Stooges

 

 

Curly Howard’s entire history flashed up on my screen when I entered his fingerprints. I told Ned, my station chief.

“Manny, Moe, and Jack have been dead for years,” he said.

“No, no, you’re thinking of the Pep Boys,” I replied. “They owned an auto service dealership in southern California. This is Curly Howard of the Three Stooges. It was a comedy act. Films and television.”

“What?”

“I’ve got him in lockup. Prints don’t lie.”

“Oh.” He scratched his bald pate as if he’d hidden something there and was now searching for it.

“Yeah, you see it’s the name Moe in both the Three Stooges and the Pep Boys that leads to the confusion.”

“You wouldn’t be kidding me, would you, Felix?”

“About the Pep Boys?”

“No, about the guy you have.”

“Run it and see for yourself,” I said sourly.

He looked at me wonderingly. “Records in D.C. gotta be wrong. Don’t worry, it’ll straighten out. What’s he in for?”

“Vandalism. Slapped a bust of Einstein right off its pedestal in the lobby of the Main Library. Ruined my day off.”

“That’s too bad,” Ned said, “for a reader like yourself.”

He wandered away.

Of course, I was something of a secret fan, from long before the Stooge films started coming back on video cassettes. I felt embarrassed at times; it was hard to accept that so many people had my lack of taste. But it wasn’t just a fad with me. I was used to watching a reel or two before the news, while eating my lonely guy’s dinner. I’d woo woo once or twice, get in a few nyuk nyuks, just to help my digestion. A cop for the NYPD needs all the help he can get.

It couldn’t be a look-alike, I told myself again as I stared at the picture on the screen. The man I had brought in was as pale as the old photo—black stubble on a shaved head, demonic eyes to match, fat; in other words, a dirty tennis ball in a gym shirt.

“Nice seeing you… alive,” I managed to say as he danced around the bust of Einstein.

“It’s great!” he had piped back, clawing his face.

The great Stooge himself, long dead, had stroked the bust until Albert went to pieces on the hard floor.

 

There was a loud rap on my office door the next morning, two hours before Curly Howard’s arraignment.

“Come in!”

A tall, gray-haired man entered, opening his coat as he sat down before me. “I’m from Washington.” He flashed his ID. “Lieutenant, tell me why you punched up a dead man’s records.” He sounded almost apologetic. “Your chief told me I could ask you about it.”

“Because he’s alive,” I said, feeling grumpy. “What’s your name again?”

“Max Karinthy,” he answered nasally. “On what charge is he being held?”

“Vandalism. He broke a bust of Einstein in the public library.”

His thin lips held a restrained smile, making me feel better about him. “Let’s have a look,” he said, standing up.

I took him down to Cell Block A. “There,” I said, pointing at Curly. I’d put him in with two burglars I knew, so he’d be safe, but clearly they hadn’t gotten along with him. Both were in the left corner, looking a bit frightened.

Curly came to the bars and dog-barked at us. We stared at him. He gave us a shy look and said, “Aw, come on, fellas, let me out. This ain’t fun anymore.”

“It is him,” Max said softly.

“You a fan, too?” I asked.

He bit his lower lip. “Listen, I have the papers to hold him indefinitely. Move him to a quiet hotel at once. And shut up about it. That’s a National Security Order. Understand?”

I swallowed hard. “Yes, sir. But what’s up?”

His blue eyes seemed kindly. “Don’t worry, you’ll find out.”

“It’s a freak of some kind, isn’t it?” I offered. “One in a billion for the prints to match. Or someone went to a lot of trouble to make himself over with surgery. You know a lot more than you’re saying, don’t you?”

Curly was staring at us reproachfully through the bars.

“For now, think of him as a kind of Stooge fan,” Max said mysteriously, smiling.

“Hey, Felix!” Joey the burglar shouted at me. “When you gonna get this nut off us?”

 

They couldn’t break his identity. Even the dental records were perfect. “Which makes it even more certain that he’s a fake,” Max said, leaning back in the chair behind my desk.

“So tell me what you know,” I said, staring out into the evening through the office window. “Is he a wealthy fan who had the money to transform himself? You’ve hinted at that.”

“We’ll have to interrogate him,” Max replied, ignoring my question.

I smiled. “Sure, lots of luck.”

