| |
He was doing a perfect imitation
of her. She had an answering machine and had replayed her own greeting
enough to know how awful she sounded.
“I assume that's you, Henry.”
“Yes, Edna. Please place the samples
behind the Beech tree. Please. Thank you very much. Please.”
“Come out where I can see you. I can't
believe how you can mimic my voice. That's pretty neat.”
“The protocol required one minute of
visual exposure. That was complied with yesterday.”
“Piss on the ‘protocol’.
I can't talk to someone I can't see. Come on out. I promise I'm not mad
about your little joke.”
“Edna, persons of our species can sense,
feel physically, if someone is about to look at them. Actual visual
contact creates an intensity of sensation that is quite painful. A secondary
result is that we, ourselves, are very unwilling to look at other creatures.
To look at someone is to tell them exactly where you are and, within our
own species, to permit them to know your intentions.”
“How are you going to ‘observe’
me without looking at me?”
“I will record your movements and actions.
I can feel where you are.”
“Where do you live, Henry? Wouldn't
you rather be back at your home? It's really not safe out here for a little
boy by himself.”
“I am a fully mature adult of optimum
size. For the next month, I will live here. Please place the samples behind
the tree.”
“Henry. There are no samples and you
are getting on my nerves. You need to leave right now. I'll give you a
ride to the end of the road. Come on, hop in the truck. It'll save you
walking a mile to wherever you came from.”
“You did not comply. Edna, I am sorry
to hear that.”
There was a long silence after that.
She squinted hard in the direction his voice had come from, trying to
see where he was hiding. A fly landed on her hair; she brushed it off.
She felt a slight stinging above her ankle and then what felt like a bee
sting. She yelped and glanced down. She saw a flash of movement out of
the corner of her eye. A thick trickle of blood was soaking the top of
her socks.
In the truck, she looked at her face
in the mirror and saw that a swatch of hair had been cut off just above
her right ear. As soon as she got to the house, she called the Sheriff's
Department.
 hat proved to be
a mistake. By the time the deputy had gotten there, she realized that
she had nothing to tell him. She had heard a voice in the woods. She had
a bee sting on her ankle and a bad haircut. Not really material for law
enforcement. Claiming to have glimpsed a peeping Tom in the forest, she
at least had the officer search the area around the house. She could see
that he didn't believe her. He had probably answered calls before from
lonely, bored women telling unlikely stories. Feeling embarrassed and
sick and very alone, she watched his car disappear down the driveway.
Her phone rang.
“Edna, this is Henry.”
She hung up.
It rang again.
“Edna, Edna, Edna, this-is-is-is-is
is Henry.”
She didn't hang up, but there was
a very long silence. She could hear the cats chasing a lizard across the
deck and her clock ticking.
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“I-I am observing you. Allowing subject
knowledge of-of-of the observer is-is new protocol.”
“Why do you keep repeating yourself?
Why did you attack me? Do you have a problem? Are you some kind of a nut
or are you crazy?”
“A-a-a-all observers collect blood
and-and hair. It is necessary for identification and to rule out physical
causes for aberrant behavior. The procedure is quite painless. I certainly
did not attack you. Blood was drawn with sterile equipment and I made
minimal contact using latex gloves. Humans are known to be unclean disease
carriers. Physical contact is forbidden. If you are concerned that I have
sex-sex-sex-sexual intent, the idea is absurd. Human females, in addition
to being physically grotesque, can not interbreed with our species. Experiments
have been performed in the laboratory with eggs and sp-sp-sp-”
“Sperm, Henry. You have a terrible
stutter.”
“I do not stutter. I experience
problems with my continuity in English when under pressure.”
“You stutter. That's what stuttering
is.”
He hung up. “He hung up
on me!” She sat by the phone and tried to think. Maybe he was from
outer space. That seemed as likely as anything else. Surely he was a mentally
unbalanced wacko. He had her unlisted phone number, her shoes, her hair
and her blood. On the other hand, he was small and timid. And he found
her ‘grotesque’. For a while she walked around the house looking
out the windows. Then she lay down with her arms across her eyes. She
stayed that way for almost an hour.
When the clock struck five she got
up, washed her face and hands and went out. Unable to decide what to do,
she stuck to her routine. The dogs always got exercised at this time.
She took them for a long hike up the ridge and felt more like herself
again. On the way back she detoured down down the meadow to where she
had heard him. She watched the dogs to see if they found anything in the
woods. What they found was wrappers. Twinkie wrappers, Little Debbie wrappers,
Milky Way wrappers. No wonder he had a stutter. He was mainlining processed
sugar.
cont. on page four
|
|
s
w