Behind him, the videogame continued its inexplicable electronic antics.
Moving in a preplanned arc through the trailer park, the hitchhiker passed the first lightless mobile without incident. The second still had lights showing and he bent low to make certain he passed well beneath the line of sight of anyone inside.
As he ducked below the last window a voice inside suddenly blared, “Drop it or you’re dead!”
The hitchhiker froze, momentarily frightened as well as confused by the unexpected challenge. More words followed upon the first, but they were unrelated to the challenge. In fact, they made next to no sense at all. Another loud voice followed clicking noises.
“Herrrreee’s Johnnnny!”
Now very puzzled indeed, but considerably less frightened, the hitchhiker rose slowly until he could just peer over the window sill into the trailer. At one end of the room an elderly human sat in a chair holding a small plastic rectangle. This he kept aimed at a video device squatting on the far side of the room. Each time a button on the rectangle was depressed, frequency shifts took place within the device and a new image appeared on the primitive glass face.
Relieved, as well as mad at himself for his reaction, the hitchhiker once more crouched below window level as he resumed his prowling through the park,
Alex and his Beta had resumed their conversation, keeping their voices down, each conscious of the impressionable ten-year-old sleeping on the overhead bunk.
“. . . and one other thing,” Alex was saying angrily, “what’d you do to Maggie?”
“Maggie? Ah, the young woman. Not all primitive instincts are unpleasant.”
“I don’t like what you’re saying, friend.”
The Beta raised both hands defensively. “Merely an unemotional analysis of observed habits based on known mammalian standards of beauty. Nothing personal. That would be impossible in any case.”
Alex wasn’t sure how far he should trust this character, no matter what he was made out of, much less the facile disclaimer. After all, the Beta was an exact duplicate of himself. It was only natural to wonder just how far that duplication extended.
“What’d you do to her?” he repeated.
“Do to her? You primitives, I never will understand you. Listen, we’re sitting outside, looking up at the stars. I’m trying to offer a little basic astronomy lesson . . . I know the names of all those stars, after all … and does she pay attention and ask pointed, intelligent questions? No! She sticks her tongue in my ear!”
Alex winced. “What did you do?”
“I screamed. I was startled. I guessed immediately that was not the proper reaction, but I was unprepared. My programming is not one hundred percent in those areas of knowledge that were deemed peripheral to my central function, the job of imitating you.”
Alex relaxed a little. “That explains Maggie’s reaction when I saw her. I guess she was a little startled herself when you screamed.”
The Beta Unit nodded unhappily. “More than a little, I fear.”
“So what do we do about it?”
“I will apologize to her tomorrow,” the Beta assured him.
Neither of them noticed that Louis had awakened. He sat on the upper bunk and rubbed sleepily at his eyes.
“Like hell you will!” Alex rose from the bed, glaring at his double. “You won’t be apologizing to her or doing anything else, because you won’t be here tomorrow. You’re going back with Centauri right now, tonight.”
As he moved toward the door he began tapping the crystalline face of his new “watch” in the sequence Centauri had shown him.
“What’s up, Alex?” Louis mumbled dazedly into the darkness. There was something not quite right about his brother’s mumbling, though Louis was still too sleepy to identify it.
At the door Alex turned to face the upper bunk. “Back to sleep, Louis, or I’ll tell Mom about your Playboys!”
Alex had voiced the ultimate threat. Blackmailed into total submission, Louis fell back on the mattress and stared across the dimly lit room at his angry brother.
“Okay, okay!”
From below the upper bunk his brother added, “You’re blowing it, Alex. You’re ruining everything. I knew I was replacing a primitive, but they didn’t tell me just how much of a primitive!”
Just conscious enough to be confused, Louis swung his head over the edge of the bunk. Seated below, to his great surprise, was his brother. So then who had just shouted at him from near the door?
He knew his older brother could move quickly when he wanted to. Alex had been on the high school wrestling team. But this fast?
“I said,” the Beta told the hanging face, “back to sleep, Louis, or I tell Mom about your Playboys!” The Beta Unit had quick reactions of his own.
The ten-year-old had had enough. He retreated immediately, taking care this time to stash the pile of thick magazines in the gap in the trailer’s inner wall, the one neatly concealed by the big Star Wars poster. Then he threw the covers over his head and began snoring loudly, lest Alex think he wasn’t taking the threat seriously.
Still tapping on the crystal facing, Alex headed outside, as the Beta Unit debated what to do next. He was directed to remain in Alex’s place of habitation. Presently, that meant the bedroom.
But things were not proceeding according to plan, not at all. Alex shouldn’t have returned. Didn’t his unexpected return cancel the original set of instructions? At such times the Beta was designed to operate independently, reacting as it saw fit to a new set of circumstances. It now elected to do so. Rising from the lower bunk, he followed his original outside. Alex was nowhere in sight. The simulacrum searched. Which direction?
While the Beta was trying to make up its mind, Alex was already alongside Otis’s trailer, standing beneath the awning that had been erected to keep off sun more than rain. Monotonously and seemingly to no effect, he continued tapping on the crystal.
He frowned, turned to face the general store. Something was flashing brightly out front, and it wasn’t the familiar erratic blinking of the old neon sign. Well, he’d check it out in the morning. He’d worked on the wiring to the big sign often enough to be able to repair it in his sleep by now. He’d begged Mom to get it replaced, but she refused, saying that those old neon signs were becoming classics. Alex knew what she was really saying was that they didn’t have the money to replace it.
Something cold and irresistible caught him beneath the chin and wrapped itself tightly around his neck.
8
Alex exhaled in surprise as he found himself rising into the air. His legs kicked wildly at emptiness. Fighting for his life, he managed to turn in the powerful grasp just far enough to find himself staring into a bulging alien face. The eyes were placed far to either side of the skull, like those of a hammerhead shark, while the teeth visible in the low-slung mouth were thin and pointed and very sharp-looking.
As he stared bug-eyed at the apparition something went snap inside his head. The alien visage was replaced by that of a kindly older man. A second snap brought back the vision of alien gruesomeness. The creature fumbled at something buried inside a shirt, cursing as Alex witnessed a recurring series of visual shifts from alien monstrosity to elderly hitchhiker.
After several seconds of useless manipulation of the concealed device the alien gave up in disgust. It was no longer necessary to maintain the disguise anyway. He raised a pistol toward the target’s face.
Alex saw the muzzle of the strange weapon coming up, wrenched and shoved with all his strength and managed to slide free of the single-handed grip. He dropped to the ground, stumbled back against the cold wall of the trailer. Above, the alien let out a violent hiss and realigned his aim.
Alex jumped for the stone wall that ringed Otis’s precious vegetable garden. Something smacked against the rocks behind him as he dove. The smell of fused silica filled the air as the quartz in the rocks melted. Rolling fast, Alex ended up on his feet and ran blindly from the trailer, toward the store and the nearby ice house.
From the roof of the trailer the alien fired again, missed again, cursed again and rushed in pursuit of the target, easily clearing the gap between the roof of Otis’s trailer and the ice house.
Alex pounded around the side of the old wooden building, frantically searching for better cover while hammering at the crystal facing.
“Please, Centauri, come in! Centauri, help! Something’s trying to kill me!” He heard footsteps overhead and moved to his right . . . where he tripped, landing hard on his side.
He wasn’t injured and was on his feet again in an instant. No thought of running for the bushes in the nearby wash now. Everything seemed to be in working order. Nothing sprained, nothing broken . . . unless you counted the bits and pieces of strangely colored crystal that sparkled in the moonlight. He looked at his wrist the facing had shattered on a rock.