“You’re going to be working on this with me, Felix.”

“Why me?” I asked apprehensively. “I’m just a city cop. My chief would rather you just took him away.”

“I feel I can trust you, you’re a Stooge fan, and you’re single, so you don’t have to go home at all. No telling where this might lead. You’re transferred for as long as this takes.”

“So fill me in!”

“Don’t get so irritated, Felix, you’ll see. The fewer people who know the truth now the better. Trust me.”

“What truth? You probably don’t know a thing.” I put my feet up on the edge of my desk. “You watch the Stooges much, Max?”

He looked at me calmly. “Lately. All ninety-seven episodes with Curly.”

“And?”

“Well, I can see that our Curly is in character.”

“That’s all?”

He shrugged. “Nothing else in those films concerns this case.”

“But did you laugh at the routines?”

“What has that got to do with anything? Look, I’ve got to make some calls. You and I will be going it alone with him tonight.”

His evasiveness was irritating. I could still see Curly’s pleading eyes staring at me through the bars. I had to make sure that nothing bad would happen to him, so I went with Max to the hotel.

 

“You can’t be Curly Howard,” Max insisted.

“Why not?” He jumped up from his chair and clucked at him.

I sat back on the hotel sofa.

“Because your physical was too perfect!” Max shot back.

“So what! My mutter brought me up healthy!” He beamed at us with pride. His tongue flicked across his lips as he looked at Max with expectation. Max didn’t answer. We weren’t being very good straight men.

“Okay,” I said finally, “where’s your brutters—I mean brothers—I mean Larry and Moe?”

He patted his stubble and seemed genuinely puzzled. His eyes closed as he searched for an answer. Something else besides Curly seemed to be at work.

“Gee, I dunno,” he said finally, “that’s a hard one.” Then the shadow passed from his face, and he stared at me as if he’d made a sudden discovery. “Have you got’em?”

I shook my head solemnly. He looked panicky. The strangeness struggled again to possess his face. He seemed to be in pain.

“Well, don’t ask me!” he cried out at last. “Do I look like I have’em?” He stuck his hand into one pocket, then rummaged around in the other. “Nothin’ there eeder!”

“You weren’t sure?” I asked.

He peeked inside his shirt. “Nope—fresh out!” He shook one leg and pumped backward across the floor, his head whipping back and forth. Then he stopped, put hands on his hips, and gave us his Il Duce stare. “You guys just don’t wanna believe me, that’s all! But I’m honest. I never lie.” He made us wait for it. “Except once.”

I laughed. Max chuckled and covered his face with his hand. Curly trumpeted his success, released a salvo of wub-wub-wubs and woo-woo-woos, then snapped the fingers of his right hand while striking his left fist, and ended by drumming on his cheeks to the sound of smug nyuk-nyuk-nyuks.

It wasn’t all that funny, but I felt happy for him.

“Now what about this?” Max demanded. “This picture was taken in Tokyo yesterday.” Max cleared his throat and held the print before Curly’s eyes.

“I look good, huh?” Curly said admiringly.

“So there are two of you!” Max shouted.

Curly looked at me. I shrugged. The photo was as much of a surprise to me as it was to him.

“Well?” Max continued.

Curly was still looking at me. “Say, when do we blow this fleabag? The soivice is rotten. Can’t get nobody on the phone!”

“Please answer my question,” Max said coldly.

Curly looked up at him blithely. “Why, soitantly. How else could I be in two places at once, copper? Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.” He pawed his face as if trying to remove cobwebs. “All this is making me tired and hungry, fellas!”

“It’ll be time for supper soon,” Max said.

“What’re we havin’?”

“You’ll see when it gets here.”

“I love surprises!” He looked downcast suddenly. “But there ain’t no goils. What’s with you guys?”

“What do you mean?” Max asked.

“There’s gotta be food, babes, and moolah,” he said, dancing a bit to his own words. “Everybody knows you gotta have all three to be happy!”

I could feel the rollercoaster pressure building. The interrogation was heading for the deep end again. The slowburn expression that had made Edgar Kennedy famous was creeping into Max’s face.

“Yikes!” Curly cried, stepping back from him in fear.

Max turned away in frustration and went into the bathroom.

