Troublemakers

Henry ignored him for a moment, deciding to unravel this as he had always unraveled every conundrum in his search for information: “calmly, sequentially, first things first. Since the unie’s comments were baffling in the light of any historical conquests Henry had ever read about, he decided to turn his immediate attention elsewhere before trying to make sense of the nonsensical. First things first.

He crawled to his feet and unsteadily walked over to the machines. All the while glancing up to keep an eye on Eggzaborg. The machines hurt his eyes.

A tube-like apparatus mounted on an octagonal casing was spitting-through an orifice-buttons. The shape of the machine hurt his eyes. The buttons were of varying sizes, colors, shapes. Shirt buttons, coat buttons, industrial sealing buttons, watch-cap buttons, canvas tent buttons, exotic-purpose buttons. Many buttons, all kinds of buttons. Many of them were cracked, or the sides of the thread holes were sharpened enough to split the thread. They all fell into a trough with holes, graded themselves, and plunged through attached tubes into cartons on the floor. Henry blinked once.

The shape of the second machine hurt Henry’s eyes; the device seemed to be grinding a thin line between the head and shank of twope

The other machines, whose shapes really hurt Henry’s eyes, were performing equally petty, yet subversive, procedures. One was all angles and glass sheets, leading to the hole in the wall Henry had seen from below. It was glugging frantically. The puffs of glowing green fog were still erupting sporadically.

“That one wilts lettuce, “ Eggzaborg said, with pride.

“It what?”

The unie looked shocked. “You don’t think lettuce wilts of its own accord, do you?”

“Well, I never thought about it-that is-food rots, it goes bad of its own...uh, nature...entropy...doesn’t it? It doesn’t? Sure it does, yeah?”

“Poor thing,” the unie repeated, looking even more wistful than before. Pity shone in his eyes. “It’s almost like taking advantage of a very slow pony.”

Henry felt this was the moment; but since the unie was obviously not human, he would have to handle things carefully. He was dealing with an alien intellect. Oh, yes, that was the long and short of it. An alien from another place in the universe. An e.t. sort of creature. Yes, indeed. He must never forget that. Probably a highly dangerous alien intellect. He didn’t look very dangerous. But then, one couldn’t tell with these alien intellects. One always has to be on one’s toes with these devious, cu

“All right, then,” said Henry, nay, challenged Henry, “so you wilt lettuce. So what? How does that aid you in conquering the Earth?”

“Disorganization,” the unie answered in a deeply significant tone of voice, pointing one ominous stick finger at Henry. “Disorganization and demoralization! Undercuts you! Unsettles, and unhinges, you! Makes you teeter, throws you off balance, makes you uncertain about the basic structure of things: gravity, entropy, cooking times. Strikes at the very fibers of your security! Heh!” He chuckled several times more, and folded his hands. There was a lot of that: folding and unfolding.

Henry began to realize just how alien this alien’s thought-processes really were. Though he didn’t recognize the psychological significance of wilted lettuce, it obviously meant something big to the unie. Big. He marked it down in his mind.

Still, he didn’t seem to be getting anywhere meaningful. He decided to try another method to get the unie to talk, to reveal all. “I don’t get this,” Henry said. “I just don’t believe it. You’re just a demented magician or-or something. You aren’t what you say at all. By the way,” he added snidely, “just what the hell are you?”

The unie leaped to his feet in the air, bumping his pointed head on the ceiling. More plaster sifted down. “Plummis!” cursed the little being, massaging his skull. Like the lettuce, his ante

He was furious. “You dare question the motives, machinations, methodology and...and...” he groped for an alliterative word, “power of Eggzaborg?” His face, normally an off-blue, not unpleasant sky tone, had slowly turned a fierce aquamarine. “Fool, dolt, imbecile, gleckbund, clod, bumpkin, jerk!” The words rolled off his tongue, spattered in Henry’s face. Henry cringed.

He was begi

He became convinced of his miscalculation as his feet left the floor and he found himself hanging upside-down in the air, vibrating madly, all the pocket-change and keys and bismuth tablets cascading from his pockets, plonking him on the head as gravity had its way with them. His noticeably thick-lensed eyeglasses finally fell off. Everything became a blur. “S-s-s-stop! P-p-please s-s-s-stop!” Henry begged, twisting about in the air like a defective mixmaster. “U-u-u-uggedy-ug-ug!” he ugged as the unie bounced him, then pile-drove Henry’s head against the floor, numerous times, with numerous painful clunks. His pipe lighter fell out of his vest pocket and cracked him under the chin.

Suddenly, it stopped. Henry felt his legs unstiffen, and he somersaulted over onto the floor, lying face up, quite a bit the worse for having been uniehandled. He was puffing with agony when the unie’s face floated into what little was left of his blurred range of vision.

“Terribly sorry,” the unie said, looking down. He appeared to be sincerely concerned about his actions. He picked up Henry’s glasses and smoothly hooked them back in place on Henry’s head. “It’s just a result of waiting all these years. Six hundred years waiting. That’s a long time to anticipate, to yearn for relief on a conquest-shift that, at best, would make anyone edgy. This planet isn’t all that entertaining, meaning no offense; but you do only have the one moon, the one sun, no flemnall, and a mere four seasons. I’m three hundred and fifty years past due for the usual, standard rotation relief, and I really need some. I’m six hundred years total time on this unimportant tour of duty and, well, I’m feelin’ mighty low.” He sighed, bit what little there was of his lips, and sank into silent glumness.

Henry felt a bit of his strength coming back. At least enough to ask a few more questions.

“T-tell me the story, E-Eggzaborg.”

The unie came to a floating halt above the prostrate Henry Lecalir. “Well...” he began, with reluctance to talk to this cretinous human, “the story is simple. I graduated with honors from Dorvis Lepham. One of the top phages, of course. First in quatt wunkery, first in padgett, sixteenth in crumbpf, but the professor had it in for me...well, anyway...I am a unie. I was thus assigned to-”

Henry cut him off, “What is a unie?”

“Shut up, stop interrupting!”

“But where did you come from?”

The unie purpled again, and Henry felt (with growing terror) his body twitch, as though it were about to ascend yet again. But it didn’t, and he knew the unie had brought his temper under control. “Plummis, man! Let me finish! Stop your blasphemous interrupting!” Snappish. Very snappish. Probably not a congenial species, in the main. Likely did not play well with other species.

Henry quickly motioned him to continue, calming him with the same movement.

Eggzaborg huffed, then resumed. “Space, moron. Space. Out there.” He pointed. Generally in the direction of some space. Not all space, but at least some space. “I came from space. Now don’t interrupt-I come from out there where you have no idea a place exists. Both in space, and in between layers of space. Interstitial expanses. Voluminous voids. I am here because-I am here because-well, plummis, fellow, I’m here to conquer!” He vacillated his ante