The first of the three shots fired in rapid succession grazed Charlotte’s neck, the second ricocheted off the pavement, and the third hit Garth in the left thigh, just above the knee. As Charlotte squealed in surprise, pain, and anger, Garth clutched his wounded leg, staggered a few steps, and then went down to his knees in the otherwise deserted parking lot at Nyack Beach State Park. He glanced up, squinting in the bright light of the early spring morning, and saw a tall, gaunt man in a ski mask and carrying a rifle leaning on the stone wall beside the narrow road leading down to the beach from Nyack’s Broadway. As Garth watched, the masked gunman straightened up and walked unhurriedly down the road, obviously intending to finish him off at point-blank range. The man was a lousy shot, Garth thought with a grim smile, and this seemed an odd and unprofessional way to carry out an assassination. Not that it made any difference; one assassin’s bullet would do the job just as well as another. He certainly had plenty of enemies who wished him dead, but there weren’t many amateurs in the lot, and he wondered which of these had finally tracked him to Cairn, taken note of his daily six-mile run to the beach and back, and selected this time and place to kill him.
There had been a time when he had never gone on the street unless he was armed, but those days were past, and now he rarely carried a gun, except on those rare occasions when he was working a particularly dangerous case. He was helpless now, crippled, and a stationary target in the middle of an empty parking lot. To his left was the Hudson River, its shoreline still clotted with ice. The trees on the side of Hook Mountain, which stretched toward the azure sky on his right, were barren of leaves and would provide no cover even if he could reach them. To his immediate right, perhaps fifty feet away, was the entrance to a two-story building that had once housed a factory for a company that had blasted trap rock from the sides of the mountain, crushed it in the facility, then shipped the scrapple by barge down the river to the stone-hungry boroughs of New York City. The building would surely provide sanctuary, but the wide, swinging doors at its entrance looked to be securely padlocked.
Garth thought it highly unlikely that the gunman was interested in Charlotte and Precious, but, fearing that the man might kill them anyway, out of spite, he removed the loops of their leashes from his right wrist, then slapped them on their haunches, trying to drive them toward the trail behind him that snaked along the shoreline. They refused to go. Squealing raucously, both pigs nudged at his arms and shoulders, as if to prod him to his feet. Bracing himself on Charlotte’s back and grimacing against the pain that shot through his leg, Garth struggled to his feet, and then lurched toward the entrance to the building. The gunman, who had just entered the parking lot from the road and was perhaps fifty yards away, raised his rifle and fired, but the slug bit into a stone corner of the building, which momentarily shielded Garth from the line of fire. He could hear the man’s running footsteps on the pavement as he lunged at the guardians to the darkness inside where he would be safe. The swinging doors, which had no brace besides the heavy padlock, creaked and gave a bit, but with his wounded leg Garth could not generate sufficient speed and leverage to smash them open. In a few seconds the gunman would round the corner of the building and kill him.
Garth was preparing to lunge once again when suddenly there was a loud thump below him and the doors shook. He looked down and was astounded to see Charlotte, knocked back on her haunches and the top of her head bleeding from the force of the blow she had delivered, get to her feet. She wobbled a bit, but she backed up, and then once again charged the door, this time with Precious running at her side. Garth timed his lunge with theirs, and the force of his own weight and three hundred pounds of pig did the trick. The old, dry wood around the padlock cracked and gave way, and Garth tumbled after the pigs into the darkness.
As Charlotte and Precious scampered away toward the opposite end of the building, Garth pulled himself back down a narrow space between two enormous pieces of rusting machinery that appeared to be portable conveyor belts. When he had been swallowed up by darkness, he leaned back against a steel tread, removed his belt, and cinched it around his leg to serve as a tourniquet. Through spaces in the undercarriage of the conveyor belt on his left he could see the bright rectangle of light that was the entrance. The gunman had not appeared in the doorway, and Garth did not expect him to; he would be a fool to stalk a man in darkness, or to hang around. The park was small, and there were houses less than a quarter of a mile away where the shots could have been heard. Hikers and motorists looking for a spectacular view and a break from their day used the park year-round, and both state police and Orangetown cops patrolled the area regularly, as had been the case two weeks earlier when Sam Beeman had eased his cruiser up beside Garth, rolled down the window on the passenger’s side, and called, “How are the girls?”
“Just fine,” Garth called back. “If you’ve got a minute, I’ll show you their latest accomplishment.”
“Sure,” the baby-faced Orangetown policeman said, pulling his car over to the side of the road and getting out. “I want to talk to you anyway.”