“Come on,” I said, trying to smile and sound as friendly as possible, “who do you think you’re kidding? Why bother? Tell us who you are. It’s a great act, but you can’t keep it up just for the two of us.”

“Whaddya mean?” he asked innocently.

“Who fixed you up to look like this?” I asked. “Who are you?”

He looked left and right. “Everybody knows me! You’re just tryin’ to confuse me.” He looked as if he were about to burst into tears.

“Okay, okay,” I said, leaning back into the sofa. “It makes me no never mind. Go on as much as you want. I only thought you’d like to come out from behind your disguise and take some well-earned bows.”

He was completely mystified by my words.

“Well, aren’t you ever going to come out?” I demanded, trying to break through that puzzled look of his. There seemed to be nothing behind those fiercely idiotic eyes.

Max looked dedicated as he came out of the bathroom, and again I worried about Curly’s safety.

 

Max brought in a bio-psychologist named G. Bruno, who examined Curly for a day or two, then withdrew to study his findings.

“Well, who do you think he is?” he snapped at us on the fourth day. “Give out with an opinion.” His tone was derisive, but he seemed more exasperated with himself than with us.

“I have none,” I opined.

“He’s not just someone faked up with surgery—he’s perfect!” His voice broke with the admission.

Curly was watching us happily, almost serenely, as he reclined on the sofa. Max and I sat in armchairs as Bruno paced.

“He’s too perfect,” Bruno said, stopping to wipe his face with a tissue. “There’s two of him! Were being visited by an alien.” The tissue fell apart in his hands and he let it drop to the floor.

“What?” I said. Weird music seemed to play in my head.

Bruno nodded vigorously. “Oh, yes! We are! It’s not just another guy in Tokyo. It’s the same person. No surgery marks. Not a one! Exacto!”

He sounded sure, and I knew he didn’t want to be sure.

Max considered this revelation for a moment, then said, “You’d think they’d have sent someone nearer the common run of humanity, someone we could understand.”

“Wait a minute!” Curly shouted. “Anyone can understand me. My mutter taught me to speak up.”

“It makes a kind of sense,” Bruno said. “Comedic personalities often seem alien, even angelic. Harpo Marx, for example.”

I had a sudden vision of go-betweens arriving from far stars, each alien weirder than the one before, leading us in steps toward a sympathy with the radically way-out species that was striving to communicate with us. Curly was step one.

“They still might have sent someone we could talk to,” Max repeated disgustedly.

“Like who?” I demanded.

“I don’t know. Maybe Jack Benny.”

“Maybe this was the only guy they could understand,” I offered. “Be glad they didn’t send some joker who could only play charades.”

Bruno nodded. “Precisely. They wanted to send Curly. He made a special kind of sense to them.”

“We can’t even be sure this is an alien visitation,” Max said tiredly.

Bruno whirled around, then paced in a circle. Curly’s eyes followed him.

“Just look at him!” Bruno cried. “It can’t be Curly. The man Curly Howard loved beautiful women, houses, and dogs. He was an introvert who became gregarious when he drank. He worried about shaving his head for screen roles because it robbed him of his male charms. He wore a hat to keep from feeling like a boy.”

He was right. All we got from this Curly was the screen image, no matter how many questions we put to him. The reel worlds of the Stooge films were gauntlets of pain and violence, but no one ever suffered or got hurt for long. Curly always shrugged off catastrophe and embraced the next predicament. It was this saintly screen Curly, not the man who had died, who now lolled before us on the sofa.

“Give him a truth drug,” Max said. “He’d blab fast enough.”

Curly jerked upright with fear. “Aw come on, fellas, don’t scare me that way!”

“Nobody’s going to touch you,” I said firmly.

Bruno pointed at him. “Then tell us who you are!”

Tears flowed from Curly’s eyes. “I’m me—who else?” He looked at us soulfully. “I still get the needle, huh?”

I felt sick. It was all wrong. Curly had never died. Somehow he had not aged, and that was all there was to it. All this stuff about alien visitors was bunk.

“Look, Doc,” I pleaded, “you could be wrong. The real guy was kind of strange… “

“Get it through your thick head!” Bruno shouted. “It’s not a natural freak, and he hasn’t risen from the dead—and no one can do this kind of surgery without leaving some signs. He’s in two places at the same time, in black and white. We’ve been invaded!” His hands were shaking. I looked away, afraid that he would shoot Curly, just to see if he would die or not.

