“Ffirzzen hobewl menawick.”
Words from several languages or one unknown one, Kerwin thought.
“See, he thinks you’re pretty too,” Seeth told her. “You oughta be flattered, woman.”
She sighed indifferently. “I don’t need the flattery.” Ignoring the exotic alien thing floating less than a foot away, she lifted her arm and eyed the candy-colored Swatch on her wrist. “Jesus, my mother’s gonna kill me.”
Seeth leaned toward Izmir. “That’s not bad, but can you do a real red?”
The blue eye turned toward him by migrating through the fluidlike body. The Astarach promptly turned a bright candy-apple red, the kind of red usually seen on show cars at fancy auto expositions.
“Pretty good. How about matching her watchband?” Izmir became a bright, hot pink. “Wild! How’s that for matching accessories? Every girl needs an alien to go with her handbag. You ever been in a band, man?”
Kerwin eyed the smaller man pityingly. “Seeth, this is an alien lifeform. It doesn’t know what you’re talking about.”
Clearly, the entire cosmos was conspiring to prove that he was the biggest idiot alive, because Izmir the Astarach’s flanks shifted and flowed to form half a dozen unrecognizable shapes. Their purpose was clear enough, however, as the imitated instruments proceeded to fill the van with a discordant but not entirely unpleasant music. Even Seeth was rendered momentarily speechless. But only momentarily.
“When we lose these Oomemians or whatever they are, Arthwit old buddy, I want you to help me get this guy on MTV. I mean, if we can get Stevie Wonder or Dave Stewart to produce for this whatsis, we’re all gonna be rich!”
“I fear there will be no time for that, much as the prospect of such an adventure intrigues me.” Rail was searching the woods now, obviously hunting for something.
Kerwin kept a wary eye on Izmir, who had abandoned his band self in exchange for a shape like a hot fudge sundae, complete with dark brown and white fluids coursing down his flanks. He looked soft, almost rubbery, a feeling enhanced by his obvious flexibility. In actuality the Astarach’s softly glowing body had the consistency of steel, but Kerwin didn’t know that because no way was he going to touch it again.
“Why is he so important to the Oomemians? I mean, he’s pretty and clever, but that doesn’t make him valuable. Does it?”
“Ain’t it obvious, man?” said Seeth. “I mean, he’s an artist. Maybe the greatest artist these Oomemians have ever developed. Or greatest work of art. Yeah, that’s it, he’s got to be a work of art. A continually changing piece of art. He can’t be an artist because he doesn’t look anything like these Oomemians, unless they can do these shape changes too.”
“No, unfortunately for them, the Oomemians, like the rest of us, inhabit the shapes they are born to.” Rail slowed a little more, not wanting to miss something in the dark. “I do not know exactly what Izmir is, but an Oomemian he is not. As to why they consider him so valuable, I really have no idea.”
“You mean, you kidnapped him without knowing why he’s important?” said Kerwin.
“It was enough to know that he is important. Very important. What is stranger still is that, from what I heard and learned, the Oomemians don’t know what he is either. But they guarded him heavily and were studying him intently close, so I figured that if he was that valuable to them he ought also to be valuable to Prufillia. Besides, if nothing else, by borrowing him I could at least deny him to the Oomemians.” Without altering his tone in the slightest he added casually, “It’s all because of the war, of course.”
The short hairs went up on the back of Kerwin’s neck. “War? What war?” Suddenly the wild terrain and the night-shrouded forest, which under ordinary circumstances he would have found threatening and lonely, began to look exceedingly inviting.
“Why, the war, naturally. Ah, here we are. I was starting to get concerned.”
“Uh, I don’t want to sound obtuse,” Kerwin told him, trying to remain halfway calm, “but there’s no road here.”
This observation did nothing to dissuade Rail. Seeth let out a shout as the alien sent the van over an embankment and into the bushes below. Miranda was tossed all over the back of the van by the terrific bouncing and jouncing, complaining nonstop. Something about her hair, Kerwin thought as he found himself thrown to the floor between the two front seats. Seeth grabbed the high back of the chair and hung on.
