“What?”
“Grass. Marijuana. A drug widely used by local Earthians of our age.”
“I don’t need no drug.”
“I don’t either. But I’d like some. You ought to learn how, just in case you find yourself in a social situation.” Amanda reached for her pack of Filter Golds and pulled out a joint. Expertly she tweaked its lighter tip and took a deep hit. “Here,” she said, passing it. “Hold it like I did. Put it to your mouth, breathe in, suck the smoke deep.” The alien dragged the joint and began to cough. “Not so deep, maybe,” Amanda said. “Take just a little. Hold it. Let it out. There, much better. Now give me back the joint. You’ve got to keep passing it back and forth. That part’s important. You feel anything from it?”
“No.”
“It can be subtle. Don’t worry about it. Are you hungry?”
“Not yet,” the alien said.
“I am. Come into the kitchen.” As she assembled a sandwich—peanut butter and avocado on whole wheat, with tomato and onion—she asked, “What sort of things do you eat?”
“Life.”
“Life?”
“We never eat dead things. Only things with life.”
Amanda fought back a shudder. “I see. Anything with life?”
“We prefer animal life. We can absorb plants if necessary.”
“Ah. Yes. And when are you going to be hungry again?”
“Maybe tonight,” the alien said. “Or tomorrow. The hunger comes very suddenly, when it comes.”
“There’s not much around here that you could eat live. But I’ll work on it.”
“The small furry animal?”
“No. My cat is not available for dinner. Get that idea right out of your head. Likewise me. I’m your protector and guide. It wouldn’t be sensible of you to eat me. You follow what I’m trying to tell you?”
“I said that I’m not hungry yet.”
“Well, you let me know when you start feeling the pangs. I’ll find you a meal.” Amanda began to construct a second sandwich. The alien prowled the kitchen, examining the appliances. Perhaps making mental records, Amanda thought, of sink and oven design, to copy on its home world. Amanda said, “Why did you people come here in the first place?”
“It was our mission.”
“Yes. Sure. But for what purpose? What are you after? You want to take over the world? You want to steal our scientific secrets?” The alien, making no reply, began taking spices out of the spice rack. Delicately it licked its finger, touched it to the oregano, tasted it, tried the cumin. Amanda said, “Or is it that you want to keep us from going into space? That you think we’re a dangerous species, so you’re going to quarantine us on our own planet? Come on, you can tell me. I’m not a government spy.” The alien sampled the tarragon, the basil, the sage. When it reached for the curry powder, its hand suddenly shook so violently that it knocked the open jars of oregano and tarragon over, making a mess. “Hey, are you all right?” Amanda asked.
The alien said, “I think I’m getting hungry. Are these things drugs, too?”
“Spices,” Amanda said. “We put them in our foods to make them taste better.” The alien was looking very strange, glassy-eyed, flushed, sweaty. “Are you feeling sick?”
“I feel excited. These powders—”
“They’re turning you on? Which one?”
“This, I think.” It pointed to the oregano. “It was either the first one or the second.”
“Yeah,” Amanda said. “Oregano. It can really make you fly.” She wondered whether the alien might get violent when zonked. Or whether the oregano would stimulate its appetite. She had to watch out for its appetite. There are certain risks, Amanda reflected, in doing what I’m doing. Deftly she cleaned up the spilled oregano and tarragon and put the caps on the spice jars. “You ought to be careful,” she said. “Your metabolism isn’t used to this stuff. A little can go a long way.”
“Give me some more.
“Later,” Amanda said. “You don’t want to overdo it.”
“More!”
“Calm down. I know this planet better than you, and I don’t want to see you get in trouble. Trust me: I’ll let you have more oregano when it’s the right time. Look at the way you’re shaking. And you’re sweating like crazy.” Pocketing the oregano jar, she led the alien back into the living room. “Sit down. Relax.”
“More? Please?”
“I appreciate your politeness. But we have important things to talk about, and then I’ll give you some. Okay?” Amanda opaqued the window, through which the hot late-afternoon sun was coming. Six o’clock on Friday, and if everything had gone the right way Charley would have been showing up just about now. Well, she’d found a different diversion. The weekend stretched before her like an open road leading to mysteryland. The alien offered all sorts of possibilities, and she might yet have some fun over the next few days, if she used her head. Amanda turned to the alien and said, “You calmer now? Yes. Good. Okay: first of all, you’ve got to get yourself another body.”
“Why is that?”
“Two reasons. One is that the authorities probably are searching for the girl you absorbed. How you got as far as you did without anybody but me spotting you is hard to understand. Number two, a teenage girl traveling by herself is going to get hassled too much, and you don’t know how to handle yourself in a tight situation. You know what I’m saying? You’re going to want to hitchhike out to Nevada, Wyoming, Utah, wherever the hell your rendezvous place is, and all along the way people are going to be coming on to you. You don’t need any of that. Besides, it’s very tricky trying to pass for a girl. You’ve got to know how to put your face paint on, how to understand challenge codes, and what the way you wear your clothing says, and like that. Boys have a much simpler subculture. You get yourself a male body, a big hunk of a body, and nobody’ll bother you much on the way to where you’re going. You just keep to yourself, don’t make eye contact, don’t smile, and everyone will leave you alone.”
“Makes sense,” said the alien. “All right. The hunger is becoming very bad now. Where do I get a male body?”
“San Francisco. It’s full of men. We’ll go over there tonight and find a nice brawny one for you. With any luck we might even find one who’s not gay, and then we can have a little fun with him first. And then you take his body over—which incidentally solves your food problem for a while, doesn’t it?—and we can have some more fun, a whole weekend of fun.” Amanda winked. “Okay, Connie?”
“Okay.” The alien winked, a clumsy imitation, first one eye, then the other. “You give me more oregano now?”
“Later. And when you wink, just wink one eye. Like this. Except I don’t think you ought to do a lot of winking at people. It’s a very intimate gesture that could get you in trouble. Understand?”
“There’s so much to understand.”
“You’re on a strange planet, kid. Did you expect it to be just like home? Okay, to continue. The next thing I ought to point out is that when you leave here on Sunday you’ll have to—”
The telephone rang.
“What’s that sound?” the alien asked.
“Communications device. I’ll be right back.” Amanda went to the hall extension, imagining the worst: her parents, say, calling to announce that they were on their way back from Tahoe tonight, some mixup in the reservations or something. But the voice that greeted her was Charley’s. She could hardly believe it, after the casual way he had shafted her this weekend. She could hardly believe what he wanted, either. He had left half a dozen of his best cassettes at her place last week, Golden Age rock, Abbey Road and the Hendrix one and a Joplin and such, and now he was heading off to Monterey for the festival and he wanted to have them for the drive. Did she mind if he stopped off in half an hour to pick them up?