We were silent for what seemed a long time. Curly sat wringing his hands and sniffling. I felt sorry for him.

“Okay,” I said finally, “how did he get here?”

Bruno shrugged. “A ship dropped him off, or he was transmitted in some way, which might explain why there’s two of him. The carrier beam hit in two places before shutting off. We’ve been talking to a few folks who know about this kind of thing. Carl Sagan thinks the beam might have originated in a relay device somewhere in our own solar system.”

“I can tell!” Curly shouted suddenly. “You guys are gonna kill me! Well get it over, so I don’t suffer. Go on, do it!”

“Christ,” I said. “We’re not going to hurt you.” I gave Bruno and Max a searching look.

“Honest?” Curly asked, squinting at me.

I nodded soberly. He looked so alone. That should have tipped me off. He’d come without the other Stooges, even though there were two of him. The duplication might have been an accident, but Curly’s solo presence was not.

“He belongs to Carl Sagan and Robert Jastrow at the end of this week,” Max said. “They can have him.”

“Hey fellas!” Curly shouted. “Fish is good brain food.”

He stood up and gazed at me with expectation.

I took pity on him and answered, “You should fish for a whale.”

“Aw, a wise guy!” he replied, but without zest.

Bruno threw up his hands and leaned back against the door. Max sighed and scratched the back of his ear. We were simply not what Curly needed.

 

A week later, Curly went on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show.

Well, not exactly; the taping was restricted and would never be aired. Sagan and Jastrow had made their case well, managing even to limit the role of intelligence agencies.

A showbiz setting seemed the right way to get through to this kind of alien. If the copy had been of Einstein, he would have rated a modest apartment in Princeton with a comfortable couch in the small study. Sagan and Jastrow had concluded that the persona being presented to us demanded this kind of response, and both of them knew showbiz themselves to some degree. I felt that anything was preferable to tormenting Curly in some cheap hotel room.

The L.A. taping was by special invitation, mostly to scientists in various fields. For his trouble, Carson had insisted on broadcast rights, if the tape were ever cleared.

Bruno, Max, and I got into the first row. Carson came out and told us why his good friends Sagan and Jastrow had arranged this taping. He was nervous, as if about to go to a commerical, but of course there weren’t going to be any. Doc Severinson and his band had been omitted, and Ed McMahon was out of town.

“So let’s see,” Carson said dubiously as he sat down behind his desk, “just how advanced we are.”

Just how advanced are we? I thought, regretting that McMahon wasn’t here to make something of the line. No one in the audience seemed to want to shout “Way-o!”

Curly came out at 8:07. The crowd clapped, hooted, and whistled. Curly barked back, dropped to the floor and raced around on his side crying, “Wub-wub-wub-woo!” as he completed three circles. Suddenly, it seemed brilliant to have brought him here. It would draw him out, if anything could; the place was full of secret fans.

Curly struggled to his feet, wiggled his hands at us, then skipped over to the guest platform. Carson was locked into his Huck Finn grin as Curly’s bulk crashed down into the chair.

A shock hit us like an invisible telephone pole between the eyes. Explosions erupted from the studio speakers. A whistle screeched through our ears as the other two Stooges invaded the set. Curly leaped and greeted them with open arms.

“Moe, Larry!” he chirped, playing along.

Sagan and Jastrow were too tall, but their makeup and costumes were perfect. Suddenly I believed. This was the way to talk to the alien—through a comedy jam session. Curly had come alone so that we could complete the trio. Sagan and Jastrow knew what they were doing.

“Where was you guys?” Curly demanded as the noise died away.

“Where were you, numbskull?” Moe-Sagan countered, poking him in the belly. Curly bumped back with his gut, knocking him into Larry-Jastrow, who snorted and shuffled, then looked a bit like Ringo Starr as he shoved back.

Carson crept offstage while all this was going on.

“I brung you a hat,” Larry-Jastrow said, beaming as he presented Curly with a derby.

“Thanks!” Curly replied and put on the hat with a show of finesse. I caught his eye just then, and he gave me a boyish grin.

