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Slitherings and
Shriekings and things. We ve inveighed against them. We ve put pressure on
movie theatres and TV networks. But that was dumb.
I ve been thinking. He had been, too. And I m gonna propose under any other
business that the
Conclave of Christ oughta put money into a movie of Devilish Horror but not
officially or publicly, if you take my point. This movie ll feature a
Righteous Ranger team, or even maybe somebody acting the role of a Regional
Apostle. It ll goddamn well scare people to see the light, for their souls
sake. In a word, literally, we ll give em hell!
You gotta know how to use the media, boys.
He sat back. That s the pious proposal. Under any other business, of course.
The other Regional Apostles, and Reverend Bryson (deputizing), stared at Jake.
So now can we get on with Matt s election?
But the meeting continued to stare at him. After a while, Jake s lips started
to wobble.
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Chapter 36
In their well-appointed, air-conditioned quarters on the air base, Cleo sat
herself down at the keyboard and typed, in lower case:
much wisdom we can show you. not details of the star drive. no. our pilots are
both dead in the crash, we are four students who study other worlds. but we
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are sad. we have had our sex organs cut. this is standard procedure, so that
we do not breed during the long journey. can you repair us?
The words glowed green on a big display screen. After scanning the
communication, Major-General
Howard E. Goodman stroked his steel-blue chin.
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Are you sure you re from another star system? he asked. I mean, your
genotype and blood sure seems astonishingly like Earth chimpanzees.
Cleo exchanged swift hand signals with Brutus. The civilian speech therapist,
fluent though he was in sign language, still couldn t make head nor tail of
these alien hand-signs.
Cleo typed again:
we are from another star, yes. but we do not know star maps. we are not
steersmen, so we cannot point to it. our star is blue. our planet is number
five.
What do you know! That could just be Vega! cried an excited voice. The
civilian astronomy consultant from the local university, Dr Herschbinder, had
long been a partisan of the idea of alien intelligences dwelling out in the
cosmos. That s one of the closest candidates: only twenty-seven light years.
Vega s a brilliant blue.
Why? asked Goodman. Why s it blue?
That s its spectral class. It s fifty times as powerful as our own sun.
Isn t it kind of hot there? said Goodman suspiciously. So what do they need
those fur coats for?
Ah! Well & Earth is the third planet from our sun but their planet is
number five from Vega. It s further away. That would put it somewhere out in
our asteroid belt, where our own fifth planet was originally. The planet
Phaethon.
The what?
Phaethon. It exploded. Maybe there was a civilization there, and they
destroyed themselves in a terrible war. Half of Phaethon got blasted into
asteroids, Major & uh, General, and the rest raced off towards
Saturn. It lost one of its moons there, which broke up into the Rings, then
zoomed on to Uranus. It pulled a slice off Uranus which slapped back down
again, knocking Uranus sideways on its axis. And the rest of Phaethon ended up
as Pluto & Mind you, that s just a theory.
But it s a reasonable one. Fits the facts.
So you see, Vega is a whole lot brighter, but their planet orbits further
out.
Uh-huh. In that case, wouldn t they like blue light in here?
Well, when I say blue, it isn t just blue if you re out there in person.
It s blue-white. Or white-blue.
Bright, though. Bright as Einstein. Maybe you could increase the light
intensity in here; but then maybe us humans would all get headaches.
I already have a headache. Four, in fact.
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So you see, you d have to wear tinted shades if you went to their world,
General & uh, Major, said
Herschbinder.
Distrusting the drift of this conversation in case she and her friends
should be blinded by blue arc-
lights but forewarned now about Vega and bright suns in general, Cleo
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hastily typed:
we tell you all about our planet. history. legends. geography. social
arrangements. poetry. plants &
This would require a lot of co-ordinated improvisation, and keen memories too;
but Cleo felt that the four of them were up to it. She thought of Dr
Herschbinder s planet Phaethon, wrecked by smelly bombs.
we tell you how we avoided destroying ourselves in war. but not much hard
science. not our field. in return, can you please repair our sex organs?
Why? asked Goodman. What s special about getting them repaired?
we apply for asylum. poor castaways, we. you receive much fruit of data in
return. we teach you shreshmish.
What s that?
shreshmish is the alien mind skill of living together without fucking each
other up. we can only show shreshmish if our sex organs are whole.
Cleo wondered for a moment whether it had been entirely a bright idea to turn
themselves in. Yet the previous year spent skulking and scavenging around the
fringes of human society had not been a huge success. The four of them had all
lost weight. Caesar had become quite ill; his hair had started coming out in
tufts. Boa had been bitten by a dog, and still limped on account of a severed
nerve in her ankle.
Noting that Cleo s body had tensed up, and scenting the strain she was under
though the dull humans noticed nothing of the sort Brutus decided to
intervene.
He reached into a fruit bowl on the table by him. He selected. He sniffed and
bit the fruit in question.
Ambling over, he waved it appreciatively at Major-General Goodman. Leaning
over Cleo s shoulder, he typed:
very nice earth food. whats its name?
Goodman turned back from the screen, to Brutus. Patiently, he explained:
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