Garth pulled two ears of barbecued corn from a plastic bag he carried in his waistpack. Charlotte and Precious pricked their ears and grunted expectantly. “Sit,” he said, and the pigs sat. “Roll over,” he commanded, and, somewhat laboriously, they managed to roll themselves over. Garth fed them the corn, turned to the policeman, and continued, “Pretty impressive, huh?”
“Damn,” the young policeman said, taking off his cap and running a hand back through his thinning brown hair. “I see they like their corn and the cob. I didn’t know pigs did tricks.”
“Pigs are smarter than your average dog—just not as eager to please. You need a lot of com, and you have to get them when they’re hungry—not really a problem, since they’re hungry most of the time.”
“I thought it was your smart little brother who was so good with animals.”
“He does the big critters—lions, tigers, bears, and elephants. I do pigs.”
“And a wolf.”
“Wolves don’t do tricks—but they’re amused when you do.”
“I also thought Vietnamese potbellied pigs were supposed to be cute little pink things; Charlotte and Precious are two cute big gray things. What do they go, a couple of hundred pounds each?”
“Bite your tongue, Sam. They do start off as cute little pink things when they’re young, but, like all pigs and people, they get bigger if you feed them. They both weigh in at about a hundred and fifty now. Charlotte was about fifty pounds overweight when Marge bought her a couple of years ago to keep Precious company. That’s when I volunteered to take her out for a fitness trot two or three times a week. Precious insisted on coming along, and it’s become kind of a habit. I get a kick out of them, and I enjoy their company. What did you want to talk to me about, Sam?”
The policeman sighed, shook his head. “We’ve got a problem with the pigs.”
“Who’s got a problem?”
“A guy by the name of Peter Erckmann—just moved to Cairn, bought the old Hurley mansion. He filed a zoning complaint against Marge. Claims the pigs make too much noise and keep him awake at night.”
“That’s absurd. They don’t make any noise, and they’re probably asleep every night before he is. They don’t bother anyone. Marge got Precious as a piglet for the kids in her day-care center to raise as a pet. Charlotte came along later. The kids love the pigs, and the pigs love them. They’re even housebroken. All they do is wander around in their pen all day, an4 then go to their place in the basement at night. The neighbors around here have never complained, and the Hurley mansion is a block and a half away.”
Sam Beeman shrugged resignedly. “What can I tell you? Who knows what he’s got against the girls? But there is a zoning ordinance in Cairn that prohibits the keeping of wild or farm animals, so he’s on good legal ground.”
“Mary and I keep a hybrid wolf that’s a lot more dangerous than Charlotte and Precious. The village board gave us a variance. Why can’t they do the same for Marge?”
“Maybe they will—but it’s not certain. Your wolf was a special case. You didn’t buy it to keep as a pet—you fished it out of the river. It had been mutilated, and you and that wolf were responsible for saving lives after those neo-Nazis set up shop in the county. People were grateful, and there was a lot of emotion. There was no place to send the wolf, so the board let you and Mary keep it. The variance you got may actually work against Marge; the board may not want to make another exception. Anyway, I just served Marge with notice of the complaint, so you’re going to find she’s upset when you get back with the girls. I figured you’d want to know.”
Marge Proctor, the pigs’ owner, was indeed upset, and when Garth arrived home he found that his wife, the folksinger Mary Tree, was too. Mary was in their soundproofed music room practicing a new ballad she had written with her band. Garth tapped on the glass and waved as he walked down the hallway outside, then stopped when Mary urgently signaled to him. She put down her guitar, said something to the three people in the room with her, and then hurried out into the hallway. Her long, gray-streaked yellow hair gleamed in the sunlight pouring in through the skylight above their heads, and her blue eyes flashed with anger.
“Have you heard what that man is trying to do to Charlotte and Precious?”
Garth nodded. “I just left Marge.”
“How can he do that?” Mary snapped, clenching her fists. “Marge’s house is their home. Marge will never find anybody to take them both in, and no other place would be the same anyway. Those are friendly, intelligent, and loving animals, Garth, and they’re so attached to each other! They have feelings, and they’ll be so sad if they’re separated and sent away!”
“I spend more time with Charlotte and Precious than you do, my love,” Garth said quietly, gently caressing his wife’s cheek. “You don’t have to tell me that they have feelings.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
Garth shrugged. “Marge and I were talking strategy, and we’ll start with a little PR work. We’ll organize a letter-writing campaign; it shouldn’t be hard to get the parents of the children who have been in Marge’s day-care center to speak up in support of Charlotte and Precious, and then the neighbors will testify that the pigs have never bothered anyone. We’ll round up a lot of supporters to attend the next board meeting, and maybe we can persuade the trustees to give Marge the variance she needs.”