Kerwin couldn’t imagine how Rail kept the van upright as it crashed down the steep slope. He couldn’t see, either, because he was tangled up in flying blankets, cushions, pillows and other loose paraphernalia. Miranda was thrown into his field of vision momentarily—a bouncing, tumbling compendium of perfect eyes and lips, wrinkled yellow pants and multicolored blouse, dangling earrings like strips of paint hanging from her ears, and other interesting accoutrements. Then she was gone again. His life didn’t flash before his eyes, but the complete contents of the van did.
Eventually they came to a halt, not so much because Rail had reached his destination as because of the presence of a very large pine tree directly in their path. Large pine trees being decidedly unreasonable in matters of right-of-way, it behooved Rail to alter his course in an attempt to go around it. In this he only partly succeeded.
The right side of the van got crumpled. The windshield shattered and diamondlike glass fragments flew everywhere. Miraculously, no one was cut, though you couldn’t tell it by listening to Seeth. Kerwin fought to sit up.
“What’s wrong? Leg, arm?”
“I should be so lucky.” Seeth leaned toward him, his face contorted, one arm extended. “Look at this, man! That’s friggin’ glove leather. Four hundred bucks this jacket cost. Four hundred bucks!” He glared at Rail, who was trying to extricate himself from behind the wheel. “I’m gonna take it out of your green hide, man.”
“I am sorry about the damage to your attire.”
“Sorry? Sorry? Didn’t you hear me? Read my lips, turkey: four hundred bucks!”
“Wait a minute.” Kerwin was looking around anxiously. “Where’s Izmir?”
A gurgle came from behind the driver’s chair and a shifting shape emerged. The blue eye stared blankly back at him.
“Here, Izmir.” Rail molded an invisible sphere with his tentacles. The Astarach promptly assumed the form of a ball again, not a bowling ball this time, but one that resembled a gigantic marble. However, he retained the blue eye and arms. If anything, this was more disconcerting than his previous forms.
“He responds pretty well to you for a kidnap victim,” Kerwin observed.
“He would do the same for certain Oomemians. Or for you, if you wish to try.”
“Thanks, I’ll pass and admire him from a distance, if you don’t mind.” He indicated their silent surroundings. “What’s the big idea? I thought you knew how to drive.”
“I do know how to drive.” Rail was trying to open his door. Locking himself in place with his tentacles, he began trying to kick it open. “This is exactly where I wanted to come.”
“Oh, fine, yeah. What do we do now? Play hide-and-seek in the woods with the Oomemians?”
“I fear am afraid we have no time for games. Having come so near, our pursuers will not rest until they have closed upon us all. We cannot remain in this vicinity any longer.” The door popped open.
“That makes sense.” He followed Rail outside, glad to be standing up again. “Hey, wait a second. What do you mean we can’t? I’ve got to get back to school, my dorm.”
“What’s the matter, man,” Kerwin taunted, “no guts? Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“My guts are right where I want ‘em, between my thighs and navel.” Both young men turned in response to a loud sigh.
“My parents are absolutely going to die. I’ll be grounded forever.”
“Don’t sweat it,” Seeth told her. “I’ll come over and keep you company. We can put Leave it to Beaver reruns on and ignore them while we—“
“You’re getting tiresome, you know that?” She was sitting in the driver’s seat, staring disgustedly at the broken speedometer. “This is great, just great. It isn’t bad enough I have to make do with a dumb jock like Brock, I have to go bashing through the woods with a freak, a nerd, an alien, and a bowling ball that’s broken loose from a Levi’s commercial. I mean, it’s not like I don’t take care of myself. What did I do wrong today? Did I get up wrong? Did I eat the wrong breakfast?”
“I resent being called a nerd,” said Kerwin with dignity.
“You think I’m a freak, sister?” Seeth gestured toward her legs. “Get a load of those pants!”
Miranda glanced down at herself and plucked at the bright yellow material. “What’s wrong with my pants?”
“Nothing’s wrong with ‘em, that’s what’s wrong. They’re straight off the rack. Untouched. Virgin polyester. No individuality. There’s nothing there that screams you.”