As they were all jostling each other for a seat, Carson-Shemp rolled out a cart of pies from stage left. His makeup was okay, but he was too thin for the part. He left the cart by the curtains and hurried back to his desk.

Curly gave Shemp’s impersonator a hostile stare.

No one had ever been able to replace Curly after his death. The Stooges had carried on with Shemp, with Curly-Joe, with Joe Besser, but it had never been the same.

Curly adjusted his bowler and looked away. Shemp-Carson reverted to all-Carson and stared out at the audience with his well-known look of nausea. I tried to catch Curly’s attention, feeling more like a stage-mother with every moment.

Then, just as Moe-Sagan was about to speak, Shemp-Carson asked, “Why did you pick Curly’s form in which to visit us?”

Curly blinked three times, and for the second time in my experience the shadow of something genuinely other passed across his face. Carson had confused him by stepping out of character.

I tensed.

“He’s kinda cute,” Larry-Jastrow said in a mellow voice.

“Certainly,” Moe-Sagan added with clipped precision.

Curly clucked to himself and smiled, melting the grip of otherness from his face. The game was back on track, except that now Carson was looking longingly at the pie cart.

Silence crashed across the fragile moments. Curly seemed to be sinking into a trance.

“We thought you was dead, Babe,” Moe-Sagan said anxiously, using Curly’s sibling nickname.

“Nah!” Curly retorted. “No future in bein’ dead!” His eyes became fierce, and he graced us with three nyuks.

“You tell’m kid!” Larry-Jastrow shouted, beaming. He was growing into the part.

Carson looked sour, obviously still irritated by Curly’s critical response to his lackluster Shemp.

“What can you tell us?” Carson added, taking a stab at Shemp’s gravelly voice.

Curly glanced at him blithely. “Not much!” he piped, clucking to himself like a determined hen.

Moe-Sagan nudged him in the ribs. “Ask me a question.”

“What comes after one?” Curly shot back.

Moe-Sagan nodded glumly. I glanced at the pie cart. Maybe this whole encounter needed more confusion.

“So what’s it like where you’re from?” Carson asked with a show of serious interest.

Curly rolled his eyes. “Just home. It ain’t bad.”

“Where is it, by the way?” Carson added.

Curly stuck out his arm and brushed Moe-Sagan’s eye. “Just out thataway—”

“Dear brother,” Moe-Sagan said as he rubbed his eye, “there are about two dozen billion questions I’d like to ask you…” He still couldn’t quite get the voice. To me it was more Kermit the Frog than Moe.

But it didn’t seem to matter to Curly. He blushed a light gray. “Aw shucks, I don’t know much. You’re too kind!” He pawed his own face.

Carson leaned over and slapped his face. “Spill the beans, you fraud!” He seemed truly angry. “Who do we have to get out here to make you talk—Asimov?”

Curly stayed in character. He jumped to his feet with a woo-woo-woo of alarm, bent over, and rammed head-on into Carson’s desk. The flimsy prop fell apart, forcing Carson to retreat. Curly thrashed around, then freed himself from the debris and went back to his seat, looking smug. Larry-Jastrow patted him on the back in approval.

“Violent is the word for Curly,” Carson said to the camera. “We’ll be right back.” He smiled feebly. Sagan’s Moe was looking disheartened as a new desk was rushed in during the mock break. The Il Duce expression was creeping into Curly’s face as he scanned the audience.

“We’ll never run out of these,” Carson said, rapping his knuckles on the new desk as he sat down.

“Sure you will,” said Curly. “You only got five fingers on each appendage.”

Carson laughed hysterically, then went silent and stared at us. Finally, he ripped off his Shemp wig and tossed it over his shoulder in defeat.

“Perhaps you might speak to us directly, Curly,” Sagan said. “We think we understand why you came to us, but now…”

“Whaddya mean?” Curly demanded, looking pained.

“Come on, fatso,” Carson said, “give us the story.”

Curly looked even more confused.

Sagan took a deep breath. “Help us find out where you’ve been. I’ll say things, and you tell me if they’re true.”

“Shoot!” Curly shouted happily.

Sagan nodded to the audience. “As I recall, a lot of Stooge material was released to television back in 1957, so you were probably on five wavelengths or more at the same time.”

Curly stared at him maniacally.