“That’s all?”
“All? What do you want me to do, Mary?”
“Your brother would think of more to do.”
“He might think of it, but he wouldn’t do it. And he wouldn’t want me to do it. In fact, his greatest concern would be that I might overreact. You expect me to go thump on the guy?”
“I think you and your brother have thumped people for less.”
Garth frowned slightly as he studied his wife. “Not over pigs and charges of a zoning violation. That’s an odd thing to say to me, Mary.”
“I’m sorry,” the woman said softly, averting her gaze as she rested her hand on her husband’s chest.
“Cairn is our home, Mary, which means Erckmann is our neighbor. I don’t want it to appear as if I’m throwing my weight around, literally or figuratively. I very much value our privacy, and I prefer my famous wife to get all the publicity and attention. The people who’d be interested in me and my whereabouts aren’t exactly fans.”
“I know,” Mary said in the same small voice. “You’re always concerned about my safety.”
“I didn’t tell Marge this, but I’ll tell you. If all else fails, we’ll bring on the lawyers. If the board won’t give her a variance, Frederickson and Frederickson will take on her and her pigs as clients, and I guarantee the matter will be tied up in the courts right up until the day when both Charlotte and Precious have died of happy, comfortable old age. I just don’t want to pull that kind of stunt except as a last resort. Okay?”
Now Mary looked up at him, and Garth could see shadows moving in her eyes. “Garth, there’s more to it. This Peter Erckmann is an evil man.”
“Why? Because he doesn’t like Vietnamese potbellied pigs?”
“Because he exploits people’s fears, and he harms them. It’s not just Charlotte and Precious who need your help. He has to be stopped.”
“What’s he doing, and how do you happen to know so much about him?”
“Marge filled me in when she called. Erckmann’s a psychologist who now runs a practice consisting exclusively of group therapy sessions for people who think they’ve been abducted by aliens. He wrote a bestseller, which explains how he could afford to buy the Hurley mansion. He’s started up a group here in Cairn, and Burty Bennett’s his star abductee. Burty’s parents must be paying for it.”
Garth shrugged. “So Erckmann’s one more alien-abduction con man, but his victims know exactly what they’re paying for when they go to see him. I don’t blame Burty for wanting to believe he was abducted by aliens; he’d rather do that than face up to the fact that he fried his brains on angel dust when he was a teenager and has spent the rest of his life wandering around the streets of Cairn clawing at his skin to try to dig out the worms he feels crawling under there. A whole lot of people are very unhappy with their lives, Mary, and they want somebody besides themselves to blame for it. Alien kidnappers make dandy scapegoats. What Erckmann is doing isn’t illegal. I can do my best to protect Charlotte and Precious from him, but it’s impossible to protect people from themselves.”
Mary shook her head stubbornly. “A year and a half ago Bill Stiller lost his management job with IBM. He couldn’t find another job with a salary even close to what he’d been making, and he started going to hell with himself—having affairs, drinking heavily, putting on a lot of weight. He ended up in Erckmann’s therapy group.
Garth’s response was another shrug. “He sounds typical.”
“What about Bill and Pat’s daughter, Jenny? Would a seven-year-old fit the profile of a typical victim?”
Mary watched her husband’s face darken, and she knew she had finally captured his attention and interest.
“Explain,” Garth said softly.
“One day while Pat was working late, Bill took Jenny with him to one of his therapy sessions. Erckmann did a number on her, claimed that by talking to her he could tell that the whole family had been abducted and experimented on, and that Jenny and her mother were repressing the memories. Pat found out about it and went through the roof. She threw Bill out of the house and started writing letters to the editor and passing out fliers attacking Erckmann. But the damage to Jenny had already been done; she’s been having nightmares about being abducted by aliens.”
“And she’s likely to have them for the rest of her life,” Garth said in a voice just above a whisper. “The son of a bitch has implanted memories of events that never happened, and those phony memories could twist her life completely out of shape as she grows older. They could destroy her.”
“Jenny used to be in Marge’s day-care center, and Marge has been advising Pat. She’s even written a few letters herself, and she has the academic credentials to back up what she says about Erckmann harming a child. Marge thinks that’s the real reason Erckmann filed a complaint against the pigs—to punish her.”
