Выбрать главу

“Take care of this,” Mardnnn pronounced in a surprisingly clear voice, as he waved an envelope wildly about in Sam’s general direction.

Sam snatched the envelope from Mardnnn’s tentacle the second time it came past his head. Quickly he scanned the contents. It was just like the dozen other requests he had processed over the past months for Mardnnn’s clientele. Included in the envelope were the usual request for tickets to Disney World, the galactics’ favorite tourist spot, along with the list of visitors, and a flyer that offered a reduced rate on groups of fifty or more. Mardnnn had already placed a thick black mark beside the rebate block.

“But you’ve only requested two tickets!” Sam protested. “We can’t get a reduced rate on just two tickets!”

“Schtupid,” Mardnnn sneered at Sam’s lack of understanding. “These visitors are Kittchikoostrans!”

The Kittchikoostrans, as Sam recalled from a briefing he’d received earlier in the week, were aggregate persons, a single mind in multiple bodies. Apparently these two “individuals” on the manifest were actually more than just two bodies. He wondered what the visitors would look like—just how many whirling teacups would a Kittchikoostran fill? Hmm, would Disney World charge by the head count or the identity? He realized that this rebate offer might present a few complications, he thought, not to mention the opportunity to have some serious discussions of epistemological realism and the nature of identity with Disney World’s management.

“There might be a slight dispute over the head count,” Sam suggested, hoping that the visitors had heads! “How many bodies do these two, uh, individuals occupy?”

“Fifty—sixty?” Mardnnn replied with a puzzled spit of green goo at the end. “Not sure.”

That was certainly over the rebate limit. “I’m afraid that we’ll have to get tickets for every one of their bodies.”

“No vladish way!!” Mardnnn exploded in an angry spray of bilious spittle. “Two Kittchikoostrans, two tickets is all!”

Sam sighed; he seemed to be doing a lot of that since he took this job. How was he going to make Mardnnn understand that the offered reduction was tied to the number of bodies who used the tickets, not just the number of individuals involved. This looked like it was shaping up to be one of the more interesting challenges facing him since he started working for the Crumptonians.

He had just opened his mouth to attempt an explanation, when the door flew open and Brill dashed in, bouncing off two walls before coming to rest in front of Mardnnn’s platform. The young Crumptonian bubbled a string of incomprehensible yellow foam at her father, suffusing the office with a fine golden spray, got a frothy green response from Mardnnn, and then turned to Sam.

“How are you, friend Sam?” Brill sprouted brightly. Unlike her parent, Brill’s air hole had not yet solidified sufficiently to mangle her words. That would happen eventually, Sam knew. In time the young Crumptonian would change from her mobile form to become a sensible male adult; sessile, stolid, and steady, anchored to his platform for the rest of his life.

“Not so fine,” Sam replied, and quickly outlined the ticket problem to Brill. He hoped that, perhaps, she would be able to make Mardnnn understand the delicate distinctions the mouse kingdom would make.

Brill was quick to grasp the intricacies of the situation and fired off a rapid stream of hissing, spitting bubbles to her father. Sam had always been amazed at how quickly Brill could grasp Earth’s peculiar way of doing things. Most of the other aliens he’d taken on tour appeared puzzled by nearly everything human—“part of the charm,” a fifteen-segmented worm in a fuchsia environment suit had remarked casually as it purchased a ceramic urinal in a hardware store and perched it rakishly on its head with one of its antennae sticking through the drain hole. “Isn’t it just me!” it had preened as it displayed its new acquisition to its fellow travelers.

One of the more outstanding puzzles to nearly all of the galactics was humanity’s singular failure to discover the phloomb effect, which was the basis for all galactic communication. Instead, the human race had, from the galactics’ point of view, wasted enormous resources on harnessing electromagnetic energy, “which couldn’t even push a signal beyond light speed, for heaven’s sake!” Needless to say, acquisition of a proper phloomb generator had become Earth’s top priority.

“Pops says he’ll never understand the way you humans think,” Brill said. “But he doesn’t have the time to screw around arguing about it. He wants you to make all of the arrangements while he is off to Erandi. Says to just do the best you can.”

“I’ll need some cash to take care of the tickets, transportation, and so forth,” Sam replied and stood by as Brill relayed this request to Mardnnn.

“Pops says you can use the corporate account to pay for anything that might come up—lodging, food, transport, and so forth. He’ll give you drawing rights on it. Just be sure that everything is ready when he gets back in two weeks. The Kittchikoostrans get really hissed if anything goes wrong!”

“Hissed?” Sam asked.

“Yeah, I heard that they slagged a satellite when their departure for Earth was delayed. Really infuriated the locals, but that’s the kind of thing the Kittchikoostrans do when they get upset.”

“What happens if they get really mad?”

Brill shuddered. Waves traveled up and down her body as she turned a deep ultramarine. “Believe me, you don’t want to know,” she said with fear evident in her voice.

Sam was appalled at her reaction. Given the rather callous attitude the Crumptonians exhibited toward the behavior of their erstwhile galactics, an expression of fear was significant. Did Mardnnn really want to deal with such monsters?

Mardnnn’s answer was, disappointingly, absolutely, adamantly, “Yes! They got money and I got a contract!”

Sam was disappointed in this assignment for another reason. He had planned on taking a vacation during Mardnnn’s absence. He needed to get to the islands, away from all of these aliens. He needed some place where he could relax with a cold beer, some good food, and an ample assortment of lovely, lovely young women. Now, thanks to Mardnnn’s contract with these Kittchikoostrans, he was tied down to making these arrangements, which would probably take all of his free time!

But he couldn’t refuse, couldn’t say no. If he did so Mardnnn could easily dismiss him and hire one of the ten thousand other applicants for this job. Since the galacitics’ arrival a year and a half earlier, soon after Earth’s first starship crew had returned, everyone on Earth, it seemed, wanted to work for them.

Still, now that he thought about it, Orlando was a pretty nice place, if somewhat overrun by tourists. With the ability to dip into Mardnnn’s corporate account he could probably enjoy a mini-vacation while making arrangements for the visitors. This might not be such a bad turn of events after all.

“Tell your father that I will do my best,” Sam replied with a smile.

After they had loaded Mardnnn onto the truck Brill turned to Sam. “I need to talk to you about something, friend Sam. A bit of business, an opportunity that will make us a fortune!” Sam was all ears. There was a lot of money to be made from this galactic invasion; everybody said so. Given the privileges of his access to the wisdom of the galactics he could easily become a rich man. “Tell me more.”

“I came across a human who showed me the most amazing collection of old ’zines. They are a fabulous find, something that the galactics will just go absolutely crazy over—pre-contact stories about extraterrestrials, time travel, strange inventions, the works! For a small, no—a trivial—investment we can clean up!”