“An alien device picked up the signals,” Sagan continued, “somewhere within thirty light-years of us, and the artificial intelligence that probably runs the station and analyzed the signals beamed you to us as a response of some kind. The details of how this was done are very complex, I’m sure, but do I have it right?”

“Sure, but why in hell him?” Carson cut in. “Why not Jerry Lewis, or even Adolf Hitler?”

“Oh, yeah?” Curly said. “Why not me?”

“It’s their way of telling us they’re out there,” Sagan replied, motioning for Carson to keep his lip buttoned, “and different from us. Curly was picked out of a mass of information because he was strange, yet still like us. He struck a congenial note.”

“There’s something dangerous about this,” Jastrow said, sitting back and folding his arms across his chest. “We might do well to prepare ourselves.” He adjusted his Larry wig.

“What about it?” Sagan asked Curly.

“Who, me?” He pointed at himself. “What’s it worth to you?”

“Is any of this true?”

“What?”

“Is this what is happening?”

Curly shrugged . “Nobody tells me nothin’!”

“You’re wasting your time, Carl,” Carson said.

“Can’t you tell us anything?” Sagan insisted.

“You’re no fun!”

“Please! We need to know.”

Curly sat back and stared stiffly at Sagan. “Really? That bad?”

Carl nodded his Kermit nod.

“Yup, you just gotta help us, Babe.”

Carson arched his eyebrows as Curly stood up and grimaced, his head jerking forward, as if in the grip of an overwhelming force. We cried out as he flickered and reappeared at center stage. His shape flowed. There was a crackling sound as he stretched vertically, then contracted horizontally, thinning and fattening rapidly.

“So long, fellas!” he cried out plaintively, looking right at me.

I glanced at the monitors. The cameras were also picking up the distortions.

Curly flickered again, very slowly. Sagan rushed to him, but his hands passed through the figure. Carson’s mouth was wide open.

Sagan stumbled headlong through Curly, then backed up into the Stooge’s space. Together they made a four-legged, four-armed creature.

“What’s happenin’?” Curly wailed. His eyes scanned us mechanically. Faint green light played around his body, levitating the bowler from his head.

Jastrow rushed over and pulled Carl free.

“Don’t go!” I cried, leaping to my feet.

“Hold back!” Sagan shouted, struggling to break free of Jastrow’s grip.

“I can’t!” Curly replied . “Moe, Larry, help me!”

He screamed as if falling from a tall building, then winked out, and his hat hit the floor.

Shaken, Carson looked under his desk.

Sagan pulled off his wig and hurled it to the floor. “Johnny, you chased him away!”

Carson looked hurt. “How’s that, Carl?”

“We may be in great danger,” Jastrow repeated.

Sagan shook his head in denial. “This was a peaceful encounter. The automatic probe was placed in our vicinity by a high civilization.”

“Fat lot of good it did,” Carson quipped. “It was literal minded.”

“It presented us with a puzzle suited to us, on the basis of what it received from us.”

“You’re giving them too much credit, Carl,” Jastrow said. “I envision a vast, cybernetic civilization that may do us harm, however well-intentioned.”

“Hell, the guy wasn’t playing with a full deck,” Carson added. “You could see he wasn’t quite sure who he was. Stands to reason they didn’t send him just to say hello.”

“Yes,” Sagan admitted, “his limitations were clearly apparent.”

“He may be reporting on us somewhere,” Jastrow said, scratching his Larry wig.

“He didn’t go anywhere,” Sagan said wearily as he sat down. “He was a one-way communication, and just disintegrated.”

Jastrow still looked worried as he sat down “Maybe not. He may be telling them that… that we’re not a breakout species, and may never be.”

Carson laughed nervously.

Sagan shook his head nervously. “We’re speculating in the dark.” A faraway, cosmic look came into his eyes. “I hope they try again, with a better intermediary.”

“Harpo Marx,” Carson said, “or Lucille Ball.”

“Maybe even you, Johnny,” Sagan replied, reminding me of the old joke about the words Carson wanted on his tombstone: I’LL BE RIGHT BACK.

“That’s right,” he said, “the signals are all out there, playing forever.”

“Humor might be a form of interstellar warfare,” Jastrow said, “or even a test of some kind. There is an aggressive component in humor, you know.”

Sagan grimaced. Carson nodded.