Garth abruptly turned and walked away, and Mary felt a twinge of fear. Garth would not use violence on behalf of the pigs, but he certainly would to protect a child. That was why she had told him the story, but now she was suddenly having serious reservations about what she had done. She felt manipulative and slightly guilty. She knew that her husband could be unpredictable and extremely dangerous in certain situations, when something or someone he cared deeply about was in jeopardy, and when he was in that frame of mind he took no prisoners. This was precisely such a situation. She knew from Garth’s reaction that she had succeeded in arming him like a guided missile and pointing him at Peter Erckmann, but now she wondered what price might have to be paid. Her fear was not assuaged when she woke in the middle of the night to find Garth, in his robe, standing at the window and staring out at the moon-washed Hudson River. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” she said, rising and going to him, resting her head between his shoulder blades as she wrapped her arms around his waist. “I was very upset this morning. I love you so much. Sometimes I think of you and your brother as the righters of all wrongs, and I know you can’t be that. I shouldn’t have laid all that business about Jenny on you. You can’t undo what’s already been done.”
“Don’t be sorry, Mary,” Garth said in an even tone, taking his wife’s hands in his and squeezing them. “I would have been angry with you if you hadn’t told me and I’d found out about it later. The problem isn’t one of putting Erckmann out of business, because there are dozens of people like him. A way has to be found to heal the girl.”
“It’s not helping anybody for you to be losing sleep over this, Garth.”
“I’m not losing sleep; I’m thinking. You and Lothar have the same manager. His house has been dark all week, so he must be out on tour. Why don’t you give your manager a, call in the morning and find out where he is? Lothar owes Frederickson and Frederickson a big favor; even if he didn’t, I think he’d want to help me out on this.”
Mary frowned, looked at the back of her husband’s head silhouetted in the moonlight. “I know where he is,” she said, thoroughly puzzled. “He’s in Atlantic City. He’s got a month-long gig at Trump Palace. I’m supposed to be watering his plants.”
Garth nodded. “I’ll give him a call in a few hours, find out when he has a day off.”
Mary shook her head. “How on earth is a master magician and illusionist going to help you in this situation?”
“I need an introduction to some aliens,” Garth replied, and two weeks later he reflected on the fact that the gunman, who had suddenly appeared at the entrance to the building where he lay in the darkness, was certainly no alien, at least not one from another planet, although he could very well be in the country illegally. On the other hand, he knew that if the man were ex-KGB or Stasi, or renegade CIA, he would have been killed with the first shot.
Garth loosened the tourniquet around his leg, but immediately tightened it again when he felt blood gush from the bullet wound; there was no sense in worrying about gangrene when there was a good chance he could bleed to death. The last time his past had caught up with him here had been when an old enemy who had been with the Stasi in East Germany had unexpectedly landed in Cairn, but that meeting had been accidental. Very few people who were not his friends knew that he lived in Cairn and was married to Mary Tree, and, their home number was unlisted. In Cairn, as in neighboring Nyack, local residents were fiercely protective of the host of celebrities in their midst. It was always possible that he had been tracked from the Frederickson and Frederickson offices in New York, but he did not think that was the case here. He was definitely dealing with an amateur, and even before the man, now half in shadow inside the building, took off his ski mask to reveal half a shaved skull painted with Mercurochrome Garth was beginning to strongly suspect that the source of this problem was much closer to home, possibly linked to the tall, stooped, and heavyset man with brooding, hawk-like features, musty smell, and big feet who’d held up Garth’s business card as he’d walked into Garth’s home office and announced, “I’ve been doing a little checking on you, Frederickson. You and your smart little brother are pretty famous private detectives. You two have been involved with some pretty weird business.”
And was about to be again, Garth thought, and said, “It’s my smart little brother who’s the famous one. Most of the time I just hold his coat. And you’re involved in some pretty weird business yourself.”
The hawk-faced man narrowed his eyes, which were the color of shale. “In the note you sent with your card you said you had something important to show me, and that I should come here at this time if I wanted to see it. But this is really about those pigs, isn’t it? I was told you’re friends with the woman who owns them, and I was warned to watch out for you. Well, you’re wasting your time. I didn’t spend almost three quarters of a million dollars for a house so that I could have pigs living in the next block.”
“Why don’t you sit down, Mr. Erckmann?” Garth said, motioning to the chair set up in front of his desk. “I really do have something to show you, and as a reputed expert on alien abduction I think you’ll be very interested.”
Erckmann hesitated, then pulled back the chair and sat on its edge, leaning forward as if ready to bolt at any moment. “What is it?”
“First, let’s get things straight between us. You’re a fraud. You take disturbed people looking to shift the blame for their problems, you hypnotize them to elicit these so-called repressed memories, and then you helpfully add on a few details so that it sounds like everyone is telling the same story.”
