help you. We’ll teach him to help, too.”
“Better kill it and dump it somewhere.”
“You told me the Army had devices that could smell out a man in the jungle. What if we killed it and found out its people could track it even years later?”
“So you’ll help me?”
“Yes. And get him a respirator, too. Speed might drive him crazy.”
I went back to school on Monday, wanting to be away when Warren worked the alien in drugs for the first time. School was cold, big mental freeze-out of little me.
Nobody said anything particular. Lunchtime I went in the cafeteria and found myself alone at a usually full table.
School’d always been weird, though. The local teachers’d told me the only reason I tested high 90s percentiles on those California achievement tests was my “sociopathic lack of test anxiety.” Crook’s nerves, they wanted me to think, so I wouldn’t know I was really smarter than the good kids.
And Warren might work the alien to death if I didn’t help. Drop-out time, I decided.
∞ ∞ ∞
Neither Warren nor the alien was in sight when I got home, just a bunch of anxious cats, so I fooled around straightening feed sacks in the barn and worked myself up madder and madder. Wasn’t cute like girl geniuses the teachers loved to save. No, just a gawky country boy.
Since I didn’t know when Warren and the alien would be up, I opened a can of beans and made a bean pot to set on low heat, ready anytime. Then I tried to read one of the books I’d got from the library, but ended up looking through the alien’s drawings—the buildings set off in space somewhere, with me drawn among them, or at least me as the alien saw me. Maybe the aliens wouldn’t be bothered if I was smart for human.
About six, Alpha came into the kitchen, holding the respirator mask in his hands, eyes with the pupils tiny although the light wasn’t bright. He hissed and showed his teeth as he gave his arms and face a thorough washing. I handed him a towel as Warren followed him up. The alien took the towel with a snap of his wrist.
Warren grinned. “He didn’t like it, but he worked. Must have dealers all over the universe, or he doesn’t like the taste.”
The alien’s eyes quivered. I felt ashamed. He stared at Warren and nodded a hostile nod.
“Damn, Tom,” Warren said, “I don’t hog-tie folks and shoot ’em up with heroin.”
“Sure, Warren,” I said, feeling hideous. “It’s a service.”
“Damn straight. Keeps us from getting killed by those Atlanta guys.”
The alien, eyes still quivering, started cutting up the sink sponge to fit around the mask. I guess he wanted to block all the dust. His fingers trembled, and he dropped the scissors once. Warren was right—Alpha was either drugged or knew what he’d gotten into.
While Alpha fixed the respirator to fit him, Warren and I ate beans.
“So what happened in school today?” Warren asked, most relaxed.
“I quit. You need help, and I want my share of the farm eventually, too.”
“School folks didn’t think much of me, either,” Warren said. “We’ll be a pair.”
“I was bad to test high. Didn’t fit in with what they expected.”
The alien finished gluing sponge on his respirator and got out his eggs and butter. He fried them up, then drank a glass of thawed deer blood before leaving for his room, carrying off a Mason jar with lid and screw seal.
“Be easier if he spoke English,” Warren said, “but then I’d always wonder if he was some trick infiltrator.”
The alien went along the bookshelves in the living room with his head straight, not cocking it to read the titles the way a human would. He pulled down novels, encyclopedias, Warren’s hunting magazines, staring at the illustrations, and shoving each book back. When he found the tattered Rand McNally road atlas, he trembled over it as though he’d found secret messages, so Warren took it away from him.
Alpha found the atlas again and brought it to the kitchen