I was dismayed. Curly had gone wrong because we hadn’t played our part. He had deserved better straight men. It seemed to me that Sagan’s eyes held something of my own reaction—sorrow on behalf of all that laughs and seeks to be divine in a dying universe.

“A little species,” Carson muttered, picking up Jastrow’s phrase, “not a breakout  
species…”

He might have been angry that the guest of the century, a visitor from the real big-time out there, had walked off his show. Perhaps he was even consoling himself with the notion that he had repulsed an alien invasion.

“Look there!” Max shouted next to me.

Curly’s faint shape was visible by the pie cart. Sagan, Jastrow, and Carson stood up. Curly struggled to pick up a pie, but his ghostly hands kept slipping through.

“Cheez!” he cried in a distorted voice. He tried to kick the cart, and his image fell apart. The head tumbled upward, screaming. The torso zoomed low over the floor like a blimp. The legs marched around. Then all the parts winked out.

We were silent. The lights flickered.

A dozen Curlies faced us like a herd of rhinos, gave a maddening cry, and ran toward us.

Through us.

Out through the walls.

Another set of Curlies appeared, looking a bit more solid. They came off the set and ran through the aisles, sinking into the floor and leaping through the panic-stricken gathering.

The next set consisted of two dozen figures, and I couldn’t see through them at all. They rushed us with a bloodcurdling burst of woo-woos and wub-wub-wubs, an oversized one tackling me. They were growing.

They were appearing by the dozen now, between eyeblinks. We were being knocked down, bumped, tripped; people were flying through the air.

I was on the floor next to Sagan.

“Brooms!” he shouted in my ear.

“What?”

“ ‘The Sorcerer’s Appprentice’—the brooms kept bringing water. The transmitter out there has lost all control. It’s an invasion!”

Jastrow crawled over to us, wearing an I-told-you-so look. I thought of the salt mill that had made the ocean salty, and wondered if my calling out to Curly had brought all this on.

“They’re bigger!” Sagan cried as one sat on him.

Jastrow and I pulled him free and we scrambled for the exit.

Outside, the police struggled to contain the mob of Curlies that was spilling out of the studio. Sagan, Jastrow, and I crept off to one side as the cops lost their fight.

Curly clones ran down the road, and more were still pouring out of the studio. It might never stop. The Stooge would multiply until he outnumbered humanity.

“The energy!” Sagan cried over the din. “The trillions of ergs needed to create so much living flesh!”

I grabbed one of the Curlies. “You’ve got to stop!” I shouted.

“What for!” he piped. “Don’t you wanna have fun?”

He looked down at me. “It’s not fun!” I insisted. “Something is very wrong.”

“Sez you! A party pooper, huh?” He struggled in my grip.

Sagan was at my side.

“Moe?” Curly asked dubiously.

“He’s not in control of this,” Sagan shouted in my ear. Curly broke free and ran.

They were still plunging out of the studio—and getting bigger.

“There’s nothing we can do here,” Sagan said, trying to stay on his feet. “We’ve got to find real help.”

“Who can deal with this?” I cried.

“Where’s Jastrow?” Sagan demanded.

“I don’t know. We lost him somewhere.”

 

L.A. was overrun that night. The city government announced a curfew and let the Curlies run riot. They commandeered cars, broke windows, crashed formal parties, wrecked all-night markets, and destroyed glassware shops. They seemed to know exactly where to go.

I went back into the studio and watched the alien mill churn out Stooges. There wasn’t much to do except point them to the exit as they socked in.

I dozed before dawn, but Sagan nudged me awake.

“It’s stopped.”

The studio was quiet. Most of the audience had left. Jastrow came in with a cup of coffee in his hand.

“They’re dissolving all over, thank God.”

I got up and found Curly’s trampled hat on the set.

“We should go to Japan,” Jastrow said to Sagan, “before that simulacrum falls apart.”

Goodbye, Curly, I said silently, dusting off the derby. Don’t think too badly of us.

Mocking nyuk-nyuks played in my mind as I left the studio.

And even now, in my dreams, the doubles keep coming, larger each night. I search for an exit, knowing the dream all too well; but it’s always too late. A giant Curly grabs me and makes for the Empire State Building. I curse the day that King Kong was put on the tube.