“I didn’t come here to be insulted, Frederickson!” Erckmann snapped, jumping to his feet.
“Sit down, Erckmann,” Garth said easily. “If you walk out of here before you finish hearing what I have to say, there’s a very good chance you’ll disappear—permanently—from the face of the earth before dinnertime.”
Erckmann scowled. “Are you threatening me?”
“You have nothing to fear from me, Mr. Erckmann. It’s my clients you have to worry about.”
Erckmann slowly eased his large frame back down onto the chair. “Your clients?”
“The reason I know you’re a fraud is because I’m in touch with the only aliens within thirteen light-years of earth, and they’ve never abducted anyone, much less harmed them.”
Erckmann threw back his head and laughed—a harsh, guttural sound. “You must take me for a complete idiot.”
“You think I’d make a statement like that if I couldn’t prove it?”
The other man stopped laughing, looked warily at Garth. “How can you prove it?”
“With a simple demonstration, which we’ll get to momentarily. But first let me give you some background so you’ll understand just what’s involved and why I asked you to come here. A year and a half ago my brother and I were contacted by these aliens.”
“Ridiculous! How did they contact you?”
“E-mail, at our New York office. They understand, read, and write English very well, but they can’t speak it. They must have bladders for vocal cords, because when they speak it sounds like they’re passing wind. They hired us to do a job for them.”
Erckmann laughed again, but this time the sound seemed forced, and he looked uncertain. “Why should they hire you?”
Garth shrugged. “As you pointed out, my brother and I have been involved in some pretty strange cases, so I guess they didn’t think we’d be fazed by having as clients a couple of barrel-sized things with fur and tentacles.”
Erckmann licked his lips nervously, then swung sideways in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest, looking at Garth out of the corner of his eyes. “I want you to know I don’t believe a word of this, but I’ll humor you by listening to the rest of your story.”
“Possibly the wisest decision you’ve made in your life.”
“How do they pay you?”
“Gold, of course. They mint some very interesting coins.”
“What did they hire you to do?”
“Find them suitable hosts, and then keep an eye on them, act as bodyguards, to make sure they weren’t disturbed while they were carrying out their observations. You see, once they enter a host body, they can’t leave it or communicate with us for a period of twenty-seven of our months. They can communicate telepathically with each other, but not with humans—it seems we’re too limited intellectually. That means my brother and I have to use our best collective judgment to decide what may be a threat to them, and what’s in their best interests. They understand what I’m doing now, and I’m sure they concur with my decision—we’ll both find out shortly. They were particularly interested in studying human development in very young children. Now, this is where you come in, Erckmann. The problem with the pigs you want to evict and separate is that they’re not just pigs. They’re host bodies for our alien clients.”
Erckmann snorted loudly and crossed his arms even tighter across his chest. “This is absolutely absurd, Frederickson. I knew this meeting was about those pigs. If you think I’m going to withdraw my complaint because of this wild cock-and-bull story, then you’re a very stupid man.”
“Actually, this is a pig tale, Erckmann, and I’m not surprised at your reaction. I’d feel the same way. That’s why I’ve suggested to the ambassadors that they arrange for you a modest demonstration. Considering what’s at stake, I assume they’ve taken my advice. We’ll see.”
Erckmann smiled and shook his head, but his smile quickly vanished as Garth rose, walked across the room, opened the door to the office, and ushered in Charlotte and Precious. Precious, always the more curious and friendlier of the two, immediately padded over to Erckmann and began sniffing his shoes. The color drained from Erckmann’s face, and he hastily drew up his legs.
“Mr. Erckmann,” Garth continued, “I’d like you to meet the ambassadors. I wish I could tell you their names, but, for the reason I explained, that’s quite impossible. Don’t worry about that one: She’s always anxious to meet new humans, and she’s probably taking field notes. But I wouldn’t touch her. The other one is quite protective, and she’s liable to take a nip out of you.
“I don’t want to touch her!” Erckmann said in a strangled voice, gazing down in horror as Precious, still sniffing away, proceeded to circle his chair. “I just want to get out of here!”
“Just another couple of minutes, Erckmann. We’re almost finished.” Garth went back to his desk, opened a drawer, and took two ears of barbecued corn out of a plastic bag inside. He threw one to Charlotte, who immediately began to gobble it down. Precious abandoned her investigation of Erckmann and scampered over to Garth for her com, which he gave her. Then Garth glanced back at Erckmann, continued, “After all, the ambassadors are housed in pig bodies, so they have pig appetites. They do love their corn, and the cob.”
