The Magnificent Wilf Read online

  “I know,” said Tom, sadly, “least of all, me and Rex.”

  “Oh, stop it,” said Lucy from the dining room. “This house is going to be in shape for Mr. Rejilla, whatever you say. If you have to do something, you can go take Rex into the kitchen and feed him. It’s time for him to be fed, anyway.”

  Released, Tom unfolded from the chair, went carefully to the bedroom and likewise released a happy Rex. He led the dog to the kitchen. Lucy had started up the dust collector in the dining room now; and Tom, suddenly realizing this offered a handy excuse to break the usual rules, closed the door between the kitchen and the dining room.

  He tip-toed to the Serve-all. Rex followed with ears pricked up, eyes bright and nose twitching. Quietly Tom eased open the door; and there was the hamburger—two pounds of it—he had picked up on the way home. He took it to the sink, still followed by Rex; put it on the drain board, unwrapped it, and—picking up Rex’s food bowl from the end of the kitchen counter—began to slice off some of the ground meat for him.

  “Oh, no you don’t!” said Lucy’s voice behind him. “You aren’t feeding Rex raw hamburger!”

  “But it’s an important occasion!” said Tom. “He deserves a treat, anyway, with Mr. Rejilla coming—”

  “Well, his treat isn’t going to be raw hamburger!” said Lucy, diving behind him, capturing the hamburger, rewrapping it and putting back in the refrigerated compartment of the kitchen Serve-all. “It’s got to be cooked if he’s going to eat it at all; and we don’t have time to do that. Besides, as far as he’s concerned this is no different from any other day. He can eat his dog food, like any ordinary canine.”

  “But he isn’t any ordinary canine, honey. Remember his famous ancestor. Rex Regis was a genius among dogs; everybody said so. And he lived on steak tartare—which is really nothing but high-class hamburger. What if it’s Rex’s diet on that dry dog food that’s been holding him back? Maybe with a hamburger-tartare diet he’d begin to show some of the brilliance of his grandfather. Wouldn’t that be something, with Mr. Rejilla coming?”

  “It would certainly be something,” said Lucy. “But what makes you imagine changing his diet would make that much of a difference in him?”

  “Well—” Tom reached for a reason.

  “Don’t stretch yourself,” repeated Lucy. “You know as well as I do what our Rex does best. This steak-fancying, vase-smashing, over-grown lump off the old block. Nothing! That’s what our Rex does best!”

  “Owooo,” said Rex, mournfully to the floor between his paws.

  “There you go,” said Tom, “now he thinks you’re mad at him.”

  “Well I’m not!” snapped Lucy at the huge canine. “And you aren’t going to get anywhere trying to play on my sympathies this time, Rex. Tom, you’d better be getting your best jacket on, because we’re going to have to leave for the copter port in ten minutes.”

  Tom went sadly out the door, and Lucy resolutely poured dry dog food into Rex’s bowl, added some water to it and put the bowl down on the floor for him.

  Rex abandoned his expressions of despair and waded into its contents.

  Daneraux, the Security Chief of Operation Oprinkian Visit, and a hard-faced man named White, from the Internal Security Branch, were waiting at the copter port when Tom and Lucy got there. The copter was not in yet, but expected any minute. The sun was already down, and a light, misty rain was falling. The lights on the landing pad were glowing through it.

  “All right now,” said Daneraux. He was a small man who had a habit of going up on his toes when he got excited. He was very much up on his toes now. “Now listen, both of you. You’ll be completely covered at all times—”

  “Right,” said White.

  “Right. And what we want is that you two just act normal. Just normal, you understand?”

  “Sure,” Tom replied.

  “Remember, Rejilla’s the representative of a greater race than any we’ve encountered to date. They may have all sorts of abilities. We absolutely can’t afford to take a definite line with them until we find out just what their potentialities are.”

  “Right,” said White.

  “Right. In Security, we understand these things better than you desk-jockeys. We have a feeling, now—in fact, it’s practically a certainty—”

  “Check,” said White.

