming, bounced himself three or four times off the cockpit deck like that Rafael Nadal fella bouncing a tennis ball before serving, and then takes a big bounce and, showing off as usual, contorts his shape into someone making a swan dive, and plops into the sea.

  The boys and I stared after him, and then Jimmy glares at me, screws up his face into something that looked like he was either about to cry or throw up, and then swings away.

  I’m not big on sentimental partings so I went back to the helm, kicked up Vagabond’s engine and swung the boat around to head back home, not one of us saying a single word. It’s the most silent me and my boys have been with each other since the boys both learned to talk. I felt like shit.

  We were coming in on Plum Gut when a school of young porpoises began showing off on our starboard bow. I told the boys to take a look, but Jimmy kept to his serious snit and Lucas barely gave them a glance.

  There were six of these porpoises and they were really having fun. Fact is, I’d never seen such a performance off my bow. They dove and leapt and interweaved and danced and even seemed to ride on each other’s backs in a way that I couldn’t take my eyes off.

  Next thing I knew Jimmy was standing beside me and staring too, his little mouth open just the way mine would have been if I didn’t figure it wasn’t cool to let your mouth hang open, especially since at my age I’d drool.

  By God, those porpoises were dancing and diving and weaving to beat the band, and I saw that Jimmy and Lucas were well out of their snits—the three of us standing there with big stupid grins on our faces watching the floor show.

  Then one of the porpoises, a small one, suddenly leapt in the air, somehow spread something that looked like short wings out of its sides, and went flying along about fifteen feet just a foot or two above the water, touched down on the sea and seemed to bounce up into the air for another twenty feet, the other porpoises leaping out of the water too but not able to come close to doing what this flying acrobat was doing.

  “FF!” screamed Jimmy.

  “Friggin FF,” I mumbled to myself, but without in the least abandoning my big stupid grin.

  FF only played at being a big overweight flying fish for three jumps and then dove back beneath the surface and disappeared. The other porpoises followed him out of sight for what seemed like a full minute but then reappeared off our port bow, but missing one of their troupe—Louie.

  Jimmy went from one side of the boat to the other looking, but after a while came up to me at the helm.

  “He’s gone,” he says.

  “Yep,” says I.

  “Not completely, Dad,” says Lucas, staring aft.

  Sitting on the stern of our boat was a hairy beach ball. Dripping water.

  Jimmy ran up to Louie and gave him a hug, which means Jimmy pretty much disappeared into an amorphous mass of wet fur, and I found that for some reason I wasn’t hot for getting back to land without Louie anymore.

  SEVEN

  (From Billy Morton’s MY FRIEND LOUIE, pp. 44–51)

  Now I figure some of you are beginning to wonder why I and my family didn’t act like normal red-blooded Americans and ask for thirty grand for an interview with ABC to tell them a bit about Louie, and the
n ask fifty grand from CBS to give new juicy details we’d held back from poor ABC, and finally a hundred grand from NBC for an interview with Louie himself. And so on.

  And why were we so worried about other people knowing about Louie and having the authorities come and question him? Why didn’t we take him to some university and show him off? Why didn’t we email experts and invite them to come examine Louie?

  Because we’re stupid. And because we’re paranoid: we don’t trust the authorities. And we don’t trust experts. An expert is someone who thinks he knows so much that he becomes an asshole. Everything he examines—a stone, animal, human—to an expert is a thing, a child being no less a thing than a stone. If an expert had his way with Louie, within a week the expert would be sawing up Louie to find out what he’s made of; stabbing him to find out if he feels pain; shooting him to see if he would die.

  “And how did you get this paranoid, Mr. Morton?” some wiseass among you is asking.

  By living a long time and keeping my eyes open.

  Actually, it started when I volunteered to join the US Army in ’65 and ended up six months later saving the Vietnamese people from communism. My pop was a good, hard-working guy who never thought too much about anything and thus believed what the TV told him. He told me that the commies were invading Vietnam, and that if we didn’t stop them they’d soon be attacking Long Island. So I signed up to save Long Island from the commies.

  In Vietnam the first thing I learned was that most of my buddy grunts weren’t that happy saving Long Island from the commies. They said that at first they were happy to be protecting the South Vietnamese people from the enemy—until it began to seem that the South Vietnamese people were trying to kill them as much as were the North Vietnamese, who tended to stay deep in the jungles.

  In any case, within six months I was smoking a lot of pot and finding it harder and harder to obey orders to go shoot some more Vietnamese. Of course when a guy shot at me I was happy enough to shoot back and try to kill him, but I hated going into villages and dragging away the women and kids and oldsters and burning down their homes. By the end of six months I was counting the days until I could leave.