“I’m leaving!” Erckmann yelped, leaping to his feet. He rushed to the door, opened it, and then took a step backward when he found Jenny Stiller standing in the doorway.
“Mr. Erckmann!” the seven-year-old with the brown hair, blue eyes, and freckles said. “What are you doing here?”
“Uh, hello, Jenny,” Erckmann mumbled as, obviously disturbed, he glanced quickly at Garth.
“You might want to stay just a little bit longer, Mr. Erckmann,” Garth said in the same mild tone he had been using all along. “It’s time for the demonstration. Come on in, Jenny.”
The child skipped around Erckmann and across the room to Charlotte and Precious, put her arms around them. “Hi, Garth! You said I could come over and play with the pigs!”
Garth nodded. “Precious, yes. Charlotte’s been a bit cranky, so I think she should stay here. You can take Precious outside. I’ve put Loner’s muzzle on, so he’s ready to receive company. Take Precious into his pen, and she and Loner can push the soccer ball around.”
“Oh yes!” the girl cried, and giggled with delight as Garth snapped a leash onto the collar around Precious’ neck and handed it to her. With Precious scampering along beside her, Jenny Stiller went out the side door to the path leading down to the beach behind Garth’s home.
“Come on over here and see what happens, Erckmann,” Garth said, rising and going to the window. “The view may give you a new perspective on things.”
For a moment Garth feared that Erckmann would simply keep walking out of the office. Erckmann hesitated, and then tentatively stepped over to the window. Garth waited until the girl and pig came into view and were about to enter the enclosure where Garth’s hybrid wolf was kept, then turned to Charlotte. “All right, Ambassador. If you agree with my recommendation for a demonstration, you can signal your ship now.”
To Garth’s considerable surprise and delight, Charlotte, as if on cue, grunted loudly. A moment later there was a wave of shimmering light outside the window, and Jenny, Precious, and the hybrid wolf winked out of sight.
Erckmann jumped back from the window, caroming off Garth, who had been standing right behind him. “It’s a trick!” he shouted in a hoarse voice, putting a trembling hand to his mouth.
“I’ll say,” Garth replied dryly. “I wish I knew how they did it. Jenny and the animals have been transported to the aliens’ ship. Jenny’s been there before, and she loves it. I think they’ve got some kind of huge playground up there; I don’t know for sure, because I’ve never been invited aboard. You’re more likely to see what the interior of the ship looks like than I am. I’m just a hired hand, but you’re a threat to the ambassadors’ mission.
“Only fools and nut cases believe in aliens!” Erckmann shouted, his eyes wide. Tiny droplets of sweat had appeared high on his forehead.
“That’s an interesting comment coming from someone who makes a living treating people you’ve convinced have been abducted by aliens, and it’s a real hoot that you’ve bought a home and set up shop in the one place on earth where they actually do exist. Ironic, don’t you think? If I were you, I’d start thinking about what accommodation I was going to make to them.”
Charlotte, who had been keeping a wary eye on things, grunted again.
“I don’t believe it!”
“I wouldn’t believe it either if I were you,” Garth replied casually as he pretended to sort through some papers on his desk, “but that’s irrelevant. I’m not the one who’s threatening the well being of the pigs housing the aliens’ minds. I’ve done what I was hired to do, and that’s all I care about. I’m not really concerned now with what you believe or do, but—just in case what I’ve told you is true—you might want to start getting your affairs in order. My suspicion is that you’ll be abducted within a matter of hours. They won’t harm you, but you will be living aboard that ship for the rest of your life. I’m sure you’ll eventually get used to the sight of them.”
Garth, his heart hammering, watched as Peter Erckmann walked to the door. He put his hand on the knob, but then hesitated. Finally he turned back to Garth, opened and closed his mouth a few’ times, then said in a tight voice, “I’ll withdraw my complaint against the pigs.”
“Mmm. Smart move, Erckmann.”
“Understand,” Erckmann said quickly, “it’s not because I believe you’re representing any aliens, but just because I don’t want to be bothered dealing with somebody who’d go to all this trouble just to protect a couple of pigs.”
“It’s always better to err on the side of caution; in this case, you have everything to gain and nothing to lose. You’ve definitely done the right thing. Now, just to be on the safe side, I suggest that you apologize.”
“What?!”