“It all screams me,” she argued.
He shook his head sadly. “Vinyl body, vacuum brain.”
“Well at least I look like a human being,” she replied huffily.
“Excuse me.” Rail had moved several yards away and now turned to look back at them. Izmir was cradled under one tentacle, his two arms extended to lock around Rail’s long neck. In that guise he looked something like a one-eyed monkey hunting for his tin cup. “We cannot stay here. We must hurry.”
“What do you mean, hurry?” Kerwin started around the van. “I’m going to hike back up to the main road and flag down the first car I see. I’ve got a mid-term in Biology coming up.”
“If the Oomemians encounter you they will melt your brain head.”
“Cool,” said Seeth. “He’ll never miss it.”
Kerwin paused, his eyes shifting from the punker to Miranda as she delicately exited the van. “Are you guys gonna wait here and play patty-cake, or are you going to make a run for it with me?”
“Run?” Seeth turned a slow circle. “Run where, man?”
“Look, we don’t have anything tying us to him.” Kerwin nodded at Rail. “If we do run into these Oomemians or whatever they are I’m sure they’ll listen to reason.”
“Sure they will. Like they did in the lot outside the Bowlarama. Me, I think these Oomemians are your standard massacre first, ask questions later types. Why should they listen to you when it’s easier to remove your head? Probably simplifies their paperwork. Typical cops.”
He walked over to stand next to Rail, stared hard at him. “In any case, Jack, I’m not letting you out of my sight until somebody pays for this jacket.”
“I’m sure I can arrange recompense once we are safe.”
“That’s better.” He looked back at Miranda. “Coming, sweetlegs?”
“I might as well.” She indicated her watch. “You know what time it is? I’m already gonna get killed. I don’t want to get shot, too.”
Kerwin tried to keep it simple for her. “Look. This guy is an alien. We don’t really know anything about him except that he’s green, and that might be another disguise, too. He’s a self-confessed kidnapper.” He found himself studying her hair. There was a great deal of it and it was a mixture of blonde and black. Blonde with streaks of black. Or was it black with streaks of blonde? And what difference did it make?
“All right, go with him. I’m getting back to the real world.” He turned to start up the hill.
“OH MY GOD!”
Seeth dropped into a fighting crouch. Kerwin whirled, wildly looking around in the darkness while Rail tensed.
“What? What is it!” Kerwin yelled. Then he saw she was bent over, staring at the dark ground.
“I’ve lost an earring, dammit! That was one of my favorite earrings. I’ve had it for almost a year.”
Kerwin slumped. He would have said something, except for the lights that suddenly appeared high up on the hillside.
“Oomemians,” whispered Rail. “Time to go. Come or stay as you please.” He headed off into the woods.
“Damn.” Kerwin hesitated, then moved to follow. He and Seeth had to take Miranda by the arms and hustle her along or she would have stayed to get her skull melted over an earring.
“I’ll buy you a new one. Two, even,” Seeth told her sweetly. “If the gruesome twosome chasing us shoot off your ears, you won’t have to worry about it.”
She shook herself free. “All right. I know when I’m being made fun of.”
“Somehow I knew you possessed great reserves of perception,” Seeth said.
“You think I’m being silly about it, don’t you?” In the moonlight she looked like a goddess, Kerwin thought. Except for the remaining earring. “That’s because neither of you knows what’s really important in life.”
Rail seemed to know exactly where he was headed, despite the absence of sunlight. They stumbled through the trees in his wake. Kerwin spent plenty of time watching the ground. He didn’t want to find out how the Oomemians would treat a sprained ankle.
“So tell us,” Seeth implored her, “what is really important in life?”
She looked defiantly at both of them. “Clothes. Clothes are the most important thing. I mean, if you don’t have decent clothes you’re just nobody.”
Kerwin nodded absently. “I’m sure Einstein felt the same way.”
“Go on, make fun of me. One of these days you’ll see.”
Twenty minutes later a wheezing Kerwin called a halt. “Hey, are we walking to Texas, or what?”
