Ken glanced through the picture window, automatically, before he answered. No fights going, nobody looked particularly unhappy; the Russian salad hadn’t disappeared yet, though Bess Church’s wheel of Cheddar cheese had gone like snow in a furnace. The host wasn’t needed: good. He said, “Food and camp gear, sure. I don’t have camp gear, and I bet it’s in short supply. Anyway, suppose John isn’t glad to see us? No way we could phone ahead.”
“Shoshone’s still a good bett Why in God’s name would even snouts bomb Shoshone? And John doesn’t own those caves. We camp out nearby—”
“No.”
“Then where?”
“I mean no, I’m not leaving.” Ken Dutton had made his decision before he understood the reasons. Now they were coming to him, in the sight and sounds of his crowded and happy territory. “Maybe I’m crazy. I’m going to stick it out here.”
“Yup, you’re crazy. Thanks for dinner.”
Marty’d go, Ken realized. He hadn’t done any of the cleaning up. He wasn’t planning to come back.
Jenny woke to a tingling in her left arm, the one that had been under Jack. When she opened her eyes, she saw his.
“Hello, sailor. New in town?”—
He grinned. “I like watching you.”
She extracted her arm to look at her watch. “Time we got to work.”
“We still have an hour.” He moved closer to her. “Not that I can—”
“It’s all right. But I can’t sleep.”
“So?”
She sat up. “Let’s watch the weirdos. We’ve got pickups in the Snout Room.”
“Sounds good.”
He stayed in bed, with the sheet over him. Fastidious. Likes to see me nekkid, but not to be seen. I’d say it was cowardice, but how can you say that about a guy who’ll put his ass in from of a bullet for the President? Maybe his scars are classified…
“Is this legal?” Jack asked.
“Sure. I’m Intelligence. I can do anything!”
“Yeh, as long as they don’t replace the Supreme Court. Jenny, we’ve got to obey the rules, because we can get away with not obeying them.”
“It’s all right. The writers know they’re being watched. And Harpanet’s a prisoner. No rights. Satisfied?”
“Yeah—”
“And there’s nothing else to watch on my TV, I guarantee you that.” She switched on the set.
The picture swam into focus. An empty box of a room: no rugs, no furniture, no occupants; nothing but a movie screen and projector, and a broad doorway with edges of freshly cut concrete. “Wrong room,” she said, and fiddled again. “We’ve already assigned three rooms in the complex, and God knows what they’ll think they need next. Hem.”
The alien lolled at his ease in a sea of steaming mud. The humans around him were in beach chairs and swimsuits. Mud had splashed Sherry and Joe and Nat, who were crowded close to the edge. Wade Curtis stayed farther back, wearing an African safari bush jacket and seated in a fold-up chair with a beer can in his hand. Just above him was a huge globe of the Earth. A bar on wheels showed in one corner.
“See? They took our swimming pool! We move the furniture out when nobody’s using it. The alien likes his floor room,” Jenny said. “How about a swim?’
Jack eyed the mud with distaste. “No, thanks. Have you got all the rooms bugged?’
“No. Hell, no! Half these hard-SF people are ex-military, and they’d spot that, and the other half are liberals! We’ve got pickups in the mudroom and the Snout Room and the refuge, that’s the room they use to write up their notes and talk and get drunk, but it’s right next to the Snout Room. The mud’s new. He seems to like it, doesn’t he?”
“Can you get us sound too?”
“Sure.” Jenny turned a dial.
Wade Curtis’ unmistakable voice boomed from the speaker. “We’ve pretty well driven the Traveler Fithp out of Kansas. We’re picking through the debris now. We’d like to know where the fithp will attack next.”
“I wasn’t told,” Harpanet said. His pronunciation was good, yet something blurred the words: loose air escaped through the nose and lips, and there was an echo-chamber effect, perhaps due to his huge lung capacity.
Jack said, “He learns fast. I’ve talked to French diplomats with thicker accents.” But Jenny was repressing a shudder. The carnage in the smashed digit ship was still with her, and she had trouble facing the Snout.
Curtis was saying, “Your officers don’t seem to tell you much of what you’re doing.”
“No. A fi’ learns little because he might be taken into the enemy herd. That has happened with me. I have told you this.” The alien might have been affronted.
“It is a new way of thinking, and hard for us,” Sherry Atkinson said. “We must learn what we can.” She slipped into the mud, quite unselfconsciously, and rubbed behind the alien’s ear with both hands. She was already the muddiest of the lot, Jenny noted.
Curtis asked, “Did your superiors show interest in any area besides Kansas?”
“Kansas?”
“The region you invaded, this area.” Wade pointed. The erstwhile snout-held territory in Kansas was already circled on the great globe, with a black Magic Marker.
“No such interest was shown in my presence.”
“What we’re afraid of is a massive meteorite impact, something of asteroid size.”