  “—that all these Aliens are as much in the dark about us as we are about them. That’s why Rejilla’s asked for this chance to spend twenty-four hours with a typical human couple in a typical human household. Theoretically, it’s just academic interest. Actually, he probably wants to learn things about us the Oprinkians can turn to their own advantage. But we’re ready for him. Now, you remember the taboos?”

  “No television while he’s visiting,” said Tom. “No drinking. No fresh plants in the house. He’s not to be disturbed once he’s shut himself in our spare bedroom, until he comes out again. Keep the dog out of his room—” Tom sighed. “That’s wrong. Rejilla particularly wants to meet Rex.”

  “That may be,” said Daneraux, “but Rejilla is Security’s responsibility. Scrub sending the dog away, then. Keep it. Act with perfect normalcy.”

  “Perfect,” said White.

  “All we ask is that you spend an ordinary twenty-four hours. Just remember we suspect that the Oprinkians outnumber us and that—this is restricted information, now—they may be only pretending to be more advanced than we are, technically—and furthermore—”

  “Damn it!” said Tom, beginning to lose his temper. “I know a lot more about Oprinkians than you ever will. And furthermore—”

  The announcer’s voice broke in on him, overhead, from the metallic throat of the loudspeaker there.

  “Please clear the stage. Please clear the stage. Eastbound copter landing now. Eastbound copter now descending for a landing.”

  “How come they didn’t send him out in a private ship?” Tom just had time to ask as they all moved off to the stage entrance.

  “He didn’t want us to,” replied Daneraux. “He wanted to ride out to your community here just like any ordinary citizen. Ha! Every seat on the copter except his is taken by Security agents.”

  They brought up short against the chest-high wire fence that enclosed the stage. A gate had swung open and a flood of passengers from the copter was streaming out. Rather curiously, in their exact midst, emerged the tall, thin, black, furry-looking form of the Oprinkian Alien.

  He was swept forward like a chip in the midst of a mass of river foam and deposited before the four of them.

  “Ah, Daneraux,” he said. “It is very good of you to meet me.”

  He had a slight, lisping accent. Aside from this, he spoke English very well.

  “Mr. Rejilla!” exclaimed Daneraux, exuberantly. “How nice to see you again! This is the young couple that will be your host and hostess for the next forty-eight hours.”

  He stood aside and Tom and Lucy got their first good look at the Oprinkian.

  He was indeed tall—in the neighborhood of six feet five—but very thin, almost emaciated. Tom guessed him at less than a hundred and thirty pounds. He wore no real clothing in the human sense, only an odd arrangement of leather-looking straps and bands that covered him in what appeared to be arbitrary rather than a practical fashion. Evidently his curly thick black body fur, or hair, gave him some protection from the changing temperatures, since the early April night was in the low forties and the damp, chilly air seemed to leave him unaffected.

  “May I present,” Daneraux was saying, “Tom and Lucy Parent. Tom is a staff member of Alien Affairs Secretary Domango Aksisi, whom you know.”

  “I am fully acquainted with Domango Aksisi,” said Mr. Rejilla. “He is a large Human Being—great Human Being, I mean.”

  “He is indeed,” said Daneraux. “You’re very perceptive, Mr. Rejilla—but then we expect that from one of your race. Lucy Parent, Tom’s wife here, is also one of our people. She was in our Linguistics Department, but is currently on leave.�
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  “Hay-lo,” said Rejilla to Tom and Lucy. “To you both, hay-lo. Do we shake right hands now?”

  They shook right hands. Rejilla’s furry grip was fragile but firm.

  “I am so most indubitably honored to be a guest within your walls,” commented Rejilla. “The weather, it is fine?” He looked up into the misty darkness of the night.

  “Very fine,” Daneraux agreed, before Tom or Lucy could say anything.

  “Good. Though perhaps it will rain harder. That would be good for the crops. Shall we go?”

  “Right this way,” said White.

  The Security men led Tom, Lucy and Mr. Rejilla to the Parents’ car. White slid behind the wheel in the front seat, Daneraux beside him. Rejilla insisted on sitting between Tom and Lucy in the back.