“My clients’ species is very big on courtesy and ritual,” Garth said, reaching into his desk drawer and taking out an ear of corn, which he placed at the edge of the desk. “Tell the ambassador you’re sorry, and give her that ear of corn. It will be a nice gesture.” When Erckmann hesitated, Garth continued, “Go ahead and do it, Erckmann. You’ve already said you’d withdraw your complaint, so you might as well go whole hog, as it were. It’s just to make absolutely certain that the ambassador understands you mean her and the other one no harm. It’s for your own good, a kind of insurance policy. After all, you might not like alien food as much as the ambassadors like corn.”
Red-faced, Erckmann crossed the room, took the ear of corn from the desk, and held it out to Charlotte, who snatched it from his fingers. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, jumping back.
Garth shook his head. “Don’t mumble, Erckmann. Be clear. Say, ‘I’m sorry, Ambassador.’”
Erckmann swallowed hard, said to Charlotte, “I’m sorry, Ambassador.”
“Good,” Garth said curtly. “One last thing. Lay off Jenny and her family—and that includes her father. Tell him he can’t come to your group any longer. My clients have plans for the girl, and they don’t need her father messing up her head with nonsense about other aliens that don’t exist. Now you can go.”
Erckmann virtually ran to the door and out of the office, slamming the door shut behind him. Garth reached under his desk and flipped the switch there, then slowly exhaled and shook his head in amazement not unlike that he would experience two weeks later when the gunman who was stalking him, half hidden in the shadows, said “Garth, I got to kill you for what you did to me. You know you deserve it. Now c’mon out and let’s get this over with.”
“Burty? What the hell do you think you’re doing? Why did you shoot me?”
“You were there on the spaceship with the aliens that took me and put the worms under my skin, Garth. I remember now. You’re working with them.”
Garth tightened the belt around his leg, cutting off the flow of blood that was pouring from his wound and filling his shoe. He was beginning to feel faint, but he willed himself to focus. He groped around him in the darkness until his fingers touched what felt like a crowbar or tire iron. “Burty, you horse’s ass, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I do know that I’m going to beat your brains out if you don’t put that gun down. We have to talk.”
The man with the permanent brain damage came further into the building, angling across the pool of sunlight and toward the sound of Garth’s voice. “You were with the aliens when they experimented on me. Mr. Erckmann helped me remember. If I kill you, the worms will go away and I’ll feel better.”
Fighting the terrible weariness that was sapping his strength and making him want to do nothing more than lay his head down on the concrete and go to sleep, Garth, clutching the steel bar, inched forward in the darkness, toward the light. Waiting for Burty Bennett to tire of the hunt and go away was not an option; he would have to make a move soon, or he would die. “Burty, Erckmann’s pulling your pud. He wants you to kill me because he thinks that will save him. I’ve got him on videotape saying that anyone who believes in aliens is a fool or a nut case, and then apologizing to a pig he thinks is an alien ambassador. That’s not going to help him sell many more books. Your classmate Bill Stiller has seen the tape, and he’s dropped out of the program. He’s suing Erckmann, and he’s subpoenaed me to appear in court with the tape. He thinks having you kill me is going to solve his problems.”
For a moment it appeared that Bennett was coming to him, but the man stopped when he was a few feet away, looked to either side of him, then started toward the rear of the building, where the pigs could be heard rooting around in the darkness. Garth sighed, leaned back against the conveyor belt and smiled thinly as he recalled the look of wonder on Jenny Stiller’s face when she had seen herself, a pig, and a wolf vanish in a wink of light, remembered the excitement in her voice as she had leaped off the sofa in Garth and Mary’s living room, clapped her hands, and said, “Mr. Lothar made us all disappear! It’s a trick!”
Garth let the tape run through the section with Erckmann offering his sincere apologies to Charlotte, then turned off the VCR and looked around at the others. Mary, sitting at the back of the room, smiled broadly, winked, and blew him a kiss. Bill and Pat Stiller sat side by side with their daughter on the sofa that faced the television set. The man was leaning forward and holding his head in his hands while his wife, her face registering both anger and relief, gently stroked the back of his neck.
Jenny skipped over to Garth and put her hand in his. “That was so funny, Garth! Mr. Erckmann was talking to Charlotte just like she was a person, telling her he was sorry he tried to make her and Precious move away. Now everything’s going to be all right!”
Garth nodded. “Yes. Now I think everything is going to be all right.”
“What a wonderful trick!”
“Why don’t you tell your mom and dad what happened?”
“I took Precious outside, just like Garth told me to,” the child said, turning to her parents. “Mr. Lothar was waiting for me just outside the door. He took Precious and me around to the side of the house where there were other men, a truck, and a lot of lights and mirrors. He played with Precious and me like he always does, and he showed me some more magic tricks. We had a lot of fun. I didn’t know he made it look like we disappeared. That was really neat!”
