One more thing, though. It’s what’s this? Ben’s asking to move the session along from groping to fate, so as not to run this session overtime and on reserve power at that, the emergency beamblinking, winking, lowlight supply or who would’ve thought engines down — and so, owing additional money He doesn’t have to an alien who probably doesn’t have need for it…if I have no say in the matter, I’m thinking, what’s with this abduction?
Only a reminder, a noodge or a nudge. It’s to say hurry up and expire, enough with this already: get your life together and live out your span, your eternity, or only what you perceive as your eternity, and then, we’ll be back…we’ll return for you on our next pass through this quadrant, you should be honored — you’ll be our only stop in the galaxy. Now, and I mean no disrespect, you’re not the only acquisition on our agenda this time.
What, He wants to know who, who’s more important than me?
If I must, and Doktor Froid strokes its moist staches, its beardy clammed thought. Discretion, divulge. It’s the last of the last, this One. Though we would’ve retrieved Him on our last trip, the logistics wouldn’t work — just didn’t make sense to Accounting, wasn’t they said costeffective, even we have to deal with budgets, deadlines, and crunch: we would’ve been backtracking, would’ve spent half an infinity on inventory and restock alone; this One’s at the end reaches; He doesn’t live where He works, doesn’t bring the office home with Him, no mixing business with pleasure. We need Him before you — but you’ll get to meet Him, don’t worry, and you might even like Him. A wonderful addition to our collection. It’s big, I’m talking a raise, might be in for a promotion, Management’s impressed. What I’m saying is that though for your world He’s the last of the last, it’s not that He’s a nothing to us.
Last what? who?
Though there’s a slight problem: it’s that we can’t quite figure out what He eats, if He eats, if He drinks, sleeps or wakes or whatever, we’re not sure, how could we be and Him, it’s not like He’s telling, keeps a lowprofile lately, silent, and hidden; it’s as if, it’s been said — it’s whispering slurpily — He doesn’t even exist, is maybe already dead, or perhaps never did exist…more like He just seems that way, wants to seem that way, out to prove, make a point: at least appears if imageless, resistant, apprehensive about the whole process, I’m sure, irked, jealous, and vengeful…relatively normal response under the circumstances, can’t say I blame Him, don’t hold it against. He’s not used to being bullied, coopted, told what to do. Not Him, not the last of the Gods — and, would you believe it, the Doktor says brightening, and rising from behind it as if they’ve all along padded its sit atop the decline of the armchair a handful of tentacles each banded around with a hundred fancy schmancy watches clocking their times differently though equally and expensively regular — it’s fifty minutes past an hour of yours; my how sessions fly, and how we should, too. It’s been a pleasure; truly, I’m honored, it’s deep. Don’t worry, we’ll deduct the fee for this session from your first week’s allowance. My office won’t be in touch until it’s too late; we don’t call or send cards. Speaking professionally, you’ll forget all about us. But you might want to get a second opinion. Rest assured, Ben — we’ll meet again soon.
A ray of light or shaft, with Him beneath, the disposition terrible. One leg of a ladder missing another leg and then, too, their rungs altogether, with Him beneath and passedout. A pole, and not that of the moustachioed, sausage-tongued nationality, those who once had been known as Poles, and so to be fatter and even taller and immensely hairier and more violent than that of the present species — but a pole like a totem, as in a lamppost, a telephonepole, above Ben, passedout about to cometo.
The mood, horrendous, don’t ask.
A pole just poling out there alone in the middle of the desert — O the West Pole, standing blown to bow in the cold wind of dawn, its shadow so long it reaches all the way to the easterly pole and right back around again, equatorial and such, gone global. As for the loose rag atop, that flappity schmatte: it’s flying the standard of a nation Ben’s never heard of before, a flag for a land He’s never even seen on the maps, a country maybe unconscious.
18, it says, where’s that?
Ask Aba — golf was his thing.
It’s freezing, and His robe’s no help, it’s wet, not fabricate but filth. It’d snowed, then icedover, and all the while the grounds’ sprinklers have been on, shooting their water to harden, to still, their sprays frozen insectlike, or into seacreature tentacles — coldhanging cages of flow, as if capturing air, imprisoning cold.
Ben on a golfcourse, His form a divot of earth.