  “I understand,” he said to Lucy, as Daneraux pulled the car away from the parking area, “that you have two lovely grandparents.”

  “Well—” said Lucy, “as a matter of fact I have three, still living.”

  “Three!” cried Mr. Rejilla joyfully. “How wonderful! I dote myself on grandparents very much. I write them poems. Yes.” He turned to Tom. “And you, Tom?”

  “Ah—one grandfather,” said Tom, “only.”

  “The ways of Providence are mysterious,” replied Mr. Rejilla, putting a comforting hand on Tom’s knee.

  “Uh—thanks.”

  “How black the night,” commented Mr. Rejilla, gazing out the window of the speeding car.

  “We’re almost there,” White said.

  “This is your structure then,” said Mr. Rejilla, looking around their living room, after White and Daneraux had departed. “It is most interesting and friendly.”

  “I’m glad you think so,” said Lucy. “Is there anything—have you had dinner?”

  “I am not in need of feeding,” said Mr. Rejilla. “Dinnering me is not necessary. You will want to dinner yourselves, however. If you will direct me to the enclosure within this structure that is for my use, I will retire to it. Ah, there’s your wolf—I mean, socialized wolf. Dog.”

  Rex had come out of the kitchen into the dining area and was examining Mr. Rejilla with some uncertainty from a distance. He sniffed in Mr. Rejilla’s direction.

  “He’s really quite friendly,” said Lucy. “Here, Rex, come meet a friend of ours. Come, boy!”

  Rex advanced a few steps tentatively and then stopped. Then he backed up a step.

  “There is no need to hurry a subordinate Being,” said Mr. Rejilla. “Time brings wisdom, does it not? Such a subordinate does not often wish to rush into anything, acquaintance or otherwise. There will be time. But you were going to show me my enclosure?”

  “Oh yes,” said Tom, “this way, please.”

  “I’ll take him to his room,” said Lucy. She led off, with Mr. Rejilla following. Left alone together, Tom and Rex looked at each other.

  “He said we should go ahead with our own dinner and everything else, just the way we usually do; and he’d see us tomorrow,” Lucy said, returning. Tom was now looking at the mail. It was all ads and charitable solicitations.

  “What do you suppose he’s going to be doing in that room of his between now and tomorrow morning?” she asked him.

  “I don’t know,” said Tom. “I’m not sure whether Oprinkians sleep or not. It stands to reason any living creature, alien or otherwise, would probably need some kind of rest period. At any rate, it’s nothing we need to worry about; and he specifically said that we were to do just what we’d do ordinarily. So why don’t we eat?”

  They did. Mr. Rejilla did not show up.

  “He isn’t anything like I imagined,” Lucy said later, while they were getting ready for bed. “I expected someone who would be more …”

  “More what?” asked Tom, tossing his jacket at an armchair near Lucy, from which it slipped off on to the floor. He began to pull apart the cling-strips that fastened the front of his shirt, in the process of taking it off completely.

  Lucy absently reached down, picked up the jacket and put it on a hanger in the right-hand compartment of their bedroom’s open closet, where Tom’s things hung. She was busy studying her various night clothes at the other end of Tom’s compartment, to which they had crept by way of overflow from her own compartment.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I expected something more impressive, in a way.”

  “You can’t tell impressiveness from outside appearances.”

  “Well,” said Lucy, “you know what I mean.”

  “The Oprinkians,” said Tom solemnly, “are one of the forty-three races of Aliens who are entitled to a seat on the governing Council of this Sector of the galaxy. Only a few Races in our Sector are entitled to a seat on that Council; and some of them have conquered and dominated as many as dozens of other worlds where intelligent aliens live. The Mordaunti, for example, rule twenty-seven other races over an empire hundreds of light years in diameter. Then there’s the Jaktals, who I think have even more—I can’t remember how many other races they dominate.”

  “Forty-three?” echoed Lucy, startled for a moment out of her contemplation of her clothes. “The Oprinkians, these Jaktals, the Mordaunti, us—and who else?”