“Not much farther,” Rail assured him. “In fact, we have arrived.” He put Izmir aside and began pulling at a mound of brush and branches, his multiple tentacles making quick work of the pile. Something like a dull platinum frisbee appeared from beneath the dead leaves. It didn’t reflect the moonlight so much as it seemed to absorb it.
Kerwin bent to help with the clearing. “Doesn’t look big enough to hide all of us.”
“Most of it is buried. I wasn’t able to dig in completely. There’s a lot great deal of metamorphic rock in this region and I was in somewhat of a hurry rush. The Oomemians were right behind me, relatively speaking.”
“How long have you been hiding here like this? How long have they been chasing you?”
“Oh, they’ve been chasing me for quite a while, quite a while. But they haven’t caught me, not yet. This is the closest they’ve come, but thanks to your intervention they have missed me again.” He grinned. “I am sure they are most positively furious.”
When the last of the brush had been shoved aside, the platinum dome turned out to be about the size of a buried Greyhound bus. If most of it still remained below ground it would be of considerable size, Kerwin mused. He had a pretty good idea what “it” was, though he still found himself doubting his own sanity.
Rail touched the device on his wrist and a door appeared in the metallic surface. The large, inviting oval opening seemed to melt through the solid wall. Light poured out of the gap, illuminating their faces and revealing a corkscrewing ramp leading inward and down.
The alien glanced back into the trees. “They can’t be far behind us. We must hurry.” He started toward the opening and vanished within. Seeth was right behind him, looked back at his friend.
“Hey, you heard the greenie. We gotta hurry or the head-melters’ll catch us. What are you waiting on?”
“It just occurred to me what this thing is. It’s not just a hideaway, Seeth.”
“Naw, gotta be a ship. What did you think he was heading for, a tree house? Come on, man.”
“It’s just that I think we’re going,” he tilted back his head and stared up at the stars, “you know.”
“Maybe even New York. Move your butt.”
“But what about my exams?” He found his feet moving one at a time toward the entrance to the buried spacecraft. Miranda strode unconcernedly past him.
“Might as well kill the whole evening.” She paused outside the opening and bent to shout inside. “I’ve just got one question!”
/> Rail’s voice drifted out to her. “I will answer reply if I can.”
“Where we’re going ... is there shopping?”
“Most definitely for certain.”
“Okay then.” She smiled sweetly back at Kerwin. “I wouldn’t go anyplace I couldn’t shop.” Whereupon she tiptoed elegantly down the ramp. Seeth blew Kerwin a kiss and followed.
Then Kerwin did too. It wasn’t like he had any choice.
The door flowed shut behind him. Rail led his guests deeper into the bowels of the ship, which was indeed far larger than the tiny portion visible from above would have led anyone to believe.
“I would prefer to find another uninhabited world,” he murmured as they descended.
“Uninhabited? But Earth isn’t uninhabited,” Kerwin pointed out.
“Sorry, but according to official galographics that’s how it’s classified. Not your fault.”
“Now wait a minute.” Miranda halted and crossed her arms again. “You said we were going to be able to go shopping.”
“Some of the best and most unique items obtainable are to be found on worlds classified as uninhabited.”
This mollified her slightly. “Well—okay. But remember, you promised.”
Rail eventually led them into a large, domed chamber, which Kerwin felt must be located somewhere near the middle of the ship. A broad, sweeping window dominated the far wall. Presently it displayed layers of earth and rock, plus one family of gophers who were about to be rudely awakened. Their host oozed into a lounge-style chair, and Kerwin wondered aloud as he took note of several similar seats nearby if he and his friends should do likewise.
“Only if you’d feel more comfortable. The field will keep everything steady and stable. You will experience only a slight sense of movement as we depart. Unless the Oomemians start shooting, in which event I may be compelled to take evasive action. But I think we will surprise them.”
Miranda promptly settled herself on one of the inviting lounges. It was much too big for her, but shaped close enough to the human form to be comfortable. She began fumbling in her purse, which was slightly smaller than your average steamer trunk.