“Mr. Erckmann was playing tricks too, Jenny,” Garth said quietly, stroking the girl’s hair. “He just forgot to tell you that he was playing tricks. His trick was to make you think that maybe you and your mom and dad had been taken away by people from another planet, and then he tried to make you remember it, even though it never happened. He tried to fool you, like Mr. Lothar does. But he’s not as nice as Mr. Lothar. You and your parents weren’t taken away by people from another planet, Jenny. Even if people from another planet do visit us one day, I think they’ll be too smart to want to hurt a little girl. You don’t have to be afraid of something that never happened, Jenny, and you can stop having nightmares. Your mom and dad would never let anyone harm you.”
“I know that, Garth. I’m not afraid anymore.”
Bill Stiller, still holding his head in his hands, choked back a sob, and then said in a quavering voice, “I want a copy of that tape, Garth.”
Garth put his hand on the girl’s back, gently pushed her toward the door. “Loner’s got his muzzle on, and I’ll bet he’d love a good belly rub.”
“Okay!” the girl said, and ran for the door.
Garth waited until Jenny was out of the house, then turned to the girl’s father and said simply, “No.”
Stiller sobbed again. “The man made a fool out of me, and he almost destroyed my family!”
“If that’s how you see it, then you haven’t learned a damn thing from this little episode. Erckmann didn’t do anything to you or Jenny, Stiller. First you made a jackass out of yourself because you were filled with self-pity and looking for someone or something else to blame for your problems. Then you gave Erckmann a shot at your daughter. I didn’t do what I did for the pigs, and I didn’t do it so that you could see what an idiot you’d been; I did it so that Jenny could get her head straight. We all got very lucky. It was an incredibly long shot. The only reason Erckmann bit is because sometimes people like Erckmann who peddle nonsense get spooked when the same nonsense is peddled back to them. You’re a big boy, Stiller, and I’m not about to help you try to destroy Erckmann. If you’ve got a beef with Erckmann for making a fool out of you, frightening Jenny, and almost costing you your marriage, you handle it yourself. I won’t do anything to help you—not willingly. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I understand,” Pat Stiller said, looking up at him. “Garth, I can’t tell you how grateful I am for what you’ve done.”
Garth nodded to the woman and walked from the living room, and days later, as he lay on the cusp between darkness and sunlight listening to the footsteps of the man who was stalking him, he reflected on the fact that it was Erckmann who was getting payback, and that payback could be Garth’s life. He knew he had to make a move now, for to wait much longer meant that he would bleed to death. Even if he could walk properly, it would be useless to stalk the other man in the darkness, for that would use up all the energy he had left. His only chance was to make it out of the building, closing the doors behind him, and then attack Burty Bennett with the steel bar if he followed.
Garth cinched up the belt around his leg, struggled to his feet, then hobbled as fast as he could toward the entrance.
“Hold it, Garth!”
With more than ten feet to go, Garth knew he could not make it. Rather than be shot in the back, he stopped and turned to face the man emerging into the sunlight pouring in through the open doors. “Last chance to give some thought to what you’re doing, Burty,” Garth said, his own voice sounding distant and metallic in his ears. “You’re not going to get rid of any aliens by killing me. You’re just going to end up spending the rest of your life clawing at your worms in some cell.”
“I gotta do it, Garth,” Burty Bennett said, raising his rifle and aiming it at Garth’s chest. “I gotta do it because of what you and the aliens did to me.”
Suddenly there was a flash of gray as Charlotte, running at full speed, came racing out of the darkness, heading directly toward Burty Bennett. Bennett started to turn, but he was too late, and Charlotte collided with the back of his thighs. Bennett flipped backward in the air, landed headfirst on the concrete, and lay still.
Garth staggered over to the unconscious man as Precious emerged from the darkness and nuzzled up to her companion. When Garth saw that the other man was still breathing, he raised the iron bar over his head. He was going to pass out at any moment, and Bennett would shoot him if he regained consciousness before someone came by and looked in through the open doors.
Garth lowered the steel bar, kicked away the rifle. He would have killed Burty Bennett without hesitation if the other man were still on his feet with the rifle, but he could not bring himself to crush the skull of a helpless, unconscious man. He took the remaining ears of corn from his waistpack and dropped them on the floor next to the fallen man. Then he sank to his knees beside Bennett. “Sit,” he said to Charlotte and Precious as he patted Bennett’s chest and stomach, and the last thing he saw before losing consciousness was the pigs doing precisely that.