  “We,” Tom said, “are not among the forty-three. We were accepted into Sector civilization only because of the sponsorship of the Oprinkians, and that acceptance is only probationary. In the next three hundred years we must make a marked impression on this Sector’s forty-three great interstellar powers, if we’re going to get a majority vote from them to establish a seat in addition for us. Theoretically, of course, we could conquer some already seated race, then take over their seat. A race like the Mordaunti, say, but we’ve got as much real chance of doing that as we would nave of trying to huff and puff and blow the sun out of the sky. You know, I wonder why that warning was tacked on to that part of my briefing that dealt with the Mordaunti—something about ‘beware a Mordaunti when he starts to roll his r’s when he speaks. Make a mental note of this and do not forget it.’ ”

  “The reason’ll probably come back to you when you need to remember it,” said Lucy, prying among the various hangers in his part of the closet. “Ah, I knew it was here!”

  “But then,” said Tom, beginning to put on his pajamas now, “our chance of seeing a Mordaunti in our lifetimes, the way we’re seeing Mr. Rejilla now, is practically zero.”

  “I don’t see why they’d allow a tyrannical race like that or the Jaktals to be on that Council!” said Lucy.

  “Any Alien culture can present some dangerous points,” Tom said, “just as it has to present some advantageous and congenial ones—” He continued talking as he dressed.

  “How well you explain it,” said Lucy, absently, disappearing with her selection from the closet into the bathroom. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Part of the briefing I had to take to reach Third Assistant status down at the Secretariat,” Tom called.

  “Tell me more,” Lucy’s voice floated out of the bathroom.

  “Well, basically the Oprinkians just wanted to make sure we had a general picture of the civilized races in our Sector; and, more to the point, that we’d all taken the necessary briefing, so that we understood the languages spoken by the most important of the alien races …”

  Tom was in his pajamas now. He tilted a couple of pillows together against the back of the bed so that he could sit up and reach into a bedside table for the book he had been reading the last few nights.

  “If it hadn’t been for this briefing I got today—”

  “Briefing?” said Lucy, her head popping out of the bathroom doorway to look at him. “What briefing? When?”

  “Today,” said Tom, “after I’d had the talk with Domango about Rejilla coming to visit us. Domango authorized Dory to give me the same special briefing she’d been equipped to give to only someone in his position—or someone he authorized. I’m the only person he’s ever authorized—and that was only at Rejilla’s suggestion for wh
omever he was to visit.”

  “What did it tell you?” asked Lucy.

  “I’m not supposed to tell anyone. But, for example, I can now speak nine hundred and twenty-seven Alien languages. It only took me five seconds apiece to learn them.”

  “Teach me one!” said Lucy. “How about Oprinkian? I’d like to learn a language in five seconds.”

  “I’m not allowed to,” said Tom. “Not even Miles knows there was this special briefing capacity in Dory. Only Domango and me. Anyway, teaching you on my own, it’d take much longer—some minutes, at least. But anyway—I’m forbidden to.”

  “Why did you have to know so much?”

  “So I’d understand the Civilization of our Sector and be able to deal with Rejilla during his visit.”

  “Oh,” said Lucy. Her head vanished back into the bathroom.

  “If it hadn’t been for that,” Tom went on, “it would’ve been too large a task to prepare me to deal with him, or any other possible visiting Aliens—oh!”

  He climbed out of bed again and headed toward the part of his closet area where Lucy had hung up his jacket.

  “What is it?” called Lucy, still out of sight.

  “Some more Security nonsense, I guess,” said Tom, rummaging in an inside pocket of the jacket and finding the long envelope he had just remembered. “Daneraux slipped it to me as we were getting out of the car.”

  He took the envelope back into bed with him, ripped it open and unfolded a thick, single sheet of paper.

  “‘Information received by special courier on same copter as Rejilla,’ ” he read aloud. “‘Late advices from Oprinkian Surveillance and Study Group indicate Rejilla may be actively engaged in studying homo sapiens for weak points which may be exploited to Oprinkian advantage in inter-Alien diplomatic field. Be on lookout for any unusual activities on part of Rejilla and offer no information that you believe might be harmful to us in Oprinkian hands.’”